Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Story: The Glove, VII [OBSOLETED x2]

What a Star Trek movie marathon! Yesterday the first three and today the final three, and now we're done. And so is 2013, that partly accursed year that saw much progress but a kick in the teeth for every thing that went well. So, farewell 2013. I foresee great things for next year including otters and a giant bouncy castle.

You can't beat a bit of Star Trek in the mid-Winter, enlivening events and thrusting a bit of colour, character and story into the grey dreariness of it all. Once you get past Star Trek I, that is, which has a greyness all its own. It's astonishing how every single one of those six original cast Star Trek movies meets a high minimum level of quality. Every single one, even Star Trek V which is underrated, has redeeming points at the very least. None are unwatchable, and some are great. It is utterly unprecedented. No other unplanned film series can claim that honour, none. Of course I stand open to suggestions to the contrary, so please comment below if you have any ideas.

Now, without much further ado let's settle in to the task at hand. Before ducking into the latest instalment of 'The Glove', let's pause for a moment and recap what has happened so far.

On the moon of Troos, orbiting the planet Ganymede, the colonists have been separated over time into two main regions: Edin and Burgh, representing the sciences and arts respectively. A young piper called Steffan passes his initiation exam into the Guild of Pipers with honours and is offered meritorious promotion to high rank in exchange for taking part in the Guild's apparently traditional intelligence gathering activities. Steffan turns down the opportunity and leaves, leaving his would-be benefactor Master Octavius unsettled. One night passes...


Story: The Glove, VII [RETCONNED OUT]
(Part I , VI , VIII)

Several days later, a figure could be seen walking happily down a dusty road to parts unknown. The dusty roads of Troos were an artefact of the colony's tendency to reserve higher technologies for the purposes that truly required them. The old Earth's eventual fate had left a major influence even hundreds of years since Last Contact.

The figure ambled along, leading a pony which it rarely rode, passing through villages and settlements and chatting with the locals as it went. One afternoon the figure entered Little Muckly and entered the pub. It pushed back its sun sheltering hood to reveal former apprentice piper Steffan, with the beginnings of a beard and an ironic countenance.

The vagabond stayed for many hours, chatting idly with the locals and their piper, before taking a room and sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Some time before dawn he left, and began to roam once more. Some days the wry fellow never encountered a village and slept in the wild with his robe for a pillow, and on others the grand sweep of events pulled him into one of the rare towns between Edin and Burgh. Every day he followed a meandering path leading away from the city of the arts toward the city of the sciences. He grew scruffier and scruffier.

A plan was forming in his mind, becoming more and more clear as he learnt from the locals and the guildsmen he subtly quizzed. That plan twisted into an entirely new shape when he met his first dissident.

To be continued...

Sunday, 29 December 2013

Rathbone and Bruce

Ah, Christmas and New Year, that time when you really look for things to do with the family. This time I broke out the dvds of the Rathbone and Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies, and we all enjoyed them to our limits. They are a marvelous sequence of distinctive and bizarre cinematic gems, each weirdly faceted in its own little way. There have also been lots of games. We're big gamers, the parents and I. Your family is there to be treasured after all, and finding the best way to do that is half the battle. I may never win 'Ticket to Ride Europe'.

Now on to Rathbone and Bruce, the first mainstream and prolonged acting team to play Holmes and Watson. I had no idea until the advent of the new 'Sherlock' series, and the dvd commentaries therein, that this pairing was so influential and that their films originated the idea of an updated 'contemporary' Holmesian adaptation. They were the films to break that barrier, not 'Sherlock' and definitely not 'Elementary'. They started off with two traditional Sherlock movies, but after that Universal flung their hats over the fortress walls of (admittedly expensive) convention, climbed into the airy (and cheap) skies above and did something unprecedented: They took Holmes and Watson to the 1940s and pushed out twelve 'B' movies in five years, restoring them to the niche they originally prospered in: The pulp magazines. Of course the film equivalent of the Strand magazine would be second rate movies; it makes perfect sense. And they were great 'B' movies, for limitation breeds creativity. Those twelve productions were full of fascinating angles and photography, noir overtones, and bizarre new plots.  Moriarty got to die three times, and femme fatales drifted around in shadows, attempting to outwit the Great Detective. Or seduce him.

If there were shortcomings in these bizarre little gems, it was that the intelligence of Holmes was built up not so much by great deductions and demonstrations of genius but more by the sheer dumbness of his friends and partners. Nigel Bruce adored to play Watson as a total ignoramus, and he was funny and wonderful, but he did undermine the character of Watson for decades, and the comic ineptitude of Lestrade was often overplayed to the point of possible mental impairment. Had Lestrade been clubbed to the head a few too many times by 1942 perhaps? Still, Basil Rathbone's Holmes would often save the day by planning for their incompetence, often using Watson as little more than a pawn. Rathbone as Holmes is a tough casting choice to judge. He was certainly detached, seemingly intelligent, and gentleman enough for the role and pulls it off brilliantly on many occasions, but you don't always get a specifically Sherlock experience, which is mainly down to the material. When he got something genuinely Sherlock-like to do, there would be no doubts.

Oh, Rathbone and Bruce, you pioneered the modern portrayals of Holmes and Watson for all who followed you, and although you are the last of the screen combinations I have encountered so far you do not disappoint. For many you were the first to do it right and on multiple occasions. While no-one will probably ever topple Merrison and Williams for me personally, you were without doubt quintessential.


Friday, 27 December 2013

Extemporise or Die!

Hot on the heels of successive games of 'Jamaica' and 'Dixit' it is time to crash into the keys and mash out something barely intelligible and hopefully interesting on a theme randomly chosen in as little time as possible, which of course it easy as I will choose Sherlock Holmes. That's hardly random at all in fact.

I'll get to Mr Holmes and Dr Watson in a moment, but begin instead by revealing that I feel much happier and healthier. The goop is subsiding and sleep is resuming, and suddenly normal patterns are back. The days are even getting longer! You wouldn't think that Christmas had just struck, destroying all in its path and reminding us all of just why holidays are the most dangerous times of the year. And we'll be out of chocolates soon, eliminating one more terrible danger.

<Makes a note to lose weight: First option is to leave gold on ferry>

Bullion is such a terrible encumbrance in the grand scheme of things. Thank goodness for paper money and diamonds. Welsh diamond mines are a phenomenon best kept secret.

Now, are we ready for Sherlock Holmes yet? Perhaps not. The last week or so has been a haze of Patrick O'Brian novels, Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies and much much reading. There has also been a ridiculous amount of minestrone soup, and the inherent relief of having a good excuse to stay in for a week with no responsibilities and recover. The Patrick O'Brian books in the Aubrey-Maturin sequence are utterly fascinating, intricately researched and detailed but simultaneously almost pulpish in their plots. In many ways they're far more easily approached than Forester's Hornblower series, if more adult in tone. Right now I'm up to 'The Surgeon's Mate', which is in danger of becoming a kitchen sinky, but let's hope it picks up as they always do. The O'Brian novels are certainly better on average than Bernard Cornwell's historical novels, which started well but then descended into almost routine potboilers. However, I would certainly recommend Cornwell's 'Starbuck Chronicles' and point out that lots of people loved the Sharpe books even I did get bored with pretty quickly after a promising start.

Finally edging back to the nominal topic, there are things to be said about the Rathbone and Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies, things which shall be said in the next post as it's becoming rather late here in South Wales. Soon, it would be nice to write about the old time radio show 'Richard Diamond: Private Detective' and eventually hopefully its television successor 'Peter Gunn'. It has to be fun too as Blake Edwards made it!

So, old time detective shows to be talked about in the future, and it shall be fun!


Wednesday, 25 December 2013

Story: The Disappearance (XVII)

(Part O , XVI , XVIII)

Someone was shaking me, and not at all gently. It was worse than being shot out of the bowels of the Earth via volcano, or at least it was to my battered brain. I dared to open my eyes and saw time running forward and backward depending on where I looked. There seemed to even be a null time event under the desk. Slowly the disparity in time streams began to equalize toward what we thought of as normal. Plainly something bad had happened and passed by. Everyone was here, sprawled around the out of kilter flat. How far out of synch could we all be?

Carter groggily looked at me from where she was lying prone by the doorway. Agnes was still out cold on the floor where she'd been knocked out. Why had Carter knocked out Agnes anyway? Getting back to myself - my favourite person - I was hanging halfway off the bed and being shaken by the shoulders, by person or persons unknown. Dragging my eyes upward it was almost a non-surprise to see myself. And there I was over by the window as well. I could even pretend to be groggy still any more, so I pulled myself out of my own grasp and stood up unsteadily. Somehow I had to fix all this so it would make sense. Stepping on a now-wobbly board I tottered over to one side and that must have been required as the helpful alternative me ambled out the door looking satisfied. That was one time loop that could be closed pretty easily.

I stepped into the only reverse time zone that was still running, around the grandfather clock and jumped out again as quickly as I could. Duly and deliberately I went over to the me half sprawled on the bed and shook him like a string of comedy sausages. He fumbled up to a level of unconsciousness and then looked about blearily. The eyes widened suddenly at the bizarre time zones scattered about the room, and the light diffusions around their edges. He stood up, tottered on a floor board that had never been wobbly before and I set out the door into the hall, and wondered what on Earth to do next. How would I get back to the window?

I kept on walking down the hall, went up the stairs to the roof, and surveyed the city. Nothing was visible beyond the confines of our own abode. Even the roof was clear of disturbances. A dishevelled Carter emerged from the interior and tied back her hair. We looked outwards in opposite directions and waited for the ice to cool. I broke finally, never being one to let a good partnership run to dust. "What's she done, Danielle? Why'd you deck the kid?"

Danielle Eloise Carter coloured slightly in the mid-afternoon sunshine. Her nose wrinkled. "Well, now I think about it, I did it because the super told me she was rotten." Beads of perspiration of began to bead out on her forehead. "I had to go and ask for someone to cover me when you sent your invitation. No overtime left. But something happened..." Carter blinked, frowned, quaked a moment, and then gasped before doubling over. "That skunk hypno-gassed me!" Carter became messy for a while and then wobbled over to a handy bit of wall to have a lean.

Comforting the suddenly shocked Carter successfully took a few minutes but I managed it before bouncing off some kind of paradox temporal horizon and ending up outside the window to my flat an hour earlier. Settling in, I wondered what I had to do to break the loop and restore time. Looking in my pockets I found a piece of paper and bizarrely a green pen and knew at least one thing I'd need to do. Listening at the window, all seemed quiet. I peeked in and there was Carter waiting beside the door, prepared to deck Agnes. With nothing else coming to mind I decided to help out Danielle and wrote a little note explaining everything as I knew it. The door inside my flat opened, Carter swung and Agnes went straight to the ground. Time flaked into a haze of crystals and through the merry diffractions I watched as I ended up unconscious on the bed, Carter slumped onto the floor and normality began to fade back in. Opening the window - it recognised my key card - I slid in and moved around quickly avoiding the worst distortions.

The note was put in Carter's pocket, then a green pen and a sheet of paper moved from a lesser-used desk drawer to unconscious me's pockets, a floor board was summarily ruined and then I slipped back to the window. Waiting seemed to take an eternity, probably due to some pocket of slow time, but finally I appeared in the middle of the room, shook me to consciousness, and then when I was finally spotted by myself I flipped out backwards through the window and walked to the pub to have a drink and think things through.

Every reason for my leaving academia in the first place had just come back to bite me. Even the local pub, where the beer had unaccountably become even worse.

To be continued...


Merry Haddock Day, everyone!

Monday, 23 December 2013

An Omnibus of Bizarre and Unrelated Topics

Going on holiday leads inevitably to getting a bit sick, which I have duly done. It may have been contracted from my leaf daughter's playgroups, from spending twenty or so hours hiking around chilly Edinburgh over two days, or indeed in the grand total of eighteen hours spent on trains or in train stations over the course of six days. Now the sickness is fading from general ickiness and sleep deprivation to annoying lingering symptoms and a tendency to stop and begin randomly staring into the middle distance, muttering about how the world is not like a great big onion and how the gold is hidden under the third flagstone under the barn. In short things are getting back to normal, apart from the disconcerting idea that Christmas has crept up on us all once again, and it's just as dishevelled as usual.

Oh, Christmas, you are a worrying time for those of us who hover around not believing in anything on principle. Actually, that's not entirely true, as there's a warm spot somewhere in the old broken heart for ideas of self-expression, karma and destiny. But they are just ideas, ones which would be lovely if true and lovely if not. We might all be pre-incarnations of future people, souls slowly edging back to the beginnings of the universe with each death and rebirth instead of the end, becoming ever less wise and ancient with each passing generation. I forgot about preincarnation for ages, but now it's back. What fun!

Apart from being inevitably sick, it was an interesting holiday. Glossing over the private time spent with the leafdaughter and her family, the following trip to Edinburgh was a classic illustration of why cities leave me so regularly cold. Edinburgh is a handsome city, full of interesting buildings, an ancient Old Town, and many attractions. However, it is also just a bit squalid in all the ways I've seen in other cities. The speck of dirt of humanity runs deep, in a way I've seen in every town and city except perhaps for Barcelona. In any case, Edinburgh has fascinating things to go and visit: A castle, a national museum, a national library, some galleries, a camera obscura, many old monuments, Calton Hill, the scenic splendour of somewhat distant Arthur's Seat and lots of lots of pavements to pound. I had the best time at the Vortex Tunnel and Mirror Maze in the camera obscura's associated 'World Of Illusions' but my soul is simple and entertained easily, as many of you are no doubt aware. To be fair, Edinburgh is probably slightly less grubby away from the Christmas season and the endless rounds of festive parties and booze that dominate at this time of the year.

Mirror Mazes are lovely. So far I've found two, one in Longleat and the other in Edinburgh. There might also be another at the prohibitively expensive Wookey Hole but there's never been opportunity to find out. I wonder if there are more vortex tunnels out there too; There must be, yes?

Of course, journeys which were once made better by the travelling are now spoilt by it instead. I miss being able to breathe on trains, to find an openable window and suck in some air. Instead it's cramped, noisy, stuffy, and horrid. Then there are the bad trains, the ones with insufficient seats running on Saturday evenings from Cardiff to Swansea and chock full of people you wouldn't want to meet even if they weren't beered up, sweary and so thoroughly unpleasant as to be barely human. Of course, in all reality they are more human but that's not something to be contemplated happily while maintaining still some shreds of sanity. It's nicer to think about lemon cake and the world of Beatrix Potter and hope everything else is a dream. It was a long, long train ride from Edinburgh to Llanelli, and there the matter shall be laid to rest.

Out of all the current modes of travel, it seems that the ship voyage is the only one to maintain some level of comfort. You can toddle around the ship, go outside, stare at the wake and not feel as if the free world has contracted to a centimetre of space surrounding you. Oceans and seas are vast, after all, and lovely. The next holidays will involve grand sea voyages and probably be stupidly expensive, however they will at least be airy. And if there are still some nice trains out there, then they'll come into action too.

Welcome back to the Quirky Muffin. Service is now resumed. We don't do duvets.


PS Let's celebrate 250 Quirky Muffins in style, by saying nothing about it at all! Next time: Quirky Muffin 251, "The Grand Rutabaga of Bismark".

Friday, 13 December 2013

Story: The Disappearance (XVI)

(Part XV , XVII)

A Recap

Hmmm... where were we? A man was vanished from a pavement, with only a cooling heat shadow to indicate his once presence. The Plain Chocolate Digestive Detectives went in to investigate the disappearance as one of the strange phenomena connected to those twice baked confections. Evidence was stolen from the lab. Our protagonist went to McGonagle Biscuits to quiz their new president Agnes McGonagle and see if she was more willing to talk than her uncooperative predecessor and uncle Rolf.

This is where it got complicated. The Detective received a secret message to meet Agnes at the Rusty Bucket but actually ended up meeting a future (or alternate) version of Agnes and himself. Then after the revelation of a future temporal explosion based in McGonagle Biscuits, a future detail emerged that the strange phenomena were linked to cheap biscuit deliveries from the future, and that everything was about to go a little ca-ca.

Using information from future Agnes, the Detective and Current Agnes hitched a ride either into a future or some other McGonagle biscuit factory, and were confronted with a bizarrely not dead but rather malevolent Rolf McGonagle. Unexpectedly employing surprise (and the shear stupidity of all fictional villains), the Detective knocked out Rolf and the three escaped via a teleporter. They ended up a few days before their own time and unbeknownst to them the fabric of space time began to quake in its shoes like a fish in a department store.

The Detective, knowing that overlaying time streams was dangerous, whisked Rolf and Agnes off to his unexpected digs in the Old University, where Rolf gave up his story and the Detective's partner Carter eventually turned up to play guard while our hero and Agnes went to meet an old friend of his at the university, and that old friend Lily dished the dirt on some our protagonist's surprising academic history. Lily was eventually packed off to ask a millennia old Mesopotamian super-computer what to do, and hasn't been seen since. The computer thinks she's a high priestess.

Space time continued to quiver, and then shake violently before it became as tense as a kitten in the presence of gift wrap. Future Detective and Future Agnes appeared in our time stream just as Carter knocked out present Agnes for reasons as yet unknown. Unfortunately this time when they arrived, they caused a three layer temporal overlap instead of a double and at that point all of space and time took a nap to try and recover.

What will happen next? What does it all have to do with biscuits in the end? Why did the story derail in a sudden knot of time travel? Is Elvis really dead? Does the author have the faintest idea of where to go next? Why did giant newts not feature in this tale at all so far? And finally, why did Carter knock out Agnes? Feminine rivalry or the first attempt to avert the time singularity predicted to occur?

Some of these question will be answered, some not, and more will be placed in the oven until baked a lovely golden brown.


--- Retroactive Note ---

Holiday Interruptus:

The Quirky Muffin is down for holidays. Normal service will resume in about a week, barring unexpected story segments.

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

The Christmas Lunch

It's hard to write about a Christmas party in specific. No individual Christmas party has all the characteristics of the essence extracted from every party ever, mushed up together and distilled. And of course an afternoon Christmas lunch for a Mathematics department is rather sedate in contrast to some of the extreme things you encounter in television, film and prose. There were not fistfights, foodfights, or vendettas leading to champagne cork wars. No, by anything other than normal standards it was quite dull!

However, if we condense the world down to the standards of what really goes on aboard this fair planet and between the folks you meet from day to day, it was a rather pleasant proceeding. The food was broadly edible, especially for people who actually like roast dinners, and the dessert didn't disappoint. People are strange, though, all with different levels of island-qualities. I'll never get people entirely. And I can't write about the people without breaking the Rule of Names or the Protocol of Description, either, blast it!


We begin
The apprehension was clear. Some people anticipated the event and the probable enjoyment to follow. Others worried about their role in the dangerous trials to come. Knives were sharpened in critical places. Dresses were smoothed down deliberately. People banded together to meet their fates, and set times to meet.

"Bing bong, the time has come, go forth in song, it's no time for glum."

Four floors of people emerged from their offices blearily, pulled on their coats and trudged or scooted to the stairs or lifts. Someone went a little frantically from door to door looking for unspecified personages. The first few people to be ready got bored and wafted up and down the stairs, surveying matters as they stood. Someone else looked totally unconcerned as lunch was something he had already done. That person was a little too smug.

As the tribes headed off to their destination, a few were left behind, unwilling to take the risk of that most social of occasions. A few others were lost, but in the spirit of great adversity were left behind presumably to never be seen again. This wasn't fair play and a swift adventure but a Christmas lunch, blast it! Safety could not be guaranteed! The band of celebrants sloped up the hill and settled into the staff club, deliberately doing their best to secure happy table-mates and trying to avoid trips to the bar.

Wolves howled outside, scenting turkey and beer.

The meal passes happily with no major problems and a mercifully short speech. Strange brown meat is identified and classified with the turkey, before being eaten or discarded according to the bravery of the respective diner. Profiteroles are sadly not flung across the room in a prelude to a full on food fight, and the pavlova is sadly insufficiently messy for that purpose. On the other hand no awkward mistletoe incidents are forced by the existence of that evil weed and toasts are averted. Isolated diners are made into part of the whole and inter-discipline rivalries mitigated by determined ignorance, avoidance and a lot of reclusiveness. Politeness is pushed to the limit as the long minutes pass before everyone is in a position to begin eating in unison.

There is no chocolate cake.

As the end approaches, and another Christmas dinner passes by without undue incident people relax and begin to wonder what is next. Some forget about the football that had dominated their minds and other fret about the duties that follow in the morning. A few wish the meal had been in the evening and that there had been much more beer. Those few stay a while longer and fulfil their dreams. One thing is true for all, though, and that is that something has been gained in the sharing. Let's hope it isn't just fat and a tendency to dribble.

We carry on



Monday, 9 December 2013

Let's Cry Us A River

Finding an outlet for the emotions can be difficult in times of solitude. It can be even more difficult when you've forgotten that you need to. It's a battle familiar to lots of people, especially ones who are recovering from addictions. The key is to remember the problem, and never forget, when every ounce of neural matter is trying to relax into the lower energy state of forgetting. Vigilance is the hardest thing to maintain when the natural human state is complacency. We must struggle to remember, and in my case it was 'The West Wing' that reminded me.

So, if you remember to let out your emotions - and that is hard - then what to do to actually express them? On this particular occasion, given that I had forgotten and gotten a bit fogged up, it was 'The West Wing' ('Inauguration: Over There') and not air conducting or that one magnificent episode of 'Due South' that was 'Letting Go', or Henry Blake's last episode on 'M*A*S*H'. It's strange how some people need levers to work their outlets, although I am quite good naturally on the old happiness front. Incidentally, let's all sing on Aberystwyth beach, if you happen to be around this week. So, anyway, on to more acceptable topics.

There's only one week of lecturing left, and then effective unemployment once again. How bizarre that it's gone on so long but feels so short. It's also strange that my techniques have gone against the obvious best methods for teaching mathematics. It's hard to 'write and wipe' when you only have a whiteboard in one theatre. That would have been so much better than making up all those slides in LaTeX! (Don't look up LaTeX, as it's dull.) Whiteboards/blackboards more fun for the students watching too. Next time, if there is a next time, it will be markers and chalk for the whole thing even if stuck with a slightly loathsome electronic whiteboard. Electronic whiteboards are too small, and rather fiddly but good in principal.

This post is meandering like a river in Central Europe; It's probably something to do with the season. True to form, I'm splitting my attention with something audio-visual, in this case 'Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall'. The second season of 'Sherlock' was strange; It began with a wonderful, stupendous Moffat episode before subsiding a little into forcedness. I suspect that Sherlock's abrasiveness was deliberately and unnaturally upgraded to make the season arc more graceful but that that upgrade rather grates on my nerves, and of course the second episode 'The Hounds of Baskerville' was personally a bit rubbish. That's the way of things in the wide world of everyone being different. Maybe those last two episodes of 'Sherlock' also suffer from being a bit lacking in fun too. Fun is important in these things. But Molly is tremendous; I adore Molly. Someone bring Lou Brealey to me now please. 'The Reichenbach Fall' is such a mixed experience, but it's better than I remember.

This thing is coming out in wild squirts to one side and another. Random bursts of content splashing all over the place, and all apparently disconnected. Although a theme is emerging; one of forced traits and techniques. How strange.

Apparently the mad squirts have stopped for now. More shall follow soon, and stories galore...


PS Best add 'Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang' to the great tv shows list:
> Doctor Who: 'The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang'
> Due South: 'Letting Go'
> M*A*S*H: 'Abyssinia, Henry'
> The West Wing: 'Noel'

PPS  I know 'forcedness' isn't a word, but what is the word needed?

Saturday, 7 December 2013

Book: 'Bridge of Birds' by Barry Hughart (1984)

Now this is a little gem, a book I heard about a little while ago and finally got around to buying and reading and enjoying immensely very recently. 'Bridge of Birds' is a 'Novel of an Ancient China that never was', a darkly comic but enthralling short fantasy that grabs you and finally only lets you go after a quest hundreds of years long is coincidentally cracked by our merely mortal protagonists. You see, it's a story about a quest for elderly sage Li Kao (who has a self-confessed slight flaw to his character) and his youthful client Number Ten Ox, as they desperately try to find a cure for a plague that has struck the children of Ox's village. Unfortunately the plague has but one cure, a mythical great root of power, that Li and Ox set out to find.

The double quest structure is fascinating, as it combines the secondary but higher mystery/puzzle with the primary simpler adventure, where the mystery itself is slowly being unveiled and then unravelled over the course of the narrative. The second hidden quest is of grand, epic and heavenly scope but is constantly counterbalanced by the earthly objective of the first. And if the second quest involves murdering evil immortal and invulnerable dukes, restoring long lost amnesiac goddesses to heaven, and at least one axe wielding (but lovable) maniacal killer then all the better. The twinned quests are beautifully intertwined, to the point that I didn't even see the puzzle solution coming, even though other readers probably do.

It's always nice to find a book that's funny and yet manages to tell a story. There aren't that many. Comedic classics like 'Three Men In A Boat' and 'The Ascent Of Rum Doodle' don't have this level of plot and story, nor the wicked sense of wit that Hughart instills into the project. Apparently he became disillusioned with the publishing process after completing the two sequels of 'Bridge Of Birds' and never wrote again. At least he stopped before polluting the legacy of this little masterwork as so many authors do, although I can't be definitive on that without reading the sequels.

This piece has run rather short, as if the swift reading time has eliminated a lot of the detail I could have written about. Perhaps 'Bridge of Birds' is a classic example of my 'Little and Big Principle': The theory that stories and films that capture both small- and large-scale ideas are inherently more appreciable and fascinating than things that only focus on one. This novel is simultaneously entirely about its narrator Number Ten Ox and his travails in saving his village, as well as an epic heavenly tale spanning centuries of time, several ghosts, numerous coincidences and an epic mislead of the first order.

You're probably better off reading it for yourself. Everyone, go and read 'Bridge of Birds' if you can. It's a bit sexist, but it's also a surprising first novel and something quite unprecedented in my own experience. I'm hoping Robert Sheckley will be just as good.


Thursday, 5 December 2013

Fun and Adventure and Homage

Sometimes you just have to be brave and do the adventurous thing. It's different for every person, but for me travelling is the most startlingly traumatic thing. That sudden shift in location is shocking, and applies to repeated trips as well as exploration and visiting places you haven't been. It's exciting and strange and scary and taxing. 'Taxing?', you might think. 'Taxing'? Travelling is taxing if you're a picky person. You don't get to eat your own cooking, there's a change of locale, it can be a very isolating experience, and the travelling itself can be very wearing indeed. So why do it?

I choose to travel to pay homage, and there is usually a reason to every trip. When last I went on holiday, it was to Orkney, and that was part of my Alan Plater homage, specifically to his fittingly named television mini-series 'Oliver's Travels'. And that homage was what really made the experience worthwhile, for there were Italian chapels and magnificent cathedrals and runic inscriptions and stone rings and more... My next journey is also a homage, both to my lovely leaf-daughter in Nottingham and to the historic city of Edinburgh. Now Edinburgh has two points of homage, one again to Alan Plater and his 'The Beiderbecke Tapes' and to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That makes a more than worthwhile trip. And it's all happening at incredibly short notice which is wonderful!

My most successful trip without a homage aspect was my first venture outside of Britain - it was to Barcelona - for which I had no reason except that there was a 'Font Magica' and a seaside. Barcelona in Autumn was lovely, and of course they serve ice cream on Las Ramblas up until midnight so it's always worthwhile! Places that do that get special points on the Oliver scale of places to visit. Ultimately, though, the Barcelona trip did acquire a sense of homage in the Gaudi-ness of it all. Gaudi built things, including the iconic never-completed cathedral Sagrada Familia. A sense of history and homage seems to be an essential part of going anywhere in my personal sense of being, even to the point of ritually paying homage to the sea here in Aberystwyth every week I come up. How can everyone not go and stand on the beach at some point each week, and smile?

So where does that leave the sense of fun and adventure implied in travelling and exploration? It's hard to say, really, as it seems like those are things that have really fallen prey to the way travelling doesn't happen spontaneously any more. Everything gets planned weeks or even months ahead, because it's too scary to just hope that there will be a room at the other end, or that there will be trains. I can only organise a trip to Edinburgh with less than two weeks warning because travelling singly is simple. Spontaneity for the most part seems to be something associated with a sense of individuality. Is that a wrong thing to think in general? Is it a personal prejudice on past events? Or is it just an axiomatic generality? Surely there are matched couples out in the world who can be just as free and spontaneous? Two halves of the same whole being able to act spontaneously? Is that maybe a myth too?

If we travel to make homage does that mean we have neglected something? What about the future? All exploration is homage to the future, for it is the true physical parallel to what we do everyday. We're travellers in time, exploring a new world every instant, and one that can be appreciated at every instant if we might only remember.


Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Story: The Disappearance (XV)

(Part XIV , XVI)

I slept, and while I was sleeping the string of time became ever more tangled about the swinging and bouncing yo-yo of fate. Space-time was nearing its breaking point unbeknownst to us as we overlapped multiple times into one three day period. No-one was there to stop the inevitable consequences should the sharp-edged yo-yo cut through the string like scissors through ribbon on a badly wrapped birthday present.

The next twenty four hours went by quickly, as Carter arrived to take Rolf-watch off my hands and I took the curiously quiescent Agnes to meet Lily Snooks. Lily had been my doctoral student once and was now a respected academic in the school of Archaeology with plenty of contacts and cross-departmental work with the School of Mathematics. I let her blab every secret I'd ever wanted to hide and thanked the world that Carter wasn't there. She would laugh enough at the bow ties in the secret wardrobe compartment she'd probably found by now.

The string became ever more entangled around the yo-yo but we didn't realise.

Agnes had accepted my theory that we should stay out of the way with more poise than I had expected. We passed through the Smedley Gallery, and while she was examining Nineteenth Century Dutch I explained to Lily the bizarre events of the last few days and the difficulties ahead. She seemed more concerned by what we hadn't done.

"Why aren't you back there? Isn't it possible that you are supposed to be the future you you met in your past? Oh, palooka, the grammar is always so difficult. You could be breaking the space-time continuum by branching history even further! We know what happened to the Egyptians and that the Grand High Zorps disappeared completely after trying to mess with the timeline. What if you cause a temporal base nine cataclysm?"

"It had occurred to me, kid, but the problem is that that version of me was telling stories about cataclysms and disasters and I've seen nothing to indicate any of that being real. That information has to have come from somewhere so I'm betting that that was a me who'll never come to be, or a plain fake. Then what we have here is temporal artifact plus a two-stream redundancy. The only question here is the guy I brought back. Something stinks to high heaven about him and it's not easily narrowed down amongst all the defective personality traits and cheesy stories."

"Yes, but what if..."

"Lily, there's a reason you're here and it's not just to tell Agnes - and don't give me that look right now - all my past as a professor and dig merchant. You're going to have to go down to Abbot and get a scenario run for me, and then bring me the results."

"Abbot? You want me to talk to a Mesopotamian super-computer who thinks I'm a high priestess and all-around super-woman? And now don't you look at me like that either!" (The stories we could tell would light up bars from here to Tokyo, but they'll live for another day and another story.)

"If you wouldn't mind. Punch in this card and then explain the situation as much as possible." I handed over the punch card, which had represented the highest forward compatible data input for Abbot for many years. "Please, Lily. Abbot will know what to do."

Agnes reappeared and saw our fingers touching over the yellow punch card. Her eyes narrowed a trifle and wrong conclusions visible set in her eyes. I would have to explain later if I ever wanted to share a lunch with the lovely Miss McGonagle in the future. Lily took her leave and headed off to consult Abbot and I walked Agnes back to the flat, wondering if any more wrong conclusions could possibly come my way.

Carter knocked Agnes out cold as we entered. That's the way days go sometimes. Then the string of time tightened to the brink and snapped, and we all took the sleep of the utterly bewildered.

More? There might be more. There's no plan any more!

Sunday, 1 December 2013


Now that was a rough old week. The twin pressures of producing worked solutions and lectures and the performing of actual research do not happy bedfellows make. It seems as if it will always be a struggle, but what's life without a bit of a torment or two? Paradoxically only having one course to teach is much harder than having several. Variety is the spice of life but monotony is the key to a fevered obsession.

It's December, the month of shopping madness, endless dark nights and the spectre of things long left behind. Is it better to have Christmas as it is or as it used to be? Is its future an ever-evolving study of mercenary consumerism or is there still an underlying layer of the social family times that used to prevail? There's a way to shift from exclusive religious event to secular community-centred festival that doesn't have to be divisive or controversial, or involve unprincipled exploitation of the people at large.

I have a friend - I hope! - who has had trouble thinking of gifts as her family aren't appreciating books any more as they're preoccupied by their tablets. Isn't that sad? I had a Kindle for a while and was fascinated by it, but when it broke I felt no need to replace it. Paper books are just better, for undefined and vague reasons.

December is the month of 'pushing through the T', of doing things you're unsure of and trusting to the best. Is that a good gift? Is it too much or too little? You won't know until afterwards. Is the winter going to go on forever and is there any point in carrying on through the gloomy misery? Well, keep on going anyway until you reach the other side. Can we take yet another vaguely hypocritical Christmas party despite our own deeply felt agnosticism? The turkey will tell the tale in the end.

Rough weeks: Lectures while on the edge of sickness, eyes that can barely focus any more, a seeming eternity without anyone to play a good game of 'Thebes' or 'Fluxx' with, dehydrating and overly hot hotel rooms and dusty offices, and far too much uncertain Christmas shopping!

Oh, December, you'll try to break us down, but we go on anyway. Let's push through the 'T' to January, and make the 50th Film Bin Commentary to boot. At the moment it's looking like 'Bravestarr' or 'Murder By Decree'.


Story: The Disappearance (XIV)

(Part XIII , XV)

I may have appeared uncaring about exposing my past to Agnes and my ever curious partner Sharon, but it was actually the worst thing I'd ever had to do. For all my time in the Force I had sheltered this remnant of another life I kept going in the wee small hours from the storm of bureaucracy, as if I could negate its importance with its secrecy. Now, well, could both go on?

Rolf's statement had been verbose but quite short. He had dictated it with witnesses and now the tape was under lock and key and the digital version encrypted and hidden in the flat above. The resident of the flat above was away on her own new professional and secretive life and we had exchanged door keys for those occasions of professional interest that popped up from time to time. Once Carter turned up we could take turns watching the prisoner under a slightly less tense and demanding regime.

It was a long, long night and I wiled away the guard duty over the restrained Rolf by editing a few articles that had been on the back burner for a while and following a trail of references on some obscure Hittite markings just to keep myself awake. The prisoner didn't make any trouble. For a while he almost seemed at ease with his situation, which was in itself quite disturbing, but some hours before dawn silent sobbing racked him from head to foot and it seemed some dam had broken.

The problem overlapping yourself in time is that you have to almost hide from the events of the world in order to not end up changing them. It was tempting to be out there, trying to change what would happen, but in actuality it would be crass foolishness to venture out of this flat, let own the old university town I loved, before the overlap was over. Also, there were other reasons to not get out too much, one in particular I hoped to never meet again. It would be stupid enough to go out and meet Lily in the morning but she was an expert and an old friend, and the risk was minimal. Once she had been an even older friend but she wouldn't know it for another twenty to thirty years.

Dawn approached and the sleepless night began to catch up with what was already an exhausted man of dubious vitality. Light began to leak through the curtains, stripey as they already were, and noises crackled through from the guest room. Reviewing my work I realised that most of it was nonsense trailing back into antiquity, but what could be expected when distracted by the outside world and its madnesses. We still had about thirty hours of this to get through, and Carter couldn't get here fast enough, if only to stop me from a sleep-deprived fall into Agnes McGonagle's arms.

A wash and a shave never hurt, so after letting the prisoner go about his own business I freshened up and prepared for the gathering storm. Returning to the living room, Agnes was sitting there reading an introductory textbook on complex analysis. I fell asleep on the sofa. Such was life.

Excitement shall ensue