Art of the State: London: British Museum.

Art The British Museum (which you can read more about here) is the first of these institutions which caused me to have an anxiety attack. This was last month before this project officially began when I decided after three or four years of monthly London trips it was about time for a visit (although I'm taking the Amy Adams in Arrival approach to time now and including anywhere I may have visited recently as being part of the project even if I didn't know the project had begun yet).  Everything began as usual on entering, toilet then lunch from the museum cafe then find the section I was focusing on for the visit, on this occasion Europe in the last millenium.

Truth be told, I'd already been nervous about that London visit for some reason.  The week before hadn't gone completely to plan for various reasons so I was already on edge when on reaching the Museum I discovered that the one working men's toilet was in the basement (as long term readers will know I spend half my time in museums and art galleries traipsing to and from the lavatory so the closer it is to the objects the better).  Then the wrap bought in the cafe was pretty horrendous, a smooshy concoction with large raw piece of broccoli root in the middle.  Then there's the map of the museum which is incredibly confusing if you don't already appreciate the geography of the building.

Such things sound like pretty low level issues but if you're already a bit tense they begin to add up.  Once I was in the museum space with the map searching for the Europe section, my head began to spin.  When I eventually reached the section I was after, my bladder was already screaming at me, the toilet so, so far away.  Between that, the sheer number of people moving around and existing and objects in display cases placed so close to each other in the rooms, one of the largest museums in the world began to give me sensory overload, like the final moments of the Doctor Who episode Turn Left but with the word "distraction" printed across all the surfaces.

Everything just got too much for me and I ended up having to run to a bench and phoning someone I could trust so that I could hear a voice which would take me out of the environment.  Eventually Mum was able to coax me back and I left as soon as I could, feeling incredibly defeated.  Apart from a visit to the nearby camera museum with its chronology of machines in the basement, the day went pretty much downhill from there and I ended up getting an earlier train home.  Although I'm sure it's not for these reasons, for the first time I understood why some people don't like London.  Sometimes it's a little bit too everything all together.

Access to the Collection.

The museum is open daily 10.00–17.30 and Fridays 10.00–20.30.   Due to its size, I can't honestly say how many of the paintings on the Art UK website are on display.  When it first opened, the National Gallery was essentially part of the British Museum so its art collection was transferred there. As one of the notes on the Museum's Wikipedia page says, "Sculptures and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. Art of a later date is at Tate Modern. The National Gallery holds the National Collection of Western European Art. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards."



Collection Spotlight.

Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa is graphically complex and thrilling artwork depicting the threat of watery chaos against three boats off the coast of the southern prefecture of Japan.  The white foam looks like claws about to pull the fishermen to their death, demonstrating the ongoing conflict between man and nature.  It also somewhat captures what it's like to have anxiety, forever under threat that you're about to overwhelmed knowing that eventually you will be engulfed despite taking medication, despite knowing that it will pass, hoping that that if you do capsize you'll still be able to make it back to shore.

Two things worth noting for the purposes of this project.  Firstly, it's not listed on the Art UK website which again opens up the discussion about the line drawn between museum ethnographic artifacts and public art collections - although it's worth nothing that because the database began life as the Your Paintings section on the BBC website, it doesn't necessarily feature prints or drawings yet, that would be another massive undertaking.  But it is one of my favourite objects in the BM's collection and with the greatest respect far more interesting than the paintings which do feature on the Art UK website which are mainly of interest in relation to the history of the museum.

Secondly, it isn't on the walls, only brought out every couple of years as a precaution against damage, something I only discovered on a further visit this month to see it.  Not wanting to be emotionally destroyed by a building, after visiting Leighton House and the surrounding sites, I returned to the museum, taking advice from a few people online to use the side entrance which was indeed a lot more civilised and with less queues.  Holborn tube station may be adorned with British Museum advertising, but Goodge Street is just as close and allows you to skip the crowds.  London is always somehow less intimidating when you're acting like a local.

Before visiting I googled the artwork to check whether it was on display.  You see I did do some homework, and this page on the website indicates "On display: G35/od" - I assumed the letters and numbers were some kind of room designation.  Not wanting to have to deal with the map again, I approached the information desk for directions, only to be told that it wasn't in fact on display.  Dejectedly I suggested that perhaps the website should be updated to say as much upon which the clerk showed me this page which does indeed show that it is "not on display". Being me I trapsed up to the Japan gallery to check anyway only to find a sign on the wall explaining its absence.

Needless to say, I've emailed the collections database department at the museum for an explanation.  Looking now, the acquisition details are different in each entry which suggests the British Museum actually owns two copies of the print but that doesn't explain why one of them is listed as being on display when it appears neither of them are.  I'll rewrite and complete this paragraph when I get a response.

Art of the State: London: Leighton House Museum.

Art A couple of days before visiting Leighton House Museum, Dr. Bendor Grosvenor noted on Twitter that one of its paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, which had been featured in a season two episode of Britain's Lost Masterpieces had been put up for sale.  As is noted there, it was actually bequeathed to Royal Kensington Borough Council who now run the museum and had decided to put it on display there and it was their decision to sell the work, which will fetch a couple of hundred grand.  This nevertheless shows the increasingly precarious position local art collections are in.  Presumably the bequest was made on the understanding that it would be on view to the public and now it'll doubtless return to private hands.

Leighton House, as the name suggests, was the home of the painter Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, and is a rare for the period example of a purpose built home and studio.  Designed by George Aitchison for whom this was his most notable work and taking thirty years to complete, it's best known for its Qa'a, a reception room with a high golden dome and islamic influenced tiling and mosaics.  It is indeed spectacular and I was desperate to sit and take it all in, but none of the chairs in the building appear to be for sitting on, with pine cones on top of all of them detering the visitor.  The rest of the building is constructed around this fancy, the most remarkable effort being the huge studio space now doubles as an education and events space.

Accessibility of the Collection.

The museum is open daily from 10am to 5.30pm; last entry at 5pm.  But despite being a council run building there is an entry charge of £9 for adults, £7 concession.  Fortunately I had my National Art Collection card so received free entry.  Word of warning.  Apparently, it's always very busy with school visits.  When I first wandered in there was what seemed like the entire year of a junior school in and a bit later an A-Level class, both of which were pretty noisy and given how small the building is, pretty disruptive to the concentration.  In the end I left and came back a couple of hours later, after they'd gone.  If you're someone like me who's becoming increasingly tricky in a crowd (see future entry on the British Museum), I'd phone and check first, especially if you have to pay the full entrance fee.



Collection Spotlight.

Much of the work on display is by Leighton himself and of these I have a soft spot for Corinna of Tanagra. But let's focus on this portrait of a girl by Emilie Isabel Barrington.  It's one of two works by Barrington in the Leighton House collection which have been brought out on display as part of an imminent refurbishment and extension plan (the rest of the reserve collection are going into storage).  Except they're also the only two works in the Art UK's database.  Barrington's wikipedia page mentions her work as a biographer and columnist, but nothing of her work as an artist.  So how did these two beautiful works happen and what was her connection to Leighton and the house?

This useful blog post from the Friends of Leighton House site has a number of answers:

"Mrs Barrington lived with her husband in Melbury Road [round the back of Leighton House -- Ed.] with the Thornycroft family of sculptors on one side and G.F. Watts on the other. She befriended many of the artists living nearby. Her devotion to Watts (who gave her painting lessons) and habit of dropping in on him unannounced, became an irritant to Watts’ second wife Mary, contributing to the couple’s decision to establish a second home at Compton in Surrey.

"Following Leighton’s death and with his home facing an uncertain future, she was behind the move to establish the house as a centre for the arts in Kensington. In 1906 she published a substantial biography of Leighton which remains an invaluable source and a number of the works by Leighton on display in the house were presented by her. Having fallen out with a committee of the great and good established to secure its future, she financed and ran the house more or less single-handedly until its transfer to the council at the end of the 1920s."

So it was George Watts who gave her painting lessons and its because of her that we have a Leighton House Museum now. Frankly she sounds like she deserves her own biography, although that seems unlikely since her key works are only in print because of the British Library's duplication service (although the Internet Archive has her Watts book).  There are plans for a new wing include a display commemorating Barrington's contribution.  Hopefully this will also include some conservation work on her painting - as you can see from the photograph, the surface has a gash out of it on the bottom right. 

Art of the Stare: London: Mayor's Parlour.

Art If Geoff and Vicki on All The Stations have awkward stations, then it's inevitable in my rip-off project that I'm going to come across some awkward venues. The Mayor's Parlour in Kensington Town Hall, a lovely (yes lovely) brutalist edifice designed by Sir Basil Spence (an architect perhaps best known for Coventry Cathedral) in the late 60s and finally opened in 1976 (ten days after his death).  The building resembles a kind of alien embassy with its geometric wall structure and spacious yet intimate interior, with a hallway on the ground floor large enough to host events.  The blog of the Kensington Central Library's local history department has a series of photographs showing the construction of the building from foundations upwards.

Accessibility of Collection.

Well. After wandering aimlessly around the ground floor of the town hall, which is also on the Art UK list but doesn't merit its own blog post due to having only two paintings listed in the database and neither on display, I stumbled upon a reception. Sheepishly I asked the the clerk if the "Mayor's Parlour" was open to the public, she smiled and said yes, there was a meeting on at that moment, but I was welcome to go and take a look, pointing me towards stairs up to the first floor.  Slightly bewildered, I wandered upwards and through some thick oak doors found some interconnected corridors.

Along one of these I could see the meeting room, where there was indeed a meeting happening and next to this another door.  I glanced in.  This was the Mayor's Parlour which turned out to be a literal private office.  Tea making facilities, large impressive desk and lots of books.  Is this what the desk clerk meant?  There were just a couple of paintings hung up and the rest stacked against a wall near the door, one of which had a Royal Academy label on the back.  I did not touch anything and decided to make my retreat.  So no, I would not consider this to be an accessible collection.

Collection Spotlight.



Henry Pether was following in the family business. His father, Abraham Pether was an English landscape painter, recognised for his skill in depicting moonlit scenes, to the point that for a while he was known as "Moonlight" Pether. He was also an inventor, constructing telescopes and microscopes and lecturing in electricity utilising machines of his own construction.  He was also the father of nine children and was barely able to sell his paintings fast enough to fit their demands, so when he fell ill and was unable to work, he fell into poverty.  Eventually his wife went into business selling pencils. 

Both of Abraham's sons Sebastian and Henry became landscape artists who also became known for their moonlit landscapes of which Chelsea by Moonlight (c. 1850) is a great example.  Henry himself had a busy life which you can read about in this database of Southampton history which included a poor investment in a railway leading to a period in debtor's prison, owning patents on machines for producing the tiles used in mosaics and for ornamental bricks and throughout all of that he continued to paint.  The Art UK website has forty-three paintings by him. 

Art of the State: Liverpool:World Museum.

Art The old Liverpool Museum has changed much since it began as a two room display of the 13th Earl of Derby's natural history collection on Duke Street in 1851. Between remodelings and recreations both before and after a bombing decimated the building during the Blitz it expanded to fill the space across the bottom end of William Brown Street. My own connection with the museum began at school and continued through working there in the late nineties on the reception desk during the brief period when the eight museums and galleries in what was then National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM) attempted a nominal charging structure.

The redevelopments have continued.  In 2005, the current atrium and entrance was created and since various displays have been refreshed, notably most recently the classical world galleries, which have allowed for much more of the collection to go on display.  It's name has also changed to World Museum so as not confuse things with the new Museum of Liverpool on the city's waterfront.  But some of the displays, notably the horology galleries and natural history sections are almost exactly as they were when I was in primary school, so visiting now really is like stepping back in time.  Presumably this means that the refurbishment will continue shortly.

Accessibility of Collection.

The museum is open daily from 10am-5pm and is free to enter, although none of the works shown on the Art UK website are apparently on obvious public display (it is possible that they were amid the World Cultures gallery although speaking to the invigilators led me to believe that wasn't the case).  Including general museums in Art UK does open up a discussion about why what are considered ethnographic or historical items in museums aren't included.  Much of what's there now is built on the old BBC Your Paintings project and is expanding to feature sculpture, but will it eventually include any items of artistic merit such as ancient polytheistic icons, cultural heritage of the Americas or the Roman and Greek statuary?

Collection Spotlight.


© the artist. Photo credit: World Museum Liverpool
Tsewang Tashi's Untitled No. 6 (2006) is part of the museum's Tibet collection, which contains "over 2,000 Tibetan objects gives an insight into the lives of British India officers connected to Tibet and the Himalayas."  Tashi was born in 1963 in Lhasa and as the entry on the museum website indicates, that although it's not currently on public display, this painting's inclusion in the collection helps in "understanding the development of the younger artists now emerging out of Lhasa" and that it is "also reminiscent of the colonial officer’s attempts at ethnographic photography".  Nothing in the image indicates directly that the subject is Tibetan, which could be seen as a reference to how the people of that area are viewed within China and the rest of the world.  Tashi stringently refuses to include any elements in his work which perpetuate the myth of Tibet being some kind of Shangri-La, knowing that "contemporary art cannot be created when contemporary life is ignored."

Art of the State: Liverpool: Liverpool Central Library.

Art William Brown Street is actually graced by a series of adjoining buildings, originally conceived as a single library and museum building designed by John Weightman, Surveyor to Liverpool Corporation, and completed in 1860. Since then various extensions have been added, like the Picton Library and the Hornby Library. For a brief period in the noughties, a door was opened up that allowed visitors to the library to visit the museum via the old entrance hall and vice-versa. The World Museum has since been through extensive refurbishment work and so has this library, reopening in 2013, making a virtue of the older architecture and transforming what was quite a dated, dingy entrance space into an extraordinary open atrium which has become a minor tourist attraction and is always in heavy usage.

Accessibility of Collection.

The library is open 9am-8pm Monday to Friday, 9-5 on a Saturday and 10-4 on a Sunday. None of the paintings listed on the Art UK website are on public display, although some of the sculpture is, notably the busts which are dotted about the historic areas of the library.

Collection Spotlight.



As the name suggests Salthouse Dock was a key part of Liverpool's salt export industry, the city being a hub for the refining of rock salt and its transfer into Cheshire and abroad. John Atkinson Grimshaw traveled the country painting these dockside scenes, the evocative lighting influenced by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.  Few in painting have captured the feeling of gaslit streets and this is subject he returned to again and again.  His Salhouse Dock, Liverpool (1884) could almost be a preparatory sketch for Glasgow, Saturday Night, although that has much warmer colours.  I wonder where it is currently - it deserves to be on public display.

Art of the State: Liverpool: The Walker.

Art Let's begin. Back when I was completing the old project, I decided to leave the Walker Art Gallery until last because as I said when writing about that visit, "having worked there, being so familiar with the collection, it seemed more valuable to head out and visit the places where I’d never worked and was unfamiliar with the collections". Since this is both a new project and a continuation, I decided to begin there again knowing it would be a relatively short visit.  The permanent display hasn't changed much in the meantime.  The portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia which has been in the Walker's collection since the 50s and was until recently listed as from the Studio of Van Dyke has now been confirmed as being by the master himself.  But there's little point in me repeating any of the material which was in the original post, which you can still read here.

Accessibility of Collection.

The Walker has free entry and is open from 10am-5pm Monday to Friday. Their website has an extensive collections section highlighting prominent works. The Art UK website lists all 2,255 artworks.  As with most larger art collections, there is a lot of minor works but what's on display is incredible.  That said, it would be good to have a room or two which revealed works from the pre-1900 collections in themed displays as happens in other regional galleries.  A large proportion of the gallery is currently consumed by a display of John Moores Prize winners which are usually empty when I visit even though the rest of the galleries is buzzing.  There are some items in the stores which would be star attractions at some smaller locals like Bolton or the Atkinson in Southport.



Collection Spotlight.

This is Fantine (1886) by Margaret Bernadine Hall. Illustrating the character from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, this is a devastating example of how lighting and staging can draw the viewer into the space of a subject. When Fontaine is sacked from her job because of her illegitimate child, she falls into prostitution to survive (the Anne Hathaway sequence in the film version of the musical).  What strikes you is the contrast between how the child is painted, all rosy cheeks and contented sleep and her mother in stark monochrome.  They living in different words, and Fontaine is fighting to keep it that way, to shade her baby from the darkness.

Hall was both in 1863 in Wavertree.  Her father Bernard Hall was a merchant, local politician and philanthropist, and elected Mayor of Liverpool in 1879.  In 1882, her family moved to London and from there she went to Paris for five years to study painting, a time when she would have found herself amid the Impressionists but few female artists.  It's in this period she must have produced Fantine at just 23.  Between 1888 and 1894 Hall travelled extensively to countries including Japan, China, Australia, North America, and North Africa, returning to Paris in 1894.  She died in England in 1910, at the home of the playwright George Calderon in Hampstead Heath.

In an ideal world, Hall would be lauded as one of our great painters.  But since her death, most of her paintings have apparently disappeared.  Her brother Douglas offered Fantine and and other of her works Les Abandonées to the National Gallery but they were declined. During the following year he offered them to the Walker Art Gallery, and Fantine was accepted.  I haven't been able to track down where Les Abandonées ended up, but Art UK lists another of her works at Trinity College Cambridge, a sketch portrait of Sedley Taylor one of the librarians at Trinity College.  This was a complex life worthy of further study.  But her single biography is out of print.

Art of the State: Introduction.

Art Back in 2015, when I wrote the final blog post describing my adventures working through the late Edward Morris's book Public Art Collections in North West England, which was naturally the Walker Art Gallery where we both worked together in the late 90s, I closed with the slightly tortuous line: "When really it's about time for the project to end. Here. For now."  Even as I ended that little crusade, something was nagging at the back of my mind that I'd end up back on the trail again in some form.  What about all the art collections Edward didn't include in his book?

In the past couple of weeks, I've been "boxsetting" the YouTube series, All The Stations, which records how rail enthusiasts Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe visited all the stations on the National Rail Network during Summer 2017. Seeing them dashing between trains and wrestling with logistics has made me nostalgic for the old times of some of my more specific projects. After a few rather sedentary years, I know that it's about time I got myself back out there and however enticing it is to repeat their exercise, it feels like it's been done. Plus I'd be lonely. And it would cost a lot of money.

So instead, having recently also signed up for an Art Fund card, I've decided to take a crack at all the art collections Edward didn't include in his book. The Art UK website, formerly the BBC's Your Paintings and mentioned weekly on the likes of Britain's Lost Masterpieces and Fake or Fortune, lists over three thousand two hundred venues. I don't for one minute think I'll end up visiting all of them, which is why this isn't called All The Art Venues or something less clunky, working my way through all the Art UK listed sites feels like a decent guideline.

What to do about collections I've already visited in my life?  Geoff and Vicki conducted a couple of test days as part of their Kickstarter campaign and then went back to those stations again as part of the main project.  This seems like a good guide, plus it's been four years since The Walker and times change, people change.  I'll also be tackling them in a slightly different way, talking about how accessible the collections are and choosing a single favourite items from what's on display (or not as I expect will be the case sometimes).  There will be some ground rules.  Here we go again.

Nu Top Trumps.

Games Like many people of a certain age, I was kept "busy" on train and car rides by I Spy books and more often Top Trumps. It's the simplest of educational games, a series of cards on a particular subject with various trivia underneath and cards won when one number is higher than another. The first person to get all of the cards wins. My clearest memory is of the dinosaurs set, hoping against hope to have the T-Rex card which had the capacity to slay everything in its wake. My young imagination filled with images of the actual dinosaurs squaring off against each other in the stop motion animated glory of a Ray Harryhausen movie. Eventually, I had the cards memorised, not that I can recall any of the facts now. They've been replaced with other useful things like the story order of Doctor Who seasons and when various Shakespeare plays were written.

Glancing through the selection of titles available, I'm pleased to see the dinosaurs are still there, albeit with an updated design. But in keeping with the times, Top Trumps have moved on to more pop culture topics and so its with this curiosity I agreed to their PR sending me a bunch of sets to have a look at and write about on here along with a FRIENDS quiz. Since I'm just embarking on a first rewatch of the sitcom in a few years, I'll save that until I'm in a position to have any chance of answering the, at a glance, incredibly nerdy questions.  Rather like BBC's Mastermind when it often covers pop culture, it also keeps its questions within the fiction of the show.  So nothing asking who directed the first episode, who played Charlie Wheeler, Marcel the Monkey's real name or which other network series took part in "Blackout Night". *

The cards themselves have been updated.  Back in the day, these were quite schematic affairs with an image on top and a small yellow table underneath listing attributes.  Now each is more uniquely designed with a photo of the subject, a small fact file (character biog, episode synopsis) and the attributes in much bolder text inspired by the given IP.  The FRIENDS set in particular feels like a callback to the era of the series in its text and iconography, although the use of something approximating Comic Sans is a bold choice.  It's here that I notice that the first episode, which in pretty much every home release is called simply "The Pilot" has is called the Netflix title "The One Where Monica Gets A Roommate".  I wonder when this was adopted at the prefered title?  Do you know?

Having not seen Top Trumps in all these years, it's disorientating to now find a game which, at least in its pop culture version, is generally numerically based on opinion with rather random categories.  The Friends set eskews characters in favour of episodes.  So instead of pitting Janice against Mr Heckles, it's The One Where No One's Ready fighting The One With The Lottery.  That means the editor of these numbers can boldly give The One After The Superbowl, Part 2 a "Top Trumps Rating" of 92 ahead of The One Where Rachel Finds Out on at 87, which I'm not sure anyone would agree with.  The Only Fools and Horses set mixes characters, things and places which presents the spectacle of an alpine ski suit as being more intelligent than Rodney and radical hair-dryers having better family values than Cassandra.  Why is one thing higher than another?

The closest to old school is the Star Trek set, with just characters but even then there are problems for those of us who have an interest in the franchise. One of the attributes is "year of birth" which is a bit ageist since it automatically puts older officers at a disadvantage. Plus the choice of characters is incredibly curious. All of the various Captains are here but crew members omitted include Beverley Crusher (even though Wesley is here for goodness sake), Bashir, Jazdia Dax (it's Ezri), Harry Kim, Tom Paris, Tuvok, Kes, B'Elanna Torres and everyone on the NX-01 apart from Archer, Tucker and T'Pol.  Chakotay has a threat to the universe score of 22 which has to be someone in the office taking a satirical swipe at Janeway's executive officer.  And what does the To Boldy Go score refer to and why does Sisko merit a 40 but Kirk a 20?  Overall, such things as skill, stamina and intellect would have made much more sense, especially since Cunning is included, something which Data scores curiously low on.

So how does it play?  I've just got back from testing the Only Fools and Horses set and either because of the age of the participants, mid-40s and mid-70s, we didn't complete a game.  As the contest went on, we pretty much coalesced around reading out the "laughs" score only, I think partly because it was the only moderately tangible number on the card.  As I suspected, because it was impossible to conceptually gauge how a number applied to the subject, it then made it less of a game of skill than simply reading out random numbers and seeing who missed out in each turn which becomes incredibly boring in the short and long term.  In what universe does Del Boy have greater style than Marlene?

Am I just having a sense of humour of bypass about a kids game.  Possibly.  Probably.  But I'd argue that there's little point in doing Top Trumps if the game mechanics don't work and I wonder if any of these sets have been playtested in house for their longevity and the extent to which the scores have been mulled over.  A short explanation included within each set might have helped.  There's also the notion of having a Top Trumps game for FRIENDS or Only Fools.  Who exactly are these meant for?  Children will have little to know interest in these properties, both broadcast before they were born and the game is too simplistic for adults outside of family time.  Fortunately the more educational options are still available.  "Height  3.3 metres ..."

* ǝldoǝԀ ǝɥʇ ɟo uɐɯpɐW puɐ 'plǝɟuᴉǝS 'spuǝᴉɹℲ 'no⅄ ʇnoq∀ pɐW 'ǝᴉʇɐʞ 'ɹǝlʎ┴ ɐɥsᴉ∀ 'sʍoɹɹnq sǝɯɐſ

Soup Safari #77: Potato and Leek at the Gawthorpe Hall Cafe.

Lunch. £4.50. Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley Road, Padiham, near Burnley, Lancashire, BB12 8UA. 01282771004. Website.

This Coby Grant track totally sounds like Laura Marling's Failure.

Music Listening to Coby Grant's 2019 album, Small Tits Big Dreams, which for the most part sounds like where Kate Nash would have ended up if she'd continued in the Made of Bricks vein, I stumbled on Heartbeat:



The song opens with some guitar chords which sound incredibly familiar:



My assumption is that these are not unusual chords so I'm not suggesting anything untoward, but it is really distracting.

You're Joking.

[The following contains numerous spoilers.]

Film   Todd Philips's Joker has been a perplexing success. Well reviewed all round and with a huge box office, it seems like DC's decision to produce a narrative set outside of the moribund DCU was correct and might just set be the guide to how they develop their properties going forward.

I hated it. Hated it, hated it, hated it.  The film clearly has some excellent formal elements: it's well shot, Joaquin Phoenix's performance is a tour de force and I'd be lying if I said I didn't gasp in a couple of places.

Nevertheless, I took against it pretty early on and after about an hour I considered walking out and on leaving gave it a whole half a star on Letterboxd.  It would have been 0 where it not for for Zazie Beetz.

Numerous reasons.  As someone who suffers from mental health problems, I'm tired of films which use such things as a crutch or explanation for why people do terrible things and especially as part of the backstory for villains.

Plus, I thought did we really need to see yet another representation of Batman's origin story?  With the slow motion pearls and tiny Bruce amid the lifeless bodies of his parents in the alleyway.

Well, cleaning my teeth this morning, it occured to me that on this score I might have misjudged the film.

That in fact this isn't an origin film about a Joker.  It's the origin film for the Joker. Or maybe.

In this LA Times piece, Philips left the interpretation deliberately vague, that the Fleck could be the actual Joker or just someone who inspires the figure who fights Batman:

"Even if everything in the film did happen pretty much as we see it and Fleck did unwittingly spark Gotham’s descent into mayhem and violence, is he the actual Joker that we have come to know? Or, as some fans have theorized, could one of his followers – perhaps the clown-mask-wearing thug who kills Bruce Wayne’s parents – or another disturbed, angry loner who comes along in his wake be the one who eventually becomes Batman’s ultimate nemesis?

“Maybe Joaquin’s character inspired the Joker,” Phillips said. “You don’t really know. His last line in the movie is, ‘You wouldn’t get it.’ There’s a lot going on in there that’s interesting.”

Although I don't entirely take back everything I said, this has made me vaguely interested about watching the film again with this new information. Plus if the DCU ever wanted to connect this film to one of their versions of Batman and his nemesis, this would be the way to do it.

Of course there's the other theory that none of the film actually happened and it's all in Fleck's imagination as he rots in Arkham, perhaps having seen the real Joker on TV ...

Why Vote?

Politics So we have another general election on our hands as agreed in the Parliament this evening. Those of us who haven't registered for a postal vote will be shivering our way to a polling station on the 12th December unless the House of Lords does anything weird - which everyone with a media department after their name says won't happen but a lot of things which weren't supposed to happen haven't happened in the past few months.  This actual election for example.

Back in 2005, I wrote an open letter to disaffected voters suggesting they might want to take advantage of their democratic right and as with every election since, it's time for a refresher:

Dear Disaffected Voter,

Hello. After the complete mess that was 2017, here we are again.  We pretty much knew we would be as soon as a hung parliament was announced and actually it's taken longer than I expected.  But here we are.

We're about to enter what's potentially going to be the most consequential election since the last one probably.  But genuinely, whoever wins this or at least has a majority large enough to form a coalition government. will be in a position to choose whether we stay in Europe or not, either because they'll simply revoke article 50 or put forward a referendum to see if the country wants to (assuming they can get another extension to article 50).

This is huge.  So huge that its simply unconscionable for you to sit on your hands this time.

There'll be some of you who won't be voting because for some reason you simply can't. You recently moved house and didn't have enough to time to get your vote moved to your new house. You'll be on holiday and the whole postal voting thing couldn't be scheduled properly with while you're away. Those and a whole raft of perfectly good reasons. I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking to the rest. The people who don't vote.

You'll be split into two camps. Those who can't be bothered and those who don't see the point. Yes, you. You idiot.

If you're insulted by that, you should be.

The biggest idiots are the ones who can't be bothered. The ones who have the facility to vote, aren't impeded, but simply can't be arsed walking all the way to the polling station, even though there are enough of them that the local will be in the next street. Do you realise you're screwing things up for the rest of us? Here is a list of the knock on effects of you not showing up.

(1) It makes us all look bad. There are certain parts of the world were people don't have the choice of more than one party, for that matter the ability to vote at all. Not naming any names. In some of the these places people have been killed whilst they've fought to get the chance to choose who they want as a leader. By not voting yourself, you're pissing on their fight because you're devaluing what they're fighting for. You're like Cameron's dad in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Lovely car parked up in the garage being wasted. Take it out for a spin once in a while.

(2) It's not a fair contest. By not showing your support for a party, whoever wins won't necessarily have won because the country wants them to be there. It'll be because the majority of 60% of the country wants them there. Which isn't the same thing.

(3) It makes you look bad. If you can't be bothered spending twenty minutes of the day going into a room in a school somewhere dodging a nativity, to put a cross on a slip of paper, a process which has been made as easy as possible now (now that they even print the name of the party on the ballot paper) what frankly are you good for?

Now there are the rest of you who are making a point of not voting. My Dad believes that everyone should be forced to vote by law, even if they show up and spoil their ballot paper. Within the current system it's your choice and right not to vote. So there will be a percentage of people who don't vote because they believe it's sending a message that you're unhappy with the political process in this country. There are a couple of flaws to this plan:

(1) Politicians don't give a shit about you. Because you didn't turn up at a polling station, come the day they don't even know you exist. If you don't like the political process the only way to develop it is to engage with politicians and ask for that change. Some of the parties have ideas for reform using systems such a proportional representation which means that every vote is counted.

(2) Your plan only works if no one votes. Like that's going to happen. No matter what you do, someone will be Prime Minister on Friday.

There are some, who aren't voting because they say that party policies aren't offering anything to them.  What doesn't occur to you is that manifestos are written to interest the various demographics of voters. So if you don't turn up, you're not a voter so why should they try and attract you with tailored policies? So effectively if enough of you people turned up and voted, it'd frighten the shit out of the politicians and they'd have to start listen and developing useful policies so that they can keep you on their side. There were no policies affecting women in manifestos until women got the vote. It's pretty much the same thing. You turn up, so will they.

I know this has been a bit freewheeling. If I'd wanted to I could have found a bunch of statistics and anecdotal evidence to back up some of these things. But I thought I'd go for the simple, direct, approach because don't think I've said anything which you don't already know.

I'm just trying to give you a nudge.

If you aren't already registered, you can now do it online.  Visit www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.

Even if you turn up and vote for a man with a bucket on his head you'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing when the announcements are made, someone who just wanted to have a bit of fun hasn't lost their deposit.

Just don't waste your vote. Pick a party and go.

And if the one you pick doesn't win, there's always next time.  Possibly.

Stuart.

Apocrypha Bipedium (Short Trips: Companions)

Books Extract reconstructed from the fealing shiftless electronodiary recovered from the fragments of the Internet Archive found when the remains of the Moon returned to orbit briefly in 3256, the only record we have of the 21st Century:

Ian Potter's story daemonstrates the flexibility of the short pose format to bend what ^ould otherwise be quite a straightforward brief encounter into something a bit more [...] epistolary style gathering together diary entries, accounts from the Matrix on Gallimaufry and a play written by the young Philip Shakesbeard still traveling with the Doctor and Charlie after the events in of Time of the Gaelics [...] who trying to avoid time paradoxing any more than they already have as they try to get the jung berd home.  Some of the elements are deliberate hazy so it's not always clear whats exactly happenin, but this is a really fun pomp looking in on Vicky, years after she became Criseyde, as a kind of forerunner to the Companion Chronocle audio series.  Placement: #oblivious

The Ethereal (Short Trips: 2040).

Books Some short prose's feel self contained and anothers a snapshot of much larger narrative. This is very much the latter which given this is the final story in the 2040 anthology makes sense and a number of threads from earlier stories are brought forward. But John Binns's piece mostly feels like the last chapter of a novel about the Eighth Doctor living in this 2040 world for a while, slowly bringing an end to the tyranny of the titular force which has dug itself into the planet and its technology.  Binns intercuts a significant car journey for the Time Lord with a report on the dissolution of this allegorical stand in for Facebook and other social networks and their influence on the world, quite remarkable for a book published a year or so before they were invented and a good ten years before they became weaponised in the information wars.  There are also shades of the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe and The Silents.  Placement: Just after Thinking Warrior. I do like the idea of there being a whole period in the Eighth Doctor's history of which just these two short stories are the only record.

Thinking Warrior (Short Trips: 2040).

Books The 2040 anthology featured a group of stories set in 2040. The challenge for these writers is to create stories for various Doctors which fit within the same broad piece of world building, governments, technologies or people. The somewhat wordy Thinking Warrior has Eighth working for whatever version of UNIT exists by then, investigating a security breach at a technology company attempting to discover exactly why the development of a new AI is taking quite so long. For all its futuristic setting, this could just as well be a Pertwee story.  Lots of dynamic, bespectacled, mustachioed men in brown suits say things like "I'm going to be busy for a day or two smoothing ruffled feathers" as they hide their real intentions.  Ultimately the narrative boils down to the Doctor having a long chat with a HAL 9000 who seems more human than anyone else here.  Perhaps that's the point?  Placement:  This feels like an Eighth Doctor who's travelled for a bit.  But he's alone.  End of the comics, before the audios?

Growing Higher (Short Trips: Zodiac).

Books "Never cruel or cowardly." The Zodiac anthology is, as the title suggests, twelve stories inspired by signs of the astrological signs. Although the introductory page eludes to them, Paul Leonard's story doesn't take the obvious approach of roping in the Nimon to express Taurus. Instead, it takes a more holistic approach and attributes the Taurean traits of trustworthiness and loyalty to one of the characters, in this case Bernadette, a live in helper of ambiguous relationship to a much older a Moon-based professor (think Barbara Hershey in Hannah and Her Sisters) due to be tried and convicted of a catastrophic accident who commits to staying with him through his incarceration and certain death back in Earth's gravity.  It's into their company the Doctor and Fitz wander, the former open to offering what some could be seen as a more humane punishment for the older man's crimes. This is the sort of story you might expect to find in the kinds of the anthologies Asimov and Clarke favoured, Growing Higher has some very rich world building for its slender pagination and manages to keep its council right through to the final few paragraphs. Placement: Following the old EyeSpider list, after Parallel 59.

Salva Mea (Short Trips: Snapshots)

Prose This is sweet. The theme of this Big Finish anthology is how the Doctor impacts the lives of those he meets, either through memory, letters or actually photography. In Joseph Lidster's entry, office drone Luke Tillyard's long wait for a train at Kings Cross to attend his Granddad's funeral is interrupted by Charley, who says that C'rizz has gone mad and is chasing her through the station and could he help her?  Initially reluctant he's eventually plunged into a life or death struggle with the Eutermesan in a massive battle across the concourse of the station which begs for the titular Faithless track to be played in the background.  Published and set in 2007 it's filled with incredible period details, especially about the Live Earth concert which happened a month after this anthology hit the shops (and so this is a story which was ever so briefly set in the future).  The pay off to the tale is beautifully emotional and I just wish we'd seen the crew in this light a bit more in those days.  Placement: Just before Absolution.  The calm before the storm.

Linking Material (Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins).

Books It's going to become increasingly difficult for official calendar publishers to produce tie-ins for Doctor Who. Up until recently, there were twelve incarnations which fit nicely into the Gregorian calendar, but with the additions of War and Thirteen, deciding how to fit them all in is going to be increasingly tricky. Producing an anthology of stories called Seven Deadly Sins provides a similar challenge if you're Big Finish and you have to service Eight incarnations. So it makes sense that while seven of them each have a story which evokes one of the sins, that the other should provide some kind of linking tissue.

Which is why we have Eighth in a surreal version of Channel 4's blind auction game show Four Rooms, but with a Tory front bench like group of morally ambiguous rich people instead of experts and experiential therapy rather than nicknacks.  The Doctor enters each of the rooms and does something to provoke the sin of each of the "clients" to bubble to the surface before they're then plunged into experiencing a moment from his past leading into one of the short stories which they're going to experience as one of the characters.

As a piece of writing, it's customary tour-de-force from Jac Raynor.  I especially enjoyed the moment when Eighth meets a fellow Time Lord and goes into some detail about his biography in order to provoke envy in the musty old being.  It's a rather more prosaic forerunner to the later scenes on television when the Doctor invokes his biography as a way of scaring the monsters.  Something which could have been rather anemic becomes a much richer brew, largely due to the scrupulous characterisation of this Doctor.  A couple of things might have made me wince, but they're not really anything he hasn't done before.

Placement:  Presumably he's travelling alone but it feels like some time since the regeneration.  So I'll bung it between the comics and audios.

Ravenous 4.

Audio Another series galumphs to the end and although I've enjoyed it more than either Dark Eyes or Doom Coalition, why do I feel like it's time to move the Eighth Doctor on to some new paradigm?  Perhaps it's because once again, the stand alone episodes in Ravenous have been the strongest by far and that just as previous attempts and serialisation have shown, this sort of thing doesn't really work in Doctor Who for longer than a few stories.  When the EDAs attempted this sort of thing, it was always far more successful when it encompassed half a dozen books rather than a dozen or so, and having a single box for the Ravenous would have been far preferable to what we've had here.  That said, there's still plenty of fun to be had, especially in the closing couple of episodes.

Whisper

Doctor Who does A Quiet Place.  Sort of.  Having the Eleven as a Turlough figure seems ok in theory, but it leaves the Doctor looking like a naive idiot because once again he's in the position of assuming the best in people even if everything which has happened previously would indicate that he has no reason to.  But it feels out of character for this Doctor and it's simply bizarre when it's revealed that he isn't stringing the Eleven along to see what he's up to but does genuinely believe he's changed, admonishing the very real suspicions of his companions, one of whom has already made the same mistake.  The Doctor isn't Charlie Brown.  He's Lucy.

Planet of Dust

Doctor Who does Mad Max: Fury Road with the Beevers Master as Immortan Joe.  Sort of.  One of the joys of Big Finish is how they've taken a character like this version of the Doctor's old frenemy and made him a viable antagonist based on just a few episodes of the classic series (four of which this actor didn't appear in) without running roughshod over televisual continuity.  He has the perfect hook, a desperation to survive and although we know how he'll ultimately succeed (poor Tremas and would you believe I've only just realised that was an anagram), it provides plenty of narrative mileage to work from as is demonstrated here.

Day of the Master

Big moment for this project as the Eighth Doctor and the Bruce Master meet for the first time, or at least the first time outside of prose or the comics.  The Diary of River Song has somewhat dulled the impact, the explanation for his survival having been established there already, but nevertheless hearing McGann and Roberts in a scene together again after twenty-odd years is quite the thing to behold even if it doesn't seem like they recorded together (not that you'd notice).  Congratulations to John Dorney for returning him to a place at the end which means that other versions of his story also still make sense (in a way which suggests he was using the TARDIS Datacore as a reference).

The final episode is delicious.  Messes Roberts, Jacobi and Gomez chomp merrily on the imaginary scenery, the latter clearly enjoying every second of this and foreshadowing her reaction to the Saxon Doctor (we have to assume this is the prequel).  But the sheer number of mysteries and twists tumbling over each other to get out are incredible, to the point that I thought we might even stumble over the origins of the Eleven (was this a deliberate red herring?).  Incredibly dark in places, this nevertheless has a heart as big as the ticker carried around by Kelly Hutchinson in Roger Sanchez's Another Chance video and I can't wait to see what happens next.

"A bunch of flowers and I slam the door ..."

Music Boom. It's Graham Norton day and #Sugababes is trending on the Twitters. Here's why:



Yes, it's cover version, but listen to those harmonies. I'm bias, but this is a far richer experience than the original and indeed gives us a window into what (the) Sugababes might have been like if Siobhan had stuck around for another couple of albums.  Plus according to the track listing on Spotify, this by Sugababes.  No definitive article.  So they have properly got the name back and I'd love to know the story of that.  Everything old is new again.

Meanwhile Amelle's on Coach Trip (whatever that is) which caused this extraordinary exchange:

"Tensions have been rising between the pair as 31-year-old James - who is on the trip with Essex co-star James 'Diags' Bennewith - continues to arrive late to the coach.

And things hit an all time high when the group were asked what their favourite Sugarbabes song is in honour of new passenger Amella Berrabah.

Arg was quick to say his favourite one was Overload, and Brendan jokingly asked if it was also Diags' choice because ‘he does all the talking.’

The TOWIE star then shouted back: “You asked me my favourite Sugababes song so I'm f*****g telling you what my favourite Sugababes song is.

“Maybe I have got a different one to Diags.”

Not stopping there, he added: “You like the sound of your own voice too much mate, slow yourself down.”

After Brendan gave him a stern talking to, Arg later explained his outburst to the camera adding: “He got proper loud and rude in front of everyone, he proper mugged me off in front of my pals.”

And the rest of the passengers were shocked by Arg’s behaviour, as Steps singer Ian 'H' Watkins, 43, said: “I saw a different side to Arg. It almost was verging on nasty.”

It's probably beside the point to note that he managed to pick a Sugababes track that was well before Amelle's time and that's not the thing they had a row about. Anyway, here's Amelle singing Overload with Keisha and Heidi.