Black Friday: a dark day indeed

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

The utter chaos that Britain's first Black Friday was met with beggars belief. People were tearing at each other to get to bargains they believed they had to have, even going so far as to physically assault fellow shoppers and abuse retail staff.
I mean, is anything worth that: losing your dignity just to get your grubby hands on a new telly?
Black Friday is, of course, an American thing, and what happens in America almost inevitably makes its way to the UK eventually, for good or ill. In several states in the US, people are actually given a public holiday on Black Friday so they can get in the midnight queues early. As a result, the first Friday after Thanksgiving has been the busiest shopping day of the year every year since 2005 in the States.
This year was the first time it's really been picked up on and actually pushed en masse in the UK. Everywhere I went in Manchester on Friday, there were signs and adverts telling me the day was black and that I could get so much per cent off this, and it could well be my last chance to get that essential gift at such a knockdown rate.
And the streets were packed. I mean, severely congested to the point that you were barely able to move freely without either treading on a small lost child, or bashing shoulders with a frenzied housewife with consumer hara-kiri on her mind.
And it saddens me that this anti-social and frighteningly damaging annual ritual is being promoted in the UK. Christmas is stressful and expensive enough as it is without retailers smugly trying to wring even more pennies out of those who cannot afford it by trying to convince consumers that they really have to buy it today - not tomorrow, not closer to Christmas: TODAY! It's your last chance, or else you'll be paying twice the price, and probably for less.
I fear for the pockets and bank balances of those in Britain who really cannot afford to fall victim to this consumerist pressure. Retailers should take responsibility and refrain from putting undue and unnecessary pressure on people to spend, spend, spend what they haven't got. People will pile up their debts on credit cards and then find themselves in even more trouble in January than they might have if they'd just stuck to sensible, paced Christmas shopping throughout December (or earlier!).

And the violence that broke out on November 28th in the UK, where people attacked one another in supermarkets in desperate attempts to get the last cheap iPod or whatever, is unacceptable, yet depressingly predictable.
Metropolitan Police chief Sir Peter Fahy rightly said: "The events... were totally predictable and I am disappointed that stores did not have sufficient security on duty."
Greater Manchester Police's Deputy Chief Constable Ian Hopkins echoed these sentiments, saying that while shoppers' behaviour was appalling, the lack of planning from retailers was "really disappointing. They should have planned appropriately with appropriate levels of security to make sure people were safe. They have primary responsibility to keep people safe and they can’t rely on the police to turn up and bail them out."
The Black Friday phenomenon is only going to get worse year on year because we live in a consumerist society where electronic goods and multimedia and pointless tat like loom bands and woolly Christmas jumpers are valued more highly than simply making sure there's enough (not too much) food on the table and having a happy, family-orientated day in the spirit of Christmas.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not religious, and I certainly don't begrudge people a bit of fun and frivolity, but the destructive power that Black Friday has demonstrated this year has to be kept in check, for all our sakes.

It's all very well giving Tesco and Asda and all those other multinational retail giants bigger profits sooner, but what is it doing to our society, to our debt-ridden and those on restricted budgets who feel pressured into buying when they really needn't?

I hope that if Black Friday rears its ugly head again in 2015 - which it will - retailers take responsibility, and mediate and control its marketing, make sure there is security on their doors at one minute past midnight, and above all, don't encourage mass debt.

But then this is the UK. I shouldn't expect so much.

Researching my family history

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

My paternal great grandmother and great grandfather

I keep trying to research my family tree, but I quickly get very frustrated with the whole thing. For the last few years I've been gathering information about my immediate family from parents, my grandmother and uncles etc, and that helps to flesh out the chequered history of the family over the last century or so.
Recent times are the easiest: just ask mum or dad about their mum and dad and already you've gone back two generations. If your grandparents are still alive (I only have one) then they can take you back another generation, probably into the 19th century.
So I have managed to get names and birth dates, sometimes marriage and death dates, going back on my father's side to the 1870s, and in some instances a little further than that.
But it's around the late 19th century when I get really confused. My surname is not too common, but it's also straightforward enough to mean there are far too many branches of the name to know if I'm on the right tree or not. And of course, 100 years ago you didn't get helpfully individual names like Shane or Monica or Jethro or Apple like you do nowadays - everybody seemed to be called either Thomas or Elizabeth!
I have discovered some interesting things about my paternal family, however. Although I hail from the Midlands, it seems my father's family went to Derby from Barrow in Cumbria, and before that lived in Ipswich, and before that in Dagenham in London. They moved around plenty, perhaps in search of work.
I also have pictures of some of my ancestors, and it's the ones I never met that I feel most curious about. My father's grandfather Thomas was a typically Victorian gentleman with an impressive moustache and there's a lovely photograph of him in his latter years in my grandfather's back garden with his wife, and they look so sweet - he in waistcoat and pocketwatch, she in apron and hobnail boots. I feel like I know them; I certainly feel like I want to know them.

My great grandfather and his son, Leonard

It's weird seeing pictures of your ancestors. They were real, they lived and breathed just like you and I, but somehow it's hard to believe that when they are mere words on a page, and a set of dates.
When you see their face, they come alive once again. I always say that nobody ever really dies, just so long as there is somebody on Earth who remembers them. Memories keep everybody alive.
Another aspect of researching ancestry I find very confusing is military history. I know my grandfather served with the Territorial Army in the 1920s and the Home Guard in the 1940s, but I have absolutely no idea where to start looking into it.
I'm a member of Ancestry.co.uk but it seems to me there is too much information on there for me to sort through. I need to be trained in how to use that site!
But I am fascinated enough to keep trying. My great-grandfather (he of the pocketwatch) would have been in his 30s at the time of the Boer War. Did he serve in the military? I tend to think not as I think he was a blacksmith, but it's so hard to find concrete confirmations for things. The 1901 and 1911 Censuses are a goldmine of surface information, but anything earlier than that and my great grandfather seems to get lost among all the other men who seemed to share his name.
I shall keep trying, persevering, because I want to know more, I want to know where I came from, perhaps in order to know where I'm going...

Something wicked this way comes...

Thursday, October 30th, 2014

Halloween. Or, more accurately, Hallowe'en. Or, most accurately, All Hallows' Evening. A celebration of all that is spooky and dark and scary and twisted. Some people might think it distasteful to celebrate a day that wallows in death in such a way, but you know what? I love it!
I love Hallowe'en more than Christmas, more than any birthday I've ever had or ever will have. I'm not one of those people who dresses up, knocks on doors and scares the living statins out of little old ladies, but I do love a good scare. Fear is one of the basic emotions, and it makes you feel very alive to be scared. Especially when it's all artifice, as Hallowe'en is. Obviously, if there really was a crazed knifeman banging on my window to get in, and it was the height of summer, I'd be as petrified as the next serial killer victim.
Many years ago, when Gareth and I were in the pubescent stages of our relationship, we used to mark Hallowe'en night by settling down and watching a spooky horror film.
But that tradition has grown over the years, and these days we have expanded to marking what we've labelled Hallowe'ek - seven days of spooky goings-on!

American Horror Story: Coven.
Not one for ophidiophobes.
Or, indeed, gynophobes

To mark Hallowe'ek we choose a selection of supernatural and horror genre titles we'd like to be entertained and spooked by and watch them each night, leading up to the day itself. We usually watch American Horror Story (one of the most twisted and unsettling shows on TV at the moment) and almost always break out the M R James adaptations, whether they be the Ghost Stories for Christmas from the 1970s (by far the best supernatural television ever committed to videotape) or the various other interpretations that have emerged over the years. My supernatural archive television collection brimmeth over!
Although this year life seems to have got in the way of Hallowe'ek somewhat, we're still doing our best to uphold the tradition. Last night we watched the 1982 John Carpenter film The Thing - visceral, gory, gooey and thoroughly entertaining (how I wish Carpenter could get his mojo back - it's been lost for decades now). We're also wading through American Horror Story: Coven (Jessica Lange at her crazed best) and have been dipping into the 1986 M R James readings for TV by Robert Powell too.
The crowning glory of Hallowe'ek 2014 will be seeing two productions at The Lowry in Salford Quays (regular readers will know that place is my second home!).
First of all we're seeing The House That Stank of Death (Volume 4), a "unique multi-media comedy/ horror experience featuring short plays and films which will make you scream with terror and laughter". I love the alternative stuff they put on in the Studio at The Lowry, so this should be a real treat (or trick).

Secondly, we're seeing a faithful reading of M R James's Casting the Runes by Nunkie Theatre Company's Robert Lloyd Parry. I've seen Robert recreate James's fireside readings before, and he really does bring the essence of telling a ghost story to its unsettling fundaments - it's just him in period costume, in a big leather armchair, and the whole studio theatre illuminated by candlelight alone.
And it is M R James's expertly crafted words which lift the hairs on the back of the neck: "He put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow. Only it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth. With teeth. And with hair about it. And, he declares, not the mouth of a human being..."
Shudder!
And I have other spooky films lined up too: Hammer's The Plague of the Zombies (one of their B-movies which really exceeded the main feature at the time); the silent German Expressionist horror Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari; and Jack Clayton's 1967 overlooked spook-fest Our Mother's House.
So what are my favourite Hallowe'en films of all time, I fail to hear you scream? Well, one of my favourite films of all time, of any genre, is 1963's The Haunting with Claire Bloom and Julie Harris. If you've never seen it, seek it out. It's by far the spookiest, eeriest, most unsettling ghost story I've ever seen committed to celluloid... and the scariest thing is, you never see anything. But my God does it give you the willies!

Michael Myers from Halloween

On the other end of the spooky scale, I think John Carpenter (it's that man again!) produced the best modern day horror flick with the original Halloween in 1978. The direction is flawless, the music really gets under the skin and the terrifying creation at the heart of the film - namely, Michael Myers - is, to me, the fictional embodiment of my nightmares. That face, that mask... That point of view shot at the start of the film. Yes, the ultimate slasher film for me, and Carpenter was quite right when he said there should never have been any sequels. With a few exceptions (which I could probably count on the fingers of one gnarled hand), sequels are never a very good idea.
What's that I hear? The chiming of a distant clock telling me it's time to get to bed... or my coffin!

Me, when I wake up in the morning...

Photo-set: A voyage around my parents

Saturday, September 13th, 2014

I spent a few days with my mum and dad earlier this week, just me and them, and it was nice to just spend some quality family time. I've not really done that for years; the only time I get with them these days is the odd snatched weekend when they come over here or we go over there.
But it's not often I spend time with them like in the "old days", when I lived at home with them as a teenager. I left home to go to university when I was 18, and never went back, for reasons too detailed and emotive to go into here. So it was nice to be that teenager again, being well-fed by my doting mum and teased by my proud dad.
I took a moment to capture just a few of the items around the house that are just so "them", little things which sum them up to me. They are very personal associations and would not be obvious to anybody but myself, but to me, these are some of the things that speak "mum and dad" to me when I am at their house...

This chiming clock was given to my grandfather (my dad's
dad) as a long service gift. Do they do that now? It's got
a pretty noisy chime, which it imparts every 15 minutes, and
drowns out the TV, but my parents don't seem to mind or
notice. It's special to me because it is of great sentimental value
to my dad, whose parents both died in the 1970s when he was only in his
twenties.

Pigs. My parents, particularly my dad, has a thing for pigs,
and they can be found all over the house, including this cheeky
fella on the hearth. I see a world-weary wisdom in this pig's
wrinkled expression, which oddly reminds me of my dad!

This rather camp-looking copper, seen shouting something or
other with his hands firmly on his hips, has been a feature of the
house for years, and I've never liked it. My family has absolutely no
connections to the police force so it's presence is meaningless. I
guess they just like it as an ornament, but I think it's weird.

An ever-present Screwfix catalogue which my dad seems to have by his side
constantly. He's a DIYer and is always tinkering or building something, and
always looking in this catalogue to see what he can buy next. It's always screws, nails
or brackets, though, not sturdy boots or gloves. It amazes me that a catalogue is needed
for screws.

Spectacles. Every room in the house has a pair of spectacles in it,
just placed randomly and used by both mum and dad. The thing is,
despite them being everywhere you look, there's never a pair
around when they actually need them, so then there's a hunt through
the rooms to find a pair. It amazes me that there can be so many pairs
of spectacles, yet never enough!

This is a fluffy holder for a pair of said spectacles,
except - guess what? - there's never any spectacles in them because
they have usually been taken off elsewhere and placed down
randomly in another room (as above). This holder is ALWAYS
empty whenever I go there, so its point is utterly lost.

My mum is always knitting, and all through the house strands of wool and thread
can be found on the floor, in corners. This is my mum's attempt to knit socks, apparently.
Many of her knitting projects go unfinished - she is in a constant state of development,
but rarely achievement!

Finally, an example of how, sometimes, my parents buy something
which really doesn't fit. They have a kitchen with black marble
worktops and pale walls and cupboard doors, but then they go
and buy something which really sticks out like a sore thumb (literally!).
This red pedal bin is my mum's pride and joy, but looking as it does like
a pillar box, I have to wonder why they chose red. Notice also evidence
of the aforementioned pig theme on the window sill, as well as a different
pair of spectacles, idly discarded alongside.

Review: Kate Bush - Before the Dawn

Sunday, August 31st, 2014

Me outside the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith, before Before the Dawn.
Notice that the words "Kate Bush" do not appear on the sign: it was all
about the show, as far as Kate was concerned. For the audience, it was
certainly about the star!

The last time Kate Bush performed an entire concert live on stage was May 14th, 1979, although something the media tends to overlook is that it certainly was not the last time Kate performed live.
She has made sporadic appearances live on stage in the intervening 35 years, most recently in 2002 with her long-time champion Dave Gilmour (of Pink Floyd) when she sang Comfortably Numb at the Royal Festival Hall. Kate Bush does do live, just not very often.

Kate singing live on
stage in 2002

So to see Kate Bush live on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo this last week was a real privilege. I managed to see her on two dates - her second show on Wednesday, August 27th, and her third on Friday, August 29th. In years - decades - to come, people will talk about being one of the lucky ones to have seen Before the Dawn, and others will be just as jealous as those today who never saw Kate's Tour of Life in 1979.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD...
So, what exactly is Before the Dawn? For a start, you certainly get good value for money - the show kicks off at 7.45pm and you don't get out until just shy of 11pm, with only a 20-minute interval in between.
The first half kicks off with a set list of six songs, which Kate performs as if it's a run-of-the-mill rock concert. This was surprising in itself, as most people were expecting a magnificent spectacle of eye-popping proportions, an expectation no doubt fuelled by the media build-up and the deafening silence and secrecy surrounding the show before it debuted.
The six songs were a mix of hits - Running Up That Hill and Hounds of Love - and lesser known album tracks, but great fan crowd-pleasers - the rocky Lily and Top of the City from her 1993 album The Red Shoes, along with the ethereal Joanni from 2005's Aerial. Joanni is not an obvious choice, and is perhaps the weakest aspect of Before the Dawn as the band rather drowns out Kate's voice, which for this track needs to be in her lower register. Still, the fact fans would never expect her to perform Joanni live makes it all the more pleasing.
Song six is the overlooked classic King of the Mountain, Kate's 2005 comeback single which sports a memorable ululating melody and soaring chorus. And as the song reaches its climax, Kate sings about the wind whistling through the house and that a storm is rising.
And that's where everything goes bonkers. There is an explosion of wind and sound, a thunderous change of scenery, and the auditorium is transformed into an epic, filmic visualisation of The Ninth Wave, the exemplary second half song suite from 1985's Hounds of Love album, something Kate has always wanted to visualise - and this is her chance.

The suite is about the sinking of a ship called the Celtic Deep and how all but one of the passengers are rescued - that one being a lone female, played by Kate. The Ninth Wave is made up of seven tracks which tell the story of the drowning woman, and Kate's live interpretation of it is inspired, spectacular and predictably eccentric.
She manages to portray the ocean on the stage using billowing sheets, and the props and effects come thick and fast - there's video footage of Kate in the ocean wearing a life jacket singing the beautiful And Dream of Sheep, there are sea creatures with skull-like heads, there is a helicopter which trains its blinding searchlight across the audience, an entire sitting room floats onto stage for Watching You Without Me, and the skeletal remains of a ship frame the entire movement.
Even if you've never heard The Ninth Wave before, the story it tells - and Kate's visual interpretation of it before your very eyes - is a sight to be savoured, and the product of a truly unique, eccentric imagination.
After the interval we get a just as visually splendid tour de force for an interpretation of A Sky of Honey, the song suite from the second half of Kate's Aerial album.
A Sky of Honey is, in itself, a triumph of atmosphere as it depicts the passage of time from a summer's afternoon to the following day's dawn, via the dusk "somewhere in between" and the twilight of the witching hour.

For this suite the stage is dressed with a forest of beech trees, a spinning full moon, a pair of giant double doors, and a painter's canvas the size of a building. As Kate sings and harmonises her way through the nine tracks of A Sky of Honey - imitating birdsong along the way - her 16-year-old son Bertie portrays an artist trying to capture the beauty of the ever-shifting landscape as day moves into night, before the dawn.
I wouldn't say he has the best singing voice, but one thing's for sure - he's a promising young performer and has obviously got his mother's theatrical genes. He even gets his own song, a new composition called Tawny Moon, which is enjoyable enough but I couldn't help wanting to hear his mother sing it instead.
Another star of the Aerial section is a little wooden man, like those used by artists to capture human posture, operated as a puppet and who interacts with the band and Kate as the music plays. He is given personality by the expert puppeteer, who manages to portray the inanimate object's curiosity, timidity, fear and, at one surprising point, depravity so well. And there's a surprise in store for the audience when the puppet comes magically to life.
A Sky of Honey's style takes in ballad, soundscape, pop song and even trippy dance music and by the end of it you really do feel like you've experienced the passing of day to night to day, through the uplifting lens of Mother Nature. This is the product of a woman in touch with who she is, her own femininity, and her place in the grand scheme of things. Kate Bush is nowadays a true Earth Mother.
Kate brings the show to a close with an encore of the delicate Among Angels from 2011's 50 Words for Snow (which lets the audience experience the simple but beautiful coupling of just Kate's voice and a piano) and the rousing Hounds of Love single Cloudbusting, complete with its refrain "I just know that something good is going to happen", famously sampled by Utah Saints in 1992.
Before the Dawn is more like theatre than a concert. Sure, it's musical, but Kate has managed to fuse drama with audiovisuals, stage effects with dance, props with mime to produce a truly unique experience, which is what makes her as an artist so special. You won't have seen anything like Before the Dawn before, and in this day and age, that is pretty rare.
As for the naysayers who reckon she should have just come on, sung Wuthering Heights, Babooshka and Wow, well... anyone can do that. The Kate Bush impersonator who was entertaining the queueing crowds outside the Apollo can do that. Heck, even Noel Fielding can do that.
And yes, while it might have been nice to see the actual Kate Bush sing them, it wouldn't leave you with the same sense that you've seen something unique, something enriching or entertaining as Before the Dawn does.
I don't want to see Kate Bush cavorting about in a white flowing dress or flailing her arms around like a human helicopter. She did that 35 years ago. I want to see Kate Bush now, in 2014, not a tribute act.
Before the Dawn certainly raises the benchmark for any other musical artists with an ambition to interpret their music live, and I predict that we'll see more shows like Before the Dawn from other, lesser performers, inspired by Kate Bush's astounding vision. And that can be no bad thing.
Let's just hope Kate doesn't leave it too long to surprise and inspire us all again.

The miracle of Photoshop

Thursday, July 17th, 2014

I was rifling through some old paperwork at the weekend as part of my ongoing clear-out, and came across two images which reduced me to a flood of uncontrollable tears (of laughter). These images brought back a much happier time in my career when we had fun in amongst the hard work!
Many moons ago our editorial department used to have an actual living human being to specially process, grade and improve the photographs intended for publication in the newspaper. This person sat at his own desk in the corner of the room and was a whiz at Photoshop and all things arty.
Well, one year we received a photograph taken at a local community champions award ceremony the night before, of one of the deserving winners with the celebrity host, actress Alex Fletcher (best known at the time for her memorable work in Brookside). The photograph below speaks for itself: all credit to the community champion in question, but she wasn't the most photogenic of subjects.

Exhibit A: the photograph before it was Photoshopped.

Our Photoshop-happy artist volunteered to try and make the picture look a little better for publication, as the lighting wasn't good and I am sure the photo made the poor woman out to look far worse than she really did. And I still remember the convulsions of laughter the entire newsroom was in when the artist unveiled his miraculous work to us. He hadn't so much as touched up the poor woman as completely transformed her. The comparison is startling, hilarious and actually really rather good, I am sure you'll agree...

Exhibit B: the photograph after it was Photoshopped.
Any likeness to Liza Tarbuck are purely in your mind's eye...

Needless to say, we published the original, so this is the first time the new, improved version has ever been published!

Gone Too Soon: Remembering Michael Jackson

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014

Michael Jackson on stage during his Dangerous world tour (1992)

Today is the fifth anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. I find it hard to believe it's been five whole years since that happened: time really does fly when you're not looking.
Jackson's death is one of those events that you remember where you were when you heard, like I imagine John Lennon, Elvis and JFK were for previous generations.
There were - and still are - fewer people more famous than Michael Jackson, and when our children and our children's children grow up, they will not be able to understand the level of fame Jackson reached.
Today's biggest stars are the likes of Katy Perry (53.96 million Twitter followers), Justin Bieber (52.48 million) and Lady GaGa (41.55 million), but if each one of their followers bought one copy of one of their albums, then they would begin to reach the height and breadth of Jackson's impact.
His 1982 album Thriller has sold 42.4 million certified copies worldwide to date: that's just one of his albums. If Katy Perry sold 54 million albums, then she'd be a superstar. To date, she's sold fewer than 15 million copies of her three albums combined.
People of my generation - and my parents' generation - were lucky to live in a time which witnessed such global superstardom. I am always envious when I see and hear about the sheer excitement and insane hysteria which surrounded Beatlemania in the 1960s, because no amount of flickering monochrome TV footage or talking heads with "people who were there" can reproduce what it was really like.
It was similar with Jackson. In the 1980s - particularly the mid-1980s to mid-1990s - Jackson was one of the most famous, and probably one of the most loved, human beings on the planet, orbited by satellite superstars such as Madonna, Prince, Tina Turner and Whitney Houston.

Smooth Criminal

But nobody ever quite attracted the hysteria and excitement that Jackson did in his prime, as any "child of the 80s" will tell you. Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, We Are The World, Bad, Smooth Criminal, Moonwalker... The excitement he generated was exhilarating, frightening even.
And regardless of What Happened Next - the allegations, the drugs, the court cases, the surgery - he was still Michael Jackson, the biggest star in the world, even when his shine had faded.
His latter years - really, his final decade - were troubled times, plagued with misfortune and controversy, and it is sad to look back at the inexorable decline of such a huge star. It is both tragic and humbling, and certainly a lesson for anybody else seeking fortune and fame without the necessary equipment to survive it (Mr Bieber take note).
Anybody who enjoyed music in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 00s cannot fail to have been touched in some way by the talent of Michael Jackson, whether they are a fan, an admirer or just a begrudging observer.
I remember where I was when I heard Michael Jackson had died. I was lying in bed in a hotel room in Manchester. A BBC newsflash came on between programmes - which is never, ever a good thing - and there it was, the caption scrolling across the screen, defying my disbelief.
The next morning, while out shopping in the city centre, the impact of Jackson's death was everywhere. His music echoed out of every shop doorway, the headlines paid tribute to him on the cover of every newspaper and on every news billboard, and it was all people seemed to be talking about as I caught snatches of conversations in the street.
It will be some time before another celebrity death has quite the same impact in as many countries, in as many cultures, as Michael Jackson's.
Bieber and Perry and GaGa may be famous, but Jackson was a superstar. And they are rare to find in our skies.

Michael Joseph Jackson: 1958 - 2009