I have heard a lot of Christmas music this month. You don’t get a lot of Hanukkah music. Here’s my input.
Blog
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Lovely nostalgia.
What a weekend of lovely nostalgia.
I was lucky enough to have two of my childhood fantasy universes descend before my eyes. I am talking of course about the wizarding world of Harry Potter and a galaxy far, far away.
Now before I continue, I am going to offer up a warning and the chance for people to run for the hills if they are worried I am about to spoil anything. I hate having films ruined for me and do what I can to make sure they are not ruined for others. I’m trying to write with a broad brush in order to sugest some of the things I am excited at without directly ruining it ahead of a good viewing.
On Saturday I saw Rogue One with my fellow gentlemen George and Benjy. We met first for brunch which was basically lunch as it was after twelve. I need to give a shout out to Kelsey for a free meal.
We took the backseat of the cinema so we could all feel one another up in the joyous dark side and then the lights descended. The first thing I noted is that the upcoming feature from Illumination, Sing, looks like the worst pile of shit I’ve ever had the discomfort of sitting through. And that’s really saying something because I’ve seen Frozen. The Batman Lego movie on the other hand looks brilliant and I am hoping my godsons want to see it so I have a cover for going to see it.Now, Star Wars.
Fuck!
So good.
So many feels.
There’s a part of me that is filled with a stomach-flipping childlike joy whenever I see the words “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, It just gets me. It makes me feel.The characters are all developed and rogueish which is fitting for the title. There are loads of lovely little nods to the original trilogy, there are cameos aplenty and the mixture of real effects and CGI works really nicely. The story is entirely separate from anything covered in the Skywalker character-led films but obviously leads into A New Hope. It’s just a well-crafted and fun film. I couldn’t have asked for anything else.
Like a lot of people, I had concerns when Disney took over the franchise but if it means they will be bringing me a new film in the Star Wars universe once a year then I am all for it. Marvel are following a similar model and absolutely smashing it so why not do the same with Star Wars.
Yesterday I saw Fantastic Beasts which has already been out for a month but shows no sign of being pulled from my local picture house.
It’s set in the wizarding world but some seventy years before Harry Potter and his little mates were fooling around round the back of the owl sheds. Instead it follows the adorable Newt Scamander as he gets a ship over to New York for some reason.
The film does well to not talk down or oversell the idea and again there are a number of cute nods to everything we knew and loved about the seven books and eight films which made The Boy Who Lived a bearable character. I’m pretty sure Newt was wearing a Hufflepuff scarf.The fantastic beasts themselves were cute or terrifying in equal ,measures and a lot was done to establish them in the way they were featured in Newt’s book, as published several years ago by Rowling for Comic Relief. The idea that the series is going to be extended over five films is interesting given the thin volume that was the original source material but In JK We Trust.
The important thing to take from this is that it is important to cultivate your childish joy in life. Both Harry potter and Star Wars were key to my development into the fine young man you see before you. I will always have a place for them in my heart and it is good to see them being so well cared for. -
Pixies | Live in Brixton
Not that you asked, and I’mma let you finish, but Doolittle is one of the greatest albums of all time. It can probably only be topped, to my mind, by Revolver, I’m Wide Awake and Transformer. It’s amazing. I was settled on the fact I would never get to hear the songs of Doolittle, or see Pixies live, until last night.
Before I go any further, it’s important to mention that I am currently recovering from a hernia operation I had last week. I was told on a number of occasions that I shouldn’t go to the gig because I could pop my stitches. What a rock ‘n’ roll way to go though. I stood at the back with the dads.
I went to see Pixies with my friend James, who as it turns out, isn’t very good at London. I had to go and collect him from Bank and see him safely through to Brixton so we could see the band. We got there just in time for the main act and shouldered our way through the bald patches and paunches in order to watch the band come on.
I love going to gigs with James. He absolutely loves music and you can see the joy on his face as a band launch into the songs he had been waiting on. To our right were two men who looked like the bullies from Hocus Pocus who take Max’s shoes. They took a lot of drugs.
Ahead of us were a group of dads who were reliving their youth. One of them looked dangerously old. When he backed out through the crowd, they parted like a sea and he road a Stannah stairlift to the toilets. He looked like Scorsese.The band were absolutely phenomenal. We got so excited each time they played something from Doolittle. Obviously everything else is great but Doolittle live. Boom!
Pixies were one of the few remaining bands on my To See list who aren’t actually dead. It made me very happy to catch them.
Pixies played:
Bone Machine
Monkey Gone To Heaven
Bel Esprit
Something Against You
Talent
Broken Face
(Unknown)
Might As Well Be Gone
Dead
Gouge Away
Isla De Encanta
Um Chagga Lagga
Caribou
Debaser
Where Is My Mind?
Winterlong
All The Saints
Wave Of Mutilation
Gouge Away
La La Love You
All I Think About Now
Classic Masher
Tenement Song
Velouria
Snakes
Magdalena 318
No. 13 Baby
Oona
Tame
Rock Music
Baal’s Back
Crackity Jones
Hey
Into The White
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The first rule of book club is…
In a weird twist of fate, I was asked a couple of months ago how I felt about a book group selecting one of my books to read. Understandably, I said I would be delighted. As the group was purely women I suggested Yallah! as being my most open and appropriate book for the audience. My other stuff is a bit too male-led and hideous in places. I was invited initially by Gina, a friend and colleague who is also a writer. I will often drop by her desk for a chat about books, mental health and anything else we feel like discussing.The group leader, Suzanne, read the opening chapter and said she would love for them to not only read the book but to also have me as a special guest at their meet up to discuss it.
The best part was I wouldn’t even need to put in for the lunchtime buffet they were ordering.It was still with some trepidation that I headed off to the meeting with both Gina and Michelle, who had also picked up Yallah and decided to join the group. I felt nervous as we entered the pub and walked straight through to the back room, wondering if I should get a drink first. The room was full of women. They were everywhere. As soon as we walked in, their collective gaze turned and I was terrified and enthralled all at once.
We started with food while Suzanne waxed lyrical about my writing style and the content of Yallah. She had purposely brought hummus to make me feel more comfortable. Every step of the way I was surprised by how much they knew about me. It made sense because they had read a book about me and my thoughts on my experiences. It still felt strange.
After we had dined on fine vegetarian cuisine the questions started coming. They wanted to know more about the trip and the people I had trekked with. They wanted to know more about Alan the camel. They wanted to know if Saaid and Omar were as much fun as they had seemed. If the food had been as good as I had made it out to be in the book. What it had been like to walk so far in such heat. I started to relax and in the end I had a really good time.
I was amazed with the way they connected with my writing. I originally wrote Yallah to serve as a reminder of the first trek I ever took part in. The idea of it being accessible outside of that group amazed me.
We posed for photographs together and they said they would be interested in reading more of my work. I felt like a celebrity. They told me I was an old soul and we had a number of deep conversations about spirituality.
I cannot tell you how incredible it was to sit with them and talk to them about what we went through in the Sahara. It was an incredible and surreal experience and one I will never forget. I would like to thank the Wormettes for taking the time to read my work and for inviting me to join them.
They are total sweethearts.
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Space baby.
What a weird experience. This weekend I visited Window To The Womb (henceforth abbreviated to W2TW), a 3D baby scanning centre of excellence. I don’t know. Before you worry that I’ve somehow become the living embodiment of Schwarzenegger’s character in Junior, I can confirm that I do not have a bun in the oven.
The first thing I should probably announce is that I’m going to be an uncle. My brother and his fiance are expecting a tiny little baby which is due in February. It’s due two days after my birthday which is just typical of him, trying to show me up when I’m trying to make everything about me.
The first thing to note about W2TW is that it is full of kids and expectant parents and family and then me. I didn’t think that I would care in any real way, shape or form but it was actually quite moving. They give you the standard ultrasound business but they’re then able to triangulate the… something… I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. They’re then able to show you in 3D on a screen what the baby looks like. It looks a bit like a sepia Voldemort obviously but ahhhhh, it was right nice. It’s given me the feelies.
I don’t know if I ever want a kid. I’m too selfish. My brother’s fiance has a little boy who I get along with really well because he’s fucking hilarious. He can be so naughty. He was laying on his front on the floor, screaming and punching stuff. He had to be subdued with a sausage roll and sent outside. There was a bit of me that thought why haven’t I got a sausage roll? Why aren’t I kicking off? I’ve been here for twenty minutes and nobody has asked about my hernia.There were all these parents-to-be having to put up with him throwing his temper around the waiting room and they’re thinking “fuck, this is what we have let ourselves in for.”
I have to admit, when that screen showed me a tiny version of the future I thought of the creepy baby in space from 2001: A Space Odyssey and then I brought myself back into the room and a tiny bit of emotion collected at the corner of my eye in the form of a tear and I brushed it away before anyone could think I was not a robot.
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63630
That’s the number of words I have written this month. It’s probably more. I’ve sent a lot of text messages.
63,630 is my word count for National Novel Writing Month 2016. I’m calling it. It will now be some time before I can look at that book again but I am excited about it and pleased with what I have been able to do in just nineteen days.
I’m now suffering from Repetitive Strain Injury in both wrists and need to just sit and read something completely different to my own work.
Good luck to everyone else still writing. -
Five Years
Five years ago today I tragically lost a very good friend. How strange that time has been.
I often find myself thinking of him, wondering what he would make of the world as it is today.
There is no doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t have been happy with the ending of Peep Show or the way things have changed at work, or in the wider world, but I hope that in some way I am carrying the torch for him. Losing a friend when they are just twenty-seven years old is fucking gutting. Realising that you have passed the age they will always be is a weird thing to comprehend. All of us are changing so much. We are having kids and getting ourselves wrapped up in mortgages. The jobs we had for a laugh so we could spend our Friday and Saturday nights pissing it up the wall are slowly turning into careers and we are losing sight of those teenage daydreams and becoming functioning adults who talk about politics and cavity wall insulation.
There will always be a little part of whatever I get myself wrapped up in that will be intrinsically linked to what he would have made of it and that cannot be helped. I’m glad of it in fact. In many ways I think we are pushed to perform and to achieve because life really is too fucking short. I miss Danny every day. I see him in the faces of strangers. I hear him at the end of corridors that I can’t get far enough down in time. His influence echoes in the best possible way.As a result of knowing him I have so many friends. I will always be thankful to him for that. I will always be thankful to them for sticking around. He had an ability to throw people together and expect them to stick, and for the most part, it had to work.
At his funeral, Sam read from Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Danny’s favourite contemporary book. I would like to paraphrase from it here:
“I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my face. Not caring if I saw downtown. Not even thinking about it. Because I was standing in the tunnel. And I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite.”Please look after yourselves and cultivate relationships with those you truly care about. You never know when that time could be over and it will always be too soon.
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The First 20k.
They say the first cut is the deepest. By they, I mean animal-print-clad pork swordsman Rod Stewart. I can’t account for that. I suppose it’s possible the first cut could be like a tester and then they could really take the plunge. Initially see how malleable the flesh is, then go up to the hilt.
Where was I? Oh yes, National Novel Writing Month.
This year is my fifth go at NaNoWriMo, a personal challenge of the highest order where participants seek to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days.
How could someone possibly do that? you cry.
Well, it breaks down to 1,667 words a day. Piece of piss.
No, literally, how could someone do that?
Also a good question. It turns out that you have to give up an awful lot in order to keep the writing wolf from the door, or invite him in and eat him, I’m lost in metaphors this week. Yesterday I didn’t leave my flat. I stayed in and clocked up over six thousand words, taking breaks to watch Parks & Recs, my latest addiction in between. I probably could have written more but one of my hands went numb, my eyes were streaming and I had a friend over for chilli and cuddles.Yesterday I managed to hit 20,000 words. I’m immensely proud of having already made it to this point. I would be prouder if I hadn’t learned that someone in the group finished NaNoWriMo in three days. But it’s not a competition and we are all winners just for taking part.
So keep on trucking. You’re doing great. Weekends are good for catching up if you’re fortunate enough to not have to work. If you do have to work then write notes for yourself through the course of the day or dictate the next chapter to yourself. It can help to access that conversational part of your brain that equates so well to storytelling.
So that’s it, I’m 20k in, but I’m not over the hump yet. Even with the halfway point in sight and possible today I’m already assuming I’ll write around 75k.
Peace.
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NaNoWriMo Cometh.
It’s that time of year again when I’m panicking and making spreadsheets and clearing my diary and wondering how close to the brink I will get as I throw myself into another novel-writing month.
For those who are new to the project, here are my tips from earlier this year when I took part in Camp NaNoWriMo:
Paul Schiernecker 