fictions

Giving up.....

2011-12-04T21:44:00.000Z

Oh well, best intentions and all that....

I had planned to keep going with Fictions the blog, had planned to do more posts, had planned.... well, lots of things.

But most of my writing these days goes into the Forbidden Planet International Blog. Not that I mind at all, but it's slightly sad to think there's no place and no time to update this.

Another problem of course is the sheer lack of material. It's more and more difficult to navigate my way through my life and talk about it without talking about Molly too much, and that's something I don't imagine she'd be too pleased with as she gets older.

Who knows, in a little while I might make the grand comeback. But for now. Nothing. Sorry

Meanderings.... gin.... a post review glow.... of writing....

2011-10-13T01:16:00.000+01:00

You'll have to forgive me for this, I know it's been awhile.

The sad fact of the matter is that I don't have the drive to keep writing here. So many other things are taking my time. I'd love to spend 10 minutes a day, maybe at the end of the day, documenting all the minutiae of Bruton mansions here. But it's not happening, hasn't happened for a long time.

There's many reasons for this. But probably most pertinant amongst those is the sheer amount of time, the sheer amount of writing time my work over at the FPI blog takes up. I get to the end of the night and it's too late to even contemplate writing anything else.

Take September. DC had this new thing where they relaunched every comic with a new number 1. And I decided, in a moment of all too frequent madness, to review all of them. Then, halfway through, I felt guilty at not balancing these DC reviews with some Marvel review. And of course, I had to do the usual reviews of things sent to me for review over at the FPI blog as well.

Which meant in September I reviewed something like 80 works. Now some of these were mere paragraphs. But as anyone doing this sort of thing will tell you, sometimes a paragraph to summarise a work is hell to write. Better occasionally to go to 2000 words than 200.

So I'm exhausted. It's back to school and of course I've picked up some delightful bug or other from the returning children, who seem to spend the entire six week holiday incubating viruses to inflict upon my person in the weeks we come back.

And I'm doing incredible work, review after review after review spews forth. And then I hit a wall.

All it took was one book that I really loved to bring me to a grinding, frustrated halt.

My way of working is a perfectionist's way. I have a rule that says I know I can't get to 100% satisfied with anything, so 95% satisfied is what I aim for. Yet occasionally even this isn't possible, usually with something I really loved, yet somehow can't find the words necessary.

And that's where I've been for the last week. Every night I thought I'd nail it tonight, the words would come, the review must write itself, after all I loved the book, so the words will just flow.

Sadly, not a bit of it. But somewhere in the rational side of the brain,. I've reached an accord. If I can't manage 95%, then maybe, just maybe, 80% will be okay? I think it might, I really do. Which is why I'm here. Right now I'm in that warm glow of post review happiness. Something that's taken a week to write only needs a final edit, a few pics added, and then it's done. Time to turn to the other books on the review shelf. But only after a celebratory G&T, and a sleep.

World Championship Athletics..... and the walking, dear god, the walking....

2011-08-28T01:46:00.000+01:00

We're watching the World Athletics Championships at Bruton Mansions and enjoying it greatly. granted, it feels like something from decades ago, thanks to Channel 4's nostalgic coverage. Nothing says 1980s quite like crappy athletics coverage, poor presenters and bad graphics - and bless them, Channel 4 have managed to get all those things in so far. We miss the BBC, we really do.

But tonight it's the Race Walking. Oh christ. Why? Here it is....

You may know the rules; always have a point of contact with the ground and the knee must be completely straight at some point in the action. Look at the picture above - bloke on the far right is breaking the contact rule. And I know it's a physical thing, I understand that these walkers are really working very hard (something like 3 hour marathon pace I think) and the mental energy involver must be huge.

The fun starts when the marshalls start handing out yellow and red cards and the disqualifications start. Although frankly the advent of super slo-mo cameras makes it completely ridiculous - it's pretty obvious from these that most of the walkers are regularly breaking the contact rules. The problem is that the marshalls are all meant to do the judging by eye, which is just impossible at the speeds these walkers are going.

however, for some reason it's bizarrely fascinating to watch. Mostly because it just seems so ridiculous.

Louise and I were trying to come up with reasons why it isn't really a proper sport. Because surely, the whole idea of athletics of this sort is to go faster. And the walking event is designed to stop people going faster - because then they'd be bloody jogging. And then chaos - they might start running.

We came up with two examples of sports that could be "walk-i-fied":

Sport 1: The Luge. WITH THE BRAKE ON.
Sport 2: 110m Hurdles. WITH WALKING RULES. Or the "walk and straddle" as we christened it.
Those I'd bloody love to see.

Because as silly as it is, as ridiculously watchable as it is, you'll never, ever convince me it's a sport that should be in these World Championships or at the Olympics.

Molly hits twelve....

2011-08-25T23:48:00.005+01:00

Twelve.
Oh My God.
Twelve.
How the hell did that happen?

This was the present haul this morning....

The highlight of the birthday though.....

Her new Ukelele. Now, fair enough, she'd actually asked for an electric-acoustic guitar. But I managed to head that one off by heading to the excellent Pocklington Music and showing her just how much they cost! She's still wanting one, but I think she's realised it's something she may have to save up for!

But a cheap Ukelele was a perfect substitute, and she absolutely adores it.

So Happy Birthday Molly. And just to embarrass you - 12 years ago you looked like this.....

Oh Dear..... at what point do I just give up?

2011-08-06T20:20:00.000+01:00

Sadly, I haven't been here since May. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Apologies. I shall try to do better.

I've just got a few comics to review first.....

McFly

2011-05-18T00:19:00.001+01:00

Oh boy, just a touch late writing this - it's mid May now? How the hell did that happen. Track all the way back to early April......

We had planned it all really well, McFly were playing Nottingham on a Saturday night - we could head down, stay overnight at friends, have a lovely weekend and Molly would have a great, great time.

Well, that little play got rather messed up when one of the lovely boys (Dougie I'm reliably informed) puts himself into The Priory. And the rescheduled dates aren't quite so convenient.

It's a Wednesday afternoon, Molly, Louise and I all rush home, get changed, pile into the car, drive the hundred-ish miles south to Nottingham, park up, get something to eat and head off to the gig. Well, Molly and Louise headed off to the gig, I was ducking out.... I'm not averse to McFly, they're actually pretty good at what they do, but I'm not that big a fan.

Molly, on the other hand, is that big a fan. Huge fan. Huge, huge fan. I don't think I've ever seen her quite so excited as when she got to the venue. I dropped them off and headed to the Broadway cinema complex for a coffee, a non alcoholic beer or two and writing, writing, writing.

Meanwhile McFly were turning a midweek school night into one of the best nights of Molly's life. Or at least that's what it seemed like when I met them 3 hours later.

Tired, but happy, the Bruton family drove home, thoroughly entertained by a great band. Cheers boys, you made Molly's year.

Guitar Hero

2011-04-18T11:32:00.000+01:00

A long time ago, at primary school in Birmingham, Molly had guitar lessons and her own acoustic guitar. But, like children do, she stopped when we moved up to Pocklington.

(I'm assured it's children and not just our child who start something with great passion and commitment and then slowly lose interest. Or is it just Molly?)

So, we come to Pocklington the guitar went by the wayside. There was some interest in drums, even getting so far as to have Grandpa's drum kit take up seemingly permanent residence in our garage, but various things have stopped that one taking off. And then we had the trumpet. We always said we'd support her in any musical, sporting or generally worthwhile endeavour but, in retrospect, neither Louise or I are sure that the trumpet was the best idea we ever supported.

Fast forward a little while. Molly's finishing off primary school and it's becoming obvious she's absolutely no interest in trumpet anymore. With perfect timing, we finally have the "I don't want to do trumpet anymore about 2 years and 1 month after buying the thing. So much for the idea of 80% of the money back if she gives it up inside 2 years. Have you ever tried to sell a trumpet on ebay? It's not the easiest of things.

Fast forward again. About half a term into secondary school. Now she wants to do guitar lessons. Fair enough, have a cheque and enjoy. Now she wants an electric guitar because her acoustic isn't good enough. We'd obviously wised up at this point. Or maybe I was still smarting over the money lost on that damn trumpet. And we told her to either put it on her Christmas list or save up for it.

Well, it took her nearly 5 months of saving up, but she did it. And now she's the proud owner of this:

Guitar, amp, accessories provided by the great Pocklington Music. Guitar hero posing and dreams of stardom - all the models own.

Pocklington Music were absolutely marvellous with us. Sure, we could have gone to Argos at York and got a cheaper package. But the package deal we got going with the local shop (guitar, amp, strap, bag, stand, lead) was very, very good. Plus we got to stick to the principle we decided on last year - where we can buy it independently and locally we will. Any excess in terms of price should be written off as a payment to keep the town vibrantly independent and full of shops. In the end we decided it was a small price to pay.

And you know what, a couple of weeks later, as I'm leaving the house and the owner of Pocklington Music walks past and asks me how Molly's getting on - you don't get that at Argos. Likewise, when Molly has trouble, she can pop into the shop for a tune-up, advice, or just to show off how she's doing. That's what local is all about.

I'm not a reluctant gardener, I'm just banned from helping

2011-04-10T14:21:00.004+01:00

Well, the sun is out, Molly has been out most of the weekend with friends, Louise has ventured out into the garden for the first time this year with intent on kicking it into shape and I have been having a great old time writing stuff. I've done reviews, articles for the FPI blog, stuff for the school website and blog. Hell, I've even found the motivation to write some stuff here.

The gardening thing – yes, I am banned from helping. Absolutely, there is simply no argument. Louise has made it quite clear that my help is not required.

The totality of my gardening involvement is getting the lawnmower out, putting it away and taking the garden waste to the recycling centre.

You see, the problem is that I have a very minimalist view on gardens in general. Or rather, I have a very minimalist view on gardens that I have a hand in. Other people’s gardens – they can be as complicated and exotically overgrown as some suburban version of the Hanging Gardens Of Babylon. I love sitting in gardens, love relaxing in them, very peaceful.

Unless it’s my own. Then my mentality to do things kicks in, I see things that need doing, cutting back, tidying up, and the relaxation is lost. Hence my gardening routine was very simple; if I cut it back by X and it takes Y weeks to grow back, surely if I cut it back by 2X it would take 2Y to grow back. Can you see where this naturally leads me?

Start of the gardening season used to be devastation in our garden. Cutting everything back to within an inch of it’s life, often passing over into an inch of it’s death to be honest.

I may have done less damage if I’d have just carpet bombed the garden with DDT.

Louise also likes the garden. Louise likes the relaxing aspect of sitting in the garden. She’s also quite partial to the relaxing aspects of getting a garden looking right. Having a garden that looks like it’s been attacked by an indiscriminate chainsaw does not relax her at all.

End result; around March or April, when the sun comes out and the garden wakes up, Louise makes it quite clear to me that SHE will sort the garden out the first chance she gets. She also makes it quite clear that I am not to attempt to help in any way.

Which is why, right now, I’m upstairs, listening to Kraftwerk, with a big mug of coffee, writing lots of things and Louise has just finished mowing the lawn for the first time.

Kraftwerk again....

2011-04-10T12:58:00.008+01:00

After watching a BBC4 doc on Krautrock (again) last night and realising that:
1. Trans Europe Express is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever.

2. I could listen to a loop of Autobahn pretty much forever without getting tired of it.

3. I'm so very pleased I got to see them live, because I'm not sure they'll ever play live again.

It was fitting to read this from Tim O'Neil:

"Because I love pointing out the obvious, let's run down all the people who haven't been inducted into the Hall of Fame yet despite their eligibility.

Kraftwerk
Estimated Years Eligible: 16
Chances of Eventually Being Inducted: Even

The same crowd who complained when Madonna and ABBA were inducted (and Grand Funk once again overlooked!) would probably weep tears of blood to see Kraftwerk inducted.

And yet: without a doubt one of the five most influential bands ever. I mean, they're German! But without Kraftwerk the shape of modern music would be so different as to be recognizable. Every group either goes through a Kraftwerk phase or they go through a phase where they emulate the no-/new-wave bands who were influenced by Kraftwerk, or the 70s Bowie albums that were made under the direct influence of Kraftwerk and cocaine, in that order. Even U2 went through a Kraftwerk phase, for Chrissakes. If you're a rapper, you've got Kraftwerk so far back in your RNA that even if you don't know who Florian Schneider is, you know all the guys who built hip-hop out of sampling "Trans-Europe Express." If you sing pop music in 2011, you're basically standing on Kraftwerk's shoulders.

They'll get in eventually, I'll wager, but probably not before half the band is dead."

Five Years Old today!!!!

2011-03-27T00:01:00.007Z

Fictions turns FIVE today.

I would celebrate, but realise I've been a bit rubbish at updating recently (ie most of 2010 and all of 2011 so far). I will try harder, I will, I will, I will.

Want List - March 2011

2011-02-27T19:12:00.002Z

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

March 2011:

April 2011:

August 2011:

2011:

2013

sometime in the future...... but when???

Well that was a quick two months.....

2011-02-22T00:06:00.000Z

Nearly the end of February. And, as usual, blog activity here at Bruton mansions has been pretty much zero. There are many and varied reasons for this;

Work's been very, very busy - the school has a new library and somehow I've managed to fall into the role of librarian. It fills a load of time, but it's a great way of filling my time - planning, organising, shelving, the works. And the payoff has been great - a stream of children eager, desperate even, to start using the library.

The comic writing has taken up a lot of time as well. The review pile has been beaten down to single figures and hopefully, by the start of March it's going to be reduced to the magic zero.

And then there's Molly. Wonderful, marvelous, lovely Molly. Who's now completely settled into secondary school and having a great time. But I'm increasingly aware that she's not going to want me talking about her on here in great detail.

And then there's the innui. Instead of being the first thing I think of, this blog's become one of the last. Other things, at least for the time being, have taken precedence. Of course, within a month I could be back and blogging every day, and, as usual, just the act of this post has made me think I should really try just that little bit harder. Who knows.

What would Atticus Finch do?

2011-02-21T00:44:00.005Z

This is great - and rather timely - The Best Parenting Book You Will Ever Read. (Found at Free Range Kids).

Kate Hunter puts forward the idea that To Kill A Mockingbird has a damn sight more to tell us about parenting than any number of modern parenting books. For example.....

There’s a reclusive man living in your street. Widely believed to have stabbed his elderly father in the leg with scissors. Probably kills and eats cats.

What we do now: Sadly the police can’t do much unless someone found bloody scissors or saw a cat in a sandwich, so the next step would be to get the media to investigate. Then we’d get a petition together to have the man moved. Possibly via a Facebook page. Only then would children be allowed out unaccompanied.

What Atticus did: He told Scout and Jem to respect the man’s privacy. Also, they were not to refer to him by his nickname, ‘Boo’ but as ‘Mr Arthur’. When the kids tried to lure him from his home and were chased by Arthur’s father with a gun, Atticus sided with the old man.

And so much more. It's so very true. And needed by an awful lot of parents. And educators. And everyone in the media. And public officials. And..... well, I'm sure you can add your own.

"Yes Scout, everything is dangerous, nothing is ever your fault and anyone claiming you are anything less than perfect probably needs reporting to the authorities"

Want List - February 2011

2011-02-01T00:34:00.000Z

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

February 2011

March 2011:

April 2011:

August 2011:

2011:

2013

sometime in the future...... but when???

Amanda Palmer..... We Are The Media

2011-01-20T01:09:00.006Z

It's in my brain and on my ipod:

And for those of you who don't realise; Map Of Tasmania?

Amanda Palmer's blog explanation (and if you're in a hurry here's Urban Dictionary). And there's lyrics here.

Buy it now.

Oh, I forgot - Film of 2010.....

2011-01-06T01:28:00.001Z

Toy Story 3.

I blubbed. There was never going to be any question about that. But what surprised me about Toy Story 3 was just how wonderful and terribly sad it was.

So many reviews of the movie have talked about the tremendous sadness the reviewer felt, about the tears they shed when the child found it was time to give up it's toys and moved on.

But it wasn't like that at all. certainly not for me.

Toy Story 3 is all about growing up, certainly. But it's not about the child giving up the toys, not as toys.

It's an allegory - where the toys are the grown ups, the toys are the parents. And they're the ones who are doing the letting go, the child is moving away from the parents (toys) and it's the parents (toys) who have to stand back and pretend that they're singularly happy for their children, that this moment and countless moments along the way are not tearing their hearts into tiny pieces.

I can't believe I haven't read that more. It was as plain as the tears streaming down my face as I sat next to my 11 year old daughter. The same daughter who was about 5 when we first saw Toy Story 1 & 2 on dvd together.

It's about that moment when the child no longer wants to play with us, no longer needs us, has better and far more important things to do with their life than spend time with their parents - that's the emotion that Toy Story 3 brought forth so well.

Simply a wonderful film. And part of perhaps the only perfect trilogy there's ever been.

Planetary - a decade to tell the tale... and worth it.

2011-01-05T00:31:00.000Z

Planetary

Written by Warren Ellis, Art by John Cassaday, Colours by Laura Martin, David Baron

DC Comics / Wildstorm

Although it started in April 1999, various problems with the series meant that the final issue; 27, was eventually published in 2009. It took a decade to finish the series and it was well worth the wait.

I love it perhaps more than I should. It’s something I go back to regularly, and will always re-read it at least once per year. This year, as a special Christmas present to myself I decided that, even though I had the whole series as Hardbacks, I really, really wanted to get the beautiful Absolute editions.

Expensive but oh so worth it. My Boxing Day was spent engrossed, yet again, in a wonderful world created by Ellis, Cassaday, Martin and Baron. The huge pages make the art so much more impressive than it already was at normal comic size and Ellis’ ideas fly even greater at this scale.

(John Cassaday’s beautiful cover to the final issue of Planetary)

Warren Ellis’ Planetary is a beautiful, optimistic, humanist, sentimental masterpiece, a magnificent superhero fantasy mythology with each self contained chapter taking some aspect of genre fiction and spinning a tale of awe and wonder. This love story of 20th Century fictions just has so much going on- Doc Savage’s pulp heroes, John Woo style Hong Kong action cinema ghost stories, giant irradiated Japanese monsters, Steranko era Nick Fury super spies, Sherlock Holmes and much more. But taken as a whole, as one supremely interconnected, expansive story it becomes Ellis’ masterpiece with it’s signature style of vast, open storytelling, tech obsessions, fast, witty dialogue and far reaching ideas of optimism and hope.

And every step of the way artist John Cassaday’s classical artwork perfectly visualises every wonderfully strange idea. It may have taken many, many years to complete the series’ 27 issues and many of these delays may have been art led. But never has the concept of “good or on time?” been proven.

Planetary is absolutely full of ideas – wonderful, incredible ideas. But the first idea is the greatest of all; making Planetary an organisation dedicated to uncovering the secret history of the 20th Century – “mystery archaeologists”, dedicated to uncovering the secret history of the 20th Century. At a stroke this allows Ellis free range over every incredible facet of the 20th Century, all the weirdness, all the impossible tech, all the amazing adventures and all the wonderful characters of it’s fictions.

(More fabulous Cassaday artwork from the softcover collection Planetary Volume 1: All Over The World)

New recruit Elijah Snow is 100 years old, one of the group of century babies, born at the dawn of the 20th Century, superpowered, but a broken man, his memory shot to hell. Planetary allows him to tortuously piece together his mysterious past and uncover the secrets his team-mates are hiding from him about the identity of the Fourth Man, Planetary’s mysterious backer.

With the Fourth Man problem solved in the first half of the story, Snow then turns Planetary’s attention to the 4; Ellis’ dark and twisted version of Marvel’s Fantastic 4, reimaged as malevolent, secret masters of the world. Over 50 years they’ve made the world mediocre, robbing it of wonders and costing millions of lives in the process. It’s Snow’s obsessive mission to save his planet from their yoke that drives the second half of Planetary, although there’s still time for interludes and one off stories, that somehow never fail to impress as they reveal some tiny bit more in Snow’s mission to save the world.

In the end, Snow’s purpose is revealed, simply and profoundly, as a man who saves things; people, information, experiences, the wonders of the world from the straitjacket of the 4. And it’s Snow’s final obsession, to save his dearest friend and team-mate, dead following a Planetary encounter with a fictional reality, that gives the book, always full of wonder, it’s beating heart. This is Ellis’ goodbye, to his readers and most touchingly his father, who died during Planetary’s troubled 10 year genesis.

Planetary starts out as Ellis’ love letter to the world of genre fiction but finishes as a hugely poignant and affecting story of loss and redemption. Planetary is a call to arms to make a finer world, and stands as one of the greatest superhero fantasy series ever told. It’s a book I’ll return to regularly, and every time I read it through I never loss any of the sense of wonder and excitement I had that very first time I picked up issue 1. From first page to last, I love it.

It’s a classic and should be in your library. If I had to pick one series that I loved more than any other this would be it.

Reviews at the FPI blog.... another long list....

2011-01-04T01:59:00.000Z

And it's only a long list because I'm a bit crap at keeping this up to date. Idiot me.

40

2011-01-03T00:01:00.000Z

Oh yes. That's me.

Am I at all concerned with hitting 40? Nope.

What bothers me more is generally getting old.

But in the short term, seeing as I'm writing this a few days ahead and I've got stuff needs writing before I go to be - what bothers me right now is getting another G&T and writing 500 decent words about a comic.

So that was the two thousand and ten show.....

2011-01-02T00:59:00.000Z

2010. The year I stopped blogging here. (pretty much - less than 10 posts for most months of the year - terrible).

The year Molly stopped being an adorable primary school child and turned into an adorable secondary school child. Or at least she did right now, with the rose tinted spectacles that a reflective look back at the year always seems to provide.

The year when everything pretty much stayed the same, in all it's wonder and loveliness. Work was good, as usual. Computers, children and teaching suit me very well indeed. And the end of the year even saw me taking on a new, unexpected role - that of unofficial school librarian. Much more on that in the new year. Much more. Libraries, shelving, design, blagging huge amounts of graphic novels for the school library - this is going to be a great 2011 at work. As long as all of those lovely computers keep working.

Louise has had a good year, despite receiving very few mentions on the blog. Something she's both pleased about and annoyed about. As always when she complains that the blog sometimes reads like a single dad's memoirs I do remind her that she has always made it quite clear that she doesn't want her life talked about here.

And increasingly, as Molly gets older, I'm well aware that this blog is a quick google search away for any of her friends or school colleagues. Which means I may have to stop talking about her quite so much and in quite so soppy a tone. Which is a shame - and yet another horrible indicator of the fact she's growing up.

The secondary school experience has certainly been a wild ride. Not that the choice of secondary schools - that was so easy it was almost untrue. It was a big plus in moving up to Yorkshire in the first place - we still talk about the feeling of relief when we first talked to Molly's Pocklington primary school about secondary school choices and were told that she had automatic entry to not one, but because of the Catholic thing, two good secondary schools. That was quite amazing to us - and certainly not something we would have fall so easily into place back in Birmingham.

But once the decision was made - by Molly (although it was the secondary school we both hoped she'd pick) - then the problems started. Homework was the main problem. For September and October it was, frankly, utter hell. It took so long for us to fit into any sort of routine and only getting her a desk in her room rather than having to do her homework on the kitchen table seemed to sort it out. Or maybe it was just that she got used to it and I calmed down about it. But my top advice for secondary school - get a desk for their room in August.

It's a strange time, getting used to Molly growing up. But, just like every time she's changed, it's a wonderful experience, made all the more so by the fact she's a truly wonderful child. She's turning into a truly wonderful young person and Louise and I are continually amazed at what we managed to bring into the world.

On the comics front it's been a year of reviewing and more reviewing. For those few of you reading this that don't know, I'm a writer on the Forbidden Planet International blog. It's something that came about almost accidentally, as a result of many years working at Birmingham's Nostalgia & Comics store - read about me and N&C here and the taking Propaganda Reviews from the shopfloor to the FPI blog here and here.

The year started and ended with me desperately struggling to clear the review pile so I could actually do what I always planned to do - review the books as I got them rather than looking at the shelf next to my desk and deciding which of the oh too long overdue for review books I should look at next. And I'm still not there. But I still plan to be. Maybe if I'm writing similar moany words at the start of 2012 I'll just have to admit it's a futile aim and give up, settle down to my lot and just get over it?

The major problem is really one of success. Personally I think the majority of what I write is somewhere between not that good and oh my god I never want to see that again. But people seem to like what I write, my name's known in the (admittedly small) circle of comics in the UK and more and more I find I'm receiving comics and books in the post for review. Sometimes, I have to admit, too many. And because of my nature and my perfectionism, I feel I have to read and review everything I receive.

This means 2011 will progress much like 2010. Lots of comic reading, lots of comic writing. Luckily I enjoy it. I may not like most of what I write, but sometimes I'll finish something, some little piece of writing, and think it's a job well done. And that feeling is what makes it worthwhile.

The downside to writing more and more about comics is that something has to suffer. And that something is this here blog. Fictions has become a shadow of it's former self. I promise I shall try to do better this year.

Right, enough for 2010. A quick month by month and then onwards, onwards into the New Year..........

January - I started as I pretty much went on - apologising for not blogging as much as I should. A little on Molly's vomit and then straight into talking about the seemingly never-ending review list. Plus ca change eh?

February - almost nothing. Quitting mentioned. Didn't really work.

March - Molly chooses her secondary school - Louise and I profoundly relieved.

April - The Brutons went to Butlins. And incredibly, spectacularly, against all expectations - I absolutely loved it. In other news - pigs did fly, hell had a cold spell.

May - Molly's dreams came true - and she got "the boys". A beautiful pair of rats - Woody and Buzz.

June - There was a world cup. It was shite. And my dear little computer decided to sort-of give up the ghost.

July - Molly left primary school. Tears? Oh yes.

August - Bruton's holiday in Anglesey and Dublin. Molly finally gets to go abroad (or at least that's the way she was talking about it. fantastic holiday.

September - this was it - the end of childhood, Molly off to secondary school. Oh hell, the homework hell kicks in. As does the teenage-isms.

October - Computer stuff. And we discovered that the "boys" Buzz & Woody, Molly's lovely pet rats were actually the "girls". Pets At Home. Bless 'em. Plus British International Comics Show - great show, but more additions to the review pile.

November - Molly gets a desk for her room and finally, thank god, the homework hell seems to calm down just a little. Thought Bubble comic show was a great time but by god it adds to the review list.

December - That would be Christmas then.

Want List - January 2011

2011-01-01T21:07:00.006Z

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

February 2011

March 2011:

April 2011:

August 2011:

2011:

2013

sometime in the future...... but when???

Christmas traditions....

2010-12-25T02:28:00.004Z

Watched Love Actually ...... Yes.

Cried at Love Actually ..... Yes.

Had that special G&T .... Yes.

Waited for Molly to get up, around 2am, just like she does every year, to go to the toilet ..... Yes.

Sitting up waiting for her to go to bed, so Santa can deliver her stocking to the end of her bed... Yes.

Merry Christmas. I shall be tired (as is the tradition) on Christmas morning.

Christmas Time.....

2010-12-25T00:56:00.004Z

It's 1am, it's Christmas day.

Molly's asleep upstairs and Santa has been. Although based on previous years Santa may wait a while before disturbing her slumbers with a stocking of goodies.

Earlier tonight she did the Santa thing - and it looked like this - including a gin and tonic which is all gin and very little tonic. She's possibly decided to test the whole Santa thing by getting him really, really drunk and hoping he'll be passed out by the tree in the morning.

Does she still believe? Is she in that strange halfway place where she sort of knows the truth but doesn't want to actually admit it, just in case? Or maybe, just maybe, she's just going along with it because she's lovely and wants her poor deluded parents to have a great Christmas?

Whatever the reason, it doesn't really matter. It's been a wonderful Christmas Eve. Just like Kipper says in Kipper's Christmas Eve (something I think we'll still read on Christmas Eve when she's come back for Christmas from Uni - I can hope. I really can. Can't I?):

Christmas Eve is the best bit.

Here's our Christmas Eve in pictures:

Merry Christmas one and all.

Even Voldemort Wouldn't Approve - Student Protests.

2010-12-11T00:28:00.000Z

On the student protests this week - from Tom Humberstone:

"In an attempt to follow up on my vague notions of documenting the student protests using the work of Denys Wortman as inspiration – here’s a quick drawing I did based on some reference provided by Dan Hancox. Thanks to Dan for allowing me to use it."

And whilst we are talking about the student protests.... here's Warren Ellis on the journalism of Laurie Penny - right in the middle of it all on Friday night::

"She’s actually covering these events two or three times over, and the first time is realtime, on Twitter, from right in the middle of it all. Down to broadcasting, in certain instances, individual police ID numbers. As deep in the story/stories as you can get. She’s silent right now: I’m presuming her phone ran out of charge, as predicted, and hoping she’s not still in the kettle, which, others on Twitter are reporting, is still active at 1230am. There are children in there. This is how we treat our children when they question us, now: by cowing them, in the dark and the cold."

And don't tell me that the parents are at fault for allowing their children to protest - what other course of action do these future indentured workers, owing at least £18,000 to the state before they even think about having a roof over their heads or food to eat at university have?

Education is something we used to believe was worth investing in. Education used to be something we were rightly proud of. Now we penalise our children for wanting to learn, now we punish them and send them spiralling into terrible debt for their adult lives.

And when they complain, when they protest - we coral them, "kettle" them, unlawfully imprison them and the official line appears to be one of - if they don't like it, why did they come out on the streets.

Welcome to the UK Dec 2010. Merry Fucking Christmas.

Reviews at the FPI blog....

2010-12-10T17:02:00.011Z

Still catching up..... more to come....

Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk......

2010-12-02T01:16:00.002Z

Since doing it for the first time in 2009 - The Stupid I-Pod A-Z Idea has stuck with me as something very worthwhile indeed.

Essentially it's a way to free me from the dread feeling of "what the hell do I feel like listening to tonight" if there's nothing on the radio to listen to. Simply start at A and work through.

It's also a good way to keep the i-pod under control. And seeing as I have a 30GB i-pod with 2 GB of space free, I really do need to look at cutting some of the chaff away from the wheat.

Anyway, right now we're up to K. And everyone in Bruton mansions knows what that means.

Oh yes:

Oh yes, it's Kraftwerk time in Bruton mansions. But this time it's Kraftwerk with a difference. Except it's a difference only I can hear. Last time I visited them it was to download and love every album in it's German form as well as the English forms I already owned.

But now it's remasters time. And even better, it's remasters in 320kbps.

I'm not an audio snob, far from it. In fact I maintain that some of my stuff sounds better in it's original hissy, poppy, taped off the radio state. But this is Kraftwerk. Going from 192kbps to 320kbps is just beautiful. Everything's clearer, and the remasters are gorgeous to listen to.

Kraftwerk. Music perfected.

Want List - December 2010

2010-12-01T00:20:00.004Z

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

December 2010:

January 2011:

February 2011

March 2011:

April 2011:

August 2011:

2011:

2013

sometime in the future...... but when???

FPI Blog Reviews.......

2010-11-28T14:00:00.010Z

Oh dear, oh dear me, it's been rather too long since I did one of these. So rather a lot to catch up on. I should really do these more often.

Molly's next bit of growing up - the homework desk!

2010-11-24T00:28:00.000Z

After Thought Bubble, Molly and I headed to Leeds Ikea - we were on a desk hunt. And this is the result:

New desk, new chair, new filing cabinet (sort of). She's very, very pleased with it. And we spent all of Sunday reorganising her room to fit everything in. Lot of work, but in the end, seeing her face was worth it all. Now she's got somewhere that isn't the kitchen table to do her homework on. Doubt that it will make the homework easier, but it may mean I don't have to tiptoe around her in the kitchen after school anymore.

This last weekend - Thought Bubble

2010-11-21T23:41:00.005Z

(Molly sketch by Adam Cadwell)

I'm writing about this for the FPI blog anyway, and I'll cover more of the comic side of things over there. But this last Saturday Molly and I headed to Leeds for Thought Bubble, the annual comic convention.

We went two years ago and she had a great time. But this year it was even better. Because Molly realised how much of a name she is in the world of UK comics - she was so thrilled that so many people there knew who she was, so many people talked to her, knew about the things she'd said about comics on the FPI blog, appreciated what she'd written.

It was wonderful seeing her having such a great time, collecting sketches and meeting people. She had a really lovely time. Special mention has to go to Sarah McIntyre:

Molly had been wanting to meet her for many years and she wasn't disappointed - photos, sketches and drawings and best of all - Sarah was determined to introduce Molly to everyone who stopped by whilst she was there. Sarah's one of the nicest people in comics, and an absolute natural with children.

Various sketches were gotten by Molly including that brilliant little mini Molly that opened this post by Adam Cadwell.

(Sarah McIntyre - of course)

(Gary Northfield)

(Sean Azzopardi)

(Francesca Cassavetti)

(Emma Vieceli)

(Marc Ellerby)

Santa?

2010-11-21T23:00:00.003Z

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here at Bruton mansions. Things are taking shape, the first Christmas songs are slowly appearing, a few presents have been bought, decorations are being put together and present lists are being assembled - although Molly's is looking rather like a wish list than a present list (laptop, TV, electric guitar are top of the list).

But, we've finally got confirmation of something we'd been thinking for a long time. It's the whole Santa thing. We've been thinking for a long time that this must be the last Christmas she really believes. But every year she's surprised us by being determined to be a believer. Or maybe, like we thought last year, she's just been stringing us along, caught in that difficult period where she's suspicious, has friends who are telling her about the big Santa cover-up, and she's just playing it safe - just in case.

Over the last couple of weeks she's made a few passing references to Santa and presents and always with a knowing tone. likewise Louise and I have found that we've been a little bit lax about strictly referring to Santa when talking about presents - so maybe we all knew that this year, we could all see the elephant in the room.

And then tonight we were talking about presents and maybe, if she wants a laptop, we'd better pop along to see what sort of laptop, what size and screen she wants - that sort of thing. So we could let Santa know. Even as I said it, I knew it sounded really silly.

Which is why her reply of - "don't be stupid dad, I know there's no Santa" - wasn't really a surprise. It's not going to stop us playing along, that's most of the fun of Christmas anyway, but there's a bit of me that's sad about losing another bit of the child I had.

In her place we suddenly have Molly the teenager. Or so it seems. She may only be 11, but my word, she's doing the whole teen thing so well. It's infuriating, annoying, inflammatory beyond belief. But at the back of my mind, there's still that incredibly wonderful feeling of her turning into a great little grown-up, who, when we're not falling out, I can have a great time with. These teenage years might not be great, and god knows they're only going to get worse when she actually turns into a teenager, but she's still my molly, my gorgeous, wonderful Molly and even when I'm arguing with her, I'm still daddy, and she's still my little girl.

But this year, she'll be in on the Santa conspiracy.

Oh Joy It's a Royal Wedding

2010-11-16T19:19:00.002Z

Halfway through the day - Louise emails me, obviously hugely excited with the Royal Wedding news - she's such an impossible Royalist you wouldn't believe.

I, like so many voices I've heard today, really could not give a toss. The only thing that really annoys is that I know exactly who's going to end up paying for the damn thing. Me. And unless they shut the schools for it and I get a day off then I really don't even need to think about it.

But what absolutely amazed me about the whole thing was this BBC News article:

"Prime Minister David Cameron said the engagement marked "a great day for our country" and wished the couple a long and happy life together.He said he had received the news in a call from Buckingham Palace during a cabinet meeting, and it was greeted with "a great cheer" and "banging of the table" from fellow ministers.
He had slept overnight on the Mall ahead of Diana and Charles' wedding, he added."

So, there's two very rant worthy images:

One of the cabinet doing their best "hah, hah, hah, we're going to smash the oiks, what ho jeeves, bring me my morning prostitute and quail's egg". Tossers.

And the other one - wanker cameron was camped out on the Mall when he was 15.

FIFTEEN.

Useless, upper class, knob.

I know I'd have used the royal wedding as an EXCUSE to stay out all night when I was 15, but there's no way I'd have actually gone to the bloody thing.

Now, off to watch the news. Oh wait, it's full of Royal correspondents trying to outdo themselves over who can be more sycophantic.

Want List - November 2010

2010-11-01T00:05:00.003Z

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

November 2010

January 2011:

February 2011

March 2011:

April 2011:

August 2011:

2011:

2013

sometime in the future...... but when???

The way all computing should be?

2010-10-28T00:09:00.003+01:00

A few days ago I was bemoaning that I had to get a new computer this half term. My XP desktop is nearly 8 years old and had started being a bit temperamental. Very bloody temperamental.

So it was off to get a new desktop yesterday, with me fully expecting to have to spend the next few days tweaking it all and getting it just right. Except it didn't work out that way at all. In fact, by 9 tonight I was finished. Everything worked quickly, installed smoothly, files transferred like a dream. Hell, even iTunes picked up all my music and artwork and didn't mess them up at all.

Unbelievable. Windows 7 seems pretty nice so far - in the barely notice it's there sense, like any operating system should do. Even better than that - practically silent, almost eerily so. I find myself noticing the quiet, more for the absence of noise than anything else. The old machine could occasionally manage to find some sort of frequency of fan whirring noise that would play havoc with my tinnitus. But every so often with this one I find myself turning down the music just to try to make out the noise.

So I was wrong. Yes, if I would have had a £1000 spare I'd probably have gone for a Mac. But I didn't, so Windows 7 will just have to do. And so far, it's doing rather well.

A little computer history....

2010-10-25T16:56:00.000+01:00

Probably of very little interest to anyone but me, but what the hell....

I think I got my first computer around autumn 1995 - over a £1000 from a local PC company in Dudley. A Windows 95 machine with no internet. Relatively high spec as I recall, but not certain of the exact specs. I also paid out full price for a copy of Office 95 Professional. I must have been mad, but for some reason I decided I needed Access to learn databases.

I spent hours pouring through the Windows manual and the Office 95 manual working out how to use it. Learnt how to use Access by making a huge database of my comic collection at the time, all beautifully cross referenced and organised. Now I don't have comics, and I dont have Access. But back then it was a real big deal.

Second computer was a Windows 98 machine, and again I have no real idea when I bought it, but it had Internet which puts it at sometime before Molly was born in 1999 - only because we remember using the Internet to search for what to do about colic!

Again the machine cost over £1000 for a relatively high spec, and again I paid out for Office 97 Pro. Oh, how things have changed. You wont find me doing that anymore. Either a copy of Office 2003 or go Open Office. Even at school we still use or licensed version of Office 2000. There's very little chance of us upgrading to MS Office 2007 - cost mostly but also because both I and the ICT co-ordinator like the idea of teaching our children how to do things with computers, not how to become slaves to Microsoft applications.

And the third computer came along in January 2003. Again fairly pricey, but the spec was pretty good for those days: Windows XP, 2.9Ghz, 120GB hard disk, 512MB RAM upgraded to 2GB after 6 years. I shocked me when I looked back just how long I'd had the machine. It's no wonder it's on it's last legs really.

After that came the idea of mini computers. I'd been thinking about them for a long time and was obviously way, way ahead of my time. Got myself a Palm m550 and foldaway keyboard in 2003, long, long before the era of smartphones. It was used as an organiser and a way to write when out and about. Not really ideal for either to be honest, but the best of what was around at the time.

But what I really wanted was something small and with a full, fixed keyboard to carry round with me and write on. Ironically, I was still ahead of the game, as the only really small mini-laptops at that time (2006/7) we're highly specialised and bloody expensive. Even more ironically, the eventual solution was something I first saw when working in a secondary in Birmingham around 1997.

Enter the Toshiba Libretto:

Bought in 2007 from ebay, costing about £100. It's still upstairs, the battery's shot, but it's still working, this beautiful little machine (about size of a hardback book). Perfect for carrying around with me, doing writing for the FPI blog, and this blog - granted the keyboard is tiny and too fiddly, but it was a lovely thing.

But I could have just waited a few months and the first wave of netbooks would have come along. My timing wasn't great, but at least I got to play with the Libretto, very probably my favourite piece of computing kit I've ever had.

November 2008: Along comes the Asus EeeePC, which is what I'm writing this on right now.

A perfect little machine, allowing me to write anywhere, not too heavy, wi-fi enabled to surf in front of the TV. It's so much better than the Libretto ever was, running Windows XP, pretty fast, not much memory, but I like to run it stripped down anyway. Only really needs a text editor and the Internet to get everything done.

And now we're onto the fourth desktop machine in my series of computers. that makes six computers, four operating systems, probably the best part of £5000. No doubt I'll be on here sometime soon with pictures and moaning about the fuss of Windows 7.

More reviews on the FPI blog

2010-10-25T14:47:00.006+01:00

Like most things on this blog, I'm way behind with catching up with these....

Computers, computers, computers - why I really don't want to get a new one

2010-10-23T15:09:00.005+01:00

My lovely Windows XP desktop is on it's last legs. Back in June it developed this annoying intermittent fault that means every few weeks I have to do a system restore to a good point, then spend a couple of hours adding things and changing settings so that it all works how I want it to. But looking back at the receipt I'm amazed to find that I bought the thing in January 2003. It's nearly 8 years old for god's sake.

Now I could keep doing that for a while longer, but there's always that feeling in the back of my mind that some day, probably some day quite soon, it's just not going to bloody work any more. And it's always going to happen at exactly the worst time.

Which means I've decided to get a new computer now, when it suits me. The downside of all this is that it means my obsessive compulsive behaviour kicks in and I have to learn a new operating system and get the new computer doing exactly what I want it to. But at least I've managed to survive on XP long enough to skip over Vista and get Windows 7.

And please, no-one pop up and tell me I should get a Mac. I've seriously thought about this over the last few months. If I'm changing operating systems, I figured at one point I may as well go the whole hog and go Apple. Except for three main things:

1) Money - I just can't afford the £1000 a mac would cost.

2) Fear - it's completely different, I'd have to learn it all again.

3) School - we're on a Microsoft network that I have to look after and I'd like to stay Microsoft at home to keep my hand in.

So sometime this half term I'll be getting myself a new Windows box. With Windows 7. And then I'll start the stressful process of getting it just how I want it. Which for most people would be something that they do gradually. But not for me. I'm far too obsessive about these sort of things. And based on what happened back in June when I had to completely reinstall my current PC, I know it's going to go something like this: 1 day of reinstalling everything (programs, internet connection, restore all my data) and then 2 days of getting the music sorted. Again, most people would just be happy getting iTunes installed, iPod synched and then tinker with tracklistings, artwork and all the fiddly stuff over the next few months. But not me. Oh no, it all has to be done and sorted immediately.

I really am hopeless, aren't I?

Pocklington - 4 years on

2010-10-19T15:23:00.000+01:00

(4 years - and some classic issue 4 - Steranko's Nick Fury, Seth's Palookaville and Ellis and Cassaday's Planetary)

Oct 19th 2006. A special day in Bruton family history when we moved the 131 miles up north from Birmingham to York (all detailed here).

It's now been 4 years since we moved, and it's honestly been the best thing we ever did. The house is lovely -even though we're still trying to get the builder to fix the bloody roof properly - yes, still trying - roughly 3 and a half years after reporting it and we're still having problems. All I can say is thank god for the NHBC. The fuss of getting the builder to do anything is incredible, until we get back in touch with the NHBC and within half an hour of them phoning the builder he's on the phone to us arranging a time to come round.

Louise's job is still great, my job in the primary school is still the best thing I've ever done. But best of all, Molly is completely settled into life here in Pocklington. Her primary school was lovely, a perfect place for her to grow up. And then we had the secondary school non-problem. A choice of two, catholic in York or local comprehensive. My heart goes out to any of our friends in Birmingham going through the nightmare of getting schools sorted.

So she's settled into her secondary school - loves being big and grown up, has a great time with her sport and after school clubs (she's on the Netball team already, plays football, hockey and wants to do basketball as well). The only downside is the problem with homework. It's just about settling down but it's been a big shock for her (and us) and we've had no end of arguments about it - the teenage years are going to be fun, I can tell.

So 4 years. 4 great years. Here's to many more.

Boys will be girls ......

2010-10-10T12:17:00.004+01:00

You know the rats we got from Pets At Home? Those lovely boys Buzz & Woody?

Well, to cut a long story short, seems they're not males at all. So the boys are actually girls. Thanks Pets At Home for that. The way it happened was this... Woody (the brown and white) had been getting all cage aggressive with us - beautifully behaved out of the cage but if we dared to put hands inside we'd be bitten and attacked. Rather nasty.

Best advice for males aged about 4/5 months is to get them done and talking to the vet they recommended that if we get one boy done we should get both done. Which was fine, they were booked in for the day and I dutifully took them in to be dropped off before work. And that's when the vet looked at them and gave me the news. To be honest I felt a bit of an idiot, because talking to the vet, boys are VERY obviously boys and these VERY obviously weren't, but I ask you - would you know how big a male rats bits were meant to be?

The vets advice was still to get both girls spayed, as this should cut out the cage aggression or at least reduce it so that with training they get used to us as part of their territory inside the cage. The main problem was that it would be both a more complicated op and consequently much more expensive.

Molly was really shocked and upset when she got home and I told her about it. She'd wanted boys because they tend to be less manic and get fat, lazy and cuddly as they get older. There were tears, as she tried to come to terms that her lovely boys were actually girls. But I tried to get over to her that, boy or girl, they were still her Buzz and Woody. And after a little while she calmed down and started to get concerned about the op and how they'd be afterwards.

Off to the vets to pick them up and bless them, they looked terrible; huge shaved patch, massive slash of stitching up their bellies and obviously woozy as hell. The wounds were horrible, and rats being such wonderfully clean animals, don't help themselves by doing their best to clean the stitches away either. But to wrap this up, all was well, Molly's "boys", as we still affectionately call them, are recovered perfectly now and they go to the vets tomorrow for a final check up. Molly has recovered from her shock and now treats them just like she used to.

Meanwhile, Pets At Home have been in touch following an email expressing my annoyance that they got this so wrong. I had a most refreshing conversation with the manager about the problem, and he surprised the life out of me when he started by completely accepting the blame, said it was inexcusable and that the store apologised for all the upset. I know I shouldn't be surprised by someone admitting that the thing that is 100% their fault is actually 100% their fault, but it seems to happen so rarely now. Then, without me even having to mention it, he said the store would cover the vets bills.

Which is why yesterday we were in York on a bit of a shopping expedition, Molly looking for boots, tops and a coat in her new favourite place; New Look. I eventually left them to it and went for a lovely lunch, a read and a bit of a write. Louise and Molly came back a couple of hours later laden with bags and Molly was beaming with the stuff she'd bought. A very good day indeed.

So Molly's lovely "boys" are girls, but she still thinks they're lovely, even if Buzz and Woody have proved to not be the most appropriate of names after all.

More reviews at the FPI blog....

2010-10-10T00:00:00.005+01:00

You know, I really should do more writing on here, but it's got so that even keeping up to date with the reviews I'm putting up on the FPI blog is too much trouble. Busy, busy, bloody busy.

Anyway, here's a couple of weeks worth...

Want List - October 2010

2010-10-01T00:05:00.000+01:00

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

October 2010

Sometime in 2010...

2011:

sometime in the future...... but when???

Last week on the FPI blog....

2010-09-25T16:21:00.002+01:00

Short week this week, although there were extra bits about Leeds Alternative Comics Fair and an overview of Terry Wiley's work by me plus a great interview with Sarah McIntyre by Matt Badham.

What I should have been doing today....

2010-09-18T19:14:00.002+01:00

But instead I spent all morning and most of the afternoon doing homework with Molly. Well, I say doing homework, more like calming her down when it all gets too much. Even with trying to keep on top of it all this week she still had 4 pieces to do/finish. The art was the real difficult one, so much frustration - she really, really wants to do it well, but so far hasn't made that step up from childish drawing to the sort of drawing the teacher will expect.

Eventually, after 2-3 hours of off and on trying to get it right, she was 80% finished when we decided that enough was enough and she needed a break. But after lunch we started her RE; photos of all the churches in Pocklington and a little research to describe them. That took ages as well. I wouldn't mind if she was thick - but Molly's bloody bright and yet it still gives her so much grief getting it all done - so much of it coming at her all at once, she's overwhelmed right now.

And tomorrow - it's History. Aaaaarrrrgh.

So no, I didn't get along to the Leeds Alternative Comics Fair, we were finished with homework today around 3, and by the time I'd have travelled across by bus and train it would have been too late. Likewise car, petrol and parking would have been a right pain.

Oh well, maybe next time eh?

This week at the FPI blog....

2010-09-18T10:36:00.000+01:00

Propaganda - A Secret Wish. I'll buy it again. And again. And again. And again.

2010-09-18T10:03:00.012+01:00

25 years ago I bought Propaaganda's beautiful, magnificent album A Secret Wish for the very first time. And then I bought the Paul Morley reproduction (other versions and remixes) cd Wishful Thinking. And then I bought the 2002 Outside World cd with even more versions.

Four times I've bought A Secret Wish. The original album had 10 different songs on it. Across all 4 cds there's only another 4 songs (and two of these are, in all honesty, just renamed reworkings of songs from A Secret Wish) and 7 extra dvd videos.

This latest version of A Secret Wish is the deluxe edition. No new tracks. Just 2 cds worth of the original album and various alternate versions and different mixes. I started with a treat - the 20 minute version of Jewel/Duel called Do Well. I hadn't heard it before - it's a rare, rare thing, mixing together multiple versions of Propaganda's most famous song. It took seconds for the goosebumps to form on my arm and a huge, ecstatic smile to play across my face.

Right, I'm off to listen to Propaganda. Again. Have some pictures, taken from the ZTT Archives.

He said what?

2010-09-16T21:40:00.007+01:00

Here's one that raises the bar on idiotic, backward thinking, out and out insulting stupidity:

Pope Benedict (from this BBC article):

"Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live."

"As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."

Yes, he really is making a link between being an atheist and being a nazi. No, I couldn't believe he'd say something so incredibly, ridiculously stupid either. But I suppose I should have expected it. This of course, comes just a day after one of his main aides described the UK as marked by "a new and aggressive atheism" and said that "when you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country".

The ongoing de-catholic-isation of Molly is going well. Things like this only make me think she's better without influences like that in her life. And even the main catholic in the house is tending towards agreeing with me on that.

UPDATE. Just after posting this, I saw Steve Bell's cartoon for today:

What I did at the weekend....

2010-09-13T22:47:00.000+01:00

Trip to Birmingham - off to Nostalgia & Comics...

and the Birmingham Zine Festival.....

Full reports over at the FPI blog

This week at the FPI blog.....

2010-09-12T22:41:00.000+01:00

She loved it.....

2010-09-07T22:47:00.002+01:00

But we knew that she would. Came home today and was excitedly going through her planner almost before she got through the door.

On secondary schools and the terrible reality of being a parent....

2010-09-07T01:09:00.002+01:00

Molly goes to her new school in a very few hours. She's a predictable mix of excited and nervous, obsessing somewhat over getting lost, wondering whether she'll be in the same groups as her friends, who her teachers will be and countless other little questions.

We've spent the last few days living the cliché of parents watching their child growing up. And the oldest cliché of them all is sadly true. It does genuinely feel like just a moment since we were getting her ready for her first day at nursery or her first day at primary school back in Birmingham, a tiny thing in school uniform nervously approaching the playground for the first time. And now she's off to big school. A new uniform, a new start, more children.

And it's wonderful, marvellous to see her, looking so grown up, so independent. Yet it's horrible at the same time, because every step towards independence, every day she grows older is another day, another step towards that glorious, awful day that she doesn't really need us any longer.

The role of a parent, at least those that do it properly is to prepare your child to leave, and to rejoice in them doing so, confident that you've done your job properly. And if you do it right, it will break your heart when they do, holding the tears in until they turn the corner.

And that's how we felt tonight, laying out her things for school in the morning, immeasurably proud, so full of love for our little baby, our little girl. And then, once she was in bed, then I started thinking about how quickly she'd grown up and how things would change so quickly now. It's so sad, so wonderful, grief and loss in a way, but something to rejoice as well.

So here's to Molly, my little girl, my gorgeous wonderful girl. From the first moment I saw her, 11 years back, I knew my future was set. And I'd have it no other way.

Secondary School tomorrow.....

2010-09-06T01:45:00.000+01:00

And much as I'd love to, I wont be going there with her.

Last week's FPI blog reviews.....

2010-09-05T00:36:00.000+01:00

Bloody hell, just two last week (and in truth, I didn't much like either of them) - it's looking like I'm not really trying. But I can assure you the review writing machines at Bruton mansions are still working overtime.

Want List - September 2010

2010-09-01T00:01:00.001+01:00

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

September 2010

October 2010

Sometime in 2010...

2011:

sometime in the future...... but when???

One, Two, Three, Four ........ Scott Pilgrim

2010-08-29T13:05:00.005+01:00

Yesterday, Louise had to work so Molly and I had a Saturday to ourselves and Molly decided that we were off to the pictures. The choice we had, according to Molly, was Grown Ups or Diary Of A Wimpy Kid.

Grown Ups I didn't fancy - it seems to me that it's one of those films where every ounce of funny in the film is already in the trailers, and two minutes of funny in a 90 minute movie didn't fill me with joy at the prospect of the £15 it costs now to get to the cinema. Wimpy Kid was the one we decided on.

Except I headed online to find out times whilst Molly was out getting her hair done - and if £15 for two cinema tickets seems extortionate, try £25 for getting an 11 year old's hair done. Wimpy Kid was on too early and there was no way we'd make it in time. The prospect of seeing Grown Ups wasn't something to look forward to.

And then I realised something:

Why the hell not? The timing was right, it was only a 12A, and as soon as I suggested it to her she was so up for it. Even better, it was on at City Screen - the lovely cinema in York that's somewhere between indie arts cinema and old fashioned local cinema.

We had a fantastic time. I'd heard enough about it to know it was going to be fun, and very true to Bryan Lee O'Malley's great graphic novel series. But I didn't think I'd enjoy it quite as much as I did. Almost everything was pretty much perfect. In fact, up until the very end, I don't think I could fault it. For some reason, the last 15 minutes just seemed a bit flat and not as exciting as it should have been, but apart from that - wow. And Molly absolutely loved it all.

So much so that we listened to the soundtrack all night when we got home and we're already planning on a second trip to see it sometime.

The strange thing is, it's possibly the first grown up movie I've ever gone to see with Molly. Before this, everything was either animated children's stuff (even if, like Toy Story 3 recently, there's a lot for me in it as well) or older child/teen movies like Harry Potter or Twilight. To me even Twilight still counts as a Molly film, possibly because it's not something I'd choose to go and see on my own.

But Scott Pilgrim was something different, a grown up movie that both of us wanted to see - and yes, that's just one more sign that she's growing up. Wonderful but still a little saddening.

Last week at the FPI blog

2010-08-28T12:06:00.000+01:00

11 years ago today - Happy Birthday Molly!

2010-08-25T01:25:00.005+01:00

It really does seem like no time at all. One day we're holding her in our arms for the very first time, the next, suddenly, amazingly, wonderfully, she's 11.

Off to secondary school in a couple of weeks, grown up, ready to face the world. Yet still, always, always, our gorgeous little girl. And much to her embarrassment, she always will be.

(Molly perfecting that grumpy teenage look - but the hint of a smile ruins it!)

Happy Birthday Molly. Love you.

Oh yes, we got presents, shouldn't forget about the presents (Molly certainly hasn't! She may be all grown up, but that doesn't stop her getting all hyper excited the night before her birthday before eventually collapsing, alarm clock set for 7am, into bed at 11pm). The slightly sad thing about this years present haul is that I realised as we were wrapping them that this was the first year ever that Molly didn't have any actual toys. Wii games, dvds, books - but no actual toys.

[sob] growing up is hard for the parents to take [sob]

This Week at the FPI blog....

2010-08-21T21:26:00.001+01:00

This week at the FPI blog.....

2010-08-14T21:41:00.002+01:00

Bruton Family Summer Holiday 2010 - Adventures in Wales and Dublin - PART 2

2010-08-13T23:32:00.011+01:00

Tuesday saw family Bruton head to Dublin.

Holyhead ferry at 1pm, Dublin at 5pm, spend the night and away again to Dublin ferry at 7pm Wednesday, eventually getting back to Holyhead in the early hours of Thursday. I've been to Dublin just once before, Louise and Molly never. Molly was incredibly excited, not least because she'd stropped a few months back that she'd never been abroad and as she pointed out "Scotland doesn't count" (sorry Scottish friends, but you know what she means).

Personally, having not been on a ferry for a long time, I was a bit disappointed that they've changed the layout (at least on Stena) and you can't get to the front or the back anymore - that was always the best bit, seeing the land disappear one end and then the destination get closer and closer hours later at the other. Instead you get a very restricted view along the sides.

But Molly was very happy with it anyway - the ferry crossing was just one long fun thing for her, finding lots and lots of things to do all over the ship.

We got in, headed into town, and off to O'Connell Street for the hotel. Having Google mapped it before we left I had no problem finding it - seeing as it's almost directly opposite the 121m gleaming spire thing:

Our hotel (Lynam's) was a cheap boutique hotel. The photos had looked lovely and Louise and I were looking forward to spending a relaxing night once Molly was asleep enjoying the atmosphere of what looked like a lovely little hotel bar. Sadly, Lynam's, although lovely and boutique-y, is also a little tired and the bar no longer opens. But it was merely a minor inconvenience (for me at least - more on that later) and the hotel bedroom was lovely - clean, comfortable - everything you need from a room you don't intend spending more than a few hours asleep in.

Off out we went to the Dublin night. O'Connell Street, Temple Bar, seeing all the sights. Unfortunately, as Molly later pointed out very succinctly, Dublin seemed to consist of far more than it's fair share of "fighting, homeless people and drunks". Oh dear. It hadn't helped when we stopped off for tea at a lovely Pizzeria and then walked out almost right into the middle of a group of chavvy kids having a fight over something or other. It was a proper fight after a fashion as well - once the requisite round of shouting, squaring up and pushing were done with, chav #1 decked chav #2. There was blood. Molly was most unimpressed. And Louise and I started to feel a little bit unsettled.

I know it's not that we're some country bumpkin family just in from the sticks. Pocklington may be a sub 10k market town, but Louise and I spent years in Birmingham and I'd regularly wander through areas of the city that most people avoided. But something about the vibe in Dublin when the lights go down just seemed a bit too threatening. Shame.

Anyway, onto the nice bits. I'd already decided it was time for a Guinness. Louise and Molly headed off to a lovely little ice cream place in Temple Bar for dessert so I headed off to the Temple Bar. Now I may be doing the typical tourist thing with the Guinness but at least I wasn't being really bloody annoying in the Temple Bar like the group of students in front of me and taking pictures of the bloody pints they were having. It's not so much that I minded them taking pictures, after all, they were students and if there's ever a time to be annoyingly young, it's those years of studenthood. No, what I minded was that they decided to do it at the bloody bar, in my bloody way.

But nevermind. That first sip of Guinness soon took any irritation away. It really is so deliciously light and goes down so quickly. Or mine did anyway. Still had the taste on my lips 20 minutes later when we all met up to head back to the hotel. I know the old adage about it being better in Ireland isn't necessarily true - the stuffs the same all over the world, but the fact that more of it's drunk in Ireland, so the kegs are fresher, the lines are cleaned more regularly and the barstaff know how to pour it all makes a big difference.

And here's where the bar would have been a great boon to Louise and I. Because it was already 10pm, Molly was knackered and was going to go to sleep fairly quickly. Since Louise is so nice and since I'm the one who doesn't mind sitting in a strange pub on my own and had some reviews to write up, I got to head out whilst the girls went to bed.

I can't remember the name of the bar, but it was suitably good. Not too many tourists, got busier as the night wore on, had a great barman who remembered everyone's drinks, no matter how long they'd been in the bar. Guinness #2 was just as smooth and lovely as #1. Guinness #3 was the same. Then I decided to not push my luck, remembering how heavy Guinness could be and what a Guinness hangover felt like, I switched to good old reliable G&T. A lovely, lovely night out in Dublin for me.

Wednesday morning we were all up early, breakfast in the hotel, off out shopping and sightseeing. Molly was determined to visit one of the crappy Irish shops that pump out trad music, sell every manner of green tat and generally exist just to sucker in the tourist money. And bless her, Molly loved it. Tacky and 10 just fit so well. After going round the shop at leasrt 5 times, she decided that she was going to get herself a T-shirt. And thankfully, she picked a pretty nice one.

(The GPO building is well worth a look - a beautifully maintained, old fashioned post office, all gleaming marble and gold fittings)

(The Oliver St John Gogarty pub - Molly just liked the flags)

After that we had a very nice, although very tiring day round Dublin, which we all agreed was a damn sight more hospitable and better natured during the day than it was at night.

We did the tourist things:

Lunch was traditionally Irish. Sheehans Bar off Grafton Street. Or at least the drink was. And after me telling Molly and Louise about my annoyance with the tourists photographing their Guinnesses she insisted on this......

Then we wandered some more. We have a habit of seeing someone famous every time we go away. It never fails. And this time, as we wandered around a lovely deli, we realised the very lovely man buying stuff at the counter was Neil Hannon, he of The Divine Comedy.

Afternoon treat for tired legs was Murphy's Ice Cream Parlour. Absolutely gorgeous ice-cream, fantastic coffee and brilliant service. We'd popped in earlier to be greeted by a lovely guy. "Can I get anything for you?" he says. "No thanks, we're just looking" say we in our best uptight English manner. "Oh, there's nothing worse than looking at ice cream - would you like to try a couple of flavours?". It was lovely, and we made a definite resolution to go back. But I get the impression that he wasn't necessarily doing the hard sell, more that he just did it anyway, just to be nice. That's customer service, and I'm gladly recommend Murphy's Ice Cream parlour to anyone who happens to ask.

And that was pretty much Dublin done. We did some more walking, some shopping, some starring at places. But come 6pm we were all absolutely wiped and just wanted to get the bus back to Dublin Harbour and get on the ferry. So another cup of coffee was sought and eventually we found ourselves on a mostly empty ferry.

But because of the terrible discrimination against foot passengers that Stena operate, even with very few people on board, we still couldn't get a seat where Molly could stretch out and get some sleep. Every sofa, every comfy bench - all taken up by the car passengers. It had struck us as strange when coming to Dublin that foot passengers don't actually walk on board. Instead, we get to wait in a passenger lounge, get on a bus and the bus drives onboard the car decks. Car passengers can get onboard up to an hour before departure. Foot passengers can't. We have to wait until the bus goes. And it was 10 minutes before departure when the bus pulled onto the ferry, by which time all those car passengers had settled down in every single comfy seat/lounger/sofa/bench and had stretched out for a nap. Damn them all.

Manny, many hours later, with Molly wired and hyper through lack of sleep we arrive in Holyhead and drive home. I appear to have a slight sniffle, a bit of a sore throat and a throbbing headache.

And it just got worse from there. Nothing bad, just a shitty cold, sinuses burning out, nose running/blocked/running, sore throat, shivers, hacking cough, and a pulsating, eye straining headache. Pretty much the sort of thing that always gets described as "man-flu". Except I don't get "man-flu". I fight and struggle and keep going, dosing myself up with olbas oil, painkillers and alcohol, refusing to let it beat me down.

Maybe it was the holiday that did it, maybe the actual relaxation, the winding down? No matter. I spent Thursday sprawled on the sofa, snuffling, dosed up, olbas stinking. Molly and Louise went down to the beach after tea and had great fun. I lay on the sofa. Molly went to bed. I lay on the sofa. Then I started to feel better. Then I got up and realised I only really felt better when I was lying down. Repeat for the next four hours until bed. I did try sitting down and writing some things, but trying to concentrate just didn't happen at all.

Bah. Holiday sickness. Not good. Repeat on Friday. Louise and Molly had a great time, off to the beach, lunch, ice creams, relaxing playtime. I lay on the sofa.

But I wont moan too much (or have I already?) - we went home on Saturday, I still felt like shite, but it didn't matter, 2/3rds of the Brutons had an excellent week in wales and Dublin, and me, as the remaining third, had had a blast right up until Thursday.

Bruton Family Summer Holiday 2010 - Adventures in Wales and Dublin - PART 1

2010-08-12T17:02:00.000+01:00

A week ago now we got back from our lovely summer hols!

The plan: Have a most enjoyable week in Anglesey thanks to the ever generous hospitality of Molly's favourite auntie and uncle with an extra overnighter in Dublin. In actuality, a great most of week that ended with me going down with some nasty cold thing. But all in all, a very nice holiday, thank you very much.

We had originally just planned to do a day trip to Dublin, but then someone (me) pointed out that since I'd have to drive to Holyhead and then drive back to the holiday house, it would mean I wouldn't feel that good about having a pint or two of Guiness. And yes, I realise it's a terrible cliche, going to Dublin and then banging on about how Guiness in Ireland tastes so much better than in the UK, but I'm warning you now - I'm going to.

So we found what looked like a rather nice hotel (cheap too) in the centre of Dublin, booked the ferry and off we went.

Saturday we got to Anglesey and settled in. The first surprise was waiting for Molly as we pulled up - Uncle David had delayed leaving so he could see her (it's been far too long since we went down to Birmingham to see them all, and Uncle David's 50th party was inconveniently placed the weekend before Molly's SATs exams started). Delight turned to amazement turned to hysteria when she realised that the Jag in the driveway was Uncle Davids and that he was going to take her for a spin in it. It's Uncle David's mid-life crisis car - I'm sure he wont mind me saying that - but it's a beautiful car and he made Molly's day with the spin down to the beach and back. That's why he's favourite uncle.

Sunday was Molly's choice so we upped and offed to The Welsh Mountain Zoo, famous in Bruton family legend for the time we took Molly's Grandad there in his wheelchair. The mountain part of the name should tell you about some of the slopes you have to walk up and down - even funnier when Louise wheeled him down the hill and was genuinely concerned they were going to lose control. or the image of Louise pushing him up the hill with Molly in front, pulling him up by holding onto his walking stick.

Anyway, the zoo itself is a lovely place:

Monday it was my choice (sort of - my real first choice was Portmeirion to relive my love of the Prisoner, but I was outvoted).

So off we go to Beaumaris and a trip out in a boat to Puffin Island. Or at least Molly and I went off in a boat. Louise doesn't do boats all that well. The ferry was going to be okay, but the last time we got her on a small boat was on a half hour trip round the bay in Whitby. Molly and I had a great time up top but Louise spent the time under decks sitting down with a glass of wine to calm her nerves. (She would have had a second but couldn't muster the courage to get up and walk the 15 feet to the bar. Bless her.) Another much loved holiday memory.

Just like the one Louise and Molly remind me of whenever we're in Beaumaris - one year we were sat down quite happily having an ice cream when a lovely seagull managed to crap with magnificent accuracy right down my sleeve as I went to lick the ice cream. Every time, every single time we pass the spot in Beaumaris, Louise and Molly can't help but collapse in fits of giggles as they remember it.

(Image of Puffin from UK Coastline - this was what one of the ones we saw looked like!)

(A Puffin - we got nowhere near this close! Image from Puffinpalooza)

Puffin Island - sadly, following an infestation of rats years back, there aren't actually all that many Puffins there, but we did see 2 on the way round the island. Plus at least 7 seals and 2 Harbour Porpoises (Molly was keeping count). Brilliant trip, choppy, splashy and lots of fun.

(Puffin Island in the distance)

(A little closer. According to Molly this was a picture of one of the seals. No, I can't see it either)

They're not meant to be doing this......

2010-08-09T09:12:00.000+01:00

One problem with rats. When you get them out for a bit of a runaround and set up a series of boxes/runs/obstacles for them, they will always go where they really aren't meant to.....

Over at the FPI blog this past week....

2010-08-08T11:57:00.000+01:00

A lovely mix - one of the best UK comics out there with Harker, the Drawn & Quarterly John Stanley library with Melvin Monster and Cinebook's Bluecoats.

Want List - August 2010

2010-08-01T01:04:00.002+01:00

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

August 2010

September 2010

October 2010

Sometime in 2010...

2011:

sometime in the future......

This week at the FPI blog.....

2010-07-31T09:51:00.000+01:00

Reviews goodness over at the FPI blog, just two his week, what with interview and work from others, including a Shadowlands review from Michael, an old colleague at Nostalgia & Comics.

Molly's Early Birthday - pizza, cinema, potential bankruptcy

2010-07-28T12:07:00.000+01:00

Every year we have the same problem regarding Molly's birthday. Coming as it does in the summer holiday it means that more often than not, her friends are away on holiday when she'd ideally like to have a party.

Some years we've waited till they're all back at school, other years we've just left it as family only. But this year, seeing as it was end of Year 6 and a major event, what better way than to actually have her friends birthday party on the day after they leave school.

We invited everyone in Year 6 and to be honest had our fingers crossed that some wouldn't be able to make it. Because Molly's plan was to have a pizza party followed by all of them going to the cinema to see Shrek 4. If everyone turned up it was going to be a VERY expensive idea.

We were in luck, just 6 of them in the end, so it was off to Pane e Vino, our lovely, favourite Italian restaurant in Pocklington (and the only Italian restaurant in Pocklington) and then the movie. We've taken her to Pane e Vino with friends before but then we had a table off to one side. This year we took the big and brave step to just book a table for them.

Not brave that anything would go wrong, that's stupid paranoid, Daily Mail type thinking. No, we were more concerned that they'd be just a little bit too loud for the rest of the diners. However, we were assured by the staff when we picked up and paid that all had been well. Which hopefully means the black looks I got off one woman at the table next door was purely of the stupid "How could you leave the children here alone!" type.

Then off to Shrek and by the end of the night, a magnificent early Birthday for Molly.

This week at the FPI blog.....

2010-07-25T20:25:00.003+01:00

Summer holidays day 1 - paperwork and birthday parties....

2010-07-24T11:48:00.004+01:00

Day 1 of the 6 week holiday. We all got up late, had a lazy breakfast and settled down for a first day catchup sort of day.

Louise is currently downstairs sorting through a pile of cookery mags taking out interesting recipes, Molly's very excited and waiting impatiently for later on when her advance birthday party happens. And I'm (thinking about) catching up with school paperwork.

At work I have many, many systems for keeping track of what they hell I'm meant to be doing. All the staff know by now that something has to be written down somewhere to have a chance of me doing it - not that I'm pedantic about it, just that my poor, pathetic memory is such that I shall immediately forget something if it's just told to me in passing one day in the corridor.

So the two main systems are a clipboard with a regularly changing DO TODAY list. Then there's the invaluable REMEMBER THE MILK, a computer application I just couldn't do without.

And then there's the piles of paperwork. Again, these have a hieracrhy. First there's the pile of things under the clipboard. That's must do or needs doing today. Then there's a slightly bigger pile sitting on top of the computer next to the admin laptop. And then there's the boxfile.

The big boxfile with all the things I really need to look at - AT SOME POINT. Things that aren't necessary for either day to day or term to term. Similarly there's also a Remember The Milk tab labelled TO LOOK AT, which I routinely add websites and applications that should be really good if only I/the teachers ever had a moment to look at them.

The big boxfile was my final day job. Instead, what happened was that, as usual, I finished with no time to spare, grabbed all of the paperwork outstanding and threw it all into the boxfile and took it home. Which, if the holidays go exactly like last year and the year before, it will sit on a shelf until it's time to go back, unopened and unlooked at.

Well not this year, this year I shall do things differently. This year I have the boxfile on the desk. This year I shall be opening it up and working through it (using the paper bin a lot I imagine).

Or at least I intend to. Right after I finish blogging about it. Then I may make a cup of coffee. Thn I think the office could do with a dust. Then it's probably around lunchtime.

School's Out - Oh, yes, there were tears....

2010-07-24T01:27:00.004+01:00

Today was Molly's final day of Primary School. Louise and I already knew the sort of emotional day we were due, having already had a phone call from school yesterday telling us Molly would be home a little late because she was really upset saying goodbye to one of the little ones who was off on holiday and wouldn't make the last day.

So off we toddled to the leaver's assembly at Molly's school. And it was a wonderful assembly - with a lot of non-dry eyes all round. They had speeches, they had some gorgeous photos of Year 6 through the years, they had presents and all of us parents were ever so proud of our gorgeous children.

Molly actually kept it together quite well during the assembly, but later on when we went to pick her up she was red eyed and just couldn't stop bursting into tears everytime she saw someone else in school that she was going to miss. The thing with Molly's school is that there's only four classes and all of the older children look after the younger ones, something Molly is really going to miss. So she spent 20 minutes after school hugging the little ones and crying, and crying, and crying some more.

We did manage to fulfill one ambition that Molly had though - she's always wanted a picture of Mikey (#1 cuddly toy and has been for a long time) with her teacher, and here it is.....

All in all, a wonderful day, incredibly emotional, full of happy memories - exactly as it should be. next up, 6 weeks of holiday for both of us and then onto the adventure that is secondary school.

Luckily, both Louise and I know that Molly's such a wonderful, gorgeous, grounded and lovely child that she's going to have a great time there.

But today was very special, and none of us can believe that it was only 6 years ago we were tentatively walking Molly into her first day at St Chads in Birmingham, a tiny, quiet thing in a uniform that was equally unbearably cute and just a little too big. She left today wearing a shirt covered in graffiti and very red eyes, much bigger, much older but still my gorgeous little girl. Then again, she's always our gorgeous little girl and always will be.

My new computer bug

2010-07-21T00:43:00.004+01:00

.... and it's driving me mad. Moving around was bad enough but now it seems to be having a rest / has died right in the middle of my eyeline.

Little bastard. Obviously did it deliberately.

(*not actual bug, this is someone else's bug. I couldn't be done with getting the camera out and taking a pic of the screen)

Reviews this week at the FPI blog...

2010-07-17T14:10:00.003+01:00

Quiet week this week.....

Oh, the joy of pet ownership....... first vet bills coming in

2010-07-17T13:45:00.003+01:00

It had to happen, the fun of owning pets is often negated slightly by the vet bills. Molly began to get concerned over the bumps on Buzz's ears. Then she googled it. So off to the vet to see what it might be. So that was my Friday afternoon taken up then.

Everything okay according to the vet, it's either mites or viral. Anti-parasite medication on both rats and see how it looks in a few weeks. And a very reasonable vet bill after all. Molly happy again, all okay. Now, on with the business of the last week of term and a social calender for the youngest member of the family that puts us all to shame.

Countdown to end of term, countdown to a new school.....

2010-07-13T00:12:00.000+01:00

Two weeks to go. 10 days. And then it's the summer holidays.

I could start telling you about the amazing amount of work I've got to fit in between now and then, but I'm not going to. Because this year, this summer is a major moment for Molly. It's the end of primary school, the end of Year 6. She goes to secondary in September and is ridiculously excited about it. Maybe a little nervous as well. But mostly excited.

Today was the first of a whole host of leavers things; her prizegiving. Not quite as exciting as last year when she was made head girl, but a lovely, slightly sad afternoon. Molly, as head girl, had to make a long speech with the head boy talking about everything their year has down and did it brilliantly. It's all too easy to forget just how bloody great Molly is, after a few moody strops and sulks too many when she's at home. But sometimes all we have to do is talk to people who aren't her parents or see her in action and we realise how absolutely lovely, clever and special she is.

Strangely there were no tears from the Year 6 leavers, but our inside source tells us that they've been practising the special leavers assembly for next week and they're weeping just at the rehearsal. Oh dear.

Anyway, pictures from the prizegiving....

and here they are, the class of 2010......

Harvey Pekar 1939-2010

2010-07-12T20:23:00.006+01:00

Oh crap, just found out Harvey Pekar just died. Wonderful, strident, humane, irascible, brillant comic writer whose work found me at exactly the right moment in my life to create a love of simple, small, powerful stories of everyday life.

Rest in peace Harvey. And thank you.

This last week at the FPI blog....

2010-07-11T02:00:00.003+01:00

My, haven't those boys grown......

2010-07-05T00:01:00.000+01:00

Well, I had planned to get Molly (far the best photographer in the house) to get some photos of her rats (the boys - Buzz and Woody).

But as you can see, only Buzz (he's the white one) was really in the mood. Woody (The brown one) decided he'd much rather stay in the comfort of his tissue box.

So , you'll have to trust us, they're getting big now. 2 months old now and much loved in the Bruton household. Even Louise, not that keen to start with, has to admit they're lovely.

This week's reviewing stuff at the FPI blog

2010-07-04T23:34:00.004+01:00

Volvo in Twilight, Peugeot bag Toy Story 3 - will Voldemort be driving a Ford Ka?

2010-07-02T20:31:00.003+01:00

What the hell is the current trend in car ads sponsoring movies all about?

And why does anyone think it's a good idea? And whilst we're at it, should the marketing men behind this abominable idea be shot. Or maybe, as Bill Hicks once brilliantly pointed out - maybe they should all just kill themselves?

Want List - July 2010

2010-07-01T01:04:00.002+01:00

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010

October 2010

Sometime in 2010...

2011:

sometime in the future......

Yep, I can see what they mean...... or maybe not....

2010-06-30T00:41:00.003+01:00

NY Post headline photo....

Good, but not as wonderfully telling as this one....

But anyway, the World Cup, it seems, is determined to continue, so I shall continue watching it. Except not today. Because today is my first non match day since the thing started. And worse, it's a non match day on Thursday as well. Withdrawl......

Although frankly I sat through the Japan-Paraguay 0-0 match thinking they really should have agreed before the 2 hour waste of time and effort that was the match and extra time to just skip it and go straight to flipping a bloody coin.

Spain V Portugal was better, lots of skill everywhere but the whole putting the ball into the net. Nice to see Ronaldo looking a little blubby and red eyed at the end though.

Quarter Finals may be wonderful, but more than likely we'll see four matches of teams desperately trying not to lose and ending up with at least two matches decided by penalties. Personally I can't see past a Brazil v Argentina final with Brazil just steamrollering all before them.

World Cup - oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ... and a weekend roundup

2010-06-28T00:29:00.000+01:00

Well, that didn't go very well did it? Utterly miserable performance. Dire. Dismal. The words just aren't enough to get over how bad a match it was. The highlight of the entire thing was watching the Match Of The Day pundits just amazed at how bad it was. Everything else was just awful.

Yes, obviously they should have some sort of technology involved for things like the Lampard goal. And the Argentina goal later in the night where Tevez was offside. The fact they accidentally managed to show the offside immediately after the goal on the big screens shows how easy it is. Except FIFA and Blatter just don't want to know. Ridiculous.

As has become the norm round here, the plans for the weekend were to have no plans. Except football, Dr Who, football on Saturday. And football, drop Molly off at badly timed laser quest party in the middle of a crucial England world cup match, pick her up and football later on Sunday.

And as usual, the lack of planning was proven correct. Friends called round Saturday and Sunday. The afternoon meetup with another set of friends turned into an impromptu sleepover and we ended up not needing to pick her up from Laser Quest as someone volunteered to bring her back. And she had a wonderful weekend. As she often does. but more and more, these wonderful weekends have less and less to do with us. I hate this getting old stuff and the necessary shift in parenting it entails. I love that she's so independent and so blessed with her lovely personality and a wide range of friends. But I'm not so keen on the back seat we're taking now...

So that's our weekend. We enjoyed it all. Except for the nadir of years of watching England. That we could have done without.

What next? Hermetically sealed children released at 18?

2010-06-24T17:34:00.007+01:00

I despair. I really do. Increasingly I find myself shaking my head in horror and frustration at the insanity of modern living. Where the default position appears to be "everyone is under suspicion" and the shrill, paranoid cry rings around of "who will protect the children?"

All of those helicopter parents, worried about any adult, especially any man who goes anywhere near their child. Suddenly no one trusts anyone, and everyone is a potential paedophile, everyone is out to hurt or harm their child. And we end up with a shrill, media driven, mass of hysteria that has no basis in reality. The sort of child protection that ends up creating a generation of children who can't actually function amongst their peers, don't know how to be independent or cope on their own.

I'm trying not to harp on too much about it. But the mass hysteria over the safety of our children is ridiculous. Children are far more at risk from injury or death on the roads, but I don't see many Daily Mail covers screaming how we're all potential child murderers because we drive. And in the majority of those horrible cases of child abuse, abduction or murder it's far more likely to be at the hands of family members or by adults known to the family.

Reason for the little rant? It transpires that a new ruling is likely to come down that anyone in a care environment will be banned from using their own cameras or cameraphones. Presumably all down to the terrible case of Vanessa George, the nursery worker who abused children and took cameraphone images to spread to friends on Facebook. So because of one hideous, unusual crime committed by a twisted abuser everyone who works in a care environment has another rule imposed upon them that tells them that they're not trusted to look after children at all.

It may not seem that serious and too be honest the actual practicalities of it aren't. I take my camera into school sometimes when I want good photos for the website or know that all of the cameras will be in use. Other people do the same. Not being able to do this will be a pain, but not terribly serious. Except it's simply a small part of an ongoing regime of distrust and blame that's crippling our children. They aren't being allowed to live life and they're being denied a childhood because of a fear of something that mercifully is incredibly rare.

And as usual, the imposition of this new regulation will not help solve the problem at all. Anyone able to hide her terrible crimes from her workmates would probably be able to figure out a way to hide a mobile phone - maybe in her pocket?

But never mind, the fact that the new rules wont solve any problems doesn't matter to the knee jerk reactionaries. Maybe we should just turn our nurseries and schools into barbed wire covered, 24 hour CCTV coverage and where our children aren't actually allowed to do anything -all in the cause of "keeping them safe".

World Cup stuff.....

2010-06-24T00:05:00.001+01:00

Well, it's been bloody fun so far. Molly keeps wondering when it's all going to end, keeps asking why I insist on watching every single match that I can. But luckily Louise is into it as well - she's not quite watching every match, and I have to agree with her that the whole first set of matches were really dreadful affairs (bar the first South Africa match). But since then the second and third set of matches have been great.

I wish South Africa would have made it through, as they've played wonderfully. But the most importantly is that England (finally) made it. Granted, the group games have been awful, the Algeria match was the worst I've ever seen them play, but the Slovenia game was better, much better (although it couldn't have been any worse to be honest).

Louise took the day off work, I had to go in and just couldn't get home in time for the kick off. I made it home for 3:20, Louise had the door open and the beer on the table. Molly was at school sports club so we could shout, scream and swear to our heart's content until she eventually came home just before the end. She said that she and her friends could hear us screaming all the way down the road.

Joe Cole's inclusion was worth it just for the spectacular way he took the ball into the corner and played keepy with James Milner.

Rooney looked injured or off form towards the end but it seems to be a minor thing, maybe he just needs a bloody goal to get him going.

Sunday we have a tricky situation though. England kick off against Germany at 3pm. Molly has a laser quest party at 3:45. England game finishes (full time) around 4:50. Molly's party finishes at 5:30. So we're desperately trying to figure out how best to schedule it all, maybe missing the first half and catching the second on TV.

And what the hell happens if there's extra time and penalties I have no idea. Do you think Molly would mind if we left her at Laser Quest till it's all over?

(Nah.... maybe not)

So, computers. Aren't I meant to know something about them.....

2010-06-23T00:12:00.000+01:00

Two weeks ago my beloved old desktop machine decided to break. It's 5 years old, runs XP, does exactly what I want it to do and does it fast enough for me. I don't want a new machine, I've got this one set up just right and the prospect of upgrading just fills me with dread.

But suddenly, I turn it on and it hangs on the desktop. No icons, no start menu, no taskbar. Just wallpaper. So, being IT savvy, I head over to google and start working out what could possibly be wrong with it. This is where having the second machine - the lovely little netbook always comes in handy. How people solve computer problems without a second machine to google the trouble I have no idea.

Lots of different things. Lots of attempts. Lots of reboots. No luck.

In the end, resigned to the fact I was looking at getting one of those newfangled Windows 7 machines I gave it one last try. The complete reformat of XP.

I've done this before. At school. And somehow, on machines where they're just 1/50th of the total it doesn't hold as much fear. But this was mine. All mine. And I fretfully sat by as it went through the whole process. And bless my soul, it worked.

Except then I had the problem of reinstalling everything and trying to make it look and function exactly the same as it had before.

[TIP#1 - always have a list of programs you need installing]

[TIP#2 - make sure all your data is lovingly backed up and ready to just copy over]

[TIP#3 - do try to make sure you actually have a list of what needs doing to the machine to make it work like you want it to]

I managed Tip #2 just fine. My paranoid obsession over backups paid off. But #1 & #3? Lets just say I have a very good list now.

So. Thursday night - Reformat, start reinstalling. Friday afternoon - finish reinstalls and download god knows how many windows updates. Move data across. Friday night, Saturday, Sunday - screw about with iTunes. Yes, three days of messing about, importing all the music, finding out where it's imported wrong, where it's messed up tracklistings, pictures, info and all the other small, annoying crap.

Finally. It was done. I have a functioning, lovely, just like it used to be machine again.

And then it does it again last night. OH MY GOD.

Except this time I notice that it happens to do it just after one particular windows update install on shut down. It took me the best part of two hours trying to figure out how to fix it, and in the end it was as simple as stopping automatic updates and deleting the Windows/ Software Distribution/ Downloads folder. Since then it's all worked wonderfully.

Which means, oh yes, that the entire problem last weekend, the four days spent reinstalling everything just right, all of that could have been avoided.

And I'm meant to know what I'm doing.

At Least We're Not As Bad As France.....

2010-06-21T23:07:00.002+01:00

So it's not all bad then..............

What's going on with the blog Richard?

2010-06-21T00:51:00.000+01:00

Well, if you've been here a while you may have noticed that over the last year the blog has become rather .... empty.

Not if yo just cast a glance over it certainly, but it was becoming simply a repository for reposting reviews that I'm doing for the FPI blog and had stopped being MY blog quite a while ago.

Not that I've done it deliberately, just that a combination of many things kept me away from doing things here. Most of my writing time is spent on the FPI blog to be honest. I'm doing the majority of the reviewing over there - which people seem to like, which is nice. And I'm also posting articles and news up there, most of which would have found a natural home here on Fictions to be honest. It got to a point where I had to let something give.

And it was Fictions.

And quite a few people have told me that they miss it.

So, here's the new plan..... I'm stopping all of the reposting of reviews, I've deleted a lot of the old ones. I'll still point you in the direction of new reviews over at the FPI blog and I'll still put comic stuff up here when I want to talk about it. But this has to be MY blog, has to have something away from comics. And from now, it's going to be again......

Right, now expect some content this week. I shall try....

This week at the FPI blog......

2010-06-20T01:28:00.000+01:00

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Psychiatric Tales

2010-06-19T01:55:00.000+01:00

Psychiatric Tales

by Darryl Cunningham

Blank Slate Books

Joe reviewed Psychiatric Tales a couple of weeks ago (Joe’s review), but I wanted to add my own views on the book.

Because I’m one of the many who’ve had their lives affected. My family seems to have a history of mental illness in one form or other. I saw my Grandma; a vibrant, slightly fearsome woman with a knowing smile and a ready laugh for her only grandchild transformed into a shambling, confused and frightened shell as Alzheimers’ took hold. And as I write this my own mother is dealing badly with a diagnosis of Psychotic Depression, a disease so similar in it’s symptoms to Alzheimers’ that it really makes no difference. It’s sad and distressing to see someone’s character and personality stripped away so easily and effortlessly.

And I know I’m not alone, and equally I know that so many people would find Psychiatric Tales a great source of information and, perhaps most importantly of all, a great source of comfort, hope and optimism to know that they’re not alone. But whether or not you’ve experienced any of the illnesses Cunningham discusses, Psychiatric Tales is as compelling and informed a book on the subject as you’re likely to read.

(A brutal, shocking moment, but all part of the essential process Cunningham takes us on in an attempt to understand.)

Cunningham worked for many years in the psychiatric care system, until his own personal struggle with depression took hold. The work here utilises all his insights gained from experience and observation and condenses them into a series of almost documentary style chapters dealing with many difficult and often hidden mental illnesses; Dementia, Depression and Bipolar Disorder, Self-Harming, Anti-Social Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia and Suicide. Each is presented almost as a case study, with Cunningham reporting events in near documentary manner.

This reportage would be arresting enough – a dry, yet fascinating read, but where Psychiatric Tales excels, where it becomes so much more engaging and emotive is when Cunningham breaks away from his documentary style and uses his experiences to bring us closer to the people behind his tales. Then the tone changes and the dispassionate observer/reporter becomes a caring, emotional fellow sufferer. It’s this humanising of the subject – transforming these patients into real people that elevate the book into something truly special.

(Darryl’s own breakdown – written with insight and bravery, painful to read, but so important for our understanding of the relevance of his work.)

And most emotive and illuminating of all is the last chapter – “How I Lived Again”. Those of us who have followed Darryl’s work for a few years will know this aspect of his personality, of his own personal depression, but to those readers unaware, this last chapter will be upsetting, disturbing and most of all, incredibly optimistic and uplifting. Darryl shows us, with personal experience as well as recounted experience that every one of these debilitating and terrible illnesses are beatable, with luck, with family, with years of struggle perhaps. But beatable nonetheless. I’m sure if one sufferer read his work and made this intuitive leap of understanding Darryl would consider his work done and done well.

(Cunningham’s stark imagery in Psychiatric Tales with those small visual motifs, such as the rain being driven back and the sun breaking through in this chapter on depression.)

Psychiatric Tales is told in stark black and white (a shock for those of us used to his vivid and colourful work on Super-Sam and San Diablo), the artwork is simplified, often to the point of near abstraction, but the simplicity of the line never fails to allow the strong message come through.

And then there are the stylistic touches, where Cunningham simply adds something to his pages that sit unheralded, yet once noticed, immediately strengthen the visual message. It may be the photographs in his chapter on famous sufferers or his use of repetition in his panels to drive home a message – but each stylistic shift is perfectly suited to the moment it’s attempting to illustrate: the rain depicted throughout the chapters on depression that clears as the sun bursts through as hope and optimism point to a future without the illness. Or the gaping hole in Cunningham himself in the final chapter as he contemplates his own depression. These little artistic touches illuminate the narrative, strengthening the message of the work.

Psychiatric Tales is a compelling, emotional and difficult read on a much misunderstood topic. Yet in just over 100 pages Darryl Cunningham demystifies the subject and connects us all to the illnesses he talks about. Psychiatric Tales manages to be both informative documentary and emotional journey, shining light on a oft-misunderstood topic and, by the end of the book, shows that there is hope for those afflicted and affected.

It’s a spectacular success for Cunningham and a great piece of comic art. But there’s no better ending for this review than Darryl’s own words:

“Look deep into yourself for the qualities you need to survive. Your talents, hopes, dreams, and desires. Because these are the things that will save you.”

This week on the FPI blog....

2010-06-13T01:44:00.003+01:00

PROPAGANDA @ the FPI blog this week........

2010-06-06T02:09:00.000+01:00

Want List - June 2010

2010-06-01T00:30:00.003+01:00

All the things I've thought - ooooh, that looks interesting in the coming months.

June 2010

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010

October 2010

Sometime in 2010...

2011:

sometime in the future......

This week at the FPI blog.....

2010-05-30T01:36:00.000+01:00

This week at the FPI blog......

2010-05-23T01:06:00.000+01:00