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I made a cardboard sports car model during lockdown, pictured above. Just a bit of simple primitive fun. It wasn’t even a real car. Just a kind of amalgamated mix of classic sports car shapes/looks.

My dad recently bought me this book, which was nice (thanks, Pops!):

I wanted this book because I have fond memories of dad or I (or both of us!) making a card sports car of this type, from a crafting book, when I was a wee bairn. I thought it’d be nice to use it as ref’ for an adult revisitation of this kind of childish fun.

So that’s what I’m doing, whilst watching the Selby vs. Brecel final, on TV. I’ve selected a car I’ve never heard of before. The Pacey Hassan. And I’ve started working up ‘profiles’ (if that’s what you call ‘em?) to use in scaling up or down the overall shape.

I’ll probably transfer these sketches to my iMac. And then tidy them up a bit. For accuracies sake. I’m not being super anal about this. I’m going to keep it all basic and sketchy. We’re not aiming at a perfect replica. Just using this particular Bentley variant as an inspiration.

Wow! Brilliant.

With guest spots from Louis Cole and Candy Dulfer, and covers by The Dan and Stevie Wonder (Reeling In Years and Signed, Sealed, Delivered), this is a fabulous film of the Fearless Flyers in all their awesomely funky finery.

At just shy of an hour and a half, that’s quite a set. Esp’ considering it’s almost all instrumental – only Louis Cole’s viral original Bank Account having vocals – and the short form of most FF tunes as previously released via YouTube.

It’s such a wonderful distillation of music as pure joy. And it’s quite surprising and refreshing to realise that, despite the almost laser sharp focus on stripped down instrumental funkiness, it’s actually musically quite diverse.

From classic blooz to elements of heavy rock, psychedelia, and even garage psych (Running Man), the genre-splicing keeps the whole set fresh, despite almost no vocals, and the groove taking precedence over showboating or solos.

That said, all concerned are fabulous musicians. And each gets a turn or three in the spotlight. Unlike on quite a few of the FF YouTube tracks, there are no horns at all, except when Candy Dulfer guests, playing alto on Hero Town.

Cory Wong is the current undisputed King of ‘chicken scratch’. Mark Lettieri shines on baritone guitar, and brings both the rawk and some virtuoso fire. Joe Dart, well, we all know about the love he earns for his low register mastery (and Olympic neck-work!). And Nate Smith shows just how goddam fierce and funky a drummer can be with just kick, snare, and sock-cymbal (and some incredible hand percussion).

Both Louis Cole and Smith get solo drum spots. It’s really interesting – perhaps especially to a fellow drummer like me – to hear how much musical character each displays. Playing around with some similar ideas, on similar set ups, yet sounding so individual. Wonderful!

Have these guys (n’ gal[s]) been to these Benighted Isles? If so, how did I miss it? And if not… please come and shower us in funky goodness. Lord knows the UK needs some mojo right now!

I’m a big fan of Mark Selby. So it was extremely gratifying to watch him make the first ever maximum break in a Crucible final yesterday.

Cool as the proverbial cucumber, and despite trailing to his adversary, Luca Brecel, Selby negotiated the break with the quiet steady aplomb that is one his (several) trademark qualities.

Was that MC and überfan Rob Walker, shouting ‘get in’ when Mark potted the final and tricky last red, along the cushion, to keep the break going? It certainly sounded like him.

It was lovely to see Brecel and referee Brendan Moore hugging the jubilant Selby, afterwards. This particular 147 was a first on several fronts: the first in a Crucible final; at Brecel’s first time past the first round. And it’s ref’ Moore’s last Crucible final, making a hat-trick. A nice way to bow out!

Only Kyren Wilson might be unhappy about it, as he also scored a maximum, earlier in this Championship, and will now have to share the prize money with Selby.

This is the sixth time the BBC will have serialised Great Expectations for TV. Six times!?* Talk about flogging a dead horse. Having read the book and seen several film and TV adaptations, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to watch another re-tread.

This reminds me of a post I did about the over-veneration of the familiar idols, be it the Mona Lisa or The Beatles. It shows a lamentable poverty of imagination and ambition, and it narrows the range of culture that’s being made broadly available.

Indeed, it’s highly symptomatic of the malaise that grips our mainstream culture nowadays. With the Tory party staging a gradual takeover of the BBC, prior to doing away with it altogether (or reducing it, as they’ve been doing with the NHS for decades, to a ‘brand’ to be chopped up and sold off), it’s the result of having bean-counters inserted at every level.

Great Expectations is, like most of Dickens work, a pretty darn good yarn. But is it so good we should remake it every decade? Every time the BBC (or anyone else for that matter) spends millions re-making it, that’s millions not going on something different. Perhaps something more obscure and/or interesting.

As far as I’m concerned it’s a natural outcome of bottom-line capitalist economics. Something’s already popular? Great, let’s keep milking it and flogging it. If our art, literature and music, etc, form a culture that could be a richly diverse orchard, this modern consumer capitalist way has the effect of replacing all of that potential diversity with a bland mono-culture cash-crop.

This latest re-boot is by Steven Knight, whose most recent successes are Peaky Blinders and Taboo. Neither of which interest me remotely. In fact Peaky Blinders (which got Knight a CBE) annoys me, as I like ‘newsboy’ flat-caps ‘cause of Tom Waits, not Cillian Murphy and co.

Teresa watched some of Taboo. I tried. But couldn’t hack it. So much modern media culture – Peaky Blinders and Taboo both fall foul of this – partake of a shallow yawn-inducing pseudo-Goth graphic-novel style vision of masculinity and criminal culture, in a way that signposts the UK following the US into a MAGA/hillbilly hell of deluded machismo, tattoos and poor sartorial choices.

Even if this were to be the best ever reinterpretation of Gurt Spectorations, I wouldn’t be up for it. It’s already been done to death. And a cursory glance, as Teresa watched it, reveals any such hope to be massively unlikely (the visual design and colour palette show it to be very much a product of our times, and as far from original as one could imagine).

Defenders of it might say, well, it’s not aimed at you. Fine. Understood. But I’m entitled to my view. And I still massively resent that the BBC, an institution I cherish, should be, like all ‘commons’, under attack by the philistines of Toryland.

The BBC ought to be boldly expanding the reach of our media culture, educating, enlightening and inspiring. Not just spewing out the same old same old, just because the bean counters, whose minds are as straitjacketed as their suits, think it might sell.

* In 1959, 1967, 1981, 1999, 2011, and yet again now. That’s nearly every decade! Only the ‘70s and the ‘00s escaped!

Wow! That was a stunner, no mistake!

First 20 year old Chinese newcomer Si Jiahui blasted the odds-on favourite for this match, Belgium’s Luca Brecel (himself only 28), off the baize, streaking to a commanding 14-5 lead.

But Luca came back at him, swinging, taking 11 consecutive frames! The match, initially a best of 33, lurched wildly, in terms of dominance. And at 14-14 became a best of five. But Luca’s winning streak kept going. Astonishing!

It looked, at 16-14, like Si had finally crumpled, perhaps belatedly realising how unlikely his run to this point had been. For a spell his mojo had clearly left him. But in frame 31 he finally got back in the saddle, winning it to zero.

But by that point Luca only needed one more frame. And he duly took it, winning the 32nd frame and the match. The contrast ‘twixt this’n, and the Selby vs. Allen match was, or rather is, chalk n’ cheese!

It’ll be interesting to see who makes it through to the final from the latter. Will Brecel face Selby, or Allen? should be interesting either way. But what a match this Brecel vs. Si game proved to be. Unquestionably a Crucible classic.

Commentators and snooker deities Dennis Taylor and Stephen Hendry were clearly loving it as much as us mere mortal viewers, Taylor highlighting that Brecel’s fight back marks the biggest comeback in Crucible history. The crowd quite rightly gave the two gladiators a well deserved standing ovation.

I r thing I’ve learned going this is that the simpler the shape the better and more uniform the shrinkage.

Large complex shapes, with thin sections and appendages, tend to get very warped and misshapen. And in this instance, there are cracks as well.

Bummer!

I also left some ‘connecting tissue’, which looks a bit shite after shrinkage. If I do any more of this – and it is great fun! – I’ll keep the shapes much much much simpler.

I made some very primitive weaving looms for the girls. Four A5 pieces of hardboard, with 18 holes drilled in a straight line at each end. One each for Teresa, Hannah, Ali and Sofi.

Ali and Sofi showed me this pretty cool ‘keychain’ stuff they have. You make a picture, on this plastic sheet, using acrylic paint pens. This is then cut out and heated in the oven at 150° C for a couple of minutes, which causes it to shrink (and thicken up).

Here’s a little rainbow heart ear-ring Sofi made:

And here’s one I made, Penfold, from Danger Mouse:

I’d quite like to make a Popeye!

The plastic side of these doodads is probably the display side. But I prefer the ‘back-side’! Can you see why?

We also had homemade pizza. Which was lovely! We’re stopping over the night. I’m doing a shift for Amazon Flex tomorrow, out of Cambourne.

I had a shockingly disturbing chat with my dad earlier tonight. I won’t go into detail. Least said, soonest mended, eh!? Anyway, I suppose some aspects of what that was about will be clear from the themes in this post.

I start with an image that sums up a form of modern hyper-masculinity that would no doubt be described by some nowadays as ‘toxic’. And yet it remains a fantasy that is both persistent and ubiquitous. The lone ‘maverick’ male, short on words, long of gun-barrel. He’ll make a shitty world conform to his will!

And, as silly as they might seem in popular entertainment form – think of Al Pacino at the end of Scarface – the real world is very much affected by such ideas. Boris Johnson thinking he’s Churchill. Churchill thinking he’s St George. St George butchering some rare and endangered winged lizard… and so the cycles of violence roll ever on.

Anyway, I’m going to try and collate some stuff, here on my blog, around the issue of socio-political change, and the role of violence within that.

I don’t think it can be denied that violence has long been a key ingredient (as, on the other hand, is co-operation) in leading to our species ‘enjoying’ the unique niche it has on Planet Earth.

Generalised conflict or all out war have been more or less constant features of our history: whether against our environment, or against each other. Driving change and innovation – from the stirrup to computers – it could be argued that violence has been hugely beneficial to humanity overall, if not admittedly for those unlucky ones who’ve suffered by it.

Ok, it’s stating the bleeding obvious, but violence is, unsurprisingly, pretty much always beneficial to the victor, and pretty much always correspondingly awful for the vanquished.

Once again, it’s pretty clear for all to see that violence builds power structures, and very often helps maintain them. But once those structures have been around long enough, does violence, rather like religion, eventually become counter-productive?

I suppose there can be no blanket coverall answers. But I’d like to try and engage my mind (and body) with such issues. It feels like the UK is drifting towards a form of Capitalo-Fascism similar to that which is very alive and (un)well ‘across’ the pond’.

And America as she is today, powerhouse of Capitalo-Fascism, is very much a product of violence. Many of the Europeans that colonised the Americas were fleeing religious persecution in their homelands.

And then a virtual genocide was perpetrated by those European escapees, on the hapless indigenous peoples of that huge landmass, ultimately turning it into the nation it is now.

This Colonial bastard child then had to free itself by war and Revolution from its oppressive unloving ‘fatherland’. And all of that’s before they got to the point of Civil War, whether you believe that was fought over States’ rights to self-determination, or the issue of slavery.

America is a nation – just like all nations are, in truth – born and bathed in blood. It’s the human condition.

Or is it? Many contemporary thinkers believe (or is it just hope?) that there comes a time when violence is, or rather should, no longer be the go to prime mover for human destiny. Such a view is put forward here.

One of the biggest issues in current societies, and again we see it particularly strongly in that fairly young nation, the US, is all about who has the right to ‘own’ violence. America is, to a very great degree, founded on both the idea and the brute reality of an armed self-determining populace.

And yet, when some of the ‘folk’ who feel themselves heirs to such gun-toting ‘founding fathers’ recently stormed The Capitol, it looked very much like a pretty appalling red-neck revolution.

I have to confess I’ve found myself thinking that those who govern us – or oppress and exploit us – may not understand any language other than violence. And those in power have long been thinking similarly. The future enemy may not be other States or Nations (although they remain a useful threat), but ‘the enemy within’.

If ruling elites are too distanced from the suffering they inflict, or allow to happen, they may well wind up in cloud-cuckoo land; blissfully unaware of the appalling realities that they perpetuate, and whose conditions might even be essential to maintaining their own privileged positions.

That’s taking a very generous view. Probably beyond the point of naivety. Another harsher and perhaps more realistic viewpoint would be that the oppressors know all too well what they are up to.

I suppose it is possible that whilst aware, cognitive dissonances can be overcome through the ‘magical’ effects of religious style thinking. Steven Trivers makes a powerful case for fooling ourselves being far more prevalent than we might want to think, in his excellent book, Deceit.

Humans have an appallingly strong tendency to believe in their own own infallible righteousness (even whilst being equally riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing!). Up to a point it’s an essential strength, as it allows us to function more readily, by oversimplifying what might otherwise prove to be insoluble riddles.

The downside is it leads to belligerently partisan tendencies, with all the differing factions believing their particular take on things must be right. This is one of the many reasons I’ve always disliked certainty in people. It just seems too glib. And it’s the first step in dominating others: my truth is so obviously the only truth, how dare you disagree!

And if you’re cowed by this, your adversary or oppressor has won a battle without even having to fight.

I guess right there is where it becomes very interesting. If you’re the oppressed party, you’re immediately cast in a bad and troublesome light, because in order to carve out your own space, you will have to challenge the assumptions (and the consequences that flow from those assumptions) that are being presented to you as ‘just so’.

And of course, returning to a theme alluded to above, but not explored here, it all depends on who perpetrates the violence – state vs individual, left or right wing leanings, racially or religiously motivated, etc. – and what their goals are.

State sanctioned violence to defeat Hitler might conceivably be somewhat different – it’s certainly generally held to be (but is it really?) – from Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski waging war on a modern society they didn’t like. It’s stuff like this I want to explore in this and other posts here, over time.

But to end on a less gloomily sanguine note, here’s a link to the AEI’s * ‘Liberation Toolkit’. I’ve not read it yet. It might be shite! But I thought it might make a nice counterweight to the foregoing cogitations on violence.

[* AEI – Albert Einstein Institute.]

I’m having a pretty difficult time at present. I’ve called The Samaritans quite a number of times. I’ve had periods of doing so before. But in the past I used to hang up in disgust after just a few minutes.

Maybe I’m a different person now? Or maybe I’m just more desperate? Whatever, I’ve certainly found some of my conversations with The Samaritans to be helpful. So I’m grateful the service exists.

I thought I’d try CALM, as their title ‘Campaign Against Living Miserably’, and their specific remit, re males and suicide, sounds tailor made for me, esp’ right now. But the two times I’ve called, it was shit.

The first time it was a technical issue. The line was so appalling I couldn’t hear the guy the other end. Mind, the little I did hear left me feeling ‘what’s the point?’ That was a few days ago. I just called them again, today, and, although the line was better, the quality of support wasn’t.

So after 5-10 minutes of chat, I said thanks and goodbye, and hung up. Not impressed with CALM! It seems the quality of staff on the end of The Samaritans lines is a lot higher.

I wonder what training, if any, is required? There must be some? And it’s not going to be a job, one would’ve thought, that just anyone could do, straight off the street. But that’s what I felt I was getting with CALM.

Well, I’m parked outside Tesco, whilst Teresa does our weekly shop. I stayed in the car, as I wanted to finish reading Treasures of Royal Museums Greenwich.

And literally just now, before I started typing this, I did just that. It’s the kind of easy reading smorgasbord one could potentially read in a single day. Although that might feel rather too much like cramming!

As it is I’ve spent a very pleasant three or four days reading tranches of the 100 numbered entries. The book starts with the Caird Astrolabe, and finishes with a new ‘fresco’, adorning The Queen’s House, by contemporary artist Richard Wright.

I reviewed this book once already. And gave it five stars. I’ve upgraded that to the rarely bestowed but coveted six stars. It’s just fantastic. A compendium of mostly exquisitely beautiful – and a few apparently mundane – artefacts, all of which have interesting tales to tell.

A sure-fire sign of an excellent book is when it promotes further exploration, be that purely literary, or in some other form. I’m now very keen to explore ship models further; to study the works of numerous marine artists more deeply (the Van de Veldes, William Hodges, W L Wyllie, and many more*); and perhaps to expand my modelling/wargaming interests to include the Anglo-Dutch naval conflicts?

The cornucopia of artistic and crafts or engineering brilliance is also very, very humbling and awe-inspiring. Oh, and inspirational, as well. I want to incorporate aspects of things I see here – from intricately worked brass, to art or wall paintings – into our home life.

So I’ve found studying this book – gazing in awe at the objects, and reading with great interest the pithily short accompanying texts – a hugely pleasurable and massively enriching experience.

And at the current asking price of £10? It’s a no-brainer! This was a real bargain, and is a wonderful addition to our library.

* Some I already knew, some are new to me.

One of the artists I’d not really know about before – I may have encountered him, by name, but I wasn’t truly aware of either him or his work – was W L Wyllie. That’s him, pictured above (this image is not in the book I’m reviewing), working on an enormous panorama of Trafalgar, in Portsmouth. With his daughter as assistant. In the book he’s represented by a fabulous underwater scene, titled Davy Jones’ Locker!

There are also works by lots of familiar names, such Canaletto, Hogarth, Reynolds, Stubbs, Ravilious, and even Heath Robinson! And of course there’s Turner’s humongous Trafalgar. An amazing work. Not my favourite Turner painting – although I do love it – but a must see.

NOTES

(1) (2) Neither of these Hodges paintings appear in the book. Their selection is the fantastically dramatic A View Of Cape Stephens. I include these two because they illustrate how reading this book inspired me to explore Hodges’ work further.