In The Cold, Cold Night

Finally get access and time enough to blog. Feel as though there is little point relating anything but the tragic story of how my simple dream of a new job and a new home fell apart. The story of why I am now living in a garden shed. The story of how I was attacked by a nine inch high canine on my quest for a toilet break.

The story plays out like this; its Monday the 5th of November, and I'm starting my new job. It's on the other side of the country to my home town, and the short notice has meant I'm staying in a basic hotel, breakfast not included. I had arrived into the town on the previous night to a cascade of fireworks for bonfire night, which somewhat alleviated the stress of carrying my own bodyweight in clothes along the two-mile hike from the train station. Somewhat.

My first day goes well. My boss is nice, as is her boss and her boss's boss. The team I'm set to work in are all friendly. I sit in a state of constant terror, natch, frozen in front of reams of text I can barely comprehend. Constant assurances are hurled at me that I'll "pick it up soon". They're probably right. Evening came and morning came; the first day.

Second day is a easier. Find out where the toilets are, strike up (albeit stilted) dialogue with who I guess I should refer to as 'my colleagues'. Crack the odd joke. No-one seems to notice; this is probably a good thing. The hotel is depressing, but I am buoyed by the fact that on Friday I will be moving into my own brand spanking new flat, furnished and lovely. Evening came and morning came; the second day.

Third day, fourth day, fifth day - all fairly similar. I'm beginning to understand how this real world thing works. Only problem being my housing plans have fallen through. So three more weeks in a hotel, oh the ecstatic joy you can imagine I felt!

To save a bit of money, I stay in a bed-and-breakfast. Unfortunately, the only room I found was in the garden shed. Bathroom facilities are in the house, it's below freezing outside (and possibly in here) and whenever I stick my head outside a troop of tiny yapping dogs go crazy for my (albeit delectable) ankles.

Epilogue
I spend three weeks in the hotel. I finally move into my flat at the start of December. It takes all of that month to get a phoneline installed (possible upcoming rant post about the hideous evil that is British Telecom call centres I hear you say?). It takes most of the next month to get a broadband line installed in my flat, and I take another six weeks off from blogging just for good measure (read: fear).

Anyway, I'm back now.

Going Missing

It has been, to say the least, a tumultous three days since last I posted here. One spent in frenzy, one spent recovering, and today spent with the weight of the future dropping once again squarely on my shoulders. And yet, in a delightful twist in the tale of fate and flat-hunting, everything has fallen neatly into place. What a pleasant surprise, especially considering the near-disaster that Wednesday was.

Three flats to look at, in three towns. The first in what has been described to me as a "sleepy little commuter town" outside London. More like "town of the dead, or those soon to be so". To say that the flat and building felt like a retirement home was not an exaggeration. I am twenty-two, and refuse to live in a flat that comes furnished with a ceramic pig, a communal garden shared with pensioners and a faint but persistent stench of stale urine.

Flat number two was a first-floor place in a building so new that not only was the carpet still shrink-wrapped, but I was informed the third and fourth floor weren't actually finished yet. Astronomically expensive but just oh-so-nice. Which didn't exactly prepare me for the third and final property.

Now, I know estate agents (or realters if you like) don't have a reputation for desperately spilling all their proverbial beans on you, so I assume when you walk into an apartment to view and your guide says "it's not gonna take long to look round" that it's going to be small. But, dear God, why? Why did anyone think that building something so tiny was a good idea?

So maybe it was small and cosy? No, why bother with that? In fact, why bother with a cupboard (in this furnished flat) when a curtain in front of a wall full of holes and with a stick jammed in there will do just as well? No need for an oven either, just this stone-age microwave that looks like it will cook anyone stood within half a mile, that'll do.

And it's really not worth re-painting the walls. Blood red and lime green is a classic combination. And the dust and filth take the edge of the headaches anyway. And to be honest, with this smell you'll probably just go outside more often, so who cares if the sofa should have an attached Hazmat sign?

You'll never guess which one I went for.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

I've never been one for logistics. I'd rather tackle a problem with an email than a phone call, my logic being that I can collect and rationalise my thoughts better in the written word than over the telephone. Unfortunately, this choice is invariably the slower of the two, and more often than not results in being ignored.

I happily sit in limbo. Only days remain before I am to move home and start work, but through the comfort of other people's delayed actions I am immobile. I cling to a nostalgic and blind sense of entrenched normalcy, and sit in the headlights, waiting for the impact. In my life, I find more often than not that I can face any problem that hits me and find a way round it, but I'll be damned if I can ready myself before it comes.

With the right impetus, I'm lightning quick, I rush forwards, rugby tackle the headlights and bring them crashing to the ground. Throw me into a boiling pan and I will leap out. But it is my fear that, like a cold-blooded frog, unaware of the danger, I will sit content in a pool of calm as the heat builds and builds until I begin to cook.

On a more practical note, I should probably cut my hair soon.

Positive Tension

Stayed up late last night, watching the coverage of Bloc Party playing at the BBC Electric Proms. It really did look like a fantastic gig, with the unusual presence of a full choir really filling out their sound.

When their debut album, Silent Alarm, came out in 2005, it was a brilliant mix of post-punk angular guitars and abstract, heartfelt songwriting. Frontman Kele Okereke's distinctive bi-tonal voice plays off against wonderfully stinging lead guitar from Russell Lissack, all propelled by the excellent and decidedly unorthodox rhythm section of Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong on bass and drums respectively. Their second album, the hugely under-rated A Weekend In The City, pushed their sound into new directions that most indie boy bands would run screaming from, and apparently their new single has them 'going a bit New Order', which is certainly a twist.

Watching the intimate and yet epic set on my TV, I found myself achingly nostalgic for the part of my life that I fear has passed. It was only a few months ago that I would always be lining up two gigs, the rotating wheel of live music that I loved never quite stopping turning. Recently, I have lacked the desire; indeed the last live music I saw was at Glastonbury nearly six months ago.

That weekend, I missed out on my second Bloc Party gig. They clashed with someone I hadn't seen, but I think the real reason I missed them was to preserve intact the memory of seeing them in London. A perfect night, it is a memory too well formed in my mind to detail here, but needless to say that it was both intimate and enormous, and that I was close enough at points to grab a fistful of Okereke's hair (though of course I didn't).

Time to get the wheel rolling again, methinks.

Devil's Haircut

I am frequently perplexed by Russell Brand. Anyone outside the UK who is reading this is probably thinking "Who?" - so I'll explain a little.

Brand is Britain's most current comedian, and by that I mean - without passing judgement on his level of fame or ability - he is certainly the most iconic of the crop of comedians to come to prominence in recent years. Sporting ridiculously large hair, women's jeans and a permanent colour scheme of "black and more black", the sex-maniac and reformed heroine addict uses a Dickensian wit combined with a delight in controversy to great effect.

I subscribe to his (incredibly popular) BBC Radio 2 podcast, having done so since he abandoned 6Music, and usually listen to it at night, stifling the laughter that always escapes me by forcefully cramming a corner of duvet into my mouth. Over an hour of hilarious interviews and tangential rants, and featuring weekly staples such as the phonecall to Noel Gallagher, and imploring China to "get out of Tibet!", its a dizzying mix of high- and low-brow humour, with a healthy dash of left-wing politics.

Which is more than can be said of Brand's new programme on Channel 4, Ponderland. Television has never been Brand's strong suit. While Big Brother's Big Mouth was a great forum for his fiery banter, The Russell Brand Show, a sort of mutant talk show, was a disaster (witness the painfully dull interview of Matt Lucas and David Walliams of Little Britain fame).

Ponderland is even worse. With no sideman to play off, the programme is simply a monologue delivered by Brand to camera, with occasional interludes in the form of stock footage from the pre-VCR era, mostly public service announcements or cheap documentaries. Brand rambles incoherently on such sweeping subjects as "Romantic Love" and "Childhood and Adolescence", and the audience, presumably dosed up with laughing gas, or maybe just on a day trip from the lunatic asylum, roar with laughter to the most banal of puns.

There is the odd moment of genius. Brand phones his own father to ask him to grade the colour of his genitalia using a paint samples board, on the basis that "dad's have browner willies". But generally you sit there praying for Brand's sparring partner Matt Morgan to turn up, and give the entire thing a little grounding. He does not.

A true original, it remains to be seen how far into the future Brand's career will stretch. But I sincerely hope that any future forays into television comedy can capture the brilliance of Brand's unique radio work. Brand can excel in a loose format, but needs to be tethered down occasionally, or God help us all.

Moving

The reason things have been so quiet on Curious Quill recently is, in essence, I have been getting myself a career. Terrifying as it may seem to me now, I am about to join the ranks of the tax-paying, flat-renting, shop-on-Saturdays, living-for-the-weekend masses. As I alluded to in my previous - and embarrassingly abstract - post, this will involve me packing up and moving out.

The curious thing is that the stress of finding somewhere to live on the other side of the country is probably a blessing in disguise. It seems to have blanked out the sheer terror I should be feeling at being tied to the tracks, wriggling to escape the inevitable and speedy approach of a high-speed train called The Worrying Prospect of Independence.

My labels are all going to change. Sure, I've recently moved from the era-defining "Student" to the deliberately vague "Graduate" (occasionally prefixed with "Unemployed" or the more optimistic "Job-Seeking"). But to abandon these luxuriant titles in favour of the more harsh "Young Professional" is something I'm perhaps not quite ready to do.

I'm sure the following months for me will consist of an immersion into (the deep end of) my new life, and I will probably live in a constant state of backlash. Hopefully I'll not be one of those slightly embarrassing types who really have no excuse to be hanging around watching bands full of people five years younger than them. Or those who continue to go to the local art house cinema to catch the latest existential Polish crime thriller, long after it has ceased to be "trendy" to do so and is instead "unnecessarily pretentious".

Then again I've never worried about labels anyway. They never really seem to stick.

Return To Sender

Time to break the ritualistic, self-imposed leave of absence. No apologies for a lack of presence; I had better things to do, and I was busy doing them. No explanation of the what and the why, maybe those can come later, but not now.

No longer stood at the crossroads. I have chosen my path, and I prepare to take my first baby steps. Choose shoes. Find the way among the rocks and snakes. The lack of choice does not make choosing any easier, and I will have to feel my way in the dark. A new beginning maybe, and the end of an era. Exciting prospects and a freedom I have most likely never experienced before.

More than anything, I feel like I'm leaving home.

Fan Mail

And so there is yet another postal strike in the UK, meaning there will be no post going in or out of my house until next week. This is annoyance in itself, cutting off my supply of DVD rentals which are the source of movies for the Sure Motif, and is designed to drive me more insane waiting to hear from various prospective employers.

Plus, going by the decorations starting to go up in the high street shops, I'd better be thinking about sending off my Christmas cards.

How To Disappear Completely

And so the most unpredictable mainstream rock band in the world have outdone themselves again. No singles released from Kid A. Confusing messages about Amnesiac being a b-sides compilation. A general mess of marketing surrounding Hail To The Thief, and exasperation at yet another pre-release leak.

So, with new album In Rainbows, Radiohead are effectively leaking it themselves. After months (maybe years) of speculation, its out in 10 days, and can be downloaded for any price you choose from their website. That's right, any price at all. So that can be free, or anything else you can think of (plus a £0.45 debit card charge if you decide to pay), or you can splash £40.00 for a "diskbox" which includes the album on CD and as a double-album on 12" pressed vinyl, plus a bonus CD of extra tracks and all in a nice book-and-slipcase set, which comes on in December. Included in the price is a download on 10th October like everyone else.

Its a puzzling strategy that is obviously to be applauded. This is not the same as the Crimea self-releasing their second album after being dropped, nor the same as those free Bravecaptain albums. Radiohead are not an outsider group, on the fringes of a music scene that has rejected them.

I suspect this is all an attempt to move them out of the mainstream. The album will surely be chart ineligible, and I doubt there will be any advertising, and probably no singles. However, everyone likes a free album, so all this is likely to do is make them the biggest band in the world.

I can cope with that.

Charmless Man

Listening to Jonathan Ross ingratiate himself when interviewing celebrities is a frequent, painful occurrence. But watching Friday Night With Jonathan Ross this week was too much to bear, as his slobbering sycophancy was burbled over Beth Ditto in a baffling display of inept adulation.

The infectious exuberance of the Gossip front woman somehow maintained my interest in what was otherwise a cringing dialogue worthy of Ricky Gervais. Ditto should be applauded for her feminist, fat-and-happy, out-and-proud stance, but in an interview like this surely praise should be reserved for her talents, instead of the tabloid-friendly labels so frequently applied to her? Her phenomenal singing voice, fierce political ethics, her lightening quick wit (which merrily ran rings around Ross's own mithering pantheon of innuendo); none of these were mentioned. Ross did touch upon her status as a fashion icon(oclast), but was far more interested in tired stories of squirrel-eating.

The lowest point probably came when Ross realised his usual flirtatious interview technique was unlikely to work. He daintily ran away from Ditto's comment that she prefers the "ladies who look like boys". Sycophancy failing, he then switched to flattery, claiming he finds his wife more attractive when she is carrying a bit more weight, as if this rescued Ditto from any embarrassment she might have about her own size. Not only is this patronising, it is also a serious distortion of the truth - Jane Goldman, Ross's wife, could at most be described as voluptuous, and certainly does not approach Ditto's frame.

Note to self: must research and write post about film critics' wives. Jane Goldman is a wonderful oddball, and I believe Mark Kermode's wife is a leading academic mind on soft-core porn. Maybe Barry Norman's wife was a Page Three girl...

All of which leaves only reinforcement for my opinion that Ross should abandon BBC 1 for perhaps Channel 4 or BBC 3, where he could cater for the niche market that he better suits. He is too talented a presenter to be re-programmed as yet another personality-free prime-time clone.

Oh, and have a shave!

Throw Away Your Television

Television is a strange and dangerous beast. Strange, because it confounds expectations, despite never being anything other than predictable. Dangerous because the uneasy comfort it provides is an opiate, a sucking tentacle wrapped around our mind, placating and digesting.

This morning was good. I got up early, ate a bowl of pecan and oats cereal. Had a shower. Teeth brushed, hair (sort of) combed, I sit in front of the computer and progress. For the first time in a while, I feel I'm getting somewhere. Short breaks here and there to read the news never fully interrupt the flow.

Its just after one, and I decide to have lunch. I'll watch a bit of telly, I think. Scrubs is on at half-past, so I'll make my sandwiches to eat then. Kill a bit of time first, and come my appointment with the grey, imposing structure in the living room, I'm sat, food in hand, ready for a thirty minute treat in the middle of a productive day.

Only its never thirty minutes. A tiny bit of channel-hopping and one episode has become three. And I don't even want to be here, its just a sickening compulsion, a hypnotic trance that I slip into, broken only by the lull of a four minute advert break. This in itself is a further ploy; get some crisps, have a banana, put the kettle on, glass of coke. I consume. And then I can't move, I'm just stuck there.

Television can be a wonderful thing. Educational, partisan or unbiased, entertaining, a conduit for information or analysis, a great way to watch films cheaply and easily. But as an accompaniment to eating alone, it is a sweet and sickly poison.

Hello? Oh...

A sample of some of the phone calls I've had to deal today. And yes, this post is named after a song. Its by the Cribs....

Me: Hello?
Caller: Hello?
Me: Hello? Who is this?
Caller: Yes.... Yes, I'd like to speak to Susan please?
Me: Susan?
Caller: Susan Merkelville.
Me: I'm sorry, I think you've called the wrong number.
Caller: My glasses are broken.
Me: I think this is the wrong number, sorry.
Caller: Oh....
Me: Goodbye, then.
Caller: Yes.
Click.

...

Me: Hello?
Caller: Congratulations! Your household has been specially selected by the Spanish Lottery and you have won a timeshare house in Austr-
Click.

...

Me: Hello?
There is a long silence.
Me: Hello? Is anyone-
Caller: Yes, hello, sir.
Me: Yes how can I-
Caller: Yes, sir, I am today to tell you if I can have a moment of your time that you have a telephone?
Me: Er, yes I do have a telephone, obvious-
Caller: It is a mobile telephone that you currently are in use of using to phone your friends and relatives in HRZZFFFRRRRRTTHH!!! sir?
Me: I'm sorry?
Another long silence.
Me: I'm sorry, are you selling something, please?
Caller: My name is Sharon and I would like to tell you that your Virgin mobile is now owned by-
Me: I don't have a Virgin mobile.
Caller: Which mobile do you have, sir?
Me: I'm sorry, I'm not willing to disclose that; I'm going to hang up now.
Caller: My name is Sharon and I-
Me: Sorry, goodbye.
Caller: If you'd just -
Click.

...

Me: Hello?
There is a long silence.
Me: Hello?!
Some piano music starts playing.
Me: You ring me up and put me straight on hold?!?!
CLICK.

...

Me: Hello?
There is a pause.
Me: Hello?! Who is this?!
Caller: Hello?
Me: Oh, hi Grandad...

Things The Grandchildren Should Know

Just to state the obvious, and as an excuse to post a picture of snow at a random point of the year, the little pictures towards the top right of the page link to my music reviews and film reviews, which are hosted on different blogs.

The book reviews are gone. That was just a silly idea.

The Old Man's Back Again

In an unbelievable and exquisite twist in the plot of the universe, Scott Walker is to release a new EP next month, only a year after his last album, The Drift came out. It is perhaps not entirely accurate to say that this breaks his usual eleven-year gap between albums, since it is a twenty-five minute instrumental piece commissioned for a contemporary dance troupe of disabled and non-disabled dancers (see the trailer here), and since it is limited to 2,500 copies.

Nonetheless, I'm rather excited.

Trash

Given a long enough period of time, some storage space out of sight and a lack of sufficient willpower, it is truly amazing how much junk you can amass from nothing at all. The sort of stuff that you don't need or want, but fail to dispose of without sufficient incentive.

This morning, I got up uncharacteristically early to clear out the loft and garage of some such unwanted junk, to deposit in front of the house as part of the wonderfully named "Bring Out Your Rubbish Day". There have been no children in this house since I was a child (now in my twenties), and yet there was still a surprising amount of child friendly rubbish lying around. Items disposed of include:

- one King-Size mattress;
- two sponge single matresses;
- at least seven cardboard boxes, empty or packed with other boxes;
- three spare bathroom panels, 8' by 3';
- one 7' three-piece wooden tree, stage prop;
- one huge plastic bag filled with other bags and torn boxes;
- one large metal fireguard frame;
- one gas fireplace;
- one staircase guard for toddlers;
- three large empty paint tins;
- one suitcase, broken;
- one plastic training potty;
- one child's digging truck, yellow.

To be honest, I think we beat the other people on our street.

Anyone Can Play Guitar

I don't know how many of you out there play a musical instrument (or for that matter, if any of you actually bother to read this blog, which I fear is spiralling downwards in a diminuendo of wit and relevance). However, my estimates tell me that for every ten of you, approximately 9.3 will play the guitar. To which embarrassingly mundane list I add myself.

It wasn't always this way, you know. I once played the recorder. I used to dabble on the piano. I even got a couple of grades in that one. But generally, I like my own musical pastimes to be easy, so I'm reduced to simply bashing out a few thunderous chords as fancy takes me. To hell with this coordinated hand motion crap, I'll just arrange my fingers in a claw-like shape and then moronically mash my paws on the keys like Chris Martin. Its easier.

Then, about 18 months ago, I decided that I wanted an instrument that was more painful to play, and would constantly, infuriatingly drift out of key. So, after a brief fling with an ancient nylon-string that constantly found new and exciting ways to break both itself and the skin on my fingers, I bought a steel-string acoustic.

Now the guitar itself is very nice, plays well. But good grief, who decided it would be a good idea to make such a dangerous, awkward instrument?

When a piano gets too much (or too little) use, its strings become warped, some of the felt will harden, you may lose the odd note. They develop a sort of honky-tonk charm as they lose their tuning, and if you ever do need to adjust anything, its perfectly acceptable to get a professional out. These wonderful little gremlins will arrive, toolbox in hand, open it up, play it for half an hour, twiddle this and polish that and - presto - you're done.

Not so with a guitar. Firstly, it is socially unacceptable to get someone else to replace your strings for you. What are you, a girl? Secondly, it goes out of tune about every 25 minutes, and sounds crap when it does. After carefully tuning the thing for 12 months, careful never to put too much strain on it, my G-string finally snapped. Oh, the excitement. Forget the fact that the bloody thing nearly took my eye out when it went, and just consider the emotional, physical and financial pain I went through to get the little bastard ship-shape again.

Firstly, I took the decision to replace all the strings, since they'd been on there a while and had collected a repulsive amount of my dead skin, which is apparently green. So first up was to identify the correct strings (80/20 Bronze Lights), order them from Amazon (just over a fiver) and wait for them to turn up. When finally they did, I had to remove the old strings (though not all at once, or the guitar will snap or something) which is where I started to run into problems.

So, you have to loosen the string at the tuning end, fine. Once that's free, you need to 'gently pull out the bridge pin' at the other end and then you're done. Gently pull? Ha, I think not. Pin, I think, is a misleading term here. Perhaps "nail" would be better. Or those things that you put into drilled holes to screw stuff into, the self-expanding impossible-to-remove ones.

A herculean struggle or five later, involving two pairs of pliers, several wedge-shaped bits of card, two bleeding fingers and a pile of bloody tissues to match, and about two hours of fruitless googling to find some sort of insider's trick, I'd managed to change the first five strings. Putting the new strings on had proved easy enough, if a bit tedious (imagine winding down the window on your car, only it takes you ten minutes) and I was all set for a victory lap on the final string, with my guitar miraculously unharmed.

Well, after much teasing, tweaking, ramming my hand into the inside of the guitar (cutting my arm on the 5th string in the process) to try and push it out, the final pin began to budge slightly.... and then snapped in two. I let out a scream of rage something along the lines of "AeeeaaauuuuuaagggghHHRGHH!" and fought back tears. So close, only to fall at the final hurdle.

New set of bridge pins, about £3, in a lovely pack including a completely and utterly useless bridge pin remover. As effective as a chocolate fireguard. I was still in quite a pickle though, as the bottom half of the pin remained wedged in the hole, about half an inch in, and with nothing for me to grab hold of to pull it out. They're the wrong shape to push through into the guitar, so it was a case of loosen some of the strings, reach in and push it out with a penny. A neat trick learnt from several how-to websites, and completely useless.

After about half an hour of trying this, I reached some sort of "damn it all to hell" moment (though perhaps not in those words). Keys, garage, dig around in the back. Power tools. The drill. Drill bit, plug, turn it on. About four good attacks and the little pin, my arch nemesis, crumbles into the inside of the guitar. The new pin fits nicely, and thankfully not quite so snugly. Victory is mine.

To Lick Your Boots

After all that big talk of expansion and a new dawn ushering in, you get sod all for a week. A fanfare followed by an ironic, extended silence.

I am not worthy.

Something Changed

As mentioned in the previous post there have been a few changes happening at Curious Quill. The crux of the matter is that there are now three independent blogs operating under my control as part of the same system, one each for reviewing albums, movies and books. This isn't particularly because I want this to take over my entire life, but rather that I wanted a way to organise and separate my own analyses of these things in a non-diaristic way. In addition it removes them from this blog, freeing it up for my own thoughts on life, or on mine anyway.

So there you are, follow the links at the top if you want to hear my misinformed, partisan opinions on anything and everything I feel I can digest. There's not much there yet, but they will grow (and we'll see how the book one does... I'm not the world's fastest reader). Enjoy.

Changes

Bigger things to come on Curious Quill. An excess of free time and an itchiness to create means expansion is in the air. An eye for criticism needs to focus. Stay tuned.

And hopefully by now you realise that this post must be named for the David Bowie song. Not the Ozzy-Kelly duet. Shudder.

Sawdust & Diamonds

If I have ever been more distant from the real world than I was this afternoon, it is a time I cannot remember. Lying warm in the sun with a cool ginger ale, and Joanna Newsom's Ys pulling me by the ears into a mythical world of meteorites and diamonds, I slipped completely into another state. No care in the world but as to when I should cool off in the pool. Phone call this morning soothed a worried pain.

Newsom's so-called "child-like" voice, actually thrillingly controlled and trained, breathing over harp and string, is one of the most enchanting sounds I have ever heard. And her lyrics are startlingly different to most modern songwriting in any form;

The meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor's just what we see.
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid
Of the fire that propelled it to thee.

And the meteorite's just what causes the light,
And the meteor's how it's perceived.
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void
That lies quiet in offering to thee.

Five minutes shy of the end of the album my batteries cut out. Like being pulled out of the lake by a hook on a string. Kicked by a badger in the eye. Poked in the eye by a low-flying fountain pen. Annoyance.

I Wish I Could Have Loved You More

Yesterday was spent at SeaWorld Orlando, a delightful place full of all things aquatic. It is much harder to try and put into words the spectacle of watching someone ride on the nose of a killer whale than to watch it, either in person or on video. As such it was very tempting to upload some of the video I took yesterday onto YouTube and then put that on here. But I'm not doing that, because if there's one thing I've learnt from the bizarre success of Carol Smillie, its don't mess with the formula. Also, I'm on holiday and can't be arsed.

Anyway, SeaWorld, the first theme park I've been to on this visit, was a refreshing change from the Disney parks I'm used to in Florida. That's not to say it is better, but it was certainly less hectic. Much of the time was spent sitting down in the shade watching various shows: dolphins, false killer whales, birds, sealions and real killer whales all took part in entertaining and often spectacular shows. There were also quite a lot of zoo-like areas, with large environments for animals from penguins, polar bears and beluga whales of the arctic to alligators and manatees native to Florida, and everything aquatic in between.

Out of a party of six, only two of us (self included) felt inclined to try the "water-coaster", which was a laugh; it was a strange mix of log flume, roller-coaster and simple boat trip, and was most memorable for a terrifying 60 foot drop at a 60 degree angle - scary, trust me. None of us really fancied the seven-inversion supercoaster tacked onto the side of the park.

I left the park with a feeling of satisfaction and without the exhaustion that usually comes with a day in a theme park, especially when the temperature is above that of blood. But on the trip home, the lingering feeling I had was one of doubt. Was it really fair to imprison all these animals and make them perform tricks for us?

I have no doubt that the company owning the park, Anhauser-Busch (a beer company who also own Budweiser) invest a lot of money in care and conservation. Indeed, the park itself is littered with signs promoting conservation and highlighting their own role in this field. But ultimately I suspect its all just lip service, designed to silence voices that cried out in desperation when SeaWorld was found to stock dolphins bought from controversial sources in Japan. Voices that repeatedly point out the vastly shortened lifespan of the imprisoned Orca. Voices that I'm inclined to agree with.

I enjoyed my day at SeaWorld, very much so, but I doubt I will go again. The bitter taste I now feel has taken the edge off an otherwise enjoyable experience, and I don't much feel like supporting an at best environmentally-neutral organisation. Especially not at seventy dollars a pop.

Heavy Weather

Nothing from me for nearly a week, then you go and get two posts in one day, you lucky devils. For the record, the last one was actually written three days before it was published; it took that long to get internet access here. And I'm running five hours behind UK time, in case you thought this was a bit late to be surfing the net.

I'd forgotten how brilliant sunshine can be. I mean that quite literally, I really had quite forgotten how sensationally bright it can get when the sun is above you and the skies are clear. Hand in hand with this brilliant, searing sunshine is a daily "bubbling up" of huge, vertical clouds that grow all day and peak in size at about 4pm. Despite this, we're six days in and only today have we been rewarded with a punchline of rain; a huge and thunderous storm blew up about two hours ago.

Flashes of lightning twice a minute for nearly an hour, and thunder echoing from miles away or overhead, it is one of the more spectacular storms I can remember, and is the answer to the prayers of the parched grass outside. There is some strange irony in coming to Florida on holiday to escape a flood-ravaged UK, only to find yourself in the middle of an oh-so-English hosepipe ban, but I can't quite tie it down.

Rain is a pleasant change from the otherwise "horrible" omnipresence of 35-in-the-shade heat. Have so far avoided the dreaded beetroot effect, but have suffered some minor burning and a bit of peeling, you'll be interested to hear. Its the details you love. Anyway, the tan is coming along nicely.

I look into the future and see... a trip to an aquatic theme park, a wild goose chase for a cheap iPod, and a future post labelled "rant" concerning American commercials.

Heavy, man.

The Passenger

A transatlantic flight is quite a peculiar thing, and a world apart from the internal European flights to which most Brits are accustomed. Those affairs, often for the price of a couple of DVDs, are hectic, Saturday-morning-on-the-high-street, screaming children, worried parents, cough-on-the-cheap-peanuts-and-you'll-miss-it trips into the darkness of the human psyche, and are characterised by manic attempts to draw the crew's attention to your lack of leg room, lack of coffee or lack of oxygen.

Conversely, the passengers on a transatlantic flight almost exclusively will sit in a zombie-like trance for the 9-hour duration, moving only to place food in mouth, or to shake off more serious bouts of pins and needles. Plugged in and switched on, its a case of headphones on, eyes front, and a dizzying concentration fixed on the selection of films showing. Instead of fending off passengers left, right and centre, the air crew's most tasking job is to try and get your attention long enough to pour you a cup of tea.

And so it's a shame when the roster of films is so limited. Almost exclusively, each film I could have chosen last Thursday pandered to a broad audience. While on some flights there will be only one channel, thus necessitating a schedule of "family films", in this case a personal screen gave me a choice of 10 film and 5 television channels. Why, then, was each (with one exception) an American or Brit blockbuster?

My movie viewing displeasure was counted in threes. Spider-Man 3 was tedious, long and overly plotted, with far too many villains and little of the real human comedy that so enlivened the first two (in its place was a cringingly unfunny "comedy" dance routine). Shrek The Third was funny in parts but had no proper finale and a series of annoying new charcters, though it was possibly redeemed by one brilliant dream-sequence sight gag. Possibly. Finally, I watched Magicians, not strictly (or remotely) a threequel, but the third major collaboration between Mitchell and Webb of which I am aware, and lacking all their usual sparkling wit. A promising setup ruined by a lack of jokes and a disappointing reappearance of Spaced's Jessica Stevenson absurdly left me more satisfied with this Britcom flop than with either of the successful franchise films.

I wonder if perhaps British comedies are genetically engineered to be viewed at high altitudes; I recall that in 2004 The Calcium Kid seemed an entertaining breath of fresh air after the tedium of unmemorable Hollywood slush, despite being one of the most critically mauled British films of recent times.

Surely the logic of showing only broad-audienced films is flawed. With ten film channels to schedule, a spot of diversity would give everyone something up their street, and maybe something to broaden their horizons too. Instead, pandering solely to a mainstream market leaves everyone pacified but unfulfilled. Maybe this is the idea.

While I may never get my wish of watching a Lynch or a Godard at 40,000 feet, I feel it would have been polite to at least have shown a good mainstream film that I've yet to see. Damn you, Branson.

This Hollywood Life

And so it was that the packing was done, and he looked upon it and smiled, for he saw that it was good. And he was to wait only until dawn to depart across the seas, to a land where the sun shines brightly and the locals bite, and stay there for one score and one nights. And he promised to keep in touch, not to leave the old ways of his world behind. And so he prepared to depart.

And, in all likelihood, he will have forgotten to pack any underwear.

Maps

As mentioned previously, I'm off to Florida on holiday this Thursday. This of course means that I should be readying swimming trunks and sunblock for packing. What it actually means is that I'm wasting my time between lounging in the sun trying to build a base tan (in the hope that I don't spend the entire first week looking like a pickled beetroot) and exploring my destination on Google Earth.

I'm firmly of the mind that this innovative programme is probably the best idea since Calvin the Caveman decided that, rather than attempting to scare pigs to death with girlish screaming and waving of the arms, it would be best to throw a pointy stick at its flabby flanks. Of course, all great ideas have terrible side effects, in the one case the most horrible, awful idea for a meal imaginable, and in the other the production of yet another fantastically compulsive, complete and utter total waste of time.

The problem with Google Earth is that it has the appearance of genuine utility, whilst actually hiding a shamefully simple concept under dazzling implementation. There is actually very little you can do with the programme. It can produce from-here-to-there directions, but without the simple interface of various equivalent websites this is less useful than it seems. Links to hundreds of websites and Wikipedia articles are present, but you're unlikely to find yourself reading about anything you're not already familiar with. The ability to type in any location and 'fly' there and view squillions of uploaded photos of famous landmarks is not useful; the same function is done far more effectively by Google's own Image Search. Fly to the top of the central pyramid at Giza and you'll find a photo of some random guy in sunglasses. This is not education.

Ultimately, the appeal of the programme is its "wow" factor, and it is here that it scores most points. It really is cool to look at the grand canyon, zoom into the three-dimensional topography and wander around a bit. Or to go to Tokyo and let the skyline fill up with skyscrapers as it streams the content in. I took the above photo in Grindelwald, Switzerland. It would take those of you with Google Earth only a couple of minutes to fly there, zoom in, level the camera and shuffle around to recreate my picture.

But herein lies the problem. You won't be there. To be nauseatingly sentimental, you won't feel the cool wind of the Swiss Alps, or the warm heat from the summer sun. You'll just see an albeit impressive, blocky representation of a real place. You gain nothing from the experience, and that is extremely frustrating.

Wandering Star

First up, an apology for the previous post. Incoherence is not cool.

After my pointless and rushed post last night, I went and sat outside under the stars with a glass of wine. It was one of those warm, balmy nights where its impossible to do anything but sit back and crane your neck up at the stars.

As the spinal spasms gave way to an enduring rigidity, my eyes became transfixed by a bright point of light travelling across the sky. At first I assumed it was an aircraft, but the constancy of the direction and speed, as well as a lack of flashing lights promptly scoffed at this theory. Too slow to be anything in the atmosphere, and too fast to be anything far away, I realised it must be a low flying satellite catching rays from a sun that had long since set for me. It maintained its fluorescence across much of the sky, and then suddenly dimmed, presumably as the sun slipped below its horizon.

I sat there for a few minutes, experiencing one of those wonderful moments of calm clarity. Maybe I should write a book. Or go jet skiing. Isn't it funny how tissues always have two layers? There seemed to be little noise apart from my own breathing.

The pacifying calm was suddenly broken by a large smashing sound on the patio, inches behind me. I jumped up, startled, trying to see the cause. My mind flicked through a couple of possibilities: a roof tile had fallen; I was under attack from aliens; a bat had crashed.

A torch revealed the presence of a presumably distraught snail slowly regaining its posture. I looked up at the roof, and down at my glass of wine. A snail had fallen from the roof of my house? A thrill seeking, skydiving snail?

At this point I decided it would be sensible to stop drinking wine, and head indoors for the safety of my bed.

The moral of the story is avoid drunken, nocturnal gardening. One of my neighbours had come home to find a snail on one of her plants. To protect the plant she picked it up and tossed it, but chose rather the wrong place to direct it.

Back On The Farm

Reports of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease hit the news yesterday, with so far one isolated case identified at a farm in Surrey, affecting 60 animals. Cue widespread hysteria and story after story of government ministers flying back from holidays to shield Britain from this apocalyptic storm in a teacup.

Forgive me if I'm dismissive of this disaster-to-be, but I never really understood the fuss the first time around. The 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth in the U.K. was, until the 11th of September that year, the biggest news story I can remember since New Labour's landslide election victory in 1997, and dwarfed the extended campaign of fuel protests from 2000. The outbreak clocked up an impressive 2,000 cases, which resulted in the culling - i.e. slaughtering, burning and burying - of around seven million sheep and cattle. Those who remember the outbreak may think this fair enough, and the epidemic was eventually stopped, so perhaps it was all a success? However, there are two crucial points to consider.

Firstly, foot-and-mouth disease is, in most cases, non-fatal. Symptoms include a high fever, blisters in the mouth that cause drooling, and sores on the feet. Animals will typically lose weight for several months, and milk production in cattle can decline. A very small minority can suffer inflammation of the heart and death. Essentially, the real damage is to a farmer's income; quantities of milk and meat that can be produced significantly decline in the short term, although in the long term they will rise again since the majority of the animals survive.

Secondly, there was at the time a policy of non-vaccination. An effective vaccination exists, but was unused due to vaccinated livestock being ineligible for sale abroad. It was decided that the damage to the economy would be far less if infected cattle, and all those with any possibility of contagion, were destroyed. The logic in this is baffling.

Farmers work in a tough market in Britain. Milk is constantly sold at a loss which the farmer has to pay. After the B.S.E. crisis in the 90s, British beef has sold terribly, if at all, abroad. Cattle are generally insured only in the case of death, and so there would be no compensation for farmers suffering financial losses due to vaccinations. As such, the National Farmers Union put pressure on the government not to adopt a policy of inoculation.

In the current outbreak, I sincerely hope that a policy of vaccinate-and-compensate is adopted by the government. While it will have to fork out substantial amounts to farmers whose cattle is vaccinated, the money lost from British meat exports - hardly a booming market - will be far less than the crushing blow delivered to the tourist industry last time, as the national parks were closed down for months.

And lets not forget that this would save the unnecessary slaughter of millions of innocent, often healthy animals.

Hammer Horror

Finally got round to buying Resident Evil 4 for my Wii today, after reading various claims of it being the "best game ever". I realise this happens a lot more than it should really, but after only an hour, I have had to shuffle off to the relative nirvana of my blog. Not through terror. In fact quite the opposite.

I was hoping to have my skin merrily crawling off my bones. I was expecting every appearing zombie would have me running for the door. I was certain I would at least let out the odd childish yelp of fear. Instead, I was presented with a sequence of decidedly mundane events.

The game opens with an interminably long opening cutscene, scream-free. Fact: driving is not particularly scary. Its okay, I think, as soon as I get control of this fella there'll be nasties hiding round every corner, desperate to jump out and give me the proverbial heebie-jeebies. But that would be too obvious. No adrenaline pumping opening chapter, no stonking mission statement of terror that tells me that anything could happen here. Instead, I get a nice wander through a little "European" village. Surely packed with terrifying beasts though? No. Packed with slow moving villagers with pitchforks. And spades. Terrifying I'm sure you'll agree.

Well maybe I'm supposed to talk to them? Build a sense of dread? Isn't that what The Wicker Man is about? Maybe not; still on my to-see list.

Well anyway, no I can't talk to them. All they do is shuffle grumpily forwards, like children going to ask the teacher for more paper, muttering in some incomprehensible dialect of - I assume - Spanish. They sound Bulgarian. They provide little more than target practice for me as I just stand there and dispense with one after another by shooting them two or three times in the head. As fun as this is (because I aim by pointing my Wiimote), it all feels a bit empty and "training level"-esque. And not the least bit terrifying. I suppose it is quite funny when their heads fly off.

I've never played a Resident Evil game before, so maybe I should be grateful that Capcom have thrown me a gentle introduction. I'm sure I progress I will no doubt become hooked, and will have to eat this post. But frankly, I bought this game to be scared, and won't be satisfied until I become little more than a quivering pile of jelly in the corner, screaming for my mummy. Or soil myself.

The Seventh Seal

This post is named for the opening track on Scott Walker's magnificent 1969 album, Scott 4. It was inspired by the 1958 film of the same name directed by Ingmar Bergman, who has died today at the age of 89. Of his 60-or-so films, The Seventh Seal, currently on re-release in British cinemas, is the only one I've yet to see. It will not be the last.

The film follows a knight, played by a pre-Jesus, pre-Ming the Merciless Max von Sydow, travelling across a medieval countryside ravaged by plague. It is best known for, and most powerful during, the scenes in which the knight plays chess with Death, gambling his life upon the outcome of the match. Shot in inky black-and-white, the film captures the sense of loneliness and disorientation felt by characters facing death, and who find no deity to turn to for help.

Written by Bergman, the film examines notions of death more closely associated with then-current existentialism rather than medieval folklore, and for me there's a dash of surrealism thrown into the mix. Its powerful and unnerving; the final image haunts long after the film has finished.

Hopefully it won't be too long before the BBC show a series of films celebrating Bergman's long and prolific career. I will be watching; until then, I may have to make do with catching The Seventh Seal on it's current re-release. I'd advise anyone reading to do the same.

Heaven Help The New Girl

Sorry, but this one's going to be a bit of a rant. If you've seen the nominations for this year's Mercury Music Prize then maybe, like me, you might take issue with some of the choices.

Okay, so maybe Jarvis Cocker, as much as we love him, was never going to get on there for the fourth time. And no, Fields' album didn't really live up to my expectations. Everyone's sick of Damon Albarn, so maybe that's why his supposedly untitled side project didn't get nominated. But for me, there are two major omissions.

Firstly, where the hell is Patrick Wolf? Surely his manic third album deserved a spot of recognition from a panel supposedly appreciative of a range of musical genres; instead they nominate insipid scenesters like The Young Knives, New Young Pony Club and The View.

But if there's one album that really deserved and needed a nomination this year, it was Someone To Drive You Home by The Long Blondes. Achieving near universal acclaim on its release last September, this brilliant album only managed to crawl to number 41 in the charts. The publicity gained from a Mercury nomination would introduce what should be a hit album to a much wider audience. I'm frankly baffled as to why it did not receive a nomination.

Maybe its because the cover looks like it was designed by a blind, stupid, friendless five-year-old.

The Magnificent Seven

This is the seventh post on Curious Quill, and seems like a good time to talk about Shichinin no samurai, or Seven Samurai to me and you, Akira Kurosawa's masterful epic from 1954.

I watched this on Wednesday as part of my pointless DVD marathon, along with the last two episodes of the Dekalog as described in the previous post. I'd also rented Ran which I didn't get round to watching; I reckon one three-hour epic about samurai in ancient Japan is enough for one evening.

I had no idea that slow-motion had been used as early as 1954. I mean, it wasn't like watching an inane, plotless, self-indulgent and deeply unsatisfying Michael Bay film, all of which are crammed to the ears with needless slo-mo sequences, but there were a couple of bits in there. (Incidentally, don't expect a review of Transformers on Curious Quill. And no, I couldn't be bothered to link to the Bad Boys films.)

Anyway, Seven Samurai was a complete delight. For a film of its length, I was astonished how engaged I was for the full three-hour duration. The characterisation of the eponymous heroes, as well as a spread of farmers and villains, was astonishingly strong, and the script sharp enough that I imagine even the most subtitle-intolerant could be swept up in the story.

Watching the film reminded me how much I love Japanese cinema. I can't claim to have seen much - this is so far my only Kurosawa, and I've seen a few Miyazakis and a couple of horror flicks. I also have eight Takeshi Kitano films on DVD, they are my comfort food. It would be pointless and belittling to characterise all of Japanese cinema with one simple characteristic, but I do think the best films contain some intangible quality not found in Western cinema.

Promise the next post won't be so cinephilic.

Underground Movies

Finally finished watching Kieslowski's Dekalog this week. For those of you whom I have not rambled at about its brilliance, its a sequence of ten one-hour films, each loosely based on one of the ten commandments, and all set in the same apartment blocks in Warsaw. Two of them were expanded into feature-length films.

I really very strongly recommend them to anyone with any interest in watching a series of intelligent human dramas. Beyond this though, there is a meditative quality to each film, and a beauty in their realisation, both visually and structurally. Recurring motifs such as the mute figure who appears and watches in most of the episodes at some point tie together Kieslowski's "cycle" of films which each deal with different protagonists.

When asked, Stanley Kubrick named the Dekalog as the only masterpiece he could think of in his lifetime. Its tempting to think he was right.

America Is Not The World

In three weeks and four days I will be going to the States. Yes, I really am counting the days. It will be hurricane season in Florida when I get there. I'm confident the weather will still be better than it is here in the U.K. at the moment. Pleasingly, I have discovered I will have Wi-Fi access, so consider this post a teaser for the twice-daily posts that I will start writing once the novelty of sun and swimming wears off. Be assured I will not be posting garish photos of my skinny frame lounging in the sun.

Part of me is infuriated that I holiday so frequently in America. This will be my fourth visit, and I believe one trip shy of the times in living memory that I have gone to Spain. I am no old-fashioned nationalist, quite the opposite in fact, but I do feel occasional nostalgia for the times before Britain was so absorbed into the American social machine. The last decade or so has seen America come to dominance over our culture, politics and now our holidays. It seems to me that we spend all our free time watching American television, American films, reading about American politics and increasingly listening to American music.

Its not that I dislike America. Its a huge country with a diverse culture that produces some great music and cinema, as well as a lot of tosh. But it saddens me that the most popular place for us to holiday is the source of most of the entertainment we now have over here. Through a combination of shared language, a favourable exchange rate and general American dominance over world culture, politics and economics, we have gradually found ourselves as the fifty-first state.

Mind you, I'm looking forward to topping up my tan.

Waiting For The Sun

Reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Short sentences are the key.

Been a couple of days since I last posted. In that time have continued to fill void time with film, television and music. I am plugged into the world. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was an undisputed classic I watched for the first time, and is clearly one of the best films I've ever seen; in contrast Kundun seemed a bit stale, Scorsese at his most patronisingly simplistic. Pretty, but maybe not much more.

Far more satisfying was watching François Truffaut's Le Dernier Métro yesterday. This, I think, is in part because I have always been somewhat underwhelmed by Truffaut's films. His part in the French New Wave of the 60's has always seemed overpronounced; as much as I enjoyed Les Quatre cents coups and Jules et Jim, I've never thought they had the same revolutionary bite as Godard's Bande à part or Resnais's L'année dernière à Marienbad. And the less said about the frankly terrible Fahrenheit 451 the better.

So Le Dernier Métro was a very pleasant surprise. Witty, exciting and well acted with strong characters, it had all the things I thought Truffaut's earlier films lacked. This is not a review, and I'm not going into the plot details, but the film concerns a theatre in occupied Paris in the 1940s, and follows the lives of the various characters involved. Part of me knows that the film lacks the invention of Les Quatre cents coups or the intelligence of Jules et Jim, but it was the first film of Truffaut's that I have warmed to, which in this case was a very good thing.

An Alright Start

The 'difficult' second post. Hopefully Curious Quill is starting to look a bit more attractive. Not that anyone's going to read any of this anyway. Amusing myself with obscure injokes to own life that no one else can get. This is fun.

Spent most of yesterday writing my curriculum vitae, now just have to send it off to the ubiquitous 'they'. Seems ridiculous; here is two sides of A4, and on it I have summarised the sum of all worthwhile activity in my life. If its not worth putting on here, I was wasting my time. Still, its done.

Sinking in now. Not a student anymore, there's real work to be done. Saddle up and hit the highway to cash. Ironic raised eyebrow. Sentence fragment.

Might go and mow the lawn now. The grass must be kept short.

Introducing The Band

Welcome to Curious Quill, a blog written, managed and edited by someone with opinions, informed or otherwise, and an arrogant need to inflict these opinions on others. Over time ground rules may be established for what is to be posted on this site, but for the time being it could be anything. Music I've listened to, films I've watched, bands I've seen, television I've endured or otherwise, books I've read, photos I've taken, people I've met, places I've been, thoughts I've had; anything really.

As with any of these things, feedback is greatly appreciated. This is my first blog, so if I commit some terrible blog faux pas, such as using italicised French phrases, please tell me. Is it acceptable to ever use the word 'blogosphere'? Will I be blackballed by the blogging community if I mention watching QI last night? Should I be using question marks so frequently? I don't know. You do. Tell me.

Here's looking at you, kid.