I was walking around Ramsgate Harbour again this morning and really enjoyed the quiet calm that a light fog had brought in…

Despite it being a fog-bound, low tide, Sunday morning, there were still things going on, including the fishermen making sure their nets were ready for their next trip out…

George Clooney does a great job of evoking the sense of a fishing boat leaving harbour in the film “The Perfect Storm”:

Captain Billy Tyne: “The fog’s just lifting. Throw off your bow line; throw off your stern. You head out to South channel, past Rocky Neck, Ten Pound Island. Past Niles Pond where I skated as a kid.

“Blow your air-horn and throw a wave to the lighthouse keeper’s kid on Thatcher Island.

“Then the birds show up: black backs, herring gulls, big dump ducks.The sun hits ya – head North. Open up to 12 – steamin’ now.

“The guys are busy; you’re in charge.

“Ya know what? You’re a goddam swordboat captain! Is there any thing better in the world?”

These lines always bring a tear to my eyes…

Col Chris Hadfield covers Bowie’s “Space Oddity” from the ISS – I can’t believe I missed this last year!!!

I picked up the story of Col Chris Hadfield covering David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” over breakfast this morning… and I simply CANNOT believe that I missed this last year.

This cover is the most beautifully poignant song I have heard in years – it literally had me in tears!

Well done Col Hadfield, “… you’ve really made the grade”

If you missed the video you can get it on YouTube here…

I saw two of my favourite sci-fi genre films back-to-back at Vue last night: Ridley Scott’s “ALIEN” followed by James Cameron’s “ALIENS”… WOW, what an experience!!
 

ALIEN made the most lasting, influential, cinematic impression on me as a lover and writer of science fiction.  I first saw it on VHS video in about 1985, some six years after the original cinema release.

I remember being:

* captivated by the sense of realism that flowed from the harshly industrial Nostromo sets,

* enraptured by the balletic orbital manoeuvring of the landing sequence (so beautifully enriched by Jerry Goldsmith’s music),

* totally drawn into the sense of being on a different world as the crew walk towards the derelict, before

* being increasingly terrified as the film accelerates with tense horror after the infamous ‘chest-burster’ scene.

Few films have managed to combine such wonderfully innovative scriptwriting with world-class acting, a haunting score, game-changing realism in set design, with a genuinely unique vision of horror (Giger’s monsters – apparently when Dan O’Bannon first showed Giger’s paintings to Gordon Carroll, the producer recoiled saying ‘This man is sick’).

One quote I really like is the foreshadowing of Brett’s death:

   Parker: If they find what they’re lookin’ for out there, that mean we get full shares?

   Ripley: Don’t worry, Parker, yeah. You’ll get whatever’s coming to you.

   Brett: Look, I’m not gonna do any more work, until we get this straightened out.

   Ripley: Brett, you’re guaranteed by law to get a share.

And wow, did he get a share!

When James Cameron’s ALIENS came along in 1986 I was old enough to see it in the cinema.  I remember enjoying the film as more of a sci-fi adventure yarn than a horror movie – after ALIEN that was a surprise.

The biggest shock was that The Alien was no longer invulnerable: as long as you had enough firepower you could survive contact with ASH’s “perfect organism… [whose] … structural perfection is matched only by its hostility”. Cameron had obviously taken the franchise on a completely new direction.

Whereas Scott’s ALIEN is full of memorable settings and relentless tensions, Cameron’s ALIENS runs on a full tank of memorable dialogue and one-liners. Some of my favourite quotes from the second film include:

On the Sulaco, shortly after the marines have woken from hypersleep:

   Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?

   Vasquez: No. Have you?

and also… with the marines preparing for the drop:

   Ripley: I feel like kind of a fifth wheel around here, is there anything I can do?

   Apone: I dunno, is there anything you can do?

and of course… in the APC after the marines barely escape from the Aliens’ surprise attack:

   Vasquez: Okay. We have several canisters of CM-20. I say we go back in there and nerve gas the whole fuckin’ nest.

   Hicks: It’s worth the try, but we don’t know if that’s gonna affect them.

   Hudson: Let’s just bug out and call it even, man! What are we even talking about this for?

   Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

   Hudson: Fuckin’ A!

The second movie was fun and memorable, and spawned some computer games I have enjoyed playing, but its lasting impact was very much less for me (I actually prefer David Fincher’s ALIEN 3 to ALIENS).

I’d always wondered what the Big Screen experience of ALIEN was like. I’d heard and read the legendary tales of people vomitting in the cinemas when it was released and I felt intimidated to try it for myself. I’m so glad I got brave enough to try it (with some friends for back-up) – it was AWESOME and the experience will stay with me forever!!

 

I’ve said before how much I love walking around Ramsgate Harbour. I find it both very relaxing and exciting, there is always something going on!  Since we returned from holiday in Dorset I’ve seen some interesting things, and enjoyed one marvellous moment of innocent expression which reminded me that not everything is spoiled in Thanet yet…

 Recently the harbour played host to the UK Border Force vessel ‘HMC Vigilant’. It was fantastic seeing a larger boat in the harbour and she was attracting a lot of attention from interested passers-by (including me!).  I was interested to read that, despite the militaristic style of Vigilant, the crew are not routinely armed and the vessel has no fixed armaments. It must take especially brave crews to chase criminals at sea unarmed.

I was also interested to see a sailor sculling his dinghy with a single oar over the transom. He made it look easy and seemed very comfortable standing in his boat.  I don’t think it would have been so stable if I had been paddling.

Thanet is definitely a hard place to live. Years of high unemployment, low expectations and social deprivation are, in my opinion, taking their toll on the friendliness of the population. It seems that each generation becomes harsher than its predecessor and I worry about how low things will sink.

Based on some conversations I have had with local Law Enforcement and other public bodies, I don’t think that government (national or local) has the willingness to take the actions that would be needed to remedy the problems of casual aggression and selfishness that I encounter in the towns and on the roads – indeed, the Police view is that we should be ‘tolerant’ of small crimes rather that enforce the relevant laws.

But… I saw today a small sign that things don’t have to be like that: I saw a child’s chalk writing on the edge of a pathway which reminded me that innocence is our natural state.

Somewhere along the way our society is corrupting that, and I would cheer our civic leaders if they could find ways to help our next generations to hold onto some of the natural innocence they held as children… for all of our sakes.

I only discovered Gabo’s writings last year and rapidly fell in love with Macondo and the sumptious insights into Colmbian life that he shared with us. The world is smaller without him but he leaves us with a marvellous mix of tales…

I very quickly came to appreciate the sense of post-revolutionary reality that he could portray (as in “No One Writes to the Colonel”, for example), the surreal world of religion and love that he showed in “Of Love and Other Demons”, and the real harsh world of the Colombian drugs war in his non-fiction “News of a Kidnapping”.

In Western Europe we put a high value on life, we value the contribution of the individual and go to great lengths to protect our people from harm. I get a very different perception about life in Colombia.

If there is a single sense that I can take from all of Gabo’s writings, it is that, overall, life is cheap in Colombia:

From ‘No One Writes to the Colonel’:

‘And meanwhile what do we eat?’ she asked, and seized the colonel by the collar of his flannel night shirt. She shook him hard.

It had taken the colonel seventy-five years – the seventy-five years of his life, minute by minute – to reach this moment. He felt pure, explicit, invincible at the moment when he replied: ‘Shit’

And the terrible death of Marina Montoya in ‘News of a Kidnapping’:

In her bed, Marina looked like a marble carving, with her hair disheveled and a pallor so intense that even her lips were white. Then the Monk spoke to her in the affectionate tones of a grandson.”Get your things together, Granny,” he said. “You have five minutes.”

… Maruja confronted the Monk, her voice steady.”Are you going to kill her?”

… The Monk bristled.”You can’t ask a thing like that!” he said. But he regained his composure right away and said: “I told you she’s going to a better house. I swear.”

… AT DAWN THE NEXT DAY, Thursday, January 24, the body of Marina Montoya was found in an empty lot north of Bogotá. Almost sitting upright in grass still damp from an early rain, she was leaning against the barbed-wire fence, her arms extended… dressed in a pink sweatsuit and a pair of maroon men’s socks… the head of the corpse was covered by a hood, stiff with dried blood, that had been put on with the openings for the mouth and eyes at the back of the head, and it was almost in tatters because of the entrance and exit holes of six bullets fired from a distance of more than fifty centimeters…”

What a very sad death at the end of so much fear.

Of course, Gabo’s most famous work is “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, and nobody who reads it will ever forget this chronicle of the struggles of the Buendías and Macondo.

As I write this blog update it is now 13 days since the world was plunged into possibly the most significant political crisis since the official end of the Cold War.

Russia stands accused by much of the International Community of having violated the sovereign territory of Ukraine by surreptitiously invading Crimea.  The Superpowers are bandying threats and apportioning blame, while the gentle peoples of all countries wait in a moment of suspense, hoping for a peaceful conclusion and fearing conflict.

As I recently commented in my essay entitled “Some thoughts about Post-Apocalyptical fiction – how bad could things get?”, the Western World and Russia entered into a totally committing arms race that spanned nearly fifty years of threats between the end of the Second World War and US President George H.W. Bush’s speech on Christmas Day, 1991, which acknowledged the end of the Cold War.

Immediately after the Second World War, US President Harry Truman told the USSR that the US would be taking a “tougher” stance against them.  The Cold War started at that moment, with East and West then facing each other across a no-man’s-land of differing ideologies The USA and USSR, the two major global Superpowers, invested literally trillions of dollars on the development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. The United States had detonated its first device in 1945 during the “Trinity” test that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and subsequently the end of the War in the Pacific. The USSR followed with their detonation of “RDS-1” in 1949. An escalating cycle then followed of threat and defence, ‘Massive Retaliation’, ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD) and then strategic ‘sufficiency’ within ‘limited wars’.

It is a testament both to the cost of developing nuclear weapons and the restraint of many developed nations, that today only 7 other nations are known to have developed these terrible weapons of mass destruction. In Europe, the United Kingdom and France also developed “the bomb” (known in the UK as the ‘nuclear deterrent’). China followed just a few years later with their detonation of “596” in 1964. The US, USSR, UK, France and China are all signatories to “The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” (NPT), which at least holds out a credible hope for restraint in their manufacture, and disarmament in the future. Outside of the NPT, India, Pakistan and North Korea are known to have nuclear weapons. Israel is strongly suspected to be a nuclear state, with secrets from its nuclear production facilities being famously leaked to the world by Mordechai Vanunu in 1986 (his story is sensitively told in the film “Secret Weapon”). There are fears that Iran is also attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

Why the focus in this Blog entry on ‘Nukes? – Simple: on 27th and 28th February 2014, following a period of unrest in Ukraine, Western media started to report that Russian armed soldiers had entered Crimea (which had been gifted to Kiev by Khrushchev in 1954). These soldiers appeared in large numbers and were apparently well-equipped, but significantly they were not wearing any uniform insignia. These soldiers are claimed by Russia to be local ‘self-defence forces’ and not Russian troops.

Most other nations and the United Nations have not accepted that statement and demanded that Russia de-escalate the crisis and remove its troops immediately. Russia has asserted a right to use its military to protect the lives of ethnic Russians living in Crimea, and on 6th March the Crimean Parliament asked to join the Russian Federation, saying it would put that request to a referendum on 16th March. The rest of the world has essentially stated that any such change of affiliation or referendum would be illegal under Ukraine’s constitution… and so a war of words has rushed around the world.

In the meantime a pro-Russian ‘New Crimean Army’ has been sworn in. I saw a news report of them parading which reminded me very much of the fascist posturing of the fictional storm-troopers in the old sci-fi series Blake’s 7. It the circumstances weren’t so serious it could have seemed almost insanely comical.

The only sane moment for the public of Western nations has been that both the US and USSR have seemed very reluctant to escalate the Crimean Crisis into full-blown war. Even the Ukrainian government in Kiev has been reluctant about that, but given its capabilities next to those of Russia, this is understandable.

Despite other complaining noises coming from the West, things seemed to be settling into a predictable pattern of diplomacy that would end with Crimea becoming part of Russia.  The Western public were then further shocked on 4th March with the announcement that Russia had test-fired an RS-12M Topol inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM).

When I saw that test reported on the BBC News website that night I clearly thought ‘Oh my God, this is it!’ Thankfully this was a scheduled test that had been expected for months, but the decision to continue with it at a time of such heightened international tensions seems irresponsible to me.

Nobody wants Crimea 2014 to be the spark for a new global armed conflict, but I very much suspect it will have triggered a new Cold War.

So now we are all waiting… waiting to see what develops next and how the US will respond. Retaliation seems to be expected to be economic rather than military, and I am thankful for that. I live near the longest airfield in the UK: a quick run of the online application “Nukemap” showed that my town would be destroyed by a single warhead from such an ICBM and there would be very few (if any) survivors– a sobering thought and a reminder of the trust we place in our politicians to wisely use the power vested in them by the people.

28th December was a lovely day and I decided to have a walk around Ramsgate harbour. The south-east has been hit with a lot of unusually strong storms this Christmas but on this day the weather was quite pleasant!

Ever since I was a boy I have enjoyed the atmosphere around the harbour. In those days it was much busier though, with a constant bustle of fishing boats queuing to unload their catches and pleasure craft moving around.

I remember one magical night, sitting on the edge of a platform in the outer harbour at about midnight to watch a crew unload their catch. A whole shoal of flatfish rose from the harbour floor to circle their boat under the yellow cast of the artificial lighting; it was an almost surreal moment.

Today the fishing fleet is very depleted but the harbour is getting plenty of use by Fisheries, Pilots, Lifeboat and assorted survey vessels. It is still a busy place for pleasure craft but somehow they don’t seem as glamorous as they did when I was growing up.

Ramsgate was in many respects a tough town to grow up in. Over the years, when compared to most of the rest of the south-east region, it seems to have become even more deprived and degraded. This leads (in part) to a fierce outlook on life and very direct, harshly strong views being held. There can be strong prejudices and long memories over past political follies.

I noticed this freshly painted graffiti while walking towards Port Ramsgate. It seems that even ten years later, the February 2003 “dodgy dossier” used by the Blair government to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq is still casting a long shadow over the Labour Party’s credibility.

 

I enjoy running for general fitness an relaxation. I don’t aim to run competitively against other people. Rather, I like to see how my personal fitness varies over time.

But when the opportunity to take part in this charity run for Men’s Health in the UK, I thought “why not?”

So at 7:00 this morning a team of three of us from work headed up to London to ‘enjoy’ the run. The photo shows me just before the race.

We all got to the end and completed an unexpectedly taxing course. Greenwich Park sits on a slope facing the River Thames, across from the Isle of Dogs. The downward sections were fairly steep and of course, what goes down must go up! (sorry Mr Newton)

With a very cold wind blowing up from the Thames it was a hard run but I was pleased with my time: 6 miles in 65.6 mins – 5.5 mph. That was a bit slower than my normal speed but not bad, given the terrain… and not bad for someone who was once told he couldn’t run again after rupturing some disks in his lower back – way to go!

Have I caught the ‘race bug’ from this? Probably not: the ‘atmosphere’ didn’t add much to my fun (but the company did) and my overall position in the race is largely unimportant, as I’m not bothered about being faster than ‘Mr Jones’. Still, I might run again for charity, let’s see next year.

And what were my overall results, do I hear you asking?

Finishing time 65m 38s. Placed 1252 from 1526 finishers, 777 from 861 male runners.

Not fast, not last, and good enough is good enough.

Here is a quick drawing from the scene where our group of survivors meet an inhabitant of Charybdis for the first time…

 I’m not a great artist, as the drawing shows, but do I find that sketching things out like this helps me to visualise a scene. At this point the story had reached 50k words. ‘The survivors’ had just entered their first proper chamber in Charybdis and were about to face the challenge of Lust and another death!

In the coming scenes we would see Byrne finally ‘crack’ and be helped in his recovery by ‘Doc Gardner. We’d also see Walczak complete his task of murdering Kaminski despite the fact that the Gdansk mobster who paid him for the ‘hit’ was now long dead, following the destruction of the Earth.

Moving towards the final scenes we would finally meet the mysterious “Pilot” and discover that for the past 13 billion years he has been facing a far greater challenge than our survivors have imagined!

Do you listen to music when writing? I don’t like to be distracted when I’m writing and enjoy the feeling which comes when my study is quiet and suddenly I’m really “in the zone” and the story is taking off. This happens most often when writing dialogue, but I have a confession to make… I don’t actually enjoy writing dialogue! Of course, in keeping with the old mantra of “show don’t tell”, this is the most effective way of writing for pulling readers into our stories. Writing dialogue can feel long-winded and slow the pace when trying to build a backdrop for action. It is also hard work, and who likes that?

One way that I have found to ensure I keep engaged when writing is to actively choose background music that matches the scene I am trying to create. I started to do this when I was distance-studying for a degree; I found that the soundtrack to the film Event Horizon was just what I needed. That music was often subdued enough not to detract from my studies but energetic enough to keep me focussed on the task at hand. The soundtrack uses long sequences of fast-paced but subdued drumming that was just what I needed then!

Today I have two science fiction stories on the go: a short story entitled GRIT and a novel-length tale called An End Of Beginnings. GRIT has a folkey,open spaces feel and I am using Jon Boden’s “Songs from the Floodplain” to build an ambience while I’m writing.

‘An End Of Beginnings’ is both the longest and the most complex story I have attempted to date. It is in part a tale of survival, a “road trip”, a journey of self-realisation for the characters, and an opening foray into speculations about cosmology and religion. That is a very mixed bag of over-arching themes and goals!

To stay appropriately focussed two soundtracks are proving very helpful: firstly Jerry Goldsmith’s 2-CD complete soundtrack to Alien – this film is an enduring favourite of mine and the soundtrack stands as an atmospheric masterpiece in its own right.

When I’m not listening to ‘Alien’ I am currently playing either Marc Streitenfeld’s soundtrack to Prometheus (a somewhat coincidental choice) or Marco Beltrami’s 2011 offering from the remake of The Thing – “God’s Country Music” from that album is one of my all time favourite pieces of music.

On other occasions I will choose different musical styles in order to actively develop a particular emotional state for other pieces of writing. Mozart is always uplifting, Ultravox can be energising, whilst “Chant: Music for Paradise” from the Cistercian Monks Of Stift Heilgenkreuz is very calming.

The next time you are writing why not try actively choosing background music yourself?