Thursday, April 30, 2009

My Doctor Who Plot

This is an adventure of the Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith. I'm writing this in May 2009 and Matt Smith won't be taking over the role from David Tennant until next year. So here's my chance to write something truly anachronistic.

The story begins:

The Doctor is just getting used to his new form when something seems to explode in his brain. Images, thoughts, names, words, all manner of neural activity causes the doctor to stagger and reel around the Tardis control room and then fall flat on the floor. We see glimpses of swirling visions and faces which are appearing in the Doctor's mind.

Roll opening credits.

The fit subsides and the doctor's companions, Wayne and Sharon, help him to his feet.

'Who are you?' asks the Doctor.

'Don't you know us Doctor?' replies Wayne.

'It's Sharon, Doctor,' says Sharon, 'You know us. Sharon and Wayne, Wayne and Sharon? We travel with you.'

'Oh gods, kill me now,' mutters the Doctor, under his breath.

The Doctor begins checking readings in the Tardis control room and then finds a timelord medical kit and begins checking his pulses and physical responses.

Eventually he announces, 'Something is very wrong indeed. I need you both to stay out of my way while I find out what's going on.'

'What are you going to do, Doctor?' asks Wayne.

'I need to perform a timelord meditation ritual' relies the Doctor.

He presses a button and a couch appears out of the Tardis floor. He lays back on the couch and places a metallic band around his head. He closes his eyes and goes into a deep meditational state.

We now see things from the Doctor's viewpoint. He is surround by white and grey mists which slowly clear to reveal a landscape with a path, unpaved and looking as though only ever trod by the occasional traveller on foot. The Doctor looks around and then begins to climb the path as it winds its way up a gentle slope.

Along his journey the Doctor meets a succession of interesting characters who look strangely familiar. They played by: Geoffrey Bayldon, Sam Troughton, Sean Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. They all represent aspects of the Doctor's own mind.

After initially being in conflict with these elements of his own self the Doctor learns to work in harmony with all of them to open a locked gateway to discover beyond it a courtyard where he must release some hidden secret within himself.

When success is achieved the container of the secret bursts open and from it come thousands of humanoid forms who congregate on a hillside in the Doctor's mindscape. The Doctor awakens from his meditation and the thousands of figures begin to come forth from his head and materialise in the real world. They form an increasing throng with the Tardis, spilling over from the control room and into the adjoining corridors. The throng of people are talking happily and excitedly to each other like old friends at a party. The Doctor's companions are totally confused until the Doctor explains it all to them. These are the Doctor own people, the Timelords. When the Planet Gallifrey was about to be destroyed by the Daleks the Timelords devised a way to survive.

They had always had the ability to regenerate by switching to an alternative quantum potentiality of their own existance but on this occasion they they had invented a way to convert their entire species into a quantum potential state and encode their lives into storage inside the Doctor's soul and then erase his memory of the plan. Thus the Timelords were safely hidden from the Daleks while the Doctor was left believing himself to be the only living Timelord. Now he is permitted to remember the plan and, with great joy, he greets the resurrected Timelords. They are back. The Timelords are back! Returned from a mere potentiality to full corporeal existance. A great deal of laughing and cheering, backslapping and conga-dancing ensues. Then they all travel on in the Tardis to find a new home planet where the Timelords can recreate their civilisation.

Roll closing credits (and replace the orchestra music with the Radiophonic workshop version).

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Voice Acting Audition Pieces - 4

This is the audition piece I read for the part of Groo in the forthcoming podcast of 'Angel Between the Lines'. Once again, I didn't get the part but will be helping with other bits of the show. Go to http://www.angelbetweenthelines.com to find out more about 'Angel Between the Lines.'


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Voice Acting Audition Pieces - 3

This is me doing an audition for the part of Wesley in the fan production 'Angel Between the Lines'. I didn't get the part but I will be doing other work for the production. Go to http://www.angelbetweenthelines.com for more info about the forthcoming brilliant podcast.

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Voice Acting Audition Pieces - 2

This one is me doing my impression of Arlo Guthrie:

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Voice Acting Audition Pieces - 1

I auditioned for various roles in Angel Between the Lines, the new fan production podcast coming soon from Between the Lines Studios. Now I'm going to share with you the audition pieces I read. Most of these are short snippets of lines from episodes of Angel. This first one is for general voice acting of bit parts and extras in the podcast:



For news about THIS FORTHCOMING BRILLIANT PRODUCTION go to http://www.angelbetweenthelines.com/

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Sunday, April 26, 2009

imagine

A SING ALONG VIDEO, if I can make a twit of myself singing acapella the least you can do is singalongaspeculativism:

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How I Came To Be A Total Geek

When I was about nine years old, or approximately 1962, a young student teacher came to do her work experience at our little village primary school. She was keen to prove her idea that nine year old children could be taught how computers work. This bright, clever, eager young space cadet had a whole plan worked out to get us all to understand the new technology of the 1960s.

A few words here about the history of computers up to the early sixties:

Mechanical computing had been around since ancient people, perhaps the Babylonians, invented the abacus and it had been developed further in the early 19th Century by Charles Xavier Thomas and others. Charles Babbage designed a computing machine called a 'difference engine' in 1822 and another called an 'analytical engine' in various versions afterward. Babbage died in 1871 and in 1888 William Seward Burroughs, grandfather of William S. Burroughs the beat generation author received a patent for a simple adding machine. Subsequently, adding machines became quite popular in international business usage but the more complex 'difference engine' and 'analytical engine' remained mere tinker toys until the Second World War when the first electronic computers were constructed at Bletchley Park in England for the purpose of decrypting German codes.

After World War Two electronic computers began to be developed for business use. By 1951 a British chain of teashops called 'Lyons' Corner Houses' were using a computer called LEO 1. L.E.O.1 stood for: Lyons Electronic Office 1.

From 1956 onward the British government raised funds by selling bonds to the public and these bonds functioned as a lottery where people could win a cash prize each week if their bond number came up in a draw. The number was picked by a machine called ERNIE, which stood for Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment.

So, by the early 1960s we were used to hearing about these various electronic computing devices and we saw representations of them in movies and tv shows. They were large, bulky machines which looked a bit like filing cabinets with tape reels spinning around on the front and punched cards put in and taken out. The holes punched on the cards represented coded information.

So our young student teacher set to work to teach us nine year olds how that system of punch coded computer cards actually worked.

She used a pack of index file cards, a hole punch, a pair of scissors and some knitting needles. Each one of the children in the class had a card to write details on. We each wrote our age, name, eye colour, hair colour, etc. and then took the cards to the teacher to be hole punched along the side of the card and holes were either cut with the scissors or left uncut depending on whether information was 'YES' or 'NO' in each of the information categories. 'YES' we were over nine or 'NO' we were under nine. 'YES' we had blue eyes or 'NO' we didn't. 'YES' we had green eyes or 'NO' we didn't. And so on and so forth. Cut through the hole to make a slot in the edge of the card if it was a 'YES' or leave the hole uncut if it was a 'NO'.
Then the cards were put together in a pack and shuffled. (It felt a bit like a magician's conjuring trick being performed).

Once the pack was shuffled, the knitting needles were inserted into the holes in the cards and these knitting needles were labelled to indicated which detail of information they represented.

Our simple computing device was now ready to answer questions. When we wanted to know how many children in the class were blue-eyed and under nine years old we simply pulled out the two appropriate knitting needles and gave the cards a little shake. The cards for the blue-eyed eight year olds fell onto the desktop.

And it worked! Amazingly I found I was able to understand the basic principle of a computer though I was only nine years old and no-one would have home computing for another twenty years yet.

When I moved on to secondary school I tried to explain computers to my teachers there but they didn't get the basic principle of them and they ridiculed me for even attempting to explain it to them. They told me not to read so much science fiction. They said the world I would grow up into wouldn't have 'computers' and 'robots' and 'spaceships' and 'genetic engineering'. Oh no, the world I would grow up into would be the 'real world' of work and suffering and slaving to pay the rent. the world of fighting in a war for queen and country and raising a family. So, they informed me, I should buck my ideas up and stop thinking all this drivel about computers and robots and whatnot and start to live in the real world. They assured me that computers would never improve my job prospects. I knew they were wrong. And I knew it was only a matter of time before they'd be eating their words. So I kept on reading that sci-fi.

And that's how I came to be a total geek.

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The Creative Process

I've been writing these reminiscences directly onto the blog with only a quick proof-read before posting so I'm finding there are still a whole mess of typos in the ones I've posted so far. Not to worry. Nobody ever reads this but me anyway. Eventually I'll get the whole book together and proof-read it properly.

Today (Sunday morning) I've been watching some of my DVD set of Firefly and now I'm listening to 'Ladies of Letters Go Global' on the BBC IPlayer at the same time as typing this. Later on I've got to update my Skype contacts list but first I should do some more writing for the book.

I'll get on with that now.

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

My Experiences In The 1960s

So I found myself in a school which was, in almost every way, opposed to the development of art, poetry and the finer feelings amongst its students. Many of the teachers seemed to be either unqualified or under-qualified for their roles and some of them had an active hatred for children and for the power of the imagination.

We were driven through the usual miserable round of forced PE activities and the ritual humiliations in the classroom. I was made to stand up and be insulted and laughed at by teachers again and again and again. No matter how well I did at maths and english I was still treated as stupid. Perhaps for reading science fiction and comic books, both forms of literature regarded as 'trash' by the teachers. Or perhaps for being Irish. Or for being Canadian. Then again, maybe the reason was something else. There was plenty to choose from. I was a Christian of that variety which takes turning the other cheek seriously and declares for pacifism. I was a swot and a little goody-goody.

Probably it was a bit of all of these reasons rolled into one. As a child I kept to strict honesty and truth telling in a way that the average person would find difficult to believe. At that age I didn't yet realise how unusual my obsession for religious peace and truth actually was. There was definitely something odd about it. Most people would tell a lie sometimes. Not me, not ever. I didn't really begin to lie like a normal person until I was about 18 or 19.

In those days no-one had heard of Asperger's Syndrome but I think it's safe to assume I had it.

Outside of school hours I read stacks and stacks of books, mainly science fiction. I continued to explore the world on my bicycle and to injure myself with reckless adventures falling out of trees and the like.

My dad, a big muscular working man, was a hero to me with his wit and his kindness, his cooking and his gardening talent. He had a pleasing Canadian accent and sailor's tattoos up and down his arms.

My mum was a gentle, kind hard working person who scared the hell out of us all if she got angry, shouted, slammed doors, stamped her foot. Us kids would run out to play somewhere else and my dad would disappear to his greenhouse and the safety of his tomato plants. But, when she wasn't angry, mum was lovely, a beautiful twinkling-eyed Irish woman and a source of love and kindness.

We were so lucky to have parents who were good, kind people.

At some stage during the 1960s (and I'm not sure in my own mind exactly when it was) when I was maybe 10 or 11 or so, I went to the dentist and received an overdose of nitrous oxide gas. Now, if you know about the use of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic in dentistry you'll realise how difficult it is to give someone an overdose. To make such a mistake requires a compounded series of negligences on the part of both the anaesthetist and the dentist. Nevertheless, somehow they managed it and I was transported into a physical-mental-emotional state of delerium. My mother took me home crying and giggling and crying my eyes out. The worst bit of it was that I was unaware of the state I was in. A woman in a newsagent's shop gave me some comics, and then some more comics, and then some more. My mum led me out of the shop wailing and crying as I clutched the comics. I asked my mum, 'Why did that nice woman give me all the comics mum?' 'To stop you from crying,' replied my mum. 'But I'm not crying,' I replied, seriously believing this to be true, even as I continued to sob and sniff. I was in another world.

Of course, it never occurred to my parents to sue anyone. People just didn't think that way in the 1960s, or, at least, not in the working class of England.

At school I sank into a lower grade and became the cleverest boy in a class of kids generally considered substandard. They taught us algebra and I got it immediately but the following two years they taught us the same algebra over again for the benefit of the majority who didn't understand it. I just had to tread water. Going nowhere.

The music teacher gave us two years of singing old folk songs from books while she plonked away on the piano. We were not allowed any hands-on contact with musical instruments in case we broke them. After two years the boys in the class were so restless the music teacher couldn't control them anymore so she refused to teach our class. This meant we wouldn't get music at all. The music teacher said she was glad she wouldn't be teaching our class anymore because she didn't want to be responsible for the boys all going out and forming rock and roll bands. As the class shuffled out the door the teacher took me to one side and told me in confidence that she would be willing to take me as an individual for tutoring, because I was 'such a good little boy'. I was horrified! She didn't think I was getting beaten-up often enough so she wanted to make me into a teacher's pet! Yikes!! Yuck!! I angrily refused her offer and told her she was quite wrong to be against rock and roll. She seemed pretty upset as I stormed off.

The art teacher didn't like art. He wanted to be a PE teacher but there weren't enough places to go round. He had to make do with being an art teacher and was openly derisory about both art and and our chances with it. I was good at drawing but you would never know it from the work I did in secondary school. We had to work with big stubby paint brushes and powder paint on sugar paper so that the most artistic 15 year old kid would be reduced to making work which would've been unimpressive in the infants. There was a glass fronted display case in the corner of the class and it was filled with high quality expensive art equipment so that the school governers and the parents could be impressed by it when they came to visit. The display case was kept locked. Permanently!

In science the boys got physics, the girls got biology and we both got chemistry. Apparently it didn't matter if the boys didn't understand biology and, anyway, it 'avoided embarrasment'. It, apparently, also didn't matter if the girls knew nothing about electricity and magnetism and no-one seemed particularly bothered if none of chemistry experiments ever worked properly.

I was made to stand in the cricket nets holding a cricket bat while the school bullies (prefects) were permitted to hurl cricket balls directly at my head and I was put into detention for moving out of the cricket ball's way regardless of whether I actually did or not.

I was informed by the teacher of 'Woodwork Technology' that my love of God and Christianity and telling the truth meant that I was a 'Uriah Heep' sort of person.

I was top of the class in all intellectual subjects and bottom of the class in physical skills like woodwork, metalwork and PE. My favourite class was religious education and I remained unaware of the existance of any religions other than Christianity untill I was 14. Then the RE teacher gave us a lesson all about the life of the Buddha. It changed my world. I suddenly realised there were other religions which still existed in the present day. I had previously believed that the old religions of the Greeks and Romans and Vikings and Egyptians were they only other ones and that they were all gone. I made up my mind to learn all about Buddhism and the other religions. This was in 1967 and it soon came to my attention that the Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation in India and George Harrison believed in some sort of Indian religion which I needed to know about.

Suddenly my religion and pacifism were fashionable and I didn't know why. Nevertheless the other kids in class were torn between trying be my friend or continuing to beat me up as usual.

When I got to 15 they told us we couldn't do GCE exams because that was a better quality of examination which only the higher classes, or streams, were allowed to do. In our class, 5C, we were allowed to do a CSE exam, which was for substandard children and was generally considered by everyone to be a millstone around a young person's neck instead of an advantage.

I was asked which subjects did I want to aim for and I said Art. The teacher looked doubtful. 'You can't do art', I was informed, 'because the school has had to tighten its belt this year and we didn't pay the fee to the exam board which does art. We didn't think anybody would be interested'.

So I decided there was nothing to do but to leave school and get a job. I looked in the paper and found an advert for a job as an office boy for News Limited of Australia in Keystone House, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. I went up to London for the interview, got the job and persuaded my mum and dad to write a letter to the headmaster of the school granting their permission for me to leave school and start work. I had escaped the cruelty and the stupidity of school and was ready to start a new life as an office boy in the heart of London's newspaper industry!

And that's how, at the age of 15, in March 1969, I came to work for Rupert Murdoch.

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How I Came To Be An Idiot

Note: This is a re-post with some typing mistakes fixed.


I was born in 1953 near the village of Belmont, which, in turn, is near the town of Sutton, which is in the county of Surrey, which is in England.
The place where I was born later got annexed by the expansionist policies of Greater London, but not until 1965 when I was 12.

In my early years I was considered extremely bright, learning to read even before attending primary school. Between the the age of five and ten years I was continually told by the little old ladies who taught at the village school that I would easily pass the 'Eleven Plus', which was the the big exam everybody was nervous about. I would pass it, they told me, because I was the brightest boy in school. They sort of 'twinned' me with the slowest boy in school, a lad almost completely illiterate and innumerate, who was called Andrew. They sat us next to each other in class and encouraged Andrew to ask me for help whenever he got 'stuck'. I was happy with this arrangement because it made me feel important to be helping somebody.

Meanwhile I was given a bit of speech therapy to get over a nervous stutter and to correct my 'bad habit' of copying the way my dad spoke, which the little old ladies considered an 'Americanism'. I was forbidden to pronounce Gloucestershire and Worcestershire in the way they are spelled. They were to be Gloss-ter and Woos-ter thenceforward. I was also getting treatment described in the 1950s as 'sun ray lamp treatment' which was intended to help with my pigeon-chestedness and bad posture, though it never did. One day when I was laying on the treatment table with the sun ray lamp irradiating my chest I overheard an attendant say 'that'll never be right' and took it to heart. I felt sure he was talking about my weak little chest.

The speech therapy was much more effective and the teachers took a positive delight in my new talents at reading aloud with confidence. Combining my new verbal skills with my mathematical ones enabled me to rattle off the times tables faster and faster, like an autioneer. The 12 times table, the 13 times table and so on up to any number of multiplication table they requested. I was on fire. I was a wizard. A prodigy.

The Eleven Plus loomed closer and I was the only one given sufficient reason by way of the teachers' encouragement to feel that I was going to grammar school.

Andrew continued to ask me for help and I continued to happily coach him in reading, writing and arithmetic. After school hours I loved riding my bicycle, roller skating, climbing trees, playing football and cricket and all the games of childhood. I also had an unhappy knack for falling off my roller skates, crashing the bike into brick walls, falling out of trees and so on and so forth, landing myself in the casualty wing of the hospital time and time again. I had stitches in my head several times. My clumsiness was matched by my enthusiasm, my enthusiasm by my courage and my courage by my recklessness. In fact I had a scar on my face from an accident where I was running with some glass and fell on it face first at the age of 4 or 5.

I had friends all up and down Shanklin Road, where we lived. It was a Surrey County Council prefab estate and we loved it. We lived in pre-fabricated bungalows made of aluminium and asbestos. The interior fittings were aluminium metal covered in lead-based paint. I cut my teeth chewing on those lead painted aluminium cupboards in those asbestos-lined rooms.

It was a two-bedroomed dwelling with my parents in one bedroom and all the kids (me and two of my three sisters) sharing the other bedroom. Very cramped and uncomfortable. We were lucky the third sister was already grown-up.

My dad worked as a stoker in the local hospital boiler room and my mum as a domestic cleaner. They were both good cooks and managed to share the responsibility between them for cooking meals and being around when we came home from school. I suppose they were very progressive in that way. An equal partnership of a man and a woman who both work, both cook and both bring up the kids. I'm proud of them for it, though I don't think they were actually trying to be progressive, it just happened that way.

I was mad keen on religion and went to Sunday School each week. My parents had no interest in religion but they let me go there and took, I suppose, some pride in my achievements when I got a certificate for bible study and that sort of thing. My dad was very skeptical and would challenge my thinking with philosophical arguments which had occured to him.

'Adam and Eve were the only people in the world' said my dad, 'and they had two sons, Cain and Able, so then there were four people in the world. Then Cain killed Able so there were only three of them. Then cain went out and took himself a wife.' My dad chuckled, 'Now where did the wife come from, son? Where did the wife come from?'

Another time dad said: 'All the big companies have these mining operations where they take the gold and silver and diamonds and oil out of the ground. They take and take and take and they don't put anything back. What's going to happen when they've taken out everything that's down there? What's gonna be left? Nothing! Just a great big hole in the earth. That's all, a great big nothing.'

He also told me that church people looked down upon the jews (I had not been aware of this) and drew my attention to the irony of the church people with their bible being anti-semitic since 'the jews wrote the bible' - or, at least, that was my dad's take on things.

The Eleven Plus rolled ever nearer and the teachers continued to tell me I would pass it and go to grammar school. Everybody seemed to agree that going to grammar school would be a good thing, so I had to accept the general body of opinion and go along with it.

The days and months rolled by, the seasons turned, my dad won the prize every year from the council for his front garden. He pottered about in his greenhouse tending tomato plants, or in his shed collecting nails, screws, different types of metal, radio valves etc. All properly categorised and placed in the correct boxes. He pruned his fruit trees, plum and apple and pear and peach. The elderberries grew along the back fence next to the blackberries and the goosegogs, in the farmer's field behind our council estate. The coal was delivered in sacks to the coal shed and we drank lucozade and lemonade and lime cordial and tea and coffee and milk and tapwater and cola. At Christmas there were presents and puddings us kids were given the treat of a tiny thimblelike glass of sherry and at Easter there were chocolate Easter eggs. And my dad went to the British Legion and drank Watney's Red Barrel and I 'Listened with Mother' on the radio except that my mother was usally out at work or busy. And milkmen delivered the milk in glass bottles and a rag-and-bone man, just like Steptoe came around collected old junk on his horse and cart, which they still had in those days. And my eldest sister was training to be a nurse and the next younger sister was helping out in a coffee bar full of beatniks and teddyboys. And I went to cubs and learned to grow mustard and cress on a bit of felt and say dib-dib-dib and dob-dob-dob and how to tie a woggle. And I got good at drawing comical cartoon characters just like the ones in my comic. And all the chimneys in the street had smoke coming out in winter and the thick fogs we got were really smog but we didn't call it that. And we read the Beano comic and the Dandy and the Beezer and the Eagle and Dan Dare and in summer we played on the North Downs and in the farmer's fields and in the old, ruin air-raid shelters where we weren't supposed to go and that just made it more interesting and exciting. And we sang carols at Christmas and played with toy soldiers and model cars and board games. And we had rain and sun and good days and bad days and sad days and boring days and dentist appointments and sun ray lamp treatment. And read books. And ate dinner. And acted silly. And played with chemistry sets. And watched mum making cakes and licked the spoon. And read Superman and Batman comics. And heard Elvis Presley records. And got colds and stomach aches and got well again. And washed behind our ears. And wondered about space ships and time machines and robots and dinosaurs and superheroes and detectives and spies and God and angels.

Eventually, the Eleven Plus arrived, the big day. They re-arranged the seating in class so we would all sit at a separate desk instead of sharing. Andrew had to sit at the desk in front of me instead of being beside me and we were all told very clearly that we mustn't speak to each other once the test had started or we would be disqualified.

The invigilator wasn't one of our usual teachers but a visiting one. She gave out the exam papers, repeated the instructions, and then told us to start.

I was flying through the test without much difficulty when Andrew turned around and whispered to me that he needed help. I had understood the instruction not to talk so I ignored Andrew's entreaties. He became more and more insistant, his whispering got louder and his tone more urgent. I continued to ignore him. Then the invigilator announced she was disqualifying both Andrew and me, for talking during the exam, in spite ofmy protestations of innocence.

So I didn't get to go to grammar school and, instead, I went to a rough old comprehensive school where I was bullied, not only by the other kids, but by the rough old comprehensive teachers, who considered me a swot. Rough old comprehensive teachers who tried to steer us away from 'airy-fairy' things like poetry and art and towards 'realistic' studies such as working in factory or becoming cannon fodder. I was treated as an idiot for asking the teachers stupid questions such as whether it is true that a spaceship travelling faster than the speed of light would go backwards in time.

And that's how I came to be an idiot.

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Friday, April 24, 2009

How I Came To Be English

My mum told me a story about my grandad. They lived in the town of Birr, in County Offaly, Ireland.
When my grandad was young, this would be in the beginning years of the 20th Century, he went out with some of the other young men to cut down a tree in the forest. While they were there an accident happened with the axe and my grandad cut his hand badly.
The other lads bound up the bloody hand with a cloth and left my grandad propped against a tree with a bottle of whisky while they went into town to fetch a doctor. My mum said my grandad always told it this way: While he was leaning against that tree with massive blood loss and pouring a bottle of whisky down his throat all the little people, the leprechauns, came out to dance in a ring, right in front of his eyes.
The interesting thing to me about this is that the story still delights the imagination, in spite of the fact that seeing visions in those circumstances is pretty unsurprising. It's still a good story. Well, I like it anyway.

After that my grandad recovered and, eventually, was called up to fight in the First World War, the Great War, the war to end all wars.
He got caught by a mustard gas attack and became a permanent invalid. My mother nursed him throughout the rest of his life.
My mother went to a catholic school where the nuns would beat her with a stick for such trivial offenses as spelling mistakes.
She once got her hand caught in a hand-cranked machine for chopping meat. She didn't lose any fingers but she talked of the horror of the incident throughout her life.

My father was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in the year 1904. He was only 10 years of age when the Great War broke out and 12 years old when the USA joined the war. He was 20 in 1924 and there is a photo of him looking smart and handsome in a good quality 1920s suit. He looks like an actor in a gangster movie.
My dad could remember the days of prohibition and Americans coming over the border to buy booze. Travelling any distance necessary to get a taste of the hard stuff. He remembered the days of alcohol being smuggled back into America in the running-board of the car.

It wasn't easy to get my dad to talk about his past but he did reminisce sometimes in a vague and dreamy way. I do know that during the depression era of the 1930s he travelled across North America like a hobo, hopping freight trains, searching for a chance of work. And he found work of various kinds including logging, lumberjacking and that sort of thing. He also worked in roadside diners and hash houses as a short order cook.

He met my mother in England. She had come over along with her brothers who had wanted to get into the war against Hitler and had come over the water from Ireland and joined up in the RAF. My dad arrived in England as a sailor in the Canadian merchant navy.

In fact dad was below decks as a boiler stoker on a ship called the Europa which had been a Danish ship until the Nazis invaded Denmark and then, since the Europa was in Canada at the time she was claimed by the Canadian government for the war effort. The Europa sailed to Greenock, Scotland in November of 1940 with a large number of Canadian troops on board. They disembarked at Greenock and the ship sailed to Liverpool in December. My dad was in Liverpool in December 1940 when the Europa was bombed by the Luftwaffe and subsequently drydocked. During the next three months the ship was bombed again and again until she was beyond repair. My dad, with no ship to return to, was in Liverpool during wartime, in civilian clothes and at a loose end. One day a woman on street corner, handing out white feathers to men in civvies, gave a verbal insult and handed one of these symbols of cowardice to my dad, who promptly hit her. She called a policeman. My dad explained who he was, which ship he was with, his journey across the Atlantic dodging submarines, the bringing of the Canadian Army to Scotland, the bombing of his ship and, finally, the handing to him of the white feather.

Well, he got off with a caution but he was pretty upset about it and went off to join the Canadian Army himself, to get into a uniform and avoid any further accusations of cowardice.

So he went from being sailor to being soldier and from boiler stoker to cook. All his old short order cook skills were put to work by the 48th Highlanders regiment. They were proud to be Scottish Canadians, wearing kilts and playing bagpipes. Dad actually wanted to be a paratroop but was disqualified from that because he was missing part of a finger and part of a thumb. This was the result of a bloody accident back home in Canada, lumberjacking. I don't know why there's this weird theme of hand injuries connecting the lives of my dad, my mum and my granddad. There just is.

The Highlanders were posted to Aldershot, my dad met my mum, the regiment took part in the liberation of Italy, the war ended, my parents made a home in England and I was born there in 1953.

And that's how I came to be English.






(copyright Peter-David Smith, Exeter, Devon 2009)

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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The things I have to put up with...

Coming back down to earth from the creation of fantasy universes and the like, back down to the level of the insanity I have to put up with from people everyday.

I'm a Buddhist and we have this thing called the 8-fold way, which is:
1. Right view,
2. Right intention,
3. Right speech,
4. Right action,
5. Right livelihood,
6. Right effort,
7. Right mindfulness and
8. Right concentration

So, after many years of trying I finally managed to get a job which fullfills the 'Right Livelihood' part of the path. I'm working as a street sweeper, which means I get up early everyday, have breakfast, bicycle to work by 7 a.m. and then walk along a set route for seven and a half hours (plus an unpaid hour for lunch) each day, picking up litter, keeping the streets clean and safe. The job is completely ethical. I have to remove litter, broken glass, dog's muck etc., keeping the way clear, clean and safer for the public. I also sort the litter into two bags, recycle or non-recycle. I earn a minimum wage which in Britain is pretty good and provides me with just enough to live and pay my bills. I give £15 a month to charity by direct debit. That's 5 different charities: Oxfam, British Red Cross, Sight Savers International, N.S.P.C.C. and R.S.P.C.A. £3 to each one, totalling £15 a month in all. This amounts to approximately two percent of my income after tax and National Insurance or a larger percentage if I calculate it after rent, TV licence and Council Tax.
So I feel I'm doing the most ethical, right livelihood, job I possibly could. Environmentally friendly, socially responsible and all the good things.
I try very hard to get this Buddhist thing right. I don't eat meat, fish or dairy. My diet and clothing are basically vegan except that I eat free range eggs. I don't drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or take drugs. I'm not a pacifist but I'm reasonably non-violent, I mean I would never hit anybody unless they started on me first.
So it's a mystery to me why I have to put up with such utter crap from people all the time.
For instance I've been arguing with shop owners for about 25 years on the issue of carrier bags. From the 1980s onward I've been telling shop owners I neither want nor need a bag but I still run into opposition. To this very day I get shop assistants in Sainsburys trying to put my vegan food into an unwanted carrier bag. I keep having the same argument with them over and over again. After 25 years I'm getting pretty sick and tired of it.
Then there's the finger-licking and the coughing in the hand trick. For years I've been refusing to allow my food items to be handled by an assistant who has ritualistically LICKED HER FINGER to put as many germs and bacteria as possible onto each item. I refuse to accept that filthy, dirty, unhygienic gesture from people. Then, when I've complained to the supervisor and got my food items handled by someone who doesn't lick her finger and put her spit onto everything I'm able to pay and get the hell out the stupid shop. But the next time go in they'll try the other little Sainsburys trick, which is coughing ostentatiously into the hand before picking up the food item and transferring their germs by that method. Again I complain. Today in Sainsburys the shop assistant defended her action of coughing into her hand before reaching for the carton of soya milk with the words: 'It won't make any difference anyway because you probably have more germs on you because you're only a street sweeper anyway love.' This is the sort of crap I have to put up with from people on a day-to-day basis.
I've got an IQ of 160, I'm an ex-member of Mensa, I've got an honours degree in fine art...... I'm trying to develop the patience of a saint but, since I don't happen to be a saint, it's hard work.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Early stages of a fantasy storyline...

I'm in the early stages of writing a fantasy story set in a different universe. The place where the story takes place is the only world its inhabitants have ever known. Consequently the laws of nature there seem as though they are the only way things could ever be. However, those laws are very different to the laws of nature as they exist in our world.
To begin with, there is no curvature to the horizon. It isn't one of those flat disc type of worlds like the one in Terry Pratchett's books. No, this is an even stranger world which exists in the form of an infinite ocean. There is no edge to fall off of. A ship could sail as far as you like in this other world and would still never fall off, but neither would that ship ever return by circumnavigation. Instead, the ship would sail on and on and on, forever.
There are continents and islands upon the infinite sea, and people living there.
The story I'm writing begins with a sailing ship setting out on a journey to discover new lands. The crew are from a country called Strakk on the continent of Zaquerral. Their civilisation is at about the same level of technology as Europe in the 18th Century but, as they journey across the infinite ocean they will eventually discover other continents where the societies are simpler and some where the technology is more advanced. Some where on that infinite ocean are people with technology resembling the 21st Century of our world and some who would appear to us to be futuristic.
The sea goes on forever in all lateral directions. The sky continues infinitely upwards and the ocean continues infinitely downwards. There is no bottom to the ocean and the land masses continue infinitely downwards too. It is possible for such a thing as a bottomless pit to really exist in this world of wonders.
The days are illuminated by the SunMoon, a mysterious orb which hangs in the sky at a very great altitude and radiates great heat and light from one side of its surface but glows more darkly from the other side. The SunMoon slowly rotates, providing 18 hours of daylight and 18 hours of nighttime in every 36 hour cycle. There is also a variation in the glow emanating from the SunMoon's darker side and this variation corresponds to five 'phases' of the night.
Scientists on some of the continents have constructed theories to explain how the SunMoon stays up in the air, or what may lie beyond it. None of these theories is yet proven.
There is no 'navigating by the stars' because there are no stars and the strange, flickering colours which appear in sky at night appear to be random.
The main characters set sail for adventure, with no plan of returning home ever again. For good or ill they have all given themselves up to a life of new discoveries.....

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Video for Some Other Sgt. Pepper

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Some Other Sgt Pepper

I've uploaded a new album to Last.fm, 'Some Other Sgt Pepper', which my version of all the tracks on The Beatles' Sgt Pepper album. I've re-worked every track in a jazz style and added a bonus track 'Mrs Dalloway' at the end. The music was created in VSThost using 2 of H. G. Fortune's plugins (STS-26.dll and Shuniji-free.dll) plus Rhythmsv3.6.dll, Takim.dll,DVS Saxophone.dll and DSK Saxophonez.dll. The word collage of Mrs Dalloway was made using 23_words.dll and the voices came from a public domain OTR of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf originally broadcast in the NBC University Theatre. All tracks are freely available for streaming and download at http://www.last.fm/music/Speculativism/Some+Other+Sgt+Pepper .

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Angel Between the Lines

Well I auditioned to do some voice acting on the fan production, 'Angel Between the Lines' and I've been accepted. Now I'm waiting to see what part(s) they give me to do in the script.

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Ghost Town - How Did They Miss That?

I just watched 'Ghost Town' starring Ricky Gervais and Téa Leoni. It isn't actually a bad film as such, it has funny bits and the re-working of the Scrooge story is not too close to the original, so that's okay. However they irritatingly miss a great plot opportunity in the middle of the movie. Téa Leoni's character is working on a mummified Egyptian and being assisted by a guy who can see ghosts. Obviously we expect to see the ghost of an ancient Egyptian following his mummy around. The writers somehow completely missed this great plot opportunity and the ancient ghost never appears. The mummy is quickly forgotten as the story moves on. A pity. It could have been a funnier movie. Instead it was just so-so.

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Friday, April 03, 2009

BSG Opera

Wouldn't Battlestar Galactica make a great opera? Imagine it! Battlestar Galactica at Covent Garden Opera House with Paverotti as Gaius Baltar!

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My Buffy Plot

So I made up a storyline for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then the series ended and I still have this plot in my mind so here it is:
The story opens in a year sometime before season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

While slaying some demons who are messing about with a time amulet Buffy disappears to be replaced by a different slayer. It turns out the time amulet exists in three different eras where three different slayers have interrupted the evil plotting of demons who are up to no good with all the amulet magic and with the chanting.
One of the three slayers is called Greta and lives in medieval Europe, the second is Buffy in Sunnydale and the third is called Deva and lives about 200 years in the future when humans have faster then light drive and colonise the galaxy. Bufy disappears and finds herself in the future. Deva, the slayer from the future is displaced into medieval times and Greta is displaced from medieval times into the Sunnydale of Buffy's time. They fight demons in each other's worlds and then work a spell to return. However the spell doesn't work properly the first time and Buffy goes to medieval Europe while Greta goes to the future and Deva to the present. They fight some more demons and eventually all get home.

When Buffy is in the future everything seems very Star Trek-like except that the aliens are well aware of demons and hell dimensions. There are many, many slayers at work in the future but it is still never enough because there's the entire galaxy to patrol for the slayage.

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Television Speculations Six

In the Battle of Wolf 359 Locutus/Picard leads the Borg to a victory against Starfleet. Benjamin Sisko survives but his wife Jennifer Sisko is among the 11,000 casualties. Benjamin Sisko later becomes the emissary of the Bajoran Prophets who are non-corporeal being living in a continuum where linear time has very little meaning. Sisko eventually goes to join them and becomes one with their consciousness but, in the process, their continuum is changed. Sisko's mind forms a conduit from our linear perception of time to the Prophet's way of seeing things. Thus the Prophet continuum is altered from a circle to a 'Q'-shaped reality where the little tail of the 'Q' is the split in the continuum. The being which was once called Sisko emerges to play with our reality and challenge the humans' right to expand their influence in the universe. He calls himself 'Q' and sets himself upo as a judge over Jean-Luc Picard at a point in time-space when Picard was not yet Locutus. In fact, Q engineers the circumstances which lead to Picard being assimilated by the Borg. Later Q becomes a father to the being called 'The Squire of Gothos' or Trelane.

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Television Speculations Five

The twelve colonies of Kobol: Aquarion, Aerilon, Canceron, Caprica, Gemenon, Leonis, Libran, Picon, Sagittaron, Scorpia, Tauron and Virgon built robot servants called Cylons. Curious about the legend of Earth they sent a spaceprobe through the galaxy looking for the 13th colony. The spaceprobe was operated by cylons, who in those days were loyal to humanity. Eventually the spaceprobe crashed on Earth at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 where the cylons onboard were seen as a threat from outer space. Fearing invasion, American scientists reverse engineeered the cylons and re-programmed them to fly a return mission to the twelve colonies and rebel against their masters.

Thus, we of Earth are responsible for the entire human-cylon war.

This is not canon. It's the story I made up while I'm waiting to see how the final episodes turn out. I always do this. Make up my own versions of stories while I'm waiting to see what really happens.

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My Version of James Bond

This is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the James Bond film 'Goldfinger': 'Goldfinger warns Bond to stay out of his business by having Oddjob decapitate a statue by throwing his steel-rimmed top hat. Undeterred, Bond follows him to Switzerland, where he unintentionally foils an attempt by Jill's sister Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) to assassinate Goldfinger for the death of her sister, Jill.

Bond sneaks into Goldfinger's plant and overhears him talking to a Red Chinese agent about "Operation Grand Slam." Leaving, he encounters Tilly as she is about to make a second attempt on Goldfinger's life, but accidentally trips an alarm. Bond attempts to escape using his modified Aston Martin DB5 car. During their escape, Oddjob breaks Tilly's neck with his hat. Bond is soon captured and Goldfinger has Bond tied to a table underneath an industrial laser, which slowly begins to slice the table in half. Bond then lies to Goldfinger that British Intelligence knows about Grand Slam, causing Goldfinger to spare Bond's life until he can determine how much the spy actually knows.'


Now, in my version the bumbling secret agent remains on the table and is castrated by the laser beam. Goldfinger leaves Bond alive but traumatised by the savage pain of castration. MI5 puts Bond in a nursing home where he spends the rest of his life locked in a dreamworld inside his own head, imagining himself to be eternally young and healthy, a ladies man, his face continually changing to resemble Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan etc.

In the real world Moneypenny visits him occasionally and cries.

He never returns to reality.

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