This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
Total Number Of Books I've Owned
I do buy books rather than borrow them from the library. Just before I moved house I gave away some books to various charitable concerns, and there must have been about 100 or more. Yet still my shelves do creak. Too many.
The Last Book I Bought
The last book I bought was 'Bolland Strips!', a collection of the 'Actress & Bishop' and 'Mr Mamoulian' comics by Brian Bolland. But if I follow Pete's lead and discount comics, it would be 'Celebrities of the Army' from AbeBooks, an old collection of portraits of various high-up bods in the Victorian Army. It's a bit the worse for wear, being from 1903. If I really push this and discount that as primarily a picture book, then the last book I bought was 'Something Like an Autobiography' by Akira Kurosawa.
The Last Book I Read
'Something Like an Autobiography' by Akira Kurosawa. I haven't read much fiction in quite a while, but I will... 'Wuthering Heights' beckons.
Five Books That Mean a Lot To Me.
I don't think I've read any life-changing books* and was worried if I'd be able to come up with five that had any major impact, but actually, once I started thinking about it...
Year of the King by Antony Sher. A year in the life of Sher as he prepared and eventually played the role of Richard III for the RSC. Very inspiring for the effort and thought he put into his work, but also personal and touching at times, not to mention very funny. It is all the more interesting because, besides acting, Antony Sher's other creative outlet is sketching and painting. Name-dropping abounds, but it's good. I annotated and wrote a complete direction for King John with the energy gathered from reading this book (though an ever-diminishing cast prevented it from being staged), and I still go back to Sher's book for a boost when Rainbow Orchid loses momentum.
From Hell by Alan Moore. Chucking out the 'no comics' clause just for this. The size and scope of this story is mind-staggering, and I don't mean the physical size. The ideas whiz out of every panel, and I love it for exposing the thread that connects the past, present and future. Give it a tug and see the ripples. The annotations at the back are wonderful.
Complete Prose by Woody Allen. Cheating slightly as this is three books in one (Without Feathers, Getting Even and Side Effects). One of the very few books, perhaps the only one, that has me crying with laughter and clutching my sides in joyous agony as soon as I start reading the first page, no matter how many times. It's full of brilliance.
William Blake - The Complete Illuminated Books. Awe-inspiring, inspirational, stunning, and beautiful. I'm constantly wandering amongst the pages and soaking up the genius (just wish I could retain some it!).
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I loved this book and want to read it again (if only there weren't so many others on the list of 'want-to'). The humour and drama is top-quality, and two scenes in particular typify this; first of all Wemmick's wedding which had me giggling like an idiot on a train journey, "Hello! Here's a church! Let's go in! Hello! Here's Mrs Skiffins! Let's have a wedding!"), and then just a few pages later I had a lump in my throat and very misty eyes as the scene of Magwitch's death was played out. A truly great story.
According the rules and regulations of meme-dom, I must pass this on. So, if you're reading this, Baz, Chrissie, PJ and Martin..?
* Actually there is one book that had a great effect on me, but it only just came to me for some reason. 'Bankei Zen - translations form the record of Bankei' by Peter Haskel was pretty influential on my thinking in my more formative years.
All readers' tickets that have been purchased up to now will be refunded - thank you so much to everyone who took that leap of faith! I've decided I wanted to open the strip up to a much bigger audience, and I'm relying on a small amount of advertising (discreet) and a PayPal donations system to help keep the site going. The advertisers are not sponsors, just Google ads, so only follow the link if you're genuinely interested - too many clicks from a single IP address and they'll think there's something funny going on! If you want to support the comic financially, go to the read strip page, and you'll see a donate button. Thanks.
Most importantly, the income from the webcomic version of the strip is to go towards the printed book version, and that is still the aim of the site.
Anyway, I just came across a copy on ebay, and it sold for £8. Just a little weirdness - it's not the kind of thing I expect to happen upon. [Resist temptation to sell my own copy...]
I enjoyed this production, which was played to a pretty small audience - The Duchess was only about a third full - and the acting was very good indeed (well, except the girl who played Lulu didn't quite have me convinced). Whenever you see something for the first time that makes a strong impression (in my case, the BBC TV version) it becomes something of a benchmark, and I would say the production we saw last night didn't quite come up to that benchmark. The TV play, if I remember correctly, was far less emotive, more subtle, and that made it far more sinister, which is what grabbed me, I think. I didn't come away from last night's production with that same feeling. Perhaps it was because they played up the comedy a little more, or perhaps because it wasn't quite as deadpan as I remember from 1987.
But it was good - it's a fantastic play (despite the fact that at least four people left at the interval, but The Birthday Party can have that effect - or maybe they're just not used to three-act plays, and thought it had ended). Henry Goodman played Goldberg, Eileen Atkins played Meg and Paul Ritter played Stanley, giving a very strong performance of a man right on the edge.
A few years ago I noticed my wife doing the same thing, peeling off the pith. "Don't do that", I said, "you need your vitamin P". After a couple of minutes of her laughing her head off and casting grave doubt on the existence vitamin P, she went back to de-pithing her fruit. "But my mother told me", I protested, "it must be true!". Ellie replied, "she must have been pulling your leg...".
When I was much younger, about 7 or 8, I asked my mum what 'shampoo' meant. "Well", she began, "it means 'not-real-poo'. Anything's that's a 'sham' means it's not real, and you know what poo is!". I was in my twenties before I actually thought about this and realised I may have been a bit gullible there (in fact, I believe the word is Indian in origin, an import along with verandah and bungalow etc..).
Anyway - I just decided to look up vitamin P (finally)... and it does exist! It is a bioflavonoid:
"Bioflavonoids are found in the white material just beneath citrus peel, as well as in peppers, grapes, pine bark, onions, garlic, blue and red berries, green tea as well as buckwheat."
So she was right on that one, but mum had quite a sense of humour, and I do wonder what other things she told me that might not have been the exact truth. I'm off to eat some pine bark.
Next up is something a bit different for me, in the form of some animation sequences as chapter headings for a video.
It's very difficult to learn! In principle it seems easy, but in practice there is a lot to it. So, after a couple of weeks I've managed to get something approximating a tune out of it. Here is a sample (160k mp3, Edelweiss - I've tried to get a kind of violin sound) - it changes key a few times (unintentionally) and misses the right note more than it hits, but I'll keep at it and hope I get better!
See also Hypnotique's excellent guide to the theremin (I first came across Hypnotique via Pete Ashton's blog a year or two ago).
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