I Have Art

I opened the two large packages that arrived today like an excited school boy. After being in the flat for a year we finally took possession of two large pieces of art for the front room. Not mounted prints or copies but two pieces of real bon-a-fide originals. The fact that it has taken so long is that Madame Vin and I have wildly differing tastes when it comes to art and agreeing on two large canvases took perseverance and a cool head.

The first is a piece called Golden Arch by an artist called Yanik.

The second is a piece called Cosmopolitan City by an artist called Muliarta.

Now I know that artist are not in any way well known and their work is classed as simple to produce but just knowing that the piece is unique (and beautiful) and that someone has sweated over its production makes it that little bit more worthwhile to put on my walls.

Heidelberg Here We Come!

I'm off to Germany on Thursday so probably won't post again until next week. I'm visiting Heidelberg on a gentleman's weekend tour. Wikipedia reliably informs me that approximately 600,000 years ago, the "Heidelberg Man", whose jaw-bone was discovered in 1907, the earliest evidence of human life in Europe, died at nearby Mauer. I'll probably be feeling pretty similar by the end of the weekend.

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Read 'Something from the Nightside' by Simon R. Green last week. This was one of the books I purchased on my excursion to London as the books are currently only available in US versions. I was really looking forward to the start of this series as the ideas contain everything that I find exciting in a story. The books are set in London and the Nightside, a world entwined within the real city where pretty much anything goes. It's a disturbing, threatening, evil place that cares for no one or no thing. The Nightside is well described and Green obviously took his time in thinking the fantasy world up. That said it's just a little bit too 'stateside' in its build to be the other side of London. It feels more like a dark and disturbing Chicago than the capital.
The story itself is very 'pulp', and for me just not complex enough. However I plan to read the next couple before giving up.

'Lost Girls' has been much talked about in the press due to its 'adult' nature and uncompromising position on lesbianism and sexual liberation. It was even briefly banned in the UK as Great Ormond St. Hospital worried it cast a bad light on the character of Wendy from Peter Pan. To be honest I think its a big hoopla about nothing. The book is nicely put together, the art work attractive and the story simple. It's not an erotic masterpiece and I doubt very much that it would shock many people today. I think its a curiosity from another time, something that would have been burnt earlier in this century but can be read and understood from (thankfully) a more mature outlook. Praise must go to Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie for at least trying something new in the comic book world.

Read this week:

Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green
Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie.

Subterranean Worlds - Pushing Back the Tide

The first in a series of short essays that I'll collect here concerning Subterranean Worlds. Some of them might be about works of fiction whilst others will be about what lurks beneath out city streets - enjoy!

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The Victoria embankment of the river Thames is the prefect place for a stroll. The street takes you from the old City of London, past the Temple and leads all the way to Westminster, the route lined with trees while the Thames laps gently below you. But the route is a fake, the parcel of land a man made construction that was used to push the river back and hide some of the many tunnels under the city.

The work was begun in 1865, designed and engineered by one Joseph Bazelgette, a truly visionary individual who brought the sewers to London. Before this date the Thames was the only means of removing all human excrement, waste and pollution from the vast and growing capital. It was in no uncertain terms a massive sewer spreading disease through the capital, and people were dying.

Cholera was rife with ten of thousands of people dying in the years leading up to the ‘Great Stink’. Thought to be brought on by Miasma – foul air, the government of the time was finally pressed into doing something.

The ambitious plan was to push the Thames back and lay underneath the new street three massive sewer pipes that would be connected to 1,100 miles of small piping to remove all the sewage from the city before dumping it untreated further down stream.

Not surprisingly this was a massive feet of engineering, and luckily for us Bazelgette was a forward thinker. Not only did he realise that the correct shape for such large pipes would be oval and not round but he built them in such a way as to be scaled up for future use. The same pipes are still in use today (thankfully the sewage is no longer ejected untreated into the river).
Bazelgette and the building of the Victoria Embankment form part of the background for the novel ‘The Worms of Euston Square’ by William Sutton.

At the same time that Bazelgette was sorting out the sewers London was also going through the process of having an underground rail system built into its foundations. It seemed only right that while the bank was open they would also put in a rail line. Today, sitting above the sewage pipes are the lines for the District and Circle services, just a few metres down below the surface of the road.

The fact that the road and area used by so many is in truth artificial can best be seen by two pieces of archaeology still evident above ground. The first is the water gate that can be seen in Victorian Embankment Park shown in the painting ‘River by Moonlight’ (I can’t find an artists name). In the painting the Thames is seen lapping at its foot, but now the gate is located in the park, some 150 yards from the river and down in a hollow.

Further evidence is given by the steps that lead nowhere by the side of the MOD. Queen’s Mary’s steps as built by Cristopher Wren once led from the now vanished Whitehall Palace as built by Henry VIII. Originally the walk led some 70 feet out into the bed of the river, but they are now marooned and stick out of the wall of the MOD building.

Busy Lives

Quite a lot going on at the moment with trips away happening and lots of info for the blog. This entry will be a bit of a round up before I write up things in a little more detail over the coming week.

Last weekend Madame Vin and I went to London, mainly to see Tash in her one woman charity show but also to catch up with friends. We flew from Edinburgh straight into City Airport, which I must say is a great way of doing it as it means less delay on the way into the capital and allows you to miss the disaster that is Heathrow.

Saturday night we took a train to Dulwich (put on the map by Edward Alleyn, a friend of Marlowe’s) to see Hampton and family, now somewhat grown with the arrival of twins last year. Much wine was consumed and hearty food eaten as we caught up, having realised we had not seen each other for some two years…my, how time moves at a rate of knots not conducive to seeing and meeting everyone you should.

Sunday morning we went on an organised stroll around Subterranean London. I’ve mentioned before that I want to start pulling work together on the subterranean world and how it’s been the focus of fantasy works in the last one hundred years. I’ll put several small essays up here in the next weeks on what we saw and a few photos.

Sunday night was given over to Tash and her show ‘Rolling with Laughter’. It was held at the Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Westend, with all money going to the Jennifer Trust. It was a great night, with Tash being introduced by the Hamilton’s (which means they’ve gone up a little in my estimation).

Final point of call was the Dr Who exhibition, which was a cool in a ‘Adam getting back in touch with childhood wonder’ kind of way. It was also a nice run in to the new series which started last night.

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Read quite a bit over the last few weeks and whilst in London I was able to nip to the large Forbidden Planet and stock on some wonderful new hardbacks.

The first in a series by Mike Carey featuring freelance exorcist Felix Castor, ‘The Devil You Know,’ is a down to earth horror/thriller. Carey writes for Hellblazer and I was expecting the books to be a bit of a rip off of Constantine but was pleased to be wrong. Felix is his own man and the London that Carey has created is positioned just the other side of normal, which is exactly how I like my fantasy.
His writing style is fluid and descriptive without ever becoming too complex so that it distracts from the tale. There is a good piece of back story and many characters that no doubt will reappear. He reminds me of early John Connelly and I’ll certainly be reading the next two books and purchasing the soon to arrive fourth.

Odd and the Frost Giants is Neil Gaiman’s children novella released for World Book Day. It plays on Norse mythology, introducing their pantheon of gods to young readers without ever belittling the history or storytelling. As always with Gaiman it reads simply, with each word being considered before use that displays simplicity of language that hides the hard work.

Violent Cases is an early work by Gaiman and Dave Mckean. An adult graphic novel that deals with the magic of memory and lives seen through the eyes of childhood. The art work uses simply black and white line drawings intercut with McKean’s unmistakeable use of mix media.

I’ve also just read the 6 issue comic book Wanted by Mark Millar. I know there is a film version of this coming out later this year but from what I’ve read I’ll be surprised if that’s the filming they are making. The comic book is nihilistic to the point of being a mockery of itself. I understand it’s a fuck you to the normal comic book world of bad guy vs cloaked superhero but in the process it turns society into helpless drones with no chance of redemption.

Read this week:

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

Wanted by Mark Millar