Epic Books, Epic Films

I’ve had a bit of time on my hands lately…

Time enough indeed to watch all eleven Star Wars films in order, the six Hobbit/Lord of the Rings Extended Editions, eight Harry Potters back to back and finally the four Hunger Games movies.

Each is a variation on the Hero’s Journey, where a young protagonist fights ruthless evil and impossible odds, aided by wise mentors and a selection of colourful allies. There is revelation and betrayal, there are battles and last-minute rescues. Each is a rollercoaster ride of triumph and tears,  reckless bravery and bravura speeches.

The films invert the classical movie tradition where established stars take the leading roles, backed up by stalwart character actors and bit players from central casting. The young leads began as relative unknowns, albeit with some stand-out early roles. In the wise mentor role came established Brit actors Sir Alec Guinness, Richard Harris and Sir Ian McKellen plus Woody Harrelson adding grit for the more American Hunger Games. Recruited as the hissable baddies came the heavyweights Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland so we know they are serious opposition. The middle order includes familiar faces from British and antipodean television, but as the series’ grew they become a veritable who’s who of acting talent. Harry Potter seems to contain just about every British actor of note from the noughties; Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman and Helena Bonham Carter to name just a few who have headlined other movies. There are some 77 speaking parts in the original LoTR trilogy and Star Wars attracted more talent as its reputation and its budget grew.

Two of our heroes (Harry and Luke) have a hidden destiny, whilst Frodo, Bilbo and Katniss have greatness thrust upon them. Luke is the only one who is not a reluctant hero, even if the others are unsettled and itching to escape the confines of their lives. He’s the only one who plunges into the fray with gusto, in line with the Saturday morning serial origins of Star Wars.

The evil that they oppose is absolute in the case of Voldemort, the Sith, and Sauron but a more calculating fascist dictatorship in the shape of President Snow. As Hunger Games is set in a futuristic dystopia with none of the magic of the other series, Snow can be overthrown by straightforward revolution. Ancient artefacts and arcane powers must be mastered to bring down the others. None of these villains have any hesitation in ordering mass executions, the destruction of a city, a district or indeed a whole planet. Hubris is their weakpoint; over-confidence in absolute power with little understanding of the values our heroes and their allies hold dear; friendship, love, decency and a sense of justice. If the bad guys are uber-Nazis the good guys have cosily old-fashioned values.

World-building is at the core of the novels and the films that follow (or vice-versa in the case of Star Wars). Tolkien’s Middle Earth is ancient and complex, and the details fall from the page and can be seen in the margins of the films from fallen statues and documents written in runes that scatter the tables. George Lucas’ galaxy feels well-used, the spaceships are battered, the futuristic technology is tacked on to traditional settlements that could have been around for thousands of years. The huge resource of spin-off fiction and television in the Star Wars universe creates extra depth which allows throw-away facts to be introduced at will; much as a film set in 1940 could draw on any of Earth’s history, culture or technology that existed at that time. Hogwarts’ history fades back into the mists of time with its medieval legends and spells, and it all feels ancient. Harry, Hermione and the rest are continuing ancient tradtions. Panem in contrast lacks either breadth or depth. Is us/here/future, a closed world where no-one strays beyond its borders and the past has been erased beyond the memory of a cataclysmic war 75 years earlier and an annual recycling of the shame of defeat.

Children devoured the brick-sized Harry Potter books, which are so packed with detail that transferring them to film makes them flabby and wandering apart from the excellent third outing and the finale. It is teenager-led throughout, and an intriguing aspect of watching them back to back is seeing the cast age, and indeed their acting skills improve. Initially they are the least violent, although the body count among the supporting cast ratchets up as the series progresses. Star Wars was of course conceived one movie at a time so leaps from one set piece to another, story arcs gradually emerging when it was clear more films would be greenlit. Much of the violence is guilt-free in the manner of old-fashioned westerns and our heroes whoop as Imperial spaceships explode and stormtroopers fall down like skittles. Hunger Games was written for Young Adults and is again teenager-led (though the actors were older), truly dark and unforgiving in places with the steely-eyed Katniss far from the flawless ‘Mary Sue’ character she could have been. Like Frodo and Bilbo (in the books at least) she is a reluctant killer. Lord of the Rings was written chiefly by Tolkien for Tolkien. It remains the most poetic of the bunch, even if the films put more emphasis on action and adventure than the author would have liked. Bernard Hill reciting part of ‘The Horse and the Rider’ makes me shiver every time.

Whilst the original Star Wars trilogy showed what film makers could be achieved without CGI, the remaining series would have been poorer without it. LoTR had proved impossible, and film makers before Peter Jackson had given up earlier attempts. The magic of Harry Potter on screen comes from the background detail; the spells, the moving portraits, the shifting architecture and the fantastic beasts. The Hunger Games are in themselves hi-tech computer controlled ‘entertainment’ and would have lost the impact if reduced to early Dr Who quality effects.

None of the villains survive; their fall is absolute, and the status quo ante-evil is re-established. The King of Gondor returns, Hogwarts is repaired, Panem regains democracy, the Jedi survive and the Republic is restored. Luke, Rey, Kylo Ren and even Darth Vader resist the siren call of the Dark Side ‘to bring order to the galaxy’. Galadriel refuses the One Ring, Harry breaks the Elder Wand and Katniss spoils Maoist revolutionary Julianne Moore’s plan to snatch the peace. For our heroes the victory is bittersweet. Katniss retreats to the countryside with Peeta and tries to put aside her nightmares. Frodo crosses the sea to find rest; the world has been saved, but not for him. In the sequels at least, Luke becomes a recluse afraid of what he’d become. I’m reminded of the way the western gunfighter Shane rides off into the sunset. Only Harry Potter can push the reset button and return to a ‘new normal’, settling down with Ginny to raise a middle-class wizarding family.

So, after 29 films and over 70 hours on the couch, I’m wondering what next.

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68 Days Later

If you’re not an essential worker, you will have spent the last 8 to 10 weeks locked down in one form or another. Everyone is saying what an odd experience this has been, with time slowing to a crawl in March, then April vanishing in a flash. May is dragging as we get the tantalizing glimpse of freedom ahead. It’s not over until it’s over and the story of the virus may have many cruel twists ahead, but lockdown has been an experience never to be forgotten.

Blue skies. Many days in April were almost cloudless, with no contrails. I acquired a tan…in Yorkshire in April!

Where did all the traffic go? The A631 was quiet as a country lane and I couldn’t hear the M1 and M18 anymore.

The daily walk. I live in a hilltop village not so far from the urban fringe and a challenge has been to find different places to enjoy exercise without bumping into crowds of people with the same idea.

Losing track of time. I stopped wearing my watch on March 16th. I work from home, I don’t watch live TV, I don’t take a daily newspaper. I re-calibrated my life on Sundays when I collected the Sunday Times and made sure I cooked a proper dinner.

Which brings me to cooking, something we all occupied our minds with. It had to be planned well in advance so all the ingredients were in place, as I only shopped every 10 days or so. A real morale booster…

…as was the ‘briefing beer’. I religiously sat down just before 5pm and listened to the government briefings (and the latest grimness) treating myself to a gluten free beer or a cider or one of my daily ration of two cans of Pepsi Max. As time went on I tended to sit down about 5.15 and watch it on catch up so I could hear the latest science but fast-forward through the political waffle.

Chocolate without guilt. Ok, not without calories. I bought multipacks, disposed of the outer wrappings immediately then stashed the 10-day supply in the fridge. It seldom lasted 10 days…

Telly without guilt, although I watched far less than I expected. I managed the whole Lord of the Rings/Hobbit series, the entire Harry Potter cycle but no more telly than normal. My new Playstation went almost unplayed.

Walking down the centre of the road. I took cheerful pleasure in doing this in later March and April before people rediscovered their cars. It was useful for avoiding dog-walkers too.

Gardening. I’m not much of a gardener but in the last pre-lockdown days I stocked up on plants, compost and gravel and re-engineered my front garden. The fact we’ve had about 2 days of rain since lockdown began did not make my job easier, and nor did my aged hose springing a leak with all the shops shut.

Wildlife. I’ve watched birds enjoying my new birdbath. I’ve waged a war of wits against fat pigeons who were raiding the seed feeders meant for garden birds. In the early morning and around sunset I’ve enjoyed birdsong in the woods.

The lockdown locks. As the curls multiply, the style clock ticks back to 1980. Maybe I’ll keep the look.

Freedom! I finally get to stretch my wheels, my legs and my lungs. Hoping this will soon be over, something to look back on and laugh about. Yes we laugh at adversity, and we downplay our fears because we have hope for tomorrow. We will survive, and we will prosper and we will meet our friends again.

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Keeping Occupied

This week should have seen the publication of my latest book, ‘Occupation to Liberation’. It would have been launched at the Guernsey Literary Festival, now sadly cancelled, and the launch was one of the 75 events to celebrate 75 years of freedom organised by Visit Guernsey. Although the UK is celebrating VE day this week on May 8th, Guernsey celebrates Liberation Day every year on May 9th as it continues to have special meaning in the islands. The end of the Second World War meant the end of five years of German occupation.

The Channel Islands were the only parts of Britain captured by Axis forces in the war, a novel fact that continues to fascinate. The Occupation was only a tiny part of the vast global struggle, yet has spawned a huge literary output of diaries, reminiscences, histories and fiction plus TV series and movies. I’m not an ‘Occupation expert’ but wanted to write an accessible book for the general reader which showcased the collections of Guernsey Museum.

One of the lines I wrote was that the big enemy was boredom, and another feature of the Occupation was an obsession with food. Sitting in virus lockdown I have begun to empathise with both attitudes. Normal civilian life was heavily constrained by curfews, restrictions on travel and closure of beaches and areas where the Germans had laid mines or built defences. Many businesses collapsed and people found what work they could for what money they could earn. Islanders were cut off from the rest of the world for five years, with only an occasional Red Cross message permitted to friends and relations off the island. News other than Nazi propaganda came from the BBC, which from 1942 could only be heard on hidden radio sets in defiance of regulations. There were no new books, the cinema soon ran out of English language films but there a great boom in amateur dramatics, arts and crafts as a way of keeping busy.

Almost everything was in short supply, so people had to ‘make do and mend’. Children played with home-made toys and wore hand-me-down clothes, often bartered for other essential items. Food ran short, and the variety of what was available challenged the ingenuity of the women who did the cooking.

Even the German soldiers experienced these twin privations of boredom and hunger. No battles were fought, and indeed as the war dragged on and hope of victory dwindled they dubbed themselves ‘The Canada Division’ knowing they would end up in Prisoner of War camps. Once D-Day began the liberation of France they too were cut off from home, knowing their families were enduring Allied bombing and fearing the inexorable advance of the Red Army. Bored soldiers turned in some cases to drink, the most depressed even committed suicide, but others applied their creativity to art. Paintings, photographs and carvings by soldiers now feature in the island’s Occupation museums and decorate some of the surviving bunkers. Soldiers too suffered increasing hardship as food supplies were cut off once the Allies controlled the French shores.

1945 was the year of hope. During the winter, the Red Cross ship SS Vega saved the civilians from starvation by delivering food parcels, which allowed the troops to eke out what other supplies remained. For all the puffed-up Nazi nonsense about ‘fighting to the last bullet’ the German garrison did no such thing. The war ended on May 8th to the relief of the civilians and, as far as we can tell, many of the ordinary soldiers. Posturing by the Nazi commander delayed matters, but on May 9th British troops stepped ashore and Guernsey was free once more.

Although the majority of the British population is today locked down in a peculiar curfew, we are not under foreign occupation. We are free to listen to the BBC whenever we like and follow the progress of our own peculiar ‘war’. There is fear on the streets and we have the constant drip of grim news and that daily toll of lives lost, but for all the wartime analogies we are not being bombed or shot at. We do not fear the knock on the door, and if we are stopped in the street by a police officer asking our business we know they only have our best interests at heart. We are fortunate to have plenty to eat – too much in my case – even though standing in line outside the supermarket recalls photographs of the wartime ration queues.

The VE Day bank holiday and Guernsey’s 75th Liberation Day will be curious affairs, with virtual celebrations and ‘street parties’ held in discrete units from garden to garden, but nostalgia will be rife. My generation is fortunate never to have fought a world war. In our current crisis I’m not being called on to charge up a beach under fire or pilot a plane through angry skies, but simply stay at home and watch streamed movies. Rather like in 1945 though, those of us who are hunkered down are relying on professionals to win the fight in the front line and are crossing fingers that our leaders are doing the right things. Perhaps this will be our finest hour?

Occupation to Liberation: Guernsey, Sark and Alderney 1940-1945 will be published by Guernsey Museums & Galleries later this year. All images in this article are taken from the book and are courtesy Guernsey Museums & Galleries.

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The Festival that Nearly Was

The Alderney Literary Festival 2020 was due to have taken place on the third weekend of March, but with just one week to go was cancelled due to the looming coronavirus crisis. I was already out there and brushing up for my panels when the news came that disappointed us all.

Rory Clements was one of the writers I was due to introduce, his talk being entitled Hitler’s Secret: Reimagined histories. I was keen to meet him as I’m working on a 1930s thriller in a similar arena to his Tom Wilde series. There are now four novels about the Cambridge Don, an American historian specialising in the Elizabethan spy network. It’s amusing to observe that Clements is getting double value from the research he did for his John Shakespear series set in Elizabethan England, of which a TV series is in development. I had pleasure to see him presented with the CWA Historical Dagger in London in 2018 for Nucleus and last year I was able to read a pre-publication proof of the fourth Tom Wilde thriller Hitler’s Secret which has now been published by Head of Zeus.

The Alderney festival mixes historical fiction with non-fiction, and the Sunday morning slot should have seen Roger Moorhouse talking about Poland’s September Campaign of 1939: the Forgotten campaign of WW2. Moorhouse has published a number of books on modern German history, including the intriguingly titled Killing Hitler about the various plots to kill the Fuhrer. Moorhouse’s most recent publication, First to Fight: The Polish War 1939 was named among books of the year for 2019 by BBC History Magazine and The Daily Telegraph, and shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History 2020. So much has been written about WW2, but the Polish campaign is most often passed over in the introductory sections of histories keen to get onto the Fall of France, so it was a talk I regret having missed.

I know nothing about the history of the Philippines, so was amused to be invited to introduce Miguel Angel Lopez de Asuncion speaking about The last of the Philippines: myth & reality of the siege of Baler. Cue some very rapid reading-up on the internet! Miguel is a historian who has concentrated for 20 years on the ‘last of the Philippines’, the Spanish heroes of the siege of Baler in 1898. He was historical advisor on the 2016 film 1898; Los Ultimos des Filipinos which is the latest cinematic treatment of the story and now available on Netflix. The siege of Baler was a ‘last stand’ epic akin to the much more famous Alamo; fifty Spanish troops holding out in a church for 337 days whilst surrounded by Filipino rebels. I read just enough to effect my introduction, but not enough to spoil the ending, so I’m still intrigued by what we might have heard.

My fourth event was to have been a panel together with Miguel, Rory Clements, and Antonia Senior. Antonia is a journalist with a trio of standalone historical novels under her belt. The latest is The Tyrant’s Shadow (2017) published by Corvus and set in the aftermath of the English Civil War. We were to have discussed The Past is a Foreign Country; challenging historical perspectives. Historical interpretation is not static, and with changing cultural, social, and political influences, historians constantly revisit the past. A talk that might have been, and still might be one day. It is to be hoped that as the world transitions towards the ‘new normal’ the Alderney Literary Festival will return.

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Sixty Days in a Strange World

There will be plenty of retrospective prophets this year. A few scientists will be revealed to have had perceptive papers published in obscure journals just before C-19 hit, but a larger number who predicted other crises will keep quiet. Writers of certain dystopian novels, TV series and movies will be lauded as prescient, although those who scripted meteorite impact or robot takeover stories will have to wait a little longer. ‘I told you so’ pundits of all shades are already pointing to this report or that course of action which if handled differently would have changed everything (maybe).

With this in mind, I looked back at my own awareness over 60 days of the mounting crisis. I’ve kept a daily diary since I was 14 and for the last decade have accumulated a store of emails, messages and social media posts which amount to a second ‘unofficial’ diary.

In mid-January I took a holiday in Sri Lanka. It was a spur-of-the moment decision and if I’d faffed around and chosen a later date I would never have gone or worse would have been marooned awaiting rescue. My diary of 24 January refers to the “new panic about Coronovirus in Wuhan”. Three days later I was nervous standing for three hours on a packed train squashed between Chinese tourists wearing masks.

In mid-holiday I caught a conventional cold that proved no more than antisocial but would not make me popular on my returning planes. On the way back at the start of February I was wary of fellow passengers at Bandaranike, Doha and Manchester airports, making use of my little travel-size hand sanitizer and avoiding groups.

My habit of snacking constantly on flights had to stop; the way the bat-meets-pig Chinese virus spreads in the opening sequence of the 2011 movie Contagion was strong in my mind. Contagion would become one of the most-downloaded films of 2020.

At the time of the SARS outbreak in 2005 I’d written pandemic plans for a merchant bank, and I revisited this by writing one for the Museum I managed from 2006. I hoped my successors were dusting those plans off and finding them adequate.

As a novelist and a scientist of sorts I was watching developments with detachment. The 1918-19 Spanish Flu reared its head in Glint of Light on Broken Glass and the research came in handy for a museum display I mounted on the end of the Great War, so I was alert to the developing story.

On February 8th I was writing as if C-19 was something I’d ‘escaped’ by getting back to the UK. In England the news was all about the floods; storm Chiara and her accomplices. As late as 26th February the Opposition were still laying into the Prime Minister for not paddling around flooded villages and not convening a COBRA meeting to deal with it. No! I yelled at the telly; convene COBRA to discuss the virus! Eerily the TV series COBRA was showing, in which an embattled Prime Minister deals with social breakdown –­ in that case after a solar flare.

For my own ‘disaster planning’ I decided not to book my next holiday, which would have been June; on Feb 9th I noted “This virus could lead to air travel shutting down, travel companies going bust etc”.

I was due to chair a session at the Guernsey Literary Festival in May and launch my new book Occupation to Liberation. Crimefest in June was also something to look forward to, but I held off booking hotels or trains. I warned friends to be prepared for cancellation of a whole slew of events, but felt rather like a Jonah for doing so.

On February 25th I re-watched Contagion as pandemic was fast becoming a topic of conversation. I invited my folks around, and I must admit that as they are in that 70+ category this was partly to bring them into the zone of pandemic planning. “Stop touching your face, Jerry!” Kate Winslett chides. I posted about the film on Facebook and engaged robustly with people who were downplaying the virus or using selective facts to score cheap points against the government. On Friday 27th I went out for a pub meal and for the first time passed around hand sanitizer.

My diary from the 2nd March begins to note the successive real-time crises we are all familiar with, and that day I pasted a semi-jokey “Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands” notice on Facebook. There was plenty of black humour around. On the 8th March we enjoyed what could prove to be the last big family supper for a long time.

I was fully booked to take part in the Alderney Literary Festival in late March, but changed flights to go out a week earlier to tidy up some of my archaeological commitments. This was the time of indecision in the UK and all transport was still running, but if hadn’t made the change, I would not have got away at all. I flew out to Guernsey on the 11th, then on to Alderney. This was the day WHO at last declared C-19 to be a pandemic.

On Friday 13th the Festival was cancelled with just a week to go, and my heart went out to my friends who had put so much effort into organising it. Italy had just locked down; it was only a matter of time before the UK did the same and the Channel Islands would surely close their ports in the hope of keeping the bugs out. Spending two weeks away from home looked increasingly unwise, so I cut short my trip, returning on the 15th wearing gloves all the way. As I’d travelled on two planes, two trains and passed through three airports, I decided to avoid all physical interaction with my family for five days after returning and turned down a meet-up with three old friends which was disappointing.

Many, if not most, people were still not taking this very seriously and I was still seeing Facebook posts from some setting off on holiday. Every event I had on my calendar was cancelled over the next few days, even Guernsey’s landmark 75th Liberation Day. The excavation in Alderney I planned for May would not be happening and that scheduled for August looked in doubt. Friends became gloomy as all our plans for the spring and summer fell away.

Expecting to be away for two weeks I’d emptied the fridge, so did a ‘big shop’ on my return wearing gloves and bought sufficient to see me through two weeks of self-isolation in case I’d picked up the bug. ‘Panic buying’ was becoming fashionable but shelves were still full. I urged friends and family to close down their social life and plan for longer lockdowns. Even this late it was the ‘self-isolating’ and disruption of my social diary that I thought would be the biggest inconvenience of this crisis. As a writer I work from home anyway, I was never going to be ‘furloughed’ and I no longer have small children to worry about. I bunged in a quick order to Amazon for a Playstation to stave off potential boredom, and filled the Jeep at the garden centre on the 20th to give myself a few weeks of garden projects.

By the time I went to the builder’s merchants on the 22nd, apologising for wearing a scarf like a bandit, most people were keeping a wary distance apart but I could have slapped the woman who literally pushed past me in the door. The atmosphere in the Co-Op was edgy and grabbing the first bunch of tulips I saw seemed positively daring. On Mother’s Day I placed the bunch outside a closed door and made four paces back feeling vaguely ridiculous. It was all increasingly surreal, as if I was acting out a scene in a dystopian film or was slavishly following those decade-old pandemic plans I’d written. Suddenly on the 23rd March we had the bombshell of lockdown, not quite two months since that first marginal note I made in January. In sixty days, the world had changed.

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Not The End of the World

I’ve just come back from my first (cancelled) literary festival of the year due to you-know-what and have received notification that the second is also cancelled. I’m not holding out much hope for the third or fourth either. Annoying though it is, mine are minor problems compared with what some people are going through right now and will continue to endure for months. All doom and gloom? No. For a start, people in self-isolation will be reading more books! And then;

The planet gets a break. Oil use is plummeting and pollution has been recorded as clearing in both China and Italy.

Reduced pollution levels will save lives, perhaps as many as the virus will claim.

The sharp reduction in air travel is a massive planet-wide experiment. How will the lack of contrails affect the atmosphere? Will we learn how much they serve to deflect sunlight and how they have masked the true extent of global warming?

Travel habits might change, ultimately good news for local museums, craft shops and other attractions.

Our new fastidious cleaning and social distancing regimes will reduce the incidence of other illnesses such as seasonal flu. Lives will be saved. If better habits become ingrained, more lives will be saved in the future.

Many companies are being forced to ask staff to work from home or work flexibly. Some will find it has positive aspects and it will become a more widespread practice, with all the acknowledged benefits for both employee and employer.

Business travel has seized up and tele-conferencing and virtual meetings have taken over. If nothing else this saves money on travel and hours of management time wasted on trains, planes and waiting for connections. If businesses discover this works as a practical model for normal times too this is a win/win. With less business travel, the planet also wins.

Ideologies are irrelevant when humanity is under threat. The virus hits capitalists and communists, black and white, Arab and Jew alike. Our petty squabbles are thrown into sharp relief.

Local wins out over international and community spirit is rediscovered, as well as brilliantly biting humour in the face of crisis. Those posts harking back to the Blitz are reminding us of how we were once less selfish, less self-absorbed and more concerned about our neighbours and family. Loo-roll hoarders and sanitizer spivs are held in the same regard as the black marketeers of old.

Globalisation has taken a knock. ‘Just in time’ supply chains relying on cheap goods from China have been shown to be fragile. This should encourage companies and countries to be more resilient and think locally again. If consumers see what shortages really look like and get used to paying the real price for what they buy perhaps we will value things more and waste less.

Science has become mainstream again. They’re not just geeks in white coats – smart women and men who have devoted their lives to their disciplines are our defence against extinction.

We have rediscovered the value of international scientific co-operation. Let us not forget it.

Reasonable doubt and mathematical models are being hammered home daily, and it is to be hoped that people start to recognise the scientific method exists. Gut feel and ‘common sense’ are poor guides in a novel situation. Perhaps we will see more appreciation of the subtleties that underly complex issues such as climate change so these do not remain simply a battle between belief and denial.

Even the most diehard Tories are grateful we have an NHS in Britain. Coming out of the crisis we should see a reconfiguring of national priorities. On a purely practical level we will see which world health systems coped best with the emergency. There will be hard, indisputable, evidence as to how effective the NHS is and where it must be improved (rather than blindly chucking money at it based on sentiment and lobbying). “Lessons will be learned” across the world.

The Age of Stupid may come to an end. Can we now eliminate the denial of facts that don’t suit the dogma? The reckoning is here for world leaders who ignore science, maths, economics and the lessons of history. The devastation caused by this crisis may be the final, if costly, proof that Trump is unfit to lead the world’s most powerful nation.

Can we hope that certain Asian countries will stop decimating wildlife for ‘delicacies’ and ‘traditional medicine’ before a pangolin-meets-bat virus kills a billion people?

Perhaps we realise that this planet is not ours to do with what we will. Nature is more powerful than any government.

Finally despite this onslaught against humankind almost all of us will survive, and next time we will be better prepared. We are in this for the species;

“These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things — taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many … our living frames are altogether immune… By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the Earth.” (H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds)

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A Walk in the Woods

Never go back, they, say, but today I walked back to summers of 45 or 50 years ago. Our village is on a hilltop, with a steep wooded valley to the north. We called it ‘The Woods’ and half my childhood memories rest down there. Allowed to go with my friends once I’d hit seven, we’d be off for whole days in the summer. Sometimes we’d take jam sandwiches and an old pop bottle full of tap water, and once I got my dog he’d come too. My mix of friends would vary but it was very Famous Five.

I walked ‘backwards’ today, from my new house towards my old. I ignored the ‘Private Property’ sign with only a moment’s hesitation, as we’d done as kids and as the couple of dog walkers I met still clearly do. We would rarely go in the winter, as days are short up here, the main paths sticky with mud and the side-paths slippery with fallen leaves. Even in the summer, we’d come back with grubby hands and knees and Shep’s white paws and underparts were almost as black as the rest of him. We’d pick brambles out of his fur and he’d suffer to be cleaned up with old towels.

Playing explorers the woods was the closest we would come to living the life of the Swallows and Amazons. Sometimes we would be commandos behind enemy lines, giving us good excuse to hide from whoever came our way; a bully from school, an adult who might worry about what we were up to, or the legendary Warden who I think we saw maybe twice ever. Just like the Swallows we made maps and gave the places names. It was amusing to hear younger kids on the estate copying our names for this place or that when it became their turn to be seven years old and set free. Paedophiles hadn’t been invented back then of course, we just didn’t talk to strangers (and they were Nazi soldiers or Russian agents, anyway).

So on a cold December day with a weak afternoon sun, I came in through a little-used southern gate and got my bearings in an area of old sandstone quarries we seldom reached. Some had been too deep to climb into, and even looked dangerous to our most adventurous spirits. Coming out of the trees I came to the area we used to call The Rabbit, a stretch of bracken on a slope above the woods proper. Somewhere below was our usual objective, the Rock Pool. Its water used to be clear enough to drink just where it gushed from a spring. There had once, I recalled, been a path, but I had to climb gingerly down through the deep and wet leaves. If I found it, the pool had become little more than a set of muddy puddles choked by leaves and brambles. Beyond had been a place we called the Bracken Field, great for building dens, but I couldn’t see that at all. Nature is dynamic, and a lot can happen in 45 years.

Scrambling back up to The Rabbit I saw just one family heading towards the estates. The old path skirting the houses seemed to have gone, so I went down, deeper into the trees. On each trip we’d take a decision whether we had the hours needed to go deeper into the woods here, or stay high and go around the spring-heads to The Rabbit, or simply stay on the Tops so we didn’t have to go down The Big Hill. The sycamores and oaks seemed even taller now than I remembered, old friends meeting again, all finally grown up.

20191229_140859One stream cuts its way between the trees to ‘The Prehistoric Place’, a swampy area perfect for climbing across on fallen trunks and bathed in a magical green light; I wasn’t planning going anywhere near it in winter. So I turned towards ‘The Big Hill’, which no longer seemed as Big as it did when it was the last feature to climb at the end of a hot  day’s adventuring.

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At the top I looked for ‘The Steps’, now only just visible beneath brambles. This had once been a bald hill crest with a mysterious set of concrete steps leading nowhere that made an excellent seat to survey the valley below. I was told it was a searchlight position from the war, but never knew the truth.

 

On the flat ground beyond The Steps some of the kids called The Tops, I struggled to get my bearings amid the silver birches. This used to be the most charmless area of the woods, pitted by half-filled quarries, and we’d pass quickly through if we had time to go deeper. Old paths once cut deep into the sandy soil here, such as we could kick up clouds in the summer to make explosions, but were now all gone. A huge quarry used to dominate this area, part-filled with rusting cars, old tyres and fridges. If you’ve read Stig of the Dump you’ll get the idea. It was also easy to get into, allowing us to hunt for dinosaur fossils in the exposed cliffs (which of course we never found) and even dig our own caveman cave. One burned-out car in particular had no doors, and a yawning sunroof, so we could become a spacecraft or B-17 crew; pilot, navigator, top gunner and sometimes even a radio man or tail gunner. The quarry is long gone, filled to its brim, capped with hardcore and allowed to be reclaimed by nature. Scrubby trees, bracken and brambles prove how quickly they can conceal the work of man.

After an hour, I came out by the in-road, the way we used to enter past a ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’ sign and an ineffective swing gate, both of which had vanished into memory. Across from the gate was a new estate, expanding the village way beyond that we’d known. Ten times the traffic now coursed the Lane that Mum used to caution me about crossing.

How on earth we survived childhood without plunging down a quarry face, drowning as we bridged a stream or suffering multiple injuries falling from a tree I never knew. Like superheroes we just brushed ourselves down, cleaned our wounds with spit, dabbed nettle stings with dock leaves and whirled our socks around our heads in the hope they would dry before we got home. I read that children don’t do this anymore; perhaps the world has become too busy. I was never a brave child, but this was where my spirit of adventure was born. Reading Tolkien took me back to those woods, its paths leading who knows where and a time when there was “less noise and more green”. The mystery of The Steps was my first clue that the ground hid secrets of the past, awakening perhaps an interest in archaeology. And of course we made up stories as we adventured, sometimes writing them down or adapting them for whatever essay the teachers set us. Those summer days still inspire me. Walking the Woods of my memory is not the same as walking The Woods that now are, but today I did both.

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Daggers of Delight

It’s October, which means it must be time for the CWA Daggers Awards, the Oscars of the Crime writing world. On the left of the featured image is M W Craven, winner of the Golden Dagger for the best crime novel of the year for The Puppet Show. Mike reminded everyone in his acceptance speech that he was shortlisted for a Debut Dagger in 2013, an encouragement to rookie crime writers everywhere. Beside him is Kate Ellis, also known for thrillers with an archaeological dimension, who won the Dagger in the Library. Kate was seated directly behind me and we joined a ‘group hug’ before she hurried to take her award with delight.

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One of the great things I’ve noticed about crime writers is they are not competitive. Whether a ballroom full of them replete with wine, or a small residual knot of diehards in the bar, they are supportive of their partners-in-crime instead of bitching about their rivals. There is genuine pleasure for the winner of a coveted dagger and genuine sympathy for those shortlisted who did not ‘win’; I cannot conceive of them as ‘losers’ as even to be shortlisted is a rare honour for a writer.

5F8EC035-BB05-4A23-95C0-08EE8252C012_1_201_aThe Awards Dinner has moved up a gear in the past few years and have become a swish affair with stylish dressing, polished presentations and a sensation of being right where it matters. It was held at the Leonardo Royal Hotel, London, which has assumed a new name since last year so challenging the detection skills of attendees.  I was seated on the Debut Daggers table in the company of shortlisted writers of unpublished crime novels of whom most had traveled from the USA. As fate would have it, the award went to the one nominee who couldn’t make it, the Australian Shelley Burr.

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Chance to meet and mingle – here with A. A. Chaudhury, Paul Sinclair and Kirstie Long.

The event has been widely talked about, and blogged about, so follow this link to Shots Magazine for more https://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com/2019/10/2019-crime-writers-association-dagger.html?fbclid=IwAR2BtYshSkox2FeU7Yc9PLPgZJIK5tzcATVrKS-9JekV4fUBffmQXGD-sU8

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Breaking the fourth wall – Gary Stratmann on duty as the CWA’s official photographer for the event

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End of Watch

It has been a poignant month for me. I’ve retired from the ‘day job’, what I described as the job of a lifetime and some called the Best Job in the Island. So there have been a whole string of ‘lasts’; the last committee meeting, the last management meeting, the last monthly report, the last appraisal, the last niggling bit of admin I could do without.

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In what I grandly called ‘Farewell Tour 2019’ I embarked on a series of nostalgia trips to picturesque parts of Guernsey and historic sites, plus a fortnight of parties, informal drinks and dinners with friends. No-contact policy be damned, there were a fair number of hugs with my colleagues and the odd tear shed or held back. On one level it was great fun, but on another level the ‘Farewell Tour’ was an act of bravado. Nobody likes good things to end, but if they continue indefinitely they become stale. We want to say ‘that was a good book’ and set it down, ‘that was a good meal’ and push the plate away, satisfied. I read a piece recently about the ‘reverse bucket list’ which is essentially ‘things I no longer need to do before I die.’ I no longer need to be a museum director; done that, tick box.

Castle farewell

As a delivery truck missed me by inches on my last day but one, I was reminded of the familiar movie trope of the ‘one last job’. Baby Driver – one last job and he’s free. Unforgiven, The Wild Bunch, The Town, Memphis Belle, we could go on. It often ends badly – or ironically. Sometimes we cannot let go of the job  – as in The New Centurions. You almost want to call ‘retire now!’ to Robert Duvall in Colors or ‘Just keep down’ (in German) to Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front. In the end we want to be Shane, riding off into the sunset or Gary Cooper simply laying down his gun and his badge, job done, and walking away. Yes there were things left unfinished, but after 50 exhibitions, and the same number of big events would my life be better if I completed 52 or 54? It was time to go.

IMG_3525Of course I made that quip about badge and gun in my farewell speech and indeed symbolically removed my ‘Head of Heritage Services’ badge; made all the more symbolic by the fact I had almost always forgotten to wear it for the past 13 years, and indeed once accidentally put on the ‘Head of Nerdery’ one of my staff made up on Big Geekend.

Never renowned for keeping a low profile, I was allowed to indulge and have fun. I fired the noonday gun dressed as Sir Isaac Brock, and received a Brock-themed leaving card as well as an amusing dress-up doll of myself as either Brock or an Archaeologist.

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Plenty of cards, prezzies and a bunch of flowers from the Latvian consul decked my desk. A lovely speech was delivered by colleague not renowned for speech-making, who I won’t name because he isn’t on facebook and won’t read this anyway. You will not be surprised to learn that a fair amount of alcohol was consumed over those two weeks. Indeed you might be disappointed if it hadn’t.

There was also the fun of the last Press interview, and the last trio of radio interviews where in the end I decided to pull punches and not make any political points about the state of Heritage. I slipped a few lines into my closing speech but in the end I decided to go out on a high. No drama, no gunfight, no ironic encounter with a delivery van. I rode into the sunset, or rather sailed into the dawn.

PS. I’m not retired from writing. An end is simply a new beginning.20191001_120516

 

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August in Ancient Alderney

I’ve been quiet on the blogging front, chiefly because I spent August digging in Alderney.  Running a dig is full-on, 7 days a week but I found time to sit back see the moon rise over Longis Bay, to watch the stars come out over Saye and enjoy plenty of Alderney hospitality. We’d swim at lunchtime or straight after work and it felt very ‘famous five’ at times. My phone thought I was in France (clearly visible 9 miles away).

Our team returned to Longis Common where we found a dozen Iron Age burials and traces or Roman buildings in an electric trench in 2017, followed up with a dig in 2018. The site overlooks the island’s natural harbour but was abandoned by islanders when the land was buried by up to 2m of sand during extensive sand-blows from the early Middle Ages. Since then it has largely been undisturbed by development.

This year’s dig reinforced our belief that Roman buildings spread for some 200m across the common, and confirmed that the Romans built on top of an earlier Iron Age Cemetery they may not even have been aware of. In the Paddock at the western, uphill, edge of the site, Trench 2 from 2018 was partly re-opened and then expanded under my colleague Dr Phil de Jersey. Parts of a large Roman building stood here with clay-bonded walls up to a metre high made of local sandstone. Large sandstone blocks were placed vertically to form parts of these walls and a courtyard of roughly hewn flat stones interleaved between two layers of clay stood between them. Extending the trench this year revealed another room or courtyard with a hearth, and a doorway framed by upright slabs. Very late-looking Pottery points to these buildings being in use in the third to fourth centuries, so still occupied at the same time as the late Roman small fort at the Nunnery nearby. They could have been part of a vicus outside the fort.

A gap in the paved courtyard enabled a very deep excavation to reach the Iron Age cemetery.

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Two skeletons were found interred one on top of the other, with the uppermost wearing two neck rings, one of bronze and the other a combination of bronze and iron (David Nash)

A third skeleton was buried close by, in a stone cist, with a small pot by its shoulder. These are ‘high status’ burials, and taken with earlier discoveries show that the Iron Age population of Alderney was affluent and had links with communities in France. We are pretty convinced that they had a role in controlling trade routes, as northbound ships hugging the Gallic coast carrying wine and Mediterranean luxuries would pass within sight of Longis, as would southbound ships carrying produce from the north. This importance carried through to the Roman period, explaining their interest in the small island.

Some 50m downhill, on the Common closer to the sea, geophysics showed a large sweeping shadow so Trench 4 was dug to investigate. Dubbed the ‘Punishment Trench’ large quantities of sand needed to be removed by hand, to be followed by disappointment when the shadow turned out to be a trackway with tyre-ruts probably dating to the German Occupation of WW2. Removing yet more sand however revealed a medieval wall, and still deeper was a metre-thick Roman wall. At the base of the site was a curious structure of roughly shaped granite cobbles that is still causing some head-scratching.

Within 50m of the Nunnery, I led a group of volunteer diggers to expand Trench 3 dug by school students in 2018. It has been my curse in recent years to dig sites criss-crossed by utilities and this was another. Avoiding two electric mains, a water main and an old sewer we put in a 13m long trench and a trio of companion trenches to reveal a building with three rooms (or three adjacent buildings). These again employed large upright slabs on their internal walls which stood just less than a metre high. A layer of clay appears to have been laid down to seal the earlier soils before building commenced. The central room is over five metres by five metres and the overall plan suggests a civilian building rather than military barracks. A vertical slab once formed one side of a doorway,

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Main Street, Riduna? An area of large slabs could be a courtyard or possibly a road leading towards the Nunnery and the sea. (David Nash)

Given the similarity in building style and dating it is probable that the buildings in all the trenches were late Roman. All had earlier Roman pottery in layers running under the building showing there was earlier Roman activity on the site. The lack of large amounts of rubble suggests that the walls had been little higher in antiquity than they are now, with the upper parts of the buildings being timber-framed with wattle-and daub infill. The small amount of roof tile recovered suggests the buildings were roofed in perishable materials such as wooden shingles.

Late in the life of the building, when floors were no longer intact, the site was used for industrial activity including what looks like ironworking. A surprise find was made in one corner of the southern room of the Trench 3 building where part of a cobbled floor remained.  Beside a crushed pot of post-Roman style was the base of a glass flask with a Christian symbol.

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Flummoxed momentarily by this find, I quickly found parallels suggesting this is Merovingian, dating from the 5th to 7th century when the Franks replaced the Romans as rulers of this region. (Mike Deane)

Frankish material is extremely rare in the Channel Islands, and opens a new chapter in the history of Alderney.

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Sherds of stamped pottery of the same date were found over the same cobbled floor; the glass was found a metre to my right, behind that wall. (David Nash)

After the site was abandoned it was buried by wind-blown sand, the walls themselves probably encouraging it to accumulate. Work is still to continuing on the finds, but this year’s excavation proved that the Iron Age cemetery is extensive, and that its occupants were of high status. Exactly where those people once lived is an open question for the future. Our team has investigated perhaps 1% of the later Roman structures of the settlement at Longis, and we have not seen any traces of earlier Roman buildings or an earlier fort, so there is enormous potential for investigating this pristine site for years to come.

A big thanks to all my friends and colleagues who made this possible including Guernsey Museum staff, local and Guernsey volunteers, and our trio of students. It wouldn’t have been possible without support from the Alderney Society, Alderney Electricity, the States of Alderney, our many friends in the island and kind permission of the landowners.

 

 

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Smoke Gets in Your Plot

Picture the scene. The detective walks into the bar and approaches the femme fatale. Very Bogart and Bacall. He offers her a cigarette, then lights it for her. Yaaawn…

I have read so many thrillers recently which would have been two chapters shorter if the lead characters didn’t smoke. Descriptions of people fiddling with cigarettes, lighters, matches etc are simply boring. People also scratch their noses, fart and go to the loo but we seldom read about it in fiction unless it’s a plot driver.

The same goes for films and TV shows, although these divide fairly neatly into ‘smoking’ or ‘non smoking’ sections. In the latter there is a cuteness reserved for cigars and pipes in the hands of old men, even in fare aimed at children.

It may depend on the writer or the perceived audience, but all media to some extent reflects the attitude of the times. In the modern western world the educated middle class largely do not smoke, so the habit is confined to villains, members of the lower classes and characters the writers think needs a quirk. On the tip side of this, a disproportionate number of writers of my acquaintance are still smoking in one form or another, so perhaps their view of normality differs from mine. There is a trope which links smoking to stress, crisis, fatigue, recklessness, sin, excess and rebellion which of course we meet far more of in fiction than real life.

It does get tedious to watch on-screen and it starts to feel like dramatic laziness, even in shows that are otherwise excellent like Peaky Blinders or Babylon Berlin. What is the character doing? Uh oh, smoking. Like 120 per day for some characters, then. By contrast, the TV adaption of The Little Drummer Girl made the selective use of cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia a period-appropriate part of the plot.

I had fun with this trope in the Jeffrey Flint novels, as despite being a product of the 80s University system Flint doesn’t smoke – he doesn’t see the point and objects to swallowing the lies of tobacco multinationals. Instead he and Tyrone kill time eating Mars Bars, drinking Coke from cans or spinning out a pint of real ale. It’s the villains that are the smokers. As you may guess I’ve never smoked, and part of the reason is that tobacco has killed several members of my family; I don’t want to boost the bastards’ profits by making it glamorous, cute, sexy or in any way ‘manly’. None of my close friends and hardly any of my wider social circle smoke, which makes me rather like a nun writing sex scenes.

I’m currently working on a 1930s plot, so that gives me a dilemma as (a) everyone is smoking in contemporary ’30s movies and (b) ‘period’ ’30s movies made in modern times fall into either the ‘smoking’ or ‘non-smoking’ camp. Films made in the ’30s were still in the thrall of movie star glamour and the cigarette was a fashion accessory – even in fashion magazines. ‘Retro’ films either ape this style to overdose on period feel, or go for a more sanitized version of the past that doesn’t ring true. Golden Age novels also take the same approach, not seeing the problems inherent in the habit that we do now beyond certain questions of etiquette.

So how do I avoid boring not just the readers but myself with endless smoking scenes? First, assume it is just happening (like scratching noses, farting etc). Second, have a non-smoking lead. This is perfectly plausible, as despite the view that ‘everyone smoked’ back then it was not true. Tobacco consumption in the UK in the ’30s was half that in the ’40s and a third of that in the ’60s, when it peaked. With unemployment at 20% big slices of the population were simply too poor, and it was still viewed in many circles as unseemly for women. With a statistic at the equivalent of 4 cigarettes consumed per day per adult, there is plenty of scope for 1930s characters who don’t smoke at all or do so with restraint. I was interested to discover that the male and female leads in both Martin Edwards’ recent Gallows Court and Rory Clements’ Corpus are non-smokers. Perhaps I’m not the only one with this view.

So, a clean-air breathing hero braves the ’30s. I am going to have some fun…

Follow Jason Monaghan Books on Facebook.

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Things We Writers Learn

I’m writing a book set in the 1930s and passed the 30,000-word mark today with a loud hurrah and a celebratory glass of Diet Coke. My last novel was Glint of Light on Broken Glass which all in all took three years to research and write, with one of those years being absorbed by getting the detail of 1913-1919 correct. I was helped by it being set right outside my front door and by its sedate fable-like tone which allowed liberties with language, but I had to carefully avoid modern expressions and Americanisms.

So to the 1930s, and I’m reading as much as I can and catching films made in or about the period. One challenge of my new thriller is that my cast of characters are witty, fast-talking and at times violent. Without delving into cliché I need to get those snappy conversations right. I’m taking a leaf out of Lee Child’s book, in that I heard him at a conference saying that as soon as he hits a point where he needs a piece of research, he does it there and then. Usually I retrofit my research, glossing over the detail until I’m sure the plot demands it. I wasted enough gloriously evocative scenes in my early writing to learn this lesson.

My early drafts are largely conversations, to allow my characters to drive the story forward which I will then back-fill with time and place as the plot becomes clear. However for the 1930s this means stopping and checking when I stumble across a word or phrase that could be anachronistic. A thesaurus, various books of phrase and fable and online versions are hastily consulted. This week I learned that jolly hockey sticks did not come in until the 1950s, but not my cup of tea or right up your street might just be acceptable after 1930. To my surprise Beating up and snitch were much older than I thought, so fine to use.

I also learned how to pick a lock and open a locked suitcase this week. There are Youtube tutorials which will dissuade you of the value of locking anything ever again. I’ve done some work on Swiss banknotes,  obsolescent German firearms and London ‘roadhouse’ clubs. One of the drawbacks of using the web for research is that more and more the search terms come up with adverts. This was particularly the case when looking for hotels to base my skulduggery in. I was surprised to learn, for example, that you can still buy British Union of Fascists flags over the internet. I expected to be able to find a selection of fascist marching songs, but was intrigued to find many carried by Russian websites with explicit warnings that it was illegal to download them in Germany. Having also looked up pederast, Irish street slang and the history of the mafia I must have a very dodgy-looking search history!

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An Eye for Nature

PLV 1Whilst working on a new thriller, and editing the one I ‘finished’ earlier, I have a new project to keep me out of mischief. I’m teaming up with artist Peter Le Vasseur to produce a book on his life and work. In particular the book will feature Peter’s later works with ecological and conservation themes.

PLV3Although Peter was born in Guernsey and returned here to live in the 70s, his formative years as an artist saw him enter the ‘sixties London art scene with clients including film stars, musicians and the aristocracy. The Beatles bought one of his earliest works, whilst he was experimenting with fantasy in what he calls his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ period. His early fantasies are still cropping up in London auctions, with his 1964 work Tattooed Sailor recently selling at Sotheby’s for many times its estimate.

 

Peter finally established his iconic style of highly detailed paintings of the natural world, generally packaged with a ‘message’, although for himself he claims not to be political. At times his work has a dark humour or carries ironic titles as it reflects the impact of the modern human world on both the environment and traditional societies.

This will be a high quality art book with the paintings as its main focus, so is going to need a significant amount of financial support to be produced. It would be particularly relevant to a large international organisation involved in environmental issues, or to a multinational with corporate social responsibility objectives which might like to sponsor a work it can give to its major clients.

I’m interested in ideas from you folks out there. Share with your contacts and see if we can find that sponsor. I can be contacted through this blog page.

For more of Peter’s work see www.peterlevasseur.com .

For those living in Guernsey, Peter currently has an exhibition of his works at the Coach House Gallery, and his large work The Tree of Life is on permanent display at Guernsey Museum where it was voted ‘The People’s Choice.’

 

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New Year, New Novel

A New Year’s Day tradition for me has been to start a new novel, or kick-start one that has been slumbering as a few chapters in rough draft. A couple of hundred words will do.

This year I got ahead of myself. With the opening three or four chapters of ‘AW’ already in mind, I put down the first page three days ago.

NRT is done, as far as it can be before the next round of editorial comments come back. In the attached photo I am pondering potential titles for the book. Meantime the challenge is to write the follow-up. Not necessarily a sequel, mind. Who is saying that any of the lead characters survived? Perhaps their story arcs are complete.

What I’ve done is start plotting two follow-up books, using the same style and tone. Both are contemporary mysteries. Why two? Firstly because I have two ideas rattling around in my head that I want to explore. Also, although starting a story is easy, there is not always a middle to explore or a neat ending to be reached. Most real-world mysteries are solved extremely quickly or drag on for years in a mess of loose ends and inadequate evidence.

An author’s chat group ’10 Minute Novelists’ carried a story by one writer on how he uses whiteboards for plotting. To date I’d used ‘plot spiders’ scrawled on A4 paper, but this seemed like a great idea so whilst I was out Christmas shopping, I bought two.

The story with code name ‘AW’ hit a plot snag when I was two-thirds the way down that first page. A new whiteboard hung on my study wall is where I’m now planning my way around it. Perhaps the problem I hit as an author can simply be passed to the characters to solve? Meanwhile, I have both beginning and end in mind for the story code name ‘DC’  but need to think out a middle to tie both together.

So I’m daydreaming and doodling through post-Christmas television, starting to ‘remember’ the stories that have not been written yet. The chart on my whiteboard grows more complex, and I’ve opened two folders on my computers where the first ideas are taking root.

2018 is going to be an exciting year.

 

 

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Rubber Duck Moment

Okay, I admit it. My work-in-progress contains a rubber duck moment. Codename NRT, the novel has a very short timeframe. There is no chance to get to know the characters before they are plunged into the mystery on page 1. Thumbnails must suffice until enough pages have been peppered with hints and clues from their mode of dress, their speech, the background information they let free with and straight prose description. I’ve avoided ‘plot bricks’ as far as I can; those clumsy speeches where someone says ‘But Sally, you are my sister!’

Key pieces of a character’s history should fall out in natural dialogue, challenge and argument.  We as readers are new acquaintances of these people, and within the story come the subtle enquiries new acquaintances make – are you married, do you have any children? If not asked directly people often go for the opening, ‘So you actually worked for NASA?’ This explains the character’s hint of a Transatlantic accent and allows a lead in to how she ended up in the USA and why she came back. We already know she’s scarily smart. Police procedurals are allowed to be more blunt: ‘Exactly what is your relationship to the deceased?’

 Drink is great. In their cups, people often spill their life story. Not always in a coherent fashion, not always honestly and rarely in chronological order but it tumbles out. ‘I was drinking this stuff when I met him in that night club.’

 A point came in NRT where there were still many unanswered questions about character A. She keeps her own council, we never meet her friends or her family or her workmates; all these are usual vehicles for allowing us to expand our understanding of the person underneath. We often see a character at work, we see the interaction with Mum/Sister/Boyfriend and they naturally ask about her day, or remind her of some upcoming appointment. Not so with A. So I needed a rubber duck moment to allow her to open up, drop enough facts about her past to allow us to piece together the last clues to her motivation.

 The classic scene has our grizzled hero explain that the reason he’s hard-bitten and avoids company is because his father threw away his rubber duck when he was six. He never trusted anyone else again, never wanted to be a father himself, never cared for family. Movies often use this vehicle, some well, some clumsily. Unlike novels, a thriller only has moments to create thumbnail characters. Female thriller heroes/villains/femmes fatales often need such a moment to explain why their behaviour is abberant – an abusive relationship, a lost child, an ugly assault, bloody men obstructing their path to the top. By their nature males can often get away with violent, obsessive or antisocial behaviour without needing deep psychological analysis of how they got there.

 So two of my characters come together in bar, tired, jaded at the end of their tether. J is chatty, needing company. She gets very little out of A beyond single-line responses, but is enough for us to finally understand A’s life choices.

‘Do you want to call your people?’

‘I don’t have any people.’

‘Mum?’

‘Died having my sister.’

‘So you’ve a sister?’

‘She died too. It was very Victorian.’

Mother, sister and next her father are dealt with in a few words each. We already know why she quit NASA and are getting to understand how she came to work there in the first place. It is not purely a rubber duck moment though; by using the past, I lead into hints and undercurrents of what is to come. This woman has no family and no ties; but does she have a plan?

 

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Four Stories to Change the World

Back in November I took screenshots of four stories from the internet in the same 24 hours. Record floods in Venice and Yorkshire, record snowfall in the USA, and the harbinger of the Australian bush fires that are still raging. These were drowned out by election excitement, hence the blog did not appear. What strikes me is there are headlines like this almost every day, often down in the 3rd or 4th story on the page. Yes we Brits love to talk about the weather, and there will be a record being broken somewhere on the planet for something most days of the week simply because it is a big place and so many things are being measured, but these stories are accumulating to become the narrative of the age.

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I was marooned on a train during those Yorkshire floods. It is not fake news.

Climate change has gone from being sci fi hokum to fringe science to debatable science to mainstream acceptance. Okay, it is a massively complex subject that very few people truly understand (including me) but scientific consensus diverges chiefly in the detail rather than the trajectory. Non-expert members of the public picking and choosing between the ever-changing models being developed produces arguments as useful as debating the colour of an orange.

Politicians are in a sticky place. Most are not as stupid and ill-informed as the public believes, and belief is a big part of the problem. People will say they do not ‘believe’ in climate change, but what they mean is that the idea does not fit with their world view. Few of us are equipped to understand the maths, critically review the last few hundred relevant academic papers or contribute to cutting-edge conferences. ‘Belief’ kicks in where there is no science, no hard facts, no experimental observation that can be repeated by others. It is the absence of science. Climate change is a fact, we have a good grasp of the many factors that can cause it, and have masses of proof that it has happened through the whole history of the planet; Ice Ages, Snowball Earth, climatic optimums and so forth.

So back to the Politicians. They have to listen to the people who keep them in power (the electorate, the Party, Big Oil or whoever) otherwise they will not be in power very long. My conscientious recycling will not save the planet, and nor will arbitrary government targets. Fighting climate change can only happen at governmental level, but it needs the will of the people to be behind it first. Governments cannot legislate against the public will – think of the failure of US Prohibition in the ‘20s. Once the government implements its new policies and targets we all have to do ‘our bit’. Policy, law, ethics, science, public acceptance and self-interest must all come together. If we look at the way smoking has been reduced in the West we have seen (a) scientific consensus on the harm it does (b) creeping anti-tobacco legislation by governments that listen (c) progressive price increases (d) health education promoting individual benefits (e) social stigma vs smoking (f) big tobacco losing the moral argument (g) alternative technology/income streams (vaping) (h) spin-off benefits to the economy (health expenditure/reducing premature death).

20191113_204111The Australian bush fires could ironically be good news, in that they should be the wake-up call to the world. It’s a big headline-grabbing climatic disaster – and I hate to say it ­– one that affects white people. Mark Lynas’ excellent book Six Degrees which I read in 2007 includes the projection that Australia could become uninhabitable with three degrees of global warming; we’re already on track for two. It is a salient lesson as Australia has the world’s second highest C02 footprint per capita (the UK comes 8th with just less than half the footprint). Their pilloried Prime Minister, if he survives the fire season, will be forced to confront the realities of climate change, even if Australia is not the sole author of its own crisis. Public self-interest in not being driven from their homes in terror will start to outweigh precious economic and personal freedom issues that dog green policies.

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So is anyone taking note other than earnest Swedish teenagers? The answer hopefully is yes. The big hyrocarbon companies are aware their stock values will tumble if human-driven global warming becomes too obvious to ignore. They must diversify or die, much as the tobacco companies started doing. Geopolitical thinkers know that the eternal crises of the Middle East will fade as we cease to be driven by oil; posturing by Iran or the Saudis will be of little global relevance and the West lose all excuse to interfere. This cannot have been lost on Pentagon strategists; the USA has already spent $5 trillion and 7,000 American lives on the Iraq conflict to no long-term benefit. Smart US politicians must also know this, even if not yet ready to speak it out loud.

Education (aka climate change propaganda) is making its mark and there is a growing tolerance for green legislation and acceptance of initiatives such as recycling as a normal part of life. Much of it in truth just involves being nice and taking life gently. Not being green is starting to be socially unacceptable; the big car, the long-haul holiday and the 16oz beef steak are losing their shine. One day they might become as naff as a fat cigar or a mink coat.

Just as thousands of scientists know there is a climate emergency underway, it has become worthwhile for thousands more to work on solutions; new technologies, new products, new opportunities, knowing there will be a market for the right inventions. The public is at last hungry for carbon-neutral solutions – so long as they can afford them. As soon as the costs of renewable energy approach that of hydrocarbons, the sharper businesses will seize the opportunities and use their promotional skills to pull the public with them, reap the profits and extinguish the hydrocarbon dinosaurs. People will act when self-interest kicks in at a much more tangible level than when aroused by a David Attenborough documentary. Politicians will have no reason not to listen. We need the activists, we need the idealists but ironically it could be big business, not neo-hippy protesters, that end up saving the planet.

 

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Taxing Thoughts

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed”  (Luke 2:1, King James Bible)

Kicking off with a seasonal quote, and closely following party promises leading up to the  General Election, here are some thoughts from an ex-civil servant. I might add that I’ve also worked in the arena of legal tax avoidance and worked against tax evasion.

Governments have no money. When a party says ‘We will spend a million pounds’ they mean ‘You will spend a million pounds’.

95% of Government spending is already fixed, so any new administration has very little wriggle room. Public sector salaries take an enormous slice of the cake, property demands to be looked after and much expenditure is ‘formula led’ based on the number of people sick, homeless, unemployed etc. Quibble the percentage if you may, but this expenditure cannot be drastically changed in the short term.

Taxation changes behaviour, so increasing taxes does not necessarily increase revenue. This sounds counter-intuitive but has been proved repeatedly. The higher taxes are, the more people will cheat and the more worthwhile it is to look for legal ways to avoid paying. They might work less, retire earlier, give up work entirely, shift their spending pattern or move to Monaco. It may be cathartic to hit the rich, but don’t rely on it bringing in more money.

Reducing taxes can have the reverse effect. However, the government cannot determine how or where people will spend their tax savings so it can simply be a giveaway without that money necessarily reaching the parts of the economy where it is needed. Tax changes up or down need surgical targeting not a blunt hammer.

Tax evasion is illegal but tax avoidance is not. It is a principle of law that nobody is obliged to pay any more tax than they are legally required to, and only a fool would do so willingly. The more complex a taxation regime is, the easier it is for people to find loopholes. Big corporations and high earners are very good at finding loopholes.

A “1% increase” is not as trivial as it sounds. A 1% increase on a 20% tax rate is 5% by my maths. Most people and most businesses spend or commit most of the income they have, so even a small increase could bite heavily into the amount left after normal expenses, the difference between profit and loss. A lot of businesses are very marginal, so adverse tax changes mean they may close or simply pass the cost on to consumers. 

Green Taxes cut one way but not both. If the objective is to raise money, the government must acquiesce in the undesirable behaviour (i.e. air transport levy). If the objective is to change behaviour (i.e. smoking), the government must expect declining revenues as people adjust their lifestyle.

No Taxation Without Representation swings back to become ‘No representation without taxation’. Progressive taxation is a fine idea, in that the poor pay relatively little and the rich pay proportionally much more. The problem is that this pushes a lot of power into the hands of the rich, or at least the wealthier 50% of the population who pay the majority of the tax. Governments have to treat the affluent carefully; one person on a million-pound salary pays enough tax to fund a dozen nurses.

Minorities have limited synergy. One weakness of the left is the desire to support a range of disadvantaged or self-defined oppressed groups which have little else in common. Whilst each cause in isolation may be deserving, they are competing for scarce resource. Do we support pensioners or the young low-paid, the single mothers or the asylum seekers, council tenants or firemen? If you are not in the smorgasbord of deserving causes you might ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ and vote for someone else.

Socialists have a very expensive constituency not only in those sections of the population who pay relatively little tax but have high demands on services, but also the public sector workers themselves. Once elected, they have a big pay-off to face before making any actual improvements in services. Ironically they must rely on a healthy capitalist economy to provide the taxes to fuel their programmes.

Conservatives will always have a hard sell at election time. Prudence is boring, pragmatism looks hard-faced, traditionalism looks old-fashioned and there is always drag against progressive ideas. As they play to the comfortable middle class and aspirant working class, their policies look selfish and their candidates can smell of money and privilege. Opposing conservative policy becomes child’s play and supporting it feels smug, whilst dumbed-down conservatism simply comes across as dumb. Hence we have the ‘shy Tory’ phenomena in Britain which has fooled pollsters and leaves energetic campaigners on the left flummoxed.

Whoever wins, there is not enough money and there never will be enough money. If we spent the entire GDP on health, people would still get sick and die. This is a big problem for my colleagues working in museums, libraries, art galleries and across the heritage sector. We don’t stop children dying or houses burning down or defend against the enemy at the gates so we know we will only get a fraction of 1% of expenditure, and have to fight for every tenth of a decimal point.

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The Elephant in the Shed

There’s an elephant in the room, but there is also one out in the garden and another in the shed. In fact I’m thinking of buying the field next door to accommodate more elephants. Very few people will notice them, because these are elephants we really don’t want to see, and want to tame even less.

The elephant is human population growth.

This spring I went to Cambodia, which suffered the most horrific conflict during the 1980s which killed up to a third of the population of six to seven million. A few decades later the figure has bounced up to 15 million. Tour guides proudly told us of the burgeoning industrialisation of an economy once almost entirely based on agriculture. Expecting to see the infamous jungle of ‘Nam movies, I mainly saw fields, fruit groves and rice paddies. Family size is falling with industrialisation, but the transition was stark. Farmers are cutting back the forest to create more land and I saw new roads leading to cleared wasteland and raised platforms designated for ‘new cities’ in flood-prone areas.

Moving on to Vietnam, the jungle was mainly absent too. Paddies and farms stretched along the banks of the Mekong. At over 90 million, ‘Nam has 2.5 times the population it had at the start of what they call ‘The American War’ despite the widespread slaughter and economic destruction. Whilst Cambodia still has a more traditional feel, Vietnam is on the path to looking like everywhere else: skyscrapers, billboards, traffic junctions, shopping malls and take-aways. At each major junction in Saigon (as most locals still call it), a phalanx of motorbikes eight wide and ten deep awaits the changing of the lights. They set off in a roar, weaving between each other in a great shoal. My thought was; ‘Whatever happens when all these people get cars?’

The tourist sites were heaving. Used to the ‘busy’ days in Guernsey when we were lucky to get 3 or 400 people turning up at the Castle I was in a whole different world. Hordes poured into the semi-abandoned jungle-clad ruin of Ta Prohm. Some 15,000 per day go into the Angkor Wat complex,  mostly Chinese, Koreans and a few Australians. Most will have flown.

Racking up my air miles, knowing I’m doing more damage to the climate than those motorcyclists, I looked out of my airliner window in the small hours, down into the darkness of the ‘stans from a few miles up. Or it should have been darkness, based on how blank all the atlases of that region look. Instead there were city lights, glittering as orange jewels, scattered in all directions. The world felt scarily full at that moment.

I came back to the interminable Brexit debate, and we know ‘Leave’ was in large part fuelled by fears over immigration. Those fears were bumped up by the exodus from Syria and Libya and other war-torn regions. We might imagine these wars are about one religious sect fighting another because they wear the wrong colour hat on Fridays, but like most wars resources are the root cause. Land is in short supply, fertile land is even scarcer and fresh water is at a premium across great swathes of the world. Bloody squabbles erupt over oil, diamonds, copper and so forth. Fuel is running out and shortages are likely to spark even more conflicts. ‘Rare earth’ metals on which much modern technology such as my smartphone relies are becoming rarer.

Millions are now living on mountains, volcano slopes, in swamps, in deserts, below sea-level, on tiny islands, in arctic regions and where jungle used to be. These areas could not naturally sustain more than a handful of human bands, yet we are building cities. Who is surprised when these areas are devastated by wildfires/ cyclones/ floods/ famine/ drought? Humans are not supposed to live there.

Nobody knows what the ‘carrying capacity’ of the Earth is but at 7.7 billion people and rising we may find out the hard way. It certainly cannot sustain 7.7 billion Americans, and who is to deny all those people the standard of consumption the Americans enjoy?

Environmentalists for the most part don’t want to talk about population. It smacks of poor-shaming and lets the resource-guzzling West off the hook. The UN doesn’t want to talk about it either; why should the West have it so good and not everyone else? Government control of population smacks of authoritarianism; it offends liberals, libertarians and ultra-conservatives alike, whilst the left would rather blame capitalism for the world’s problems. Birth control of any form also offends numerous religious groups.

Last year the world hosted an extra 82 million people, that’s an additional 160,000 more per day. It’s more than died in the whole Second World War and it would take a pandemic on the scale of the Spanish Flu or Black Death to significantly knock it back. Most growth is in the poorer regions of the world already groaning under the weight of numbers and environmental degradation. Their cities are choking with pollution.

foffIt is not surprising millions want to move to Europe or America, and it is unsurprising that Europeans and people who have already made it to America don’t want their already overcrowded lands crowding even more. I saw a t-shirt on sale in South Dakota reading ‘Fuck off, We’re Full’. You can buy them on Amazon, car stickers too. Trump and his ilk use unpleasant language, but they articulate the fears of their electorate.

 

Migration is part of the human story, it has happened since the dawn of time. It has brought marriage and trade, the exchange of ideas and culture and it has brought prosperity to many. It has also brought war, exploitation, slavery, discrimination, disease, resource-raiding and extermination. Opposing migration is commonly decried as racist, a denial of human rights and a policy of the far right. Left-leaning Greens don’t have an anti-immigration/population control stance, yet population growth undermines efforts to consume less and preserve wild places. The net 270,000 people coming into the UK in 2018 is equivalent to a new city with the footprint of Newcastle, and even if they are poor when they arrive we can’t ban them from one day owning Range Rovers, flying to Florida or eating beef.

Across Europe we have seen the rise of ‘populist’ candidates with simplistic messages and ‘far right’ anti-immigration parties in a mood that smacks of the 1930s. A major problem is that Liberals and centre/right democrats have vacated the debate as too hot to handle. It is easier to attack the Alt-Right on the basis of their rhetoric than on the uncomfortable problems provoking it, so pragmatic discussion is almost non-existent.

No-Blade-Of-Grass-poster-468x330We are in very scary, apocalyptic movie territory; No Blade of Grass and Interstellar both play on the results of global crop failures. The crazy world of Mad Max fights over water and oil. As a teenager I was chilled by the overpopulated world of Soylent Green and J G Ballard’s Billenium.

History has shown us that people under environmental stress do not sit still and die. The Migration Period saw peoples from the east moving west in successive waves; Huns, Goths, Vandals, Franks and Saxons. Even the names of these groups still carry echoes of the violence that followed. Illegal immigrants by definition are breaking laws, and criminal gangs are exploiting desperate people from the south prepared to risk their lives for a new home in the north.

The displacement of five million people from Syria is a new factor destabilising the European order, fuelling Brexit, which and in turn threatens the break-up of the United Kingdom. What if 50 million desperate people were on the move? If the climate change Cassandras are even close to being right, a billion could be displaced by rising seas and expanding deserts. No country is going to want them, but who is going to stop them? Unless rational people start to address the difficult issues, irrational people will be left to take the initiative.

We’re going to need a bigger shed.

 

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