Vintage, 2008

Day follows the fortunes of Alfred Day, a former tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber during World War 2. This might lead you to believe he will die in the novel’s denouement – rear gunners were notably short lived, being the first target a night fighter might hit in an attack run and unsuitably positioned to exit a doomed Lanc easily should the worst happen – but it is quickly revealed that after the war he returns to Germany to take a part in a film set in a POW camp. The book roams back and forth through Day’s wartime life, the filming and his relationships with the bomber’s crew, his parents, and the married woman he takes up with.

The prose shifts in various ways. The narrative is not linear, the point of view changes, as do tenses and even the person in which the novel is related. Passages related by “you” – ie in the second person rather than the more familiar first person, I, or third person, s/he, are notoriously difficult to bring off – but Kennedy slides into them and out again with facility.

The post war scenes are the least engaging. They seem to be present to allow Day to recollect his wartime experiences from some distance though they do reveal part of his character and the ugly compromises made by the war’s winners as their old allies turned into adversaries and vice versa.

The front cover tells us Day won the Costa Book of the Year 2007. While the fractured nature of the narrative may render it difficult to read for some, the gradual unravelling of the story does build to its conclusion; where there are no unsignalled authorial surprises waiting for us.

And so via East Lancashire and West Yorkshire to Haworth. We came over the moors from Hebden Bridge through Oxenhope. This was very atmospheric as the mist was rolling around the hilltops, though not as bleak as I had been expecting and very reminiscent of moorland Scotland.

While the town of Haworth is well enough signposted the Brontë Parsonage Museum wasn’t until we had almost passed it. The village from their time we would have completely missed were it not for the museum signpost. The photo is of the original part of the building as it was in the Brontë’s time. An addition to the right was made by a later incumbent who had a sizable income.

The museum society’s web site is here.

The rooms are/were tiny. How they crammed two adults and four children plus servants in there is a miracle. It’s worth a visit on its own and the staff (all volunteers I believe) were very friendly. The talk and more especially the tour outside afterward were very good indeed.

When the Brontës lived there, Haworth was essentially one cobbled street on a steep hill. The old village was more or less shut when we were there, though. I think the shops – almost all Brontë or tourist related – do most of their trade on a weekend.

The church was/is down the hill a wee bit from the parsonage, separated from it by the cemetery but still uphill of the village, though. At that time table top burials (with flat, not upright, gravestones) remained in use in Yorkshire though they’d been phased out elsewhere. Apparently Haworth was the unhealthiest place in England then. The Rev Brontë was never done taking funerals. We were told that there were 42,000 dead in the cemetery – this in a space not much bigger than a penalty area!

The nature and density of the burials meant that the corpses didn’t decompose properly. Sometimes they were dug up and burned to make room for later bodies. When it rained, ground water from the graveyard would drain under the church and rise up through the floor. The smell must have been appalling. This stuff along with raw sewage would also have flowed down the street. What with that and the overcrowding – Haworth was extremely densely populated with loads of mills and such – no wonder the death rate was so high.

The views now are not at all bleak, rather pleasant actually, but it was hopelessly remote in the early nineteenth century and must have seemed like the end of the earth. Modern Haworth lies mainly across the valley from the old village.

There was a nice (twentieth century) park at the bottom of the hill, too.

One strange thing we learned about Chester is that it’s in Wales – in the televisual sense at least. Button 4 on the remote in the B&B had S4C and Channel 4 was on button 8. I think the border is actually right on Chester’s outskirts but it still seemed strange.

We left Chester and headed east to view some modern architecture. I took the A56 because I was fed up with motorways and knew the road passed close to our destination.

As a result of this we travelled through Altrincham, Sale and Stretford, encountering quite a few Art Deco cinemas, shops and houses on the way but I have no pictures as I was driving.

At Salford we were directed down Matt Busby Way past the Theatre of Debts Dreams and on to Daniel Libeskind’s building for the Imperial War Museum North. This photo was taken from across the Manchester Ship Canal.

The first thing I noticed on getting out of the car in the car park I instantly recognised as a Soviet designed tank. (The good lady wondered how I knew but they’re just so distinctive.) It’s in desert camouflage since it’s a T-55 as used by the Iraqi army and was captured by British forces during the second Gulf War.

There’s a T-34 inside the museum. (When I see Second World War footage of those I always think they look like Daleks. It’s probably the way the gun sticks out.) Also among the exhibits are a Harrier Jump Jet – which had to be craned in before the roof was put on – a gun turret from a Wellington bomber – tiny inside – and a German floating mine laid at Scarborough in World War 1.

The building’s shape and form were explained by the tour guide (from whom we got a hug: but don’t get your hopes up – she went to school with our younger son’s girlfriend, and we’d met before.)

The unusual shape is based on a fragmented world with three shards representing Earth, Air and Water – the three arenas for war. Apparently there was to be a fourth symbolising Fire – highly appropriate to war, as well as matching the four ancient Greek Elements – however, the project’s funding didn’t permit that. The audio visual displays projected onto the inside walls are very effective.

We spent four hours inside and wondered where the time had gone. It’s well worth a visit.

A spot of lunch (late) and then over the Ship Canal to the Lowry, designed by Michael Wilford and started in 1997. We were told the building is supposed to resemble a steamship. My photo is a stitch of two taken from the War Museum side.

More details are on the Lowry website.

There were lots of Lowry paintings, of course – some not of matchstalk men: mostly the early ones before his style settled. In “Going To The Match” he captures perfectly that stooped-over walk men used to have when walking to a football match. Others of the pictures show this stooping too, though, so maybe it’s a Northern England thing.

There are some of Lowry’s landscapes here too but none was as good as his riverscape that we saw in the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow.

We then spent some time in the Lowry Retail Outlet just across the plaza.

The area has been cleaned up since it was industrial. There were scullers taking advantage of the calm water. The new BBC premises in Manchester are under construction a stone’s throw away off a branch of the Canal. (See the cranes in the photo above.) I hope from the outside that will be more interesting than the vast shoe box they recently built in Glasgow – which is stunning inside instead; but that’s a bit pointless really.

The footbridge across the Ship Canal between the two museums is interesting as it’s on a lift; or rather two lifts – a kind of modern equivalent of the Transporter Bridge at Middlesbrough. There’s a photo on the Lowry site of it raised to allow a ship through.

The last thing I expected to find in Chester on our trip was Art Deco buildings, but it was riddled with them.

Just outside the city wall, right where the clock is, lies this former Burton’s.

Almost opposite Burton’s was an Art Deco (former?) Marks & Spencer which was so tall and wide I couldn’t photograph it. I also can’t find a picture of it on the web.

Further along the same road was what is now a night club or something (called Brannigan’s and Lot 76) but looks as if it was once a cinema.

Most strikingly, and inside the city wall, was the now disused Odeon Cinema. A great example of Art Deco in the fascist tendency. On Flickr I found these pictures from when it was still open. I particularly like the trianguloid columns.

Here’s a very minor example of Art Deco just opposite Lot 76.

Writers’ Bloc member Gavin Inglis is running a series of spoken word performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Sorry for not clueing you in before – it’s been going for over a week.

Here are Gav’s notes for this week.

“Mon 17th Aug is the second open mic night. Some popular names are already signed up and I have had to start turning people away. Be prepared to be surprised — if that makes sense.

Tue 18th Aug is pretty special. If you are a loooong term Bloc follower you may remember Under The Bright And Hollow Sky, Andrew J. Wilson’s post-modern, multi-voiced tale of terror. We are staging this chilling episode for the first time in seven years.

Wed 19th is Newbie Night; poets and writers who have never performed their work on stage before. Come and support them — and y’know, I might still have one slot free …

Thu 20th is wasted on some guy called Gavin Inglis.

Fri 21st features Word Dogs, our sister group from Glasgow. Bark worse than their bite? Come along and find out.

Underword is 19.50-20.40 at Fingers Piano Bar, Frederick Street.
http://underword.co.uk/ Admission is FREE.

And a quick reminder that the West Port Book Festival is in full swing:
http://westportbookfestival.org/.”

Gayfield, 15/8/09

Well, that’s the unbeaten run at Arbroath gone, then. (Four league draws in a row up to yesterday.) Plus we’re now bottom of the division. The only consolation here is that both teams with full points are the two we’ve played already.

The first thing to say is that we were dominant early on. Not much to show for it beyond a McNiff cross that Roddy Hunter just failed to reach. The longer this continued without us troubling the keeper overmuch the more I had a foreboding.

Onebrow remarked he’d take the draw now and I said he shouldn’t have said that and then I compounded it by adding that I felt a sucker punch coming.

It duly arrived with a wind assisted sixty yard punt (in both senses) that completely took out the badly positioned Michael White (not, at that time) in goal. It knocked us back but in this league we’ll need to get over setbacks like that.

The big blow was the badly defended corner just after half time. 2-0 and a much bigger ask.

The rest was us huffing and puffing with Arbroath breaking a lot but never really threatening.

Then a bit of concerted pressure near the end and a good Ben Gordon header from a throw-in led to a poached Roddy Hunter goal.

At which point we threw up Gordon and Dunlop and went for it. Chissie did have a great chance to equalise but mishit the ball. Full marks for chasing the game, Chappie, even if it backfired as Arbroath broke away and made our lack of cover at the back count.

Why is every match at Gayfield played in a gale? And why can we neither play with the wind nor against it? We should have peppered the Arbroath keeper with long-range shots all second half.

I liked McNiff and his long throws – we’ve lacked a weapon like that for long enough (since the two games of James Okole in fact) – but he’s still a bit raw.

Has anyone else noticed the remarkable similarity between Scott Chaplain and Fergus Tiernan? (Except for Tiernan’s goal scoring obviously.)

Note to the manager – we did look more solid when Ryan McStay came on.

Next Saturday’s game against Clyde is now very important.

Edited to add:-
Arbroath were no great shakes, but a big physical team much like Alloa. Then again at this exact time two seasons ago I wouldn’t have said they were promotion material. (They made the play-offs and scraped up.)

The good lady and myself hied ourselves off for a few days this week ticking places off the “to see, to do” list.

Our first stop was Chester.

It’s an idiosyncratic city, certainly. Lots of Tudor (or Tudor style) buildings and the famous rows – colonnaded terraces of shops above shops.

This was the most impressive building of that type.

Tudor shops in Chester

There was scaffolding on the row on this one. Behind it the place opened out into a modern shopping mall which could have been anywhere.

Here’s another example. Note the nearest upper shop’s name. Shuropody. (Shudder.)

Tudor building showing row

It was very pleasant strolling along the rows at night after the shops had shut. It had been a bit hectic and crowded during the day.

Like York, Chester still has a walkable city wall, though it came down to ground level on the side of the city nearest the river. This clock stands above one of the entrance gates to the walled part. Unfortunately the sky was a bit bright behind it.

Chester wall clock

This one was outside the wall. Still traditional Tudor in style but the incongruousness with the contrast to the shop’s name forced me to photograph it.

Curry's Digital!

This years Hugo Awards have been announced.

I see Wall.E, which I commented on about a year ago, won best dramatic presentation, long form.

Dramatic presentation? It was a cartoon! (I know that does not preclude drama, but still.)

Like the BSFA’s, the Hugo’s voters have gone with Ted Chang’s Exhalation for best short story.

I reviewed this when the BSFA awards were impending.

The Book Of All Hours: 2.
MacMillan, 2007

Disclaimer: Hal Duncan is another of my SF contacts. Since he is a long standing member of the Glasgow SF writers’ group, with which my own group has many links, I have known him for a long time. If you ever encounter him at a Science Fiction convention you won’t have a dull time.

Ink contains Volumes 3 and 4 of The Book Of All Hours, the first two volumes of which were published as Vellum The Book Of All Hours: 1 in 2005.

The background conceit of both books is that the universe is akin to a piece of wrinkled parchment (Vellum) extended to infinity, with lives and histories experienced within the parchment’s folds. Like in parallel universes, history in the folds is different one to the next.

Both Vellum and Ink are presented as series of interleaved narratives, some in different typefaces, which at first apparently bear little relation to each other.

Duncan’s invented Book of all Hours within the book – written in blood on the skin of angels, no less – “has as many histories as the world itself …. fused as one confused and rambling tale, a sort of truth but full of inconsistencies and digressions, spurious interpolations and interpretations,” which is about as good a description of Ink (and Vellum) as any I could conjure. As you might expect then, Ink is full of characters historical, biblical, Shakespearian and mythic, as well as fictional.

At the end of each chapter Duncan inserts a coda labelled Errata where the underlying themes are teased out and underlined.

In Volume 3 the prose in one of the narratives is rhythmic, almost Shakespearian in its metricality, with rhymes to heighten the effect, though it is laid out in the normal (non-poetic) manner. In an afterword Duncan reveals this narrative to be a reworking of Euripides’s The Bacchae. (His epilogue is based on Virgil.)

In one small section Duncan enumerates the inhumanities man perpetrated on man, woman and child during the (real) twentieth century, a year on year account of unremitting strife and conflict. Who now remembers the Armenians? is a telling tagline.

Yet Duncan, despite living there, seems to relish laying fictional waste to the city of Glasgow. Sorry, as this a different fold, make that Kentigern.

As a medium, ink is of course liable to be erased and the underlying vellum written on again, made into a palimpsest. This novel, Ink, is concerned with the efforts of various characters to get hold of the Book of all Hours and amend or destroy it so that history can unfold differently.

Replete with allusion, alliteration, assonance, outright rhymes, repetition, puns on names (Guy Fox,) deliberately altered spellings (eg photogram, an ancient city called Themes, endless variations on the name Thomas) and not afraid to display its historical and classical knowledge, Ink is dense, layered and complex; a tour-de-force. This is not a book with which to while away the easy hours.

Ullevaal Stadium, Oslo, 12/8/09

It’s ages since a Scotland match. I’d almost forgotten I was posting about them.

I didn’t see all the game as I’ve been away. (Updates on that over the next few posts.) I was listening on the radio in the car, though.

So a right good humping, but it’s been coming since this group started. I have never been sanguine about our chances of qualifying and feared for the consequences if by some miracle we did.

Hearing the line up I wasn’t too confident and we didn’t seem to be in the game much even up to the sending off which, of course, killed it.

No mystery. We just don’t have the players any more. I don’t think the best manager in the world is going to change that.

But it was also crazy to play a qualifier before the season started in the SPL and Premier League.