Back in Devon

Our Dieselpunk Present

Kings Cross right now is like a vast pre 1939 industrial landscape being rebuilt and renovated into something seriously 21st centry,  on such a scale that in an ironic bit of circularity it starts to resemble the future of Things To Come (1936).

The pre Easter heat wave we are having is kicking up a lot of dust in the perpetual development of Kings Cross, giving York Way a bronzed chromium sheen. Facsination for the austere Art deco world of the 1930s in the 2012's  I believe is called  deiselpunk.

Here are some pics


Just up the road from the development, the disused York Way tube station closed in 1932

Still from Things To Come

View from Kings Place third floor

Kings Cross new concourse exterior (opened last week)

Kings Cross interior

Kings Cross Parcel Room, the newly renovated bar

St. Pancras behind more Kings Cross exterior

Not relevant but included anyway: on the way home, the Scala, still a spiritual home

Another bonus in the area, Pret a Manger York Way is full of gorgeously moody spanish girls, not as friendly as the French Pret crowd in Croydon but unlike La Linnea in actual Spain you do feel their apparent moodiness is a cultural militancy rather than genuine dislike (one thing I've come to learn, when the French and Spanish do dislike you they won't bother to hide it - in that respect you can't fault them for honesty). I'm being very harsh actually, they are moody but unearingly friendly and professional and I eat there virtually every day (I have to be careful what I say on this blog after The Lukins friends and family read that previous blogpost..)

I am going through a bit of  1930's fascination at the moment (hence lots of Pret a Manger) sparked by another podcast..

http://worldwariipodcast.net/wordpress/

the only historian, or even aspiring historian, to you use the phrase 'freaked out', what he lacks in professionalism and accuracy he more than makes up for in enthusiasm.
He seems to be sourcing so many books it is hard to keep track (Dunkirk Fight to The Last Man is one) but at least he is picking the right material, he plugs them relentessly and you can't fault his effort.

What really saves him in my eyes is the coverage of the fall of France in 1940. It comes without any of the cheese eating surrender monkey guff you might expect from an Anglo perspective. The French Army did not run away in 1940. The worst of that army shamefully was exposed to face the sharpest point of the Blitzkrieg and the Germans drove an entire army through that hole at unbelievable speed, to gut the real Allied forces before they were even aware what was happening. The Panzers moved so fast even their own general staff were unnerved by their progress, it is hardly surprising the veterans of WW1 could not cope.

This much I already knew, but the podcast fills in the poltical detail in the French Government and makes it imediate and fascinating. The Fall of France was not not just an inevitable pathetic collapse it was a real tragedy of lost opportunity, like the Spanish Civil War in fast forward, with every single setback exploited to the full by the enemy and every atempt to fix the situation playing into the hands of those who ultimately would be happy to work with the Nazis. What that does to the national consciousness I would hate to think but if the defense of Britain in 1940 were somehow to depend on say, the force that failed to defend Singapore, we might be a little less ready to ridicule.

In 1939 the French Army was still considered the best in the world, and the French Republic it protected was a beacon of civilisation and stability. Six months later, by the sumer of 1940  was a lost world, all gone in a chromium dust storm of fast moving events and poltical treachery.

New Years Day on Exmoor

Because I'm anticipating the trip back.. A pic from a favourite New Years Day activity on Exmoor, walking up to Watersmeet from Lynton (sometimes listening to Pink Floyd's UMMA GUMMA)

Don't delay gratification - William Gibson's Zero History

I've just finished Zero History, the final novel in William Gibson's espionage marketing trilogy. 

I delayed finishing to savour Zero History and I regret it. I should have powered on through, forgotten about the rest of my life and stayed in-mode, with my prose perception tuned to William Gibson's dissonant portrayal of reality and characters. As it was, I got distracted. Lost my edge.
The tight surreal descriptions of surroundings that make for such great poetry-punk in describing Gibson's contemporary 21st century really get frustrating when describing action scenes. When Zero History briefly turns into cyber-SNATCH at the end the need to read every paragraph twice stops being clever and quickly gets irritating.

The re-introduction of great characters from Pattern Recognition is a let down and although the characters from the near impenetrable Spooky Country are much better shown here they are continually undercut by a new boyfriend or new henchman appearing from nowhere to save the day.

As with the other Hubertus Bigend novels, Gibson's need to keep introducing minor characters is a real irritation, especially at the expense of great characters you would rather hear a lot more of. The Molly Millions of Zero History is Heidi Hyde, the drummer for Hollis Henry's defunct band, Curfew, who is consistently funny throughout and makes you wish the novel had been less about fashion espionage and more about eccentric ex-rock band members adjusting to life in normal society.

The more the arcane characters of Blue Ant (the accidental SPECTRE of ad agencies) and Curfew recede into the background and the more convenient romantic foils feature (I did not believe in Gareth or Fiona for a second) the less interesting Zero History became. The director or Blue Ant lets his daughter have a career as a dispatch rider in London? I'm not sure I would have believed in something like that in Neuromancer let alone the supposed reality of contemporary London.

Still, aside from the characters and the action which are problems common to the rest of the Bigend trilogy, Zero History has moments of real dazzling imagination and poetry. Reading most of Zero History was a real pleasure. More and more with Gibson the actual plot and characters are receding into the background behind the poetry of mundane detail. Less and less influenced by Philip K Dick and Ridley Scott, he's becoming more like Brett Easton Ellis and Ballard. 
Cabinet, is virtually a character in itself

I particularly like this, which fits easily with my experience of life:
Milgrim, speaks of Bigend's personal philosophy

He believed that stasis is the real enemy.. Stability is the beginning of the end.. we only walk by continuing to fall forward

It also gives us a fresh look at London from a foriegn perspective. WG is obviously obsessed with the retro-fit in London and Paris, and has never hesitated to tell us the the nationality of every person we meet - still influenced by the multinational Los Angeles bequeathed by Ridely Scott and Sid Meade in Blade Runner.
Gibson created another world out of that, The Sprawl, and the similarly other worldly and deliberately obtuse nature of his prose is hard but rewarding work to adjust to. It is just possible that had I not deplayed my pleasure to savour the book and stayed in mental WG mode to read straight through to the end I might have enjoyed a lot more.

In one chapter he makes more of an Ekranoplan than Sebastain Faulkes does throughout the entire of Devil May Care, which now I think about it was the last thing I finished. Maybe I should stick to Ekranoplan related fiction.
So, despite delay, I was feeling pretty good about actually finishing a book in pretty good time. 400 pages in two weeks. 

Then I hear, back in Parracombe, Peter Goode has finished the new Neil Stephenson ('his 'pattern recognition'), REAMDE, 1040 pages, in two days. "Very good, bit too much gun touting for my personal taste, but very readable, great characters I think and fun plotlines."
MF

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• Portions of this blogpost previously appeared in a drunken rant 24/3/12
• The automating line spacing and formatting in Blogger continue to be a mystery to me. If I formatted documents like this as part of my job I would be taken out and shot.

Where I live... in Beatle's Yellow Submarine

I've had a frankly surreal couple of years including working in Gibraltar, coming back to Exmoor in the middle of a Winter apocalypse,
then driving my car from there to Gibraltar.. and then driving it back (via the Arctic Circle)

then I got a job in Whitehall
then I got a job at the Guardian

(and started this blog)

possibly the flat out wierdest thing of the lot,
was being told when I got back to Parracombe
by a local mystic/wasted teenager

that the village in Exmoor in which we both live, was featured very briefly in a montage of British holiday postcards in Beatles YELLOW SUBMARINE (see below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JIhvNbdI7g

At 4min 11seconds in Part 3 (linked above).

Thanks, Sir Nicholas Ridley, for the Falklands War

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/19/falklands-optimistic-invasion-anniversary

Following on from the carrier blogpost, this is a great, fair, article about the Falklands including detail I didn't know, such as the Argentinians built Stanley airport...

I also didn't know, but am hardly surprised to find, that the spark for the conflict in the 80s can be traced to infamous Thatcher goon Nicholas Ridley, generally associated with the term NIMBY  (among many other classics which belong only  in the imagination of Daily Mail readers)

from the article above

That November, Margaret Thatcher sent a Foreign Office minister, Nicholas Ridley, to the Falklands to sell the deal.

Falklanders have long memories, especially for perceived betrayals, but Ridley's visit is remembered with particular bitterness. Ridley was a self-confident, not particulary empathetic minister, the kind of Whitehall figure some older Falklanders do mocking impressions of to this day.

Fowler attended a public meeting with him in Stanley: "It was fairly late in the evening. He was being heckled. He got cross. And he said, 'If you continue with this intransigence [against leaseback], on your own heads be it. We will not be sending a gunboat.' "

Less than 18 months later, Argentina invaded. For this reason, the Thatcher government is less fondly recalled in the Falklands than British conventional wisdom would have you expect. "It was her mismanagement of the situation that caused the invasion," says Mike Summers, one of the islands' eight elected politicians. In Stanley, there is a street called Thatcher Drive, but it is short; H Jones Road is longer.

The Lukins.. The Water Rats...

Damn near perfect day yesterday, bit of blogging, bit of great computer game, lots of great book (Zero History now near un-putdownable, not had that with a WG since Neuromancer)

Rounded off with a trip up the road to a pub Rich recommends called The Water Rats, which seems to be the Intrepid Fox of the 1950s interior wise. Apparently Teddy Boys used to hide razors in the rim of their hats and do people across the face You can really see that happening in there..

Anyway.. the middle band on was The Lukins, who I'm delighted to find were from Plymouth and I must look out for them (sorry about blurry photo). Generally great poppy metal I thought was more "the new Garbage" than "QOTST molested by Blondie" on their myspace page.. until their last song which opened up like vintage Paranoid era Sabbath. Aside from being generally all round competent and like able they showed off some great songs, the only dud was actually a cover, a metal version of Cliff Richards Wired For Sound which you have to give them at least balls for trying.

They actually played the audience as well, a very underrated skill in band terms.

This was highlighted by the next band, Carlito (from Kingston), who I think in terms of musicianship were way ahead of the Lukins but got into an instant sulk at the small crowd in the Water Rats and hid their mood very badly. Perhaps too much fizzy pop beforehand. Britpop in fred perry shirts turned up to 11 is never going to be my thing but they could have won me over if they'd shown half of the humility of The Lukins. This might be a consequence of playing to audiences in the South West of course..

To follow on my blog from yesterday on the way London is going, I'll refer you to two albums about London both featuring the same songwriter, one written in 1994, one in 2007, with sharply different moods.

For all the mindless excess suggested in Parklife it is a mostly fun experience, suggesting the freedom and opportunity (seemingly) available in London in the mid 90s.

In stark contrast, The Good The Bad and The Queen, released supposedly at the peak of the Naughty Noughties just before the crash, is full of Dickensian squalor and doom. I wonder it it influenced PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, both seem to draw a parallel to the Britain of a century ago.

We should probably all be in Plym with The Lukins....