Olympics Opening Ceremony 2012

The part of the ceremony last night leading up to the 5 rings in the sky reminded me of a cross between a Wagner opera and Close Encounters.

A Competing Litany

The postwar [i.e. post Third World War] landscape, then, was all over the country, featureless and dull. But in the neighborhood of Cambridge there was an exception to this. Owing to one of those freaks in the process of destruction, of which the Second World War had given many examples, the western tower of Ely Cathedral still survived. The rest of the church was flat, its ruins scarcely distinguishable in the mud that heaved around it, but the tower still stood, a gigantic and awe-inspiring landmark. Indeed its effect was so overwhelming that beholders had been known to faint at the sight of it, and even the least sensitive were moved with tumultuous feelings for which they couldn't account.
Those few who remembered the great building in its glory would sometimes try to describe it but they got no encouragement to do this, for nostalgia of any kind was looked on askance. Not that the Dictator frowned upon religion; he even encouraged it as a necessary outlet of the human spirit; but it had to be the contemporary religion of his own brand, and the Litany was the only form of it that he permitted to delinquents. The Litany in which everyone was equal, equal in sinnerdom. The tower of Ely Cathedral, piercing the heavens, spoke another language.
-- from FACIAL JUSTICE (1960) by L.P. Hartley

L.P.Hartley - Facial Justice

FACIAL JUSTICE by L.P. Hartley - has anyone else read it? I think it is a long lost SF masterpiece, with touches of Rhys Hughes here and there, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, plus something intrinsically unique. I am only a short way through it so far.

"People were allowed five minutes a day in which to laugh and get it over, like the interval for coughing which, in earlier days, was sometimes conceded to bronchial subjects at a concert."

"Betafy means beautify."

"Motorists (as they used to be called) were utterly irresponsible in their dealings with the pedestrian public; for their benefit homicide was legalised."

-- L.P. Hartley (Facial Justice 1960)

Esplumeoir

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys. Perhaps he thought the word 'Esplumoir' was not in Malory because he misspelt it as 'Esplumeoir'!

"As all Merlin's disciples well know, there is a mysterious  word used in the Grail Books about his final disappearance. This is the word 'Esplumeoir.' It is inevitable from the context to interpret this as some 'Great Good Place', some mystic Fourth Dimension, or Nirvanic apotheosis, into which the magician deliberately sank, or rose; thus committing a sort of inspired suicide, a mysterious dying in order to live more fully. As he sought for one of his favourite passages -- for 'Esplumeoir' does not appear in Malory -- he kept murmuring that particular invocation under his breath, pondering intently on the occult escape offered by this runic clue from all the pain of the world, an escape so strangely handed down from far-off centuries in these thaumaturgic syllables."

Something Smothering

To placate is often to playact.   I have just completed the novel GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY by Elizabeth Goudge (764 pages in Capuchin) purchased during a remarkable holiday in Ely recorded elsewhere. It was only fitting that the dying tones of Richard Strauss' FOUR LAST SONGS were sounding from the stereo: live from tonight's London Proms performance - for this novel has affected me more than any other, I suspect. Implicated as I am in its 'mistake'. The homophone, the heteronym, the semantic disconnection. But I shake off any doubts. I do not in the end renew my vows of love. You see, I never abandoned them. So do not need to find them again. Nor to renew them. They will never be old. They were never young. They were and shall ever be so.  Something smothering, something embracing. Implacable love, implacable death.

An Aside

Most placating is playacting.

Tender Shadows

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys is given below. But first, has anyone compared the phenomenon of Marianne and Marguerite Le Patourel in GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY (1944) by Elizabeth Goudge with that of Cordelia and Crummie Geard in THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys? No? Well, I just did. They are both sets of sisters, with similar tensions of difference, physically and mentally, as well as a very intriguing psychological confusion of names and (mis-)aptness of names that lead to semi-confusions of identity, a fact which in the Goudge novel at least is an experience of the reader whiich implicates him or her more deeply in the narrative in a very disturbing way. That may also become true of the Powys novel but this is my first re-reading of it since 1975 and my memory is not good!
----------------------
"As Cordelia watched the delicate softness of Crummie's limbs during the lengthy ritual, and the whiteness of her flesh thrown into tender shadows by the ruffled hem of her garment, there did come over the plain girl's mind a faint, flickering spasm of revolt. Why should her own poor knees be so bony and rough-textured? Why beneath her bony knees should her legs be like a pair of broom handles? If God had willed everything from the very Beginning of the World, why had He willed everything that all this exquisite delight in one's own body -- Crummie was at the mirror again now, turning this way and that way, as she tried on her new party dress -- should be given to one girl, while another girl felt her body to be a troublesome burden to be carried about? Oh, it didn't depend on having men to admire one, or to embrace one. 'It is the feeling,' thought poor Cordelia, 'of being beautiful to one's own self that matters!'"

Le Patourel and Geard

Has anyone compared the phenomenon of Marianne and Marguerite Le Patourel in GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY by Elizabeth Goudge with that of Cordelia and Crummie Geard in THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys? No? Well, I just did.

Big Brother - Summer 2012 (3)

CONTINUED FROM HERE

(13 July) I have a feeling that one of Lauren and Becky - and their definite personalities, often attractive, often not so - is heading towards winning BB. They both can act disarmingly well in roles beyond themselves. Not that I particularly like either of them!
The avant garde music that Conor elicited from his megaphone was an interesting highlight last night. But I still hope he goes tonight.
All in all it has not been an inspiring bunch of people this season compared to some previous ones, if 'inspiring' is not too strong a word to ever use about this programme! Unless they have new HMs, I can't see that changing.
I am finding the 'warden' task bitty and unsatisfying. Like the HMs themselves. And Sara Long-Legs does not seem to 'grow' as a character at all...
-------------
Marion wrote HERE: "However, Sara was funny trying not to weep in the 'no cry' task. The shoogling in her chair and stamping of her feet when her MUm sent her love was comical. Then Ashleigh's 'no sound' task was very satisfying. She had about six rule breaks for squawking when 'rocks', and what looked like dead fish and birds, rained down on her head."
Yes, richly typical BB task outcomes. More natural than staged.
I agree that Shievonne was very engaging in her interview. In fact a natural TV star in the making, and maybe she will still make it. Pity this didn't shine out in the House.
And also agree that Conor will now be insufferable and I have severe doubts about his inner stability (despite what his mother and sister said as character witnesses)... Still I enjoyed the megaphone music more than Marion appeared to do! It synergised with Friday 13th and the First Night of the Proms that clashed with BB on another TV channel. Good job that with two brains inside my head, I can be in two places at once. Still I may miss BB tonight. Because sometimes I am nowhere.
------------
Marion Arnott wrote: "The meanness of Ashley, Becky, Carline and Conor was shown in their appropriation of the alcohol that BB deleivered to the house."
Ashley and Carline? Are they new HMs I've not yet noticed?
The scream task had one great spin-off, however: Marianne being able to post Munch's Scream on this thread.
I saw that painting in real life in Oslo a few years ago.
Another bitty show. The wine-pilfering will run and run.
------------------
Marion wrote:
"Why is this ape still in the house? [...]
Caroline was at her whispering best - [...]
However, Ashleigh seems to have recognised something about Luke at last. In conversation with Conor, she remarked that in the photos, Luke's eyes looked like black holes, all screwed up. Yes, Ashleigh, dead black shark's eyes to go with his shark's grin."
Ape? Or gorilla? (and I echo the question!)
Susurrating Caroline continues to bundle herself bigger towards Becky's shape in some unconscious mimicry and fleshy masochism.
You are right, Marion, a better evening. And, indeed, by osmosis, Ashleigh seems to have already 'heard' what Luke S said about her during his own Carolingian self-puffing and hero-making calendarisation...
------------------
Indeed, Becky as well as Lauren was very funny in the 'ugly' team - and I think I mentioned before that these two are potential winners for their gamesmanship and ability to act and throw themselves about.
I got the impression towards the end of the programme that at least two HMs were either genuinely cracking up into madness or pretending to do so for Pinteresque dramatic effect - Deana and Caroline.
Thought Conor looked good as the Sheriff. One of his better nights.
------------
(18 July) I am sure this programme can be fully enjoyed only through the eyes of Marion. That's why millions are tuning into her reports, I guess. A ho-down, a ho-up of a report, again and again, day after day. Thanks.
The discrete Becky-boob weigh-in was something to put in the Kinga annals of BB.
Jade returns even larger than life. RIP.
And Caroline is something smothering, and placating is almost always playacting. A moving mountain of towel as a theatrical aside.
I reckon they nominated Lauren because they think she is going to win.
Luke A to go on Friday, I say!!!
-----------------
Marion wrote: "Caroline also took her insecurities to BB. She broke down in there, gasping and squeaking apologies which were practically inaudible because she had dropped into that ghastly little Violet Elizabeth Botts voice she uses when she's in trouble. Distinctly audible were 'Weally weally weally sowwy, weally weally intended no harm, weally weally ...million times better with Luke A and Lauren next week. And she weally weally hates herself."
That really stood out as a Nikki 'who is she?' confessional moment but in a different form. Didn't quite come off, but stood out and expunged near all else for me last night. Thanks goodness again for Marion's incisive eye.
Several people now seem to be wearing those one-piece snowtime pajamas that Arron once wore. Arron? That seems an age away now.
Sara is straight-talking, indeed, but lacks a 'who is she?' moment so far - and, in a funny way, so is Ashleigh straight-talking. Essex straight-talking in her case. No faux-mance for her. The land is flat in Essex and clear-sighted. The coasts with endless horizons, sometimes empty, sometimes full of hidden wisdom that one can bring to those horizons.
---------------
Did I actually hear Becky make the schoolyard joke that was around when I was young in the early 1950s? CONSTANTINOPLE is a long word - can you spell it?
There have been racial vibes in the house since this season started, I sense. Usually unspoken, often subtle, often unproven. The Curryhouse-gate incident is just one of them. The Shilpa Shetty incident casts its shadow every year on BB mores.
I wonder if the HMs realise they are going to miss the London Olympics? Is that why they often seem so sad.
Caroline acts as if she is about to divest herself from the mountain-of-towelling and dive in the archetypal Olympic pool. A catharsis not dissimilar to a body-and-soul baptism.
---------------
Last night, I was both surprised and disappointed that Lauren was evicted instead of Luke A. It will be the programme's loss. She did however lead Adam on a bit, what they call a P****-teaser in polite circles. Her interview was very professional. She may have far to go.
Sara starred, meanwhile, with her lie detector test. Sadly, she is not a star who can be starred, though, other than by her looks. There is also a strange steely British supremacy undercurrent to her character that may appeal to some viewers and not to others.
Meanwhile, I did not cross my legs to test out Becky's p**** theory...
-------------------
I was wondering if Becky and Caroline were not so much laughing off the actual thought of close-to-hand sex acts of any sort within the BB House, but more a subconscious or conscious homophobic form of such a thought? To go alongside some HMs' subconscious or (partially concealed) conscious racism. A sad emblem for our times. Unspoken fears and antipathies pent up within an ostensible 'politically correct' society. And sometimes spoken rather than unspoken within closed social groups outside the House. Then breaking out of that pent up state during long hot summers...
I was cheering on Luke A via-a-vis Becky. I was astonished that Ashleigh broke his confidences, but having read Marion's report maybe I shouldn't have been. And indeed Luke A expected such an outcome? He is rewarding us for having been saved from eviction!
-------------
(23 July) Scott talking like someone in Coronation Street and Sara dressed as a baby doll Queen Elizabeth II were the highlights.
Caroline and the Fish-Eye was a trauma and a half.
I felt sorry for Ashleigh. Hers was the only letter task that depended on overcoming a reflex or a glitch like a hiccough - i.e a lifetime of swearing between every other word. She was BOUND to fail.
I saw a trailer of Conor feeling sorry for Deana about her lack of a letter, but I can't recall seeing the incident in 'real-time' playback. Was it shown?
Becky has become a stranded form of an emotional sea-mammal. Excusable, though, when you're only 19.
------------
Marion wrote: "There wasn't a lot going on tonight and so I have only a few observations:"
Well, you could have fooled me! Another fulsome and generous supply of reported items. What would we do without Marion?
Ashleigh is rather buxom for her slender frame, I noted last night. The only item I can think to add.
Oh, and yes, Caroline's stern rabbit mouth when she tries to be serious. Not only casting aspersions but also then disowning them.
---------------
Marion wrote: "I'd rather look at Deana's, or even Adam's, than Becky's."
And talking of melons, I didn't get that game with the elastic bands, either, Marion. Until one of them spectacularly exploded. The nature of melons had previously escaped me.
I hope I don't hear a similar splatting noise when Luke S is in the vicinity.
And the fact that Becky was not nominated at all for eviction is something that religions are made of. An impossiblity.
Double eviction this week: Conor and Caroline!
Ashleigh or Deana or Scott eventually to win overall.
------------------
Well, I can't beat Marion's account (better than any other account on the whole internet) of the Ashleigh / Luke S 'fraughtmance'.
I'll just make mention of the GIANT slumber bed and its 'midnight feasts with crackly toffee paper' of the distaff soul. A quote I made much earlier on Facebook yesterday from 'Facial Justice' (1960) (the SF novel featuring the Tower of Ely Cathedral) by L.P. Hartley: "Little spirals of femininity had welled up in her, like bubbles in a soda-water siphon."
And those escapades contrasted with Albinoni's Adagio being played by the BB production team as background to an image of Luke A appearing as if he were about to appear in a Federico Fellini film...
----------------

Sara came out tonight - as her namesake Bernhardt:
The farrago of the Office games was hard to understand. Surely the others eventually realised Deana and Sara were cheating because they had a secret mission. They do say Hell is Other People. An 'In Camera' Hell must be even more severe.
------------
Thanks, Marion. What I was trying to remember was being woken up in the middle of the night in midsummer to enact a New Year's Eve party with all its joyous singing etc. A bleary-eyed bizazz that beats any theatrical performance of real dislocation I've ever witnessed.
Marion, are you sure that object that hit Caroline's face - with such subsequent wild playacting injury - was not caused by her own throwing it in the air playfully and failing to catch it? I can't recall it being thrown at her by someone else.
I may not be commenting again till Sunday.
----------------
The Olympic ceremony was interesting, better than I expected, but I didn't notice the giant bed, as I wasn't watching the whole time. The scene leading up to the five rings in the sky reminded me of a Wagner opera.
Meanwhile, Brian was right: the interview was as chaotic as Caroline's hair: symbolic of a negative synergy that (as Marion also says) is a bit worrying with regard to the prospect of her mental health following this experience.
An interesting case-study, not necessarily one that was comfortable to watch. I said early on she was one to watch. It turned out that I was right for the wrong reasons. She'll never be another Nikki.
--------------------
Nothing to add to that, Marion. You created a very interesting review of a relatively boring episode.
A quote from Nina Allan's excellent story in TTA's Black Static #29 (which I am real-time reviewing at the moment):
“It is true that I have formed friendships, intellectual and sometimes emotional alliances that lasted a decade or more. But the ending is always the same: a boredom that finally becomes so oppressive that I am driven to fabricate some feud or schism that explodes the relationship apart.”
Life is just a slow-motion version of Big Bother, I'd say.
Or Big Brother is a micro of life's macro.
---------------------
Marion wrote: "Sara also decided a few tears shed wouldn't do her cause any harm. She related the tale of how she and her Mother helped a man with nowhere to go by giving him the only thing he asked for - food. She complained about the lack of help for people like him and wept. Cool as cucumber, Deana told her about poverty in India and how she should be glad to live in Britain where the poverty of India is unknown. She said people did not appreciate how lucky they are to live here and that she is proud to be British. This forced Sara into agreeing with her and re-establishing her Unionist and Royalist credentials. Deana took the drama right out of Sara's control and made her look silly. Oh, that Deana is a clever one!"
The box game was OK. But that bit Marion describes above was the most remarkable event, with lots of fleeting emotions over some people's faces, hard to read, inscrutable, but there nevertheless and interpretable in various ways, especially when Deana praised living in England or was it Britain, seemingly giving a right-wing salute as she said it? Ironic or sincere or subconscious or simply misinterpretable? Sara and Ashleigh were particularly inscrutable listening to Deana. Sara's Bernhardt tears returned and, already knowing about her extreme idiosyncratic Royalism, this model makes a very strange mix. Shall I ever fathom these people, as in a all great dramas and literature?
More significantly, can they fathom themselves? 
------------------
I wrote a week or so ago: "In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described by Marion above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!"
(31 July) The BB authorities obviously been reading this thread and pinched the idea.
Actually, like Marion, I thought it was a very good task. A lot of home truths shining through the self-theatre.
Sara seems to be growing middle-aged phsyically and mentally as day follows day in the House.
I still think Essex girl Ashleigh is a good bet for the eventual winner.
Deana's 'improvement' speech was well thought out and delivered. 
 
CONTINUED HERE
----------------------------------

The Diurnal Heroism of Manual Labour

Today’s quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys. This represents the first appearance of Geard: with a head like mine! But can one ‘own’ one’s head that is joined to the body. Don’t you only own things that need not be yours to own until you do own them?

“Here there was a suspended gas-globe, and here the strangers turned, revealing the black bowler hat and hooked Roman nose of Mr. Owen Evans, and a broad-shouldered, rather fleshy individual, without any hat, whose grizzled head under that suspended light seemed to Sam the largest human head he had ever seen. It was the head of a hydrocephalic dwarf; but in other respects its owner was not dwarfish. In other respects its owner had the normally plump, rather unpleasantly plump figure of any well-to-do-man, whose back has never been bent nor his muscles hardened by the diurnal heroism of manual labour.”

A Weather-Washed Lust

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys. (I am collecting all these passages here: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/)
---------------
"Their love was lust, a healthy, earthy, muddy, weather-washed lust, like the love of water-rats in Alder Dyke or the love of badgers on Brandon Heath. They were shamelessly devoid of any Ideal Love. Born to belong to each other, by the same primordial law that made the Egyptian Ptolemies marry their sisters, they accepted their fatal monogamy as if it were the most casual of sensual attractions.
And in the etheric atmosphere about those two, as they stood there, quivered the immemorial Mystery of Glastonbury. Christians had one name for this Power, the ancient heathen inhabitants of this place had another, and a quite different one. Everyone who came to this spot seemed to draw something from it, attracted by a magnetism too powerful for anyone to resist, but as different people approached it they changed its chemistry, though not its essence, by their own identity..."

Wooden Exactions

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys: "Every girl lives so constantly in the imaginative atmosphere of being made love to that even the most ignorant of them is rarely shocked or surprised. It is the material consequences that they dread, not moral remorse or any idea that they are allowing what is wrong. John's way of love-making might, however, have easily palled on a more passionate nature than Mary's; for he was not only profoundly corrupt but extremely egoistic, touching her and holding her in the manner that most excited his own childishly fantastic imagination and never asking himself whether this was what suited her, nor for one second forgetting himself in any rush of tempestuous tenderness. But Mary, as though she really *were* a hamadryad, who had known the shamelessness of hundreds of whimsical satyrs, treated the whole thing with grave, sweet, indulgent passivity. Something in her kindred nature, some willow-rooted, fen-country perversity, seemed to need just this protracted cerebral courtship to stir the essential coldness of her blood and nerves. One quaint feeling often came to her, in the oddest moments of his 'sweet usage,' namely that he was one of her old, faded, wooden *dolls*; yes, the most dilapidated and injured of all four which used to belong to her, come to life again, but this time full of queer, hardly human exactions that she would willingly prostitute herself for hours to satisfy, so long as she could hear those wooden joints creak and groan in their joy."

The Two Twilights

Today's quote from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys -- "The best time for any human being to pray to the First Cause if he wants his prayers to have a prosperous issue is one or other of the Two Twilights; either the twilight preceding the dawn or the twilight following the sunset. Human prayers that are offered up at noon are often intercepted by the Sun -- for all creative powers are jealous of one another -- and those that are offered up at midnight are liable to be waylaid by the Moon in her seasons or by the spirit of some thwarting planet. It is a natural fact that those Two Twilights are propitious to psychic intercourse with the First Cause while other hours are malignant and baleful."

Only Sleeping

Excerpt from review here:: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/a-certain-slant-of-light-peter-bell/

Only Sleeping
“Full-faced, however, her beauty was seriously flawed by an odd asymmetry of features.”

…describing a Russian woman as another form of iconostasis… but I am leaping ahead of myself: this is a spooky tale, sometimes self-consciously so or even satirically so, like ‘Lamia’, with all the trappings of a ghost story that would please MRJ fans (and the boy who is haunted in an Isle of Man guesthouse by the long corridor leading alongside his non-ensuite room surely deserves being spooked by reading MRJ stories just before going to sleep!) – but, artfully transcending that feeling of mine, the story is genuinely scary. And the ambiance of Douglas, the Russian woman’s ‘Don’t Look Now’-type bereavement, the decor of the guest house, with shreds of Robert Aickman or Elizabeth Bowen… Mentions of the River Mersey, of beams in the rafters as well as beams from a lighthouse, of a “screen” of sycamore and privet, all lend to the symmetry/asymmetry of this book, enhanced by Lowe’s excellent drawings, one with what I saw as a confessional screen like a barred cell or railings around gravestones (here “caged-in tombs“) ….and the dreaded “unconsecrated ground” ie unscreened by God? And the millennium ball toing and froing upon these tides of fiction. This book, I recommend to any reader wanting to be scared. No facelift can relieve that threat, I suggest, from the twisted visage within you or represented by the mask you hide under the normal face, a mask that upstages any talisman of self even if only by dint of ‘superstitious awe’. I wonder if this book is the prime example of what I call ‘ghorror’ (a word I coined recently as a result of a typo, pronounced ‘gore-or’) where ghost story trappings are accompanied by gory upstagings of one’s very soul. But that is just me idly rambling from the other side of the page. Or foolhardily rambling like Bell’s protagonists … to seek some oxymoron of destiny. A fate that is only sleeping. Or slanting from the vandalised past toward you with some mixed hope and despair for the future. (26 Jun 12: 12.05 pm bst)



A Certain Slant of Light
The reviewer in Ely Cathedral:

Big Brother - Summer 2012 (2)

CONTINUED FROM HERE


(24 June) Marion wrote: and Lauren , although willing, not particularly impressed by his efforts to massage.
She seemed to go the extra mile, though, in her willingness!
A great report, Marion. Nothing else to add or subtract.
-------------
With all the excitement of England versus Italy last night, BB took a bit of a backseat. But I did note one birthday party versus another birthday party to become the Platonic Form of Birthday Party. The rude awakening regarding life's penalty shoot-off is that any Platonic Form is infiltrated by fallible humanity and Clockwork eye-decor. Even Fallibility itself is not what it was.
We go through life with eyes wide shut.
Thanks, again, Marion, for your infallible reports keeping me up to speed. (BTW I believe it's Conor not Connor)
--------------------
Marion wrote:  "gender insults abounded [...] We're right, Des - this is not a likeable house."
The only feasible likeables are Deana and Luke A, I feel. And perhaps Sara. Otherwise, not a good crowd, and mostly boring people, too (other than Lydia). So I don't know what BB is going to do to make this a likeable season in the weeks ahead. My spirit drops.
Agree that Conor is not only short of something vital in the intelligence stakes but also showed a very ugly side yesterday and BB should have evicted him. However did he pass the original audition?
Only glad that race doesn't seem to have come into it. On the surface anyway, with this factor having been drummed into all HMs, no doubt, following the Shilpa Shetty matter. But endemic 'genderism' has come into it and BB should deal appropriately with all such attitudes.
-----------------
Well, another big beast is liable to go on Friday: Lydia; Dislikeable yet interesting. A future politician on the centre right.
Caroline listed out the city venues for her Romantic 'Grand Tour' of Europe when she eventually meets the man who wants to care and service her. A highlight of the season so far. Luke A suggested St Petersburg would be better than Moscow in her list. I agree. 
 ------------------
Marion wrote: "hashing"
A new technical term for applying internet social media methods to real life situations, situations like Reality TV, even Reality itself!
Lydia was hashing hard last night in the diary room in a ploy to stay in the house. See the sparkle in her eye, see the metaphorical moustache of mischief being preened and then tagged?
Caroline - no doubt my favourite housemate from day one (even before she said anything) - who nevertheless goes up and down in my estimation day by day - is today's H. Rider Haggard 'She' or Mrs Bennett in the making (even Lady Catherine de Burgh) or an EM Forster heroine who yearns interechangeably for a room with a view and a passage to India. Travel by sedan chair or rickshaw (who's he) if not by motorised hash tag.
--------------
Marion wrote: "Oops! BB's nerve was struck and Caroline was summoned to the Diary Room and given a formal warning about what she had said. For a moment I thought BB was referring to her remark about his having no sanitation (her grammar is execrable) but no, he hinted tentatively about racism and then threatened her with removal from the house. Is she racist? I really don't know - there's no art to find the mind's construction in a word - but I find it odd that she can be threatened with removal for a single word while Conor can contemplate beating a woman and raping her with a hairbrush and only be gently chided."
Indeed, Marion.
And love Caroline or hate her, she certainly has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about her. A talking point so much more credible than Benedict.
Deana to go tonight, I say.
--------------------
Marion wrote: "So. The game is all over bar th shouting, isn't it. Luke S's group outnumber the outsider group by a wide margin. Next week, either Deana, Scott, Adam or Lauren goes...and the others will soon follow."
I think you and I should go in there as wild cards: Marion of Diamonds and Des of Spades.
Lydia was supposed to have a famous boy friend but when she got out, I didn't recognise him. Who is he? Who is he?
I agree with what you say about Ashleigh's behaviour. Being an Essex boy through and through, I assure you she is not typical. But Essex is getting infamous... When I was young, it was simply another county.
---------------
(1 July): Thanks for another excellent report, Marion.
Scott is actually quite shrewd, amid his posh accentuation of vowels and consonants, describing the 'presence' or lack of it with the then potential of Lydia or Deana going. He is pontifical, strangely with his hair (that Marion once described as his brain bursting through the top of his skull) now shaped into a kippah-like eruption of orange-knitted lava. Also his kamikaze belittling of the Conor-'purchased' table (almost its phenomenological conception as the essence of Table) was like watching the Martyrdom of St Sebastian...stuck all over with toy-footballers on spinning stakes.
Becky's internal thigh slapping - after Deana describing her as possessiing the Wonder of being comfortable in her own skin - was something that martyred us viewers...
----------------
I agree Deana was the star in 'calling' the Luke S and Ashleigh fauxmance. But she, too, is perhaps operating her own moral sting... A fauxmance between two chancers (or one chancer and one gullible individual) and a crusade (such as Deana's) on an unprovable point are both game-ploys that have grown up with BB over the years.
I think I'd keep a cool ployless, plotless head ... like Caroline?
---------------
I'm glad you didn't divulge tonight's nominations here ahead of time, Marion. BB's Reality should not become real-time! I look forward to their gradual 'evolution' tonight.
Caroline's stony-faced assurance about who had not talked to her in the last three days begs the question of why she had not talked to them. Ever the mirror reflected back, that lady.
Although I think Deana is playing a game, I'm glad Luke S is rattled. Don't like him.
The Shievonne task was indeed brilliant and natuarlly flowed from her earlier Clownophobia (is there a more psychologically technical expression for that? Like the Stephen King Red Nose and Custard Pie Syndrome?)
------------
Coulrophobia, apparently!
------------
(4 July) Scott Gyrning
I continue to find Marion's reports invaluable for many reasons, e.g. because of the way the Housemates' gyrning and making Pinteresque absurdisms, rolling their eyes up into whites (particularly Caroline) and generally blocking sense with veils of misgotten telepathy-with-grunts-grins-and-gawps. But Marion miraculously seems to be able to transcend all this with her TTA Forum reports. The masque that rolls beneath the Geordie chanting of the Marcus over-voice that seems merely to achieve punctuating further diversions of sense.
An interesting foursome up for grabs this week. I hope Conor goes (he must have conned the auditioners for BB about his true nature). But I fear that Marion may be right about the fulsome current of the Beck flowing ineluctably back to source upon a wave of the TV audience's tactile voting.
Today is Higgs boson day - finding the dirty Diamond in the Cern Zoo. Seems somehow to be running parallel with BB.
----------------------
Marion wrote: "Is the world ready for yet another fauxmance?"
Or grosmance (pronounced growmance) where a fauxmance becomes real and/or gross with mass or dark matter -- or grows or morphs into something other than faux, if only in the self-deceived minds of the participants of whatever 'mance' it is.
Becky in trousers; I had to laugh at Big Brother saying he couldn't see her legs as they were in army camouflage trousers.
There is a lot of physical and mental gurning going on: even the furniture going green and blue with its own camouflage of 'genius loci'. (Sorry I mispelt gurning as gyrning yesterday: it was almost as if the word itself had started gurning: a vexed texture of text).
The world may have discovered the Higgs boson (or at least its lookalike) and Reality itself (as an extrapolation of Reality TV) has effectively started its gurning process: almost the opening of a Pandora's Box by the discovery of the 'God particle'; the next step will be Avian Flu passing human to human, I fear.
The Big Brother House: the ultimate CERN Zoo.
Meanwhile, I pray (not too strong a word) that Conor is gurnt off on Friday, the scorched earth of his designer stubble on his extended chin and all.
(From Wikipedia: "A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip, though there are other possibilities.")
--------------------
Marion wrote: "It's coming to something when a man who has spent time in one of America's prisons can be shocked by the behaviour of Britain's youth."
Proof that BB isn't just silly games but a Morailty Tale, too.
But the HMs' heads acting as green or blue loo-brushes was a real 'Happening'! A bit too bitty last night, though. We all know who we hope is going tonight. Becky is shaping up better, so I hope it's not her at least.
----------------
Marion wrote: "A lesson must surely have been learned here - you cannot make people see things your way; there is such a thing as objective reality. He tried to drown out their protests by talking over them (he's what my Gran used to refer to as a wee yap o' hell)..."
A lesson for us all, indeed, as this Morality Tale - with Classical Horror's Hubris and Nemesis - Shakesperean even - perspicaciously rolls on. During the live streaming on 5* between cup and interview's lip, it became Continental Art Cinema of the Sixties with close-ups dwelling on faces, almost in dreamy slow-motion as emotions flickered between expressions that escaped involuntarily or were poised deliberately before slipping away again: a true revelation, brilliant TV as only Reality TV of this nature can achieve.
Marion is spot on with her epithet about the interviewee: "prize prat". And about everything else she says above. It turned out perfectly for justice, leaving Conor marooned in his own Sophoclean Tragedy, with Marion and I -- and other members of the audience with whom I'm in touch osmotically -- the Greek Chorus.
------------------
(8 July) Marion wrote: "On this board, we talk a great deal about how HMs true characters are revealed in the house but so, it must be said, are the characters of commentators."
We reflect back from the stagings of others in the march of life. And by watching Reality TV we can perhaps fathom even more our own motivations for better or worse.
"It is a dark and opaque side to ourselves, one that we leave untreated at our own peril, but it is also a source of endless humour and amazement, so that we can also enjoy the subject as we suffer it." Robert Trivers
And thus gratifying to see grizzled Conor blubbing in the arms of Luke S. But, meanwhile, we tell ourselves that we were born to love and be loved, even Conor...
The enduring image for me last night was the blue towelling of a mountainous Sultan from Sinbad's days attempting to mimick another religion in the shape of a Buddha with the disarming drawback of speaking from Caroline's face.
----------------
Marion said: "She reminded me of that blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland!"

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way –"
My highlight was Scott reciting that in his articulate poshese from beneath his kippah of orange brain-hair.
Yes, the Shievonne jape is to turn seeeerious... Adam, watch out.
That is brilliant, Marion, your blue caterpillar Caroline.
My original conceit above was a merging of these two:

And this is the current Diary Room chair:

-----------------
Marion wrote: "Conor is a man of few words - so he just keeps repeating them."
Indeed. And when a love-circle was proposed he probably first thought of something else.
Seriously, I think BB stepped over the mark with the entrapment of Adam. Made it more into a voyeuristic hothouse psychological investigation into human behaviour when taken to extremes of personal interaction rather than a Reality TV game which often borders on that 'hothouse', true, but hopefully doesn't cross the line into deliberate manipulative cruelty.
-----------------
Marion wrote re Shievonne: "She flapped them at BB, threw them up in the air, then from side to side, even circled her own head with them - a magician making magic passes. She said she'll be carried out of the house on a stretcher and duly crossed her arms over her chest to symbolise a corpse."
In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!
Like Marion, I have no idea re the unseen backstory of Sara and Luke A.
I think Caroline at one point said that Scott would win this BB season. I'm beginning to think she's right.
----------------
Yes, I forgot Sara is an ultra-Royalist. Ashleigh looks like a frail flower of an innocent abroad, as you imply, Marion, but in nobody else has there been an innocence so subsumed by an inner archetypal Essexisation...and, meanwhile, even I knew that the Queen's dogs are corgis.
I still depend on your reports to set me straight, Marion. Until I read it this morning, I thought last night's show was confusing, mostly inaudible and boring, and I see I was right on the first two but not, retrocausally, on the third!
Conor to go tomorrow night!

CONTINUED HERE

Fugue for Black Thursday – George Berguño

Excerpt from my real-time reveiw HERE.



“Time grows in all directions, sprouting new limbs and branches.”
I was opportunely listening to Mozart’s Piano Sonata K333 (just finished being broadcast on BBC Radio 3) while I was reading this story. You will know why opportune when you read it. Also the story today has another opportune synchronicity with the Ukraine-Poland Euro Football Tournament with references in this story to Drohobycz (and the England footballers being taken to visit Auschwitz in the last few days) – and synchronicity with the evil things today going on in Syria. Do I dare belittle the story by calling it Whovian? Still, this truly great story has variations on the theme of Time’s Arrow concerning Bruno the Jew and his three pictorial sketches: following a quote from ‘Tempus Incognitum: a small town in Ukraine’ - Berguño’s story being narrated from the ostensible POV of a first person singular Gestapo officer in 1942 and 1983. Fascinating, intriguing, devastating. “…man or woman or child, old or young, just kill for the sake of killing.” (12 June 2012 - 10.05 a.m. bst)

Big Brother - Summer 2012

Continued from HERE
Copied and pasted from the discussion with Marion HERE

[Adam Kelly, Arron Lowe, Ashleigh Hughes, Benedict Garret, CarolineWharram, Chris James, Conor McIntyre, Deana Uppal, Lauren Carre, Luke Anderson, Luke Scrase, Lydia Louisa, Sara McLean, Scott Mason, Shievonne Robinson, Victoria Eisermann] [Later: Becky Hannon]

Hey, I've just realised it's started tonight!!! I'll have to catch up - hoping that Marion does her usual aide memoire. Seriously, I may not have much time this season to watch it regularly.
I've just had a quick look. They all seem like model men and women of a similar age (all good looking) out to get a career in show business. A bit of a talent show rather than the old-fashioned Big Brother...
-----------
I saw some of last night. A crowd of people growing on me. Some interesting individuals. I hope we're not going to have Shilpa Shetty type trouble surrounding Deana! A charming woman. Not sure about my fellow Essex-mate, though (Ashleigh?). Quite like Lydia's eventual attitude to her nomination. Hopes she doesn't go.
The usual sex talk gets a bit boring, though. And was that someone with a sock tattooed to his foot and calf? i.e a real tattoo looking as if it is a sock!? Seems a symbol for our times.
----------------------
I got fed up with the Luke A's 'backstory'. Loved the way Chris brought his chipmunk voice into the sexual spectrum vis a vis this backstory. I couldn't concentrate at all well last night, because I think there are too many people and I get confused. I shall hopefully come into my own once the population has reached ten.
Who is the one with the tattooed sock? I've forgotten. I really think this 'sock' is a symbol for our times and for this population of shuttling counters on the ludo board of mock-celebrity amid theatrically projected intention and misintention.
---------------------
There was a storm outside making the eviction's process within the studio. Later there was another storm - a sudden squawking tornado - now inside the House itself. Becky Hannon. Only 19 but looks like an unwrinkled middle-ager. The hot tub overflowed when her first action was getting into it. But that fulsome gushing was caused by the tornado's lamina flows rather than the water's meniscus displacement. Mustn't be ungallant.
Victoria was rather engaging in her interview. A sad loss.
Lauren is developing as a character....an interesting face.
Must take a closer look at Caroline...I hadn't really noticed her before her tub-side chat with the Becky-in-eruption-eructation.
-----------------
Yes, Chris entered my radar with an accreting splurge like (the title is an ink blot) by Gahan Wilson - for all the reasons Marion gives HERE. This show is shaping up with grotesque promise. Not sure I can stand the pace!
(I'm not sure why - but I think Caroline is one for my radar to watch out for.)
------------------
(11 June) I've been spending all day wondering what to add to Marion's wonderful report of last night's programme. The housemates are promising a classic BB season, and my worst fears on day one are not being borne out. Worst fears about humanity however are being borne out by this series, but in the interests of a case study constructively derived from Reality TV. Best hopes don't always give us best food for thought ... about life, the universe, everything.
LATER: Well, tonight's episode provides an interesting psychological dilemma or conundrum regarding Becky's special mission via-a-vis Deana, and her reaction, and then Becky's counter-reaction. The ladies here are quite complex, as is Sara (with her Royalism and her under-the blanket chat with Becky, although this has vibes of the school playground) and Lydia claiming she is "being fed to a pack of wolves like a slab of meat". I'm sure there are hidden depths to Caroline, too - but we are never allowed see her to test this theory out. And Lauren is interesting, too, with a vague pouting 'clown' face that resonates with Caroline's.
----------------------
Marion wrote HERE: ... His stiff gelled hair looks as if his brains are seeping through his skull - Thanks for the apt description of Scott, Marion.
Day by day, we are ever being entrammelled by the collective guile and naivety of this whole group. I can't believe Becky is only 19. That bit about the moon, wasn't she talking about mooning rather than being a moon.
Benedict: his talk of 'pleasuring' in the bath and the way he said it to camera plus his whole persona and backstory - he is the only real sore thumb. The sooner he goes the better.
But of the two up for nomination, I prefer Arron to go.
And we got a better view of Caroline last night. She is a half-garbled throwaway line in the collectivity but often throwaway lines are important.
-------------------
One of the best BB tasks ever - the prevent-yourself-laughing-or-grinning task in the face of clowns (both funny and Shievonnesque) - stilted and pie-chucking ... and in face of the natural tendency for mankind to laugh or grin when amused, emabrrassed, scared and simply 'at sea' in life's interactions. They even had the real Keith Harris and Orville turn up to ignite laughter.
The HMs were like Frankenstein's monsters trying (and often failing) to mould their faces by gyrning or gawping or yawning towards a serious expression without their fragile humanity also cracking - cracking in mirth and/or the general entrropy of self-made monsters. Arron's costumes he was made to wear by BB were just one ingredient in this thought-provoking as well as hilarious task.  And Caroline's and Benedict's imperviously straight faces.
If one takes Chris at face value, he is out of his depth on the show - cracking up in a way that is painful to watch - and he should go tomorrow for his own sake.
-----------------------------
(15 June) Marion wrote: In the end, he came across as a multifaith atheist.
Well, however much we dislike the persona presented on BB by Benedict, he has created a new term in the Philosophy of Religion! Breaking new ground even on Google! Thanks, Marion.
Chris and Caroline are interesting characters, and I agree that the latter showed her dark side yesterday, but there is something attractively intractable or inscrutable about her - and her hair.
Isn't Sara tall? Ostensibly, the younger man's eye candy of this BB season. I can't talk for old men yet! But her slavish Monarchism of the UK kind seems both complex and simple-minded. Which goes back to my idea of this BB Collectivity of Guile and Naivety, not something simply cross-sectioning at times the group piecemeal (i.e. individual 1 (being guileful), individual 2 (being naive)) but often cross-sectioning each discrete individual within the group.
------------------
To add to Marion's report - we saw Benedict struggling against himself naturally defaulting towards being the group's 'Daddy' or alpha male.
In many ways, sorry to see Chris go. He had so much more to give. A self-proclaimed alpha male, but within an imaginary alphabet with only one letter: not omega, but helium.
--------------------
Marion wrote: The other day, Benedict established himself as a multi-faith atheist. Tonight he has declared himself a multi-sexual heterosexual. [...]Talk about trying to please all of the people all of the time...
Indeed!
I am grateful for your reports, Marion, not only for their scintillating shafts of wisdom, wit and sharp observation (I mean that genuinely), but also because I often can't hear what the HMs are saying to each other. It may be my TV's sound or my aging ears, but whatver the case, you clear up many mysteries for me, Marion.
I said to watch Caroline even before she said anything on our screens, I think the records will show. Her blood is acid. Her hair an unruly hedge.
----------------------
Marion wrote: And it is surely better to aspire to Mr Darcy than Mr Casaubon!
Better Tom Jones than Joseph Andrews? In fact, with my real-time reviewing, I myself have, I fear, the Casaubon Delusion.
Big Brother is today's Gulliver's Travels or Modest Proposal or Rape of the Lock, today's Alexander Pope masquerading as Jonathan Swift and vice versa. We learn so much from BB.
-----------------------
Hilarious, tonight. Benedict's Cult of Onanism. The expression "getting his point across" was used by the Announcer. And Benedict (with his deadpan face) mentioned to Caroline about trying to get her to see "where he was coming from." Straight up.
Lydia worrying about the group now being seen as part of Benedict's sexual safety-valve evangelism was spot on.
Caroline attempting to eat a fish-eye was another highlight!
----------------------
As I said earlier, I agree with Lydia's point of view on Benedict's sexual evangelism. Marion's view, too, spoken later.
Benedict is serious (hilarious in his deadpan seriousness) in trying to acclimatise anyone (who thinks otherwise) that onanism should be a socially acceptable safety-valve ("just like brushing one's teeth," he said) to prevent possible repercussions of forced/unwise actions beyond one's self....and sincerely believes his blatant showiness in the shower will reduce the ostensible self-shame or stigma of such an act. I don't think his theory-in-practice (a theory taken for argument's sake on its own terms) has worked in the context of BB.
-----------------------
Benedict is indeed a strange cove. His mouth expresses the ultimate passive/aggressive knowingness - with a Chinese Wall beyond which we can only guess at his inner emotions, emotions pulling the strings of his clinical, socially-minded, hard-faced, hard-core porn underpinned by his multi-tentacled heterosexuality and his multifaith atheism and his schoolteacherly postures.
I am at a loss about Lauren's nomination. She seems to be the group's collective-unconscious offering of a sacrificial lamb towards some vaguely disinterested God who has created Benedict almost as a hobby or experiment to while away Eternity.
And, yes, Marion, I prefer BB when the HMs are not allowed to discuss nominations...as was mostly the case in the past.
------------------------------------
(21 June) I have to disagree with Marion. I found the lab-rats task quite boring, especially when compared to the 'non-laughter' task last week. Some good moments that Marion draws out above, though. I go through a phase - at least once in every series - where I think all the HMs are chancers and unreal. But that's life I suppose.
I'm coming round to wanting Lauren to leave this week and the 'interesting' Benedict to stay.
-------------------------------------------
Marion wrote: Hooray! Nomination talk has been banned!
Fresh from my increasing success with Portugal on the TTA Forum Euro Football thread/sweepstake, I am also pleased that the BB Authorities seem to have read our comments here, Marion, about the HMs' boring nomination-natter.
Lydia is quite a gal. Her weaselly elfin face is sleek and hints at whisker preening as ploys and steely stances fleet through her over-active Machiavellian brain. One to watch. So different from the bushy-tailed Caroline...who seems to be infected by Lauren's understated bird-flu of the spirit.
Becky's inner robot coming to the surface of the puppy-stuffing in prone, frozen moon-walking was another highlight.
Meanwhile, Benedict is shaping up to be the ultimate conspirator, conniver, with that down-turned trapezium mouth in mock passive/aggressivenes to conceal the power of the intellect suppling up its muscles within, emerging now and again like a series of verbal-materialized orcs to defend him against any imaginary inner-robots peeling off sporadically from communal psycho-cages or temporary alliances of other HMs' simple minds and machinations, paradoxically more important now that nomination-natter has been still-birthed in its tracks.
-------------------
Re Benedict, I mean all those things, Marion. Obnoxious behaviour. I am sorry I supported him at any stage. I bet the BB/ch.5 were also worried when he took that heavy chair up to the top of the stairs leading out, ready to throw it into the crowd in a violent tantrum...?
I think they should make a film called Caroline's hair...
Her obsequious reaction to Benedict following his diatribe... well, she hasn't got acid in her veins as I thought...or maybe it was some sort of 'scorched earth' strategy with as yet mysterious outcome........building on a new 'tabula rasa' of self??
I'm finding myself rethinking the whole set of people. I don't think I like any of them. Maybe Adam and Deana are OK.
-----------------------
CONTINUED HERE

Even Dogs...

EVEN DOGS COULD TALK by DF Lewis and David Price




I could remember more readily the books I once read as a child better than those I read only last week. Not that I read much these days. Characters don’t seem able to live any more, somehow. In those early days, even dogs could talk.

A case in point is the book I have in my hand. Talk about resonances. I can really believe it’s all happening, even now, as I hold its shuddering shape. Yes, happening between the covers, like moving from page to page as bookworms would.

It takes a lot of reading. You see, when I was a child, I found Rupert annuals difficult, especially those blocks of text at the foot of the strip which most other kids (or even nostalgic grown-ups) cannot be bothered to read through. The pictures, in primary colours (except for the tints of sky melting into each other), were enough for most of us, I guess. Or, at most, the little couplets of print beneath each box. But those horrible expanses of unbroken text, only the likes of me could skate over them as deeply as I did, making grooves amid the letters with my eyesight. And, now, today, I have this new book, one that the grown-up in me feels is the ultimate page-turner of a potboiler. It’s as if the dust-wrapper has a hold on my hands. Sucking at the pores.

I’ve managed to put it down, although the blurb did say it was unputdownable. It has much critical acclaim quoted on its back, some of which really goes over the top, like a landmark in popular literature and it’ll scare the pants off you and a book that can captivate souls sooner than the end of the first chapter and what’s in a plot, when it means so much? and there are characters that will move you more than you have ever been moved before and simultaneously nerve-shattering and

soporific with gently tidal dreams and many more such choice phrases which I cannot bear to repeat for fear of playing the book’s own game and foisting its cloying machinations of chutzpah and froth and heist and nerve and fanfare and hype upon the likes of you.

Well, there it sits, just like my favourite Enid Blyton or Biggles book from my barely memorable youth. It’s as static as the next book. As thick or thin as the most average hardback. As neatly stitched, glued and guillotined as the best of them. Only reading it does the damage. Simply seeing it or even daring to look at the printed words within without putting meanings to them cannot possibly give you more than eyestrain or outright boredom.

Still, in the old days, when I was young, Rupert and the Famous Five jumped out at me from under cover of the words that masqueraded as meaning. They lived and breathed and literally touched me. I followed the characters’ adventures, alongside them most of the times, but sometimes faster or slower so as to savour the action from in front or behind. They humoured me, of course, ignoring my presence, not even blinking an eyelid when I (rarely) intervened. They did not even talk about me, out of hearing of the omniscient writer who had created them on the page. Sometimes I became one of the characters, unnoticed, even by the reader. When I was the villain, though, that was the time to withdraw and leave the natural progression of the plot to unfold in camera.

Will draw you into a world you would not want to enter given the choice.

I shook my head. It was generating its own blurbs. I cringed to avoid its grippingness. The print was cut into the page with tiny blades, perfect perforations pulling me along in search of a whole thesaurus of trenchant treasure. A quest that Frodo wouldn’t have countenanced, given even Gandalf’s help.

So much sheer pleasure for the discerning and the bookish. A stunning stunt beating hype into a cocked hat. A self¬ perpetuating plot that uses its readers as bait to feed its protagonists. A tale that wags the dog.

The title of the book? MISCREANT IN MOONSTREAM are the words gold-tooled into the spine. I will not trouble you with the machinations of the plot, suffice it to say that I needed to get involved, for only by doing that could I get to the heart of the writer.

Speaks from the bottom of her heart.

Better than from the heart of her bottom, say I.

So I dressed in the clothes of a Victorian gentleman - frock coat, top hat; nothing less than the full bib and tucker -and settled into my most comfortable armchair. On the back of the dust cover, Dee F. Lewis smiled like a benign aunt. You’d certainly trust her to lead your children across the road ... ah, but whither will her mind lead you?

I flipped back to chapter 3 and stared at the words, waiting to be drawn into the action like a tree into a twister. Sometimes it would take a while, other times...

So I stared, waiting for my mind to translate words into actions and actions into events.

Beau Loches pulled up at the roadside, tired and cold after a three-day ride. The horse needed resting again, but the road sign signalled the climax of his journey:

AGRA ASKA -3 MILES

He took the flask out of his pocket, undid the top

and drank the last of my whiskey.

“Forward Old Codger,” I said, speaking more to myself than my steed. “Not much further. We’ll both have a roof over our heads tonight.” And I once again urged him on. A quest on request; this was nothing new. But I wasn’t getting any younger. Could this be my last adventure? Bounty hunting had been my life, the thrill of the chase exciting me to the core of my very being.

“Ah, but your being has become rotten to the heart!”

These words, uttered by a drunken whore in a tavern, had seen me taking stock of my life. Hence I was now doing something free of charge, ‘because it was the right thing to do’.

It was enough to make any self-respecting mercenary curl up and die of shame!

Flakes of snow had started to fall by the time I reached The John Bello Inn. Turning the horse over to the stable-lad -- with suitable remuneration for the grooming of the beast -- I entered the inn anticipating a good meal. After the coldness of the day the heat from the tavern’s fireplace nearly knocked me off my feet.

“By the stars it’s a cold one,” I said. “A meal’d be just what the apothecary ordered.”

I approached the bar and dropped a couple of gold coins before the inn-keeper, an elderly, stooped fellow of advancing years.

“A meal and a bed it is,” said he, scooping up the coins.

Retreating to a table with a goblet of wine, I took a paper and quill out of my travel-bag. To all intents and purposes I was an itinerant poet in search of inspiration. In a world of chaos, poets were virtually the peers of the realm. Within the hour I was shown to my room, tired, but happier after a square meal. As the inn-keeper closed the door, I opened my bag and took out the little green box I had been given at the start of this venture. Small, it would accommodate a man’s hand should he have the misfortune to lose one.

I held it, and looked at it...

...then I wasntt looking at all.

I was looking at the pages of MISCREANT IN MOONSTREAM, the plot temporarily lost.

Placing the book to one side, I went to make coffee. It was tempting to pour a little Bells into the brew, but a clear head was the order of the day. I was now well and truly caught in the web of the plot and, somehow, had a feeling I was going to enjoy every minute of it. Had I got to the heart of the writer, though? Maybe just to her head. Who was the narrator? It seemed to be a man. Old Codger, yes, only a man or his horse could be called an old codger. But Beau Loches may be a woman in disguise, unknown both to the reader (me) and to the writer (who according to the dust wrapper photo was indeed a woman), whilst the plot’s narrative ‘I’ (or eye) did indeed know where his or her own gender truly lay. The spurious period words such as ‘tavern’, ‘apothecary’, ‘inn-keeper’ were merely decoys from a truth that was beginning to hit nearer and nearer to home. I shuddered. The frissons here were not only in my own skin but in the feel of each foxed page of wrinkled paper.

Unaccountably, I grabbed my dog-eared atlas (the one I’d had at school with each ink-blot telling its own story) - and, this book of maps being well out of date concerning the world’s current political geography, I guess that, if MISCREANT’s temporal context was indeed as firmly in the past as the most primary of sources (rather than a latter day period piece tarted up to be just one more whore of lowest common denominator literature) then, surely, I’d find Agra Aska lurking somewhere, even if I had to search high and low for it.

The world then was larger than it is now. Darkest Africa was as mysterious and frightful as the furthest reaches of the tenable universe. Footpads crouched in the shadows. All smells were stenches, except in palaces where perfumes perhaps pervaded, even then. The moon cast uncanny beams for fairies and elves to dance between. Indeed, the moon was a living creature that caused rivulets of golden light to stream through the breeze-laden curtains and then upon my counterpane. Much bad yet to be discovered. Much bad yet to be done.

Beau Loches knew there was a human hand in the green box. But would it be a man’s or a woman’s or an indeterminate child’s? He shook it and felt the thud thud as the contents ricocheted even in that confined space. Space was confined, even with the world being larger. The world was larger but seemed smaller. And the astrological planets were the furthest he could imagine anything being beyond. He shook his head as thoughts lost control, praying for the steadying hand of some force that he called God whilst some others may have named it from within a different system of nomenclature. There was suddenly, without recourse to easy paragraphing, a loud knocking at his door. Ignoring it, then, he opened the box with a spinal creak which, strangely, books often make.

I heard the drunken whore again. This time she was in my head, not my heart.

“Beau,” she said, and, “Beau,” again.

A slap to the face sent me reeling back, eyes snapping open as the atlas fell to the floor. I was back at the tavern, the drunken whore standing before me.

“Impossible,” said I, “I haven’t got the book.”

“True,” said she, “but the plot, like the soup, thickens.”

Strange it was to be confronted by this raven-haired amazon in a flowing red gown. I had not entered this scenario of my own free will.

“Beau...”

“Not Beau, madam ... I shall assume this traveller’s identity when I’m good and ready.”

Hands on hips, she threw her head back and laughed.

“Think you’ve got a say in the matter, do you? The plot is up and running. Now pick up your bag, we must away,” and she leaned against the door with folded arms. Realising that she’d brook no further argument, I seized my possessions and followed her out into the night. Was she the narrator or the omniscient story-teller? Did the words flow from her mouth or her pen?

Out on the snow-covered street she clapped her hands, as if in command, and my faithful steed trotted out to greet us.

“Do they call you doctor Doolittle, by any chance?” I asked.

“Not in this book.”

At that moment a crack of thunder rent the night, shaking the ground and kicking up clumps of snow.

“What the .. ?”

And the world seemed to break apart, a huge chasm opening up just yards from where we stood. Smoke began rising out of the maw, a dark mist at first, but swirling ever faster and ever darker, rising above Agra Aska like a steaming Olympus. And as I looked at that towering behemoth, a form began to take shape; a torso, I thought, and a head. Then a Daemon’s horns seemed to burgeon from that head. This was madness, illusion ... but then glowing red eyes appeared!

“The box, Beau, open the box.”

I obeyed, not taking my eyes from that mountain-sized Daemon. Springing the lid, I glanced inside. Two bands, I thought, but curiously misshapen. I nearly dropped the box in fright when they started flapping like broken butterfly wings. Indeed, as they rose out of the box, I realised that they were wings. Wings with ribs like webbed fingers. Flittering across the ground, they attached themselves to Old Codger’s legs. In a second he was transformed from a tired old mare into a magnificent stallion, white and powerful.

“Jump on,” he shouted, “We must go.”

And at this, I really was taken aback.

“You spoke,” I cried.

“In these days, even dogs could talk,” he replied.

The raven-haired one leapt on his back and I did the same, almost as though caught in her wake. Old Codger leapt forward ... then soared into the air like a bird. I was aware of the Smoke-Daemon billowing towards us and I closed my eyes as the choking cloud engulfed us. But smoke was all that assailed us, and Old Codger was soon clear of that.

I stole a glance behind and saw that the smoke was drifting harmlessly away. In anticipation of a dissipation, I turned back to my companion.

“An excellent trick. Where to now?”

“Onward,” she replied. “There’ll be more substantial Daemons after us now. We must head for Heartland. Old Codger knows the way.”

Below us, a miniature landscape hurtled by. Arms tight about the lady’s waist, I started to relax. These terrors were but words on a page. I assured myself no harm could come of such purple prose.

In minutes we were flying towards Heartland; indeed, I could not mistake it, for it was a fantastic hamlet of golden cottages atop a plinth of rock - shaped, not surprisingly, like a heart.

“Heartland,” Old Codger needlessly remarked, and began a swift descent upon those glowing denizens.

I recalled the old Rupert books with superfluous text. Surely the same mistake wasn‘t being made here. I tried to visualise the rest, rather than depend on some more dry old words from the wizened crone that lived inside a rather smart and benign looking lady called Dee F. Lewis or into which selfsame crone Dee F. Lewis herself may soon grow by dint of the ravages of age. My actual eyesight scored gooves into the panoply before me as the shining heartlanders stumbled acoss the furrows thus caused. I was destroying their peaceful haven with the carelessness of imperfect narration Oh, My God! I was powerless to act, to bend the pen the ways I wanted…

The funnelling Daemon trod the thermals of my imagination as if they were its own. The vast pulsing twister - having turned bruised and blackened with the choking soot that constituted it - churned through the flailing limbs of the best and most rounded people I had ever managed to create. All my previous exercises had, by comparison, been tantamount to cutting out cardboard characters from cereal boxes with childhood’s blunt-ended scissors.

These sweet-souled heartlanders, then, screeched and blistered as they stumbled further into the deepening troughs my vision could do nothing now to make more shallow. My were-horse, too, trotted free in an orgy of stampeding and brainstorming, forgetting it was once my dear Old Codger - now, not even neighing or braying as a good wholesome, if wild, steed would have done in the natural course of events, but barking inarticulately like a rabid mongrel, then thunderously baying as if a hound from hell.

I crammed my ears with fists.

Terrified, I then tugged my pants down to prove some point I could no longer fathom. Or was it merely to see if my hindlegs were sprouting a devilish pelt or mane?

Omniscience is escaping like liquid words into a river of impossible dreams...

I then squeezed my eyelids so that I could only see the tentacles and floaters that ever lived within the optic juices. And my two hands began to flail of their own free will. Unputdownable hands. Struggling to strangle the first whore’s neck they could find...

In many ways, I had imagined death to be simultaneously nerve-shattering and soporific with gently tidal dreams. In reality, thank goodness, it was more a gentling down, gentling down of my rabid heart. I could hear a little boy’s flute and I knew I had returned whence I came: twilit Agra Aska. I watched five children playing at being smugglers. One gingerly carried a green box of what 1 guessed would be childhood’s treaures. Another wielded a huge school atlas. Somehow 1 knew these children’s names: Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timothy the dog

I shook my head. The book was not only generating its own blurbs but also its own happy ending.

Agra Aska’s river - which colourful royal barges, fresh back from a victorious war, plied - flowed like a moonstream. I gently gazed into the heartland of its waters

and saw the miscreant reader.

No Ties

The stable was full, so they had to stay in the inn. I was the innkeeper. Because of the current economic conditions, there had been fewer and fewer guests who could afford the bedrooms - so they made do with the stable stalls, covering themselves in straw for the sake of warmth. So, when some dogs and horses and geese and so forth arrived, they automatically trooped into the empty inn - a long line of them and I hadn't yet seen whoever was herding them along from behind so as to ask him or her for wherewithal. It was only after they took off their costumes that I realised they were human beings like me and they told me they would have preferred staying in the stable, but they would make do with the bedrooms. As they were all now in human shape, I could not tell which one of them had been herding them or simply in charge. The costumes had been piled up in the inn's foyer area and I noticed that the various skins and furs had no openings so as to get in or out of them. No ties to join edge with edge. Not even any air-holes to breathe through or grilles to look through. The eyeballs were opaque. The mouths were closed lip to lip without joins. I decided to stay in the stable myself: I knew its geography better than anyone, being its owner. You see, I didn't want to rub shoulders with any creatures that could climb in and out of such impossible costumes. In the stable, I snuggled close to one of the lambs - as body warmth was the only safeguard against the icy night. A large dog, in turn, snuggled up to me. A cow up to him - until the whole stable was an endlessness of such items of body warmth, with me the only human representative. Someone must have been dreaming us with no ties, no joins, not even any dreams of our own, except a single dream merging several dreams that none of us dreamed:

Within the inn itself, only the costumes breathed. Those in the bedrooms spent their own last breaths in one single snore of sound that shook the ground - winding into and out of each other, doorway by doorway, along all the shining corridors, twisting and twirling into a snake yearning to swallow itself. Or tying itself into several knots. Eventually, there was silence. Just a star above the stable, almost as big as the moon. Indeed, it may have been the moon itself like a yellow swollen balloon. And God pulled it back into His darkness, using the only tie that existed.

Written as the speed writing exercise last night at the Clacton Writers' Group.

Dada0ism

Extract below from my Real-Time Review of DADA0ISM (Chômu Press):

11 ‘Testing Spark’, by Daniel Mills
“A world in readiness: all awaits the Tester’s Spark, the nudge of the First Mover.”
[Today* happens to be the very day when the Olympic flame (the 2012 Olympic Torch shown on the left) officially passes from the hands of the Greeks to the 'London 2012' group (how ironic bearing in mind the cataclysmic repercussions of the catastrophic Greek Politics at the moment and our fears in UK of financial contagion!)] This story has this essence of a torch-bearing, flame-transferring trope mingled with, I guess, religious Eucharist wafers within a ’Machine Stops’ (EM Forster’s 1909 Internet story) type ’factory’ scenario where the Web moves “vers la flamme” (the title of a piece of music by one of my favourite composers, Scriabin (explicitly mentioned in this story by name), whose music I have loved more than most other music for many years). As well as the unrequited love aspect that is in tune with the rest of this book, this story harvests some of the music-steeped cosmotechniks of the Isis story while being briefly seasoned with Lovecraft references. The story also stands wonderfully on its own as a work I shall need to re-read in the future to ensure I have fully understood its vision. “He returns to his workstation and settles into his chair. He glances at the computer clock.” (16 May 12 – 7.00pm bst)

*In fact, the actual ceremony is today in Greece where David Beckham, Boris Johnson, the Princess Royal et al collect the Greek flame and, via torches that look like the design of words on this book’s cover, bring it back to us in the UK – without there being any quarantine for the flame whatsoever, I note! [ I also confirm, as is stated on Wikipedia, that I was instrumental in forming the Zeroist Group at Lancaster University in 1967 (for which group a University grant was received). One of the group's manifesto aims was a sort of belief regarding Dadaism, i.e. bringing Art back to zero or 0 - and starting off in an unknown new direction. O the idealism of youth!] (17 May 12 – 7.45 am bst)

As those who have read my previous real-time reviews already know, I try to pay no prior attention to anything published outside of the book’s fiction itself – but I often do pay attention to the shape and style of the book itself while conducting any review, and some of the themes in this very book point to that importance. You will be reading a different ‘book’ if you read an ebook version of it, in other words. That’s not a value judgement comparing the two formats, merely a fact to be taken into account according to your individual tastes. For example, I couldn’t help noticing in my email in-box that a recent Chomu announcement referrred to this book as a ‘butterfly’. Could the front cover be intended as the huge wings of a butterfly rather than the ‘concrete poem’ (cf the book’s flesh poems) or the Olympic torch ideas that I had been toying with? And that brings me back to the Intentional Fallacy (something I’ve been interested in since the 1960s)… (18 May 12 – 7.45 am bst)