I've just finished The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe, bought last week to celebrate the opening of The Woodstock Bookshop. I greatly appreciated the development of character as the story is told episodically, stepping through the Birmingham of the 1970s from pub bombing to picket-line crushing to impending recession, as the teenage characters grow up and start interacting with the adult world. Everyone is a witness to the unravelling, perhaps the murder, of the national myth; whether in the form of the vicious beating of the British Leyland trade unionists who travel to join the picket line at the Grunwick photo-processing, or the rebellion of three-fifths of embryonic prog rockers Gandalf's Pikestaff in throwing off their leading light (the book's hinge character, Benjamin Trotter) to become punk outfit The Maws of Doom; or just in the persistent undermining of the ideals of the post-war settlement by entrenched attitudes based on class antagonism and the ill-considered assumptions and prejudices of empire. I'm only a decade younger than the teenagers of the novel, and so was affected by many of the same cultural developments. The Closed Circle is the sequel, and while I intend to read it the blurb suggests that it doesn't enjoy the same perspective on the late 1990s that The Rotters' Club expresses on the earlier decade.

( Breaking out again )

( Birds of a Feather? )

( Black hole )

( Goodbye Stephen )

( Sogguth! )

( Minority appeal? )

( Maturity )

( End )

( A stray note on casting )

ETA: ( Into the 1980s? )

The Guardian have an online gallery of photographs taken by George Plemper, a schoolteacher in Thamesmead, south east London, between 1973 and 1978. I was struck by the period covered and the similarity of Plemper's hopes to those of Roger Price of Tomorrow People fame when working in children's television.

sunlightdances posted a link to the new American version of Life on Mars, and it's really weird to watch. It's such a straight translation of the original in many ways. Life on Mars with an American accent. Being someone who lives interculturally myself (and having done a lot of cultural translation recently with my parents visiting), I find this sort of thing fascinating.

What do you think?

Time breakdown of modern web design

http://thenextweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/time_breakdown.png

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080514

http://xkcd.com/423/

"Grassington, England - If it were not for the odd cow on the horizon, visitors to this remote part of northern England might feel marooned among the thousands of sheep. It is silent here too, apart from the almost indignant "baaing" of these fluffy wool donors. A latticework of drystone walls like silvery grey veins divides up the "dales," as the lush, green valleys of this upland landscape are known, and it is not hard to see why English author JRR Tolkien found inspiration hereabouts for his Lord of the Rings trilogy. A few elves and dwarfs or even a hobbit would not seem out of place."

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/204965,striding-out-among-the-sheep-in-the-tranquil-yorkshire-dales.html

!!!

Ok. This is the state of my revision so far, if anyone has not had enough of my ceaseless analysis.

In order of appearance:

Roman History 1.6 (46BC-54AD) - Tacitus and Suetonius
Gobbets and essays paper: Hmmm. Reasonable. Although I only know crazy stuff.
Translation paper: Should be ok if I can find time by magic (or Lucozade, my new saviour) to finish reading the set texts in Latin.

Cicero - Politics and Thought
Gobbets and essays paper: Had better do well on this one, I need it to pull the others up.

Athenian Democracy
Gobbets and essays paper: I have sorely neglected this one on the basis that it is easy, as all the texts are in English. It is not. Cramming (well, cramming for all, but especially for this).

Roman History 1.5 (146BC-46BC) - Cicero and Sallust
Gobbets and essays paper: Don't know enough. So many Cicero letters to look at again, as have forgotten them because there are too many.
Translation paper: Should be ok, as long as the Cicero half isn't a letter (see above).

Greek Core Literature of the 5th Century BC
Commentaries and essays paper: Commentaries - depends on what bits they are. Essays - eh. Is just reading stories, writing down opinions on them and making up rubbish. Have tried to do a modicum of secondary reading. Trying to overcome natural inability in study of literature.

Comedy translation paper
Have read 1 of the 4 plays for this. Will squeeze in others at the edges of days.

Roman History 1.4 (246BC-146BC) - Polybius, Rome and the Mediterranean
Gobbets and essays paper: I know one topic. Hahaha. Least favourite, most difficult paper.
Translation paper: see above.

Greek Core Literature of the 5th Century BC
Translation paper: Have read or will have read all texts in Greek save possibly Herodotus. Hope this is enough.

Latin Core Literature of the 1st Century BC
Commentaries and essays paper: Have not started revising this yet, as is not til the end and will have 6 days. Otherwise, as for Greek Core.
Translation: As for Greek Core, but aiming to read all texts in original.

It ws such a beautiful evening that I walked the long way round Christ Church meadow to the Manor, stopping by the river to watch the rowers pound their way along the dappled waters of the Isis, and sit in the golden sun to finish Lies of Locke Lamora.

Later, lost in the beauty of the light of a late Spring evening, a patch of bluebells catching the sun just had to be photographed. It makes me just a little bit wistful; it reminds me powerfully of this song, maybe just substituting Marion Bridge for Christ Church meadow;

"A car driver in Australia has been fined for strapping down his beer rather than his young child."
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7397867.stm

ETA: "A man has been given a suspended jail sentence for attacking two Star Wars fans while dressed as Darth Vader."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/7398202.stm

ETA2: "University staff have been caught pressuring students to dishonestly answer an official funding council survey of student satisfaction."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7397979.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7397247.stm

Everybody who is stressed has to watch this! I watched it with no sound in the library IT lab which made it a bit weird, but even so. You must watch it! Is very short.

ETA: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/7397623.stm

:-O

Ok, back to Polybius, blah blah blah.

Is anyone else getting sort of sore, red, swollen bits around their eyes? My friend Emma says that it's stress and tiredness, and it certainly doesn't seem like styes, at least not from horrible picture on Wikipedia... don't have time to go to chemist anyway so never mind. But is a bit odd.

I am considering going on the demon drink: coffee. Have been good at avoiding caffeine thus far, but like my "I won't revise once the exams have started" (which I bloody well will now if I want to have looked at Latin Core before I sit the papers) principle, my best-laid plans are being eroded by necessity. Have done 9 hours' revision today, and have another 6 to go :-(

I had a duck-billed platypus when I was up at Trinity,
With whom I soon discovered a remarkable affinity.
He used to live in lodgings with myself and Arthur Purvis,
And we all went up together for the Diplomatic Service.
I had a certain confidence, I own, in his ability,
He mastered all the subjects with remarkable facility;
And Purvis, though more dubious, agreed that he was clever,
But no one else imagined he had any chance whatever.
( Read more... )
Creatrix has just pointed this out to me - does it have a link to the metre, and general feel, of Errantry?

When Jack was a young boy, and down on his luck
He had the misfortune to pick up a duck
And why he should do this, I really can't say
But when he trudged down to the dungeon that day
With his toy sword in hand and his shield on his back
He was met by a beast that emitted a 'quack'
And feeling courageous, he struck with his sword
Heard the thud of its head as it hit the floorboard
(He didn't look down, see, and thought it was dead,
So failed to spot when it flew to his head.)

He emerged from the dungeon, his sword held on high
"I've vanquished the monster," his mum heard him cry
"That's all very nice, dear," his poor mother said
"But before we have tea, take the duck off your head."
So puzzled, he turned, and he went to his dad,
Saying "Daddy, I'm worried that mummy's gone mad,"
"She thinks that I'm wearing a duck as a hat,"
"Oh, what do you think is the matter with that?"
His father looked up, turned his head to and fro,
And replied "I'm afraid that the duck has to go,"
"You've got blue eyes and fair skin and hair that is red,"
"And none of it goes with that duck on your head."

He looked left and right, and he looked up and down,
He looked in the mirror, and started to frown,
For all he could see was the cut of his hair,
(With the big peak in front, it looked quite debonair)
So when, eating tea, they began to complain,
He decided his parents were really insane,
And looked so dejected his parents did stop,
Shared a glance, did not mention the duck on his mop.
And his dad, when at night into bed Jack did tuck,
Said nary a word 'bout the damnable duck.

But at night, as he twisted, unable to sleep,
Jack heard things which up from the kitchen did creep,
"I simply won't have it," his mother exclaimed,
"It isn't hygienic," the woman declaimed.
His father suggested "It's simply a phase,"
"He'll get rid of it soon, when he joins the new craze,"
So they left it at that, and they came up to bed,
And argued no more 'bout the duck on his head,
But time, as it passed, did not calm his mum's fears,
And his dad became prone to burst out into tears,
And the speech at the table was more and more forced,
Till seven months later, his parents divorced.

His teachers, at first, sent him out every day,
"We won't have the school uniform mocked in that way!"
At first, he went out then, polite and demure,
(He was otherwise really a good boy, I'm sure),
But as it persisted, his anger grew great,
Till he threw at his teacher the most of his hate:
"That's enough, I can't stand it, I don't give a fuck"
"About your imaginary, head-sitting duck."
To shout at his teacher, and swearing so loud?
They expelled him: it simply just wasn't allowed.

So with no education, he tried to find work,
As a dustbinman, cleaner, or shopping store clerk.
The builder just laughed, till his face turned bright red,
And pointed a finger at the duck on Jack's head.
"H&S wouldn't have it, what use would that be,"
"When you're hit in the noggin by flying debris?"
So he took to the streets, with the clothes on his back
And the duck on his head gave a lamenting quack.

He's dead now, of course, and all buried away,
One cold winter evening he died where he lay.
And near where he's buried, there lies a small lake,
Where ever so often, just for old time's sake,
With a flurry of feathers, the water is struck,
And upon the lake floats a solitary duck.

It was Miss Shore's birthday on Sunday and to celebrate the fact that it'll be another 5 months until I'm *that* old (as old as I thought she was the first time I met her 5 years ago!), and the fact that her parents were visiting from America I made a cake to celebrate...

 

So thats me punting us...

 

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080512

http://xkcd.com/422/