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Symbolic Forest

A homage to loading screens.

Blog : Posts from May 2009

Glad To Be British

In which I don't like the weather

No, really. I never thought I’d say that, and the regular readers all probably thought they’d never hear it too. But, yes, the past couple of days have made me glad to be British?

Why? Because I can’t bear the weather at the moment. I stepped outside my doorstep today, and felt myself starting to wilt at the corners. Ten seconds of bright sun and warmth was enough to make me want to scurry away into the shade. One weekend of summer heat is enough to make me glad I live in a country where the weather, normally, consists of drips, wind and fog.

Photo Post Of The Week

In which we visit a small corner of London

Regular readers might recall that recently, we visited the London Zine Symposium, and I mentioned it on here. That post, after lots of rambling about the aristocratic “anarchists” of the zine world, ended with us leaving the zine symposium and heading off into the big city, with no hint of what we might do next.

Well: we explored. I took K on a walk something like one I’d done before, from Bankside up past St Pauls, through a deserted Smithfield, past Farringdon and up into Clerkenwell. And on the way, we passed somewhere I wasn’t aware of three years ago when I last passed it. So, we went in.

Postman's Park

This is: Postman’s Park, right in the centre of the City, on King Edward St; a 19th-century park made from former graveyards and churchyards which abutted each other. A small patch of green. I’d heard about it from Nothing To See Here, which has featured Postman’s Park and its most distinctive feature. The Watts Memorial, to commemorate the bravery of ordinary people.

Memorial, Postman's Park

It consists of 47 tile plaques, under a lean-to shelter, commemorating ordinary people who died saving the lives of others, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The painter G F Watts created it, from the late 1880s onwards; he delved into the archives for some of the plaques, commemorating deaths from 25 years earlier.

The rest of the park has its own air of strangeness, being lined with headstones dating from its days as a group of churchyards. Especially on a summer Sunday evening, it is a quietly mysterious place, the art-nouveau plaques of the memorial lending it a subtle neogothic touch.

Memorial, Postman's Park

The Sound Of Music

In which we go to a festival, albeit a mud-free city centre one

As I keep, keep saying, it’s been busy, so busy. Not only was there that trip to Manchester; but also K’s been busy at work. And then, following it all up, we had visitors, and we had tickets to the Dot To Dot Festival, or, at least, the Bristol half of it. A long and tiring day of music, bands, and trips back and forth between various venues around the city centre; so many different bands that they start to blur together.

First up, we had planned to start with Marina And The Diamonds at The Louisiana; but, unfortunately, they were replaced with a local band, First Of The Giants. Who weren’t bad, just not what we wanted to listen to; still, we stayed through to the end. Before moving on: another venue, another band.

Tell the truth, we didn’t move straight on; we stopped off in The Centre for ice cream, before going on to The Academy for the main line-up. There, we started off with The Rogues, who wore leather jackets and sidled up to the mikes as if they were trying to be Pete Docherty.* They were solid and competant, though, and good performers. Maybe not a band we’d go to see, but a band we wouldn’t mind seeing again.

The Rogues were followed by Mumford & Sons, a rather good Americana band who turned out, when they stopped singing, to have American singing accents but British speaking voices. They’re coming back to Bristol in September, and we’ll make sure we catch them again. After the Mumfords came Cage The Elephant. The best think I can say about Cage The Elephant is that they were enthusiastic. They were also dull, pedestrian and tedious; and all their songs sounded the same. “He thinks he’s Jagger,” I overheard the people next to us saying, about the Elephant’s lead singer. “He’s fucked, and he thinks he’s Jagger.”**

The bookers of Dot To Dot certainly like contrast between their bands. Cage The Elephant were followed by Patrick Wolf, who was the real reason we’d come to the Academy. Entirely unlike Cage The Elephant, of course; but he rocked out a lot more than the last time we’d seen him, at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Then, he only had a single backing musician; at Dot To Dot, he brought a full band. He was dressed something like a glam-rock matador, with bright yellow quiff held in place with a lifetime supply of hair gel. He produced lively, sing-along music that still had meaningful lyrics, all expressed in his powerful, crisp and sharp-edged singing voice.

Next on was Ladyhawke, one of the best-known acts on the bill. Ladyhawke was a disappointment, and that was partly because of Patrick Wolf’s singing voice. Mr Wolf, we could hear every word and syllable of. Ladyhawke’s sound was all very mushy, not helped by a slightly mumbly voice.*** She was also a disappointment because there wasn’t much variation at all between her album tracks; we could clearly tell who in the audience had bought the album and who had only heard the singles. Personally, I can remember the ’80s the first time around; and we’re surprised that Chrissy Hynde hasn’t called Ladyhawke up and asked for her stance and hairstyle back.

We didn’t stay at the Academy to see the headliners, Friendly Fires. Instead we took a break, took in some unhealthy food,**** and popped over to the Thekla ready for Little Boots later in the evening. There was no queue, so we wandered straight in to the bar and came across the French band Naive New Beaters. We knew nothing about them, we didn’t plan to see them, and they turned out to be one of the best bands we saw all day. Certainly better than the band that followed them onstage, Pulled Apart By Horses, who thrashed about and rather suited their name. As the moshpit was between us and the exit, though, we were a bit trapped until their set finished. Looking out of the window porthole, we noticed that the Thekla had suddenly become the hot venue of the night, with a long, long queue stretching back almost all the way to Prince St.***** Possibly because the other venues had, by then, started to close. Almost certainly not because of all the people rushing to see Pulled Apart By Horses.

I don’t remember much at all about the final act we wanted to catch, Little Boots. I was starting to get a bit sleepy, and the festival’s timetable was slipping further and further. The band before Little Boots went offstage over half an hour late, and by the time Little Boots herself appeared, the schedule had slipped by another half-hour. The crowd were getting restless, very restless, and her first song was accompanied by loud boos. I was well out of the way; as the air conditioning had failed, I’d retreated to the back of the room because I felt that if I didn’t I’d probably faint. We heard Little Boots from a distance, and occasionally caught a glimpse of her through the crowd. I know she sounded pretty good, but I have no memory at all of exactly how she sounded. If she’d come onstage at her booked time, we’d probably have really enjoyed it; our slightly-more-hardcore friends, who had more stamina, certainly did.

Overall, it was a bit of a mixed day. Afterwards, we felt as if we’d need a long, long time to recover. It wasn’t all good; but we’d never heard of several of the bands before in any case, and didn’t know what we were going to find.****** Is it something we’d do again? Well, maybe: it would depend exactly on who’s going to be playing next. Enjoying the day with friends was more important, in the end, than the music we were listening to as we did it. And that, by any measure, was a success.

* when he looked slightly healthier than he does now.

** At least, that’s what I think I heard. The singer certainly was staggering about the stage as if he was about to fall over.

*** “You couldn’t even make out what she was saying between songs,” said K. “Because it was in ‘strine?” I replied. “No, just because she couldn’t say anything without mumbling.”

**** except K, who had pitta bread with hummus and salad.

***** I’m exaggerating. But not by much.

****** The slightly-more-hardcore friends mentioned earlier are more engaged with the modern music scene than us, had done quite a lot more research, and planned out the itinerary

Unreality

Or, cryptic post of the week

It’s been quiet on here lately. We’ve had too much other stuff to do, culminating (for me) in a busy day in Manchester yesterday, sitting in a room eating some rather nice free food.

Regarding the Manchester trip: the other week, someone asked me how I was feeling about it, and I said. “It doesn’t seem real, and I don’t think it will seem like it’s really happening until I sit down and it actually happens.” Well, it’s all happened now. I went to Manchester, ate the tasty free food, spent a few hours in waiting rooms, sat down, it all happened, and we came back home again. And it still doesn’t seem real.

Too Much Information

In which something in the neighbourhood has changed

Not long after we moved here, we started to notice one particular car that was often parked in the neighbourhood. We noticed it because it had distinctive stickers in the back window. On the nearside, “Born-again Pagan!”. On the offside: “Bondage. It’s knot for everyone!” We’ve seen it again many many times since then, and speculated as to who would own a car with stickers like that; but we’ve never seen it moving. An aging hippyish type? A purple-haired couple? All sorts of stereotypes floated up into our heads.

The other day, though, we saw something that shocked us to the core. The car was there, again. The “Born-again Pagan!” sticker is still there, blue on white. The bondage sticker, though, has gone. Gone, with just a mark left behind. Never mind the driver or the owner: the missing sticker has really set our minds racing. What has happened to it? Is the owner worried what the neighbours might think? Have they decided to keep their sex lives to themselves? Have they lost their sense of humour? Did a couple split up, one take the car, the other take the sticker? Did it dissolve in the rain? There are myriad possibilities. I’m tempted to leave a note under the windscreen wipers asking the owner to get in touch.

The Neighbourhood

In which we visit some neighbourhood artists

As summer comes in, it seems as if every weekend there’s something artistic or creative to do. Last weekend it was the Bristol Comic Con (which we missed), and the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, which we didn’t miss; or, at least, didn’t miss all of. The Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, in short, is a weekend event where creative people around Southville throw open their doors and turn their houses and/or gardens into galleries for everyone to visit. And it was the weather for it: we toiled around the hills of Southville, trail maps in hand, all the time seeing other people doing the same.

We didn’t see all of the venues, nothing like all of them; there were 51 listed on the map, scattered over a pretty wide area. Off the top of my head, they tend to blur into each other, especially nearly a week afterwards. We definitely saw: the Wonkey House on Mount Pleasant Terrace; people from “Number 40” at, erm, 40 Mount Pleasant Terrace; textile designs* on Allington Road; paintings by Terry Williams on Birch Road; and lots of other wildly artistic open houses whose owners’ names passed me by. We finally ended up at a second house on Birch Road where we saw various bands and performers play. Rachael Dadd served us tea, and her band The Hand played, along with The Wraiths and The Fingerless Hoodlum. We relaxed in the sunshine, the warmth of the garden, and K caught a sunburn.

Like everything else, we walked home wanting to do more ourselves; wanting to create things; wanting to have things to show ourselves. There are so many local art events, I wonder how people have time to make art in-between them sometimes.** We walked home, and then straight away started planning to go out once more. Because, we’d been told: “those people over there are in a really good band, and they’re playing tonight – you should come along, you’ll love it.” That’s another story, though, for another blog post.

* some a bit like the “crochet bomb” which I keep telling you I’m making

** the next one I’m currently aware of is the Easton Arts Trail, coming up in about a month’s time

Topical

In which we are overtaken by events

It’s nice to be topical, even if it is entirely by accident. Earlier, I complained about the rather unbalanced media coverage following the recent hit-and-run deaths of Sam Riddell and Troy Atkinson. Three or four hours after I published that post, the BBC briefly announced that the city magistrates have remanded someone to await trial for Troy’s death.

It’s good news that the hunt for his alleged killer has barely taken a couple of days longer than it took the police to find Hannah Saaf. It was probably a trickier job, too; unlike the Riddell/Saaf case, the chap in question wasn’t the registered keeper of the car. He’s not the man police arrested shortly after the incident, and he’s also been charged with taking the car without permission. It’s quite possible, to be fair, that the police kept the Atkinson/Ahmed case out of the media for investigative reasons; it was presumably thought to be in their interest to broadcast pictures of Hannah Saaf far and wide in the hope that somebody would spot her.*

There’s still something about the relative treatment of the cases in the media, though, which leaves a slightly nasty taste in my mouth. The police might have now brought both cases to the same stage, in roughly the same time; but one of those stories has been all over the media in the past few weeks, and the other has been hardly mentioned. This isn’t any sort of class war: it’s just a comment on the type of people who have easy access to the media. If you want to get your story out there, you need to have either a good publicist or a story that fits the media’s mould.

* which they did, although she hadn’t actually got that far out of Bristol

Media Friendly

In which we compare and contrast two recent and similar deaths

This is a local news story. Which is to say: local readers will have heard most of the details of it before. Or, rather, it’s two local news stories together. People further afield may well have heard of one of them.

A couple of weeks ago, close together, two young people were killed in the Bristol area, in hit-and-run road accidents.

On April 28th, a 15 year old called Troy Atkinson was hit by a black Mercedes on Penn St, in the city centre. He died the following day, of his injuries. It featured in the local news, the police released the car’s registration and asked for witnesses to come forward; and then the news went quiet.

Three days later, an 11 year old called Sam Riddell was hit by a car in a North Bristol suburb. The driver fled the scene, leaving the car behind. It featured in the local news, and the police asked for witnesses to come forward.

There, though, the story changes. Sam Riddell’s story stayed in the news. The police revealed that the car’s owner matched the description of the driver, and that she had not come forward. More details came out about Sam Riddell’s happy family life, and newspapers started to publish photos of the car’s owner, presumably as her friends* and acquaintances realised there was cash to be made. The story slowly made its way from the local news to the national news, and came to a head when the alleged car-owner and driver was found, apparently hiding in a shed in Pensford. She was promptly charged, and is currently on remand awaiting trial.

I don’t know how far the police are getting in their investigation of Troy Atkinson’s death, because the press has been rather quiet about it. The police got as far as arresting someone, but whether he was charged or not I can’t seem to find out. And, apart from the manhunt aspect of the Sam Riddell case, there’s one rather obvious difference to the two cases. Sam Riddell was from Westbury-on-Trym; Troy Atkinson was from Hartcliffe.

Sam Riddell was brought up in a nice, middle-class suburb by nice, middle-class parents, who have made very sure that the story has stayed in the news. We’ve been given stories about what a nice boy he was, how he had lots of friends, played football, went to church regularly and had a happy life because of his firm faith in Jesus. I have no idea what Troy Atkinson’s upbringing was like, but, well, it was in Hartcliffe. Hartcliffe, if you’re not local, is a large 1950s estate, one of the most deprived areas in the south of England.** It’s a fair bet that Troy Atkinson didn’t go to church very often. It’s also a fair bet that his family isn’t very well off, because his friends organised a memorial march to help pay for his funeral. The Bristol Evening Post‘s response to the march was to print accusations that the mourners had carried out shoplifting attacks en route.

Maybe the news stories about Sam Riddell will disappear too now that the alleged car-driver is imprisoned. I suspect, though, that they will pop back up again as her trial date approaches, and then again in a few years when she’s released. If the driver who killed Troy Atkinson gets imprisoned, will it even rate a mention? This story, as much as any, shows how much your background matters. If you come from the right background, if you have an idea how to work the media and write a good press-release, you can keep your story in the news for almost as long as you like. If you don’t come from the right background, your story will sink without a trace.

* Or, former friends, I assume, given that they’ve now sold photos of her to the press.

** I can’t be bothered to check the statistics because that would involve getting up and going through to the living room; but I do recall that statistically Hartcliffe isn’t quite as bad as neighbouring Knowle West, which comes out as one of the worst places in England on several measures of social deprivation.

Stuffed

In which a craft project stays delayed

As time goes on, the list of creative projects I’m working on to some extent doesn’t get any shorter. If anything it grows, inspired by events such as the Zine Symposium and so on. Of course, the more things I start, the slower everything goes.

The “crochet bomb” mentioned in that list, in particular, has been stuck for a while now; partly from a supplies problem. It’s essentially a black crocheted ball, a bit like a cartoon bomb. It’s going to have to be stuffed, at some point, to retain shape; and the texture of the crochet is the origin of the problem. I do like the texture, but it’ll be open enough to show the stuffing, and the white polyester we have in the cupboard just isn’t going to look right. It wouldn’t take dye, either. I’ve looked around for black stuffing, but haven’t managed to spot any in the shops, possibly because it’s too dark and was hiding. Until I work out a way around the problem, the crochet bomb is going to have to stay unfinished.