Times they are a changin'...

Well not all that much. I was getting a little tired of the blue and thought it might be time for a little revamp. At the moment it's all a bit red but it may not stay this way. Please give me your thoughts as I'd love to hear what you think.

Holy Land

Mirage drifts in homeland calling
The cave mouth chews and digests
Our people and their dreamings

The old cracked wrinkles in the ground
A mother’s face
The tears and strains of time

Sand glow and unity
Golden reward abounding
The road is long my brothers

The desert cries like a horn in the night
“Arise! Arise to danger!”
Legends grow from sand like this
   
There’s a mist within us all
We grow to know it like a friend
We are ghosts my brothers

We are all that is left of the old ways
Dying breeds of men
Echoes in the fault lines

Dancing in the Gaps Between the Clouds

We were crows and wizards and greater than gods
Great stomping children and ladies refined
We were the future and past
Hope beyond time

We flowed and did not stumble
Clutched hands – our own and others
Our names on unfamiliar tongues
And familiar ones

A family extended many-fold
As we discover other mothers
Connections wrought
And solid forged

We were hedonism free and heavy winged
The gravity is strong here
Fed on words
We fly like birds

The ground was soft beneath our feet
And never were the days ahead
So unimportant
And so close

'Each the other’s world entire'

A fair selection of my friends will know that this has become one of my new loves. I’ve recently read “The Road” and a few days ago saw the film adaptation so here are my views on the two. My copy of the book came from a charity shop and it was in excellent condition with the original receipt inside. After having used it as a bookmark for some time, I finally looked at this item in more detail.

Apparently this particular copy was bought alongside a book entitled 'Beautiful Kitchens'. I have to salute the eclectic nature of this particular visit to W H Smith while wondering how dull your life needs to become to want a book about especially attractive kitchens. Thinking about it, this may well be the reason this book was on the charity shop shelf alongside the obligatory Dan Browns, Maeve Binchys and East of The Sun (A book that so offended one fellow traveller that she abandoned it on a train, throwing it onto an empty seat in utter contempt). Whatever their reasons, I’m grateful to this lover of kitchens for helping me to afford the beginning of my love affair with Mr McCarthy.

 Having discussed the origin of my book, I’m going to start with the film. Just because I can. Like a lot of book lovers, I generally don’t find that film adaptations are as good as their original sources. They can be excellent films that I truly enjoy watching but they just can’t compete with the original. With the best screenwriter, director and actors on board, a film still suffers from its limitations the main two being the lack of a narrative voice / interior monologue (Voiceovers cannot capture this really) which means an inability to have the same amount of information and the simple fact that a reader’s imagination is still stronger than the best CGI and effects. On the other hand, a film offers a completely different form of storytelling. An actor’s expression tells us what it could take a paragraph to convey in words.

With that out of the way, I can say it was a damn good film. The actors were excellent. I am a long standing fan of Viggo Mortensen, but I was truly impressed by Kodi Smit-McPhee. A lot of child actors make me want to hit my head against the nearest blunt object but his performance was wonderful. Between them, they carried a film that is slim on plot and heavy on character, without it being a strain at all.

Another strong point was the film’s cinematography. You can do a lot with grey apparently. The skies are grim and the vast empty landscape appears inhospitable and above all lonely. There’s something about it that is both beautiful and ugly simultaneously. I suppose that pretty much sums up both the book and the film. Both are well worth a look although the latter lacks some of the original’s subtlety. When the action does occur in the film, it is too much. The score brings out the dramatic violin strings and because we are pretty much being shouted at “THIS IS A REALLY TENSE MOMENT”, it’s not. It seems dissonant with both the plot and the otherwise beautiful soundtrack. This is a small gripe though probably more about film conventions in general rather than this one in particular. When you read a book the font doesn’t change when it’s exciting. The reader creates the mood from the text.

There is one thing you get in the book that the film cannot give you though and that is Cormac McCarthy’s writing. His prose is really quite beautiful. This is no pretentious meandering – the book is very readable, but you often get caught out in the quieter moments of the story by a simple description that makes you really feel something. He manages to convey an awful lot with just a few well-placed words. Punctuation is minimal – no commas, no speech marks only basic sentences. It takes a moment to adjust to, but it makes the writing look stripped down. Despite this, it is still incredibly elegent.
 

 What made the book great for me though is that it’s about striving to retain goodness and a sense of humanity against all the odds. Most of all, it’s a book about the bond between father and son. I think that’s worth noting. Such stories are quite rare. We live in a society with an increasing number of single mothers and an acceptance that children grow up in a maternal environment. When we read about or see fathers with their children in books and the media, they tend to be awkward, absent or aloof - all conveniently ‘A’s apparently. Before we drown in a sea of alliteration, I guess I want to point out that I enjoyed a book where fatherhood is given the same importance as motherhood. The Man is strong enough to survive and protect his child in the bleakest of environments yet is still incredibly caring. McCarthy has created a man who is a nurturing figure that is wholly masculine. I would be hard-pushed to think of another writer who has quite so aptly done this.

Both the film and the book are known for being GRIM. A few people commented on me reading such a depressing book. I would say it's the opposite. It makes you think about the value of life. When you realise what you are lucky enough to have, suddenly your own life seems unimaginably hopeful. Put simply, you're not stuck in a dying world with only your offspring and a shopping trolley for company.

Overall, I can simplify this review into a quite simple message. Don’t waste your life assessing the aesthetic value of kitchens.

Overdue

Hello my dear patient readers. As you may have noticed, I’ve been away a while. Sadly I’ve had a few computer issues recently which have severely delayed the post you should have had a long time ago. While I wait to get this sorted I thought I’d give you an update of what I’ve been up to.

 Falmouth

I’ve been back in Cornwall for a few days.

Well it would be nice to say I'd been on lots of picturesque coastal walks but this is actually a picture I took a while ago. I would like show you a collection of photos of beautiful west country scenery but my camera stayed happily curled up in my bag while I spent a lot of time catching up with friends in here.

There is something truly comforting about going into a pub where the graffiti is familiar, the barman knows your normal drink and somewhere your name is written on a jenga brick.

Of course no trip to Falmouth would be worthwhile without a session in here:

Loading became a regular haunt for me over the last year or so. It’s a tiny place and home to gamers, coffee lovers and infamous shot sets. It’s also the only place where I have a slot on a Hall of Fame

So before this turns into ‘Pubs of Falmouth’, I’ll continue.

Employment

I’ve been especially busy this last week as I finally have a full time job. Hopefully soon I will get back into the habit of sleeping like a sensible person. Maybe I will also develop stronger eyeballs so staring at computer screens all day won’t make my eyes and head hurt. This is problematic when you want to blog in your spare time.

Still, it’s nice to finally have the chance to earn some money. I work for a Student accommodation firm at the moment. Thus far my stats rate thusly.

Hours worked – 30.5 (Bank holidays are kind)

Colleague names remembered - 8

Calls by irate and threatening parents – 1

Pictures of stained mattresses viewed – 1000000000000000

So far so good.