Leave for Civilisation only to go back in time - Fun Thing # 92

A Night of 50s Music....

Just call me Marty. It might not be everyone's idea of a great time; you hit the big smoke, have a few drinks and then see a rather odd man, dressed up as someone about 30 years younger and long dead, singing songs... in obscene leather trousers. Thrusting. I, er, didn't enjoy that part I hasten to add.

That's right I had a night of watching a bunch of singers pretending to be long dead popstars: it was called 'In Dreams'. At times it came closer to some of my nightmares.

The Billy Fury impressionist and the rictus of terror that was my face aside, a great time was to be had when I actually focused on the music; there were songs there that should never have been forgotten, or rather relegated to a night of dodgy entertainment; like Conway Twitty's (I know, I know, stupid name) 'It's Only Make Believe'. Generally despite all the sinister references to sixteen year olds, or bizarre lyrics that can only be indicative of a generation abuzz with pent up frustration there are some just simply fantastic songs. Obviously I'm being extremely patronising there as the era was a font of musical diversity and change. Admist all the costumes, bad Dusty Springfield wigs and hand clapping, some of that spirit crossed over; old ladies found the energy to dance in the aisles, whilst I sat complaining of bad knees and feeling asphyxiated by the fug of their floral perfumes. Well, a couple of old ladies were twisting the night away, but the majority of the female audience were accompanied by old men husbands who flatly refused to get up and make a spectacle of themselves, thank you very much! One boogie orientated grandmother danced alone. Like that Sting song, well excepting the state sanctioned excecutions....

I've just realised from my use of the phrase "boogie orientated" that it is entirely possible I am still drunk. The only thing to add is that tomorrow I'm visiting a cheese festival.

Die of Mortification - Fun Thing # 34

It's a Saturday night, you've gone out for a few quiet whiskies... which have become slightly more raucous cocktails and even, (I shudder as I write this) a verbose cherry flavoured alcopop. You've met a man who has stolen a nickname from vintage Grange Hill, put up with a matchmaking barman, and uttered in , ahem, the meekest of tones, a desperate plea much akin to Abba's 'gimme, gimme, gimme' but slightly more explicit, which results in two very old men sitting in your kitchen drinking your single malt whisky. Bottomless old men with a huge capacity for quaffing. Be careful what you wish for.

Once you've gotten rid of them (when the bottles have been sucked dry) all that's left to do is register that it's 4am, you're wide awake, pretty waxed, and (the killer and crucial 'and') it is about time you sent a text. A drunken text.

The next day you die, die, die, die as you remember (quick delete it from your sent messages, so you never have to read the terrible words ever again)... exactly what you said. And to whom. Die. Turn your phone off. Die. Die. Die - the combined weight of chagrin, mortification and horror crushes your fragile soul.

It's a good job I self deprecate so well - but it is a result of all the practise. My sageous flatmate wisely said that no one is perfect all the time, but I would settle for averaging 10% - rather than the 3% I'm currently on.

I'd just like to add.... sometimes a drunken text gets you everywhere. Ahhhhhhh.

What's On....

After expending a fit of energy yesterday, researching and writing notes until my poor hand couldn't take any more, I'm back to my usual torpor. Is it wrong to be put off going up to the library because their computer desktops display little gadgets telling you the weather outside? Maybe I shouldn't be irritated by this, but isn't that part of the point of windows? Real windows, not the Microsoft kind. The only point of that is to crash and generally annoy people.

I worry for the future of the human race sometimes; stupid, pointless desktop gadgets will only promote natural selection to remove necks. Our future generations will be doomed to become reverse giraffes.

In other news the students are trickling back in, with their odd hair, strange clothes and capacity to mill around 4 to a pavement; the Bacchanalia of the Fresher's weekend isn't far off either. This means the only place I'll be safe is the library; I mean what kind of strange 0nes will be hanging about there - apart from the weather-phobic no necked weirdos obviously.

Rain, rain, go away.... Fun Thing #67 - Listen to songs about rain whilst staring out of the window like a lost puppy.

Aberystwyth's rain is .... similar.

The downpour continues and I am trapped indoors, having foolishly spent all my money on luxuries like wine, decongestant, pesto and fair trade rice cakes rather than a sensible pair of good winter shoes... and my duffle coat (now an amazing seven years old, still far too big) has even more holes.

• The current playlist: Raindrops keep falling on my head (Manic Street Preachers cover) Rainslicker (Josh Ritter) Why Does it Always Rain on Me? (Travis) Summertime Blues (The Who) I Can't Stand the Rain (Ann Peebles) Stormy Weather (Ella Fitzgerald)

And newly discovered (well pinched from another blog) Stormy Monday Blues (Bobby Blue Bland). Don't say I never give you anything.

...but not as suggested by some the greatest hits of Wet, Wet, Wet.

Some Comments on Films....

I'm still suffering from that lingering cold: if I were lost in a dark forest or a labyrinth it wouldn't be crumbs or thread I'd follow to freedom but a trail of tissues. At some point I hope to regain my normal voice and wake up without the cacophony of coughing and sniffling that currently accompanies me.

Being ill and unable to do all that much (it's such a hard life) I've been confined to watching films, so you're going to get my film rant. Old favorites have been dusted down, and being such a geek I've watched all the special features too, except for the making of Jurassic Park, where the introduction "I'm James Earl Jones, and let me take you on a wonderful adventure through a film 65 million years in the making...." put me off. Likewise, Se7en, one of my very favorite films of all time and incidentally a dvd that is packed with special features and 3 separate sets of commentaries, features the droning and dull Morgan Freeman who rattles on about how a hat put him in the right frame of mind for the character of Sommerset and how he wants to bring to the forefront scripts written by all different kinds of Americans; Afro-Americans, Asian Americans... as long as they are American he doesn't care. Which is why he worked on Se7en, written by a Caucasian American script writer, even there are too many of those about all telling the same story.

The Counterfeiters

For something completely different however try the 2007 film 'The Counterfeiters', written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, starring Karl Markovics, Devid Streisow and August Deihl.

It's a fascinating slice of forgotten World War Two history -Operation Bernhard: a Nazi plan to destabilise the UK and US economy. Concentration camp forced labour was used to fake £134,610,810 in practically perfect bank notes to help resupply the German war effort: it remains the world's largest counterfeiting operation. The film is based in part on the memories of a survivor of this operation Adolf Burger, and catalogues the men's differing reactions to being used as part of the Nazi war effort - in helping to prop up the weakened German state they guarantee good treatment for themselves, but they are still Jews, still in prison and are unable to escape the morality of their situation; upon arrival at Sachsenhausen they are treated with cordiality but in a macabre twist given the clothes of Auschwitz prisoners to wear. Understandably there's a lot of conscience wrangling going on. It's a gorgeous looking piece of cinema, really grimy and understated, the characters all have depth and complexity and it is certainly a window into a thought provoking situation. Apologies about the pun but there's nothing flashy or false about The Counterfeiters; it really is a decent film- 8/10

I hate to be grumpy but the reason I'm watching really old films, The Counterfeiters excepted, is that I maintain that there hasn't been a decent period of film making since 2000; although there are one or two gems that shine through (like the wonderful Sideways, or The Prestige) studios are producing less material and generally it does seem to be generic, safe, and now with a disturbing trend to produce 'chick flicks' aimed at a slightly older but apparently no wiser female audience. So, later I'll be watching... well I'd love to watch the Usual Suspects but unfortunately some bloody hobbit has my copy of it, so it's going to be The Silence of the Lambs, which I'll be doing Hannibal impressions to; "I ate his liver with fava beans a nice lemsip".

Summer Reading

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe (1979)

'The Right Stuff' is Tom Wolfe's answer to why a man sits on a firework and why public admiration for the Mercury 7 astronauts literally took off (oh,I'm sure I can get sky high in here somewhere too). Wolfe catalogues the beginnings of the US Space Program with boyish enthusiasm and never misses a chance to get in some pilot lingo; he is openly admiring of the 'right stuff' of flight testers, particularly Chuck (first man to go supersonic in flight and assent) Yaeger and provides an entertaining history.

The titular 'right stuff' these pilots possess boils down to unassailable egos that in turn gives rise into physical invincibility. The young men do not fear the statistic that tells them that 23% of naval pilots die in accidents (this doesn't include combat, which the US Navy wisely considers never to be accidental), they are unflappable when their friends around them are dying (rather horribly), and they have little care for the damage their jobs do to home life - they just buckle up and try to go that little bit faster - "push the envelope" to use Wolfe's euphemism.

The astronaunts don't quite have the same pizazz as the career test pilots- despite their bravery and achievements, not least enduring rectal thermometers and lots of enemas. They seem, to Wolfe at least, to have some how circumvented the cult of the righteous despite the fact that Gordo Cooper was so relaxed that actually fell asleep in his capsule before his launch. They are both the pinnacle of 'the right stuff' and its downfall, though they abide by esoteric warrior ethics and have very shiny suits.

It's a fantastic read; enlightening, informative and slightly gossipy whilst exuding respect. To have the right stuff is to be a colossus bestride a world of ants. Ants that can't fly and wouldn't even dare... mostly because they are bloody sane!

The Sourdough Experiment - Fun Thing #46

Aberystwyth continues to be the dull, disreputable, dinge-hole that various people seem to know and love. I am not one of them.

Pretty sunset. Horrible place.

I didn't give in gracefully to living in here - as my encyclopedic knowledge of pubs near train stations testifies. Recent events mean I'm here for good, so maybe it's time to embrace the experience. So far I've been attacked by seagulls, seen the camera obscura and museum, and become so drunk and disorientated that I've been lost in my own flat.... but surely there's more to this tiny little (woefully inadequate) town?

Enough of tangents, I shall sally forth and get to the point of this post....I made sour-dough: cue ominous music in the background.

Sour-dough, for those not in the dough know, is a special kind of bread that you deliberately let go mouldy before you bake it: so for sour read ... fecund. The brave can find a recipe (though not the one I used) here. It takes about a week to turn the ingredients into a bubbling, malty ooze, thankfully this is achieved by just leaving it be. Once the bubbly state has been accomplished you add more flour.

In theory this should leave you with about 3lbs of dough, but in reality it creates tremendous problems and unleashes the forces of chaos. This is not just any old dough, oh no! It is dough that contains so much life that it has developed a sense of generosity. Within seconds of trying to add more flour, the philanthropic bake-stuff will leap up and cover the baker liberally from head to foot.

If you must carry on, then scrape up whatever remains, kneed the hell out of it (to teach it a valuable lesson), and then leave it alone again (naturally). Bake the next day. Once cooled, cut a piece, eat, then pull a face because it really can be quite sharp.

When you have, made, baked and sampled your labours promptly feed them to someone else. Tell them you respect their refined taste if they seem lukewarm (or are otherwise informed on the perils of sourdough).

On a totally unrelated note - I've left Aber for a few days: I'm travelling with my bread, not unlike P.T Barnum and Jo-Jo the dog faced boy. Those who wish to sample may do so.