Symbolic Forest

Last autumn, a friend-of-a-friend back in Grimsby was having a quiet evening at home, when he saw some teenagers messing around in the street outside. They were attacking a neighbour’s fence. “Someone ought to say something about that,” he thought. He’s a fit, healthy, well-built chap, someone who can stand up for himself, so he didn’t see why it shouldn’t be him. He works in a security-type job; just in case something happened, he put on his stab jacket before going outside.

Just in case.

He was stabbed, several times, and beaten with planks of wood, fracturing his skull. He survived by backing into a corner, and because of the jacket.

There were several witnesses, and arrests quickly followed. The trial date was set to: July 2nd, this year. The witnesses agreed to testify, on the proviso that they would be granted anonymity.

You know what’s coming now. On June 18th, the House of Lords ruled that convictions should not be decisively based on anonymous witnesses. The government plans to change this within the month; but, nevertheless, the CPS did not want to try delaying the above trial. Yesterday morning, the trial opened, and the prosecution witnesses suddenly all found that the promised anonymity was no longer on offer. None of them would stand, so the magistrates threw out the trial.

So, nothing is happening. The alleged attackers have been released. Whether or not they can or ever will be charged again is a mystery to the victim. The local paper, the Grimsby Telegraph,^* which loves to be tough on crime, tough on the reporting of crime, has apparently not reported it, although they normally love filling up odd column inches with reports from the magistrates. I suspect this is because they’re just as unsure about the legal status of things as everybody else involved.^** I said to the people involved: “go to the national papers, they’ll be interested”. Whether they will do remains to be seen.

* regular readers will remember how much this blog loves the Grimsby Telegraph and vice-versa. Some day I do still plan to get hold of a copy and count what proportion of its content is actually reporter-written, and how much of it is wire reports, reader’s letters and photos, events listings and so on, so I can justify my previous description of it as “rather news-thin”.

** unless it’s a deadline thing, but I’d have thought a court report from Wednesday morning could have made it into Thursday’s (lunchtime-published) paper. When the attack happened it was, I think, a front-page story, complete with a big “injured victim” picture.

Keyword noise: assault, Grimsby, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, Grimsby Telegraph, justice, stabbing, trial.

An intriguing claim appeared in The Guardian yesterday, buried in its corrections column. Insurance-comparing website GoCompare has stated that there is little connection between its Google positioning and its income. More specifically: dropping from the first page of Google results for a common search term did result in a big drop in traffic, but had no financial effect on the company.

GoCompare is an internet business. As far as I understand it, they rely entirely on their website for income. What they’re claiming is: when Google lowered their ranking, they lost a large amount of traffic – but that none of that traffic, apparently, was making them any money.^*

There are entire companies based solely around the premise that they will push you up to the top of Google’s pages. I’ve known marketers spend huge amounts of time and effort on it, taking common search phrases and analyzing them with a fine-tooth comb, trying to find out why they’re below their competition. I’d expect GoCompare to have been doing exactly the same thing themselves, in fact. And they’ve found, apparently, that it was all for nothing – because when Google pulled the rug from under their efforts,^** they say, it had no effect at all on their income. Maybe they’re a special case because (unlike smaller online companies) they do spend a lot on irritating minimal-budget TV adverts.^*** Even so, it’s intriguing. If their claim is true, there’s probably hardly any point at all in any large organisations spending much effort on search-engine optimisation. Small companies who can’t afford TV adverts, or who produce specialist products – well, that probably doesn’t apply. It probably doesn’t apply to AdWords campaigns either. But general search results? “Overall sales figures were not affected”.

* They seem to be talking about general search results. If they were talking about paid-for adverts, then the drop in traffic would also mean a drop in outgoings; but as they’re not, the change in traffic shouldn’t have any effect on their running costs.

** The Guardian had previously speculated that Google did this deliberately – it was that article which prompted the correction.

*** which, at least, aren’t as annoying as those produced by their competitor Confused.com. I’m never going to go near confused.com, no less than barge-pole distance, because their adverts are that bad. “I’m so stupid I’m trying to get money from a piece of cardboard with a cartoon cash machine printed on it! I’m confused! Dot com!”

Keyword noise: advertising, confused.com, GoCompare, insurance, search engine optimization, SEO.

The BBC has a history of having heavy-handed lawyers on the payroll, so it wasn’t surprising when they threatened to sue a website featuring Doctor Who knitting patterns. I’m old enough to remember the Teletubbies,^* and the way the BBC responded to websites that poked fun at them: send in the lawyers. What’s the most important thing about Doctor Who, after all? Inspiring kids to be amazed at things, and look at the world in a different way? Hiding behind the sofa? No, silly, the important thing is to generate lots and lots of merchandising money for BBC Commercial. Where would we be if everyone started knitting things for their children instead of going down the shops? If you start spending time and care on things like that, when are you going to find the time to watch more TV? What’s going to happen to all those traditional Chinese peasant plastic-mould farms? And never mind that, what on earth do you think you’re doing to the economy, going out and making things instead of buying them? Where do you think you are, Cuba?

Seriously: I’m sometimes in two minds about fan-created stuff, largely because of the effect fan fiction has on me. It makes me want to run away and scream, partly because of the smug little disclaimers that fanfic writers always seem to put at the top of their stories. “These characters aren’t mine, I’m only borrowing them.” Did you ask, first?

Fan art, though – which includes fan crafting, in this case – is a different matter. It does, to my mind, at least, imply a lot more creativity than most fanfic. But I can’t draw a rational line between the two, or explain why one seems acceptable to me when the other doesn’t. Maybe that in most cases fan art seems to add something to a world, where fan fiction seems to take it away. That, though, isn’t something you can exactly quantify. And it’s not an excuse that would go down well with a lawyer, either.

* I was just the right age to appreciate them when they appeared – about 19 or so.

Keyword noise: BBC, copyright, crafting, Doctor Who, fan art, fanfic, home made, knitting, legal.

This post has nothing, really, to do with the above title; I was listening to a Hefner album this morning, heard the above lyric, and liked it. Maybe soon I’ll write something which applies to that title, post it under a different title, and so on.

I burst out laughing at the news – which you’ll have heard by now – that campaigners on Lesbos are suing a Greek gay rights organisation^* with the aim of getting rid of the word “lesbian”. The word, they say, infringes their human rights. I’m smelling a rat over this story.^*** I suspect that “campaigners” actually means “publisher Dimitris Lambrou”, who is the only person mentioned in any of this. If he wants us to stop using “lesbian”, he really ought to come up with an alternative suggestion, because “gay woman” doesn’t really cut it in my opinion. I suggest “dimitrians”, or possibly “lambroans”. Either would be ideal, I reckon.^**

The Mother had something to add when she heard all this. “Back when I was a nurse,” she said, “we used to get crank calls all the time. One girl I worked with had a man on the phone, who said: ‘are you a lesbian?’ ‘No,’ she answered, ‘I’m Church of England’.”

I’m sure I’ve heard that story before, as a joke. Never mind.

“She didn’t know what it meant, you see,” continued The Mother, making sure I got it. “Mind you, neither did I then.” This would have been in 1960 or so. And I’m not surprised. Back then she was pure and virginal, *The Killing of Sister George* hadn’t been made, and I definitely doubt that The Well of Loneliness was on the curriculum at Cleethorpes Girls’ Grammar.

* actually, in the stories I’ve read, it’s not entirely clear what type of organisation is being sued

** He would no doubt object to “sapphic”, too, because he’s claiming that ‘new historical research’ has discovered that she was married and loved men. ‘New historical research’ presumably means ‘I looked it up on Wikipedia’, like I just did; it gives both of the stories Lambrou mentions and references them to a 1982 edition of her surviving poetry. In short, his claims aren’t new, by a few thousand years, and nobody’s going to be surprised by them.

*** it’s just as iffy as the “man regrows missing finger” story, also in the news, which Ben Goldacre has easily debunked.

Keyword noise: Dimitris Lambrou, gay rights, Hefner, lesbian, Lesbos, The Mother, sapphic.

Last night: we popped up to The Sage, Gateshead, the first time I’d ever been to a concert there. To see a band which has been on my “second-favourites” list for a few years, but who I’ve never really been a fan of. Low. The audience was a strange mixture: lots of former indie-boys now in their thirties, and a good supply of men with long hair, glasses, and bristly Vollbart beards. We spotted, in the audience, the waitress from the Side Café in Newcastle, a very good café which I’m sure I’d written about on this site before; but I can’t find any such post anywhere. Ah well; it’s a very good cafe, and I even have a photo:

My first thoughts about the venue itself: it seems very big from the outside, but Hall Two, in which the bad were playing, is tiny. An octogon, much taller than it is wide, with two rows of balconies from which you could, if you wished, peer down at the band from a great height. The balconies are in the round, which singer Alan didn’t like – “it’s like having an angel on your shoulder,” he said. He doesn’t do banter, which led to long silences between some songs whilst he fiddled with his pedals and feedback equipment, a pair of miked-up monitors behind him. “Play more new songs!” shouted the audience. “Play more old songs!” “Play songs from in the middle!” “Play songs in the order on that piece of paper in front of you!”^* “Can anyone else hear … voices?” replied the taciturn Alan.

They’d been preceded by The Helio Sequence, a drummer/guitarist duo from Portland, who had never been over to Britain before. They were rather chattier. “Hello, Newcastle!” shouted their singer-guitarist. “They told us not to say that. ‘No, no whatever you say, not Newcastle, this is Gateshead.’ So I thought I’d say it anyway.” Their music was good,^** but what really struck me was: how much their drummer, Benjamin Weikel,^*** enjoys himself whilst playing. He is the absolute antithesis of the famous Charlie Watts: flailing around and bringing his arms up high, a joyous and broad smile on his face.

Low are on an album-promoting tour; but, as per the requests, they did indeed play a good mixture of old and new songs – the oldest I recognised being “Lion/Lamb” from their late-90s album Secret Name; but as I don’t have any of their earlier albums, there may well have been older songs I didn’t know before. They really are a beautiful band to hear live, singers Alan and Mimi harmonising beautifully together, supported by a tremendous wash of noise from the two intruments, guitar and bass guitar. With those alone they can fill the space entirely with sound. Before the gig, regular reader and commenter Kahlan asked me what sort of music they play. Now, I hate genre-classification anyway; but I was stuck for words to describe them. They turn a minimalist collection of instruments – Mimi’s drumkit consisted solely of two drums and two cymbals^**** – into a grand swell of mind-filling sound. I went away with my ears ringing and a smile on my face.

* which, I think, came from one of the angels over his shoulder.

** K already has two of their albums anyway, so she already knew this.

*** a sometime member of Modest Mouse, according to the ever-trustworthy Wikipedia

**** plus a few other hand-held things like tambourine and sleigh bells. Sadly, despite having the sleigh bells with them, they didn’t play my favourite Low song, “Just Like Christmas”.

Keyword noise: Gateshead, gig, live music, Low, music, Newcastle, Portland, review, Side Cafe, The Helio Sequence, The Sage, Utah.

We turned to each other and said: “it was never this silly in the Old Days,” was it? And I don’t think it was.

In Doctor Who of Olden Times, you might well have got little creatures made from body fat. The difference, though, is that they wouldn’t have been so damn cute. They wouldn’t have had happy smiling faces and stubby hands to wave with. It’s always been a children’s show, but the old series was never so consciously one.

There are hints of something darker, I’ll admit. A minor character dying purely because of the doctor’s assistant fiddling with something she doesn’t understand, for example. Not fiddling with it because she wants to know what it does, but fidgeting and giving her hands something to do, and killing someone directly because of it. Maybe that will come back up later in the series. There are rumours, after all, that things are going to get much darker later on; but I’ll have to see it to believe it.

Keyword noise: BBC, Catherine Tate, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Russell T Davies, television, The Doctor.

Before going off on holiday, we popped down to York to see *Sweeney Todd*, the new Tim Burton version of the Sondheim musical. It contains, as you might expect from a Tim Burton film, a lovely, dark, damp and grimy version of 19th-century London, albeit one with a rather anachronistic Tower Bridge opening near the start.^*

I’m not normally a fan of musicals, but I rather liked this one, despite feeling slightly ill by the end at the amount of blood spurting around in best grand guignol style.^** I loved Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance as a barber-showman with prominant genitalia, and I even guessed the ending twist (although not the direction it would be coming from). He’s a very good mechanic, too, Sweeney Todd, knocking up a mechanical barber’s chair overnight; I never did work out where he got all his pinions from. And as Mrs Lovett explained how all the blood and waste was poured down into the sewer, it occurred to me that back then nobody would have noticed anyway. Back then the sewer was the River Fleet, which daily ran red with blood and offal from Smithfield Market upstream.

Above all, though, the film reminded me of one of my favourite books, Alasdair Gray’s Lanark. On a superficial level: the almost constantly dark and smoky London of the film reminded me of Lanark‘s fictional and Hadean city of Unthank, with its constantly dark skies. Moreover, though, it was the film’s sense of alienation, between rich and poor, between ruler and oppressed, which made me think of the book.^*** Todd’s alienation and disconnection from the London population, caused by his unjust transportation to Australia, lead directly to his sociopathy and psychopathy. It echoes the defining line that isn’t actually in Lanark^**** but which sums up much the themes of that novel: “Man is the pie that bakes and eats itself, and the recipe is separation.”

* it wasn’t built until about 90 years after Todd was supposedly around, in most of the versions of the story which give him a date.

** “It looked more like paint,” said Mystery Filmgoer afterwards, laughing. “It was too brightly coloured, more like the blood you get from superficial cuts – arterial blood is darker.”

*** Some of the lyrics also echo George Orwell’s famous quote about “a boot stamping on a human face forever”.

**** The line never appears whole and complete as I’ve quoted it here, but fragments of it are repeated many times through the book.

Keyword noise: Alasdair Gray, film, Fleet St, grand guignol, Johnny Depp, Lanark, London, musical, review, Sacha Baron Cohen, Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton.

The rather news-thin Grimsby Telegraph newspaper has decided to jump on a fish-marketing bandwagon and declare today to be Great Grimsby Day. A day to be proud of the Grimsby area! Its scenic mudflats! Its thriving heroin-injecting scene! The active support for boxing and extreme wrestling seen in the town centre every Saturday night! The wide range of chain-based shopping opportunities, and the picturesquely decaying industrial areas. Be proud, people!

It’s a good thing, I suppose, that they didn’t get it confused with National Fetish Day, which – equally arbitrarily – was yesterday. I hate to think what would have happened. There’s not much of a fetish scene in Grimsby, after all; a couple of the regulars in the Lloyds Arms and that’s about it. I can quite easily imagine the Grimsby Telegraph’s staffers not understanding what the word means.

Keyword noise: fetish, fish, Grimsby, Grimsby Telegraph, journalism, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, marketing, National Fetish Day, newspapers, pride.

We’ve just been watching Nosferatu, the classic silent vampire movie, and one little touch jumped out at me. The menu screen of the DVD shows the cover image, a stylised pastel portrait of the titular vampire, but with one small difference: every couple of minutes, he blinks. The sort of thing that: when you see it, you’re not sure if it really happened.

It got me thinking about the nature of fear; and, particularly, fear of images. When I was younger, I had a book^* full of exciting information for children and suggestions for fun activities. It had everything from face painting and magic tricks, to the colour wheel and the platonic solids.^** I loved it – but one page, I was terrified by. The page – well, double-spread – on toxic and dangerous animals. I didn’t really mind the tarantula, and I can’t even remember anything else on the page: but what terrified me was the picture of a piranha down in the corner. It scared me so much that I wouldn’t dare touch it, even though I knew it was only a picture. I’d find a different way to turn that page, without going near the piranha. I can’t explain why I found a picture, essentially a picture of a fish with big teeth, quite so frightening, but I wouldn’t touch that picture for years.

* A pedant writes: as I rarely get rid of books, I still have it, and it’s still on the primary Bedroom Shelves rather than relegated to storage somewhere.

** Tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron, I think. I might have missed one. My favourite part of the book was also the longest: a project to build your own electrical trivia game with questions about the solar system. I never did try to build it.

Keyword noise: fear, fish, Nosferatu, phobia, piranha, teeth.

Today’s blog is like one of those spot-the-difference puzzles where you have to spot hard-to-find differences between two apparently identical pictures. To make it a little bit different, though: here’s a carefully-prepared Spot The Non-Difference puzzle, where (for a change) you have to spot the hard-to-find connection between two apparently little-related pictures.

Firstly, we have a photo I first spotted in today’s Guardian. It’s a publicity still from the award-winning film *Atonement*, and shows James McAvoy hard at work apparently invading war-torn France:

Secondly, this photo, taken by Dimitra, some years ago now:

Yes, I’m pretty sure they were taken at almost the same location, although, to be quite honest, if I didn’t already know that Atonement was filmed in the Symbolic Forest area, I’m not sure I would have spotted the link between them.

Keyword noise: Atonement, beach, Cleethorpes, Ferris wheel, filming, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, location.