28/06/2007
"It's not the winning, it's the taking part that counts." How many times did you hear that on your school sports day? A couple of hundred I guess, if you were like me (a titan in English and language classes but a lightweight on the sports field). You know, you came last but you put up a brave fight, played the part of the valiant underdog and that's heroic.
I write this to you on the back of reading how Tim Henman has gone crashing out of Wimbledon in another five-set thriller, that still there's always next year. Admittedly, you've got to feel a little sorry for the lad and the immmense burden he has to carry on his shoulders: every year the crowds get right behind him, spurred on by the media who encourage us to pin all our hopes on him, since he's the only one of our lot for who the tournament won't be over on the first day.
Then there's our football heroes in the England squad. They battle hard (rallied by the patriotic "Great Escape" in the background), but, alas, our Achilles Hell of penalties lets us down again...and again...and again. Of course, we just pat them on the back and say, "Oh well, you tried hard but it was those damned pesky penalties again. Get us every time. Doh!"
So maybe we should be less supportive and more pessimestic towards our sporting heroes. Maybe if we were to expect nothing but the worst and react with a bit of more venom, they might just develop the killer instinct, get out there and show us what they're made of, purely for the sake of silencing the critics and the millions of down-doers. What do we care what they're reasons are? We just want to see some silverware- and have something to believe in. Wouldn't that be nice? Go on, lads surprise us!
Friday, 31 August 2007
If You Were Here, Truman...
04/07/2007
Dear Mr Capote,
Have just watched "Capote" again, a bio-pic on yourself and how you wrote "In Cold Blood," your magnum opus by all accounts. Hope to find some time to bury myself in it someday. The film itself was fabulous, the kind that has you talking about it once you exit the cinema and are in the car on the drive home, so many questions...
The main one is, what made you write it? Id like to think that it was because you were a good person, that you were not so vain as the media would have us believe, that you really felt those men had some good in them deep down instead of being the monsters we all thought. You maybe actually even loved one of them. Did you? That would be the optimist in me.
Then there's another voice, suggesting it was all fuelled by the desire to be famous, to be somebody. Was it? According to the film, you could have cleared them, saved their lives, but then in their hour of need you weren't there, didn't want to know. Is that true? Were you using them? Is the suggestion of betrayal, although they murdered and forfeited their freedom in society, justified?
Which one of the voices is right, Mr Capote? Which? How I'd love to know.
Dear Mr Capote,
Have just watched "Capote" again, a bio-pic on yourself and how you wrote "In Cold Blood," your magnum opus by all accounts. Hope to find some time to bury myself in it someday. The film itself was fabulous, the kind that has you talking about it once you exit the cinema and are in the car on the drive home, so many questions...
The main one is, what made you write it? Id like to think that it was because you were a good person, that you were not so vain as the media would have us believe, that you really felt those men had some good in them deep down instead of being the monsters we all thought. You maybe actually even loved one of them. Did you? That would be the optimist in me.
Then there's another voice, suggesting it was all fuelled by the desire to be famous, to be somebody. Was it? According to the film, you could have cleared them, saved their lives, but then in their hour of need you weren't there, didn't want to know. Is that true? Were you using them? Is the suggestion of betrayal, although they murdered and forfeited their freedom in society, justified?
Which one of the voices is right, Mr Capote? Which? How I'd love to know.
Crossing the Ocean of Time
11/07/2007
So, it's official. For my summer holidays this year I shall be visiting Romania, the land of Dracula, as you know, on a Transylvania Carpathians tour and also the supposed resting place of Vlad the Impaler by Lake Snagov. They say it's there, but have you ever read "The Historian"? In typical Da Vinci Code-style Elisabeth Kostova, the author(ess), suggests it may be...somewhere else (I won't spoil it for you!). Well whatever she believes, I have to at least go and check it out. After all, I was born in the North only an hour or so away from the fishing town of Whitby, which Bram Stoker cherished so dearly as to make it part of the setting for his famous work.
Still, you've gotta wonder what the Romanians make of it all, even if it was their own history and folklore that started it! Maybe they're a bit fed up of all this interest for a savage and sadistic ruler who took pleasure in torturing and murdering his own people: six centuries on and he's drawing crowds - though I guess it was more a case of the opposite back then- and having people yapping on about him. Perhaps I'll see it written in the faces of Romanian's today: "Here we go with the old Dracula shit again."
Which makes me wonder if I should find something else to ask about once I'm there (just need to brush up on my Romanian first!), or spice up proceedings by waving round the Hungarian flag. But then again it's a pretty long drop from the Carpathians, and the wolves must get awful hungry! So maybe I should embrace old Vlad T, just like the rest of them.
La revedere!
So, it's official. For my summer holidays this year I shall be visiting Romania, the land of Dracula, as you know, on a Transylvania Carpathians tour and also the supposed resting place of Vlad the Impaler by Lake Snagov. They say it's there, but have you ever read "The Historian"? In typical Da Vinci Code-style Elisabeth Kostova, the author(ess), suggests it may be...somewhere else (I won't spoil it for you!). Well whatever she believes, I have to at least go and check it out. After all, I was born in the North only an hour or so away from the fishing town of Whitby, which Bram Stoker cherished so dearly as to make it part of the setting for his famous work.
Still, you've gotta wonder what the Romanians make of it all, even if it was their own history and folklore that started it! Maybe they're a bit fed up of all this interest for a savage and sadistic ruler who took pleasure in torturing and murdering his own people: six centuries on and he's drawing crowds - though I guess it was more a case of the opposite back then- and having people yapping on about him. Perhaps I'll see it written in the faces of Romanian's today: "Here we go with the old Dracula shit again."
Which makes me wonder if I should find something else to ask about once I'm there (just need to brush up on my Romanian first!), or spice up proceedings by waving round the Hungarian flag. But then again it's a pretty long drop from the Carpathians, and the wolves must get awful hungry! So maybe I should embrace old Vlad T, just like the rest of them.
La revedere!
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