Booze Ban

Apparently, there is going to be a mass boozey picnic in Hyde Park next weekend as a protest to the rising number of bans imposed on drinking in public spaces. Like the disastrous mass booze up on the underground to mark the last day of legal drinking on June 1st, this so-called protest is being promoted heavily on all the social networking sites. And similarly to the June 1st shenanigans, it sounds to me like an excuse for one big piss up in the guise of pushing a political point. No doubt, it will descend into violence, much like the organised Hyde Park waterfight that was also publicized by sites like Facebook.

I don't know what these peoples' problem is. Is it so bad to have to drink in - heaven forbid - a pub, a bar, a restaurant, a club or even your own house? Do these people rely so heavily on alcohol that they CANNOT go a tube journey without cracking open a can of Stella, or sit in a park without downing a bottle of Becks? I would argue that, no, they don't. These protesters are nothing but professional nuisances. They go around creating mayhem and pretend to be making a point - pretend to be protesting at how their civil liberties are being stripped from them, when really, they just want a bit of media exposure and the kudos of organising such an event. Get a grip. The only thing these people have been stripped of is their own common sense and sense of perspective. I say to these people: Go and protest about something that actually matters, something you really care about, something that has real political significance. And in the meantime, go and drink your alcohol in a pub. It won't hurt. Really.

La Vie en Rose

I am well known among friends and family at having, what I like to refer to, as cinematic dyslexia. Basically, I cannot follow movie plots, particularly those that deal with drug rings/crime/politics/the mob. Something else happens when I watch a movie, as well: I become deaf. When I watch a DVD, I have to have the subtitles running, much to the irritation of anyone who watches movies with me. As a result of all this, I'm not a big movie watcher. I prefer books - at least I can go back and re-read the bit I didn't quite follow. So, it's fairly rare that I will really love a film. My favourite, for quite some time now, has been Crash, but yesterday I watched a movie that took my breath away.

La Vie En Rose has the bonus of being in French - great for me, because of the subtitles - and is about the life of Edith Piaf. I once wrote a project in the third year of senior school about Edith Piaf, (we had to write about an important historical figure) so I already had an interest. Marion Cotillard, who plays Piaf in the film is utterly brilliant. She is totally believable when she plays Piaf at the height of her success as well as when liver cancer has almost finished her off. So many biopics tend to rely on makeup to do the work of convinving an audience that the character has aged, but with Cotillard this is definitely not the case. She stoops and shudders and croaks her way through the lines, rendering the deterioration of the french icon both heart wrenching and real. Her Oscar for Best Actress was entirely deserved.

I have never really warmed to Edith Piaf's style of singing - all that warbling leaves me a bit cold, but the performances in the movie of classics like 'Padam, Padam,' 'La Vie en Rose,' and the ubiquitous 'Je ne Regrette Rien,' are brilliant. I had to wonder whether they had lifted old recordings of Piaf and digitally cleaned them up for for the soundtrack, but apparently the songs were performed by singer Jil Aigrot. (check out her performances on You Tube) I hope she gets the recognition she deserves off the back of the movie, unlike the wonderful Marni Dixon who dubbed the singing for actresses in classic movies like 'My Fair Lady,' 'The King And I,' and 'West Side Story' and who is seriously under celebrated for her talent.

Cinematographically the film perfectly evokes France in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. The influence of the french new wave flavours the way the film has been shot, making it a pleasure to watch. 

Ultimately it is what it is: a biopic and, because of that, you know exactly how it is going to end. My only criticism would be that the performance of 'Je ne Regrette Rien' was dangled like a carrot on a stick throughout the movie, and finally came at the most predictable point, (Piaf's death) which made it all a bit cheesy.

However, even if you know nothing about Piaf's short, troubled life, it is well worth watching even if you just want to see a brilliant piece of method acting. The soundtrack is rather wonderful, too!

Stick that on your barbie and smoke it!

I don't want to be accused of jumping on the bandwagon. Before the Olympics, I knew precious little about cycling. I didn't know what a team pursuit was, let alone a Madison. Now, thanks to the amazing performance of the British cycling team in Beijing, I know precisely what these are!

I must admit, though, that part of my enjoyment of these Games is down to our thrashing of the Australians. Having lived there for five years, (which included the Sydney Games) I had to put up with a LOT of Australian gloating, self adoration and back slapping, not solely in their performance in Olympic Games, but in Rugby, Cricket and yes, even football when the Socceroos beat England. But let's not dwell on that, because now, it seems, that the worm has finally turned!

Australians love to hate the Brits. In terms of sporting achievement, they have long looked down from their higher ground, scoffing and gaffawing at our lack lustre performances. But not anymore. They were quietened in 2003 after the Rugby World Cup and then again when we beat them to win the Ashes, but these successes have always been met with the argument that our wins were down to 'flukes.' And, as patriotic as I am, I couldn't shake the feeling that they might be right. However, the past few days' performance by the British Olympic athletes in Beijing puts pay, well and truly, to any doubts the Australian's may have had regarding our sporting prowess. Typically the Australians have dominated in the Velodrome. How delightful, then, to see the Brits stealing almost all of the gold medals on offer, leaving the Australians to limp home with a solitary silver. Not that gaining a silver is any mean feat, not at all, but I have to admit that it was extremely satisfying to see Victoria Pendleton snatch the gold in that event, leaving Australia's only hopes of a cycling gold in tatters.

Having read the Australian press today, (namely The Australian, which traditionally makes a sport out of sledging Great Britain wherever possible) I see no sign of the word 'fluke,' anywhere. But don't be misguided. Don't be fooled into thinking that Australia are taking a leaf out of the British book and actually being good sportsman about all of this. No, they are smarting. They still feel the need to take cheap shots, and they're doing it in the form of highlighting how Great Britain has put four times the amount of funding into Olympic Sports than Australia, and that's why they're winning medals. Yes, of course. How foolish one would be to suppose for one moment that Team GB are winning golds because they are actually bloody good at what they do. 

Maybe the Australians will actually learn from all of this - that sport isn't solely about being good sports people, but practicing good sportsmanship. It can be a bitter pill to swallow, and one which, I suspect, Australia will choke on.

Finding inspiration

One of my biggest problems, being a writer, and trying to make a living from it, is finding inspiration. It is one of those elusive things that I manage to grab hold of infrequently. The trouble is, I don't have the luxury of being able to sit around waiting for those light bulb moments. If I'm hoping to earn money at what I do, I just have to keep plugging away.

So what do writers do to find inspiration? Well, I suppose what I'm talking about, really, is how to avoid writer's block. There is a school of thought (one that all my creative writing lecturers subscribed to) that says there is no such thing as writer's block. Those who believe this think you should just pick up your pen/open your laptop/boot up word and write. This one doesn't work for me I have to say. I find the flashing icon on a word document or the open expanse of a blank white page too intimidating, so much so that I will avoid it. 

My favourite practice is to read some poetry or short extracts of writing to give me a push. This can be slightly dangerous as the result can serve one of two purposes. Either it inspires me and motivates me to try and harness my creativity, or (and this is the pitfall) it makes me feel as though there is no way I could produce writing of the quality I have just read. Typically this happens when I read poetry. There are so many amazing poets out there who seem to have a firm grasp of their craft and insights that I could never achieve. 

However, I have found a new mode of pinning down inspiration. Unfortunately it only comes around once every four years, Brigadoon style, but nevertheless serves its purpose well. Yes, I'm talking about the Olympics. Last night I watched the diving and it astounded me to think that the young women who were competing in this sport, must spend hours and hours every day of every week climbing the steps to the diving board, executing a dive and getting out of the pool over and over and over again for the chance to get to the Olympics and compete in a diving competition where they are judged on less than 2 seconds of action. Imagine the amount of effort, dedication and focus you must have to have to set your sights on perfecting just a period of 2 seconds during which you jump from the board, do your thing mid-air and then enter the water. Hours, days, weeks, months, even years perfecting every twist, every tuck and every nuance of movement, and it's over in a flash.

When I compare this to writing, it seems that writers have such a greater advantage. Yes, we similarly have to hone our output. Like a diver who plugs away at perfecting their movement, a writer must strive to tweak their work to make it the best that they can. But the point is, that writer's have the bonus of being able to go over their work. Unlike a dive or a race or a gymnastics routine, the work isn't over in a flash, it exists and can be re-visited time and time again. And at the end of it, writers have a piece of work that can be read and re-read, re-experienced, re-worked. An athlete, though they have the benefit of video replays, can never go back and tweak that bit where they could have made up two tenths of a point. 

I might be overdoing the analogy, but I find the dedication of these athletes tremendously inspiring. If they can spend the amount of time they do on their craft in order to attain achievement, then surely I can face a blank screen today. Surely I can churn out a few thousand words. Hmm, yes. But maybe I'll just watch the four men cycling pursuit first!

Up, Up and...

This weekend was the Northampton Balloon Festival. I was quite excited by this prospect, as I've only ever seen a few hot air balloons in my life, usually through car windows - never up close. The balloons were released or 'untethered,' (if you want the official balloon speak) at 6am and 6pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 

On Friday evening Pete and I ventured out of Northampton to the village of Hardingstone, just south of town, to watch from a height. We parked the car on a hill with a good view and stood in a corn field, waiting for a swathe of colour and tear drop shapes to fill the sky. They did, but rather unconvincingly. I was surprised later, to find out it was actually a race. It just looked like a few people mucking about in balloons. The pace did pick up a little bit later on, but it was nothing in comparison to what I'd imagine in my head. An over-active imagination can do that to you..

Yesterday, was even worse. My parents came to visit, and we actually paid the £4 entrance to get into the balloon festival, hoping that perhaps Friday had just been a practice. I took from the event programme that as Rick Astley (who was the headline act!) was performing on Sat, we could expect them to pull out all the stops on the balloon front and see a glut of shapes fill the sky. We stood in the field. We waited. And we waited. A helicopter took off - that was exciting for a moment. Then came the announcement. It was too windy. Apparently, balloons have to have a maximum of ten knots wind speed at height, and it had been measured at thirty. So, no balloons. No inflated Bertie Bassett. We were gutted. We came home feeling robbed. My parents felt even more robbed - they'd sat in a traffic jam most of the way from London to Northampton and spent an evening in an empty field. Such is the Bristish summer.

On the plus side, I did learn some quite pointless information about hot air ballooning. Maybe I can use it some day.

Introduction

I'm new to HTML so I really don't know what I'm doing, but we'll give this a go. This is a place for me to air my writer's block angst and to wax lyrical on the everyday things that colour my life. 

A little about me: I'm 31 years old. I work as a writer in an office in my house (the cellar) - this makes me feel like I should be writing horror novels, but no - I write fiction (can't bring myself to call it literary fiction without sounding like a pompous idiot.) I also work as a consultant behavioural analyst with children who have autism. That means sorting out tantrums and getting my hair pulled and my arms bitten along the way. I live with my partner. He is an artist, a very good one. We don't have pets of the furry variety. We have a marine aquarium with no fish (we add them in September), but we DO have a shrimp in there - he must have come with the rock we bought. We haven't named it....yet. 

We cook lots. My partner makes a LOT of stock. He likes it - it's cathartic. I fill my days with displacement activities to prevent any actual writing. I don't know what I am going to do when Big Brother ends (should I  admit that?) I read a lot. I start books and don't finish them. I am surprised I actually like James Joyce. It pleases me to like somebody like Joyce and actually mean it when I say it. Mostly I say I like writers to make me sound cleverer than I am.

I think I'll stop here and see what happens. Did I mention I don't know anything about HTML?