Reshuffling

I had a very productive Saturday down at the Pearce Institute Reshuffle with the Unity gang, and came home with a spice rack (it was going free) and a scary pile of anarchist stuff which probably tells you a few things about the impact studying sociology and anthropology with my particular department had on me. Of course, much of it, on having a flick through is getting dispatched to Uncle Alan (this blogs no.1 fan!) and Shimmy for his degree.

It was quite a good day. The Unity in the Community bookshop opened today. And is the only shop in Govan to have a sort of sociology section. My geekiness knows no bounds. It is perhaps also the best bookshop in Glasgow, not only because I'm biased and will say such things, but also because it is a second hand bookshop that sells books at reasonable prices, unlike most, so skint people can actually afford to get a decent book for peanuts. There is a history section I very much have my eye on too.

The reshuffle was a lot of fun. I picked up quite a few pamphlets, etc from the Unity stall that should be very useful to me in my voluntary work. It's rather difficult to come across current asylum literature I find, and I like being up to date. It was cool seeing just how many local groups there are kicking about in Govan doing their own thing. I particularly liked the Radical Independent Bookfair, who happened to have books on all the stuff I studied at uni. Would have been very handy then, but nothing to stop me enjoying it now as I'm still very interested. One thing I thought was cracking was the fact that they have a book swap, where you can take your own radical book that you enjoyed and swap it for something else. I practically started salivating at that as I have a lot of books that I can swap. I've signed up to the mailing list and will no doubt be at their next event with some tomes to swap!

The day was rounded off by a very nice dinner at the house a lot of the Unity boys recently moved into nearby. I have promised to knit Patch the dog (who really runs the house) a black anarchy hoodie. So next time I see him, I'll have to measure him up.

Arthur Elder - terror of 1900s Glasgow

My Uncle Alan was up today for a visit. Previously mentioned, he's my Dad's uncle and the family's professional historian. Anyway, he was telling us a bit about the family history. And it turns out one of my nearish ancestors was a rather known Glasgow crook!

The man in question is Arthur Elder, though perhaps I guess was born Arthur Steel as that was his father's name. Arthur's parents Willie Steel and Lizzie Elder were linked to the Baptist Church in Paisley, thus were 'of the manse'. Willie and Lizzie are my great-great grandparents. Arthur was thus the brother of my great grandfather, Richard Steel, who has been described to me as Grandad Steel. Amelia, or Milly was his wife.

Anyway, the family background now described, lets get to Great-great-great Uncle Arthur. He was the second son of Willie and Lizzie, and meant to be a medical student. However, unbeknownst to his father, Arthur dropped out and became a professional con-man. He spent a year in the Highlands posing as a doctor, in the Loch Carron area. For services rendered, he received a gold fob watch from the community to 'Dr Cameron'. He apparently did quite well. But of course, he was jailed for pretending to be a doctor. The police apparently found him hiding in the attic of his aunts house in Linwood.

Arthur's undoing came one day in Glasgow in 1910. He had gone into a binocular shop, borrowing a pair of binoculars to try out. After collecting said binoculars, he strolled round the corner to a pawn shop in Cambridge Street and tried to sell the binoculars. The shop owner cottoned on, managing to alert the police while keeping Arthur talking. He was duly arrested and taken down to the station in Oxford Street.

At the time, a suspects pockets could only be turned out after being formally charged. So whilst getting his particulars taken at the front desk, and still to be charged, Arthur went into his pocket and brought out a revolver. He shot one officer in the arm and made a break for it. Eventually he was cornered, so he turned the gun on himself.

One of Arthur's sisters, telling my aunt Evelyn about it all, refused to marry and have children in order to breed the criminal element out of the family.

She may have been a bit over-cautious, as her great nephew went on to join Strathclyde Police. That folks, would be my Dad!

There is some info on Arthur at the Police Museum in Glasgow. I've sent an email to the curator for some info.

Happy 251st Birthday Mr Burns

Burns day today. Which means some shops are probably doing a good run on the haggis. And whisky!

My favourite Burns has to be "A Man's A Man For A' That", which came about from seeing the last few lines of said song on a plaque at Hillhead tube station nearly every day as I trooped to uni for my last year. They are:

"For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."


I like the sentiment that everyone is equal, appealing as it does to my lefty, egalitarian view point on life. It hits the spot quite well, especially when you consider all the crap and prejudice that goes on, something I see quite a lot in my voluntary work. It's amazing some of the stuff that gets spouted off these days by the vocal, bigoted, but thankfully small, portions of society. And the best retort comes from a song written over 200 years ago.

As they might say in modern Scots parlance, "Get it up ye!".

The full length of "A Man's A Man For A' That" can be found here.

It also talks about how despite the poverty a person may face, they are still a person, and probably more a man (or woman!) than all the rich folks with their jewels, trinkets and fine wine. Not a bad sentiment at all, and one we seem to have forgotten these days.

RIP Kate McGarrigle

Very sad to hear that Kate McGarrigle passed away today after a long fight with cancer. She's the mother of my favourite singer, Rufus Wainwright. With Rufus, you don't just get him, but the whole family package as all are very successful musicians.

The End Of Ten

David Tennant - in my view rather excellent as the Doctor, and a very close second to my favourite, Peter Davison. Probably just as well I was too young to notice when Davison regenerated in 1984, as I was feeling a bit melancholy at Tennant's upcoming fate, even though I've been looking forward to Matt Smith's arrival. Perhaps it's something to do with having Tennant around since my first year of uni as the regular Doctor and it gets a bit like having a favourite armchair for years. That and he was bloody good.

Needless to say in a family like the Other Half's, the regeneration of a Doctor is a pretty big thing. Put it this way, the family have been massive fans since Grandad Bob originally watched it in 1963, and then spread the fandom to his children who subsequently passed it on to their children. I think the only other family in existence more Who-ish of a persuasion would be Peter Davison's. There we have Peter as the Doctor in the early 80's, his daughter Georgia Moffett appearing as the Doctor's daughter Jenny. Then Georgia starts to date David Tennant. In the meantime, Peter's youngest sons become massive fans, quickly eschewing Dad for the big sisters boyfriend as their favourite, whilst Georgia's own son adores Tennant and Tom Baker (no mention of Grandad!).

But I digress. This year the event of the regeneration was watched with the Other Half's Mum and sister. The Other Half was cooing at the arrival of Time Lords, whilst the rest of us were having our heartstrings torn by the Doctor himself and basically wanting to adopt him all over again. There were plenty of 'Oh noooo!' moments when we thought that was it, but no, the Doctor kept battling on to.... no I'm not going to spoiler it!

But then the end came. The Doctor started to regenerate, visiting all his mates to say good bye, and then with a final "I don't want to go!", burst into a wall of bright stuff, started wrecking the TARDIS and then turned into Matt Smith being surprised he had legs and crying out "Geronimo" as he tried to steer the TARDIS.

There isn't really much to write about regarding the actual story, save to say that come the end, tissues were being passed to some family members. I was quite impressed with number Eleven's 20 seconds of screen time so far. Probably not enough to predict how that Doctor will be, especially as a newly regenerated Doctor is a bit nuts (see Tom Bakers first story Robot as an extreme example) before settling down. But from the taster trailer shown after The End Of Time, it does look promising. And I see Stephen Moffat, aka The Moff, has kept up RTD's tradition of snogging companions. Bet that was fun for Karen Gillen! I'll just have to hang on til May to find out now. I am a bit disturbed by the fact that Matt is my age. Probably thanks to hearing friends in recent years talk about you know you're getting on when the Doctor is younger than you. I'm six months older. Not a lot. But still...

So post- regen, we then watched Doctor Who Confidential in which Russell T Davies looked smug and relaxed in California, David Tennant looked completely wiped out and Matt Smith got accosted by lots of crew curious to see him take over and bump into RTD for the first time. I'd say that Matt looked the most chilled out after RTD on the whole programme. It was poignant watching the shift over for the filming of the regeneration. Tennant and RTD exited, whilst Matt and the Moff entered, the Moff looking very serious, but gleeful at overseeing his new 'toy'.

The most memorable scene from Confidential was David being called back after shooting his final scenes for a technical thing, only to be given a send off by the crew. Cue tears from the outgoing leading man and some of us watching at home. The withdrawal is probably a killer!


So overall, what did I think of The End of Time? Some of it was a touch silly, but it was fun silly. The Master, as ever, was great - nearly at Delgado levels. Bernard Cribbins was brilliant as Wilf and seems to have been adopted as the new elder Statesman of Doctor Companions along with William Russell (Ian) and Nick Courtney (The Brig). Donna was bolshy as ever. But David Tennant was the best. I have the feeling he put his recent stint as a Shakespearean thesp to good use in getting the range of emotion he put across. I think he may actually have cried in it more than certain of his fans watching! It probably goes up there with The Caves of Androzani in terms of regeneration stories, though I think Peter Davison's swansong might have an extra edge as it is very understated in comparison to The End Of Time. There isn't as much demonstrated emotion in Androzani, which is what I think makes it all the more moving. But then again, I'm probably just being biased!

Hamlet: Eastenders for the 1600s

Shakespeare I believe is made a little difficult for most to access because of all the complex academic discourse built up around his work. I remember in school that more focus was place on the way Shakespeare switched from prose to poetry, use of certain words, similes, metaphors, etc, with some focus on the themes of his plays. This completely bored the the pants off me and my fellow teenage classmates, who were usually more interested in the actual story. We were enthralled by the goriness of Macbeth, and the comeuppance that awaited the eponymous villain, whilst in S5, the girls were caught up in the romance of Romeo and Juliet, which might have been helped by our teacher putting on the Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Danes version for us to watch! That and she also pointed out and explained some of the filthy jokes, to some of my schoolmates glee.

I didn't think much of The Merchant of Venice, which we covered in S3, but then, every genius has a turkey now and then!

Hamlet is the first Shakespearean play I've picked up purely to enjoy without having to study it for something and just be able to enjoy as a story. I somehow get the impression that's what Shakespeare was after himself - the story as pure entertainment for the masses, with the added benefit of being able to drop in a filthy joke or twenty, and the opportunity to poke fun at the establishment and the inanity of humanity. The other half I think has mentioned at some point that Shakespeare wrote as a populist. This was probably driven home more for the non-literati like myself in The Shakespeare Code in series 3 of new Doctor Who. I think that this has made me interested in having another look at Shakespeare. Of course, the fact that the now ex - Doctor David Tennant took on the role of Hamlet in 2008, (after ascertaining that there would definitely be no full series of Doctor Who in 2009) also gave me a push. I can't help but wonder if this has happened to others who might otherwise have not looked at Shakespeare at all. Hamlet was the obvious choice to begin with.

Apart from being thrown at times by the language used, which I put down to the 400 year gap between Hamlet being written and me reading it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I overcame language difficulties with the commentary at the back of my copy and annoying the English Lit graduate I'm betrothed to. I also wanted to read it before watching the Tennant in action in the Boxing Day broadcast of his Hamlet so I would be able to follow it. Of course, I am yet to watch the video as the other half has put it somewhere and not told me (subtle hint).

I was struck by how much the plot resembled the storyline of a contemporary soap, though not many soaps these days focus on the Danish Royal Family, so we can take that as a minor aberration!

Pretty much what we have is this: a ghost is scaring the Palace guards, and is recognised as the recently departed king of Denmark. His son, the prince Hamlet is alerted to this and ends up having a wee chat with the ghost. He finds out that his father was murdered by his uncle, Claudius, who has since gone on to take the crown and married Hamlet's mother Gertrude to boot. Hamlet is already a little peeved at his mother remarrying his uncle, and only a few months after his father's death, so becomes incensed at the murder and swears revenge.

However, it takes Hamlet a long time to actually get around to this. In the meantime, things go a tad pear-shaped. Hamlet pretends he's mad, loses the girl he loves, Gertrude, and then gives his loving uncle a hint that he knows what's happened by getting a troupe of travelling players to essentially re-enact the murder. The end result is that Claudius arranges for Hamlet to be taken to England to be 'dealt' with. Hamlet lets his mother know what has been going on, upbraids her for marrying the murderer of her late husband, then accidentally kills Polonius, Ophelia's father, who conveniently hid behind the tapestry in the Queen's room to eavesdrop.

Things speed up after this. Ophelia goes decidedly barking mad after Hamlet is sent off to England (under the auspices of banishment, etc for Polonius' death). Laertes, Ophelia's brother, and son of Polonius, comes home from France screaming for blood at his father's demise, only to be made more desperate for revenge when he sees Ophelia's insanity and her subsequent death (quite a few cark it in this). Hamlet, in the meantime has thwarted his own demise as plotted by Claudius, and been captured by pirates on his way back from England. The pirates realise they have much to gain by treating Hamlet well as he is a prince, so he gets home. Claudius finds out after getting a letter from Hamlet, and plots for Laertes to kill Hamlet in a duel with the use of a poisoned sword. Claudius also helpfully provides some poisoned wine as a back up. And you can guess where this is going....

So the duel takes place. And it goes wrong. The queen drinks the poisoned wine meant for Hamlet, and both Laertes and Hamlet end up stabbing each other with the poisoned sword in a scuffle. The queen dies. Laertes realised he's been used, that Claudius is a git and forgives Hamlet. Then he dies. Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword, and makes him drink the poisoned wine for good measure. Then Claudius dies. Hamlet is very much on his own last legs at this point, and has just been handed the crown of Denmark. He names the prince of Norway as his successor. Then the hero of the piece kicks the bucket.

Not a touch like Corrie or Eastenders at all really!

Slight Hiatus

Not been able to blog lately due to unforeseen circumstances, namely my brother being attacked and left severely injured whilst out one night in November. He has made some recovery, so blogging can begin!