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A damp Sunday
Oct. 13th, 2019 03:29 pmWhere yesterday's programme had been full of hard choices, interesting events overlapping each other, today's was, if anything, on the sparse side. This is partly a function of my own tastes, of course, a considered choice not to attend things that were on offer. Making allowance for that, and despite Peter Kessler's opening remark that the festival was bigger, with more guests, than ever before, it felt less rich, less abundant. I enjoyed everything I did, and I certainly seem to have bought more books than usual, but I've also had more time to pause between sessions. Of course, if the sun were shining (or even if it just wasn't raining) I'd be enjoying having time to explore the town...
We had time before the morning's first event to call in at the Clocktower, where I surprised myself by buying two books from Myriad as well as one by Myfanwy Tristam and Zara Slattery (hooray!). Neither of the Myriad books was by Darryl Cunningham, who we were about to hear talking about billionaires, at a panel titled Visible Invisible: a neat device to bring together the secret manipulators of the world with the hidden history of lesbians, as represented by Kate Charlesworth. I'm not sure the two really fitted together, but Bryan Talbot chaired as even-handedly as he could. I'm looking forward to reading Kate's memoir / history, and to seeing whether the family likeness to Bryan's Alice in Sunderland (suggested by the slideshow) really exists.
In the break before our next panel, we returned to the International Marketplace: having already bought books here yesterday from the Belgian artists I'd been listening to, I was quite restrained - well, comparatively!
Finally, the writers' panel: and the first panel which actually behaved as a panel, in the the participants talked among themselves, and there was actual conversation. Participants were Garth Ennis, Rob Williams and Si Spurrier. Garth Ennis is the only one of three whose work I have read, and not very much of it. He deals mostly in material that is too brutal for me to enjoy - respect, yes, enjoy, no - which I occasionally regret, because I love his quiet moments, the conversations between his characters. I thought it would be interesting to hear what he had to say, and it was. Si Spurrier I knew by name, Rob Williams not at all, and while I didn't come away with the urge to buy their work, I did think it would be worth checking the library.
So far, so good. There was one more thing I wanted to see, a project called Next Frame, which invited artists to look at works in the Abbots Hall Art Gallery as if they were the first frame of a comic, and to supply the next panel: this took place yesterday, and the work was to be on show until three o' clock today. We put aside thoughts of a leisurely Sunday lunch, and after a quick sandwich set off for the Abbots Hall in the rain, to find it closed, and with no indication that it might ever have intended to be open. Later, we asked about this at the Clocktower, where by chance the organiser was in conversation with the volunteer we asked, and so was able to apologise: he had not realised when he scheduled the event that the current exhibition having ended, the Gallery would not be open on Sunday. The suggestion that this fact could have been publicised seemed to surprise him, but he agreed that it might have been an idea. Meanwhile, we went to the Tom of Finland exhibition, which was what it was: though the effect of a large number of (almost exclusively) black and white images, regular in size and therefore in arrangement, in a white exhibition space was paradoxically chaste.
On a brighter day I might have lingered in town and explored more of the Windows Trail, but not today. I liked this window, though, only just down the hill from our cottage:
Which came first, the monster or the egg?
We had time before the morning's first event to call in at the Clocktower, where I surprised myself by buying two books from Myriad as well as one by Myfanwy Tristam and Zara Slattery (hooray!). Neither of the Myriad books was by Darryl Cunningham, who we were about to hear talking about billionaires, at a panel titled Visible Invisible: a neat device to bring together the secret manipulators of the world with the hidden history of lesbians, as represented by Kate Charlesworth. I'm not sure the two really fitted together, but Bryan Talbot chaired as even-handedly as he could. I'm looking forward to reading Kate's memoir / history, and to seeing whether the family likeness to Bryan's Alice in Sunderland (suggested by the slideshow) really exists.
In the break before our next panel, we returned to the International Marketplace: having already bought books here yesterday from the Belgian artists I'd been listening to, I was quite restrained - well, comparatively!
Finally, the writers' panel: and the first panel which actually behaved as a panel, in the the participants talked among themselves, and there was actual conversation. Participants were Garth Ennis, Rob Williams and Si Spurrier. Garth Ennis is the only one of three whose work I have read, and not very much of it. He deals mostly in material that is too brutal for me to enjoy - respect, yes, enjoy, no - which I occasionally regret, because I love his quiet moments, the conversations between his characters. I thought it would be interesting to hear what he had to say, and it was. Si Spurrier I knew by name, Rob Williams not at all, and while I didn't come away with the urge to buy their work, I did think it would be worth checking the library.
So far, so good. There was one more thing I wanted to see, a project called Next Frame, which invited artists to look at works in the Abbots Hall Art Gallery as if they were the first frame of a comic, and to supply the next panel: this took place yesterday, and the work was to be on show until three o' clock today. We put aside thoughts of a leisurely Sunday lunch, and after a quick sandwich set off for the Abbots Hall in the rain, to find it closed, and with no indication that it might ever have intended to be open. Later, we asked about this at the Clocktower, where by chance the organiser was in conversation with the volunteer we asked, and so was able to apologise: he had not realised when he scheduled the event that the current exhibition having ended, the Gallery would not be open on Sunday. The suggestion that this fact could have been publicised seemed to surprise him, but he agreed that it might have been an idea. Meanwhile, we went to the Tom of Finland exhibition, which was what it was: though the effect of a large number of (almost exclusively) black and white images, regular in size and therefore in arrangement, in a white exhibition space was paradoxically chaste.
On a brighter day I might have lingered in town and explored more of the Windows Trail, but not today. I liked this window, though, only just down the hill from our cottage:
Which came first, the monster or the egg?
