Knackered and clapped out

If anybody out there is wondering where the hell I've been and what the bollock I've been doing since you last heard from me, just give me a chance to explain.

Over the course of the past month I have:

1.)  Undergone an operation at the Christie Hospital
2.)  Passed my MA course with a Distinction
3.)  Finished learning the Georgian alphabet
4.)  Been stricken with a horrible virus
5.)  Suffering from post-viral exhaustion

I am afraid that I also looked up 'steam cleaning teeth' on Google - and discovered that that stupid old ratbag Liz Jones happens to be telling the truth about this rather esoteric sounding health and beauty treatment.  However, you'll be glad to hear that no way am I daft enough to actually sign up for a course of it.

And of course I haven't forgotten the lovely Dr Frogg.

So just relax and give me a break, would you?

Froggy is my darling

Or why we all love and worship Doktor Archibald Frogg from the League of Super Evil.

Find out more once I've finished writing it and posted it up here ...

The crepe list

In no particular order, a selection of the things that have been getting right up my schnonker (sp?) recently:

* Cupcakes - ponced-up fairy cakes with an inflated idea of their own importance
* Mismatched sets of vintage china - great way to charge triple for chipped pieces of bargain-basement crockery in balls-achingly trendy and eye-wateringly overpriced interior decorators called Carpet in Shoreditch (remember that shop in The Harry and Paul Show that used to part Trustafarians from their parents' hard-earned money?)
* Cake-stands - only useful for putting cupcakes on in twee teashop windows in Shoreditch
* Doilies - ditto
* Tea-cosies - what you make to pay your mortgage after you get made redundant from your job in the City
* Crochet - ditto
* Knitting - ditto
* Home sewing - something I am not very good at, due to being deficient in many of the more traditionally 'feminine' skills (so how I'm going to pay my mortgage during an economic downturn, I don't know.  Chutney-brewing, perhaps?)
* Owls - as signifiers of cute 'quirkiness', rather than ancient wisdom and knowledge
* Taxidermy
* Fancy cut-out silhouettes
* Bloody obsession with anything and everything Scandinavian - starting to wonder whether this hasn't all been secretly sponsored by the tourist boards of all these countries a la 'Carrots give you cancer - signed the Potato Marketing Board' campaigns
* Sara Lund's sodding jumper - she wears it because it keeps her warm in a cold climate and it's quick and easy to put on in the morning.  Proof - I have never seen her get snapped in it at the Coachella Festival
* Constant festivals - that all seem to be starring Florence And The Machine on the Jimi Hendrix Stage
* Assumption that I am meant to be at all arsed what all the female celebs are wearing at these endless festivals and who they have started going out with this week
* Twiglet-thighed female celebrities who don't ever seem to do any work, but only ever get papped on the red carpet/on holiday/at festivals, thus making you conclude that their definition of 'work' must be 'blagging designer clothes to get papped in on the red carpet/on holiday/at festivals'
* Constant twitterings in women's magazines about how 'lonely' and 'unlucky with men' Jennifer Anniston is meant to be - well, she doesn't seem to be doing at all badly from where I'm sitting
* Claiming that Prince Harry is 'handsome' - no, he sodding isn't!  Just look at him - a baked potato in fatigues jumping out of helicopters into the sea.  All these women only drool over him because he has a title, is loaded and appears in the papers every day.
* Liz Jones getting paid shedloads of moolah every week for writing total cobblers about her supposed 'fairy-tale' affair with a washed-up 'rock star' - generally referred to on Mumsnet, DigitalSpy, Gransnet, The Angry Mob et al as the 'FRS' (Fantasy/Fairytale Rock Star, rather than 'Former' RS) because that's what they have all concluded he probably is.  If Liz Jones longs to write novels with curlicued pictures of pink shoes and purple handbags on the front that stressed-out twenty-something women read on the Tube to take their minds off worrying about possibly losing their jobs during the current economic downturn, then why doesn't she just write up a synopsis of her idea and send it off to a few publishers for consideration?
* The media insistently banging on about how 'gorgeous' George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling are - don't you even trust me to make up my OWN mind about celeb men?
* Idea that it is intrinsically 'feminine' for women of all ages to absolutely adore pink sparkles on anything and everything - if I took this up at my age (44), the natural assumption would be that my husband had left me for his secretary and I was now attempting to drown my sorrows in chardonnay and male strippers
* Fake tits
* Tango tans
* Horrible dagger-like false nails - if I'm not working as a porn star, why the hell would I want to dress like one?

The tea-trays of Atlantis

Well, it's official, fans.

I am suffering from acute library book withdrawal symptoms.

Manchester's Central Library is going to be out of commission until 2014 (or even longer, if the current renovation works fall behind schedule) and I'm already finding it difficult to cope.

Because there isn't all that much room in their temporary quarters on Deansgate, the librarians have had to store  most of their extensive holdings down the bottom of an abandoned salt mine somewhere in Cheshire.  Hence there are far less books, papers, magazines, CDs, DVDs and so on in circulation at the moment.

I've been trying my best by extending my range and visiting first Didsbury and then Chorlton, but it seems obvious that all the branch libraries share a pool of books which they regularly exchange amongst themselves.  As a voracious bookworm, I've already managed to work my way through a fair old number of these volumes. So now I'm starting to read some of my old favourites again.

Oh, how I miss the extensive and capacious shelves of the Central Library!

Four floors crammed to the rafters with the brightest, the best, the brilliant and just the plain barmy in world literacy.  Plus tons more in the stacks that you can order up from the basement stores.

The lack of weirdy-books is proving particularly galling.

I realise that Manchester Libraries probably chose to keep the books most likely to be of interest to the greatest number of borrowers - and these days your average punter prefers Jamie Oliver's 30-minute mispronounced dinners and Kevin McCloud's wallpaper hanging tips to alternative history and parapsychology (unless it is the bloody abysmal Da Vinci sodding Code - how that illiterate berk Dan Brown has managed to earn so much money from it is beyond me).

But oddball books have provided me with hours of free inhouse entertainment over the years - as you will know if you've bothered reading this blog on anything approaching a regular basis.

One abiding favourite I will be forever indebted to the Central Library for is Discovering Atlantis by Diana Cooper:

http://www.dianacooper.com/atlantis/

In this classic of New Age spirituality, Diana elaborates on the popular theory that the people of that mythical sunken civilization owed their greatness to crystal power.

When their children reached the age of adult majority, they were presented with a crystal wand and an object that looked just like a large metal tea tray.  Every time they wanted to travel somewhere, they sat on top of the tea tray, tapped the side of it with the crystal wand and thought of their destination.  Slowly, slowly, the tea tray began to rise in the air ...

Costcutters

Thoroughly cheesed off to read in the latest edition of the Guardian Media guide that Grace Dent is leaving.

Not only that, but she claims that she is being replaced not by another proper professional reviewer, but by reader contributions supplemented by copy generated by 'android pigs with hats on' (must remember to check this quote again and amend if necessary, rather than spend ages online reading the latest developments in the extremely disturbing Anders Behring Breivik trial and attempting to find out how the hell the bloody appalling man has managed to get himself any fans at all, let alone a German woman penfriend who might have even fallen in love with him).

In other words, those tight-fisted buggers on the Guardian are desperately trying to save money by cutting down on the number of qualified experts they employ.  The excuse they are going to use is that they want to make the paper more 'interactive' and 'user-friendly', because the advent of the Internet has turned everyone who watches telly (aka 'downloads content' - yuck, horrible modern techno-bollockese phrase de jour) into a critic.

Enter endless screeds of rabid fanboy dork-dribble, half-illiterate two-word summaries that tell you five fifths of fuck-all about the programme and hordes of students doing unpaid work experience who reckon the best way to create a reputation is by doing word-perfect impressions of Charlie Brooker circa 2003.

Grace is right to describe television as an artform that deserves to be taken seriously.  If the Guardian agrees with her conclusion, then they should be prepared to splash out on a full-time, appropriately experienced and qualified reviewer.

And if they claim to support up and coming new journalists, then they should be coughing up the going NUJ rates for every piece of copy that the work experience bods knock up. Plus a full byline.

They walk among us

Now HERE'S something new you don't learn everyday!

Those naughty little Illuminati get everywhere - and then some.

According to that unimpeachable authority Dr Google, they've even managed to extende their evil suckered tentacles as far as the north west.  At great personal cost, dedicated conspiracy nuts/theorists (please delete according to personal taste and/or current level of gullibility) have now uncovered convincing evidence of their presence in Manchester and Buxton.  Just see these links for far more and unnecessary details than you ever imagined in the very worst of all your nightmares:

http://illuminati-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/ive-had-couple-of-e-mails-asking-about.html

http://buxtonilluminati.webs.com/buxtonandtheoccult.htm

On reading all these breathless revelations, a few basic questions do spring inevitably to mind.

1.)  If the Illuminati are such a mighty and all-powerful organisation as is usually claimed in these sort of screeds, then why on earth would they be so daft as to reveal covert signs of their presence and coded indications of their future plans all over the place?  They're meant to be secret, remember!

2.)  If the Illuminati are such a mighty and all-powerful organisation, you would think they would be rather more efficient when it came to company branding.  Why not open a chain of coffee-stores with a branch on every corner in the world, rather than have Rihanna make rude  gestures with her fingers in her next video (whilst wearing a jacket with a picture of a pyramid and an all-seeing eye on the back)?  That is, assuming they want everybody to even know of their presence in the first place.

3.) How exactly would it help further their supposed plans for world domination if they take over places like Manchester and Buxton?  Are they thinking of re-opening the Hacienda and the Spa, perhaps? 

4.)  I always thought local authorities were in charge of running Manchester and Buxton.  And I would imagine Richard Leeson would be pretty surprised (not to mention worried) to see a set of green scales when he takes off his vest at night.

5.) If the Illuminati are really such a brutal and ruthless outfit, how come weirdoes of every stripe have managed to reveal every little last detail of their calamatous influence right over into the furthest reaches of the Internet?  Surely they would be able to stamp out dissidence even more promptly than the government of North Korea.  

Flash aaaaaaaaahhh-arrrggghh!!!

Since we last spoke, I have obtained the script of the Flash Gordon Show (series 1 episode 1 - first broadcast on 27 April 1935) from the Generic Radio Workshop Script Library, via the Simply Scripts website.

The reason I downloaded this and the scripts for three subsequent episodes is so I can learn how radio pulp sci fi series were written back during the Thirties. And yes, it’s American because fast-moving pulp sci fi shows would have been a bit too exciting for the Beeb back then.

For such an ancient piece of history, it still packs an awful lot of incident into the first episode alone.  The best way to prove this is for me to recount the plotline to you.

The action kicks off to a brisk start with the discovery that a newly discovered planet is on a collision course with the Earth.  Not surprisingly, everyone on the planet is more than a little concerned about the prospect of rapidly impending annihilation.

Flash Gordon and his girlfriend Dale Arden are travelling somewhere or other on a giant airliner, though we never get to find out where or why they are going there.

Such minor details turn out to be immaterial, as suddenly, the plane crashes.

Big, burly hunk of heroism that he is, Flash completely unperterbed by this unexpected (if you’re not writing the script, that is) turn of events.  Quickly, he grabs Dale in his arms, leaps out of the plummeting plane and parachutes them both to safety.

Once they’re down and safe, Dale notices a large steel door closing. Flash recognises it as the entrance to the secret laboratory of the great scientist Dr Hans Zarkov, who he decides to ask for help.

Bad move, mate!  Dr Zarkov turns out to be yet another stereotypical mad scientist.  Instead of assisting them, he loses his rag and accuses them of dropping to steal his secrets.

In retaliation, he forces them to climb into his top secret experimental rocket ship at gun point.  Then the ship takes off.  Its course is set for the new planet.

Flash tries to persuade Dr Zarkov to swing the rocket ship out of the path of the new planet, but being barmy, Dr Zarkov refuses to listen to all reason.  While the ship ducks and dives, he rants and raves his obscure resentments against the world, the universe and humanity.

The ship crashes.

Both Dr Zarkov and Dale are thrown from the rocket ship unconscious.  Luckily Flash is thrown to one side of the wreckage and lands on his feet, uninjured.  Flash picks Dale up and starts to carry her in the direction of the glittering towers of a distant city.

Once again, the sensible solution turns out to be singularly ill-advised.

Suddenly, soldiers armed with ray guns jump out.  They surround Flash and Dale and capture them.

The soldiers take the captives to the throne room of Ming the Merciless, emperor of the planet Mongo and supreme ruler of the universe (or so he thinks).

Flash is a proud and free American who refuses to bow down and worship anybody.  He argues with Ming the Merciless.

Ming the Merciless isn’t going to put up with this sort of crap, so he commands his slaves to throw Flash to the red monkey-men in the arena.

Flash is released into the arena, where he knocks out the first monkey-man.  Then he picks the stunned simian up and uses him as a flail to knock down all the other ones.

Refusing to be deprived of his cruel revenge, Ming orders the soldiers to destroy Flash with their ray guns.

Before they can shoot, Ming’s beautiful daughter Princess Aura calls Flash to her balcony.  Grabbing him by the hand, she leads Flash through a secret door and into a private elevator.

The lift ascends to the private landing pad of her personal rocket car.  Aura instructs Flash to climb into the rocket car to escape from Ming’s guards.

Once he’s safely in the car, Flash demands to know how he can now manage to rescue Dale.  


Aura explains that obviously he can’t.  Now he must love her instead – or die!

Meanwhile, Ming informs Dale that his soldiers will soon recapture Flash.  Dale asks what Ming proposes to do with her.

That’s easy.  She is very pleasing to him, so he will take her and she will become his new wife.  According to Ming, because the men of Mongo don’t have any human traits like love, mercy or kindness, it really doesn’t matter in the least to him whether Dale loves him or not.

A slave rushes in and announces that the lion-men have started bombarding the city in their space gyros.  Ming can see the carnage for himself on the ‘spaceograph’ (genuine example of Thirties spacey techno-speak, here).

Ming orders the entire space fleet to attack the space gyros.  A terrific aerial battle breaks out.  Finally, the men of Mongo manage to drive off the space gyros of the lion-men.

Unfortunately, Princess Aura’s rocket car is blown up during the bombardment.  Once more, Flash is in luck.  Instead of dying horribly, he is thrown to the ground, unconscious but otherwise uninjured.

Flash comes round to find himself staring into the face of Thun.  For those of you who don’t know, this character just happens to be the prince of the lion-men.


Thun demands to know who Flash is and what he is doing there.

Flash explains he is the enemy of Ming the Merciless and is trying to rescue the girl he loves.

In ringing tones, Thun declaims that he and his people are all long-standing enemies of Ming and co.  If Flash wants to be his friend, he will gladly help him beat Ming.

Flash knows he can trust his new buddy, so they shake on it.

Thun shows Flash a secret way back into the palace.  If they follow the passage, they can get in and rescue Dale.

First they repair to Thun’s handy space gyro to look at the ‘thought projector’ (more genuine Thirties spacey techno-speak!).  This shows them not only where Dale is currently being held captive, but the precise route of the secret passage.  And it leads straight into the throne room!

The hidden doorway turns out to open onto the top of the altar steps, directly behind Ming’s throne.  Flash and Thun are hidden from sight by an enormous and very convenient statue of the god of death.

As they emerge, they hear the wedding procession approach.

Even though Thun warns him that looking round the statue means certain death, Flash peers round it to try and spot Dale.

Ming is furious.  He commands his soldiers to pursue Flash and Thun – and kill them!

While Ming is distracted by Flash, Thun quickly guides Dale into the secret passageway.

The soldiers swarm up the altar steps to the attack – until Flash and Thun topple the idol right over onto them.

As the soldiers struggle to help their wounded comrades, Flash, Dale and Thun scarper down the secret passageway.  But not for long …

All of a sudden, they slip.

Tumbling down into a whirling underground river, they are swept down by a raging current and over a waterfall into a lake.

Flash swims to the shore with Dale.

But, just as he is about to pull her to safety, she screams - and disappears below the surface of the lake, clutched in two giant green scaly arms.

Flash plunges into the water to Dale’s rescue …

All this takes place in the space of 14 minutes – or rather 12, if you subtract air-time for two breathless and protracted plugs for Hearst Newspapers by the announcer at the beginning and end of the episode.

Much of the action is described by the announcer, rather than being depicted through the medium of sound, even though you do get the odd well-judged sound effect, such as a rocket taking off, an elevator humming and the statue crashing onto the startled soldiers.

Other action is indicated by deplorably clunky dialogue, such as Zarkov ordering Flash and Dale: “Get down this ladder, into this tower.  Down, I tell you!”, Dale observing: “Oh, look, Flash!  There’s a large steel door.  It’s closing!” and Dale explaining: “This rocket ship is breaking away from the Earth with the speed of light.  Right into the path of the new planet!”.  Still, I suppose she needs something to do, considering that she is too girly to participate in the action and you can’t even see how beautiful she is on the radio.

Despite living in a futuristic, technologically superior society, many of the extra-terrestrials talk in amusingly/irritatingly cod-Biblical jargon.  For example, a slave addresses Ming thus: "Oh, thou indulgent Ming, most merciless majesty of Mongo, supreme ruler of all the peoples of the new planet, thy slaves salute thee.”

Thun asks Flash: “Who are thou, white-skinned youth?  Speak!”  Note that Ming and Aura both address Flash as ‘you’ rather than ‘thee’, despite the fact that ‘you’ is the politer and more modern form of the third person singular in English.

God only knows what happens in episode 2.  I’m still too knackered to attempt it just yet.