Skip to main content

The joys of Man

NA week or so ago I went to the best literary festival I've ever attended. It wasn't a five ring circus like Hay, but rather a compact but imaginative mix of authors, not just speaking at events (several of them free because they were sponsored), but also spending a day in local schools. The only other festival I've ever spoken at that had the same sense of community was the marvellous Kempsford Festival in Gloucestershire. That one demonstrated that small is beautiful, while the Manx Litfest proved that you could be bigger and still have that essential link to the community.

Of course, the location helped. Getting to the Isle of Man is not a trivial exercise, especially if, like me, you choose to avoid flying and instead opt for three trains and a ferry - total journey time around 9 hours. But, of course, the great thing about travelling this way is you can work as you do, so it's not wasted time. And it was an opportunity, as I walked to the ferry, to see the Liver Building in all its glory like this.

To be fair, the island itself was on its best behaviour and gave us beautifully sunny days that meant my early morning view on the Friday, taken from the porch of the hotel, could have been the South of France. Instead, though, I was heading off to visit to Manx schools, in the morning at the Cronk-y-Berry junior school with a group of hugely enthusiastic year fours, and then off to Ballakermeen high school, where I not only had a theatre full of positive audience but the opportunity to sample the island delicacy at lunchtime. Sadly I chickened out from the chips, cheese and gravy - I should have been braver.

After a quick sandwich it was off again for the evening engagement which combined a talk by Matthew Kneale about his father, Nigel and the showing of two of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass episodes - the first of the Quatermass Experiment and of Quatermass and the Pit. I had the privilege of joining Matthew on stage part way through for a quick chat about science and science fiction, and a chance to ask him some questions in front of the audience (I'm the one in the left hand chair, with Matthew on the right and festival director John Quirke at the podium.) British TV and film science fiction was hugely influenced by Quatermass and despite the fuzzy black and white, there was real class in these productions. After Quatermass and the Pit particularly I would have loved to have watched more of the story.

At a drink afterwards with Matthew, John and others, Harry from the conference bookshop, Bridge Bookshop, asked a question no one brought up at the event, but an essential bit of info for any history of science fiction buff - where did that distinctive name 'Quatermass' come from? Apparently Nigel Kneale flicked through a London phone directory and the name caught his eye - there was just one in the directory.

The next day I had a free morning to stroll along the prom and prepare for my session on Build Your Own Time Machine. In the photo I'm just waiting to go on, seated behind a dalek (as you would be). Sadly the TARDIS that we'd hoped to have a stage prop was too big to fit on the trailer provided, so I had to make do with my standby prop, the cardboard box of time.

After my event I was whisked off for a chance to be a fan in the audience for a talk by Joanne Harris of Chocolat fame - it was fascinating to hear about her early inspiration in the Barnsley library and her new title, The Gospel of Loki, which as a re-telling of the Norse legends from Loki's viewpoint is about as far from the Chocolat image as you could imagine.

A recovering evening followed before an early ferry back to the mainland. All in all, a great festival.

Comments

  1. It all sounds wonderful. Did you meet any tailless cats?

    ReplyDelete
  2. We're incredibly lucky to have such a wonderful festival here. I'm delighted that you had a great time, although you'll need to come back and eat your chips, cheese and gravy. Until you've done that your indoctrination into island life is incomplete. We were so lucky with the weather! It feels like a tropical island in the sunshine.
    Thanks for coming and taking part. X

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope