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.

Fallujah - a Lost Generation?

In one of the many alternative mini-cinemas that have sprung up in Bristol City, we enjoyed a one-off showing of this vital documentary set in Fallujah, by Feurat Alani. Fallujah was chosen over Baghdad as it was the city, it's explained, that put up the strongest resistance to the invasion.


The results of the US/ UK invasion are, of course, well-known: the enforced dismantling of the army and the civil service which left the whole country open to the most negative of anarchies, for instance - and more of that side is revealed in the film. But the immediate effects of the attack have been treated as less newsworthy and also have been subjected to stringent censorship wherever possible. Inevitably rumours and facts have leaked out, but this film looks like the most substantive indictment to date. The use of white phosphorous, a close relation to napalm, has led to accusations of war crime, but the depleted uranium, used in shells, bullets and armour plating for its extreme hardness (and probably because it spontaneously combusts under heat), goes beyond that in many ways. Years after it was used, it continues to cause cancers  locally and doubtless has contributed to the World's general atmospheric pollution, while leading to the regular birth of children with seriously disabling defects. This is all revealed in the film, whose makers, we can't forget, were braving considerable danger in making it. They, at least, were able to work without the threat of American sniping, unlike the concerned doctors and scientists who tried to determine the source of the increasing cancers and birth defects in the early days.
Inevitably, the director's  concern for his subject didn't stop with the camera's rolling. He's not the only one: our hostess for the evening revealed that she had found that children, made homeless by the bombing, were playing in an abandoned army vehicle heavy with the above DU (- let's call it by what it is, really: nuclear waste-)  and tried to get the truck removed, but she couldn't get America, Iraq or Britain to accept responsibility. Eventually, she told us, it was moved from the centre of the square to the side - creating two contaminated areas out of one.
Well, that's it. A documentary that works like a home movie for the Humans. I hope.

Acker Bilk

JazzServices.org.uk

The clarinettist and band leader who came close as anyone could to making Trad Jazz look cool, Acker Bilk has died at the age of 85. He will always be associated with 'Stranger on the Shore', the major hit in both the UK and US, ahead of the British pop-rock invasion. After he gave up touring, and a good while after the height of the Trad boom, he returned to one of his other careers and enjoyed some success as a painter, concentrating on small landscapes. More:

So long, Jack

goingthruvinyl.com

Jack Bruce, from Bishopbriggs Glasgow, has died at 71. He studied composition at the  Royal Scottish Academy of Music and left the academy and Scotland at the age of 16, making his way to London where he became a member of the seminal Alexis Korner's Blues Inc, where Charlie Watts was on drums. Watts left to join the Rolling Stones and Ginger Baker took over, beginning the long love/hate relationship - or hate/hate relationship, that found its expression in Cream's roaring, racing backdrop to Eric Clapton's extended solos. Immediately after the breakup of Cream he got back into jazz, with the release of the album 'Things we like', and went on to work with such luminaries as John McLaughlin and Frank Zappa, playing a central role in arguably jazz's first supergroup, Lifetime. He left a legacy of songs and compositions as well as just enough recordings to establish his great width of abilities.

Susan Greenfield

Mind Change

Random House

In her new book, neurologist Susan Greenfield asks this question: We know that the human brain adapts to its environment so, in the new unprecedented cyber environment of the 21st Century could our brains be changing in unprecedented ways? And if so, what implications might such changes have for the generation of ‘digital natives’ whose brains will be influenced at a crucial time in their development?

Drawing on over 500 ‘peer-reviewed studies’ Greenfield explores (for the first time, it says here), what those changes could be. She examines three different aspects of the digital landscape: social networking, and its impact upon interpersonal skills and identity; computer gaming and its impact upon attention, as well as links with addiction, aggression and risk-taking; and the use of search engines and their effects upon thinking, learning and memory.

Greenfield’s interest is in finding how we can create a world where our technology does not frustrate, but actively fosters, some of the key features that make us human: deep understanding, creativity, sense of identity, and real fulfilment. These last three she listed in her introduction as part of Bristol Festival of Ideas as her ‘must-have’ items. Although she touched on the possibility of there being a whole generation of kids with underdeveloped pre-frontal cortexes as connecting with others via the Net instead of talking face-to face with the attendant body language and mutual consideration results in pretty raw, ill-considered talking, (True- see the comments column on any site, especially if it’s linked to the news media), Baroness Greenfield was able to remain optimistic about the cognitive near future. In her short talk in Bristol  she was able to touch on other related things, like the difference between facts and knowledge, and the chicken-egg relationship between low seratonin and clinical depression. Maybe that problem could be compared to an endless game of tennis, cause and effect constantly changing sides.

As for fulfilment, she allowed that we could get that out of a witty verbal exchange as easily as from creating something bigger, a symphony for instance.

And there we’re talking psychology as much as neurology.The important thing is to keep the game going.

Another thing that occurred to me was: we each can alter our mind’s environment to an extent. Noel Coward’s recipe for a Good Life was to ‘enjoy yourself as much as possible. It passes the time pleasantly, and gives you some memories to enjoy in your old age.’

And for Mr Coward, enjoyment was work. Perhaps I’d sum up the whole thing by admitting that nothing succeeds like success, especially in the cerebral cortex.

Scotland: reasons to be yessing

A major reason to vote 'Yes' in the Scottish referendum must be the promise of disassociation from Britain's infamous role as warmonger through hosting nuclear submarines, allowing US bombers to use the UK as 'airstrip one' and otherwise backing the US wars of self-interest -particularly as a manufacturing base, from napalm for Vietnam to fighter planes for Gaza, but there is more, well summed-up by John McGrath's great play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb3qbFcLYZc  The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil.

The Hundred Foot Journey

Richard C Morais


Alma Books
ISBN:978-1-84688-133-6


Simon Callow described this as being for anyone who loves food, and cares for character. He’s right on both counts. Morais’ stories tend to be heavily populated but he manages to give each face in the crowd depth of character and degrees of back-story, without dragging down the pace of his narrative.

His delving into food is also deeply believable, and so enjoyable that often I felt that I had in fact been eating quite a lot. While giving us these gorgeous word pictures he manages to colour-in the cultures they come out of. And he is convincing at giving himself the voice of his protagonist, which immediately strips away a layer of distance from the action.
He has done his research, but doesn’t wear it on his sleeve. Instead we can feel we are reading between the lines when we pick on several tricks of advanced cookery. This is no doubt the time history will remember for popular obsession with food and cookery, both on the airwaves and on paper, but this book rises above the genre.


Coinciding with the paperback publication of this, the film (starring Helen Mirren and Om Puri, director Lasse Hallstrom) is due for release. To see the trailer, click here: http://collider.com/the-one-hundred-foot-journey-trailer/