Further Fry
30/12/2007
This time it's rather more recent, and I can't remember a funnier piece of television comng out of any source in recent years... I hope I wont have to explain the concept of QI to you, but essentially it's a venue in which Mr Fry can be obscenely clever and, occasionally, very silly:
All together now - what do they say?
Moab
26/12/2007
I've just finished reading Stephen Fry's "Moab is my washpot", and I love him even more than ever. But more than that I identify with the Stephen in this book (for those as don't know, the autobiography of Stephen somewhere between age 8 and 20) probably more than I have with anyone else. Strange in many ways - a gay public school boy, living in a world 20-30 years before I was born, a boy whose fiercest anger in the book seems to be reserved for his complete inability to sing or play an instrument, a boy who (despite having read more of what might, snobbishly but perhaps rightly, be called worthwhile literature by the age of 12 than most do in a lifetime) took until nearly the end of his O levels to really understand what "=" means. And, lets face it, a boy who was sexually active both with the gender he fancied and those he didn't well before he'd reached the stage I'm at now, when to put it kindly I don't have to take many drinks if I play the game "I never"...
But some of the similarities are far more painful. I fear I'm not yet distant enough from events nor brave enough to admit to most of them, but with the sort of arrogance that could try to play psychology with Cambridge interviewers, with the manipulatve cruelty to try to use his own suicide as a weapon against parents, and with the gall to treat teachers, that most noble of roles (however much it may be superficially blackened), as though they were somehow lesser than him, simply for having chosen for their subject something at which he did not excell or enjoy. These comparisons, I have to say, are not literal - as I say, I'm too cowardly to say exactly where I've betrayed those character flaws - but they are true, without being neccessarily True.
What perhaps impresses me most, then, with this as an autobiography, is that it leaves me reassessing not Stephen's life, but mine. And despite the damming words of the previous paragraph, what most disappoints me is to realise that, for large swathes of the past 2 or 3 years, I have spent weeks or months without a book "on the go". For me, that is one of the most disgusting wastes of opportunity, especially when I've constructed artificial boredom for myself in those periods. Perhaps I should ask myself regularly over the next few months what I'm reading, and if I have no satisfactory answer I could at least remember my anger now and perhaps that could goad me into action. There is simply no excuse for boredom. Ever. It really is a modern evil, that we somehow use to stop ourselves from growing, enjoying, and living.
*fzzt* Out *click*
23/12/2007
Righto folks - I plan to avoid coming online for the next few days, so I'll just pause here to send my hopes for a peaceful Christmas for anyone reading this, and I shall see you on the other side.
Much love
Mushroom
16/12/2007
Last week, between Monday morning and Friday night, I saw the sun once. Every day but Thursday, work kept me inside, in a shop without windows, throughout daylight (and quite often a while beyond that, too), and it left me feeling a little bit disconnected from reality. I expect this coming week will be much the same, so today I had to do something to prove to myself and to the world that I actually exist.
I took my usual approach to that situation, really... One that I've used a few times before when I'm weighed down like that (during exams and such have been typical past occasions). I walked up to the top of my hill, and looked out over the world. It's a good solution, too - it's physically quite an effort to climb so you get real sensations, and you get to a point at the top where 3 different chunks of world seem to collide. You're very definately out of the town - the nearest houses on either side being farms - but you have a panorama of the whole urban sprawl (particularly good when the lights start coming on), so you compare the human and natural world. And simply being up there, it's been a good place for me over the last few years to feel in contact with God, too (perhaps because it's been a place I've headed to when escaping everything else). Heaven, nature, man, and me feeling truly alive between all 3.
Yes, I may have to go back to another week of being crushed down, but this just helps me know that that's not all there is.
Eighteeny
10/12/2007
Had a little bit of a party saturday night... The experts out there will think that row of bottles rather lacklustre, tho I should point out that the ones shown there are less than half of the number consumed on the night - and there were only 5 people drinking there.
I'd been getting rather worried as the day went on, as I realised that person after person probably wasn't coming... When I first calculated that there were likely to be so few of us I thought it a little bit of a poor show for an 18th birthday. But that was rather an immature attitude, and I'm not proud of it - you don't measure your friends by their number... And they proved that for me, by making it a thoroughly enjoyable evening. And god it was nice to see my friends... hadn't seen most of them for at least 3 months, and hadn't seen Ben for 18. Good time had by all (with a notable exception that's none of my business, and hence not for reporting here).
And can I just say: "Guvnor, how's your father..."
Very Special
6/12/2007
In which Giles pretends he wrote this entry 3 days ago... He's not a very good liar, unfortunately
Last night was one that makes you glad to be alive. In fact it rather makes you question why you do anything else of an evening. After the ever-wonderful flute choir, my mum & I headed into Oxford to see Duke Special at the Zodiac. I'd seen the man once before, in front of 10,000 people at mainstage at greenbelt, and that was a night that left me buzzing and got me addicted to him. In front of 400, in a room no bigger than GB's stage2, he was simply astounding.
Duke (or Peter Wilson if you insist) sings with a vocal technique and quality that a choral scholar would be proud of, but with his own edge that makes such an elegant approach completely fit the style. He writes in a style that he himself has constructed, and which somehow draws on music hall but ends up more perfectly beautiful than anything from that history. But far more than that, he gives you everything. The level of emotion in both sets I've seen has been almost incomparable, and is really what managed to make both a outdoor mainstage and a small club feel like something completely other.
Duke Special quite simply gives you the most special experience of any live performance I've heard (with the possible exception of U2, which is perhaps an unfair comparison, given there relative starting-points). If you possibly can, see him now while it's still £11.50 for a gig he's headlining, and it's still practical for him to book small clubs in Oxford. Dont wait until you'll be at the back of Wembley arena and have to pay 5 times as much. I don't doubt he would make even that an unforgettable few hours, but I suspect it would be impossible not to lose something of the perfect intimacy of last night.
Very, very special.
I-spy
3/12/2007
The above was the headline I spotted in Wincanton on Saturday... It seems there wasn't much news in the west country towards the end of last week. But all the same, that's the status quo - you can't just print the status quo and call it news. Just admit "there has been no news today - see you tomorrow".
Saturday, by the way, was great fun - Hogswatch 2007, with a notable contingent of thudgame loonies to catch up with, some for the first time. And it was most excellent to spend time with them... In fact it was great to spend time with geeks: my brain felt more alive on saturday night than it has for many weeks.
The other piece of signage I bring you today I saw on a bus in Oxford, and is probably the most bitingly satirical sign you'll see for a long time:
Given the rise and rise of smartcards that know everything about you, and use it to do everything from monitoring us to apparently prevent disorder, to sending you junk mail, that sign strikes me as simply astounding. There must, presumably, have been a meeting when lots of senior oxford bus chaps had to decide on an appropriate slogan, and none of them noticed quite how painfully true that choice of words is.