10 September 2010

From the Memorial Booklet:

Celina first came into my life during my last summer in London, when I became a devoted reader of her blog. I enjoyed the sharpness of her observation and the emotional dexterity of her writing. When Celina entered my life in person we soon discovered that we never ran out of things to say, just the time to say it in. She was elegant and alive, her eyes were always open and her wit ready to do battle with new ideas. The last gift Celina gave to me was her generosity - she cooked me lunch on a Saturday, we talked and laughed for four hours and she wrote out for me the recipe for the dish I loved. I wish to thank her family and her other friends for sharing this wonderful woman with me, because even a short friendship taken away too soon was worth every minute.

6 September 2010

Carol

I can still see the sunlight on the geraniums in the roof garden outside my window the day in London that I found your blog. For some reason I even remember walking down the wood-panelled hallway to my workmate Laura to laugh about the first post I read of yours that was so great it made me keep reading. It was the post about alerting the authorities to the drugs in the luggage of an ex-boyfriend? Anyway, I loved it and stayed to read. And a few days later I started reading Slinky Cat and the rest is cross-continential, blog-related friendship history.

As I drove away from Celina's house four weeks ago I was smiling, because I knew that I would go to Singapore next year with her and meet you finally. And after that, whenever we got our husbands delivered and had kids, or our nephews and nieces went travelling, they would be made to be friends because we were all friends. It seemed inevitable that such a great friendship would be felt into the next generation.

When Celina and I finally got our act together to meet (and that took a criminal three years) I immediately felt the loss of the years I was 'too busy' to meet someone in my own city. She was like her writing and beyond it - funny and fast and able to leap ahead with new ideas and new jokes. When we went to breakfast the second time we talked so much we lost about 30 minutes - Celina had to go at noon, we said goodbye, found another topic of conversation and suddenly it was 12.30! As we finally parted by means of simply stopping a full conversation in mid-flow, I knew that not being able to stop talking was the sign of a good friendship to come.

Then I had Celina to my parent's house for breakfast because I love to cook for my friends, and I wanted her to see the house I grew up in. As I get older I appreciate meeting my friend's families and seeing their childhood homes as it gives me a shape to their stories of growing up. Celina let me take her on the tour of the house to look at the photos of my brothers and sister, the view from my window and hear the stories of my family. She ate my famous mini-quiches and declared that it was a triumph of a breakfast. The funny thing was that we only half discussed all our topics of interest because we had only a few hours - we never really finished our conversations fully because of time restrictions - and we promised we would have more time next time to discuss everything in full.

And in order to fulfill this promise Celina cooked me lunch four weeks ago at her house and it was a wonderful day. She cooked soup and vegetables and pork belly that made me a little teary it was so good. We talked for hours and finally got to finish all our conversations. We talked at the top of our voices, laughed until we snorted and we very rude about a whole lot of people who should have known better than to mess with us. We discussed our various hapless men in full, looking at them from all angles and amused each other with cutting remarks. We discussed where Celina would go after she finished her degree and we discussed how hard it is to work doing what you love but getting paid a pittance for it. I was looking forward to seeing her in Singapore and going to see her wherever in Australia she decided to practice as a vet. Celina showed me a photo of you and Miss J that she had in her room and we inspected her bookcase and she lent me two books to read.

She finally had to kick me out so she could study, but I left with books, the recipe for pork belly and the glow of many conversations delighted in and plans made. I went home and spent almost two weeks telling all my friends about the feast Celina cooked me. That lunch was so lovely I got out my pen and paper and wrote to thank her for her generosity and time. When Tim sent me a message on Facebook that she was gone and I rang him in response, I was so shocked that I hadn't truly reacted until he mentioned my letter. I had only thought about the letter that morning as I tried to calculate if Celina's family had gone home yet so she would be free to catch up and chat about the visit. I was missing her. I asked Tim if my letter had been opened and he said yes - and I started crying. I had finally realised what had happened and I was pathetically grateful that I had thanked Celina for her wonderful gift of her time, cooking and conversation. At least she knew a little bit of how much I appreciated her place in my life.

Quite apart from what a pleasure she was in person (and I always felt as if meeting up with Celina for food was an event and I would get a bit excited about how much fun we would have), it was what she had DONE that made me so thrilled to know her. Whenever I told any of my other friends about her, I would say she was the Corporate Lawyer from Singapore who had Saved to come to Perth to be A Vet (and I met her through Her Blog). Celina had done things, hard things, long years of study and work so she could take the steps she needed to towards her goals. She had character and she was a character because she worked hard and she cared about things other than money and the trappings of success. And it made her someone with whom you knew you could take flights of fancy because she was a dreamer as well.

I cannot adequately thank you for being the woman through whom I met Celina. Thank you. She made an impact on my life from the first meeting. The second last time I saw her we went to a bookshop after our breakfast and I bought a biography of my favourite poet, Emily Dickinson. I have enjoyed the book immensely, but today sat down and wrote in the front of the book:

Bought in the company of Celina Chau 18 July 2010. Celina died in a car accident on Friday 3 September 2010.

I have added a verse from Emily to that inscription as well, but it is one of Emily's other poems that I would like to write now. When I first read it I was a stranger to great grief, and I merely admired its clever imagery. But now that I am gathering my thoughts of a short but important friendship to allow me to grieve, I appreciate the dichotomy at the heart of thinking of those who are not around, for as Shakespeare, you and I know - as we love, we lose ...

If recollecting were forgetting,

Then I remember not,

And if forgetting, recollecting,

How near I had forgot,

And if to miss, were merry,

And to mourn, were gay,

How very blithe the fingers

That gathered this, today!

18 August 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Wednesday 18 August 18 2004

FrightFest fare 

It seems that M and Max aren’t too interested in the offerings of FrightFest 2004. All I got was a pair of wrinkled noses when I uttered the words ‘Horror’, ‘Psychological Thriller’ and ‘Suspense’. 

Instead, I was told: 

Max: “Why don’t you ask THEM” 

Me: (puzzled) “Who?” 

Max: “You know,” (gesturing to the computer with casual, practiced, mock distaste) “your fans.” 

-The blog has a history of being somewhat of a persona non gratis in the household because it makes me sit at a screen for hours on end holding up my end of a conversation with half-muttered and occasionally inappropriate ‘uh huh’s. - 

Me: “Ummm, that’s a little weird. Interesting, though.” 

Max: “You could run a competition ... Win A Date With ...” 

Me: (interjecting) “ ... ahhhhh yeeeees, I see your point but I don’t really think that people are going to enter a competition to sit next to me at a cinema.” 

M: (seemingly from nowhere) “You never know.” 

Sweet. I suppose that’s why he’s my husband – he actually thinks going to the movies with me is like a prize. Unless, of course, it’s a horror flick, in which case wrestling with some Linux flavour named after a hat is a damn sight more interesting. I suspect, therefore, that I'll be going alone.

18 August 2003

From the email:
The coach trip out to Oxford was a just what the doctor ordered. I got to see rolling hedge-bound fields, thickly forested valleys and the cutest little ivy covered cottages. I fell asleep so I missed the entrance to Oxford and at first the outer suburbs looked disappointingly like Morden. Then we turned a corner and were on a High Street lined with the most divine old buildings I have seen yet in my three weeks in Britain. I am seriously excited about tomorrow. I predict a rather stunned Max trying to prevent herself from photographing every College in the town!

The town is quite handsome and is full to bursting of young people. I had dinner in a lovely gourmet pizza restaurant and was watching the diners with interest. There were two men in dogcollars with large family groups and I was a bit puzzled until it clicked that they were probably lecturers. As one group was leaving the waitress was chatting to them about some of the lecturers she had. At that moment I began to really miss Uni while simultaneously wishing that I had lived in a University town. What fun!

I am off to bed to prepare myself to roam the Colleges tomorrow.

4 August 2005

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Wednesday 4 August 2004


A good day gets better 


It's difficult to have one overriding perception of London. There are beautiful areas, ugly areas, prosperous and frightening areas, places where even the sky seems to be made of ugly 60's concrete...and places like this: 

This area is literally a 10 minute meander or a 5 minute walk from my front door. I live 20 minutes from the heart of London. The contrast couldn't be greater and I have to admit I come here often to recharge. 

It's easy to forget that you're in the middle of a city. Easy to forget you're in the middle of this century in fact in such a timeless setting. I find my mind freely wandering to all kinds of places and my neck muscles unknotting as I step over tree roots and scare ducks into waddling away from me in that silly way they do. Geese fly overhead in strict V formations and swans glide across the lake with seeming effortlessness, sharing it rather disdainfully with wobbling boats and dipping oars. The people that come to the lake are calm and quiet - they even smile at you when you walk past. Children seem to be mesmerised by this place and don't shriek overly loudly. The lake is one of the reasons I really do love where I live. 

Today was so beautiful that I made M, Max and our visiting Aussie Lee promise to be home at a reasonable time so that dinner could be a picnic on the lake. 

We ate wonderful food, exchanged gossip over wine and wandered around the lake until the sky turned violet and a refreshing breeze came over the fields to tell us it was time to go home. 


I told you I was having a good day. 

4 August 2003

From the email:

It was a scorcher today, really hot. And it was striking the Londoners down like a plague. At each Tube stop there was a little sign saying that if you started feeling faint, to seek help as *drum roll* it was going to be 35 degrees ... ARGH! The sahara! 

Since it was so hot, M used the search for airconditioning as an excuse to show me her favourite shops, Bluewater. Bluewater is the Galleria on steroids. Built by Australians in a quarry outside Woolwich, it felt like home as soon as I stepped into it. The English just don't have shopping centres like we do ...

Airconditioning is a great idea, and teamed with shopping, well, what girl is going to say no?

The itsy bitsy problem was that the trip to Bluewater entailed a one and a half hour bus trip in buses WITH WINDOWS THAT DIDN'T OPEN! It was inhuman torture. Who was the doofus who thought air circulation was so last century? Let me at them ...

It was a driving sauna in those buses. But driving around the endless suburbs of London you get a real feel for just how huge the place is. The buses were taking us out to the coast and on the way we passed some pretty interesting stuff.

First of all there was the small area called Crook Log. Everything was named after it, Crook Log Medical Centre, Crook Log B&B ... 

Then we passed this HUGE bridge that was very deceptive. It had only two pylons and looked like a footbridge that goes across a Perth freeway. Yet watching the traffic driving across it you see huge tankers looking like Tonka trucks.

The best site on the trip was the pub called ... the Frog and Radiator, complete with a sign consisting of a ... you guessed it ... a frog perched ontop of a radiator. God bless their cotton socks.

3 August 2003

From the email:

It's fabulous weather right now, hitting about 35 degrees and I lay out in the garden reading the Salmon of Doubt and getting myself my first English tan *Max shifts uncomfortably to reach the aloe vera for her pink shoulders* After I had done my shoulders medium rare I ventured out with water bottle and my coolest (temperature wise!) clothes to Morden Park across the road. It looked like a park for an estate that you would expect to see a BBC period drama set in - huge lawns, large trees and mock Tudor houses rising above the trees on the hills. I was perched on a rustic seat on the top of the park and I kept on hearing rustling in the very dense blackberry bushes behind me. RATS! My god they were huge too. If I hadn't liked Ratty in Toad of Toad Hall ...

The strangest thing about my Sunday of country living was the sky. At 10am in the morning it was a pristine blue, but each time a plane flew over it left a vapour trail that didn't disperse. By 1pm there were 15 vapour trails perfectly intersecting across the sky and as the day wore on they were joined by others. Eventually the older ones began to spread and by 8pm (which looked like our 5pm) the sky was completely covered with the slowly dispersing cloud.

2 August 2003

From the email:

Saturday I went to Camden markets ... well actually myself, half of London and ALL the tourists. It was another clear hot day and the place was jumping. I nearly died from over salivation at the North African BBQ stalls ... the smell was heavenly. I managed to see every shoe shop in Camden as I was on a mission for a pair of sneakers. After a while I realised that EVERY shop I went into had a wall of bongs in it ... bizarre. We then headed to Portobello Road, which was closing as we arrived.

From the diary:

We are in a ground floor apartment on an Estate and it is so bloody English! We have a long overgrown garden with blackberries and lavender. A sunroom painted electric blue with fairy lights and a disco ball. A very serviceable kitchen. The bathroom is fantastic, orange and blue tiles, a bath and the cutest little unit. All her furniture is pretty cool, huge chunky woodens affair, a scattering of antiques and mock antiques and some painted with stressed paint. Very funky. My room is blue with a green wall and I need to arrange the furniture. The lounge is huge with two sofas and Jack’s room is red with the most spectacular huge wardrobes. I have yet to travel to town or have a look around but I like it down here.

31 July 2003

From the email:

Your own English correspondant has just been watching some English Home Improvement shows and I can quite confidently say the presenters are DIVINE, but what they perpetrate on the room is NOT. Horseshoes spraypainted white with fairystones glued on them, taking pride of place over the fireplace, a 'curiosity' coffee table with a glass top through which you can see the huge fake agapantha flowers resting on velvet ... URGH! The presenter though! Lordy, the accent, the english alternative rock hair, the fabulous clothes *sigh* PITY about the taste in decorating.

I went to Harrods yesterday, and had to ring M to expect me a little late for dinner because I had wasted about 20 minutes staring at a bag. Love at first sight.

Apart from the window shopping though I just strolled down Picadilly. It is FABULOUS weather right now, lots of sun (I may even have gotten a light TAN shock horror), but the pure amount of cub scouts, groups of Japanese tourists in matching caps and backpacks and badly dressed Americans running around ... hilarious. I was asked three times yesterday if I was Australian purely from me saying 'hi'. Yup, tourist written all over me.

Yesterday afternoon M, M and I went for a run (in the rain because all that lovely sun disappeared as soon as I was using it for good and not for evil) and we went through Epping Forest which has Snaresbrook Crown Court on the lake. At one point there is no modern buildings in sight and you could swear you were back in 1600 with the white swans on the lake and the castle rising up out of the trees ...*sigh* I am very happy.

30 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Saturday July 31 2004


Twas my fete


I was at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s ‘Village Fete’ today, billed as: 


“The best of British and international up-and-coming creative talent design stalls take over the V&A's Garden, surrounded by the activities of a traditional British Fete.” 


It was supposed to be: “A quintessentially English event” with a “modern twist”. 


What it actually entailed was a crowd of painfully fashionable young things strolling around the V&A courtyard to dubious music. On the edges of the courtyard were the stalls manned by the artistes. Most of the stuff was harmless, but showed a shocking lack of imagination from people who should be brimming with ideas. 


Nevertheless, I was glad to be out on a balmy night and photographed some of the most interesting goings on: 

“Are you always the one who makes the tea? Are you surrounded by colleagues, friends and family who shirk their tea-making responsibilities? Teabuddy is the answer to your prayers.” 


You’ve skinned them alive and hung their hides from the lintels to warn others in the office of my severe dislike for making 20 cups of tea instead of just one? Awww, thanks guys, you shouldn’t have. 


“Teabuddy is a tool for keeping-up with the making of tea in the office, at home, or, just about anywhere. No more fighting over who made the last round, or exactly how you like to take your tea - Teabuddy simply takes the hassle out of tea-making.” 


Ahh, they didn’t. 


Essentially, it’s a web site with a list of tea preferences listed next to coworker’s names. Every time you twitch in your seat so that you can be construed as looking in the direction of the tea room (and therefore be burdened with The Making Of The Tea), you can just tick the names that want tea, print off a handy tray sized list (arrow) and take it with you to the tea room, safe in the knowledge that your subservience to the common horde will be up to their exacting standards.* 


Please note that the tea-totallers were, in fact, imbibing Foster’s beer (circled). 


Asked how they will be making money off the site (whilst taking my free tea), I was told that they won’t – that they do this out of the goodness of their hearts. 


You know, sometimes I wish I had a trust fund to fritter away too, it might be fun. 


*(Why don’t I like making tea for the whole office? Simply because what was going to be a 45 second task turns into a production of theatrical scale. Others presume I’m going to make them a beverage simply because I’m making my own. Absurd. Also, as a recovering HR person, I can advise that it’s actually a better idea for everyone to get up from their chair to get their own tea as they will inadvertently be stretching, relaxing, helping their circulation and posture as well as allowing their eyes to focus on longer distance things than just their monitor and desk for a few minutes. ) 

This man was recruiting an elite militia for a new country called Bananistan. Qualifications required were an asymmetrical haircut, sneakers that had never been used for any form of exercise and hideous vintage clothing that cost more than a monthly mortgage payment. Most of the people in the crowd qualified. 

When creative people go bad. 


Pay a pound, get a baseball bat, lab coat, gloves and goggles. Lucky dip as to what you get to smash. Hope for the melon. Get a piece of electronic equipment instead. Be glad that you didn’t take your afternoon dose of Ritalin. Umm, smash stuff. You have 60 seconds. 


This booth attracted one of the largest, loudest crowds. I have to say I was a little disturbed by the sight of the previous boy baseball-batting the bejeezus out of a life-size female dummy’s head. 

One of the more creative ways to win things was dreamt up by guys who used old transport pallets to make laptop stands. 


A toy rat was placed into the top of a large PVC tube and the contestant given the rat paddle. They had to ‘Smack the Rat’ against the wall as it came out the bottom. This woman missed the critter and it’s on the floor in a sorry heap (arrow). 


What fete would be complete without the stick-your-head-in-this-thing-and-look-silly stand? 


I diligently stuck my head in and looked very, very silly.

29 July 2003

From the email: 
To be quite honest, I am sitting here in what could be a set for one of the Ruth Rendell telemovies and I find myself waiting for Inspector Wexford to knock on the door. My home for the next four days is very cool; the top apartment in a terraced house in a series of tiny streets of curry houses, pubs, terraced houses, pubs, long narrow picket-fenced cottage gardens and pubs. 

But I'd have to say that it was the handy flight plan on the TV on the plane that defined my journey. I found the only thing that kept my mind off how very sad I was feeling about leaving everyone behind for so long was watching the land over which I was flying. I really started getting excited over the Caspian Sea and once we hit the Carpathians the flight attendants would take turns to ask me to return to my seat because I had my nose pressed against the glass of the exit windows. Over Germany the attendants got REALLY shirty, there was a lot of turbulance but the sunrise was unreal. The best part was actually about 30 minutes before we got into Singapore ... a lightening storm above the cloud layer against the sunset ... spectacular. 

Once into Heathrow I was interviewed by an immigration officier who spent more time holding forth on the phenomenon of Australian passports smelling of fish than asking me about my VISA. One confused gentleman tried to make off with my luggage at the retrieval but I managed to head him off and there was NO customs (hehe). I was waiting for Monica in the lounge and I saw a Bobby, a Black Cab and a car rental agent holding a sign for Mrs Primrose Taylor-Barrington. Welcome to England.

26 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Monday 26 July 2004

Bugged

Max recently commented that I sound rather angry on my blog, as if I don’t like anything – ever. Then she remonstrated that I always find something negative about cultural things she takes me to. She’s quite right on that account, the last two things she had taken me to were a shockingly bad modern music concert and a very poor talk by a woman who gallivanted her way around Antarctica, finding it to be (surprisingly) full of male scientists.

This comment, however, was made after taking me to the National Portrait Gallery’s showing of the entrants and winners of the BP Portrait Award and listening to my running commentary.

Essentially the half hour diatribe can be summarised thus: 5% were excellent, 15% were good, 20% were passable, 60% should have been recycled for the valuable canvas underneath. Somehow, most of the winners were chosen from the last group.

Max knows I’m generally a happy, bouncy person. Max listens to me warbling songs at inopportune moments. Max just wonders why I choose to be so cuttingly negative so often.

The answer is passion. I just don’t have lukewarm feelings towards anything I give a damn about. I either love it or I hate it. I may love it despite some small flaws, I may hate it yet see some redeeming qualities – but you won’t find me shrugging my shoulders and saying “Yes, well, I suppose it’s nice.”

I once heard a definition for ‘nice’ that I very much liked. Nice stands for:

Nothing

In me

Cares

Enough

…which sums up the concept perfectly.

It’s easy to know when I don’t care about something or someone. I’ll be very quiet, I won’t venture an opinion, I’ll smile weakly, I’ll say that it’s ‘nice’.

If I get fired up, whether it be foaming at the mouth from anger or beaming from adoration – it just means that I care, I really do. Perhaps the reason that there are so many negative entries on my blog is that I give a damn about too many things that are out of my influence to change.

So here’s something positive – something I wrote a while ago and shelved, thinking that it wasn’t really good enough to do homage to something I truly loved. Perhaps it’ll balance things up a tad.

_____

Firefly

(I guess it’s all been written before. I’m sure I’m not the first blogger to be struck with ‘I’ve just watched the entire series of Firefly, there aren’t any more left and I simply must immortalise the grief with a post’-itis.

It’s probably been written more prosaically, it’s probably been written by someone with a unique angle, it’s probably been as done to death as anything popular with the smarter people on the web. However, in light of the fact that I can be as commandeering as Mal and as scary as Zoe, I’ll just go ahead, do it anyway and stare down anyone who so much as twitches at the plan.)

A firefly is a creature given to metaphor. Short lived, dazzlingly and surprisingly bright – it conveniently mirrors larger occurrences in history and allows us to essentialise and encapsulate them in one convenient image. Part of the fun of being human, I suppose.

I don’t think Joss Whedon gave his show the moniker with any foresight that it would so closely mirror the actual lifespan of nature’s firefly. I’d like to think, rather, that he knew - given the right creative freedom - he could make the show sparkle and delight like the little bug. Happily, he was right, I was utterly delighted.

It wasn’t until I saw the extras on my DVD set that I came to a more complete understanding of why this series was so good. The sections went through the concept, set design, camera/FX/CG work and musical score - I saw how each element was controlled by someone with a deep understanding for their craft, a genuine love for the show and run in a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experimentation mode. Many things weren’t done the way that they’re usually done. I heard the phrase ‘you simply don’t do that’ many times. I LOVE to hear that kind of thing – it’s usually the way fantastic new processes happen.

To me, Firefly is an example of what happens when a talented group of people come together and give their best to a project which is itself led by someone talented giving their best.

In the same way as like attracts like on a personal level (you can tell a man by the company he keeps as the old saying goes), like hires and retains like on a professional level (you can tell a company by the people it keeps). I think it explains why companies carefully and obsessively controlled by the original entrepreneur or by a strong CEO have such a different feel to those which are controlled by the ‘everyone and no-one’ of committees committed to the ‘everyone and no-one’ concept of stakeholders.

I don’t buy into the new ideas about the way things should be run. Things that work are always, ultimately, controlled by an individual.

One person holds a vision, controls it’s execution at the macro level – he hires people he can see ‘get it’ and they control it’s execution at the micro level. Joss Whedon wrote the theme song, for chrissakes. There’s no mistaking who was at the wheel here.

I daresay that he fought every decision the besuited bumpkins at Fox handed down with the superior mein of those who forage daily at the trough of popular opinion.

Someone who didn’t understand the concept of Firefly and who wasn’t completely and irrevocably committed wouldn’t have fought for its original inception tooth and nail. We wouldn’t have had the short, fresh, violent and utterly brilliant season of Firefly we do today – we would have had ‘Friends’ on a spaceship arguing over who would receive which quarters and wondering whether the Alliance General gave Rachael the eye. It would have lasted 10 years. It would have canned laughter every time Ross fell off his horse or fumbled with his gun. The horror is actually palpable, isn’t it?

Whedon had his concept, though. He fought for it and today we have a piece of art that is incredible in it’s design and execution.

So, besides the fact that someone stubborn got his way, why do I love it so much? Let’s start with the fact that I’m not a passive watcher/listener/reader of entertainment. Silly though it may seem, I talk back. Often, I will suggest what I see as obvious actions for characters to take in their situation. As the episode goes on and the characters (inexplicably) ignore me, I become more and more agitated. Occasionally, I yell. Often, I swear.

Half an hour into the first Firefly, I remained in the same position on the couch. I had been completely silent. An hour in and not a muscle twitch. Two hours gone and all I could do was turn to M, slack-jawed, before quickly scurrying to the mouse and clicking on the next episode.

***Warning…spoiler…plot element discussed below.***

In the second episode, when Mal is confronted by a giant of a man who vows to spend his life hunting Mal down to kill him, I find myself thinking – “Aha! This is the clincher…this is the Bad Guy who will pop up every once in a while, try to kill Mal and be thwarted. All this because Mal is going to have one of those weak moments of hippy conscience at the very time when he could stop the Bad Guy. Gotcha – same old lazy scriptwriting.”

It may not seem it, but damn do I love being proven wrong, especially when I think something’s not good.

And so it was that I was proven wrong, so very, very wrong.

Just when I was beginning to grumble something to the effect of “Just kill him, for chrissakes, why the hell would you let…” Mal simply shrugged and kicked the bastard into a turbine engine. It was the loveliest little bit of violence I think I have ever seen. I made a noise, something like “Oip!” and felt my eyebrows raise far beyond safety limits.

***End of plot spoiler, you can read below safe in the knowledge that you will be surprised by EVERYTHING in Firefly. I promise.***

What Firefly gets so right – what sets it apart from every other show I’ve seen - is the fact that the morality is so damn close to what I agree with. The characters don’t faff about – they know which action gives them the most benefit personally and they take it without qualms. There is no apology for what would be considered crude opportunism in other shows.

You also won’t find your stock standard characters, your Tortured Soul 56b and Bimbette 29a on the show. You’ll find very complex characters making very difficult decisions and *gasp* actually THINKING those decisions through.

You’ll also be entertained. Joss spins his usual verbal mastery and gives the characters strong, punchy, funny lines.

So here’s an endorsement – nay, a directive.

If you like what you read on my blog, if you’ve clicked through on a few of the links and enjoyed them, go and buy Firefly on DVD. There’s no prerequisite to have enjoyed Sci-Fi previously, this isn’t traditional Sci-Fi.

When there’s so much entertainment around and so much of it is lukewarm, finding something that makes you think, laugh, gasp, worry, chew the couch cushions and admire the actors is a prize. Go discover it for yourself.

24 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:

Tuesday 3 August 2004

Vettriano

Last week, I went to the Jack Vettriano exhibition at the Portland Gallery in London. I scrawled notes of such incomprehensibility that it’s taken me a week of painful reconstruction to figure out what on earth I was trying to say.

Now, I’m no art critic and my education in art is simply to have been dragged to galleries as a child – more and more willingly as time progressed – to listen to my mother’s (art specialist by profession) commentary on pieces. Eventually, I came to see the great satisfaction in seeing good art without sulking and kicking car tires first.

Nowadays, going to a gallery is a treat at home and a must every time I travel to a new city. I think I’m one of the only people my age that rates the Rijksmuseum as the highlight of their stay in Amsterdam.

Anyhow, on to my post and what I was thinking when I saw the exhibition.

Jack Vettriano isn’t popular with the art establishment, particularly the female subset who make vapid noises about the way women are portrayed sexually in his art. What better recommendation, then, could one have to go and see an exhibition?

There are two Vettrianos, though. The nice, light, romantic ‘Dance me to the end of Love’ Vettriano and the darkly sexual Vettriano. It was the latter on display at the Portland Galleries this time including some that are almost impossible to see outside of his live exhibitions.

Dance Me To The End Of Love

I think the impact was interesting for me because I (as a female) got to look through the eyes and step into the desires of an unashamedly sexual man. Vettriano is a singularly talented narrative painter; it’s very easy to be transported to his scenarios and even easier to become involved in them.

His talent, I think, is to bring movement to an inherently still medium. The same canvas and paint that could show the calm, frozen time of a still-life instead shows a great deal of movement – movement about to happen, movement suppressed, freedom of movement captured lightheartedly and perfectly. It’s almost painful for me to watch these characters, half expecting them to continue their paused movement at any moment to do what it’s so evident they’re about to do.

You won’t get the same feeling from these thumbnails, unfortunately. Don’t try for it in the reprints either. As with most oil paintings, the originals are so good because of the way that light interacts with the suspended particles in the paint – you have a richness and a glow that gives depth. That’s why serious collectors will buy an original – they really are getting something that no-one else can have, no matter how good their copy.

As I mentioned, this exhibition was dominated by the ‘darker’ Vettriano. I’m quite glad for it, as it seemed that his breezy beach paintings (well composed though they are) were just him warming up. Getting used to the human form, getting used to space and colour, getting used to movement.

This is not to say that he now uses the crisp, photographic form of the Renaissance painter. He seems to borrow a little of his style from the early impressionists, many brush strokes are obvious and you are under no illusion that this is oil on canvas. I think it aids in conveying the movement inherent in his compositions.

The evident brushstrokes also serve to give the hint of structure that you must fill in for yourself. The form is there, the detail is occasionally ambiguous, the intent and emotion behind the pose is all important.

So what is the intent? The scenes in this exhibition were split between portraits of his favorite models engaged in a solitary activity such as walking or gazing out a window and those of sexual tension and sexual encounters.

Now - if you think that sex should always be a gentle confluence of souls with lots of talking about feelings before and after (sometimes during) then I’m afraid you’re not going to like these Vettrianos. These poses are all about clandestine, forbidden, passionate sensuality. He openly admits that these couplings are doomed from the start and that he portrays people who just can’t help themselves when it comes to temptation.

The Embrace of the Spider

What you see, though, is not the ugly portrayal of sex which is evident in so many contemporary artists. These are not confrontational scenes of rape, the nudity is not incidental. At the same time, each painting is blatantly honest about what it is portraying.

Passion Overflow

Because there’s no attempt to hide the sexuality, there is no need for the audience to draw it out from insinuations in the images. It’s all there and it’s definitely unapologetic for its chosen theme – you have the time to focus on the sensuality of the pieces instead. To put it another way – you get over the fact that you’re seeing a garter belt very quickly and become far more interested in the positioning of the bodies and the expressions on faces than seeing a peek of something that is traditionally forbidden.

The focus seems to be on WHAT is happening far more than HOW it is happening. It’s why the subjects are in that situation in the first place and the relationship between them that is emphasized.

Along Came A Spider

Interestingly enough, unlike the artist that idealizes the virginal, the untouched, the woman before she is sullied with the taint of sex, Vettriano seems to show his women with the familiarity of an established lover. These women have ‘fallen’ into ‘sin’ already – yet don’t seem to be any less desirable for that fact. Rather than wanting to find and pluck something new, he seems to hunger for more of the same and venerate those women he knows can give it to him. This is where, I think, the evident appreciation for his models comes through in the painting and why the art is so sexually charged. It’s not a work of contempt – it’s a work of understanding and appreciation.

There is no contempt for the human form either. Although not sculpting his male or female forms to the fashion magazine ideal of today – there is no mistaking that both are rather attractive and both are DISTINCTLY posed and dressed for their gender. As he puts it:

"I’ve always loved women who dress as women, you know, pure femininity." ... "When you know a woman’s wearing stockings there’s no sort of question about it, and I love that world where there’s a strict division between men and women. If you were painting contemporary life now, man and woman, from the back, you can’t tell the difference.”

If the women are ultra feminine, then the men are ultra masculine. Far removed from the pretty-boy Beckhams, DiCaprios and Pitts, these creatures radiate masculinity, poise and strength.

The power play between the sexes is clearly shown. We don’t have two sexually androgynous humans coming together for a night of sensitive-to-each-other’s-emotional-needs lovemaking interspersed with tea, basket weaving and psychotherapy. There is a man who evidently dominates the woman physically – there is no shying away from who will be doing what to whom.

Pincer Movement

Equally powerful (although in a completely different way) is the woman, who is sure of her power over the man and is wielding it unflinchingly.

In fact, in the introduction to “Lovers and Other Strangers”, Anthony Quinn says of the brunette used in most of Vettriano’s paintings:

“..she looked like a woman to whom a pledge of eternal love might provoke her to stab you with a stiletto.”

Vettriano himself says:

“I portray women wielding sexual power.”

Clearly, these are not damsels in distress.

What I think I see in equal measure is the man surrendering himself to what he perceives as his basest desires whilst at the same time physically dominating the female in the piece. It’s rather a clichéd juxtaposition and one that relies on considering the longing for sex to be something other than honorable.

Although I don’t really agree with this dim view on humans as flawed due to their desire to copulate, I must applaud his mastery at perfectly conveying this idea.

Other paintings, those with a person alone, show a strong individual lost in a reverie – completely unaware of the viewer. Even when the subject is a very strong woman in serious and contemplative repose, there is a hint of femininity and sexuality through exposure of a piece of the traditional accoutrements of the feminine seductive arsenal – a hint of stocking, a little piece of bra showing, a very high stiletto heel, even just a beautifully tailored dress. There is no dichotomy between femininity and purposefulness - they coexist naturally and beautifully.

Baby Bye Bye

Edinburgh Afternoon

The men he portrays alone are somewhat of a mystery to me. I get a sense of stoic, practiced isolation from them and am not sure if I’m misreading his intentions. Many are straight self-portraits, which I tend to find difficult to unravel at the best of times.

What I do know is that Vettriano is almost uncannily popular. In a world where it seems the public consistently opts for the worst creative compositions available, the fact that I had to crane around people to see what I considered very good art was somewhat gratifying.

Of course, he comes under fire for this very popularity and comments:

"Well you know, you run the risk of the wrath of the establishment by being popular, but at the same time why shouldn’t people have an image for £10 when they don’t have a lot of money to spend? And anyway, I own the copyright of my work until 75 years after my death and then it’s a free for all and you think - well why shouldn’t I benefit from it now?

"What would Van Gogh have done, what would Monet have done if they had had the opportunity? Instead of that what you get is, the marketplace is flooded with their stuff and they’re not earning a penny from it."

Happily, he’s earning far more than pennies. Annoying the establishment may be a faux pas – but what a profitable one.

Reach Out and Touch

Vettriano quote source - interview

22 July 2004

From the friends, Th'inkwell:


Saturday 24 July 2004

Beggars and Choosers

I have just this evening been told by Perry de Havilland that it is imperative to post daily. Several times if at all possible. I realised I’ve been neglecting the blog – not through want of love for it, but because of my inherent perfectionism and tending to take days to actually write something I’m finally happy with. Leaving it untouched for days simply isn’t on – I’ll have an insurrection on my hands and you’ll all leave me alone to babble to myself in a corner. Clearly, something must be done.

So if you’ll bear with entries that aren’t as polished as usual, I can manage the daily(ish) rant. Here’s today’s -

Yesterday, Max and I were on our way to the National Portrait Gallery for an evening lecture from Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica as part of the Three Centuries of Women Travellers exhibit. The lecture itself had some interesting points, although I was disappointed by the author’s constant need to obtain cheap laughs from the audience by peppering her halting tale with obligatory anti-man jokes. There are only so many times you can chuckle at the use of the word ‘testosterone’.

Anyhow, in one of the interminable underground walkways connecting tube stations, we came across a man who was huddled in the corner with a sign: ‘Hungry, please help.’ I noticed Max slow down, but was swept along myself by the rush-hour crowd. When she caught up with me, I saw a wry smile on her face.

Apparently, she had read the sign and stopped to offer him her packed dinner. Not a shabby dinner either – a flat bread stuffed with freshly grilled salmon, avocado and salad. The man, however, had refused as he was a vegetarian.

Now, correct me if I’m completely wrong here – but vegetarianism is a moral choice for most people, not a physical requirement for survival. That moral choice usually hinges on some belief that animals are equal to humans and that it’s cruel to eat them. I have severe – SEVERE – problems with those who think that humans and animals are the same. If someone wants to believe that they are no better than a slug, so be it. Don’t apply it to me though.

Nevertheless, this man was starving, wasn’t he? So by not taking the food he was essentially saying that he values a salmon’s (or cow’s, or pig’s … or whatever’s) life above his own. He would rather hold out for someone to give him cash so that he can head to Pret a Manger for a vegetarian baguette and a double espresso.

I myself try to avoid wheat and milk because they’re not particularly good for me – but if I were starving, I’d take a hamburger and milkshake to sustain myself. I can only understand this man’s attitude if eating animal flesh is somehow severely physically detrimental to him. If he’s just doing it to save the whales then perhaps Darwinism can claim a deserving victim.

What on earth is it that makes people think they can demand the constituents of alms granted to them?

The one thing I can say for him is that at least he was just begging, rather than mugging us as is the government’s regular wont to do. Where it was his (stupid) prerogative to refuse the very thing he actually needed and demand something else to satisfy his whim, it is not a prerogative that is open to those who are on government assistance.

This is why I can’t stand to read of people not satisfied with the standard of government housing , government provided childcare or whining about social services being provided in a way that’s not sensitive to their particular bent . To my thinking, they’re damned lucky that they obtain anything at all.

Don’t like the housing? Start paying market rates of rent like the rest of us and you can choose from a variety that will stagger you.

Don’t like the childcare? Either don’t breed or pay for your own goddamned sprog.

Don’t like the way social services are delivered to you? Don’t take any.

Better yet, throw social services out the window and ask me directly for what you need. I’ll see what I can spare.