Three essays.
On my own in Leamington's coldest student house.
No dance classes.
It'll be fun, right?
I give you...
Sunday, March 17, 2013
The Ed Delusion
10,500 words to write to pass second year.
Three essays.
On my own in Leamington's coldest student house.
No dance classes.
It'll be fun, right?
I give you...
Three essays.
On my own in Leamington's coldest student house.
No dance classes.
It'll be fun, right?
I give you...
Retro Football
I recently entered the David Welch Student Sportswriters' Award 2013, in which I had to write three 800-word pieces on any topic related to sport. I didn't win, but my Director of Studies liked the articles. A victory of sorts. Anyway, here is the first of those articles. This article is probably the most similar to my regular style of blogging, but any feedback would be appreciated as I attempt to seamlessly move from blogging into vaguely serious writing. Much obliged. Ed.
One of the joys of the Internet, when it
isn’t being populated by Gangnam Style
and misguided tweets, is the wonderful glimpse into a radically different time
that a younger man can glean by watching a few videos of archive football, and
exploring the context.
It was a few weeks ago, when I was
reading about the intense Leeds v Chelsea rivalry of decades past, prior to
their Capital One Cup clash, that I typed into the search filter the two words
that anyone who grew up in the 1970s will be familiar with: ‘Dirty Leeds’.
The entry that was thrown up was an
FA Cup third round match from 1978, played between Manchester City and Jimmy
Armfield’s Leeds at Elland Road. Admittedly, being fascinated by David Peace’s
extraordinary novel, The Damned United,
I was slightly disappointed not to stumble upon a relic from the Don Revie
Empire that, thanks to Peace, feels so familiar. Nonetheless, what a world I
encountered! I felt like Aeneas travelling to football’s Underworld.
Six seconds into the seven-minute
video, it’s quite clear we’re not in 2013 anymore, Toto. Gordon McQueen brings down
a Manchester City forward with a tackle that is reminiscent of an uncontrollably
frustrated nine-year-old in the playground. Five-match ban, it must be! He’s
not given it! The evocative tones of Barry Davies ring out.
‘That surprises me, but the
referee’s view is better than mine’.
Already it’s hard not to laugh, yet
be strangely admiring of the game. For a generation that, due to the gratuitous
violence of films and video games, is supposed to be immune to the shock-factor,
it’s quite an adventure to stumble upon a match of Association Football featuring
the Brobdingnagian Leeds United of the 1970s.
I
should have known that things wouldn’t be quite as they seemed. For a start,
the goalkeepers weren’t wearing gloves. In a match played in January. Like I
said, it’s hard not to be admiring.
A minute later, the grainy video, like a
war film with the soundtrack performed by Barry Davies, ratchets up another
notch. McQueen punches his own goal-keeper, Peter Harvey, square in the jaw.
You can almost see the referee saying
‘that’s your first warning’. I’m not so sure Howard Webb would be so lenient.
Not long after Manchester City scramble
(how else?) into a two-goal lead, an almighty pitch invasion occurs. It doesn’t
seem to have the same violence and menace of pitch invasions performed in anger
in the twenty-first century, nor does it have the same joyous outpouring of
those carried out in celebration. It’s almost a Carry On Football approach to getting the game stopped, hundreds of
parkas frivolously filling the pitch. And then the obligatory horse rides on.
This is what YouTube was made for. It’s
not just an insight into the raucous behaviour of football fans and players
alike in the era; it’s a history lesson for those who study the game.
Full-backs don’t simply ‘jockey’ their winger into the corner in the manner of
today, they dive straight in. The pace of the turnover from defence into attack
is at times frightening. And the back-passes! The first time I watched The Big Match Revisited with my father,
I ended up inadvertently blurting out my shock at the unpunished back-passes,
until I bashfully discovered their outlawing in 1992.
Meanwhile, back with the pitch invasion
and facing increasing levels of parkas, the referee wanders over to the side of
the pitch. He takes up the PA’s microphone. Maybe he’s going to sing? The
Wings’ Mull of Kintyre was number one
at the time. That might appease the hordes of parkas. Alas, no. He implores
them all to get back in the stands, and after a while, the video informs us,
they do. It’s a pitch invasion with a touch of respectfulness.
The match ends, thankfully, without
another mention of Gordon McQueen, and the venture into 1978 sadly ends there.
But what good is this without context?
I turn my attentions to that other great
font of knowledge for any slightly obsessive football fan, Wikipedia, and follow the rest of the rounds with a few clicks of
the computer mouse. Manchester City were knocked out in the next round, which
seems to make my attention on the match at Elland Road disappointingly futile.
Scanning to the bottom, Ipswich Town
were the winners of that FA Cup. Their first ever, and, to date, only triumph. Another
nugget of trivia that sports fans obsess over like no other.
After writing up my trip down memory
lane, I check the scores on 2013’s FA Cup (with Budweiser) Third Round Saturday.
Leeds are drawing 1-1 with Birmingham in the nondescript tie of the round.
Reliving the 1978 FA Cup easily beats
living in the present.
Monday, March 11, 2013
The Continued Family Love Affair with Cheltenham
Everyone who knows me will know of my family's borderline obsession with Birmingham City, and football in general. Most of you will know about our love for cricket, and the days spent at New Road and Edgbaston with friends and family respectively. But it's a little known fact that horse-racing is a love that has been passed down from generation to generation, and on the eve of my first trip to the Cheltenham Festival, it seemed appropriate that I should write this blog on some of the stories that have made me laugh and cry so much over the years, the little anecdotes that make each family what it is.
I won't pretend to be an expert on horse-racing, first of all, lest you all start hanging on my every word for tips and subsequently slashing my tyres when it falls at the first hurdle. My gambling expertise doesn't go much beyond following Cornelius Lysaght on Twitter and picking a horse called Franklin Roosevelt on the day that I'd spent writing an essay on the Presidency (it won, by the way. One in the eye for the over-analysts). That honour went to my Dad. He always insisted his specialist subject, should he ever go on Mastermind, would be the Cheltenham Gold Cup, or horse-racing in general. A subject this broad would no doubt have put to shame Myleene Klass's efforts at answering posers on Sex and the City (Series Two). Not that he ever really used his knowledge for financial gain. He'd bet on the Grand National, out of tradition (although he was always fairly disdainful of its merits as a race), and of course, any day he went to the races, usually once a year. He followed jockeys, and tended to bet on them, as opposed to the horse. The up-and-comers. It was telling, in fact, that we ran a donation for the Injured Jockeys Fund at his funeral, for which we received a beautiful card thanking us.
A delicate subject, but other members of my family have fallen foul of the curse of horse-racing, something which my Dad stayed well clear of. He watched it simply for pleasure, interest, and, what's more, to doctor the work of Rudyard Kipling, he 'never breathed a word about his winnings'. That was to us anyway...
'How did you do today?'
'Broke even, really'.
It was always slightly baffling when, therefore, the next fortnight he might have taken us out for dinner.
His love for horse-racing, as far as I know, stemmed from my Great Uncle Mick, the eccentric fella with the flat cap who's looked out for us immeasurably over the last two years. At 82 (I think), he still seems to know the best tip for the 3:10 at Chepstow, usually thanks to his mate down at the fish market. And to think you all thought I was from thoroughly middle class stock...
My Dad also always said that the first thing he'd do if he won the lottery would be to buy a racehorse. Not that this would have been our family's first foray into owning a four-legged running thing, as the following anecdote will display. I already know it's many of my friends' favourite anecdotes ever, so bear with me if you've heard it before.
Mick: 'Have I told you about the time me and your Dad and some friends got a really highly regarded greyhound over from Ireland between us and ran it over here?'
Me: 'I don't think so... is this going to be another made up story, like Mr Isles who shaved the cat?'
Mick: 'Well, basically, we brought it over for its first race, and it's really sad but... well, in Ireland it had been used to running on straight tracks... on its first race on an oval track, it kept on running and went straight into the wall at the end'.
The best thing about that story is I have absolutely no idea if it's true or not.
On what I think was my thirteenth birthday, my Dad took me to Warwick races, where we proceeded to lose every single race. He reminisced further that day.
Dad: 'There's the trainers' car park... Mick always looked like a trainer in his flat cap so almost every time we came here we just got him to tip the peak of his cap, say 'cheers mate' to the attendant and got in for free.'
Me: 'We're not doing that today are we?'
Dad: 'I've got a flat cap in the boot to be fair...'
It's some coincidence that my grandparents, on my Mum's side, live a stone's throw from Cheltenham Races. - a neatness that knits this wonderful family affair together. The local knowledge of the area has led to my Nan and her friends either taking in Irish lodgers in their beautiful Cotswold village, or gladly informing with pride anyone brave enough to ask for a short-cut to the races. On his first trip to their new house, I'm told my Dad looked out the window and did a little jig of childish glee when he surveyed the Cotswolds and pointed at the Grandstand far in the distance. From then on, he would always take the week of the Cheltenham Festival off work, even if it was just to sit in front of the telly.
Horse-racing gets a lot of bad press, especially with a spate of recent Grand National deaths, with the race regrettably often coinciding with unusually hot days. But accidents do happen in almost every sport, and every walk of life. The adulation and love these horses receive almost makes up for those tragedies, and to have the sight of a true thorough-bred galloping down the home strait tarnished, or even taken away, would be a great shame to all those race-goers: a strange mix of shady bettors, wealthy owners and trainers, hard-working stable-hands doing it for the love of the horse, and of course those looking to make a quick buck or just have a right old laugh.
The Times' Simon Barnes, probably the finest sports journalist around (although he has recently turned his hand more to nature articles, in my view a shame), wrote a wonderfully powerful piece in the wake of the tiresome horse-meat scandal about why the nation was in such a pitchfork-wielding state. It was a love for horses that had been butchered- the noble steed, the beautiful thorough-bred- and the line had been crossed. It explains why there has been so much uproar in certain circles as to why Kauto Star, two-time Gold Cup winner, won't be allowed to live out his retirement in glorious, studding peace, and instead must be made to traipse down to the other end of the country as little more than a show-pony.
It's fitting, really, that in a sport where winning and losing can have such high stakes, I 'won' my tickets (VIP!) for tomorrow's day of racing in a competition on Twitter. I doubt I'll sleep tonight, and am immensely looking forward to taking a good friend of mine with me. He won't mind me saying that if my Dad was still around, he'd have knocked Matt over in the rush to take the ticket, there with his boots black and a copy of the Racing Post under his arm. Indeed, I felt a very strange twinge when I won the tickets, desperate to text that extra person my good news.
Doubtless there'll be one or two tears shed by this blogger when the famous Cheltenham roar rises up, as the curtain lifts on another year of 'The Greatest Show on Turf'.
I won't pretend to be an expert on horse-racing, first of all, lest you all start hanging on my every word for tips and subsequently slashing my tyres when it falls at the first hurdle. My gambling expertise doesn't go much beyond following Cornelius Lysaght on Twitter and picking a horse called Franklin Roosevelt on the day that I'd spent writing an essay on the Presidency (it won, by the way. One in the eye for the over-analysts). That honour went to my Dad. He always insisted his specialist subject, should he ever go on Mastermind, would be the Cheltenham Gold Cup, or horse-racing in general. A subject this broad would no doubt have put to shame Myleene Klass's efforts at answering posers on Sex and the City (Series Two). Not that he ever really used his knowledge for financial gain. He'd bet on the Grand National, out of tradition (although he was always fairly disdainful of its merits as a race), and of course, any day he went to the races, usually once a year. He followed jockeys, and tended to bet on them, as opposed to the horse. The up-and-comers. It was telling, in fact, that we ran a donation for the Injured Jockeys Fund at his funeral, for which we received a beautiful card thanking us.
A delicate subject, but other members of my family have fallen foul of the curse of horse-racing, something which my Dad stayed well clear of. He watched it simply for pleasure, interest, and, what's more, to doctor the work of Rudyard Kipling, he 'never breathed a word about his winnings'. That was to us anyway...
'How did you do today?'
'Broke even, really'.
It was always slightly baffling when, therefore, the next fortnight he might have taken us out for dinner.
His love for horse-racing, as far as I know, stemmed from my Great Uncle Mick, the eccentric fella with the flat cap who's looked out for us immeasurably over the last two years. At 82 (I think), he still seems to know the best tip for the 3:10 at Chepstow, usually thanks to his mate down at the fish market. And to think you all thought I was from thoroughly middle class stock...
My Dad also always said that the first thing he'd do if he won the lottery would be to buy a racehorse. Not that this would have been our family's first foray into owning a four-legged running thing, as the following anecdote will display. I already know it's many of my friends' favourite anecdotes ever, so bear with me if you've heard it before.
Mick: 'Have I told you about the time me and your Dad and some friends got a really highly regarded greyhound over from Ireland between us and ran it over here?'
Me: 'I don't think so... is this going to be another made up story, like Mr Isles who shaved the cat?'
Mick: 'Well, basically, we brought it over for its first race, and it's really sad but... well, in Ireland it had been used to running on straight tracks... on its first race on an oval track, it kept on running and went straight into the wall at the end'.
The best thing about that story is I have absolutely no idea if it's true or not.
On what I think was my thirteenth birthday, my Dad took me to Warwick races, where we proceeded to lose every single race. He reminisced further that day.
 |
| Great Uncle Mick- Conman Extraordinaire and Scourge of Greyhounds |
Dad: 'There's the trainers' car park... Mick always looked like a trainer in his flat cap so almost every time we came here we just got him to tip the peak of his cap, say 'cheers mate' to the attendant and got in for free.'
Me: 'We're not doing that today are we?'
Dad: 'I've got a flat cap in the boot to be fair...'
It's some coincidence that my grandparents, on my Mum's side, live a stone's throw from Cheltenham Races. - a neatness that knits this wonderful family affair together. The local knowledge of the area has led to my Nan and her friends either taking in Irish lodgers in their beautiful Cotswold village, or gladly informing with pride anyone brave enough to ask for a short-cut to the races. On his first trip to their new house, I'm told my Dad looked out the window and did a little jig of childish glee when he surveyed the Cotswolds and pointed at the Grandstand far in the distance. From then on, he would always take the week of the Cheltenham Festival off work, even if it was just to sit in front of the telly.
 |
| A great photo of my Dad in amongst the throng- I'm assured my Mum wasn't checking how much he was putting on... |
The Times' Simon Barnes, probably the finest sports journalist around (although he has recently turned his hand more to nature articles, in my view a shame), wrote a wonderfully powerful piece in the wake of the tiresome horse-meat scandal about why the nation was in such a pitchfork-wielding state. It was a love for horses that had been butchered- the noble steed, the beautiful thorough-bred- and the line had been crossed. It explains why there has been so much uproar in certain circles as to why Kauto Star, two-time Gold Cup winner, won't be allowed to live out his retirement in glorious, studding peace, and instead must be made to traipse down to the other end of the country as little more than a show-pony.
It's fitting, really, that in a sport where winning and losing can have such high stakes, I 'won' my tickets (VIP!) for tomorrow's day of racing in a competition on Twitter. I doubt I'll sleep tonight, and am immensely looking forward to taking a good friend of mine with me. He won't mind me saying that if my Dad was still around, he'd have knocked Matt over in the rush to take the ticket, there with his boots black and a copy of the Racing Post under his arm. Indeed, I felt a very strange twinge when I won the tickets, desperate to text that extra person my good news.
Doubtless there'll be one or two tears shed by this blogger when the famous Cheltenham roar rises up, as the curtain lifts on another year of 'The Greatest Show on Turf'.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Presidential perks
On the 9th March 2012, I was elected President of Comparative
American Studies Society, or CAS Soc. Next month, I will hand over to my
successor in a cavalcade of personalised hoodies and flags, provided I am not
impeached beforehand. Here is my ten-point plan to running a society:
1) Pick a society with a successful
blueprint, and run with it: I was extremely lucky to have a predecessor who put
an incredible amount of time and effort into the society, making it a friendly,
fun organisation with many opportunities for inter-year group collective
congratulating and sighing in equal measures. I could have started a society
from scratch, but I’m not really sure many people would join my ‘Knitwear and
Scampi’ Society.
.PNG) |
| Our risqué tweets: A hit with the DoS |
3) Use the things you love: It’s fair to
say I’m an obsessive when it comes to social media, and the CAS Soc Twitter
account has given me moments to cherish. I’m not sure how
much information has ever been gleaned from it, but when you go to see your
Director of Studies for talks over a Year Abroad and come out discussing which
was his favourite tweet from the night before, it means as much as a successful
social!
4) If you’re wondering about whether you’re
running for the right reasons, trust me. You are: I ran for CAS Soc
President for a multitude of reasons. It's difficult to rank those reasons,
having fast-forwarded a year, but I'm fairly sure 'personalised hoodie' came
close to the top of the list. I also wanted something to show from my time at
university other than a degree of dubious quality and worth, and, with CAS Soc
having delightfully impinged upon most of the things I did in Year One, this
seemed like the obvious challenge.
5) It’s your society. Your time. Use it wisely, young Jedi: Every
year things get improved upon, changed, altered, trimmed, cut down, expanded,
whatever. If a society’s events had the same appeal every year to every year
group, there’d be no need for a committee, it’d be ‘CAS Soc: Just add water’.
Thankfully, your creative licence comes to the fore. Who’d have thought that a quiz about the Super Bowl which had nothing to do with the Super Bowl during the Super Bowl
would become one of my personal highlights of the year?
6) If you’re not enjoying it,
you’re doing it wrong: There will always be times when you wonder if you’ve
done it right. Remember the Events Management. If being a volunteer, in your
second year of university, working amongst your closest friends to organise
coffee mornings and celebrations for even more of your closest friends has
become a chore, then you’re taking it too seriously.
 |
| A highlight |
9) Surround yourself
with an exec that no matter how tough a week it’s been, will still laugh at
your jokes: I’ve been lucky enough to be accompanied by a tireless committee who
have spammed Facebook walls, sent emails down the rabbit hole of communication
that is Warwick SU at times, and have reminded me of points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, and 10 on an almost daily basis. You know who you are!
10) Smile, you’ve
got a new nickname. And a hoodie.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Dickens, and a Q&A with one of Britain's top writers
The 2012 film adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, directed by Mike Newell, with an adapted screenplay written by David Nicholls, writer of One Day and Starter For Ten was shown at Warwick Arts Centre this afternoon, preceded by a question and answer session with Nicholls himself. I went along to listen to one of the most sought-after writers around.
I read Great Expectations when I was in Year 9, having been assigned it by my somewhat ambitious English teacher. The plot is one that every young boy prone to falling in love should familiarise themselves with: the 'haughty and capricious' Estella, perceiving herself to be above Pip's station, intent on breaking his heart, egged on by her vengeful (adopted) mother, Miss Havisham; encountering a fortune and the morals of accepting it; in many ways, it is the ultimate bildungsroman. I would add 'assisting a convict' to the life lessons, but I didn't find many of them in middle-class Worcestershire, unless you count my uneasiness of celebrating Marlon King's goals.
It was a difficult read for a thirteen-year-old. I'm not saying I didn't finish it, but let's just say that Miss Havisham's death took me aback somewhat when I saw it on stage. If anyone thinks that's a spoiler alert, then I feel over 150 years since publishing date is enough grace for a writer to reveal certain elements of the plot.
Anyway, I like Dickens. I like the devil-may-care attitude to his characters' names- this is the man, after all, who called a cruel schoolmaster 'Gradgrind'. (He makes the character of 'Jock Strapp' in Carry On Dick look positively subtle). I like the simplicity of the plots, and I like the misery that comes with seemingly every chapter. If that's a bleak outlook, then consider that eight-year-old me hated Enid Blyton's stories because they were 'too happy' and 'unrealistic'. I'm more at home with plague and rickets than I am with lashings of ginger beer.
I was sceptical about the event for two reasons. Firstly, I've got what I can only describe as 'Dickens fatigue'. 2012 being the two hundredth anniversary of his death (pass you by, did it, what with all the jubilee and sports, did it?), I religiously watched the BBC's documentaries and adaptations, safe in the knowledge that we probably would live a Dickens-free diet for the foreseeable future. And then I see a bus with a poster for more fucking Great Expectations. Only this time with Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter and Robbie Coltrane. With a cast like that, I begrudgingly admitted that it was too good an opportunity to turn down.
Secondly, I read One Day, Nicholls' most famous novel (or at least part of it), in the upcoming days to the event, and I wasn't overly enamoured. The staccato, oh-so-dry humour of Emma coupled with the raffish charm of raffish Dexter with all his... raffishness. It didn't do a lot for me.
But he was pleasantly charming, self-effacing for a writer, and an extremely successful one too. The Q&A took place prior to the screening, which wouldn't have been my preference, and most of the questioning was done by a Leamington-based writer. There were roughly sixty people in attendance, students, and the silver-haireds of Warwickshire, including a bloke who wheezed like he might expire on us at any moment. He spoke of the challenges of adopting the novel and remaining faithful to the text. He was reluctant about taking on the project due to the book's much-loved qualities- I neglected to tell him that I failed to finish it. He talked about the cinematic aspects of Great Expectations, (in the process answering the question that I had lined up); and also how Dickens is unfairly described as someone who creates two-dimensional characters. I apologise for the earlier Gradgrind quip, Mr Nicholls. He also said how he is in the process of adapting another Thomas Hardy novel (I gleaned that he meant Far From the Madding Crowd- one of my favourite novels), and his awareness at becoming restricted to 19th century novels.
I even asked a question myself, one of only four to be posed. It wasn't particularly grilling, something along the lines of 'I likes your work Mr David, but do you find it frustrating that Mr Charles has already writed the descriptive bits of the novel and you can't really be as creative, yes, you know?'
Like I said, it wasn't Watergate. But he answered it completely and engagedly, explaining how essentially anything you do is an adaptation of some sort, but yes, he wouldn't be adapting many more works as he liked the challenge of creating the next Miss Havisham. Good luck with that one.
The film itself? It won't change your opinion on Dickens particularly. A fresh adaptation, one that was bleak, but not dreary, and still conveyed the humour of the novel. Yep, Dickens could do funny too, perhaps the greatest revelation to come out of the film for those who absorb the loaded term 'Dickensian'. Ralph Fiennes apparently channelled the eel-man from The Mighty Boosh in his terrifying but ultimately unoriginal portrayal of Magwitch, and Helena Bonham-Carter was Helena Bonham-Carter, which is to say, she played a very convincing turn as Miss Havisham. I've seen three versions of Great Expectations now. One on stage, in Stratford, one on the BBC, and this one. And, sadly, each portrayal of Pip has been instantly forgettable. It's a hard role, probably the most multi-dimensional role in the novel, and as such impossible to do justice to in two hours, but maybe the next version will leave a lasting impression.
Just, you know, leave off the Dickens for a while, okay? Good.
 |
| Nicholls- looks writer-ish, doesn't he? Courtesy of guardian.co.uk |
I read Great Expectations when I was in Year 9, having been assigned it by my somewhat ambitious English teacher. The plot is one that every young boy prone to falling in love should familiarise themselves with: the 'haughty and capricious' Estella, perceiving herself to be above Pip's station, intent on breaking his heart, egged on by her vengeful (adopted) mother, Miss Havisham; encountering a fortune and the morals of accepting it; in many ways, it is the ultimate bildungsroman. I would add 'assisting a convict' to the life lessons, but I didn't find many of them in middle-class Worcestershire, unless you count my uneasiness of celebrating Marlon King's goals.
It was a difficult read for a thirteen-year-old. I'm not saying I didn't finish it, but let's just say that Miss Havisham's death took me aback somewhat when I saw it on stage. If anyone thinks that's a spoiler alert, then I feel over 150 years since publishing date is enough grace for a writer to reveal certain elements of the plot.
Anyway, I like Dickens. I like the devil-may-care attitude to his characters' names- this is the man, after all, who called a cruel schoolmaster 'Gradgrind'. (He makes the character of 'Jock Strapp' in Carry On Dick look positively subtle). I like the simplicity of the plots, and I like the misery that comes with seemingly every chapter. If that's a bleak outlook, then consider that eight-year-old me hated Enid Blyton's stories because they were 'too happy' and 'unrealistic'. I'm more at home with plague and rickets than I am with lashings of ginger beer.
I was sceptical about the event for two reasons. Firstly, I've got what I can only describe as 'Dickens fatigue'. 2012 being the two hundredth anniversary of his death (pass you by, did it, what with all the jubilee and sports, did it?), I religiously watched the BBC's documentaries and adaptations, safe in the knowledge that we probably would live a Dickens-free diet for the foreseeable future. And then I see a bus with a poster for more fucking Great Expectations. Only this time with Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham-Carter and Robbie Coltrane. With a cast like that, I begrudgingly admitted that it was too good an opportunity to turn down.
Secondly, I read One Day, Nicholls' most famous novel (or at least part of it), in the upcoming days to the event, and I wasn't overly enamoured. The staccato, oh-so-dry humour of Emma coupled with the raffish charm of raffish Dexter with all his... raffishness. It didn't do a lot for me.
 |
| Courtesy of flickeringmyth.com |
I even asked a question myself, one of only four to be posed. It wasn't particularly grilling, something along the lines of 'I likes your work Mr David, but do you find it frustrating that Mr Charles has already writed the descriptive bits of the novel and you can't really be as creative, yes, you know?'
Like I said, it wasn't Watergate. But he answered it completely and engagedly, explaining how essentially anything you do is an adaptation of some sort, but yes, he wouldn't be adapting many more works as he liked the challenge of creating the next Miss Havisham. Good luck with that one.
The film itself? It won't change your opinion on Dickens particularly. A fresh adaptation, one that was bleak, but not dreary, and still conveyed the humour of the novel. Yep, Dickens could do funny too, perhaps the greatest revelation to come out of the film for those who absorb the loaded term 'Dickensian'. Ralph Fiennes apparently channelled the eel-man from The Mighty Boosh in his terrifying but ultimately unoriginal portrayal of Magwitch, and Helena Bonham-Carter was Helena Bonham-Carter, which is to say, she played a very convincing turn as Miss Havisham. I've seen three versions of Great Expectations now. One on stage, in Stratford, one on the BBC, and this one. And, sadly, each portrayal of Pip has been instantly forgettable. It's a hard role, probably the most multi-dimensional role in the novel, and as such impossible to do justice to in two hours, but maybe the next version will leave a lasting impression.
Just, you know, leave off the Dickens for a while, okay? Good.
Monday, February 4, 2013
A Brief Tribute
'Each happiness of yesterday is a memory for tomorrow'- George W. Douglas
Whether it be the time Darren Carter was about to take the most important penalty kick in our lifetime and your first thought was 'just' to turn to me to make absolutely sure I could see.
Or the time you ran downstairs for the post, scrabbled around, and ran back upstairs to tell me I'd passed the entrance exam for RGS, grinning like a madman.
Or when we were told we weren't allowed into Old Trafford hospitality areas with our chips and home-made sandwiches, so we stood and wolfed them down on the spot, in the process making ourselves feel sick for the rest of the game.
 |
| Two years since my Dad's passing |
Or whenever I was getting dogs' abuse when I was a referee and you'd 'just' have a word with me at half time, and for some reason the second half was never as bad.
Or if I had to go to bed at half time in the football and you'd 'just' sneak up to my room to tell me the final scores.
Or if I fell asleep in the car on the way home from a night match and you'd 'just' carry me up to my room instead of waking me.
Or all those times we'd 'just' sit and watch the worst piece of televised sport ever, but it was alright cos we were 'just' discussing how many points Blues would get from the final ten games.
They weren't grand gestures, but they were 'just' the best 17 and a half years anyone could wish for.
Keep Right On xxx
Friday, January 25, 2013
Working in TV, Radio and Film
My latest attempt to discover my perfect job led me to a talk on 'Working in Radio, Film and TV' at Warwick University. By all rights, this report should be appearing on Warwick Careers' website, but I was given the wrong email address- by the time this mistake was rectified, the role had been filled. I'm not bitter.
I've been to a few of these career talks now. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact purpose; more often than not, it means different things for different people. Like Christmas. There have been varying degrees of success in recent months. Last year, I attended a talk on 'Marketing and Advertising', which, in all honesty, left me feeling a little bit broken. In recent months, I've decided to pursue the dream that I've latently harboured for much of my life, once I gave up the hope of playing for Birmingham City.
Sports journalism has always been the ambition, and, unwilling to restrict myself to one medium, I've brought myself along to this talk, under no illusions. Six speakers, each, understandably, looking rather pleased with themselves. And why not? Media, we would be repeatedly reminded, is one of the most notoriously difficult industries to break into.
The first person, a Warwick alumnus (one of five to frequent the Copper Rooms in their student days), was a 'Freelance Shooting Researcher'. He'd worked as a runner. He revealed he'd worked on Splash! with Tom Daley. Boos almost rang round the lecture theatre. That show seems to have become the TV equivalent of saying you're a traffic warden, or a Conservative MP. Interestingly, and, for someone who's spent some seriously dull weeks sat in an office making tea, the speaker suggested that work experience was not the be-all and end-all. Admittedly, this went against the grain of the evening, but, if that particular Warwick student can find his lucky break into the industry, why can't this one?
The second speaker, a radio producer on Capital FM in Birmingham, took the more well-trodden path. He'd worked on RaW (Warwick's student radio station), produced demos, joined street teams, and used phrases such as 'Theatre of the Mind'. Radio is still one of the most versatile forms of media out there.
The speaker that intrigued me most, naturally, was the Director of Strategy for talkSport, the commercial radio station. talkSport often gets a bad press from those who religiously rely on the BBC's sports radio coverage, but, in recent years, has become a serious player. It is, at times, sensationalist, but it has overtaken BBC Radio 5Live, in my opinion, as the most entertaining sports broadcaster. It engages fans, it provokes debate, and approaches issues from the angle of the modern day supporter. The football betting market is growing by the day, and talkSport taps into this, offering live odds during commentary, updating us on presenter's 'accas' (accumulator bets), and really driving home the twin elements of social media and gambling, something which, through 'tipster' accounts, are natural bedfellows.
As my thirst for regularly attending matches dwindles amidst a backdrop of abysmal ownership and growing apathy, I have enjoyed the 'armchair' supporter's experience. I can tell what's good about football coverage (talkSport's 'Matchday Live' coverage), and what's bad (the levels of punditry on Match of the Day). I've grown up with local radio, particularly their football coverage. Contrasts between the premier commercial local football broadcaster and the BBC's equivalent are vast. Each has a place, but who knows what shape coverage will take in a few years time? For a start, the producers on Match of the Day might realise that 'I don't know much about this player, but-' is not an adequate level of punditry for the fee that certain former Newcastle strikers command. Perish the thought.
And I told talkSport's Director of Strategy my thoughts. I'm still not entirely sure what networking means, but I think that was it. He seemed impressed- 'know your audience' was his message. He also pressed home that, being at a top university, and having get-up-and-go, would, more often than not, see us achieve our ambitions.
A man from BBC Radio Oxford took the option of reaffirming the difficulties of the industry. I'm not entirely sure what speakers are trying to achieve through informing us that a frighteningly low number of on-air radio jobs are currently paid, but I suppose it ensured that nobody left with any illusions. Hardly likely, considering the repeated scaremongering that students encounter with regards to jobs. If I believed everything I heard, read and saw, I'd give up my degree and pick up the dole now. It's a horrible cliché, something which football pundits seemingly use as currency, but a career path is referred to as a path for a reason. You could encounter something you'd never expected to see on that path. You could also, conversely, encounter dog shit.
Careers events are most certainly not for the faint-hearted. Unoriginal tales of 'sleeping on the sofa' still raise a nervous laugh, as does any mention of debt. This event, however, left me with more feelings of positivity than negativity. I will be looking to radio on my Year Abroad in Toronto as a means of furthering my media ambitions. If I can persuade listeners in Toronto that news of Birmingham City's latest defeat is in any way relevant to their lives, I could be onto a winner.
I've been to a few of these career talks now. It's difficult to pinpoint the exact purpose; more often than not, it means different things for different people. Like Christmas. There have been varying degrees of success in recent months. Last year, I attended a talk on 'Marketing and Advertising', which, in all honesty, left me feeling a little bit broken. In recent months, I've decided to pursue the dream that I've latently harboured for much of my life, once I gave up the hope of playing for Birmingham City.
Sports journalism has always been the ambition, and, unwilling to restrict myself to one medium, I've brought myself along to this talk, under no illusions. Six speakers, each, understandably, looking rather pleased with themselves. And why not? Media, we would be repeatedly reminded, is one of the most notoriously difficult industries to break into.
The first person, a Warwick alumnus (one of five to frequent the Copper Rooms in their student days), was a 'Freelance Shooting Researcher'. He'd worked as a runner. He revealed he'd worked on Splash! with Tom Daley. Boos almost rang round the lecture theatre. That show seems to have become the TV equivalent of saying you're a traffic warden, or a Conservative MP. Interestingly, and, for someone who's spent some seriously dull weeks sat in an office making tea, the speaker suggested that work experience was not the be-all and end-all. Admittedly, this went against the grain of the evening, but, if that particular Warwick student can find his lucky break into the industry, why can't this one?
The second speaker, a radio producer on Capital FM in Birmingham, took the more well-trodden path. He'd worked on RaW (Warwick's student radio station), produced demos, joined street teams, and used phrases such as 'Theatre of the Mind'. Radio is still one of the most versatile forms of media out there.
The speaker that intrigued me most, naturally, was the Director of Strategy for talkSport, the commercial radio station. talkSport often gets a bad press from those who religiously rely on the BBC's sports radio coverage, but, in recent years, has become a serious player. It is, at times, sensationalist, but it has overtaken BBC Radio 5Live, in my opinion, as the most entertaining sports broadcaster. It engages fans, it provokes debate, and approaches issues from the angle of the modern day supporter. The football betting market is growing by the day, and talkSport taps into this, offering live odds during commentary, updating us on presenter's 'accas' (accumulator bets), and really driving home the twin elements of social media and gambling, something which, through 'tipster' accounts, are natural bedfellows.
As my thirst for regularly attending matches dwindles amidst a backdrop of abysmal ownership and growing apathy, I have enjoyed the 'armchair' supporter's experience. I can tell what's good about football coverage (talkSport's 'Matchday Live' coverage), and what's bad (the levels of punditry on Match of the Day). I've grown up with local radio, particularly their football coverage. Contrasts between the premier commercial local football broadcaster and the BBC's equivalent are vast. Each has a place, but who knows what shape coverage will take in a few years time? For a start, the producers on Match of the Day might realise that 'I don't know much about this player, but-' is not an adequate level of punditry for the fee that certain former Newcastle strikers command. Perish the thought.
And I told talkSport's Director of Strategy my thoughts. I'm still not entirely sure what networking means, but I think that was it. He seemed impressed- 'know your audience' was his message. He also pressed home that, being at a top university, and having get-up-and-go, would, more often than not, see us achieve our ambitions.
A man from BBC Radio Oxford took the option of reaffirming the difficulties of the industry. I'm not entirely sure what speakers are trying to achieve through informing us that a frighteningly low number of on-air radio jobs are currently paid, but I suppose it ensured that nobody left with any illusions. Hardly likely, considering the repeated scaremongering that students encounter with regards to jobs. If I believed everything I heard, read and saw, I'd give up my degree and pick up the dole now. It's a horrible cliché, something which football pundits seemingly use as currency, but a career path is referred to as a path for a reason. You could encounter something you'd never expected to see on that path. You could also, conversely, encounter dog shit.
Careers events are most certainly not for the faint-hearted. Unoriginal tales of 'sleeping on the sofa' still raise a nervous laugh, as does any mention of debt. This event, however, left me with more feelings of positivity than negativity. I will be looking to radio on my Year Abroad in Toronto as a means of furthering my media ambitions. If I can persuade listeners in Toronto that news of Birmingham City's latest defeat is in any way relevant to their lives, I could be onto a winner.
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