Back to The Wire, and the latest incarnation of the bluesy theme song, with its warning about how you’ve got to keep the devil down in the hole. Impossible task, that. This is a show about working life, and one of the things it makes you realise is just how crap being a drug dealer is; the boredom, the violence, the bullying bosses, the lack of legal protection, the risk of imprisonment, injury and death. An above-board office job may have its Bartleby moments, but you’re unlikely to end up assassinated by staple-gun and covered in quicklime.
The Wire also makes you realise – not that you doubted it, but you prefer not to think about it – how entrenched the drugs industry is, and that ending the prohibition on the end product, at least at a local level, might be the best way to limit its capacity for damage. The other thing it makes you think is: what a dump. The shittiness of the drugs districts is matched only by the inimitable gun-totin’ languor of the way the characters express themselves.
This was an expert introductory episode to season four, with plenty of deft humour: the piss-bomb vengeance attack that backfires, happy Jimmy McNulty nicking a spare folder to take home for the kids, sweaty Carcetti needing to keep a spare suit in the car and enduring the awfulness of being obliged to solicit funds for himself while shut up in a small room with sick yellow wallpaper, a titty-girl poster and a darts board.
There were also two great inappropriate training montages. Prez sat in a room full of teachers who were exhorted to think of themselves as lovable when they were about to face Armageddon. Meanwhile, Sydnor, McNulty et al were urged to be aware of soft targets for terrorists, and laughed at the counter-suggestion that the work of terrorists would probably pass unnoticed, and that the terrorists wouldn’t stand a chance anyway.
Probably most of the US population has no idea what it might be like in the inner cities where street corners are retail outlets to be fought over, and don’t want to know, any more than Daily Mail-reading Middle England really wants to have to think about Peckham, Brixton and other boroughs where people get stabbed or shot on a regular basis, other than to allocate blame and condemn the outcomes. This sort of moralising laissez-faire ensures that it’s business as usual; misery for the punters and pushers and vast, invisible profits for the untouchable few. Sounds familiar, don’t it? And nothing’s quite as dangerous as people who have nothing but their status to lose.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
How The Sweeney gave birth to Katy Perry
Yesterday I consumed an assortment of festive meals and snacks that would have put The Hungry Caterpillar to shame, and sat in front of an equally unhealthy glut of televisual titbits. First up, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which the girls screamed and hid in a tree while their big brother protected them; carried healing drops, a little vegetable knife and a couple of arrows instead of swords that might have actually enabled them to stand up for themselves; and cried, at length, over the apparently dead Aslan while the boys got girded up for war. (Later on, I seem to remember, Susan is disbarred from Narnia for getting interested in boys and lipstick.)
The only dame to be seen who was any good with a blade was, of course, a baddie. This female arch-villain, an ice queen who turned living things to rock, was the antithesis of the warm mother who turns her blood to milk to nourish her young. But why a wicked witch, when in every kingdom on earth masculine villainy has played the leading role down the ages? Tolkein has fewer female players – Arwen, Galadriel – but at least they’re properly heroic, and their magical powers are good rather than evil. (OK, he has Shelob, but she’s more spider than woman.)
It seems to me that C S Lewis was more hostile to the female than JRR, keener to keep it in its place. Maybe it was because JRR had lost his mother, or maybe it was his Catholicism; although there’s a popular myth that Catholicism creates two equally impossible categories for women to squeeze themselves into, the virgin Madonna and the whore, it seems to me that Catholicism is more inclusive of the female and the maternal than Protestantism; at least Mary cradling the baby is right in there, has her own chapels, occupies a crucial place in the general set-up...
Anyway, I’d rather a story concentrated on its male characters and let me identify with them rather than proffering some screechy females that I’d rather not imagine myself alongside. Peep Show’s Big Suze turned up in the last few minutes as, er, Susan, which at least gave me something to smile about.
Next up: World’s Strongest Man: 30 Years of Pain (‘I think I’m stronger than him, but he can really run’), followed by Bradley Walsh presenting The Sweeney – Must See (obviously John Simm would have cost too much). Yes, The Sweeney was one of the greatest police drama action series ever shown on ITV, and it was full of such jokes and fun, usually involving Regan and Carter eyeing up some bird’s boobs or bum, Don’t mind if I do! We’ll have to take you down the vet if you carry on like this! Oo-er missus, but I wouln’t do him, that bloke bending over next to the bird with the wind up her skirt, ooh no.
You could see how the daughters of the 1970s, reaching maturity in the 1990s, decided to draw the sting out of this kind of provocative sexual appraisal by joining in: No, I wouldn’t mind a bit of that either. And thus trysexuality was born; girls necked girls in queues for the loo, Carrie kissed Alanis Morrissette and a few years later along pranced Katy Perry cooing about the taste of her snogee’s cherry chapstick. Regan and Carter, just look what you went and started.
Then there were a bunch of Brit actors garnering, hopefully, fat pay cheques in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – well, you have to hope they were handsomely rewarded for their role in advertising, at length, what I’m sure is a very effective and successful theme park ride. The film was beautifully realised, and had some decorative actors, but oh! What a load of heartless tosh! Why do people talk about this franchise with such warmth, as if it’s a guaranteed go-to for a good time? I thought the first one was disappointing, and this one was even more silly and tedious. It’s the kind of film where a random, expendable crew member is reduced to a pair of feet stuck in a porthole before disappearing into the clutches of the lovingly CGI’d sea-monster, whereas if Keira Knightley gets nabbed you know someone’ll save her within minutes.
CGI does not a good story make; I’d rather watch Old Gregg talk about his mangina than Bill Nighy with a beard of genuinely wriggling sea-serpents. And as for Johnny Depp... yes, I know everybody raved about his comedy-pirate turn, and he did a convincing job of looking like he was enjoying himself, so much so that it almost felt rude (but still quite possible) not to join him.
Anyway, by the time I caught sight of Robert Downey Junior being startlingly assassinated in a very good Nazi-themed Richard III I’d thoroughly spoilt my appetite, and had to call it a day.
Also glimpsed in Richard III: Dominic West. Series four of The Wire arrived this morning. Yay! There’ll be no Jool’s Annual Hootenanny for us this New Year’s Eve.
The only dame to be seen who was any good with a blade was, of course, a baddie. This female arch-villain, an ice queen who turned living things to rock, was the antithesis of the warm mother who turns her blood to milk to nourish her young. But why a wicked witch, when in every kingdom on earth masculine villainy has played the leading role down the ages? Tolkein has fewer female players – Arwen, Galadriel – but at least they’re properly heroic, and their magical powers are good rather than evil. (OK, he has Shelob, but she’s more spider than woman.)
It seems to me that C S Lewis was more hostile to the female than JRR, keener to keep it in its place. Maybe it was because JRR had lost his mother, or maybe it was his Catholicism; although there’s a popular myth that Catholicism creates two equally impossible categories for women to squeeze themselves into, the virgin Madonna and the whore, it seems to me that Catholicism is more inclusive of the female and the maternal than Protestantism; at least Mary cradling the baby is right in there, has her own chapels, occupies a crucial place in the general set-up...
Anyway, I’d rather a story concentrated on its male characters and let me identify with them rather than proffering some screechy females that I’d rather not imagine myself alongside. Peep Show’s Big Suze turned up in the last few minutes as, er, Susan, which at least gave me something to smile about.
Next up: World’s Strongest Man: 30 Years of Pain (‘I think I’m stronger than him, but he can really run’), followed by Bradley Walsh presenting The Sweeney – Must See (obviously John Simm would have cost too much). Yes, The Sweeney was one of the greatest police drama action series ever shown on ITV, and it was full of such jokes and fun, usually involving Regan and Carter eyeing up some bird’s boobs or bum, Don’t mind if I do! We’ll have to take you down the vet if you carry on like this! Oo-er missus, but I wouln’t do him, that bloke bending over next to the bird with the wind up her skirt, ooh no.
You could see how the daughters of the 1970s, reaching maturity in the 1990s, decided to draw the sting out of this kind of provocative sexual appraisal by joining in: No, I wouldn’t mind a bit of that either. And thus trysexuality was born; girls necked girls in queues for the loo, Carrie kissed Alanis Morrissette and a few years later along pranced Katy Perry cooing about the taste of her snogee’s cherry chapstick. Regan and Carter, just look what you went and started.
Then there were a bunch of Brit actors garnering, hopefully, fat pay cheques in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – well, you have to hope they were handsomely rewarded for their role in advertising, at length, what I’m sure is a very effective and successful theme park ride. The film was beautifully realised, and had some decorative actors, but oh! What a load of heartless tosh! Why do people talk about this franchise with such warmth, as if it’s a guaranteed go-to for a good time? I thought the first one was disappointing, and this one was even more silly and tedious. It’s the kind of film where a random, expendable crew member is reduced to a pair of feet stuck in a porthole before disappearing into the clutches of the lovingly CGI’d sea-monster, whereas if Keira Knightley gets nabbed you know someone’ll save her within minutes.
CGI does not a good story make; I’d rather watch Old Gregg talk about his mangina than Bill Nighy with a beard of genuinely wriggling sea-serpents. And as for Johnny Depp... yes, I know everybody raved about his comedy-pirate turn, and he did a convincing job of looking like he was enjoying himself, so much so that it almost felt rude (but still quite possible) not to join him.
Anyway, by the time I caught sight of Robert Downey Junior being startlingly assassinated in a very good Nazi-themed Richard III I’d thoroughly spoilt my appetite, and had to call it a day.
Also glimpsed in Richard III: Dominic West. Series four of The Wire arrived this morning. Yay! There’ll be no Jool’s Annual Hootenanny for us this New Year’s Eve.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Doctor Who and Madonna’s gusset
Doctor Who Christmas special: apart from David Morrissey, who I could happily see much more of, it was all a bit silly, really, lurching from one spectacle to another with tentative excuses, like a BBC version of a really bad Hollywood action movie. The first couple of series after the advent of Russell T Davies were worth making a TV date with, and David Tennant’s gawky charm is all very well, but the storytelling now is often flimsy, with honourable exceptions like the Blink episode. The fact that it’s for children is no excuse; it is emotionally manipulative, but without a consistent underlying intelligence, so when the music blares and you’re presented with a scene that is obviously meant to make you feel something, you just think, Did I miss something?
For the last few years Doctor Who has been suffering from a mild case of Madonna’s gusset; that is, when everybody tells you something’s worth watching, so you do, and then are disappointed. Madonna’s gusset syndrome was named after the nasty pink leotard she wore in a video for one of her entirely unmemorable songs. The definition of her buns was almost universally admired, at least in the kind of magazines I read, but that still didn’t make her look like someone you’d want to get sticky with. I just found myself wishing she’d put a skirt on it.
David Morrissey: mmm.... Those sorrowful dark blue-grey eyes, the sensitive mouth, the slight ruggedness... I remember him being great in The Deal, and a brilliant counterpoint to Michael Sheen’s impersonation of a brittle and weightless Tony Blair. Sheen’s perfectly equipped to play TB: when he acts there’s no core to him, he’s a perfectly observed, weightless exterior, whereas David M has a sympathetic gravitas. If only David M was playing the ghost in The Ghost, rather than blooming Ewan McGregor, who will wreck it, or rather, gently lay waste to it by being smug and uncompelling, as he has been in everything I’ve seen him in since Trainspotting, when he still had something to prove. With David Morrissey as the doomed writer The Ghost would be a much better film.
For the last few years Doctor Who has been suffering from a mild case of Madonna’s gusset; that is, when everybody tells you something’s worth watching, so you do, and then are disappointed. Madonna’s gusset syndrome was named after the nasty pink leotard she wore in a video for one of her entirely unmemorable songs. The definition of her buns was almost universally admired, at least in the kind of magazines I read, but that still didn’t make her look like someone you’d want to get sticky with. I just found myself wishing she’d put a skirt on it.
David Morrissey: mmm.... Those sorrowful dark blue-grey eyes, the sensitive mouth, the slight ruggedness... I remember him being great in The Deal, and a brilliant counterpoint to Michael Sheen’s impersonation of a brittle and weightless Tony Blair. Sheen’s perfectly equipped to play TB: when he acts there’s no core to him, he’s a perfectly observed, weightless exterior, whereas David M has a sympathetic gravitas. If only David M was playing the ghost in The Ghost, rather than blooming Ewan McGregor, who will wreck it, or rather, gently lay waste to it by being smug and uncompelling, as he has been in everything I’ve seen him in since Trainspotting, when he still had something to prove. With David Morrissey as the doomed writer The Ghost would be a much better film.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Christmas crunchiness for all
Last night, in Screenwipe’s round-up of the year, Charlie Brooker noted various sillinesses about Survivors, mostly either relating to the onset of the initial plague or to the acting tics of the lead characters; Max Beesley’s eye-narrowing, Abby’s smug insistence on banging on about a son we’ve never met and therefore aren’t fussed about, etc. He was spot on, as usual. But I still like it more than anything else that the BBC’s produced for a very long time. At least it doesn’t have any bonnets in it.
I also realised how much terrible nonsense I’ve happily managed to avoid negating my existence by watching. Noel Edmonds! John Barrowman! Luridly coloured quiz shows with a vague political agenda? What hideousness was this? If you sat through too much of this stuff, you’d morph into a pink flashing buzzer with an inane grin plastered across the void where your brain used to be.
One thing I like about Survivors is that for a homegrown production it’s relatively un-crunchy; crunchiness being when a show looks a bit rubbish, like it was conceived and shot by the work experience. The nativity show, however, is an art form that’s wonderful precisely because of its crunchiness. I watched one yesterday. The same three kings costumes come out of storage every year, and are always inhabited with regal dignity, whatever the misbehaving three-year-old at the foot of the stage does to break through the fourth wall. At the end the children were allowed onto the stage to greet Baby Jesus, a real newborn who actually let them stroke him without crying.
In the Christmas issue of The Spectator Rod Liddle is all hot under the collar about some woman who withdrew her child from RE lessons, then protested when he was excluded from the Christmas party: ‘But Christmas is nothing to do with Jesus!’ she allegedly protested.
Actually, she had a point, given that the Christians co-opted the Roman midwinter festival of Saturnalia, just as they adapted the horns of the pagan fertility god for the iconography of the Devil. When you’re establishing a new power base, if you’ve got any sense, you don’t attempt to sweep away what was there before entirely, you seek to employ and control it; and people need a knees-up when it’s cold and dark, and would, then as now, be most upset if it was disallowed.
Now it seems that the pagans have co-opted Christmas back again, or, to be more precise, Commerce, the upstart god of the age, known in infancy as Mammon, has made it his own. (Gluttony and Debauch also get a good look-in.) Or so it may appear, but actually the midwinter feast, celebrated for and by children, their families and tribes, retains its magic regardless of who’s meant to be in charge. The annual ritual of the nativity play, acted out on school stages and in churches the length and breadth of the land, has a gentle power that is succoured by something quieter and more enduring than the incessant tinkle of Christmas musak, something older even than Saturnalia; something that doesn’t need to advertise and couldn’t if it tried.
I also realised how much terrible nonsense I’ve happily managed to avoid negating my existence by watching. Noel Edmonds! John Barrowman! Luridly coloured quiz shows with a vague political agenda? What hideousness was this? If you sat through too much of this stuff, you’d morph into a pink flashing buzzer with an inane grin plastered across the void where your brain used to be.
One thing I like about Survivors is that for a homegrown production it’s relatively un-crunchy; crunchiness being when a show looks a bit rubbish, like it was conceived and shot by the work experience. The nativity show, however, is an art form that’s wonderful precisely because of its crunchiness. I watched one yesterday. The same three kings costumes come out of storage every year, and are always inhabited with regal dignity, whatever the misbehaving three-year-old at the foot of the stage does to break through the fourth wall. At the end the children were allowed onto the stage to greet Baby Jesus, a real newborn who actually let them stroke him without crying.
In the Christmas issue of The Spectator Rod Liddle is all hot under the collar about some woman who withdrew her child from RE lessons, then protested when he was excluded from the Christmas party: ‘But Christmas is nothing to do with Jesus!’ she allegedly protested.
Actually, she had a point, given that the Christians co-opted the Roman midwinter festival of Saturnalia, just as they adapted the horns of the pagan fertility god for the iconography of the Devil. When you’re establishing a new power base, if you’ve got any sense, you don’t attempt to sweep away what was there before entirely, you seek to employ and control it; and people need a knees-up when it’s cold and dark, and would, then as now, be most upset if it was disallowed.
Now it seems that the pagans have co-opted Christmas back again, or, to be more precise, Commerce, the upstart god of the age, known in infancy as Mammon, has made it his own. (Gluttony and Debauch also get a good look-in.) Or so it may appear, but actually the midwinter feast, celebrated for and by children, their families and tribes, retains its magic regardless of who’s meant to be in charge. The annual ritual of the nativity play, acted out on school stages and in churches the length and breadth of the land, has a gentle power that is succoured by something quieter and more enduring than the incessant tinkle of Christmas musak, something older even than Saturnalia; something that doesn’t need to advertise and couldn’t if it tried.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Post-apocalyptic pastoral: eat, shoot, leave
Oooh! The final, cliffhanger episode of season one of Survivors brought me out in a sweat. I have a very low resistance to suspense. It really was very good – genuinely gripping, chilling and thought-provoking. The thoughts it provoked, for me at least, went something like this:
- What on earth would I do in this situation? I have no useful practical survival skills. I don’t know how to trap and skin a rabbit, fix up an engine or use a gun.
- Oh yes... that’s exactly the kind of shitty behaviour people would probably indulge in if the social order fell apart. That irritating prick who’s enjoying shoving a rifle into people’s faces and throwing his weight around – yup, that’s what you’d have to put up with if you made it through to the grim new world. I’m not sure any of our current ministers or politicians would actually really end up wielding any authority over their fellow men when the chips were down, though. Our generals, maybe. Or maybe any surviving politicians would be in their element, conniving and bullying their way back to the top. Just one unpleasant possibility among many.
- ...Yes! Yessss! Shoot him! He’s an irritating prick! (The post-apocalyptic scenario does away with one’s willingness to give people the benefit of the doubt and deal with threat in a peaceful and diplomatic fashion.)
Guns are crucial in the post-apocalyptic world. So are old-fashioned huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ countryman-type skills. Perhaps you’d end up with a sort of peculiar civil war with urban guerrillas and well-armed yokels fighting it out over who gets to be lord of the manor.
One thing’s for sure, the manor’s the place to head for. Cities always turn nasty very quickly when the social order goes into meltdown in the aftermath of plague. The whole post-apocalyse genre is a sort of perverse pastoral in which there’s no option but to go back to the mean old serfdom of tilling the soil, probably with a bunch of thugs and enforcers living off the fat of your labour and deploying you to fight turf wars with the neighbouring badass...
Anyway, roll on season two. Next up: season four of The Wire, which has just become cheap enough to be eligible for purchase. Happy Christmas Eve!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Birth in all its grim glory: The Devil’s Whore, Cold Feet and Threads
Enough birth brickbats. Here are some bouquets.
- The Devil’s Whore. Evaded charges of ludicrousness by omitting labour completely, instead showing us an exhausted Andrea Riseborough leaning back against bloodied sheets at the moment of delivery. Good yelling.
- Fay Ripley in Cold Feet. Again, this looked convincingly fun-free.
- The poor girl who gives birth to a deformed infant alone in a manky farmyard at the end of Threads. Conveys succinctly how terrible it would be to give birth in a post-apocalyptic world in which care of any kind, let alone from medical professionals, is no longer available.
One of the fundamental functions of society is to look after and protect expectant mothers and newborns. That brutal conclusion told you there was no hope left, no prospective redemption, and no future; the damage done to the social contract was irreparable.
At my NCT class they told us that, left to our own devices on a desert island, we’d all manage to deliver our babies eventually. It was nice of them to try to make us feel confident. But it was also patently untrue.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
More daft birth: how Survivors screwed up
BBC1’s Survivors: whoever put this together has been watching Lost and Heroes, and it’s all the better for it; its characters, being Brits, aren’t as consistently gorgeous, but they’re morally ambiguous while remaining sympathetic, which is the winning hand played by big American dramas at their best. But the recent birth scene was, in one crucial respect, a letdown.
OK, we’d been primed for it to be a quick labour; it was her third, and she was sure it would be as easy as shelling peas, or picking daisies, or something. But the creepy music had warned us that the delivery might turn out not to be as straightforward as the fate-tempting mother anticipated... And lo, it’s breech. Here’s the fatal flaw; it was completely preposterous to suppose that the sexy sister from Nathan Barley would have been happy to push one out with Mumsy Abby and the slick boss from Peep Show looking benignly on.
I know this character was exceptionally Zen – so much so that she responded to the unmedicated schizoid antics of her group leader with warm affection, and instead of deciding it might be a smart move to keep her newborn out of his orbit, volunteered the hope that the baby would help him to recover. But all the same... She might have put up with Abby, just, but Mr Peep Show Boss, delightful though he is, would have almost certainly received some very sweary marching orders. Am totally digging him in his Survivors incarnation, though. I hope it’s true that he’s going to be the new Doctor Who.
OK, we’d been primed for it to be a quick labour; it was her third, and she was sure it would be as easy as shelling peas, or picking daisies, or something. But the creepy music had warned us that the delivery might turn out not to be as straightforward as the fate-tempting mother anticipated... And lo, it’s breech. Here’s the fatal flaw; it was completely preposterous to suppose that the sexy sister from Nathan Barley would have been happy to push one out with Mumsy Abby and the slick boss from Peep Show looking benignly on.
I know this character was exceptionally Zen – so much so that she responded to the unmedicated schizoid antics of her group leader with warm affection, and instead of deciding it might be a smart move to keep her newborn out of his orbit, volunteered the hope that the baby would help him to recover. But all the same... She might have put up with Abby, just, but Mr Peep Show Boss, delightful though he is, would have almost certainly received some very sweary marching orders. Am totally digging him in his Survivors incarnation, though. I hope it’s true that he’s going to be the new Doctor Who.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Blood and grunts: the daft birth awards
The literary world has its annual Bad Sex awards, but as far as I know there aren’t any statuettes for iffy on-screen nookie performances. Of course sex in the movies doesn’t often look a whole lot like the real thing, for good or ill; it’s a strictly codified and emblematic art form, in which a lady who has just been merrily pluking will wrap a sheet around the entirety of her body in order to leave the sanctuary of the king-sized bed, thus notifying us that she is still modest and adorable despite the hot heave-ho she has, or so we are led to believe, just been receiving (step forward with your head hung in shame, SATC movie.)
Sometimes a sex scene really does convey the urgency of passion – I’d like to single out Ana Lucia and Sawyer in Lost for an honourable mention. Now that looked like she actually wanted it to happen, and who could blame her? Of course, within a couple more episodes she’d been dispatched like a fallen virgin in a horror movie, so there was no opportunity for a recurrence. Still, that particular bit of intimate action came as something of a relief after endless episodes in which they were all cooped up on the island forging alliances and enmities and, on occasion, eyeing each other up, but no-one was actually getting down to it.
Maybe the fear of giving birth sans epidural would have been a powerful disincentive, but actually, given all those long summer evenings with nothing else to do besides go paddling and wait for the Others to come calling – whaddayagonnado? If it was a French series, they’d all have been rutting in rock pools as soon as they’d recovered from the crash landing, retrieved some Gauloises from the hold and had a few long, pause-ridden and enigmatic discussions about Rousseau (the original dude, not the bird with the mad hair.)
Sex in the movies is tricky, but birth really is a sure-fire enticement to absurdity. For starters, as all tremulous mums-to-be learn, labour can go on for days, especially first time round. In this context I’d like to single out Friends for an honourable mention. OK, so Jennifer Aniston looked as if she was stretched out on a spa bed with mild indigestion rather than undergoing an experience you wouldn’t wish on a suspected terrorist, but hey, it is a comedy, and at least the writers made a joke out of poor old Rachel’s failure to progress.
The other thing that was excellent about that episode was how Rachel ended up cooped up with Janice. In the throes of labour even a relatively benign presence could be just as invasive as that honking comic monster; there’s nothing like the ward round walking in to put you off your stride, though you should probably be grateful, on balance, that somebody’s actually bothering to check up on you.
Sometimes a sex scene really does convey the urgency of passion – I’d like to single out Ana Lucia and Sawyer in Lost for an honourable mention. Now that looked like she actually wanted it to happen, and who could blame her? Of course, within a couple more episodes she’d been dispatched like a fallen virgin in a horror movie, so there was no opportunity for a recurrence. Still, that particular bit of intimate action came as something of a relief after endless episodes in which they were all cooped up on the island forging alliances and enmities and, on occasion, eyeing each other up, but no-one was actually getting down to it.
Maybe the fear of giving birth sans epidural would have been a powerful disincentive, but actually, given all those long summer evenings with nothing else to do besides go paddling and wait for the Others to come calling – whaddayagonnado? If it was a French series, they’d all have been rutting in rock pools as soon as they’d recovered from the crash landing, retrieved some Gauloises from the hold and had a few long, pause-ridden and enigmatic discussions about Rousseau (the original dude, not the bird with the mad hair.)
Sex in the movies is tricky, but birth really is a sure-fire enticement to absurdity. For starters, as all tremulous mums-to-be learn, labour can go on for days, especially first time round. In this context I’d like to single out Friends for an honourable mention. OK, so Jennifer Aniston looked as if she was stretched out on a spa bed with mild indigestion rather than undergoing an experience you wouldn’t wish on a suspected terrorist, but hey, it is a comedy, and at least the writers made a joke out of poor old Rachel’s failure to progress.
The other thing that was excellent about that episode was how Rachel ended up cooped up with Janice. In the throes of labour even a relatively benign presence could be just as invasive as that honking comic monster; there’s nothing like the ward round walking in to put you off your stride, though you should probably be grateful, on balance, that somebody’s actually bothering to check up on you.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Dreamscape: under the pillars of the flyover
Last night I dreamed I was trying to make my way to the first of a number of addresses in London, but it turned out not to be at all close to the tube station - we'd been running for at least five minutes, over carriageways, up hills, past train tracks, and in all that time we hadn't seen a soul - the city was, as it really is, complex, greenless and literally built up, blotting out the horizon and reaching up into the sky, but it was also, as it never is outside of apocalyptic movies, completely deserted. The structures required to accomodate traffic were present, but no-one else was passing through.
Then I saw someone jogging towards us along a walkway that circumnavigated the great concrete pillars of the flyover overhead. Not just one, but a long line of people, perhaps 30 or so, separated by perfectly regular intervals. When I saw the first one, I thought, this is trouble, we're going to be mugged; when I saw the rest I thought we would probably be okay, as they were smiling and appeared to recognise me.
They ran down the walkway to join us at ground level, and it transpired that they were a group of friends from a school near where I grew up; they'd published a magazine together before graduating and abruptly falling out. We talked quickly about what had happened to us all since we last met and I introduced them to my daughter, a sulky dark-haired girl who didn't look too sure about any of this. Then I woke up with my heart pounding.
So I guess starting this blog freaked me out a little - it's the immediacy of it, and the fact that it's out there, bread cast upon the waters. It's great, though. It's a much more promising note from my sleeping self than the one I got after a lone agent responded to a synopsis with an invitation to submit my three chapters, then sent them back with a form letter by return of post. I dreamed then that the gates of a megalopolis had slammed shut. It was all going on in there, but there was no way I was going to be admitted.
But like Holly Golightly says, there's nothing quite so sad as being the person with your nose pressed up against the window, wanting to be on the other side.
I've come to the conclusion I'm a crap novelist, anyway. I really can't be bothered making stuff up when there's so much real stuff out there that's so much better than anything I could invent. I guess that's a failure of imagination, but imagination does have its limits. From time to time I read or watch something and think No, there's no way, you're not telling me the truth, there's no way that ever happened that way, and then the story's spoilt and I can't be doing with it. Inauthenticity is a killer.
Then I saw someone jogging towards us along a walkway that circumnavigated the great concrete pillars of the flyover overhead. Not just one, but a long line of people, perhaps 30 or so, separated by perfectly regular intervals. When I saw the first one, I thought, this is trouble, we're going to be mugged; when I saw the rest I thought we would probably be okay, as they were smiling and appeared to recognise me.
They ran down the walkway to join us at ground level, and it transpired that they were a group of friends from a school near where I grew up; they'd published a magazine together before graduating and abruptly falling out. We talked quickly about what had happened to us all since we last met and I introduced them to my daughter, a sulky dark-haired girl who didn't look too sure about any of this. Then I woke up with my heart pounding.
So I guess starting this blog freaked me out a little - it's the immediacy of it, and the fact that it's out there, bread cast upon the waters. It's great, though. It's a much more promising note from my sleeping self than the one I got after a lone agent responded to a synopsis with an invitation to submit my three chapters, then sent them back with a form letter by return of post. I dreamed then that the gates of a megalopolis had slammed shut. It was all going on in there, but there was no way I was going to be admitted.
But like Holly Golightly says, there's nothing quite so sad as being the person with your nose pressed up against the window, wanting to be on the other side.
I've come to the conclusion I'm a crap novelist, anyway. I really can't be bothered making stuff up when there's so much real stuff out there that's so much better than anything I could invent. I guess that's a failure of imagination, but imagination does have its limits. From time to time I read or watch something and think No, there's no way, you're not telling me the truth, there's no way that ever happened that way, and then the story's spoilt and I can't be doing with it. Inauthenticity is a killer.
Shopping on the verge of a breakdown
It's a melancholy experience, Christmas shopping in the credit crunch. No bargain is quite bargainous enough to assuage the fear; no discount sufficiently steep that it could not be better still. Deep down most of us probably believe the old saw that you get what you pay for. If prices can be so abruptly reduced, perhaps it's not the case that you've got your sticky fingers on a purchasing opportunity you'd be a fool to let slip; maybe it's just evidence of how blatantly you were being ripped off before the markdown. And so the dopamine rush of being a good consumer has been replaced, in malls across the globe, by hesitation and a niggling sense of disappointment...
Or so I thought yesterday, after an hour or so trawling clothes shops to very little avail - if it's half-price, silk and dry-clean only, or creased, itchy, boob-crushing or camel's toe-inducing, I'd still rather not, thanks. But today the pair of shoes I'd had my beady eyes on for months turned up on a rack outside the store for £30 less than the original price, and I have to say I swooped on them as efficiently as a bird of prey alighting on its next snack, as if generations of evolution had fine-tuned my responses for no less a purpose. And felt mightily satisfied afterwards, if still just a teeny bit guilty...
Yesterday I tried half-heartedly to negotiate a discount, and failed dismally. The secret of successful haggling, I've been told, is to be prepared to walk away - which I did. But that means you can never allow yourself to really want the thing you're about to haggle for. The bargain itself, and not the object you're bargaining for, must become your aim.
Or so I thought yesterday, after an hour or so trawling clothes shops to very little avail - if it's half-price, silk and dry-clean only, or creased, itchy, boob-crushing or camel's toe-inducing, I'd still rather not, thanks. But today the pair of shoes I'd had my beady eyes on for months turned up on a rack outside the store for £30 less than the original price, and I have to say I swooped on them as efficiently as a bird of prey alighting on its next snack, as if generations of evolution had fine-tuned my responses for no less a purpose. And felt mightily satisfied afterwards, if still just a teeny bit guilty...
Yesterday I tried half-heartedly to negotiate a discount, and failed dismally. The secret of successful haggling, I've been told, is to be prepared to walk away - which I did. But that means you can never allow yourself to really want the thing you're about to haggle for. The bargain itself, and not the object you're bargaining for, must become your aim.
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