Out with the old…

So there goes 2011. Another year behind us, with all the experiences it brought. Honestly, I’m not sure where it all went.

But a lot has happened in the life of me, the vast majority of which has gone recorded in this blog. Looking back, I’m not sure where to start…

• I finished university. Yep, after three long years of study, I finished my exams and in July graduated with an LLB from the University of Sussex. I’m as surprised as anyone, to be honest. But I even managed to cross the hall and receive my degree without tripping over. I have video evidence!

• Having, at the beginning of the year only dreamed of it, I ended up standing for election this summer. Following the conservative incumbent’s resignation a mere five days after the local elections in May, I stood as Labour candidate for the ward of Remenham, Wargrave and Ruscombe. And despite the staunch blue shade of the local politics, I managed to poll well and come a not-too-distant third.
• I’ve been writing, as always. I’ve only had the one story acceptance this year, sadly, but I put that mostly down to the need to focus on university for the first half of the year. One 2011′s highlights was definitely taking part in the excellent Halloween Shorts project, alongside my fellow writers Jennifer Williams, Kev Clarke and Andrew Reid.
• For the last few months I’ve been volunteering, part-time, for the political blog Political Scrapbook. I’ve learnt a lot from it, and had the pleasure of working with a whole host of great people. Hopefully, the new year will herald the arrival of a “proper job” of some form.
• I’ve also been volunteering with the local Scout group. Honestly, this was always likely to happen. I was a Scout as a child, my mother is a Cub leader, and the path towards the leader’s uniform has already been tread by my brother. But it’s a great experience, and hopefully I can make the difference in the lives of the lads I’m working with that my leaders made to me.
• I have, after much procrastination, joined the British Fantasy Society. This was only a week ago, so not much has yet come of it, but I’m excited and inspired. And, of course, looking forward to my first FantasyCon, in September next year!
• And finally, yesterday marked the end of a third year spent with my wonderful Ashleigh! We celebrated by spending the day in London, at the Saatchi Gallery and Forbidden Planet (of course!), followed by a beautiful meal at Manna vegetarian restaurant. I know it’s a cliché, but I couldn’t be happier.

So that’s the highlights of my personal year. I could have done a political rundown, or a writing run down, but there are other people doing that. For today, I want this to be a record of my year, of what I’ve managed, what I’ve tried, and where I stand on the cusp on 2012. I’ll start looking forwards tomorrow.

Burger King leaving Maidenhead shows a failure of local government

The withdrawal of Burger King from Maidenhead high street represents another nail in the coffin of town centre retail, and shows how local politics is failing local economies.

A while back, it was all over the national news that McDonald’s had pulled out of Rochdale. This was mooted as an indicator of just how poor the economic situation is. The line of thought being that, presumably, if even McDonald’s didn’t think there was money to be made in Rochdale, the situation was fast approaching hopeless.

So what then of Burger King’s decision to pull out of Maidenhead high street? I doubt that this will be as heavily covered by the national press, this being Theresa May’s back yard, but it surely shows that the dire economic situation is far from confined to town centres in the north west.

Local economies are arguably as important to people’s lives as the national big picture, but somehow it never seems to get the same attention. If small businesses like McDonald’s and Burger King close, then it shows not only that there is little money to be made, but it narrows the opportunities available, chiefly to young people in the area. Customer-facing low-wage jobs like that are often the stepping stones for teenagers into work from full-time education. Getting a part-time job has been a rite of passage, but if there is nowhere offering such positions, what are they to do.

There’s also the wider impact. Fast food restaurants provide a barometer on the rest of the high street. They rely on passing footfall from other shops in an area. People will rarely go to town specifically for a burger, but are far more likely to take a break from shopping the locality for the convenience of fast food. If these places are failing, it can only really come down to a lack of footfall generally in the vacinity, which will amount to a failure of primarily retail.

The fact is that small town centre high streets, like Maidenhead and Wokingham, aren’t going to be able to compete with big out-of-town locations, or even the bigger towns and cities in the area. For that reason, proximity both to London and Reading is to the detriment of the smaller Wokingham and Maidenhead high streets.

Since neither are going to be able to compete, there seems little point in trying. Rather than going for big branded shops,  they should make for what is available to them. Local councils can make locations more attractive to small, independent businesses which would fit better into their market town locale, and cultivate a more secure, more unique economic base.

But, in both Wokingham and Maidenhead, the councils seem paralysed.  Both have solid Tory majorities, who seem afraid of looking in any direction but the past, and lack the drive to do something to actually address the problem. With central government’s continuing austerity policies cutting too far, too fast, 2012 is not going to be an easy year. The people of both Wokingham and Maidenhead need  more inspired leadership, if they are to weather this storm.

“The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel” by Jennifer Williams – A Review

"The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel" by Jennifer Williams

(Amazon Kindle, £2.21)

It was in a conversation with Jennifer Williams herself where I discussed the nature of reviewing; that reviews of books that most people give are by nature likely to be positive, as if a book is bad most people would put it down and not finish it. So in the first sentence, I’ve already made two things clear: that I know the author, and that I liked this book.

Quest fantasy and I haven’t historically had the best relationship. For a long while I regarded it as stagnant, boring and unoriginal. I think it might have been the elves. It probably didn’t have too good an opinion of me either, but since I’m a badass I never really cared. Two things have conspired to change that opinion: HBO’s TV adaptation of Game of Thrones, and Bethesda’s life-consuming open-world fantasy game Skyrim.

But to the book. The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citidel, follows a motley crew of adventurers entering the titular citadel for various reasons of their own. The crippled Lord Frith is searching for the key to regaining his castle, whilst mercenaries Sebastian (the Ynnsmouth Knight) and Wydrin (the Copper Cat) hunt for gold and riches. The synopsis seems pretty standard for quest fantasy, but the hero (if there is one in particular) isn’t a farm boy, and there doesn’t seem to be an evil emperor in sight.

Where it comes of its own is quite obvious and simple; it’s rather brilliantly written. The characters in particular shine, and all of them feel like real people. I think Wydrin is my favourite; rather than being a wilting princess or Amazonian wall of muscle, she’s an actual person. This is what fantasy so often misses out on, and characters become subservient to the plot. Rather, the plot should be driven onwards by the characters, by their personality and motivations. Williams clearly gets this.

Another endearing factor is that it’s a novella. So it’s short. In a genre world that seems dominated by sprawling epic tomes, a little brevity is like a cool breeze on a summer’s day. There are fewer words devoted to info-dumping, and more to in-story exposition. I finished this book in about a day, primarily because I couldn’t put it down. It was engaging, exciting, and left me looking very much forward to the next installment.

If you got a Kindle for Christmas (you lucky thing!) then I would heartily recommend you give The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel a read.

To all, a very Merry Christmas!

Whether you’re reading this whilst waiting for your turkey to cook, whilst trying to avoid the Queen’s speech, whilst suffering from indigestion after overindulging, or as you’re settling down for the night, the day done with- I would like to take this opportunity to wish you, whoever you are, a very merry Christmas.

Whether you celebrate it or not, dear reader, I hope that you have a wonderful day with family, with festivity, or simply with a bottle of whiskey and some choice Christmas TV. Well done on surviving another year!

On (Finally) Joining the BFS

So now I'm a member of the British Fantasy Society

So, at last I’ve done it. Last night, Ashleigh and I joined the British Fantasy Society.

It had been something we’d both been meaning to do, and discussing, for a while but hadn’t seemed to get around to. Ironically, I think it was probably the controversy surrounding this year’s British Fantasy Awards which finally spurred us to take the plunge.

It’s possible that joining this close to Christmas was a bit silly, as I doubt there’ll be much activity in way of our new membership until the New Year, but even joining up feels inspirational. The BFS’ “Join us” page, bears this message from Stephen Jones, which I shall relate to you here:

“Whenever a fledgling horror or fantasy writer comes up to me, at a convention or somewhere else, and asks me how they can get their work published, I invariably advise them that their first step should be to join the British Fantasy Society.”

After what has felt like a fairly lacklustre year in my writing career, I’m keen to improve in 2012, and this feels like a good step towards it. I’m looking forward to attending some of the get-togethers, including FantasyCon 2012 (which will give me a good excuse to go back to Brighton). And at £35 for a year’s membership, it feels like a bargain to me.

So here’s to the next year, for myself and Ash as members of the British Fantasy Society! Let the fun start here!

Labour’s Infighting Only Distracts from the Real Enemy

Whether you personally voted for him or not, Ed Miliband was elected Labour leader. Now we either unite behind him, or resign ourselves to the wilderness.

And it was all going so well. When Labour lost the 2010 election (along with all the other parties who fought it…) I held out hope because we seemed to have escaped the infighting which marred the Conservatives post-1997, and Labour post-1979. There were lots of competing ideas, lots of suggestions of the direction that the party should go in, but it manifested as helpful debate, amicable and above all civilised.

But now it seems we’re heading back to infighting. Since the last Prime Minister’s Questions of 2011, grumblings about Ed Miliband’s leadership have reached fever pitch, with the “Blairite” “right” of the party (read: David Miliband supporters) saying that Ed should be removed as leader. It culminated in spectacularly vain and vapid comments in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday by Tom Scholes-Fogg. The best commentary on this I’ve seen so far is from Owen Jones (a Labour blogger I respect far more than TSF):

Witty Kinnock paraphrasing aside, he has a point. Rubbish like this only helps the Tories, at the expense of Labour members and voters, and the ordinary working people of this country who we should be focusing on helping. Here’s a few of my views on the criticisms. You know, just to join in.

• Ed has been leader for 15 months. Labour suffered a fairly catastrophic defeat in May 2011, and as has been pointed out by those more qualified than myself he’s fighting against the tide. The British press is mostly right wing, and the idea that they’d be more receptive to even David right now is pure fantasy. Any Labour leader would be struggling, under the weight of the repeated myth that this whole mess is our fault.
• Ed is a different kind of leader. Ed is trying very hard to forge a new politics (pardon the phrase) and break with norms. He led the attack on the Murdoch press, despite the very obvious risk to the party. His unfairly-ridiculed conference speech earlier this year attacked the model of capitalism which has caused financial ruin. If we, rather than fighting with each other, spent our time working out political philosophies and directions, and a tranche of new policies, we could win the intellectual argument and return to power not on a wave of anti-Tory feeling, but a positive groundswell of optimistic change.
• PMQs does not matter as much as you think it does. Yesterday Shelly Asquith tweeted: “Is performance at PMQs really the be-all and end-all? Most voters I know are at work on a Wednesday afternoon, not glued to BBC Parliament.” Quite. Sunny Hundal wrote a very interesting article calling on Ed to focus much less on PMQs, with which I agree.
• What exactly do you think this makes the public think of us? When the Tories conspired to stab IDS in the back, do you think it made the party look like a model of competence? No, of course it didn’t. One of the things that did for us in the last election was the rumblings of rebellion against Gordon Brown. It confirmed to the public what the Tory press were saying, by giving an image that the party didn’t have faith in him either. How were voters supposed to have faith in us in those circumstances.

That I didn’t vote for Ed Miliband is a matter of public record, but the facts are still that on Thursday Labour held Feltham and Heston with a swing of 8% from the Tories. The polls oscillate wildly, and really don’t show anything useful at this stage in a parliament. But yeah, if you want to give an image of a party in chaos, unable to work together cohesively in a time of economic disaster, carry on throwing rocks at other Labourites. Meanwhile, the Tories will continue to play the “Labour can’t be trusted” card, and on the evidence we present the public will believe them.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

I’m one of those weird people who strangely doesn’t rejoice in Christmas’ beginning around mid-October, and rising into a deafening crescendo by the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month. This shouldn’t be taken as my being against the celebration of Christmas (I am not), but rather as an adherence to all things in moderation.

In my family we have a tradition: the “Christmas period” (an odious phrase, if ever there was one) does not begin until after 11th December. This is my maternal grandmother’s birthday, and I suppose it originated out of a desire not to have her day overborne by giddyness at a day still two weeks off. Whatever its initial reasoning, it has become something of a “this far and no further” line in the sand.

This year, we violated this fundamental tenet of that principle by putting up the tree on 10th December. I personally blame this on the 11th selfishly falling on a Sunday, which would mean that the earliest post-11th opportunity to put it up wouldn’t be until the 17th.

But by and large, Christmas seems to have taken it easy this year. Yes, there have been the usual adverts for all things festive, but they haven’t had quite the shrill tone as some years. Perhaps its a general malaise at the dreadful economic climate, and a realisation on the part of retail that we don’t all have money to burn at Christmas. But for me it’s been a somewhat gentle descent.

Today I had my first carol service. I sang my first carols, ate my first warm mince pie, and drank my first cup of mulled wine. It’s a week until the big day, and do you know what? It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

The Thing [2011] – A Review

The Thing (2011)

I’ll be honest, I approached this with some trepidation. The original film The Thing is a classic of sci-fi and horror, one of those films I watched as I began my awakening to the genre, and loved every moment of. Coupled with my general distrust of remakes, I wasn’t at all convinced that this would be a sound investment of my time.

Surprisingly, then, I can report I rather enjoyed it. It managed to capture some of the feeling of the original, but add to it with more modern touches. The film is actually a prequel rather than a remake, which begs the infuriated question, why does it have the same name as the original? I don’t have the answer to that, but the film itself does fit perfectly into the original which is rather gratifying in itself.

But that it works as essentially fan fiction to the original should not at all be the gauge of its success or failure. It must stand as a film in its own right- which it does rather well. The CGI rendering of the titular Thing gives it a rather different flavour, swapping the 80s gore effects which Carpenter was so fond of for a more Dead Space appeal. Indeed, the Thing more resembles the necromorphs from those video games than I remember previously.

The story itself was sound, but then it was half-written by the film it was expanding upon. A team of Norwegian scientists in the Antarctic discover a crashed alien spaceship along with an alien frozen in a block of ice, and remove the latter for examination. Except it’s not quite dead, and the alien cells can imitate human cells, and you can probably see where this is going.

The pacing goes for a little less claustrophobic paranoia, and a little more big budget action, but I think that’s more a sign of the times than anything- and aside from there being no real explanation as to why there is such an abundance of flamethrowers at Antarctic bases, it doesn’t stray to far from the believability of the premise.

One interesting note is that it does seem to be staffed by lookalikes. The female lead, at certain angles, bears rather a resemblance to Firefly and Stargate Atlantis actress Jewel Staite (but isn’t). The can’t-speak-English Norwegian heavyman looks sort of like Liam Neeson gone native (but, unsurprisingly, isn’t). And the English radio operator looks the spit of Tim Roth (but isn’t). None of which has any bearing on anything really, but I thought it was interesting…

In the end, though, as much as I enjoyed the film I’m left wondering why it was made as a prequel to 1982′s The Thing. Yes, it fitted perfectly with it, but that’s because it was made to. It didn’t have to be. It had flavours and inspirations from a variety of other sources, including as I’ve already mentioned the Dead Space video game series, and the first Alien vs Predator film. I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t pushed as an inspired-by-but-unrelated film, injected with a bit of originality and allowed to go its own way a bit more.

Even straight-jacketed to someone else’s film I enjoyed it, but I do think I would have enjoyed it even more if it was its own film. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who is getting sick of remakes, prequels and the like.

The Wordsmith’s Creed

This is my pen. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

This is my pen. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My pen is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My pen, without me, is useless. Without my pen, I am useless. I must write with my pen well. I must write swifter than my insecurities which are trying to defeat me. I must write before they stop me. I will.

My pen and myself know that what counts is not the words we write, the flow of our ink, nor the sentences we craft. We know that it is the telling that counts. We will tell.

My pen is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its nib and its barrel. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my pen clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.

Before God, I swear this creed. My pen and myself are the explorers of worlds untouched. We are the miners of the depths of imagination. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is ours and there is no more tale left to tell, only more worlds and new stories.

All the Fun of the Fayre

1st Twyford Scouts' and Cubs' contribution to the St Mary's Christmas tree fayre (left) and 1st Twyford Beaver's tree for the group's centenary last year

Tonight was spent by myself at the traditional Twyford Christmas street fayre. This is the first year I have properly experienced the phenomenon, since last year myself and Ashleigh arrived from Brighton on the train as it was in full swing, and only passed through on the way to the car- picking up some food on the way.

This year I was in the thick of things. As the newest addition to 1st Twyford Scout Group’s ranks of leaders, I took my place at the barbecue, ready to get cooking! In actuality I didn’t do any cooking, instead taking partial command of the central station, taking cooked sausages and burgers from the grillers on each side, and passing them forward to the front-of-house people.

The end result was that I stink of smoke, and spent much of the evening shouting for either burgers or sausages (or, for one fraught stretch, onions). But we sold out at about ten to eight (the fayre ran 6 ’til 9). I’m not sure how much we made for the Scout Group, but we certainly fed a lot of Twyfordians.

The early finish gave me a chance to really have a peruse through the festive stalls. There were a lot of different things, and a lot of samples. The folks at the Bird in Hand pub do a particularly fine mulled cider. I was also able to wander up to St. Mary’s Church, to see the Christmas trees display.

The church had invited lots of local clubs, organisations and businesses to make their own Christmas trees for a display over the weekend. I must say, it makes for an oddly heartwarming visual representation of a community. The Scouts contributed our own; a pioneering-style contraption, suspended from a gallows-like arrangement. The decorations were put together by the Cubs, and the Beavers’ impressive effort from 1st Twyfords centenary last year was also on display.

If you’re at a loose end in Twyford this weekend, you could do worse than going and taking a look.

But of everything I saw, nothing can quite equal what I beheld at the local Lib Dems’ stall. I know times are hard for everyone, and we all must all seek whatever ways we can to make money- but whatever other problems we face, at least Twyford & District Labour Party can say we’ve never resorted to selling adult books!

Liberal by name, liberal by nature *

*There was, of course, an identical sign at the other end of the stall, proclaiming ”children’s books”, but sometimes a photo is just too funny not to take. I hope that my Liberal rivals will take this poke in the jocular fashion it was intended.