Edited to add (9/9/10):- The list is there (see comment.) The link I followed only took you to the video.
Other awards of interest to me were:- Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars.”
Hmm… I didn’t think that episode was particularly good.
Best Novella
“Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (Wireless, Ace, Orbit.) Charlie is a one time and now somewhat detached member of the East Coast Writers Group. We bask in his reflected glory.
Best Novel (tie)
“The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
“The City & The City” by China Mieville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
I’ve read the Miéville.
Oban (An t-Ãban as the road signs have it) is not far from Connel and is the main departure port for Mull and the Inner Hebrides.
Its most famous landmark is McCaig’s Tower sometimes known as McCaig’s Folly. Note the Gaelic on the road sign to Campbeltown at bottom of picture.
However, hidden back from the road so we were on it unexpectedly, lies a fully blown Art Deco hotel, The Regent!
Below is a stitch to get the whole frontage in.
It’s obviously seen better days but it’s still a working hotel and a delight to see.
Edited to add:- The windows look as if they might even be original.
There are not one, not two, but three photos on flickr.
As we were walking along the prom a bit earlier we noticed a seaplane taking off from the harbour area, doubtless flying to one or more of the many islands dotting Scotland’s west coast. Click on the pictures to enlarge.
The town was very busy the day we were there. I suppose it’s like that all summer.
Once more from the sublime (Lavinia) to the ridiculous. This book covers what might be termed the natural twentieth century US Altered History scenario but which I don’t believe anyone else has tackled. What if Japan had not just raided Pearl Harbor but actually invaded and taken Hawaii?
Days Of Infamy has the usual Turtledove modus operandi familiar from his Great War, American Empire, Settling Accounts, World War and Colonisation series which all had multi-stranded narratives, each thread from a different viewpoint character. The twist this time is we get a few Japanese to follow.
The format has the usual faults, too. The cuts between viewpoints make the flow jumpy, some characters are merely irritating and others appear solely in order to push the story on. Some of them indeed are more or less the same cardboard people from those other series (Fletch Armitage for instance is only a transplanted Sam Carsten) and too often they repeat thoughts they’ve had previously.
Offstage, the Japanese still over-run Malaya and Burma – though surely that would have been a serious overstretch (which arguably was the case in reality, even without Hawaii) – but Turtledove has of course rearranged some things to suit his narrative. Here, for example, General Yamashita is on Hawaii and not at Singapore. He gets to say similar things at the US surrender of Hawaii as he did in the real 1942, though. There is too, a nice twist on the Doolittle Raid, now launched on Hawaii and not the Japanese home islands.
Most of the viewpoint characters are actually rather uninteresting but the beach surfer type is an unusual choice of voice. In the Great War series I remember Turtledove killing off at least one of his narrators. A major fault with Days Of Infamy is you never feel any of the narrators are in real jeopardy. Only incidental characters die.
I was watching Country Tracks on BBC 1 this morning – well it was on and I was in the same room.
They were doing what might as well have been an episode of Coast; from Liverpool to Morecambe – with a diversion up the Manchester Ship Canal – taking in along the way Antony Gormley‘s statues on Crosby Beach, and Blackpool.
A lot of the programme consisted of clips shown on previous BBC shows. The introduction to Morecambe was an extract from a 2006 edition of Coast which I remember well as it alerted me to the refurbishment of the Midland Hotel which I looked at last year and Big Rab has photographed recently.
The show is on the BBC iPlayer. For how long I don’t know. (The content wasn’t working when I tried though. The relevant bit will be towards the end.) For a programme called Country Tracks it spent a lot of time in cities and towns this week.
The presenter got to stay the night in the hotel and we saw several shots of the inside and the Eric Gill artworks.
By a curious coincidence yesterday’s Guardian Review (I only get round to reading that bit on a Sunday) had an article about another English sea-side Art Deco extravagance, Marine Court, St Leonards, whose structure is modelled on the liner RMS Queen Mary. Marine Court opened just in time to be made a bit of a white elephant by the Second World War. It’s quite stunning.
This was so frustrating. I expected Lithuania to be much better than they were. Given that we were so dominant in the first half while playing an essentially defensive formation why not change to something more attacking at half-time? (That was also the perfect time to replace Scott Brown who had become a liability.)
As it was McFadden wasn’t brought on till 25 minutes to go which didn’t give him enough time to be effective. Not that the ball was delivered to him often enough anyway.
And Kris Boyd wasn’t brought on at all: whatever you think of him he’s more of a natural goalscorer than anything we had on show in the starting line-up.
We’ll probably struggle against Liechtenstein on Tuesday night too.
Spain, now, we just might beat when they come round. We’re perverse that way.
I learned earlier today that Cyril Smith has died.
He was one of those few people who genuinely deserve the description larger than life. I do not mean that in any pejorative sense even though he was a large man.
He was one of the most distinctive politicians of the 1970s and 80s. What marked him out was that he seemed to be a human being. Though a spokeman for his party he also spoke for himself, apparently not toeing the party line. As Liberal MP for Rochdale he brought a fresh forthright perspective to political debate and was one of the main driving forces behind the Liberal revival. What he would have made of his party’s present situation I don’t know but I suspect he would have been as outspoken. I’m sure his personality caused some people to cast their vote who might not have otherwise.
A few months ago when another blog referred to Abdelbasset Al Megrahi‘s lingering longer than it had been suggested he might and linked to a website which lists famous people who are getting on a bit (I put that politely) I had been surprised to learn that Smith was still alive. He seemed to have been absent from the news for so long and I had thought he had left us long ago.
Now he finally has and I find I am saddened by it.*
Cyril Smith: 28/6/1928- 3/9/2010. So it goes.
*Edited to add:- perusing other blogs and following up what they said it has come to my attention that like a lot of prominent people Sir Cyril not only had feet but also, it seems, other extremities of clay.
Just before my time there was a vogue for instrumental bands – The Shadows, The Ventures, The Tornados – but this more or less petered out with the advent of The Beatles.
Booker T and The MGs started out in that earlier era but carried on in that vein; so unusually for bands in the mid to late 1960s continued to eschew actual songs. According to Wikipedia they were (ahem) instrumental in shaping the sound of Southern and Memphis Soul.
I believe I first heard of them when they released Soul Limbo, a minor hit in Britain – and a track now much more famous as being the theme music for Cricket coverage on the BBC (TV and radio) – after which their earlier records received some retrospective airplay. They later had a much bigger hit with Time Is Tight.
I was going to have this track in the Friday slot a few weeks ago but a restricted blog which I frequent got there before me so I’ve held it over till now.
This is a live version of the band’s first single, Green Onions.
Posted in Bridges, Trips at 15:02 on 2 September 2010
The good lady and I took a short trip over to the west coast early in August. We travelled via the A 84 through Callander and past Loch Lubnaig up to the A 85.
Suddenly, on reaching Crianlarich, we had entered Gaeldom. The green background A-road signs displayed the English names of destinations in the usual white but in yellow there was in addition the Gaelic.* Glaschu and An t-Òban, for example for Glasgow and Oban. Fort William was easy to decipher being An Gearasdan – the garrison – how literal; as was stèisean for station.
Now, it’s years since I’ve been that far over but I don’t remember any Gaelic* road signs in Argyll and Bute back then. Up north, round Inverness and the like, yes; but not over in the west. Or had I just forgotten?
Anyway we passed through Connel. When I were a lad I’m sure it was called Connel Ferry. (Or was that just the railway station?) There’s no ferry now, of course. But there is a striking modern bridge. The photo is a stitch to get it all in.
Loch Etive, a sea loch, was running into the Firth of Lorne like a river tumbling down a slope.
The water was roiling and churning under the bridge quite fiercely.Though the water wasn’t very deep I wouldn’t have liked to be a ferrymaster dealing with that lot.
Posted in Weather, Work at 19:57 on 1 September 2010
The past couple of weeks car windows in my street have had condensation on them when I left the house. This doesn’t usually happen in August.
This morning (1st Sep) bang on cue the first mist of the autumn was hanging around. I’d have called it a haar but it persisted all the way to Dunfermline; haar usually only lies close to the coast and Dunfermline tends to avoid it.
Whether this presages another bad winter like last year I don’t know. I do know it’s not usually so cold so early.
The tree at work I have mentioned before is showing its autumn colours again. Mind you, it wasn’t looking too green even in June.
Once more
