Desire for Chocolate

Care Santos

Alma Books

9781846883644

This entertainment  is several tales in one; for instance: a modern-day love-triangle, a detailed examination of the social and cultural mores of 18th century Barcelona from the point-of-view of a lowly house-maid and industrial espionage and intrigue among the English, French and Catalans - all tied in with the production and consumption of chocolate. The descriptions of Barcelona one and two centuries ago are good enough to suggest personal experience, and the ’voice’ effortlessly changes to follow the story, whether the humble but strong-willed maid is talking or it’s the innocent Frenchman at loose in the back streets of old Barcelona - or the ‘voice-over’ of the author herself. Mind you - maths has never in any way been my thing, but in Aurora’s tale, I stumbled over the suggestion that the chocolate business could increase a hundred-fold in one year... However, it seems to work out.  Care Santos has used a good deal of influence from the cinema, both in the shape of the whole book and in the cutting of individual scenes . The obvious movie trick was to follow the adventures of one ceramic chocolate pot from hand-to-hand, over the centuries. It ties up like the portmanteau films of the Fifties. I can almost hear the music.

Three Pigs in Renfrew Street - architectural report

The recent students' degree show at Glasgow School of Art was an opportunity to see the new building over the road from the original School, for real; after its online and telly  airing following the opening. I have to admit that most of what I said at the time holds true. The space between the old and new buildings is a neat shape but that's as far as I can go with the positive. In an ideal world, the new building would have had walls of stone, to tie-in with the Mackintosh building. Failing that, even brick could have done; and it would have aged and settled in, in time. But the new block's exterior is about as far as it is  possible to get from the Arts-and-Crafts ethos that inspired CRM. Instead of being a functional element of the structure, it is nothing more than cladding panels stuck on to the interior skeleton. Whatever these panels are made of, two are already damaged, badly dunted, by no more than the wind blowing up Scott Street apparently - bent inwards and shattered. Any dreams of them ageing well may be defenestrated. Will they keep the inside safe from Nature's ravages? Time will tell. 

UK at war: alternative news

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, said a US drone strike on a Raqqa, Syria, school on Saturday 4th July killed six innocent civilians, including a child. US military spokesman Lt Col Thomas Gilleran claimed: "The significant air strikes tonight were executed to deny Daesh [ISIS] the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq."

Guest blog of the week: Yemen again

A friend of this blog, Judith Brown, has decided to keep us up to date with the situation in under-reported Yemen, where there has been civil war for most of the past ten years, with interference from other countries notably Saudi Arabia. The BBC has lately noticed that there is something going on in Yemen, but this blog goes straight to the centre, and it will be on a daily basis: http://yemen-news-today.org/

Aluna - the message

Thanks to Truthout Cinema, the (literally) underground cinema in Stokescroft, Bristol, This blog has just caught up with ALUNA: a documentary made for BBC2 by Alan Ereira, although halfway through its shooting, the subjects, the Kogi tribe of Colombia, took over the camera.

The men of the Kogi refer to themselves singly and collectively as the Mama - they see them selves as the loving guardians of their river and surrounding networks. They understand that there are critical connections within the natural world. They know this from generations of experience rather than reading “Chaos”. The Kogi also believe that without thought, nothing could exist. Their concern is that, as well as physically plundering the world’s resources, we are messing with the thought holding existence together. (see Unspeak) The film showed us one dried riverbed and its source, a one-time lake shrunken by ‘development’.

An undercurrent in the story was how the director got wised-up to the Kogi philosophy, in full view of the camera. The tribe’s message to the Old World / industry / western development projects, collectively named ‘Little Brother’ is to protect the rivers - which seems as good a place to start as anywhere.
The good news is that since an earlier 90 minute collaboration has been on TV, it has had huge global impact, repeated on BBC2 and then in other countries - according to the movie’s own website, www.alunathemovie.com , 30 times in the US last year.

Ian Parker flies "solo"

Ian Parker, the ubiquitous keyboard player who is part of London's Celtic membrane and a personal friend of this blogger, has just released his very own latest, a CD called PACIFICA.   The launch, in deepest Bloomsbury, was a collectable event. All the stars of the album showed up to do their thing, mostly Pete Howarth of the Hollies, who gave us a full set as a 'support' act. Ian's new stuff sounds big and important; lush, too. Ian's own  pop voice has got stronger - of course - with a-gig-a-night for so many years.  All struck me as being like movie music, especially the kind you'll hear over the opening credits and scenes of major emotion and drama.  The titles might contain clues: Women of the Desert, Spacetime is Cool, A Day in the Life of a Sherpa...I just let it wash over me.

Drawing attention

Drawn 2015, The open submission show at the RWA, taking up most of the late Bristol spring, follows on from Drawing On, which featured such luminaries as Edward Burra, Cecil Collins, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mary Fedden PPRWA, Elizabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth, Keith Vaughan, Henry Moore, John Nash, Ceri Richards and Stanley Spencer - and has been well worth catching for a wide variety of reasons, not least as a nudge in the ribs if you've forgotten what drawing is for.

 

K2: the movie

There has been a lot of talk lately about the degrading of Mount Everest from frontier of the unknown, a near-religious entity, to the site of regular public day trips - with, for all I know, a MacDonald's at the top. This, and the lives of the Sherpas, making some kind of living from  acting as guides since the first attempts to get to make the ascent, and the danger to their lives that comes with the job. The World's other great majestic mound, K2, is yet to be added to the package holiday deals but it is surrounded by the same kind of dichotomy between the 'intrepid' visitors and the locals. Iara Lee and Cultures of Resistance have produced a documentary, simultaneously sobering and beautiful - even as a small-screen trailer. In Iara's own words: 
 "K2 AND THE INVISIBLE FOOTMEN: shot in stunning northern Pakistan, it is about the plight of the unsung heroes, the indigenous porters of majestic K2, the earth’s second-highest peak." 
https://vimeo.com/125332915
On the strength of a quick look on my laptop, I for one am convinced that this big picture is one to catch on the big screen.

The Damned. Thank you; I publish...

www.last.fm

If you were too young, or too old, to really "get" Punk - or even if you were in the thick of it, the band that was the missing link between Music Hall and armageddon - as remembered in this documentary - is for my money the one to fill in the gaps. Summing up so much about the punk attitude, really dangerous onstage and sparking riots on tour - with a bass-player called Captain Sensible.

The Insect Farm

Stuart Prebble
Alma Books
ISBN 978-1-84688-361-3

Like any good novel, The Insect Farm may have you looking back at your own world in a new light, and questioning your fix on reality. Jonathan is his brother Roger’s carer. Roger is obsessed with the elaborate universe he constructed in a shed in their parents’ garden, populated by millions of tiny insects. His obsession is equalled by Jonathan’s obsession with his beautiful, talented and absent girlfriend Harriet.

As Roger lives in an impenetrable world of his own, after the mysterious death of their parents Jonathan was forced to give up his studies to take care of him. This obligation forces Jonathan to live apart from Harriet – boosting his already jealous nature. Halfway through the 'deftly plotted' tale their obsessive little world is shattered by a new trauma, and we begin to wonder if it is Roger, not Jonathan, who is the ‘carer’ in their relationship.

By now we readers have become so used to being inside Jonathan’s mind that we can’t put the book down until we are sure of his survival. But even the existence of a threat to that survival is increasingly questioned. If Jonathan knows more than he is admitting, he never quite lets us know. Despite the shock near-ending and a couple of unexpected twists, the plot remains in full flight right up to the final page.

Chris Rainbow

Chris Harley, who metamorphosed into the Rainbow for the short few years of his career in mainstream pop, has died before he could extend his album Home of the Brave (which contained two of his singles) into the body of work we listeners and friends so eagerly anticipated, although there is  The Best of Chris Rainbow, 1972–1980, which has appeared in single and double CD sets and includes radio spots, and rare and unreleased material.  Back in the early 1970s as his pals and fellow musicians in Glasgow agonised interminably about what they would do when they hit The Big Time, he just quietly sneaked off and became  a successful singer/songwriter, working with Stevie Wonder's producers and gaining expertise as a producer in his own right. He started out as a member of successful Glasgow band Hopestreet, and soon moved on to run Vital Spark Studio on the Isle of Skye. He is now widely seen as inhabiting the same territory as Brian Wilson. Among his friends, he was as famous for his stutter as much as anything, and adding that to his sense of humour leads to the name of his own record label "Stutter Music". More here: 

Oscars for sale

Premiya-Oskar

It's well-known that the British cinema industry is concentrated around a few airing-cupboard offices in London's Soho. In fact, with the digital revolution a tiny room at the top of a west-end stair can be enough to run the show. The Soho connection is important - and the important word is "connection". Same as in the music and broadcasting business. If you want to make your mark you probably are still best doing it in Soho (despite the universal complaints that it's not what it used to be) - and the other two requirements are tenacity and loads of money. If you have all these sorted you can join the struggle for an Oscar, which nevertheless has to look like an unexpected surprise when it comes. Today (Thursday January 15th), the nominations are announced, and over in the USA backstage the struggle continues. This week's guest blog has the story: http://stephenfollows.com/how-much-does-a-hollywood-oscar-campaign-cost/

a propos Charlie Hebdo

Old Hanley's Almanac

I hesitate to blog opinions here rather than facts, but as we watch the current rapid shifts in world power I'm prompted to go into print with what I've been saying in the pub for a few years. As the USA, for so long the all-powerful entity hanging over us like God, with a never-ending supply of money, rewards and retribution, dwindles to third-world status, with Detroit, Motor City itself becoming the world's biggest city farm, at the same time as India and China are rising. China has been topping-up America's economy for long enough. Waging war has no doubt kept the US economic system working but without exports and with increasing reliance on imports this has just been window-dressing. If China decides to stop giving the USA credit, as it could, that will most likely lead to the end of the Israel regime in Palestine; it could be the first cut if America really has to shape up - a lot of money the USA really doesn't have goes that way annually, and the Israelis are getting ever more stroppy with their sponsors, just as the Revolutionaries did with the British. The most important thing about China's status now is not a readiness to wage war like the US/UK axis but the fact that it is backing up its rise as an economic power with its new role as the planet's centre of industry.