News from Nowhere

After the count on Friday, since we were halfway to J's house, we took the roundabout route home, and called in for a cup of tea. And I'm glad we did, even though we then had a bit of a rush to make the Live to Your Living Room gig we had booked: luckily the start time was not the advertised 7.30 but 8 o' clock, and we used the extra half hour to inveigle our too-smart-by-half tv into showing us the live YuoTube stream.

Breathless, but worth it: a hybrid concert, with Nancy Kerr, James Fagan and Tim van Eyken, not a line-up I'd met before. It seems they used to play together twenty or so years ago, when they all lived on narrowboats, then other things happened - but now Tim van Eyken has moved to Sheffield, and they have relaunched the trio. This had a feeling of celebration about it, and I think was also an anniversary concert for the organiser (Live at Sam's), so it chimed well with our own celebratory mood: and lots of tunes, lots of songs, some old friends (Spirit of Free Enterprise is absolutely not celebratory, but always welcome!), some new to me - a setting of Locks and Bolts to the tune of Lads of Alnwick, dissolving into the familiar tune...

Nonetheless, durham_rambler wanted a small celebration to thank his team of supporters (leaflet distibutors and one brave canvasser). This was of necessity held at short notice (wait for the election result, but as soon as possible thereafter) and this is a Bnk Holiday weekend: so the party ended up being a very small one indeed. I don't know what it says about this household that we had enough fizzy wine already in the cellar even before one of those well-wishers turned up with a bottle before going away for the weekend; but we had to go shopping to top up the supply of wine glasses! We also did some intensive dusting and vacuuming and moving of boxes in the sitting room, which is now looking almost presentable. We had a grand total of two guests, which is in my opinion an excellent number for a party, because you get to talk to everyone in some depth. Conversation was, quite properly, about the election, and what it will mean for Durham, and techniques for pushing leaflet through letterboxes, and gossip about local figures - and then veered off in an unexpected direction when the guest I knew less well removed her jacket and revealed a Sandman t-shirt...

Today we went to the VE Day anniversary celebrations in the Market Place: regard this as durham_rambler resuming his civic duties rather than any desire to commemmorate VE Day. Actually, I'd be happy to celebrate VE Day, and suggested that we should make a 'War is Over' placard to do just that: but as I had feared, the historical re-enactors present did not seem to have heard that news; and the band - well, it was too loud for me to listen in comfort. There were fewer stalls than I had expected, too, but we went round the market, and chatted to people (including the Parish Clerk, so durham_rambler gets his brownie point for showing up) and I bought a book from the bookstall.

On our way back to the car park, we called in at the People's Bookshop, where there was a small selection of hardbacks by Neil Gaiman, and a note saying 'if you want to read Gaiman without him profiting from it, buy secondhand' - I wasn't sure how to take this, but I selected a collection that I don't already have. So I discovered that the assistant who had written that note was a big fan...

Three celebrations and two conversations about Neil Gaiman: how's that for a themed post?

One of M.'s contributions to last night's Unity Folk Club was to get all of us, even those who had never heard of Pogo Possum, singing Deck us all with Boston Charlie - excellent stuff, and very silly. More information here, including (if you scroll down far enough) the song sheet as handed round.

We went to Sunderland on Saturday, to hear Bryan and Mary Talbot speaking to the Society of Authors - and anyone else who turned up - about their new book, Armed with Madness about the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. It took place at the museum, and durham_rambler kindly dropped me at the entrance to Mowbray Park, so I could walk through the gardens while he parked the car. Which is how I came to be right under the flight path of this tumult of pigeons:



I just happened to be photographing the walrus as a father and daughter behind me did something - I don't know what: rustled a paper bag, maybe? - and I think they were pretty overwhelmed by the pegeons' reation, too. (The walrus is an Alice in Wonderland reference, but that's another story).

The talk was maybe a little more 'story so far' and a little less about the new book than I had expected, but always entertaining. Here's the trailer, which is a good introduction:



I knew very little about Leonora Carrington: no, less than that, since what little I did know was inextricably entangled with Dora Carrington, an entirely different woman artist (I think it's inconsiderate of them to have so very nearly the same name... )

( Now, having read the book... )

Thr plan was that after the talk, people would afjourn to the museum café; we were all for this until we realised that the only way to accommodate all those present was to sit outside. The sun was bright, but durham_rambler and I looked at the black clouds, heard the thunder rimbling and decided on discretion. We reached the car before the rain began, but by the time we were out of Sunderland, the barrage of hailstines was loud on the windscreen. So we lunched at Homer Hill Farm shop (I recommend the cauliflower fritters).

Many of the comics I was sorting through at the weekend were things I had removed from the shelves for the Reading Group (many others weren't, but let's not get distracted): the Readers of the Lost Art had greeted the announcement that DC were closing down their Vertigo imprint with a look back at some of the shorter series published by Vertigo. So, not another Sandman re-read (though personally I'm always up for a Sandman re-read), and not Shade or Hellblazer, and there seems to be a degree of resistance to The Invisibles too. Which still left plenty to look at (Wikipedia has a useful list) and when I came to check my shelves, I found plenty of Vertigo titles of my own to explore. I should have returned them to the shelves by now (easier said than done, but nonetheless) but they have been waiting on the brain dump which follows, which started out back in the autumn as a Post in Progress (PiP) - if not, as mentioned in the context of the queue for authentic Belgian chips, a Post in Perpetual Progress - to enable me to keep track of what I had read, and in particular what I had borrowed from fellow members. As time passed, there has been a reversal in the direction of flow, and I want now also to record my pleasure at sharing my own collection, and in particular at discovering a shared enthusiasm for what I thought were my strange minority tastes. The Reading Group long ago wrapped up this theme, circumstances have closed several tabs which were supposed to push me into completing the post, so it's time to admit that it is never going to be finished, and post it anyway.

( Hey, kids! [Vertigo] Comics! )

tl;dr version, Vertigo was fun while it lasted, with a remarkably high success rate. Why am I not tempted by Karen Berger's omprint at Dark Horse? Other publishers have followed where Vertigo led, I guess. Anf now all I have to do is squeeze these comics back onto the shelves ...

Sunday morning was bright and cold - a change of weather for the change of month, except that yesterday was even colder. November had been wet - in fact the whole autumn has been rainy. I'll start this post with the previous Saturday, and it was raining steadily then: which was appropriate if not very agreeable, because that's when I took the train into Newcastle for Bryan and Mary Talbot's presentation of RAIN at the the Books on Tyne book festival. durham_rambler had been to the actual launch, in Kendal, and had had our copy signed then, but I had skipped that because it clashed with a talk about Belgian comics, and because I knew there'd be another chance in Newcastle. So S. and I met for lunch in the Tyneside Coffee Rooms, in all their art deco splendour, and went together to the talk. Which was not as well attended as it deserved - but then it was very cold and wet, and Bryan and Mary barely made it, having taken an hour and a half on the road (a half hour's journey); and the audience was an interesting mixture of people who were interested in climate change and flood prevention, people who were interested in comics (only myself and L. from the Reading Group, though the man in the front row in a Luther Arkwright t-shirt was clearly a hard-core fan), and people who were making the most of the Books on Tyne programme. Someone asked "But who is your intended audience?", which rather nonplussed the speakers. But they seemed to be selling plenty of books, so that's good.

I didn't hang around town after the event: cold and wet, as I said before; also I had a tummy upset about which I won't go into detail, but I was ready to go home, so I did. The next day I was - let's say - 'better, but still not well', so we took things very gently, visiting Broom House Farm for lunch and a little light shopping. It was already misty when we left home, but as we drove up the long hill to the farm, the fog thickened, and at the top you could barely see from the parking to the coffee shop. I may have been a bit hazy myself: being wrapped in cotton wool felt entirely appropriate.

The rain continued through the week - we got soaked on the way to the Elm Tree on Wednesday - but Saturday morning was bright and frosty. It felt like a new month: I turned the page on the kitchen calendar, so we could compare commitments for the week ahead, and the calendar, which has been a sad disappointment to me all year (you'd think a National Geographic calendar of islands would suit me, but it's obsessed with tropical beaches) finally, at the last opportunity, gave me something to enjoy: a pair of blue footed boobies (in the Galapagos). It felt like December, too, because this has been the weekend of the Christmas Festival: the kind of festival that is all about shopping, and I went out and shopped.

durham_rambler accompanied me for the first stage of the shopping, in which we did some errands and failed to buy a haggis: the cheese stall had not stocked up for St Andrew's day, and had sold out. We didn't buy any cheese, either, because J, who had spent the night with us on THursday before catching the very early morning train for Milan, had given us a miniature brie (given the diameter of a full-size brie, a miniature one is still a substantial cheese). Besides, I knew there would be cheese sellers at the profucers' market in the cathedral cloisters. We went there next, and we did indeed buy cheese, also bread, and some smoked foods (haloumi and black pudding, separately).We lunched together in the cathedral café, which was pleasant enough but very busy.

And then durham_rambler unleashed me to do my worst in the marquee, which in theory is dedicated to crafts, but also offers various edibles: in fact, a major reason I didn't want to mss the festival is that I wanted to buy some wine from the Domaine de Palejay - anf I did, and it was delivered that evening, so I have shopped successfully, which is good. I also had some entertaining conversations, including one with a cartographer (ah, here he is!); bought a couple of small gifts (not as many as I had hoped, but when does that ever happen?); bought myself a garment (picture the least you would have to do to a scarf to turn it into a jacket, and it's one of those). And did I mention the cheese? I had forgotten that Lacey's were likely to be there, but since they were, and since they make very good cheese, I chose a couple of pieces - but I was greeted like an old friend (which I am, but) and it's three for a tenner, and that's not a very big piece, have this one, and this one, and look, have this as a gift... We will not be running out of cheese any time soon (which is not a bad thing.)

Where 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 are spending the weekend in Kendal, at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Another year, another cottage: I'd happily return to the Marketplace Hideaway, but it was already taken. So we are on Beast Bank, which is very handy for the Brewery during the day when the back gate is open, and not much further along the road after dark.

We took the direct road, as it was past midday by the time we set off: but the A66 is still spectacular. It was sunny east of the Pennines, but the west has a reputation to keep up: the hills were green and grey and dotted with white sheep, the sky was grey and silver, and the margin between was blurred. We were safely in our cottage before the heavens opened, with a great clattering on the plastic roof of the lobby - and it had stopped by the time we'd had a cup of tea and were ready to go out, so that was OK.

I arrived at the festival knowing only of one event that I definitely wanted to go to: the official launch of Bryan and Mary Talbot's Rain. I hadn't looked in detail at the programme (actually, I hadn't looked at the programme at all) because I find the website very hard work. So it wasn't until we picked up our passes, and a paper programme at the box office - they also gave us a handy calculator to display what's on when, so I suspect I'm not the only person who struggles with this! - that we realised that there are several interesting things overlapping that timeslot. Luckily we saw Bryan and Mary in the foyer, so I was able to apologise and say we would join other members of my reading group and go to their event at Books on Tyne, and tomorrow we would go and learn about Belgian comics instead. They were very understanding: Oh, said Mary, I wanted to go to that!

The Gala opening event was a celebration of Viz, a panel of artists attempting the world record for drawing 150 characters from Viz in an hour: they say there is such a thing, and who am I to disbelieve the guys from Viz? I was impressed at the ability of the audience to recognise a huge number of characters. I recognised one or two myself: it's not that I don't think Viz is a good joke, but it is still just the one joke. It felt like a very long hour, and although I was interested to compare the artists working on paper under a camera, and those working direct on a tablet, but I wish we'd had time for Hannah Berry to say more about the progress of her laureateship.

And home, past some of the shop windows displaying art in the town's Windows Trail: tomorrow, more Belgians than you can shake a stick at.

We knew there was a Captain Pugwash exhibition at Ushaw College - actually, Ushaw having been until not so very long ago a catholic seminary, an exhibition of the work of John Ryan, creator of Captain Pugwash and long-time cartoonist for the Catholic Herald - and had every intention of visiting it, sooner or later. Then, on Wednesday, I received an e-mail: sorry about the misinformation in the previous e-mail, Isabel Ryan will be lecturing on her father's work on 29th NOVEMBER.... I hadn't seen any previous e-mail, and the 29th was the next day, but we decided to go for it - and I'm glad we did, because the exhibition was charming but, let's say "minimalist", and the talk was excellent and provided all sorts of material that wasn't in the exhibition. So, here's the Captain Pugwash exhibition website, and here's the exhibition at Ushaw:



( Things could have been better organised. )

However. The talk itself was joyful. My memories of Captain Pugwash are of the television series (and accompanied by the Trumpet Hornpipe, known in this household as 'the Black Pig', after Captain Pugwash's ship). I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that it started out as a comic. The first Captain Pugwash strip appeared in the first issue of the Eagle, but after a few weeks, Eagle decided that Pugwash was 'too childish' for them, so Ryan drew them Harris Tweed instead. Him i do remember as a comic, and Lettice Leefe, too, though I don't think I ever connected them with Captain Pugwash.

Meanwhile, the Pugwash strip found a home in the Radio Times, and from there it was a small step to the BBC asking for a television version. It seems to have been Ryan's idea to animate this by combining static images with a limited number of moving parts - eyes, mouths, arms, a ship at sea - which could be operated using cardboard levers, in time with the soundtrack. Amazingly, the first episodes were broadcast live, with Ryan and his wife frantically pulling and pushing the cardboard tabs, and trying not to giggle as Peter Hawkins played all the voices. This must have been absolutely chaotic, and they soon started to film the show. Isabel Ryan had brought some examples of scenes with moving parts, for her audience to try out; she told us that on her much delayed train to Durham the previous day she had had an entire carriage of travellers acting out scenes, and so caught up in the process that when they finally saw a train pass their windows, they cried in unison no, it's the scenery that's moving!

( Captain Pugwash's puffin? )

While this post has been under construction, the death has been announced of Anthea Bell: since this is the all-comics version, impossible to pass by without mentioning her!

Then back to Kendal, and picking up where I left off, We continued to have trouble throughout the weekend locking and unlocking the door: we decided blame the wet weather. But on Friday evening we eventually persuaded a key to turn in one of the two locks, decided that would do, and headed to the Brewery to collect our tickets and passes. I'd hoped to have a look at the Hunt Emerson exhibition, but it was in a space also occupied by a band making music at a volume too loud for comfort, so we retreated. From two floors away, it sounded rather good, and I wondered what it was, but I don't suppose I shall ever know. In the bar we found Bryan and Mary Talbot, and Mel Gibson (no, silly, the real Mel Gibson), and there was pleasant chat before the doors opened for the evening's event.

( Friday evening gala: Marvel vs DC )

( Saturday: crime, hate, loathing, rain and the Great War )

( Sunday: Russia, Portmeirion, Jerusalem )

The Graphic Novels Group has been considering comics about the Ancient World (whatever that may be). There's no practical way of getting hold of anything in multiple copies, so rather than all read the same thing, we try to find a theme which lets us bring together our scattered reading, and the current theme is that of the - entirely undefined - Ancient World. For the record, then:

• We started with a prolonged wander through the deeds of Asterix. This is entirely on topic, of course, but we didn't talk much about their depiction of Rome and the Romans, nor of the unsubdued Gauls of that one little village, except to the extent that we talked about the 'Asterix and the Other Nation' pattern which recurs through the series. Mostly we just enjoyed the jokes, and talked about the merits of reading the original text versus the brilliance of the English translation, about Goscinny and Uderzo and of whether the series should have survived them.



• When the word come round that we were ready to move beyond that one little village on the fringes of empire, I thought about what I might be able to read ahead of the meeting, and remembered the episode of Sandman about the emperor Augustus (because somewhere in Sandman you will find something of relevance to any theme). Better still, when I tracked it down to Fables and Reflections, I realised that the same volume also contains The Song of Orpheus. Two takes on the ancient world for the price of one: one a possibly fictional anecdote but given a firmly historical setting, and recounting a single day in which not much happens; one mythical, a tale of life and death, gods and satyrs, stepping outside time to talk of the Endless themselves. There's another kind of symmetry, too, in that both stories are drawn by Bryan Talbot, working with two different inkers. Can you distinguish Talbot inked by Stan Woch from Talbot inked by Mark Buckingham? Sort of - almost - I think I might eventually learn to do that. So that was very satisfying.



• I came away from the meeting with something I'd never heard of, Three, by Kieron Gillen. The interior artwork by Ryan Kelly and Jordie Bellaire is fine, and the covers are better than fine (they reminded me of Charles Keeping, which is nothing to complain about) but it is very much Kieron Gillen's baby. The story of three helots in flight from Sparta offers a riposte to Frank Miller and the heroic view of Sparta and its warrior ideal, all meticulously researched. In the back matter (for Kieron Gillen is all about the back matter) there's academic discussion of how much this view is supported by the evidence (short version, there is evidence for this view, but it is not the only interpretation). Entertaining AND educational, what more could you ask?



• In the discussion about the territories of the 'Ancient World', someone mentioned Egypt, which had not occurred to me. Through a miracle of filing, I was actually able to find my copy of Peter Milligan and Glyn Dillon's Egypt, and I have started rereading that - I hope to finish it on the train in to the group this evening. It's a return to the point of departure in the sense that, like 'Asterix', it is playing with ideas about ancient Egypt, its rituals and its gods, but with an altogether blacker palette. The protagonist manages to be cynical and unscrupulous to an extent which would be totally repellent if you stopped long enough to think about it, only you never get a chance to do that. Think of a slightly hapless John Constantine.

I wasn't very enthusiastic about this topic when it was suggested, but it's turning out to be a lot of fun.