Friday 29 October 2010

1516 A man with no Identity watches London to Brighton

It is 2 pm Saturday, cold and raining. I did not rise from bed until 11am having stayed up Blog writing and it was midday before I started to tackle, the Man with no Identity.

It is not that I am afraid of death itself but I am afraid of what the process of dying could be like.

I am more afraid of writing about myself.

I did make a start. A few opening paragraphs. I am not yet in the dimension to write and write, abandoning everything else/ I need to organise myself better than I have so far., but I have the experience of completing works of 200 x (3), 300 and 400 pages, the later also had an addition of 75 pages of photographs, so I know what can be achieved when the research has been completed,, the work is clearly set out in my head, or at least there is a notion of a beginning and an end.

I have made toast and coffee.

I have looked at what football and other programmes there are on TV during the rest of the day and will listen to Sunderland at home against Arsenal at 3pm. I could watch one of the two DVD's that have arrived over the past two days about which I know almost nothing. I will concentrate on getting myself up to-date with project work in hand and hopefully return to the writing before the day is done. The car insurance documents have arrived. I will switch the heating on and make lunch. Do I want to put myself through the pain of writing? Do I need to do it? Is it right?
A good lunch of vegetables followed by a chunk of sea bass with seasoning, black grapes and tea. Complete printing of recent Blogs for Creatives sets in Volumes 5669 5673. Transfer photos of Durham parading with trophy at Riverside, and the latest condition of the patio plants from memory sticks to computer and then recharge the camera battery. Prepare five two set volumes for future Blog sets while listening on Century radio to Sunderland hosting Arsenal on Century radio. The commentary suggested that Sunderland were well organised and defended well but did not sit back and took the game to Arsenal whenever they could. Five minutes before the end a 0.0 draw seemed a worthy result and then Sunderland scored a brilliant goal electrifying everyone including men. Then according to the commentators there was no justification for the referee adding four extra minutes which was sufficient for Arsenal to equalise. Later I watched the whole of the second half on Sky and the Match of the Day highlights and noted that the Manager, Roy Keane, did not complain about the additional time, perhaps it looks as if Arsenal had a good goal disallowed when the linesman thought the ball had gone over the end line before a player sent it into the goal mouth where is was struck into the net.
I have been enjoying playing different games against the computer recently. Ink Ball is a game when with the use of the mouse one has to steer coloured moving balls into their correct pocket, allow one to enter a different colour and the game ends. The mouse can create ink strokes which prevents a ball going astray or help steer. About between 1000 and 3000 points can be won per game and my first target was 10000 points although I quickly reached just under 25000 and then just under 50000, and then in one long game I not only broke 50000 and then 75000 but went on to 82166. My effort now only reached 11000 but later I made 66000. About a decade ago I played all the numbered games from 1 to 10000 on free cell so this time I am concentrating on percentages wit 46 games won from 50 a 92% after a shaky start losing two games in succession but with a run of 41 wins since. Winning 269 from 278 games at level three the best run has been 57 but the three loses is unacceptably high. Hearts is the game where I had an appalling start winning only one in ten games before working out how to play and win so that now the percentage has risen to 43% 638 games from 1468 and were a winning streak of 26 now is better than an early series of loses which reached 25. Spider Solitaire is another form of patience which I quickly mastered winning 718 of the 788 games played 91%, There is a three form child's game where one of the three is spatial, and two guess and memory. I occasionally enjoy a game of finding matching pairs of tiles among 20 with 37 turns to find the ten pairs is the best effort. I am hopeless at Minesweeper with tune squares and one has remember of ten mines. And Mah-jong Titans is yet to attempted.

I watched Strictly dancing while enjoying bottle of beer some pasta, and small apple pie with custard. Around midnight, may have been later I had a tomato sandwich. I have discovered two video tapes of Brideshead and went though most of my cabinets of tapes thinking there should be a third until in the early houses I discovered that although the first was marked as having episodes 1-3 it has 1 to 7.5 with the second having the remainder. I look forward to seeing if the quality has been maintained and enjoying the big screen showing.

Whereas I went to the cinema to experience the film of Brideshead with my head filled with visuals and sounds from the TV series I knew nothing about the low budget independent film London to Brighton produced in 2006 and which had limited showing but received some good reviews. The DVD contained a good range of additional material including the after show discussion at the Curzon Cinema. Films about gangsters and low life set in London and Brighton are popped up over the years with Graham Greene's Brighton Rock set just before World War 2, appearing in the late 1940's. I have the DVD. I also may have on tape Mona Liza. The film is what happens when a young girl, aged eleven runs from home and tries to live on the streets of London and is picked up by a drug taking prostitute whose pimp has demanded she finds such a girl, for a millionaire paedophile. The girl is played by thirteen year old Georgia Groome, an already established child actress who has attended both a school and an academy of performing arts. Understandably her mother was unsure when reading the script but the girl claimed she had a fair idea of what it was about from what was talked in the school yard. She was subsequently chosen to star in a teenage film released this year, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging which is based on the work on someone who has become a world wide recognised writer about the reality of being a teenager in contemporary society.

The film is described as gritty and authentic. I would add grim and realistic about the behaviour of men with money and the exploitation of the young at risk whether here in the UK or from central Europe and Russia and Asia. The film avoids glamorization, titillation and sensationalism and cannot be regarded as entertainment, My problem with the film is that the story will all too familiar with social workers and those working in the justice system and rather like the latest attempt to put people off smoking with lurid pics on the fag packets, it will have no effect as a cautionary tale. What impressed me was the quality of the performance of the cast who were not paid with the shooting and cutting script around £80000 and the whole film about a quarter of a million. If contemporary art is to reflect the truth of contemporary life, then while this is no Shakespeare it can be regarded as a contemporary art performance captured on camera and then edited.

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