Badlands and Egrets

If anyone noticed my blog absence yesterday, it was for the best of causes - I was out walking. In this case, around the fine old Kentish town of Faversham (with an amazing parish church, St Mary of Charity, that has to be seen to be believed). As so often with such time-soaked, visually rich and glorious English towns - especially towards the eastern seaboard - there's a dark and seamy netherworld just beneath the rosy surface. Faversham is closely surrounded by council (or ex-) estates that seem all the more squalid and gipsyish for being on the edge of open country. The quaint old streets of Faversham are thick with charity shops, pound shops and suchlike, and walking out of town along Faversham creek takes you through an extraordinary Dickensian marginal world - half of the water, half of the land, with bizarre houseboat-style habitations amid the rotting hulks and beached barges. As the signs of human population dwindle, a bleak, flat estuarine landscape opens up, in which it would be no surprise to see Magwich himself emerging from the mud or being rowed silently down the creek. However, at intervals one of these lands gracefully and redeems the muddy blankness... I blame global warning.

Richard and Judy

Just as I was told (by my agent, who knows such things) that a book chosen by Richard and Judy will at once sell 300,000 extra copies, we learn their Channel 4 show is to end. 'Richard Madeley' is simultaneously angry, lyrical and defiant. I interviewed these two once and found them and found them both pleasant, strange and extravagantly ordinary. They seemed, somehow, unanchored, products of a floating world. The odd vehemence of Richard's blurted opinions suggested a kind of eccentric neutrality and Judy's long-suffering mumsiness appeared to be a pose but an unchosen one, as if 'Judy' was just what she had to be. This is, I suppose, what is required of television stars - being everything to everyone without being no-one. Sadly, their book stuff is likely to continue. Sadly because they have helped shore up the present, lamentable state of the book market in which bookshops dictate what will and won't sell and demand money for window display and even those phony 'staff pick' shelves. R & J just helped them rig the market more effectively. Such a criticism will mean nothing to them, of course; to themselves, they are just what they must be - too of the culture to be clearly seen by the culture.

Word Verification On

Sorry, I have had to reinstate word verification for comments, I have been hit by a wave of spam.

The Seagull Caption

I know you've all lost interest in my captions, but, what the hell, it's Friday - (Isn't it? I may be wrong about this, I'm in Norfolk.) - and I like the seagull.

Hurting Women is Fun

Every time I see the BBC spy show Spooks - not often, I admit - I see a woman being tortured. I guess this is more box office than a tortured man. I have also seen Heather Mills going weepy and crazy about her treatment in the tabloids. The tabloids - shorthand for all pop media - say she had it coming because she courted publicity, she had some kind of form and so on. I have no view of Mills's moral status, primarily because I don't care but also because I know perfectly well it is irrelevant. By marrying McCartney, she automatically turned herself into a standard blonde bitch for the tabloids. Blonde bitches make particularly juicy torture victims. Finally, we have the stout-hearted yeoman of Edenbridge burning an effigy of Cherie Blair. They had, of course, considered Heather Mills. The charge is that Blair is making money from a book. Burn the witch, sorry, bitch! Sexual sadism - there's a lot of it about.

Burn This Book

Scanning a publisher's catalogue, as I do, I come across Three Lions: The Unofficial Story of the England Football Team Since 1966 by Brian Beard to be published in April. The blurb announces, 'Published for Euro 2008; the ultimate fan's guide...' etc.. As I recall, The Worst Football Team in the World now stands little chance of qualifying for Euro 2008.  This book, I fear, will only pour more salt in the wound and send Frank Lampard back to his cognitive therapist.

Careless Pork

It's gratifying to see that the latest nonsense on cancer, booze, meat, etc is being greeted by the press with due scepticism - and, in the case of The Sun, downright mockery. Today's paper (not the online edition alas) carries the inspired headline Careless Pork Costs Lives. This is all in refreshing contrast to the ever worthy, ever credulous, ever minatory BBC, which led its bulletins with the supposed alcolhol-cancer link - despite the fact that obesity-cancer is the story, inasmuch as there is one. Hats off to Her Majesty's Press!

The Day The Clown Cried

I have had this magnificent tale of movie madness drawn to my attention, and feel I must share it. How could Robin Williams have turned this one down? It just screams Robin Williams...

Halloween Must Be Stopped

Does anybody, in this country, actually want Halloween? Last night I saw grim-faced mothers marching along the road with brats wrapped in sheets crudely marked with felt-tips. This is an American show. We don't like it, we never used to do it and we don't have to now.

The Shield: Send Vic Mackey to Iraq

Reeling from the news that dark matter doesn't exist, that Elvis, fiscally, lives, that my cold sores will destroy my mind, that the Iraq war is God's judgment on gay-tolerating America and that we played the Darth Vader march for King Abdullah, I find myself unable to compete with the real world this morning. But, anyway ... CaptainB comments below that The Shield is the best cop show on TV. He said this to me a while ago and, as a result, I found myself with the complete seasons three and four on DVD. It is an extraordinary piece of work. Everybody in The Shield is ugly and nobody is a hero. The main characters are permanently engaged in corruption and torture and in elaborate deals with the gangs they are supposed to be fighting. Best on TV? Probably, though I don't see many cop shows. But, while watching, I suddenly realised why CaptainB likes it so much. He is a great believer in dividing one's enemies - precisely what, he argues, we should have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. We could, for example, have made a deal with Iran in return for destroying Saddam and the Taleban. This is, in fact, precisely what the cops in The Shield do. It isn't pretty and it can never achieve total victory. But it is the best that, under the circumstances, can be done. It is a view of life as a series of compromises intended to move a little closer to good and a little further away from evil. In strategic terms, Vic Mackey is a dirty realist; as such, he'd probably be a better Middle East envoy than Tony Blair - remember him?