Scribble, Scribble, Scribble (A Play, A Menu, And a Top Tip).

Everybody Sing!

#AmWriting

Hello there! Sorry I've been away - mostly sorry for myself.   I'm not sure how much this writing drought of mine has mattered to other people.  I have missed it, however.

So, what's the problem, you ask? Last year I had to give up half-time work for full-time work.  (Read, "kid going to college").  Like the song says, you gotta serve somebody, and for money.

If I were sturdier and not so lazy I wouldn't be making excuses of this sort, but you can't get words from a turnip. My brain is crowded with work stuff.  Also, we bought a couch that reclines and I have a Roku.

The Play

But enough about me. Except for about that Play.  That is also about me. I wrote one! A radio play, for a contest, that I was intending to win. But I did not win, place, or show.

This was the last project I could really dig into in my part time idyll.  BBC didn't like the play, apparently, but I kind of did and I really enjoyed writing it.  So I have put it up on Figment , which is a website  for high school girls with Aspirations,  but also Margaret Atwood.  I posted the first two scenes tonight but the rest will appear within the week.  It's called "Daughter of a Brave Country" if that link doesn't you have to go hunting for it.  (I'm really sorry if that happens.  I'm honored by your willingness to click.  If the play is performed in even one head I'll be happy).

In one or two of my brighter moments lately I have had thoughts for new stories etc.  These moments are fugitive, however, (see supra note, "work-crowded brain").  All I have for you tonight that is really new is the Halloween Meal Menu I've been mentally concocting this week.

The Menu

The main dish will be "Slathery Jack."  I'm not exactly sure what this is but it's horrible.  It was served to a writer I admire during a sea voyage because the Captain had sold the actually edible provisions.

So we'll have that, along with apple solids, pumpkin spears, and German lashings for dessert!  The mulled zinc will also be flowing.   Halloween party at my house!

The Top Tip

Speaking of writers I admire, I have been thinking lately about how simple it is for really wonderful work to be invisible.  If you click the link to my Amazon review of the Slathery-Jack-eater's book, you'll get a sense of what I mean.  (Katherine Everett is her name and she was an amazing person and a really good writer).  This is not a back door way of promoting my obscure self.  I've accepted obscurity.  But I routinely run into things that I think are wonderful that no one seems to know about.

Granted what follows is a pretty crap example of this because in England the song I'm about to recommend and the band responsible for it are HUGE stars.  The band is Elbow (awful name, I agree) and the song is "One Day Like This."

Michael Caine introduced this song to me in his Desert Island Discs interview, (DID was an earlier top tip here, as you'll know if you're an old friend).   I had never heard of the band or this song before stumbling into Caine's interview.  There must be an issue with US distribution for Elbow or some other stupid reason why it took Michael Caine to play this for me instead of my local radio station.  So here's the song.  FYI, I bought the record and I play this song on Fridays, on my way home from work.

Thanks for stopping in and for reading to the end.

Just a Little Something for Stopping in: Book of Love-Peter Gabriel

The World of Quarter Sessions: Brilliant Animation Brings 1931 Back to Life

The World of Quarter Sessions: Brilliant Animation Brings 1931 Back to Life: I'm hoping to convince this genius, who's doing WONDERFUL things with his computer in Russia, to do a book trailer for me.  (I think...

Come to our Fark! (Someday)

Hold on a minute while I hoist the banner.

There we go. Hello!  I'm here!

And before you ask, rest assured that the paucity of posts here on ye olde blogge has not been due to anything worse than the Roku my sister got me for Christmas two years ago.  Now - no matter what - there is always good TV to be had, or at least a good-TV search effort in which to engage.

Also there is social media. I stare at my phone all the time like the rest of us. (Except for you high quality individuals who still read blogs and  probably listen to CDs and don't have internet TV or Twitter accounts).  Query- is there a relationship between this (tedious) vogue for zombies and phone-staring?

My old blogging friend Nan recently decamped from Facebook and retreated to her own dear old blogging project.  I don't know if I'm ready to cut the FB cord, but I must say that there is something in the rhythm of this that is nice and actually it feels like the Library of Congress in terms of stability and substance next to Twitter and FB.

Enough about that now. I actually sat down to write here tonight because I had a thought that wouldn't fit into 140 characters.  The thought doesn't deserve much more than that but I write things down.

I was driving home from work today and thinking that someday, perhaps, as a retirement project we might actually farm the old farm that we have owned, lo these many years (since 1993).

We have always rented the farm land to an actual farmer and made do with our catastrophic (mostly) gardening and lawn mowing or crouched in the old house there.  But who knows?  Maybe I'm a future farmer.  My next thought was, "well, I wouldn't really want all the land to be fields - I'd like some of it to be landscaped, like a park.  This is what I will do with my lottery winnings."  Then I thought, "well, maybe some farming and some parkland is what my future (rich) self should aim to achieve.  A 'fark' that's what I'm after." That will make you want to come visit, won't it?

Here's a picture of the old fark as it currently appears.  Not bad.

Cheers.  Thanks for not completely abandoning the last house.  (By the way, my Twitter handle is @woolfoot if you want to follow along there...)

Get Inspired

I'll be running a promotion over the next week in the US and the UK for that e-book of mine.  It starts tomorrow and runs through June 3.  I'm giving stuff away (see sidebar) and generally having a good time.  If you haven't read it yet, for what are you waiting?

A key plot point in the book involves an elaborate padlock.  It was inspired by a real door lock that I saw in the collection of the V&A in London some years ago. It was so cunning and artful I knew I'd want to make use of it someday.

Maybe it will inspire you.  Here's the video.  In the meantime, tell your English reading friends about this e-book bargain this week, will you?  Thanks.  Of course all are welcome to buy a paperback as well.


Detector lock by John Wilkes from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

Go, Click, Win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Radio 4, Where Have You Been all my Life?

Duh.

England.

Radio 4 is one of the nine radio stations run by the BBC.  There's Radio 1 (pop hits), Radio 2 (adult contemporary), and on like that.  Radio 4 is mostly talking and it's where I spend most of my time - at least so far.  There's so much BBC radio that I haven't had time to venture deep into the other stations - yet.

And may I just say, we have crappy talking radio here in the US, if you ask me, which you didn't but it's my blog.

I'm not even talking about the Saharas of sportstalk and  know-it-all political blowhards and the religious folk on our dial.  I have zero interest in that.  I listen to music and occasionally NPR.  NPR is the closest thing we have to BBC-style radio in this country and it is a poor, sad, pushy, begging enterprise. Plus NPR is irritating.  Aside from Cokie Roberts and Ira Glass (once in a while), and Terry Gross (most of the time) it is middle-brow forced-jollity earnest superior blah beige boring.

When I was a kid, WGY in Schenectady played Mystery Theater, hosted by E.G. Marshall each weeknight.  I would "work" cleaning the kitchen for the whole hour of Mystery Theater.  Thinking of that sole survivor of radio drama (in my day) I  am reminded of the remains of those dwarf mammoths they found somewhere - physically shrunken holders-on - last of their species, dying out on some island .  That was what Mystery Theater was back in the 70s.  It wasn't genius but it was fun and it exploited one of the things that radio is good at - telling stories.  When I stumbled into Radio 4 I realized how starved I was for programming that takes full advantage of Radio's (note capital "R") potential to be fun, informative, interesting, creative.

I'm not looking for a radio revival to suit me here in the States anytime soon.  Our airwaves follow the money.  They must.  I understand that. The Beeb is publicly funded and even if Bernie Sanders gets elected no one in the States is going want to throw tax money at radio.  Podcasting has filled the void, largely, that's true. But Radio is still a special thing.  We don't have to hunt it out. It flows. It's a friend.  Thankfully, we now have the internet.  And the British taxpayer.

So here, for your listening pleasure are links to my favorite shows Radio 4 shows, with a nod to Radio 3.  (Actually this is the tip of the iceberg my favorite shows but it's bedtime).

Desert Island Discs
Are you interested in any famous people? They have probably been interviewed on this show.  There is an archive stretching back to 1942.  Famous people, including Bill Gates, the late Princess Margaret and all kinds of movie stars, musicians, writers and other achievers - the kind that would only get radio time in England (e.g., a landscape designer, a nonagenerian allergist, a supermarket magnate) discuss which  eight records they would take if marooned on a desert island.  It turns out that this is a great way to get biography.  I am addicted.  The theme music sounds like a Monty Python joke - at first I thought it must be.  I quickly understood, however, that they were playing it straight. The theme is a holdover from the show's 1940s origins. I love it now: living strings, squawking seagulls. Please Aunt Beeb, never change it.

Desert Island Discs was my entree to Radio 4.  I have since become enamored of Book at Bedtime - so many great adaptations there.  And lately I've been dipping into the venerable Woman's Hour, which is as old or older than DID.  There's comedy. There's all kinds of drama.  On that point, I have to give shout out for dRadio 3, I listened to a brilliant creepy adaptation of the famous play The Skriker there recently. Give that a listen if you can. You will never hear the like on the radio in the US.

Really, there's too much to detail here.  Just go poking around the BBC Radio website.  If you don't find much to love, check you pulse.

Real Names That I've Heard Recently That I Like and Want to Remember

"Nish Kumar."  He's a comedian in England. I like that his name seems like it might be a nickname for "Danish" or "Finish" or something.

"Penny Cleverly."  Need I say more?  I wish this had been mine name.

"Luke Fortune."   How lucky can you get? I'll bet the good fairy came to his christening too.

Off the Turnip Truck

Sundown tonight in #centralpark #nyc #nofilter pic.twitter.com/oRsQUNryXI

— Kim Velk (@woolfoot) February 26, 2016

A Good Time to Be Pretty & She Was Kind to Cars

I got a call from high-school-senior daughter this morning.  Our 1994 Toyota Camry with 260,000 miles on it - the one that she drives because we are people who think it is enough that she has any car to drive at all-  was making bad noises.  She  managed to make an appointment with the local garage for after school to check out the noise.  The gents of the local garage are, as per me, a bit of a shifty bunch. I told her to have them call me before any repairs got authorized.

Fast forward to 3 PM.  The young mechanic to whom she handed her iPhone said "it's a spring and a strut."  I pitched him a softball: "Don't you have do both sides?" He said (are you sitting down?) "No."

I'm not sure that's right but did I mention 260,000 miles?  He told me it was going to be about $300.  I said, "fine."

My daughter then had a friend come fetch her at the garage. The two of them were returning here just as I was pulling into the garage in the State of Vermont fleet vehicle that I have this evening (more on that in a minute).

She and I began discussing the transportation dilemmas that will be caused by not having Ye Ancient Camry tomorrow.  This being Vermont, my kids' whole school skis on Friday (tomorrow).  No Camry means trouble to-ing and fro-ing for both my kids.  I have to leave at 6 AM tomorrow in the aforementioned fleet car to get to a court hearing two and half hours from home . Turns out, however, that we might not actually have a problem.

"The guy said he would come in at six tomorrow morning and get my car fixed in time for Friday program," my daughter said as we made our way up to our kitchen.  "It pays to get up and put on make up every day," she added.

Right.  Never having been pretty myself I never learned how it can pay.  (Not bragging or anything but that's her up there.  A colleague, seeing this picture on my desk once said, "no offense but she obviously hit the genetic jack pot."  Yes.  That's true).

But I'm not here to totally disparage myself.  Why? Let me tell you a heartwarming little story.

I had to leave my own car in the vast Siberian parking lot at the state office campus just now in order to pick up the fleet car.  I was resentful for a bit, thinking that my poor little car was going to have to suffer the winds and subzero temperatures in the parking lot tonight instead of in its home in our garage.  Then, however, I thought of how the fleet car doesn't properly belong to anyone, how no one loves it, how it is part of no one's family.  It never goes anywhere fun. The people in it are never making happy memories. When it's time for it to go it will be nothing but a cold calculation - how many miles, what repairs etc.  So. I'm like a foster mother tonight to the orphan car.  I thought, well, you enjoy that garage, you unloved utilitarian Ford you.  So, maybe a beautiful soul if nothing else.

Another Top Tip - Desert Island Discs

A couple of months ago I stumbled onto the venerable BBC Radio 4 Program, Desert Island Discs.  Since then I have been listening to the new shows each week and combing through the archive.  It is not too much to say that I can't get enough.  Fortunately, it is an almost inexhaustible listening resource.

I defy anyone to show me a more genius idea for an interview program.  The format is simple: interviewees are asked which eight discs (well, it started in 1942 so "discs" it remains) they would take if marooned on a desert island.  While they talk about their choices, they also talk about their lives.  There are famous people, celebrities, etc. but also, crucially, people who aren't famous except in their own fields.  To wit, a pioneering allergist, a prize-winning landscape designer, a supermarket magnate.

If you have a favorite actor, writer, singer, scientist check the archive and you may well find that he or she has been interviewed.  My favorite interviews so far have been the ones with Michael Caine, Roger Waters, Princess Margaret, and Robert Hardy.

One more tip, sometimes the programs aren't available to stream, but I have found I can download those as MP3 files and play them that way.

One of the things I like best about the show is that it doesn't appear to be tied in any way to the current marketing efforts of the guests.  That is, they aren't asked on because they have a new book/album/movie are are making the rounds of the chat shows. The focus is on entire careers and biography.  Brilliant.