February 14th, 2011

BBC4’s Storyville: Afghan Cricket Club - Out of the Ashes is a true underdog story of passion, perserverence and national pride.

Image Source: www.frontlineclub.com

This heartwarming documentary film made me feel happy, sad, relieved, stressed and ultimately rewarded by the 90 minutes I spent watching it. There isn’t much you can watch on TV that does that.

If it was a Hollywood movie, I imagine the pitch would read like this (apologies if this pitch is even rougher than the ones the Afghan team have to train on):

A refugee from his war torn homeland, Taj Malik learnt cricket the hard way, in a rubble-strewn camp in Pakistan. He taught his brothers how to play, and took his love for the game back to war-torn Afghanistan where he set up the national Afghan cricket team, with his brother as opening batsman. Together, they defy the odds by winning a World Cup qualifying tournament in Jersey. But is Taj experienced enough to take Afghanistan all the way?

The title of this film appeals to cricket lovers, yet is ultimately misleading, because the themes are universal: national pride, passion, loyalty, culture clashes, triumph over adversity, betrayal and redemption. It’s all there - and it is outstanding.

My one quibble? Not enough cricket. But then again, the lack of cricket ensured my girlfriend enjoyed the film. If there’d been more wickets given away or thunking sixes, she’d have started demanding I put American Idol or Got To Dance on.

Now that would have been a waste of ninety minutes.

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February 12th, 2011

Image source: www.filmofilia.com

I’ve been thinking about novels told in the form of diaries or letters, such as Dracula, Adrian Mole, Bridget Jones and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

While the format is entertaining and serves a clear plot and character purpose, I can’t help thinking it’s   ultimately flawed because it makes the narrator unreliable. When I write my  diary every night, I’m usually too tired to write loads. I would never think of relating entire conversations, so reading a fictional diary in which a single day’s entry goes on for pages always seems slightly unrealistic.

David Morrell said in Lessons From A Lifetime In Writing that the reader has to believe a first person narrator’s reason for writing the story down. While a journal/diary format explains the reason for writing, if the way it relates the story doesn’t feel entirely authentic - because it is too detailed to be believable - it’s solving one problem by creating another, much larger one.

I watched The Diary of A Wimpy Kid at the cinema and enjoyed it (although was struck by how much it reminded me of The Wonder Years). My son and nephew both loved it. I also liked both Bridget Jones novels and all the Adrian Mole ones, but I don’t think I’ll ever try to write a diary format novel. If I can’t write much in my real diary, how on earth could I write more in a  fictional one?

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February 10th, 2011

Passion, pluck and people power in Tahir Square. Wet fish in Whitehall.

Photograph’s original source: BBC News, 10.2.11.   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12421000 

As I write, the news is broadcasting images of Tahir Square. The atmosphere looks stunning…tents make it look like an encampment. This is people power reminiscent oof when the Berlin Wall was torn down.  Whether Mubarek going (if that is what he’s about to announce) will solve some of Egypt’s woes, leading to a possibly fairer redistibution of wealth, better job and career opportunities and a more democratic system of government, is another matter. I hope so, for what my hopes and wishes are worth.

What all this does show is how much ordinary people can achieve. It’s taken three weeks to push Mubarek to the point where he could resign today. Makes me wish people in the United Kingdom had more get up and go about them, and would protest more.

Imagine if the scenes in Tahir Square were repeated in Trafalgar Square. If everyone I know who is unhappy with the Coalition Government piled into Trafalgar Square, London would be crippled. And people should be angry - the Government has broken countless election promises in the space of a year, cut essential services, cut education budgets, cut police budgets, cut health budgets, and every time they’re challenged, they say, “It’s not our fault, and anyway, it’s for your own good.”

How do they get away with it, every time? I’d understand if they had some aura of charisma, but George Osbourne, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are as charasmatic as wet fish. There’s an army major speaking to the people in Tahir Square at the moment, full of charisma and passion. I wonder if anyone in the government has ever been as passionate and angry as that soldier? I doubt it, somehow.

And look what happens when they are faced with genuine anger and passion, as in the student protests. Because of the actions of a tiny minority, they denounce the protests. But. Just imagine if all the people who genuinely care in the UK really did protest in Trafalgar Square. Protested and kept protesting, staying there like the people in Tahir Square, until they achieved what they want, peacefully and good-humouredly. But staying there. Imagine tents around the lions, around the fountains, in front of the National Gallery. Traffic halted for weeks on end.

Maybe the people of the United Kingdom could learn something from those from the Land of the Pharoahs. And maybe they should learn it, quick, before our own health care, education system and job opportunities are dismantled.

Tags: Egypt
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February 10th, 2011

Human Planet - one of the best documentary series I’ve ever seen - is showing sulphur miners on East Java this week. Now there’s a job that puts all others in perspective. Waves of extreme heat erupt from fissures at any time as the miners collect hardened yellow sulpur from around Mount Iijen’s acid lake. Many of the miners bear burn and scars, and even if they aren’t injured in a day’s work, they still have to climb back down the volcano lugging their heavy baskets full of sulphur. (Not to mention climb back out of the crater in the first place!)

The sulphur, once known as brimstone, is then processed to make matches, white sugar and fertiliser.

You can read more at BBC News, as well as watch a clip and see more photographs. And if you haven’t seen Human Planet yet, give it a go.

Tags: volcanoes
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February 8th, 2011

I’ve been doing some research about the Skylon, a 300ft metal tower built for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Coming at a time of severe austerity in Britain (sound familiar?), the Skylon was a stunning design, all sleek symmetry and futuristic sheer lines.  The tallest building in Britain, when it was illuminated at night it looked even better, partly because it had no visible means of support (like the British economy, a joke at the time went).

When Clement Atlee’s government lost the general election in 1952, Winston Churchill ordered the Skylon to be taken down, dismissing it as “3D Socialist propaganda.”

Although I’d never heard of the Skylon before 2011, the name has lived on in many different guises:

• a British spaceplane project
• Nike sunglasses
• a Dublin hotel
• a restaurant in Royal Festival Hall, Southwark (where the 1951 Festival took place)
• the Skylon Tower at Niagara Falls.

In fact, the excitement Skylon generated clearly remains engrained in people’s minds, because there’s now a campaign  to bring Skylon back at Rebuild The Skylon.

I think the Skylon caught my imagination because it’s an extraordinary design that I’d never heard of before, something glorious that my childhood hero disliked enough to have pulled apart. There’s a pleasing asymmetric sense in that.

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January 29th, 2011

I’ve been trying to write, but keep watching the news about Egypt. It must take an unimaginable amount of courage take to the streets and protest against a totalitarian regime. Nothing to hide behind.

When I lived in Cairo, the expats used to make wry, helpless little jokes about the percentages of recent elections, how they were obviously rigged. And all the time I was there, and all the time since I left, there university graduates who counted themselves lucky to have jobs that earned them hardly enough to feed their families.

To stand up and refuse to accept the corruption anymore, to refuse to be helpless… I don’t know how they can do it, in the face of batons, guns, snatch squads and tanks. Could any fiction, ever, accurately encapsulate such real life bravery?

I don’t think it could, which is why the truth in Egypt is so much more compelling than any fiction.

Tags: Egypt
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January 24th, 2011

This list is from the point of view of an outsider’s point of view, with no formal education in American History or Politics. I resisted the urge to include Jed Bartlett.

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Ronald Reagan
4. George Washington
5. Barak Obama
6. Bill Clinton
7. Dwight Eisenhower
8. Franklin D. Roosevelt
9. Thomas Jefferson
10. James Polk

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January 24th, 2011

This list is from the point of view of an outsider’s point of view, with no formal education in American History or Politics. I resisted the urge to include Jed Bartlett.

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Ronald Reagan
4. George Washington
5. Barak Obama
6. Bill Clinton
7. Dwight Eisenhower
8. Franklin D. Roosevelt
9. Thomas Jefferson
10. James Polk

Tags: lists
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January 23rd, 2011

1. Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, Turkey
2. The Alhambra, Granada, Spain
3. Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, England
4. The Pyramids, Cairo, Egypt
5. Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia
6. Laxey Wheel, Laxey, Isle of Man
7. Ankhor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia
8. The Treasury, Petra, Jordan
9. Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain
10. Saigon Central Post Office, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam

NB: this list is in no particular order.

Tags: lists
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January 23rd, 2011

Obviously, I can only comment on cities I’ve visited. In no particular order, then:

1. Istanbul, Turkey
2. Bangkok, Thailand
3. Barcelona, Spain
4. Colombo, Sri Lanka
5. Seville, Spain
6. Lisbon, Portugal
7. Sydney, Australia
8. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
9. London, England
10. Kyoto, Japan

Tags: lists
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