Anxious Anticipation - Lord Foul's Bane

Many, many moons ago - back in 1977, to be precise-ish - in the continuous hunt for the next great Epic Fantasy, I was fortunate enough to be one of the first to encounter The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, and the amazing debut novel that was Lord Foul's Bane!

 

Like the great J.R.R. Tolkien himself, I was wary of those stories of Faerie that involved travel of one form or another between the realm of reality and the perilous land, but found that I had little to worry about in this manifestation of that genre. Stephen R. Donaldson handles this transition with skill and aplomb, and the result is breath-taking!

 

 

 

Right from the start, I fell in love with The Land and its inhabitants, whether good, evil, or just filling the scenery. From Thomas Covenant - the conflicted, leprosy-inflicted hero who bears a stark resemblance to Berek Half-hand, who himself bears a striking resemblance to Beren Erchamion - through the Bloodguard, the enigmatic defenders of The Land and its inhabitants, as well as the Viles, Urviles, Ravers, Cavewights, Humans, and the Giants - one of my all-time favourite fantasy races - not to mention Lord Foul himself, Donaldson fills his creation with convincing characters and peoples, and describes his world in such beautiful detail he makes you want to be there. I read the entire series - Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War and The Power That Preserves - and read them again, and, like The Lord of the Rings and The Sword of Shannara, kept them close at hand for many years.

 

And then I moved to London. And then I moved to Canada. And, sadly, most of my beloved book collection remained back home in South Shields, where much of them became victims of age, bad storage, and the depredations of friends and family.

 

So I was thrilled when Grim Oak Press ( https://grimoakpress.com/ ) said they were publishing a limited, newly illustrated edition of the original Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant trilogy, and signed up as soon as I could to get one of the limited copies. Grim Oak had already published both lettered and limited illustrated editions of The Sword of Shannara, which I was pained to learn I'd missed out on, so was pleased I hadn't missed out of Covenant.

 

So now I am waiting in anxious anticipation on the April publication date. I have heard nothing but good things about the Grim Oak Press editions, and cannot wait to delve back into The Land and revisit one of the best fantasy worlds ever created.

Carry On Bowel Movements - Kenneth Williams - 1926-1988

I just finished reading Born Brilliant, the official biography of Kenneth Williams, and, like many people I assume, I am left with a collective contradiction of emotions and memories that only serve to add flavour to the mystique of one of Britain's most beloved, and obviously most misunderstood, comedic actors.

Pretty much any person born in Britain up to about 20 years ago would be familiar with and have fond memories of the series of Carry On movies and their standard cast of actors and actresses, of which Kenneth Williams is probably one of the two most memorable components, along with the loud-laughing Sid James.  In post-WW2 Britain, the Carry On movies, with their blend of baudy British comedy, formed a part of the Collective Psyche of Recovery that propounded an "Up Yours!" to both the English stiff upper lip and those that had been besetting them so recently, and which set the scene for so many memes around the British and sex that laid to rest the hangover of Victorian attitudes that so many still deride today.  Famous for their irreverent scripts and their promotion of the "camp" flair that oozed across Britain in the '60s and '70s, the Carry On movies remain firm favourites in the pantheon of British Comedy films.

And yet, while reading Born Brilliant, it becomes obvious that this huge, comedic talent was a massive collection of contradictions that both belie the star on the screen, and yet give credence to the often trooped message that behind every successful comedian there lies a tragic life. Who would have believed, for instance, that the genius of raunchy innuendo started each daily entry in his diaries with a detailed description of his bowel movement, and listed all of the pills and potions and prognoses of his multitude of illnesses - both real and imagined?


It's always entertaining to have our cravings for the "behind the scenes" gossip and situational conflict that comes with a successful ensemble of characters like those that made up the Carry On team over the years. The surreptitious relationships, the secret scandals, the outre contretemps and outrageous repartee loaded with sexual innuendo, are delicious morsels of mischief that are always avidly sort after by the British, with their inexhaustible hunger.  And there are huge quantities of these in Born Brilliant, just waiting to titillate the reader.  But the real revelations in the book cover Williams's inner emotions, beliefs and attitudes - his obsession with his health, his total dependence on his mother, Louie, his inability to form a deep, personal relationship with anyone, and his strange behaviour, both in public and in private.  Michael Parkinson calls him "brutal", and, at times, he was, reducing actresses to tears and friends to anger and despair, cutting associations dead at whim.  He would tell the great British public to "Fuck Off!" when they encountered him on the street, and while they laughed and assumed it was "just Kenneth William's way", he actually meant it.  Many of his colleagues were amazed to learn, afterwards, that he had actually held them in great disdain, even despised some of them, to say the least. Mind you, some of those feelings, like that between him and Sid James, were mutual, which tells even more what wonderful actors they both were, because that mutual dislike was never allowed to affect their performances together.



In later life, when the series of Carry On movies, the endless radio shows and his continuous successful and not so successful performances in numerous theatrical productions pretty much came to an end, Williams recreated himself as a game and chat show guest, becoming very popular in those roles, and cementing his place as one of the greatest entertainers Britain has ever produced.  But he persistently resisted all of the calls to America and Hollywood that would undoubtedly have brought him worldwide fame and an enviable fortune, remaining instead tied to England and north London, living his whole life within a few miles of his birth place, and tracking his income with feverish paranoia, making sure he always had enough money to look after himself and his mam.

Which leaves me with a confused impression of the man.  Like most Brits, I love his performances, and will always find them hilarious.  Knowing the background behind those makes them even more precious and interesting.  But knowing all of that additional background can't help but make me wonder how he ever managed to produce the work he did, and what greatness he might have achieved if he had only had the gumption to stretch himself that little further, and cross the Atlantic when asked to do so.  Another aspect of that is the fact that he was treated almost despicably by the Carry On producers, who only paid him a tenth of what they paid actors like Phil Silvers when he starred in one of the films.  So typical of the British, getting ripped off again and again by the very people who were supposed to care and nurture them. 

 

Like Kenneth said, "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!" 

The Passing of the Past...

Muhammad Ali died this week. 74 years of age, but an icon that impacted so many lives during his span on Earth. I had the honour of meeting the man in a boxing ring at Gypsies Green stadium in South Shields back in 1977. He was in town for the opening of the new mosque in Laygate, which he was combining with having his marriage blessed by the imam.

 

Don't get me wrong - I wasn't boxing or sparring with the man! That was far above my pay grade at the time! ;)  I was there to greet him as Chairman of the South Tyneside Council of Youth, representing all of the youth organisations in the area. He was playing darts with Tony Green, while Peter Gillanders and I looked on.  I remember his hand totally engulfing mine as we shook them, then he punched me on the shoulder - quite gently for him, I suppose - before moving on.

 

 

 

I am also almost finished reading Born Brilliant, the biography of Kenneth Williams, the very popular and incorrigible comedy actor most famous for his very camp characters in the Carry On series of films.  Like most British people of my generation and older, the Carry On movies and their stars where significant pieces of our national psyche, and a major factor in our attitudes towards comedic and sexual innuendo and situational comedy. 

 

 

 

While Williams died quite a while ago - 1988 - and Muhammad just a few days ago, the whole aspect of their passing was summed up by a comment from a teacher and friend of mine back in England, Anthony Shedden, who expressed concern at the recent passing of so many childhood icons. There have been a number of these lately - Bowie, Prince, Ali, Lemmy - to name just a few. These sudden losses always make us think to our own mortality, even when they are much older than us, and lead us to look to our current situations in regard to life and health.  I don't believe that anyone wants die, especially before they feel they have completed what they may have set out to achieve, which is why we have all of these wonderous tales of life after death, heaven (or hell) and reincarnation to assuage our fears.  However, as indicators of our own personal aging, the loss of these markers of youth tells us that it's time to get on with what we have to do before we, too, succumb to the inevitable.  Time to stop dreaming those dreams and start making them happen, because, let's face it, if you don't try, you'll never succeed.  Feeling our mortality is an ideal way to inspire us to get going, because the clock is ticking, and it's not going backwards, my friends!

        

Farewell 2012 - And All That Jazz!

So - here we are - on the verge of the End of 2012, and the start of 2013! How time flies!

I cannot say 2012 has been the best year of my life so far - although it is far from being the worst! It has had many challenges, and many goals (and their inherent dreams) still remain unattained, although, admittedly, a lot closer than they have been in previous years. Some of the impacts that have either delayed or prevented certain achievements were not of my own making, nor were they under my control, which makes them even harder to bear.

 

But I am not going to dwell on those events and occurrences, as that will only serve to bring the mood lower than need be!  There were still many things about 2012 that gave me a certain amount of success - especially in areas I had only pondered about previously - and which have laid a very hopeful foundation for the future on a number of levels.  Work went well, with the new company being very successful, and looking to continue that for the next 12 months.  And my writing has been successful in ways that both myself and my wife find amusing and inspiring, if somewhat unexpected, and, with a little more effort from myself, looks poised to bring even more success in the coming years - hopefully to the extremes of my dreams.  The only challenge is reigning in the new diversity and channelling that into those routes that others would expect from me, while still allowing the new routes I am following to achieve their success.  It will be interesting!

 

So I enter 2013 with a certain amount of optimism, putting behind me the depradations and interferences of the past - both 2012 and beyond - and looking forward to bringing greater achievements and successes to ever-growing audience - no matter what the field or endeavour!

 

Another aspect of my future life is these blogs I have so recently started writing.  These will be a challenge on a number of fronts.  First - I am by no means a strict diarist or journalist (in the pure sense of that word), so writing regularly will be an interesting challenge.  Then the challenge to that challenge is to write something interesting, informative, or entertaining, because I don't believe in writing a blog entry just for the sake of having a blog entry.  And the other challenge is keeping it fun and interesting for myself, otherwise it will languish in that special purgatory set aside for failed hobbies and projects that we all have!  Time to make the hobbies into obsessions!

 

Finally - if you are reading this, I wish you a very happy and successful 2013.

 

Paul J Todd

 

 

 

Tragedy Revisits Tragedy - Newtown, CT, Friday Dec 14, 2012

Friday, December 14, 2012.

11 short days before the biggest celebration of Children on this planet.

Now another day we will always remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the horrendous and soul-destroying news of yet another massacre of school children at the hands of yet another nutbar.  And another outcry against the crazy gun-culture upon which the United States of America thrives.

 

And the rhetoric begins yet again - and will go on endlessly, with little, if any, positive outcome.  Asking Americans to give up their guns is like asking Christians to give up God.

 

But I am not here to join that diatribe.

 

I am here to remind us all that, for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, the healing has only just begun, and will be never ending.  Yes - there will be grief, anger, denial, and, eventually, acceptance, but there will never be release.  Don't believe me?  Then just ask any of the residents of the small village of Aberfan, in the Merthyr Vale of southern Wales.  There, on October 21st, 1966, a rain-soakened slag heap of black slurry, dug from the coal mine that dominated the landscape, slid down the side of the valley it had been piled upon, and crushed Pantglas Junior School, where the young children of the village had just finished singing their Harvest Festival hymns.

 

116 children, between the ages of 7 and 10, almost half the population of the school, died under the crushing power of that landslide, along with 28 adults - teachers and other village inhabitants.  The political fallout from that tragedy is still going on - over 46 years later.

 

But that is not what I am here to talk about either.  I am here to tell everyone who isn't part of that community that there are still those living in Aberfan, and those who have left since the disaster, that still suffer symptoms of what would called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and who have various levels of psychological distress - whether they be parents of lost children, husbands and wives of many of the adults who died there - but, most of all, the children who survived when their brothers, sisters and friends died around them.  Even now, many of them still feel guilt that they survived when so may didn't, or feel that they could have done more to help, when, in reality, there was nothing that they could have done at that time to prevent what occurred.  The prevention was something that should have been done a long time prior to the disaster, and, like at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the cure was already well known.  And never acted upon.

 

The slag heaps could have been moved.  The guns could have been restricted.  In both situations, the danger was well known - and ignored.

 

So, we should expect nothing different from the survivors of Sandy Hook.  Sure, they will look like they are coping and getting on with life, but, deep inside, the doubts and worries will already be starting to worm their way into the psyches of those fresh, young minds - such fertile ground for those memories.  And even those who, like me, were never involved in Aberfan or Sandy Hook, there will be long-term changes in our realities - subtle but persistent - that will modify our behaviour in ways we don't anticipate.  I mean - I was 8 when Aberfan happened, and never realised just how much it had impacted me, but, forty years later, I was suddenly inspired, and not in a subtle way, but in an almost manic experience, to write a poem - Aberfan, 21st October, 2006 - that detailed the events in ways I didn't know I had even recorded in my mind.  For the short while it took to write that poem, it was almost an obsession with me, and filled my mind and heart in ways that made it a relief to complete the work - to get it out of my system!  If someone who was hundreds of miles away from Aberfan, in a time when the only news was a 30 minute broadcast or the paper, with no internet or other means of instant communication, could be affected in that way, imagine how much more damage the exposure available to todays watchers, let alone to the victims of this tragedy, will perpetrate.

 

It is going to be a long, hard recovery for Newtown, Connecticut.  Pray for them if you believe.  In any case, love them and give them peace.