Freeview: the denouement.

The TV aerial man patiently reattaches the cable where I have kicked it out, probably in frustration and not being able to find one of the straight-edged pieces of my Doctor Who puzzle. He changes the fastening so that I can't kick it apart ever again, and cuts away all of the excess cables underneath my desk that do nothing whatsoever. My Freeview reawakens with channels galore.

"I seem to remember," he muses, "that last time you called me it was something very simple as well."
"Well, yes," I say. "This is not my field. I mean, if I lived with someone else they could probably just point out where I have detached a cable... Like that time when I called my brother because I couldn't connect my computer to the internet, and it was because I hadn't plugged in my phone line. But you know, there are other things I do well."

TV aerial man maintains a polite silence.

"I am a very good cook," I say, ignoring the evidence of the mangled omelette I have just made for my lunch. "You know. The feminine things. Those I am good at."
"That will be £55 please."

£55, I am thinking, is cheap compared to the life-long cost of my utter hopelessness with all matters practical. And in paying £55, I am also thinking, I am keeping this very nice and tactful man in employment, and that is a good thing. And additionally, I am thinking, why don't I move all those copies of my novel downstairs where people who come round to fix stuff that isn't really broken can see them, so that they know that there is at least one thing that I can do properly?

"Next time," I promise, "I'll try to make sure that the aerial has blown off the roof. Something good for you to do."
"Goodbye," says TV aerial man.

Freeview

Bit of a housekeeping post I'm afraid. Do bear with me.

I live in North London. I have a Freeview box that I've used with no problems at this address for several months. Suddenly, as of yesterday, I can only get the following channels: BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, Ceebeebies, BBC News 24, and BBCi. Rescanning for channels does not help. Switching off at the mains and switching back on again does not help. The manufacturer of my Freeview box seems to have disappeared, as e-mails bounce back and their help desk has a recorded message saying they are away "until January 2nd 2007". Help! Is anybody else in the same boat? Anyone got any advice? I need to get this sorted before this week's episode of ER!

Me on TV!

Me on French TV - in English or in French (about five minutes in, after the Peace Orchestra feature). Spot the difference - we recorded the interview twice, once in each language. The scariest part wasn't the interview at all but forcing myself to watch the French version, it's bad enough hearing myself speak a language that I know how to pronounce. Watching myself speak French is like watching a slightly more stupid version of myself. Slightly more stupid, and, due to the joys of the lens, also slightly fatter. That's how I like to be. Also, if you want to play a drinking game in the French version, try taking a chug every time I say the word "donc". Actually it's not too bad - I appear to have weaned myself off the habit of looking at the ceiling every time I'm trying to think of what to say (cf YouTube - or, please, don't), so at least it looks as if I'm talking to the presenter this time. Maybe next time I'll learn how to stop grinning and nodding like a dog in a car...

Lark Rise to Candleford

Ballykissangel in crinolines.

The Rovers Return: a mystery solved!

The Rover's Return (with an apostrophe) was opened in 1902, on the newly built Coronation St (1902 being Coronation year for Edward VII, hence its name). It was originally to be called The Coronation, but the brewery was forced to change its name when the go-ahead had already been given for the street to be named Coronation Street. When Lieutenant Philip Ridley returned from active service in the Boer War, the pub was named in his honour. In 1918, to celebrate the return of the soldiers from World War I, the apostrophe was removed, thus making it The Rovers Return (plural+verb). When Coronation Street began in 1960, the signage of the pub read "The Rovers Return" but at some point was changed to read "Rovers Return Inn", without a "The".

Well, well, well. I love Wikipedia.

Coronation Street

I have only just this second realised that "Rovers Return" actually means something and isn't just two random words put together. I'm a writer, you know. I blame the lack of apostrophe.

There Will Be Blood (or will there?)

The world says: it's the most incredible film ever made. Miss it at your peril.

I say: It's about men and oil and it's written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson so it's probably about 300 hours long. Oh god, do I have to?

No Certificate For Old Men

Went to see No Country For Old Men on Monday night. It is magnificent. Though as Cormac MacCarthy is one of my favourite authors, the Coen Brothers two of my favourite filmmakers, and I adore Tommy Lee Jones to a level which stays this side of healthy only because he is a bit old, it would have to have worked very hard to put a foot wrong with me. It's very nasty and very bleak but beautifully done. You do have to have a reasonably high tolerance of people getting blown to pieces by a psycho with bad hair and a very unpleasant kind of gun.

Which does make it rather surprising that the film has a 15 certificate. The tone is so distressing and the gore so graphic and unrelenting, and the themes very dark, complex and adult. I'm not sure where I stand on certification of films in general, but if it is going to be done, it should at least have some logic and consistency. My cousin, who works in cinema, explained it to me. In this country, apparently, the method of setting a certificate for a film is done with the aid of a checklist. You tick every time something happens which might give a film a higher certificate and then count the ticks at the end. There is only one tick per type of infraction and no subjective judgement about the overall feel of the film. So No Country For Old Men gets one tick - *one* - for gun violence, and another for blood. But there's no sex, no swearing, no punching, no stabbing, and so it's a 15. This also explains why The Bourne Ultimatum, with that charming sequence where a man gets bludgeoned to death in a shower cubicle, is a 12A. Show some tits and say motherfucker, though, and it suddenly becomes unsuitable for kids.

Still, that has to be better than the closed system they have in the US, which was exposed to brilliant effect by one of my favourite documentary makers, Kirby Dick, in his movie This Film Is Not Yet Rated. There, it's a panel of "concerned parents" who are in charge of deciding who can see what. And nobody knows who they are. Feel confident?

To return to No Country For Old Men, I had a glance at the BBFC guidelines for certification and apparently, for violence in a 15-rated film, "Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury." Have you seen this film? More to the point, have they?

Quantum of Solace

I may only know what 1 + 3/4 + 1/4 of those words mean (very confident on "of") but it's an excellent excuse to put up a picture of Daniel Craig in his (very) smalls.

I had to read a book called The Natufian in the Levant once, perhaps they should name the next Bond film after that?

American Idol

Just when you thought there was no point ever switching on the television again... along comes American Idol.

I love American Idol. The population of the United States, calculated in July 2007, was 301,139,947. For the same month, the population of the UK was estimated to be 60,776,238. So even with my maths I can see that the US has five times as many people. Five times as many talented singers, five times as many lunatics. But then, you have to multiply that by the American Dream. Ah yes, the American Dream, that anybody from anywhere can grow up to do anything, to be the President, to be the head of a multinational corporation, to be the next American Idol. Yeah man! Come on! You can do it! NO YOU CAN'T. Because to be the next American Idol you need to be able to sing. This is not a fact that has trickled down, even after seven seasons. Nobody seems to have realised that you can't always get what you want just by wanting it a whole lot and being a good person. There's always that moment after the terrible audition where the tearful auditionee says "but my mother always told me that I have a good heart" (that's a direct quote - I have never forgotten), "everywhere I go people smile", "God loves me". Thing is, God loves everybody. It doesn't make you special and it doesn't make you talented. America seems to be full of people with a lot of hair and a lot of teeth making a lot of noise with very little reason. No, that's probably not fair. But American Idol is full of those people, praise be.

What American Idol also has is Simon Cowell, and to my delight, what Simon Cowell seems to be hell bent on this year is filling up the programme with bonkers people. It's as if, having watched the likes of Sanjaya last year go from strength to strength, that he has decided that if the programme must be stuffed with the mad, it will damn be stuffed with *his* mad. Why else put through the one-eyed tone-deaf Janis Joplin impersonator whose brightly coloured outfit has, by her own gleeful admission, "been making people laugh all day"? It's as if he has decided to find out just how far exactly he can push his luck, given that if he says yes, the others tend to agree, no matter who is doing the singing. (If Randy says yes, the auditionee always goes through too, because Paula always says yes if somebody else says yes first. In fact, if Paula ever had to give her opinion first I think it would actually kill her.)

My other favourite thing about the show (OK, there are quite a few more favourite things, which we can discuss week by week) is when someone comes on looking like the top Google Image search result for 'bizarre', and you are bracing yourself for HORROR and they open their mouth and out comes something which is actually halfway decent. Witness the Dallas show's singing future congressman, complete with nerd specs, geeky hairdo, clip-on tie, and fulsome political ambitions. OK, so he might not actually be good enough to win it, but he's easily the match of, say, John Barrowman, which means he'd get to the final if he was in the UK. This not being the UK, he is likely to fall by the wayside a fair while before then, because one of my other favourite things about American Idol is that the people who are good are so very very good, so by the end you are actually just enjoying the singing. Witness: Dreamgirls's magnificent Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson came SEVENTH. I'd like to see her in a singing contest against Same Difference and that short kid who won X Factor this year.

There are a few weeks left of audition shows before the fun of the knockouts start (here's hoping that Cat Deeley will not be providing those pointless interstitions that proved the lowlight of last year's run). To join in the fun, simply switch on ITV2 at any time of the day or night and it is almost guaranteed to be being repeated.

Worst Date Movie Ever

I'm going to be off games for a few days so I thought I'd set you a fun question while I'm away: what's your nomination for the worst date movie ever? I actually was once taken on a first date to see Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's documentary about gun culture and high school murders in the US. Reading reviews of new films this week, it occurs to me that this could easily be beaten by a romantic trip to see grim Romanian abortion movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. Any improvement on that?

Primeval

Now, my concentration on this was interfered with spending the first half flicking between it and The One And Only, so it was DOUGLAS HENSHALL - FAT TOM JONES - KILLER RAPTOR - SHORT ROD STEWART - HANNAH SPEARITT - GRAHAM NORTON'S DEVIL TAN. Also, I only saw one episode of season 1, so I have very little comparative material to go on and next to no background knowledge. But for all that, I actually really enjoyed Primeval.

The premise is dead simple. A bunch of prehistoric creatures come through a rift in time (they keep calling it an "anomaly" which I'm assuming is because all of the better words have been taken by previous scifi series) and team Henshall have to find them all and shove them back into the past. These anomalies crop up all over the place and each time a different monster gets through and wreaks a different kind of havoc in a different place.

This time it was a bunch of velociraptors in a shopping mall (an empty mall sadly, they probably couldn't afford the extras, so only the odd security guard got munched). (By the way was anyone paying attention and saw what happened to the guy who got his throat ripped out by a baby dino? I saw the bit where he'd mysteriously vanished but that was it.) All very Jurassic Park I'll grant you, but doing surprisingly well given the un-Jurassic Park-sized budget. I think it's easier to make the dinos convincing when they move dead fast. They kept the tension up pretty well over the whole hour, and there were some geniune surprises along the way: full marks to the bods who came up with the chasing-dinosaurs-on-motorbikes sequence, and I loved - scrap that - *adored* the moment when the Daddy raptor ATE the baby raptor.

The human interest stuff fitted nicely around the action without slowing things down too much. A pleasing mystery has been set up regarding certain changes that have happened between the last time Douggie went into the rift - sorry - anomaly, and when he came out, but (and I like this) the changes are mostly subtle and it's hard to see if the world is worse off or just different. Plus I am really looking forward to the reappearance of evil Mrs Douggie, who has also, it's emerged, been boffing his sidekick, repressed macho yet oddly metrosexual Stephen. And bonus points go to the casting of lovely Martin from Green Wing as a bumbling - but surely hiding something - civil servant who only exists in the new reality.

I'm sticking my neck out here and maybe it's just the novelty, but I enjoyed this more than a lot of recent Doctor Who, which, certain genius episodes aside, has been suffering a bit from self-congratulatoriness. This was simpler, fresher, and a lot less smug. Whether I can muster up enough continuing enthusiasm for the central shoot-em-up of humans versus monsters is another matter; it is a bit like a computer game with a lot of different-but-the-same levels, and without any guiding intelligence to the monsters, it's a little hard to invest that much interest in them. Douggie Henshall is a brilliant lead but I failed to engage with any of the other characters: macho-metro Stephen seems rather cold, the only female character in this episode spent most of it unconscious, and I can't decide whether the geeky boy with the rat face is quirky and amusing or just really annoying.

I'll be back for more, then, in the particular hope that we get some good bad guy action complicating the setup next week.

The One And Only

In search of a new televisual addiction to replace my beloved Strictly, I tuned into The One And Only this evening on BBC1. Did anybody else? I'm guessing not, so I won't keep you too long. Only to say that Graham Norton was sporting the most bizarre "suntan" I have ever seen in my life, to whit: forehead: bright orange. Nose: bright orange. Rest of face including cheeks: ghostly pale. Skiing with giant sunglasses and scarf pulled right up over chin but not over nose? But then why orange? Why not red or brown? And why not, for the love of god, conceal it with make-up?

Anyway, the standard was abysmal, I'm tempted to take the piss mercilessly but they'd all worked hard, the poor loves, and I don't see too many fanblogs appearing for this one so they'll make their way here by Google eventually. I suppose that once you set up a reality show you do just have to go with the people who audition. My suspicion is that very few of those in the show actually started off as a tribute act to the artist concerned, but were just looking for another way to get on TV. Heaven knows what they will think of the winner once they claim their prize: a season on stage in Vegas...

Worth tuning in once to watch the transformation of a twentysomething ginger supermarket stacker into Lionel Ritchie.

Clips and stuff to be found here.

Simone de Beauvoir

It's ironic that I should have posted the below in the week of the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir's birth without acknowledging her as the original and greatest thinker of the subject of male norm / female other. So here is a lengthy quote from the introduction to The Second Sex which you are by no means obliged to read, but does rather make the point better than I ever could. Happy Birthday Simone! You'd be glad to know that things have changed, though, sadly, not enough.

A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: ‘You think thus and so because you are a woman’; but I know that my only defence is to reply: ‘I think thus and so because it is true,’ thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man’, for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity. A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. It amounts to this: just as for the ancients there was an absolute vertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus: these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it. ‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle; ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam.

Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being. Michelet writes: ‘Woman, the relative being ...’ And Benda is most positive in his Rapport d’Uriel: ‘The body of man makes sense in itself quite apart from that of woman, whereas the latter seems wanting in significance by itself ... Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man.’ And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex’, by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other.

The Ascent Of Woman

In this week's Time Out, they have a special on the body, illustrated by one of those 'Ascent of Man' pictures where you start on the left at the least evolved and go through to the present day on the right. (A bit like, though not, the one above.)

Now, I studied Archaeology and Anthropology as an undergraduate, so I have seen a lot of these drawings in textbooks, articles and so on, and I have never, ever, EVER seen one where the evolving figure was female*. I am led to the conclusion that women didn't evolve, we are just the same base ape creatures that we have been since the dawn of time. Either that or we came out of the primordial ooze perfect, stopping only to smear it on our faces as an exfoliating masque.

Why is the male the default? Why do we always have to learn about the history of our species entirely through the changes in men? Why are we still living by the notion that what is male is normal and what is female is different? We are the majority, remember, not you, you weird, hairy, penisy, breastless, low-voiced, non-menstruating freaks.

*I will grant you that the third figure from the left is sporting some impressive breasts but I think that they are just ape-man-boobs.

Pop! What is it Good For?

Inspiration comes in the funniest places.

I suppose most people would assume that as a writer you get your inspiration from other writers. Well, yes, of course. But it's complicated. I tend to measure my achievements in comparison with my peer group, so that I know that I'm doing well if I'm keeping up with the best. That was fine for grades at school but it's rather more depressing now. I used to come top in my class and I can't any more. The last three books I've read have been: Dickens' Bleak House (actually I'm still only 1/3 of the way through); Peter Carey's Illywhacker; Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games. Bleak House probably speaks for itself, of the other two Illywhacker is double-Booker-winner Carey near the top of his game, and Sacred Games is a brilliant 900 page modern Indian epic. These are not good mirrors to look in. In fact, in general I read relatively highbrow literary fiction, and that is not what I write. What I write is the kind of book that the New York Times suggests was put together with fiction-writing software - yes: I'm still sore about that, when I wish I could have got a computer to do it rather than put two and a half years of my own sweat into it. It's hard enough to write the light and the structurally simple, how the hell does anyone manage proper literature? I'm being a little disingenuous here as I think that my book has its own strengths - notably, it is funny, and it sneaks in some intellectualism like a pill in jam - but compared to Dickens it's pretty pale.

Anyway, channel-hopping tonight, I stumbled over the BBC4 Paul Morley documentary Pop! What is it Good For? which, as you might expect, was a smart investigation into pop music for the brainy listener. It was beautifully put together with some really lovely post-modern editing techniques (forgive the pretension - I used to work in TV docs back in the day), a decent clutch of interesting interviewees and, unsurprisingly, a cracking soundtrack.

Some way into the programme, Paul Morley started talking about the Kinks. As I listened to the wonderful Waterloo Sunset, something in me started to stir, and as he moved on to Lola, I thought: that's it! that's what I'm trying to do! If Gods Behaving Badly were a pop song, I'd like to think it would be Lola:



It's such a great story and it's clever and cool and it makes you want to sing along and you're already there within seconds. It is probably better than Gods Behaving Badly but I definitely felt as if I was comparing like with like. Which is not how I feel when I'm reading Bleak House.

Then a little while later into the documentary, Morley was interviewing Peter Blake who was talking about his development as an artist in the sixties. He says, and I can't remember it exactly, that you get classical music and pop music, and what he was doing was the equivalent, pop art as opposed to classical art. Here's a bit of Peter Blake:

I thought: Yippee! Maybe I don't have to be a classical novelist. Maybe I can be a pop novelist. Maybe I can be like Ray Davies or Peter Blake. They're no lesser because they aren't Mozart or Michelangelo. They are doing something else.

By the time Simon Armitage was dissecting the poetry of Morrissey and This Charming Man I was bouncing off the walls with excitement.



I want my novels to be like listening to a really great pop song. A song that makes you smile (or cry) and makes you think and makes you dance and it's over in three minutes and you never forget it.

Other books can only provide you with so much inspiration, sometimes you have to look somewhere else. I'd forgotten about the joy that comes from a song so perfect and simple and true that it becomes a part of you without you even having to try. That moment of instant recognition when a pop song goes right for your soul. As transient and delicious as a kiss, or a really good chocolate. That's what I want to write, only as a novel. Just once would be enough.

QVC

You're going to have to trust me on this one, but QVC is a creation of utter genius.

I have just got back from a few days staying with a friend who is a QVC addict. I am ashamed to admit that I doubted her. I was wrong. QVC is the Pringles of television. Once you've popped, you can't stop. You can watch it for literally hours. Essentially, they spend all day and night trying to sell you bad jewellery made of stones you've never heard of (blueberry quartz, anyone?), pointless home "solutions", baffling beauty products, overpriced basics (watch them talk about tupperware for an hour!), all live, all unscripted. Unscripted is the magic. Recently I saw someone trying to sell jewellery from Brazil, a country which, she pointed out, is mostly famous for its milk. The key is that as long as they keep talking, it has a hypnotic effect so that all of the original thoughts are sucked out of your head and you genuinely start to believe that you need this stuff. I almost accidentally bought a full set of coathangers with useful trouser barbs. As an additional incentive to keep watching, members of the public can call in and discuss the exciting QVC products that they have already purchased. You'd be astonished how frequently the live phone-in is *not* abused.

Anyway, to convince you further, here are two brilliant examples that I tracked down on YouTube. They are both from America, so you will have to imagine the same thing for the UK, only a bit more Home Counties. The first clip is for a magnificent piece of exercise equipment that you can hardly do without, and the second is a glorious example of the joys of improvisation.





Can't resist? Just call in and buy...

Jewish Book Week

The following just plopped into my inbox:

Would you like the opportunity to work with literary luminaries from around the world?

Jewish Book Week 2008 is looming on the horizon and we’re looking for volunteers to join our team and help make this year another stellar week. You’ll have the chance to meet dazzling literary personalities and get free access to events.

I'm reading at Jewish Book Week. Cripes. I suppose that makes me a dazzling literary luminary personality from around the world. Better invest in some lipstick.

Ice Dance Movies

It was an ice dance themed New Year for me - not involving any actual ice dancing, don't be ridiculous: me on ice resembles that shaky footage you get of newly born foals taking their first steps, only blindfolded, and in a force nine gale. And, indeed, on ice. But I did stay in with a close friend watching ice dance movies: The Cutting Edge, The Cutting Edge: Going For The Gold, and Blades of Glory.

Blades of Glory was hilarious, and I'm not contractually obliged to say that because it is made by Red Hour, the new home of Gods Behaving Badly, honest. The Cutting Edge: Going For The Gold was the most charmless piece of film that I've ever seen (it's really saying something when ten minutes into a romcom you are desperately hoping that the vile couple do not get together.)

The Cutting Edge, however, was completely brilliant. Sure, it's a formulaic romantic comedy with a plotline that you can figure out in its entirety just from looking at the box. (Yes it's an ice dance love story - so that happens - and that - yes, and that. And that. And the ending? Yes. That.) On the other hand, either you are the kind of person who loves the idea of a film about a stuck up rich ice dancer who is paired with a redneck former ice hockey player to dance at the Olympics, or you are not. If you are not, fair enough, but leave these pleasures alone for the rest of us.

Anyway, what really sets The Cutting Edge apart, aside from its great performances (notably Moira Kelly, just about making up for her supremely irritating turn on The West Wing, and lovely, sexy, where-is-he-now DB Sweeney) and fabulous ice dance sequences, is the script. It is very sharp, very funny, and very clever. In particular, the character of Kate (Kelly) is written as a mouthy, grumpy, opinionated, intelligent, unreasonable, funny woman who is completely lovable from the beginning to the end, and never, as is usually the case in this kind of film, has to be humiliated, brought down, and admit that she really needs to be looked after. She does get dropped on her head on ice at high speed several times through the film, but it's that kind of movie.

In fact the script was so suspiciously good that I had to look it up, and it turns out that it was written by Tony Gilroy, who lately penned or co-penned all three Bourne movies and Michael Clayton. Which explains a lot. So if you fancy a charming romantic comedy, written by someone highly intelligent with a fine skill at writing tight thrillers, ON ICE, this movie is for you. And if you don't, I can't help thinking that you are lost. You do know what this blog is about, don't you?

Happy New Year!

I've only just got home and switched the heating on, and my hands are far too cold for typing, so until I'm back in gear here's something I wrote for the Page 69 Test website. NB it's using page 69 of my US edition - page 69s of other editions reflect rather more kindly on my writing...