Genius

Genius was a cartoon that appeared in the Observer from 1978 to 1983. It featured Anode Enzyme, the greatest genius since Leonardo, who had an IQ of 12, 794 (it was higher, but he lost a few points through watching television). Working for Lord Doberman, the world's richest man, gave him a lot of freedom, but he mostly confined his talents to doing whimsically obscure things like firing colour televisions into the sea, or recording the sound of a tape recorder being destroyed by a chain saw. Aged about 11 or 12, I hugely admired this serial work, so much so that I collected the strips for a while, pasting them into an old notebook. It's hard to say whether I prefered the surreal humour, the delightfully messy ink drawings and lettering, or the rather lovely watercolour that formed the main part of each week's installment. They clearly came from a complex, witty, un-bourgeois, and generally splendid intelligence. It always felt faintly subversive, as if nobody at the nice paper quite knew what the chap was up to. They never really gave it enough space. The same point is made in a nice appreciation here. I recently came across my yellowing cuttings, complete with original dates in my own childish hand. The one above was undated, before you ask.

John Glashan, the creator of Genius, seems to have rather sunk without trace. A great pity.

Tony Hart

Tony Hart has died. I spent a lot of my childhood watching him, on shows like Vision On, and Take hart. Like most of the best TV presenters, the programs were never about him. They were generous, encouraging to aspiring artists like me, and always fun.

Happy New Year

And now, nuclear war.

I grew up in a threatened generation: in the late 70s and early 80s. It already seems a long time ago, but there was a real prospect then that something very big could kick off. I don't remember this being talked about much, although it would surface as nervous laughter at school: "Imagine Miss Watt announcing a three-minute warning over the Tannoy!" One focus for these fears was the television film Threads (1984).

It is a docudrama that tells the likely consequences of a nuclear exchange on Sheffield, and when I watched it—aged 15—it scared the shit out of me. Recently, Rog pointed out to me that you could watch Threads on Youtube (all 13 parts). Now I have, and it remains riveting.

Despite almost 25 years elapsing, some of the scenes were still vivid in my mind, though I had forgotten that some of them belonged to this film. Take, for example, the woman wetting herself in the street, or Ruth giving birth in some straw with a barking dog outside, or the post-apocalypse children blankly watching a scratchy video about skeletons.

The documentary angle helps the film and means that it doesn't just become incoherent and shouty. Paul Vaughan's narration of chaos was particularly effective, as he regularly voiced episodes of Horizon at the time.

Near the end, we see that children born after the attack are evolving their own corrupted form of speech. Give it a few centuries more and you have Riddley Walker.

Fife coastal walk: 2

It's taken too long to get round to it, but here is the next part of what is becoming a winter project to walk the Fife coastal path.

Days are short at the moment, so 9.30 am saw me getting off the train at Kinghorn and seeing what was more or less a sunrise.

The caravans thankfully didn't last very far, and I soon got to the day's first castle, Seafield Tower, with its own tiny harbour.

I reached Kirkcaldy not long after, and stopped for coffee and a not-very-nice all-day breakfast. I always find that Fife has a good supply of baker's shops where traditional plain baking may be acquired, and Kirkcaldy is no exception. I bought a bag of scones for £1. The assistant wore a badge that said "SAY AYE TAE A PIE".

Onwards to Ravenscraig castle, which Historic Scotland uncharacteristically, don't tell you much about.
A lot of industrial past can be seen on this walk, and there's a bit of it at Dysart, whose neat harbour was originally used to export Fife coal. A bit further along is the preserved winding gear of the Frances colliery.
A slightly less obvious reminder of the coal industry is the vast spoil heap that the path takes you over. It has been landscaped and has enough vegetation on it now that you'd never know there was once a nice sandy beach underneath.

I'd never heard of the caves at Wemyss, but I should have. I also didn't know that the name Wemyss comes from the Gaelic Uamh (a cave). So there you go.

And the last castle of the day: Macduff castle.

Buckhaven and the outskirts of Methil tend to drag a little, though there is much more recent industry in the form of the Kvaerner fabrication yard with its massive shed. Methil power station also dominates the view for a while. It used to run on coal (do you see a theme developing here?), but was decommissioned in 2000. When I got to Leven, there was an hour or so of daylight remaining, but its cute new bus station seemed a natural point to stop. I had twenty minutes to wait for my bus home, which I occupied with buying chocolate and wandering up the main street. One shop was a huge empty barn-like space lit by strip lights. Somebody was pulling down shutters as I passed. The name above the entrance read "Woolworths".

I hope to have more psychogeography very soon.

You want disgusting local filth on that?

The ever-fascinating Strange Maps has been mapping the boundaries of some fast food habits. I wonder how they'd get on with the distribution of salt-and-sauce on chips. A perverse Edinburgh habit that I've never taken to.

An obsession for the mentally deranged

I was very much hoping that NordWand would be good. The mountain film is a shy and rarely-met-with creature: you just don't get that many. So there is an extra intensity of hope. After waiting all that time since Touching the Void, would I be let down? Thankfully I was not.

The film tells the story of an attempt on the North Face of the Eiger in July 1936. The feeling of climbing is conveyed very well, with lots of detail of the (to today's eyes) crappy equipment of the time. Ropes are of hemp; clothing is woollen and dull in colour; ice axes are long and wooden. Natural materials ranged against ice and rock, I suppose.

The film starts in a fairly pedestrian manner, but the device of the ascent builds up interest, and the final third is stunning, tragic, fascinating, and oddly beautiful. One small criticism: I think the film misses the opportunity to show the danger from falling rocks as the face warms up.

H2G2

I'm currently enjoying the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in its best form: radio. The original series, broadcast from 1978 to 1980, were a formative experience for me. I can still remember lying on top of my bed one evening listening to that bit about the Shoe Event Horizon (a section that is both manifestly true--you try living in Swindon--and which curiously failed to make it to any of the series' other forms). I didn't know before that how effective radio could be. And I didn't know you were allowed to be that funny.

Hitch-Hiker also meant that I later had a few shreds of status (at least among other geeky 14 year-olds) through being able to recite some of the Good Bits.

For years I owned a tape version of the first two series, but my tape player doesn't work these days, and I own too few audio tapes to be bothered buying another one. So a purchase seemed in order, and the chance to get all the later series too seemed too good to miss.

You gotta rush. It'll pass.

Well, a rush of boredom. You, know, you've nothing in particular on, your boss turns out to be off sick, and you tit about pretending to finish some document that nobody really needs, and that you could have finished on Friday if you had a reason to. Things are so slow, you start writing a training document. Still, with age comes experience and the almost certain knowledge that tomorrow will be better. No, really, it will.

Visiting

I was in Ocean Terminal yesterday and saw HMS Edinburgh in the harbour. A bit later on she left with the help of a couple of tugs. The huge picture windows at Ocean Terminal are perfect for this.

Fife coastal walk: 1

And now, a slightly delayed post about what I did on Friday.

I've been meaning to walk along the Fife coastal path for a while, and good weather on Friday combined with a day off got me started. Recording my progress here may make me more likely to finish it too.

The starting point is one of Scotland's iconic objects. 55, 000 tons of steel sculpture with trains running over the top of it.

There's a lot of industrial and post-industrial stuff going on at the start of the walk, with disused quarries, and this jetty near Inverkeithing made of old Bailey bridge components.
It's quite a varied landscape though, and a few hours later found me looking at St Bridget's church, near Dalgety Bay. One of the inscriptions on the gravestones reads "1787 James Scott Two Breids".

I neglected to take a picture, but just outside Burntisland is a monument on the spot where Alexander III's horse stumbled and killed him, precipitating the wars of Independence. You know, Bruce, Wallace and all that. Somebody has left some cacti in pots next to the monument. I don't know why.

I can't say I enjoyed this section very much, as you are forced to walk along the road, past lots of identical mobile homes that are arranged in straight rows across the fields. A truly depressing sight. If I'd been Martin Parr, I'd have taken pictures. I guess it pays better than farming the land.

Things improved a bit at Kinghorn though. Some people were attempting to surf in the tiny bay in front of the town.

I considered walking further, but it would be getting dark soon, and I could see more caravans in the distance, so for the sake of my sanity I got the train home.

How big is it really?

Check out ActualSizer. It gives you a sense of the scale of an art work: something that is often lost in reproduction. I sense some major time-wasting approaching.

More news from my lunchtime walk

This wee dug was being encouraged across some jumps, seesaws and tunnels at lunchtime. It seemed happy.

My evening

Excited by the smell of chips, a mouse runs across the floor and behind the washing machine. When I check where it's gone, I find a sock. I was looking for that.

Health and Safety bollox

The pond that I sometimes walk to at lunchtime has acquired a couple of signs saying "Danger, water". Just in case you hadn't spotted that. I wonder how much this pointlessness costs?

Where was I?

My walking gear smells of smoke. I must have spent the weekend in Clashgour.

Doors Open Day

It's that time of year. There's a crispness in the air, and the days are getting shorter. It must be time for Doors Open Day. This year seemed a little less interesting than usual, but you can't back winners every time. There were still high points.

I enjoyed James Craig House on Calton Hill; part of that enigmatic group of buildings around the observatory. This had been allowed to deteriorate, but I'm glad to say the council has done a lot of work on it in the past year or so, as I have occasionally noticed from the top floor of John Lewis. It's still full of plaster dust and old bits of wallpaper, but has excellent views. The best bit is a circular room on the top floor with a painted domed roof, and panoramic views of Edinburgh. Apparently it was a girl's bedroom in the 1930s. How can you progress from that? Any bedroom after that would be a disappointment.

Another Good Bit was seeing inside Edinburgh University's new Informatics Building. I've been watching this take shape along the road from me over the last three years or so, so it's nice to end up at some form of housewarming. The view south from the roof is excellent, and the grass they've planted along the edge makes rather more sense from up there. I believe they do some very clever stuff there too. I wonder how long it'll be before the colour-coded furniture gets onto the wrong floor?

It just works

My new Mac is spectacularly effective, in a particularly unspectacular way. I've connected most of the devices I own to it and found that they work, but up to today the old scanner lying in the corner of the room was reproaching me. It was always a nightmare to set up on Windows, as it never seemed to remember any settings from one session to the next, and usually overwrote drivers for something else. It also insisted on the use of various bits of crapware that you had to install.

On the Mac, I connect everything up, start Image Capture (seems like a good guess), and blow me if it doesn't tell me that I have an Epson Perfection 1250 there mate, and do I want a scan of that thing that's on it?

I am three

Thanks to Rog's post, I've just realised that my blog is three years old today. I'm a little surprised that it's got this far. I did have a vague vision when I began of myself penning terse little pensées, but of course that didn't happen, and the blog is all the better for it.

Lucky visit

I visited Glasgow yesterday without any clear aim, but struck lucky when I joined a tour of the Necropolis. This has been one of my favourite bits of Glasgow for a long time, but I had never realised that the Necropolis was consciously modelled on Pere Lachaise. Or recognised the symbolism of the Bride of Sighs that you must cross to visit the city of the dead, with the Styx being played by the now-vanished Molendinar Burn. How could I miss that?

Gary's back

I've been missing the War Nerd for a bit, but I'm glad to say he and the Exile have a new home. Kinda cute to see the guy growing moist-eyed over the recent Georgian conflict. Armoured columns and air support--ah, nostalgia!