The Current Outlook

And after a very long hiatus, here I am. I am deciding to blog again. Well, at least until something else happens to distract me. My Flickr output is on my own page. Much of my new stuff is now there to look at and read. I only mention this as an opening post because… well, why not?

I went to see the film Brief Encounter last night. I must say that I quite enjoyed seeing it again. The one sticking point for me was that they couldn’t actually show the film properly! The film, being a pre-1950s affair, was shot at an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. Most modern cinema screens can only handle widescreen films so a good quarter of the frame was missing from the screen. This did make compositions look rather awkward at times. Apart from that it was interesting enough. There is quite a bit of local relevance to the film as the station they used was actually in Carnforth. I have been to that station and you can look at a few of my shots here.

Quite a few things have happened in my life since I last edited this page. I have visited several different countries (those being Portugal, Spain and Gibraltar and soon, Malta too) and have taken many shots. Here’s my thoughts on these countries:

Portugal: We holidayed in Tavira, a small town in the Algarve. A nice enough place but there wasn’t really a lot to do there. After a day or so walking around the town we got bored. The food was OK (nothing at all special, really) and the beer was reasonably cheap. A large Super Bock cost about €2.00 (£1.40) at most of the places we stopped at. I visited Faro and quite liked it there. We drove through some of the smaller towns like Olhão en route. I must say that out of all the places that I saw while I was in Iberia, Faro would be the one place I’d like to go back to.

Spain: For some people (mainly British and German expats) a life in the Costa del Sol is a dream. A nice place in the sun? But why? I’m sorry to speak ill of a place but the majority of the south coast of Spain is a terrible hole with little to recommend it. There are mediocre Spanish restaurants, terrible ‘English’ restaurants (if there was one thing that had me wanting to go home and have a pint of mild in my local it wasn’t the Spanish but the British!) and all the rest. And there is one thing that I cannot understand about the Spanish and it is chorizo. Who on Earth thought it up? I’ve had some pretty appalling sausages in my time but Jesus Christ, that takes the flipping biscuit. The hotel we stopped at near Estepona was very nice though. All in all, I’m glad to say I’ve been to the Costa del Sol so I can pontificate about what it’s like to people who ask about it (which at last count was a grand total of 0). It’s like the touristy parts of Lanzarote but… worse. Methinks if I ever went to Benidorm or somewhere like that I’d implode in a molten fury. Or something like that. An easier way would be to just not go in the first place.

Gibraltar: Gibraltar was nice but that’s probably because it plays up to my pro-British sensibilities. It is Britain with a Mediterranean twist. Granted, there isn’t very much to do there. You go over the border, get on the bus at Winston Churchill Avenue (you know they’re proud of their British status when they have street names like that at their border!) and go the short distance into town. Main Street and el mono (the monkeys) are really the only two games in town. Main Street is OK if you want things like cheap cigarettes, aftershahve and spirits but for many other things the Gibraltarians go over the border into Spain to shop. The Rock tour is interesting and takes about 90 minutes to complete. The guide takes you around the Rock and shows you what there is to see. It’s unhurried so you have plenty of time to look at stuff. The taxi driver fills you in on the political situation on the Rock (Spain wants its greedy mitts on it, the Gibraltarians will never surrender to Spanish rule against their wishes, the British government vacillates). I would have liked to hear a bit about the Chief Minister and how government works there. Gibraltar is Britain’s smallest remaining overseas territory. I suspect it’s a bit like a town council and a country all into one. Anyway, we had a meal at The Angry Friar and rang home, then we left. Gibraltar seems to go quiet once most of the tourists leave as there seems little to do downtown. It seems that quite a few Gibraltarians go over the border to La Línea de la Concepción to enjoy a meal and a night out. Granted, we went on a day when most of the shops happened to be shut but it was an interesting place to go and to which I’d like to return someday.

Life goes on, even if this just sinks into all the other mud that the Internet has to offer. In truth, I’m only really posting on this old thing again because, well, I’m bored. Can you tell? I must start reading the old blogs that I used to read.

Currently I’m listening to The Lost Continent, a Bill Bryson book about his journeys through small-town America. It’s quite diverting.

Maybe in the next few days I shall come back here and relate some more of my life. Or, maybe I won’t. Watch this space, as they say.

Irish Blood, English Heart, Ulster Fry is a book written by Annie Caulfield, who was born and brought up in Northern Ireland but moved away when she was young to the London of the 1960s.

This book is basically about Northern Ireland away from the bullet and bomb stuff. It does discuss the Troubles and the political side of it but mainly it’s about the people she meets on a return trip to Ulster. It’s a funny and informative read and quite touching in some places. An entertaining page-turner.

Marching Powder is a book written by an Australian law graduate called Rusty Young.

Others have made the comparison between this book and Warren Fellows’ gripping The Damage Done, about an Australian who ended up in Bangkok’s notrious Bang Kwang Prison for twelve years of his life for smuggling heroin between Thailand and Australia. From memory, that book is far, far more depressing than this one. It is what the film (and even the book, to some extent) version of Midnight Express should have been like instead of a catalogue of sensationalism, half-truths, fabrications and the occasional instance of ad hoc xenophobia.

Marching Powder is a true story about a black Englishman from Liverpool called Thomas McFadden, who was arrested and ended up being sentenced to a seven years’ imprisonment in a Bolivian jail for trying to smuggle drugs out of an airport.

The prison he ends up in, San Pedro, is utterly ludicrous. It’s a prison, that much is true. But pretty much everything else about the place has been turned on its head!

For example, new arrivals have to pay an entrance fee to the governor to come into the prison! Then they have to pay to get access to a certain section of the prison and then they have to buy their own cell and decorate it and everything!

They make cocaine inside the prison. And they like to have parties too. For hours and hours on end.

The book is filled to the brim with crazy stories about drug deals, sex and some of the more dangerous and loony fellow inmates. Thomas even makes a decent living as a tour guide to tourists from all over the world at one point. I won’t spoil the rest of the book for you but the book is such good fun to read it’s almost magical.

The only significant criticism I have of Marching Powder is the nasty and rather unpleasant self-important streak that is in evidence in some parts of the book. The subject tries to lessen the seriousness of the offence he was charged and convicted for whilst emphasising how popular and well-liked he was. This attitude gets somewhat wearisome after a while.

Nevertheless, Marching Powder is an extremely entertaining read and comes highly recommended. I read the whole 373 page thing in its entirety in just over two days and I’m not generally one for wanting to rush through books at a hundred miles an hour.

Just a quick note to say I got the book this morning and I’ve been making my way through it this morning by date (i.e. from beginning to end). I’m still at the late November 2004 section at the moment. It’s quite interesting to have a look at the book and recognise which blog entries you remember reading and which ones you don’t. There’s certainly some excellent writing contained within these pages and I shall no doubt be updating my blogroll and RSS reader with some new links once I have finished reading it.

A few words on the technical side of the book: I think it looks mostly looks OK apart from the horrible looking 1980s-style computer font used to adorn the book cover and to introduce the blog entries in the book. The choice of font has the effect of making the text somewhat difficult to read. Also, I’m not at all sure about the fake ‘HTML code’ used either. It looks well out of place in a book and should be dumped next time. I like the greenness of the cover for some odd reason that I haven’t quite fathomed out yet.

Just finished reading a fascinating book - Stasiland, by Anna Funder. It’s about the infamous and highly effective secret police force in the former East Germany, the Stasi.

Funder tells the stories of ordinary innocent people who had their lives wrecked under the Communist regime before the Wall fell in 1989. It’s an addictive read and not a book that can be put down easily, although the author does go into unnecessary and highly irritating passages occasionally. A great page-turner. Highly recommended.

The Strange Death of Tory England is an interesting, thoughtful and well-written book on the rise and, of late, almost moribund state that the British Conservative party and the state that they currently find themselves in at the moment as we approach the General Election in 2005, which at the time of writing is just under three weeks away from now. A worthwhile read.

I really enjoyed this audiobook. It’s the autobiography of the BBC’s Michael Buerk and his life as a journalist and newsreader. I could probably have gone on listening quite a few hours longer. The audiobook felt rather too abridged for my liking at just under two hours and fifty minutes. Entertaining but much too short for me.