Postponed from earlier in the week, we went for a walk in King’s Wood this morning. So quiet! So many mushrooms!
Month: October 2022
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On the way to Horrid Hill
Took the boys for a walk along the river and up to Horrid Hill this morning. Tide turned as we walked back.
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The Passenger
Started Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger. His last novel, The Road, was published 16 years ago. There’s an expectational attitude you have to take when you read one of McCarthy’s novels…
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“children… have a right to high-quality care and education that meets their social and emotional needs”
Excellent piece by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett about childcare in the UK (second most expensive in the developed world that our European neighbours put to shame). Cosslett is right in linking child-care to aspirations of a fairer society and child-neglect as a political policy. She points out: “far more important is the wellbeing and education of children, who have a right to high-quality care and education that meets their social and emotional needs.“
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In your restless dreams, do you see that town?
Exciting to find out that – after 10 years – we are returning to Silent Hill. Four games seem to be in development. I’m most interested in Silent Hill F, set in 1960s rural Japan. There’s even a sequel to the fairly enjoyable 2006 movie. All very exciting.
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Stories
More as a reference for me: Laird Barron’s short story recommendations. I’ve not read the Paul Tremblay story so will hunt it down RIGHT NOW!
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Gillen’s A.X.E.
Find myself agreeing with Chad Nevitt’s fierce admiration for Kieron Gillen’s coordination of Marvel’s A.X.E. event:
“I was stunned by the complexity of the narrative he is telling. It is absolutely stunning to see the various threads weave in and out of different comics, pulling together all of these characters. Most events have a variety of narrative threads that the writer must hold together, though I find that they’re usually left loose for others to pick up or cast aside when the time comes to focus on a specific, singular endpoint. Somehow, Gillen’s narrative for this event has grown more and more complex as it has gone on – and he hasn’t abandoned any elements, instead keeps adding new ones.”
Gillen is expert at handling very complex plots and exploring characterisation in provocative ways. His development of Mr Sinister has been always been highly regarded but – in the pages of Immortal X-Men in particular – he’s written takes on characters like Destiny, Sebastian Shaw and, now, Nightcrawler that genuinely bring a sense of adding depth to character. Like Nevitt I’m working hard to keep up with what’s happening (though I’m convinced – spoiler – that what’s actually happening is some sort of reality simulation created by the Celestial).
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60 Years Ago Today: Love Me Do by The Beatles
Someone to love.
Somebody new.
Someone to love.
Someone like you.Time plays odd tricks. It’s 60 years ago that The Beatles released Love Me Do on 5th October 1962. The opening harmonica hook remains haunting and evokes the grainy black and white early Sixties. Melancholic images of fog on the Mersey. John, Paul, George and Ringo playing the smoky Cavern Club. Screaming teenage girls tearing out their hair. The thaw in post war austerity. Yes, the first few notes of the harmonica hook are instantly recognisable as redolent of a seeming moment of cultural change in Britain.
By the time I was conscious that I was listening to music by a band I could identify as The Beatles sometimes in the Seventies, they had broken up and their quotidian grip on British culture was already legendary (and certainly mythologised when Lennon was shot dead in 1980). My mum was far more likely to play Led Zep or The Kinks at home but I remember my first experiences of The Beatles was through a black box of their collected singles. It included black and white photos of the band as they went through their transformation from juvenile boy band through beatniks and psychedelic warriors to long-haired otherworldly prophets. There was something of the religious artefact about the box. The care needed to load a single on the record player gave the act of listening to them a ritualistic quality. I remember that one of the classes in my primary school had done artwork based on songs from Magical Mystery Tour which was displayed in the school hall and I distinctly recall sitting looking at the pieces happy knowing that I knew the songs. I could even sing them. That might have been the point I realised that there was connection between music and art (and, implicitly, British culture). The Beatles were part of the fabric of a (idealised) childhood Britain that included The Queen, James Bond, PG Tips, Doctor Who and red post boxes.
Love Me Do had been recorded three times before release with a different drummer each session (Pete Best had been kicked out the band, George Martin wasn’t impressed by Ringo so session musician, Andy White played drums on the third recording). The single released on the 5th October 1962 featured Ringo by mistake (the album, Please Please Me, “corrected” this with the Andy White recording featuring Ringo’s tambourine). The song is by McCartney, who claimed he wrote it in 1958 when bunking off school with some help from Lennon with the middle eight (the “Pleeeeeeese Love me do”). It’s likely that McCartney had been influenced by the country sound of the Everly Brothers’ 1957 hit, Bye Bye Love and squint your eyes watching Don and Phil perform their song and you could be fooled into seeing John and Paul performing.
Supposedly, George Martin didn’t want Love Me Do as The Beatles’ first release. He had the rights to How Do You Do It by Mitch Murray – later released by Jerry and the Pacemakers – and believed it was perfect for the band. The Beatles disagreed, thinking it was too typical and lacked their rock and roll attitude. Of course, they were right. Love Me Do has been mythologised into establishing Merseybeat as an overnight success, but in reality, the song peaked at number 17 after eleven weeks. It only reached number 1 in the US in May 1964 during Beatlemania. Their fame would only grow after this release.
Over the years, The Beatles have become for me something slightly emblematic of a Lost Golden Age of Sixties innocence and idealism just before I was born. It’s hard not to be nostalgic when hearing Love Me Do and have the backbeat not become part of the rhythm of your life. Today, I experience Love Me Do as more of a ghostly lament to a lost Britain that called out for future love and a better life after the war. For a moment it seemed to be answered only to end as yesterday. I experience it now – as I’m sure many others do – as an aspect of my lost youth. It was always really a slow, melancholic, unrequited song.