Bollywood... with Morris Dancing?

Not only my kind of film, but Bride and Prejudice seems to be one of the few that can cross the demographic of my family - though there weren't enough Orcs in it for Rachel.

It's got fabulous dance numbers - I haven't seen any real bollywood films, but they reminded me of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - and plenty of direct quotes from the original Jane Austen. In fact, with the whole strand about arranged marriages worked in very intelligently, an Indian update of the story probably works better than an update into Western society.

And, as a bonus, the Rutland Morris Men appear in it, including an amusing Bollywood style out-take during the credits.

Space Psychosis and Medieval Castration

I saw two shows in one weekend: a musical about space psychosis with Kitty on Saturday, and a theologian getting castrated at the Globe with Ali on Sunday.

The Dust Collectors was a lot of fun. A completely new musical, put on for a week in the wonderful South London Theatre, dealing with the troubles of astronauts returning to Earth.

This was a theatrical experience you'd be unlikely to get anywhere else, and it went down well with me and nine-year old Kitty. It had some serious strands, some very funny parts, good songs and great choreography. And - amateur theatre gold dust - lots of talented people ,working really hard and having fun.

In Extremis at the Globe Theatre, was the story of Abelard and Heloise, dramatised by Howard Brenton. Theological debate, or love story, or both? They sort of wove together, and the play really worked well - though was Brenton unfair to the mystic Bernard of Clairvaux, chief enemy of Abelard's rationalistic approach to religion? Bernard came on like a fundamentalist freak, and Abelard was a one-man mini-Reformation - and yet, you could see the other side of the arguments... good play.

And it had the kind of comedy business they do well at the Globe.

Best Goose Weepie of All Time?

I found Fly Away Home in a Helston charity shop for 50p. We all watched it again, for the first time since 1997, a few days before Kitty was born.

It's a family animal weepie, a genre which I have seen far too many of in my time, but it's head and shoulders above the brand leader of that pack, Free Willy. It's got wonderful nature filming, good acting from Anna Paquin and Jeff Daniels, and a story that pulls the usual emotional stops, but leaves some things understated. And it's - sort of - true.

Right from the off, you're rooting for Amy (Anna Paquin). The movie opens and (more or less) closes with long sequences from her viewpoint, where the sound goes away, replaced by music. In that, it's very reminiscent of the fantastic Black Stallion, also directed by Caroll Ballard.

The movie doesn't suffer from the two-dimensional "bad guys" who are probably the most irritating feature of the animal weepie. In the other movies, the bad guys try to kill the whale, dolphin, dog, bear, reindeer or whatever animal the film's about; they usually try to kill the child hero (who's such a whingeing brat you wish they'd succeed). They also endanger the local environment with their evil money-making schemes.

At the end of these movies, the bad guys lose, of course. They get punished. But these are kids' movies, so nothing really bad can happen to them. Nine times out of ten, at the climax of the movie, the bad guys fall in the water. And that's it.

Fly Away Home has a game warden who's not a bad guy - he's against developers but tries to play by the rules. And at the end, a developer just sighs and turns off his JCB. Much more satisfying, much more true.

How true is the movie in the factual sense? I was disappointed to find that Amy is completely invented. There was no girl-with-no-mother, who led her geese to freedom. That whole part of the story is constructed - including a childhood in New Zealand to explain Anna Paquin's accent.

But the dad is based on Bill Lishman, a real sculptor, inventor and pioneer. He was involved in the film, which came out only three years after he really did lead a flock of geese from Canada to the US (a story which apparently everyone else heard of but I missed somehow). He "imprinted" geese for the film, to follow the actors, and the planes they used. His Operation Migration is now working with Whooping Cranes.

I'm impressed by the speed with which they got the story together, and got the film made.

And there's something else. The video box tells me it's the "RSPB's Flim of the Year". I can see that, and the RSPB does sell DVDs, but does it have a film of the year every year? What other movies got the award? Chicken Run? The Birds?

What a heavy printer!

I'm having a high time this week, entering product reviews and writing news stories at ZDnet.

Here's the highlight so far. Misreading the units in the publishing system, I accidentally published a review (now fixed)which shrunk a Lexmark printer to about six inches high, and increased its weight to 66kg.

Yes. That was the highlight.

Amusing, wasn't it?

TalkTalk comes through

This morning, I'm a happy bunny.

Yesterday, TalkTalk definitely had problems, but today everything is looking good. This morning, I tried the router again, and it was connected. The password I put in yesterday was working just fine.

There's no technical issues to make this different from other broadband, and at least two of my routers work (the basic old Netgear and the Fritz box).

The Fritz box's snazzy diagnostics tell me I'm getting the same 2 Mbit/s that Pipex was giving me (though the line is actually capable of 8 Mbit/s). But I'm not grumbling.

Just to check things fully, I made a call to Tech support, feeling somewhat embarassed to make a call with no actual support problem. I got connected in about one minute and had a useful conversation. f

Apparently, there were "technical problems with the phone system" yesterday, that cut people off. I had a clear and coherent conversation for two or three minutes today and didn't see any trouble. I asked about the speed and got a sensible answer. I'm getting 2 Mbit/s because they're currently using the BT equipment. By the end of next year, TalkTalk, with "unbundling" hopes to upgrade its own equipment in the majority of exchanges, and will send me a letter when this happens.

My friend in the callcentre tells me that TalkTalk has already upgraded about 30 percent of its customers.

On the basis of this - I say go for it. If you can dial a phone and enter a password to your router, and if saving £20 a month is meaningful, TalkTalk's technology and support seems adequate so far.

The parcel at the Post Office? That turned out to be a re herring - some spring bulbs that are due to be planted now.

TalkTalk is in overload

I thought the fuss about talkTalk was hyped. The company is promising free broadband, and the media's been full of predictions of doom. The call centres can't possibly keep up etc.

I thought it couldn't be that bad. My finances are such that saving 23.44 a month by not using Pipex sounded a good idea. And a couple of preliminary calls to TalkTalk support got a quick and helpful response. Pipex has been pretty slack at cutting its prices or improving its service, too. So I took the plunge

The switchover date was when I was on holiday of course. And so I got back yesterday, to find the Pipex account is closed, but the TalkTalk one isn't working yet.

There's a parcel at the Sorting Office, which I think is a TalkTalk modem (did I ask for one?) and by the time I realise this, the Sorting Office is closed till tomorrow. But surely, one of the three ADSL routers I have in the house will work?

TalkTalk has a sensible and useful option to get your username and password from an automated (free) phone line. I put those into my ADSL router, and it doesn't work. Maybe there are other settings which I should change, but there's no chance of finding out. Any calls to the helpline get answered within a minute, which is great. Four or five times, I get through to someone in an Indian call centre, and give them my phone number. The bad news is that every single time, I get cut off at that point.

It's a new failure mode in my experience of call centres. The other side of the world, a patient army of people is picking up calls over and over, taking the caller's phone number, then hanging up when the line drops.

So for today at least, it's off to the friendly Internet cafe on Brixton Hill. I guess I'm still better off than the call centre operators.

"I am the sword of the Lord, and pestilence is my sister"

It's a summer of pre-destination here. The book group's been reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, the classic anti-war book in which Billy Pilgrim flits through time, living his life in a strange order and finding that, from this perspective, everthing is inevitable, sweet and tragic.

I last read this at the age you should read it - late teens. This time round, I was surprised to see how "literary" the book is. This should be no surprise as Vonnegut is an old-school literary author who believes - or at least hopes - in the power of books to change things. So every other page, it seems, has references to books, books and more books. From Celine, to Charles MacCay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions.

He fall foul of one of the problems of books, and the loving way he quotes them. As well as his personal experience, he goes for the facts about Dresden to a book, possibly a brillian one, but it's a book by David Irving, whose status as a historian is now blown. So we don't quite trust the history, but Slaughter House Five is still a great book.

Not quite so taken by the next cult classic, but once again, it's all about pre-destination and evil. I've heard people raving about James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner as a book which punctures the self-righteous and skewers religion (something Vonnegut likes to do as well). Written in the nineteenth century, and set in Scotland in the eighteenth century, it's the story of someone who "knows" he is justified by faith, not work. It doesn't matter what he does, and he winds up committing horrible crimes.

It's meant to be a prototype "modern" novel, with an unreliable narrator, literary games and more. And, well, yes, all of that is there, but it's not exactly a great read. It's a brilliant idea, and it's fascinating. But as a book, it's got some drawbacks.

1. It's not exactly a page-turner. The structure means you are reading the same events over twice, once told by the editor, and once by the narrator. You know how they turn out, so for a large part of the book, you are (or I was) thinking "get on with it!"

2. The narrator is a dick. This could be an interesting device, but the chilling, deluded seral killer Wringhim is Mr Pooter, who doesn't know how ludicrous he is. Sometimes Hogg goes for comedy (when Wringhim says "I am the sword of the Lord and pestilence is my sister" to his jailors) but mostly he falls between two stools...

3. ...because the theological points aren't that great either. OK, justification and predestination are dangerous ideas. We get the picture.

The history of the book's unpopularity and popularity is interesting. It fell out of favour, and came back in a big way since the 1940s. I think it's due to slump again, as we start to see it as a sort of Frankenstein-esque fable, that's a bit heavy on the moralising.

It does come with an excellent little foreward, which helped me out - it was just the potted summary of the religious and political background to life in Scotland in about 1700.

OK than -- next up on the pre-destination-go-round is The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffeneger. No problems with readability there.

See this play: Stay With Me

I know people always think their mates' plays are the best. So you won't necessarily rush out and see this play on my say-so. But you should.

"Stay With Me" is a youth production, first put on at the South London Theatre. Now it's transferred for a four week run at the Greenwich Playhouse.

It's youth theatre, but not kid's stuff. The actors are great, the directing is good, and the script really gives them something to get hold of. It's two plays, set on the same dates, towards the end of the Second World War. In the first play, a group of young Jews and a Gypsy are waiting in a concentration camp. In the second play, a group of English schoolchildren are trapped in the cellar of their school when a doodle-bug hits.

There's pathos and raw emotion, a surprising amount of humour and - perhaps more surpsising - theology. Where is God in the concentration camp? Who still believes - the boy who keeps the faith, or the boy who says God is not there? Or the boy whose heart says "You can't stop yourself falling in love. You can't stop your heart beating." ? And is it possible for the dead to talk to the living?

There's more information here, and booking details are on that page. There's also comments on the Time Out site.

The Greenwich Playhouse is in a pub, next to Greenwich Station. Get there!

St Anne's Anniversary

It's fifteen year's since St Anne's Community Centre and Church opened in Soho (the church itself dates back longer). Since Ali worked there for several of those years, we were invited to the party.

And what a great do! We had the fabulous London Gay Men's Chorus who know how to put their heart and soul into a performance, and a bunch of groups and organisations who have made a home at St Anne's.

"We have about 100 people in Church on a Sunday morning, and about 1,000 people come through the Centre in a week," said the Rector, Clare Herbert. They're an interesting bunch of people too.

The London Gay Men's Chorus, by coincidence is celebrating its fifteenth birthday, and we heard them the day before their party in Heaven. Were they on good form? You bet!

I want their CD , "Make the Yuletide Gay" for Christmas.

And then there were other performers, including Carmen Miranda, and a brilliant singer of Spanish songs.

A great night out....

School Holidays means...

The first "proper" day of the school holidays is here, and for a home-working dad, that means a trip for Monday breakfast to the Brockwell Park Lido with the girls.

And that means a Sunday evening spent getting their bikes back into shape. There are few things I like better than spanners, patches and rubber solution.

Funerals

So the weekend before last, I went to two memorial services.

One was for Martyn Emery, a friend in the IT industry who died suddenly in his forties, while working away from home. He was a man full of life, liable to argue for the mischief of it, and always coming up with another big plan for the future.

The other was for Gerda "Pytt" Geddes, who taught my Tai Chi teacher, Andreas. I never met her, but she's had an influence on me... and has died aged 88, leaving a not-quite movement of students and followers.

Martyn's memorial was in a church in Brockenhurst, decked with flowers for a wedding the next day, and at a hotel nearby. The event was full of people who wanted to remember him, and felt shocked to lose him.

Pytt Geddes' memorial was in a full lecture theatre at The Place , a contemporary dance colledge in London, where all the students learnt Tai Chi from her. Afterwards about 100 of us went to Regent's Park, and did Tai Chi in her manner. It was very different remembering someone who lived to fulfill more of what she could do.

I didn't have any great observations or revelations from the two services, except for a feeling that life is for living, and sharing. I've spent a lot of time not being in touch with people I know and like, just because I'm not all that good at it.

I'd really rather be enjoying what I do, and sharing it with people I like. So if this might be you, and I haven't been in touch - feel free to make the first move.

"This used to be the best football pitch in Brockwell Park"

Wednesday is my middle-aged triathlon: I cycle to the park, do Tai Chi, and swim ten lengths of the pool. This morning, as I arrived at the Lido, I met a man who remembers it being built, in 1934.

As a boy he had mixed feelings, because the Lido was built on the best football pitch, - the flattest part of Brockwell Park. He changed his mind later, when mixed bathing came in - first introduced in Peckham Rye Lido, apparently - and you could see girls in their swimming costumes.

Last week I was sharing the pool with two ducks. This week it was a bit busier.

A robot horse in Islington

Sometimes this blog goes slack when there's other stuff happening elsewhere.

Here's a robot horse I met in Islington the other Saturday. There's another clip at the London Pride blog.

Heatwave's over

Hard to believe it was 30 degrees in London at the weekend, now it's colder, and wet again.

But here's one of the best bits of that weekend. Cycling to Islington was hot work on Saturday afternoon, but there was a burst water main on the Walworth Road, just before the Elephant and Castle.

What could I do but cycle right through the fountain? Bliss!

Exterminate, says the Dalek Bunny

My evil brother Davros is visiting, from his secret base hidden in the Far East. His experiments have turned his daughter's harmless toy into an evil killing machine.

I believe it could be his undoing, as I think she will never forgive him.

(actually, we just put the voice box from a Dalek cake, from my nephew's birthday, inside the bunny).

My mid-life accordion

Appropriately hazy, here's the accordion I borrowed Wednesday. Some men get a Harley or a mistress, I can't afford don't want anything like that - I'm celebrating mid-life with an accordion.

It's a 12-base, two-octave thing, which any player will tell you is only suitable for children or rank beginners.

I'd been doodling at tunes on the piano, and in my mind I "knew" I'd pick it up and be playing instantly, to the admiration of my peers, this being a mid-life thing. In reality of course, I'm fumbling and stumbling at it.

My daughters think it's cool though.

Is Bill Oddie God?

He's got a white beard and he's tetchy. He sits on a sofa somewhere, where we can't always see him, and he can look inside every nesting box. He cares about every sparrow. He can't do anything to help them, but he feels for them.

He clearly loves the earth in all its richness, and all the creatures on it. He's pained and a bit angry about global warming and what we're doing to the planet.

In last night's programme he mused very effectively on depression and how the natural world can save you from it.

No doubt about it - the more I see Springwatch, the more I'm convinced that Bill Oddie is God.

Now, more advanced theology would then imply that Simon King, out there suffering amongst God's creatures in the Orkneys, is Jesus, and that makes Kate Humble the Holy Spirit. But maybe that's pushing the analogy too far.

Another round of mutants

Surprise - I loved X-Men 3! Yes, I know, I'm bound to like superhero movies. To me Tootsie is a superhero movie, with all that secret-identity crisis stuff.

But a second sequel, from a comic I overdosed on years ago? I read way too many X-Men issues. Characters would get killed off, and come back, have yet another complete new secret origin, have yet another doomed romance. Or were they really a shape-changing spy under mind-control from Captain America's dead sidekick? Read Wikipedia's entry on Wolverine ( go on read to the end), to see what I mean.

From the start of this series, I like the way the creators have picked up the mass of X-Men stuff, given it a good shake, thrown out anything they don't like, and played with the rest, while keeping faith with the basic idea behind it all.

What they end up with has moments of sheer corn. "We'll have to close the school," says Storm - and instantly, there's a knock on the door, and another scared young mutant comes in, looking for shelter.

But there are so many other bits where it just about gets to the mythic level I always thought was there under the spandex. And they've got the God-like, human presence of Ian McKellen (a lifetime of Shakespeare and he manages to say "What have I done?" without over-acting).

On top of all that, while playing havoc with the idols, they put in enough references to the stuff comic fans want to see (the Danger Room, the Sentinels - hey, there's a guy called Trask! - and plenty more). Only the sickest, saddest comic fan would go away unhappy.

And (unlike that Wikipedia entry) you do need to wait right to the end. There's a great little moment after the credits...

Unicorns are not related to horses

Many people think that unicorns are related to horses - that they are simply horses with a horn.

Observations in the field reveal that the two animals are quite unrelated species. Look at their hooves.

While the horse has a single hoof on each foot, the unicorn has a cloven hoof, suggesting it is more closely related to the cow. Or possibly the goat - check the beard. It's much easier to imagine a two-horned species evolving a single-horned version, than a non-horned species growing one, isn't it?

This also explains the rarity of unicorns. Unlike horses, they are vulnerable to foot-and-mouth disease, and are often believed to be extinct.

Apologies for the quality of the photos - obviously, they were taken under dangerous conditions.

Lazing on a sunny afternoon

Kitty and Mackerel making the best use of a sunny Saturday in London. We're back from a week in Cornwall, with lots of family, lots of body-boarding, horse-riding and all the rest of it.

But home is the place to be.