How Landmarks Move Around When You're Not Looking

Manchester is my home city, but I haven't been back for an awfully long time.
In fact, the last time I went back, I got lost.
I was going to visit my sister. "This will be easy," I thought. "We get the train to Manchester Victoria, then walk down to Victoria Bus Station and get the 95 to the Swan and Cemetery."
Famous last words....
When we walked down the hill, Victoria Bus Station wasn't there.
This is what it looks like now:

So I left my ex-husband with the bags at the Shambles, and went in search of the right bus stop.
Now, the Shambles, otherwise known as the Old Wellington Inn and the Sinclair Oyster Bar, is one of the oldest buildings in Manchester, and when the Arndale Centre was built, it was raised four feet from its position to sit in the middle of the modern square at one end of the Arndale.
And then the IRA blew the Arndale Centre up.
I have to admit, my first thought when it came on the news was "Hurray!" because I'd never liked the modern buildings with their toilet block yellow tiles.
It meant that that whole area had to be rebuilt - it's a Harvey Nichols store now - and as part of the rebuilding the powers that be decided to move the Shambles to a different spot.
Actually, they've done it rather well. I was appalled at the idea when I first heard of it, but now it slots into a corner beside the Cathedral, at the top of Hanging Ditch, and it looks as if it has always been there.
We went there for breakfast, and it was really very pleasant. The Wellington is owned by Nicholson Inns now, which is a rather good chain. I've been in another pub of theirs in Southwark - the beer was very good, and the place was packed out.
So, this is what the Shambles looks like now:

Starting out with Graphic Novels

It's an unfamiliar area for me - graphic novels. I know very little about Marvel or DC or the tangled continuities of the superheroes, and it's difficult to know where to start, with such a wide variety of graphic novels out there.
When I was an archaeologist, though, one of the diggers used to buy a 2000AD comic for everyone in the site hut to pass around (yes, we were that poor!), so I've known about Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog and Nemesis the Warlock and so on for a long time. My favourite, though, was Slaine, and as archaeologists with an interest in the Celtic Iron Age we were all impressed with the amount of research that had gone on to write that one.
So when I was in Manchester over the weekend, we stumbled across a Forbidden Planet - and kind of couldn't pass the door until we'd explored the SF and Fantasy goodness within. Down in the comic section, we came across Slaine, the Books of Invasions - wonderful artwork by Clint Langley, with the story by Pat Mills.
And then I went a little mad.
Another comic I had come across in my youth was Green Arrow - I used to get that from a little comic shop near Scotland Yard when I worked in London, and I'm aware of the new US TV series, though I haven't seen any episodes of it yet. There was The Longbow Hunters, with Oliver Queen looking just as I remember him, with the yellow beard and the Robin Hood hat. And the longbow, obviously.
Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors, and I knew he'd started off in comics. In fact, back when I was reading Green Arrow, I also picked up Black Orchid - I had no idea of who the writer was at the time, because I'd never heard the name before, and it didn't stick in my memory. Then I started reading books like Neverwhere and American Gods, and did some reading about Neil Gaiman's career - and remembered how much I'd enjoyed Black Orchid. I didn't find that this weekend, but I did find Marvel 1602 - in the hands of such a master, how can I go wrong?
And finally, I'm dabbling at the edges of Steampunk. I love the costumes, and the alternative realities, and I had heard of a character called Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard. Who is a badger. In an alternative 'Victorian' London. They had Grandville, the first in the series, in which the Inspector goes to Paris.

I have the feeling there is a whole new world opening up before me....

A Beautiful Dress

I saw this rather gorgeous dress on Facebook, on the page of Celtic, Renaissance and Medieval Trim. It comes originally from designsbyladyfaire.deviantart.com - and we wants it, my precious!

Actually, it reminds me of a Star Trek Convention I went to in Birmingham many moons ago. There was a masked ball (David Gerrold was the guest of honour, and he spent the evening in his ordinary clothes, but carrying round a large inflatable banana which was wearing a mask). There were two ladies there in absolutely gorgeous Elizabethan dresses, one of which was not unlike this one. I guessed that one was Queen Elizabeth, and the other Mary, Queen of Scots - but she turned out to be Lady Blackadder.
I helped a friend to make a (male) Tudor Blackadder costume (well, I sat and watched her do all the complicated stuff), which took a huge amount of time and effort, and a lot of rewatching the videos ("Now, if he'd only just turn a little bit further so I can see the corner of his cloak...."), so to look at the male costume and, from that, design a dress.... simply amazing skill and dedication!

The male costume my friend made was worth all the hard work, though - the lad who wore it had girls falling at his feet all weekend!

James Hance SF and Fantasy Art

On Facebook, I follow The High Council of Timelords who post, as you would expect, Doctor Who related material. Just recently, they started posting pictures by an artist called James Hance. He was doing a charcoal sketch of each Doctor, in order, over a couple of weeks - and they are just superb! I think my favourite has to be David Tennant, but here they all are:

He's selling them as prints on ebay - under the name "jimjeroodles".

He's also done sketches of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock - and something else. I knew I'd seen his name somewhere before, and then it came to me - he also drew this:

Can there be many things cuter than a cross between Winnie the Pooh and Star Wars?

Childhood Heroes

The writer of The Age of Uncertainty blog was talking about his childhood heroes a little while ago, though I only caught up with reading the blog today. We had one or two in common: Virgil Tracy and Mr Spock, and I suspect (though I haven't checked) that I'm around the same age as he is.
Virgil Tracy, of course, was the second of the Tracy brothers, the one who flew Thunderbird 2 - and Thunderbird 2 was my favourite of all the aircraft and rockets by a long way. It wasn't only the lift off sequence with the palm trees bending back - it was the idea of having all those smaller craft and vehicles, like Thunderbird 4 and the Mole, in those interchangeable pods. And there was a moment in one episode, where Virgil saves Lady Penelope from being run over by a train in a tunnel. He's lying on the track, inches from speeding death as the train passes over him, and he's looking at Penelope. I know these were puppets and they didn't have facial expressions really, but at that moment I was certain that Virgil was in love with Lady Penelope but he would never tell her!
Mr Spock is an obvious hero to have - for me, anyway. I never did go for the gung-ho Captain Kirk types. It was nearly always the sidekick, the quiet one who was brave without being flashy about it, and Spock was intelligent, calm, logical - and not as emotionless as he liked to pretend.
One hero who was definitely not a sidekick was Robin Hood! For me, it had to be the Errol Flynn version, or Richard Greene from the 1950s, standing up against official injustice with a sword, a bow, and a quick wit. Actually, Errol Flynn was one of my heroes in just about any film he appeared in - as Queen Elizabeth's favourite Sea Hawk in court or rowing a Spanish galley, or as Captain Blood, or Don Juan, as long as he was in period costume and handling a rapier, I was there. (In those innocent days, I knew nothing of his activities in the bedroom - it was his skill with a sword I admired).
Also skilled in handling a sword, and using his quick wits to get across enemy territory to save the besieged city of Casale, (in a war I otherwise knew absolutely nothing about) was the Chevalier de Recci, the Flashing Blade himself. Looking back, they had every single swashbuckling cliche thrown into the mix, but it was all such fun!
Ilya Kuriakin was another sidekick who I liked much better than the over-suave Napoleon Solo. I spent ages, around the age of seven, practising how to say his name, and also practising the Vulcan salute.
And in those days when all nice little boys and girls watched Blue Peter, and made their own models with stickyback plastic and washing up bottles, John Noakes was a definite hero - always the one to do the dangerous stunts, and also the one with the friendly but naughty dog ("Get down, Shep!").

Now, I'm a girl, so I knew I couldn't really grow up to be Robin Hood or Ilya Kuriakin. Fortunately, in the 1960s and early 70s there were some pretty good role models for girls. So I wanted to be Emma Peel of the Avengers, and Sharon McCready from the Champions - with the ability to speak telepathically to the other Champions and throw bad guys across the room. I wanted to be George from Enid Blyton's Famous Five, looking like a boy and exploring secret passages with my faithful dog, and I wanted to be Sarah Jane Smith, exploring time and space with the Doctor.

Actually, I still want to be Sarah Jane Smith, and if I ever hear that wheezy old Tardis engine - well, when I disappear, that's where I'll have gone.

The Music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold

The very first LP I ever bought with my own money, way back in the mid 1970s, was called Captain Blood, and was a collection of classic film scores for Errol Flynn films. Captain Blood itself was represented by a short piece called Ship in the Night. Captain Blood and his pirates see a ship in the distance one evening.
"Where is she going?" one of them asks.
Errol Flynn gazes after the stern lights with melancholy longing. "England," he says. "Where we may never go...." (cue romantic Korngold score).
The record also had music from The Sea Hawk, one of my favourite pirate films of all time, including the bit where it turns briefly into an opera - the English galley slaves have taken over the Spanish ship, and they all start singing about being bound for the shores of Dover! If I were ever on Desert Island Discs, that would be one of my eight records, and the nearest thing to opera that I'd choose.
The Adventures of Don Juan is on there, by Max Steiner, and various other films like The Sun Also Rises - and to finish it all off, there's The Adventures of Robin Hood (my favourite Robin Hood film of all time), with what is supposed to
be the most complicated trumpet solo in any piece of film music.

Wonderful as all this was, and I still listen to the record regularly, it was only part of a set - the first Korngold record of the series got the other bits of Sea Hawk and Robin Hood, and I've been looking for it ever since.

Today, I was chatting to one of my colleagues at work when I happened to look down at the LPs she had leaning against her desk. One of them was The Sea Hawk. I looked closer. I beamed in a delighted way. There it was, with two galleons pounding each other with cannon fire on the front cover: The classic film scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, including the other bits of Captain Blood, Sea Hawk and Robin Hood, and with other films like King's Row and The Constant Nymph.
Even better, there were two other records with it. Elizabeth and Essex, more Korngold scores, has Errol Flynn and Bette Davis on the front cover, and includes music from The Prince and the Pauper, Deception and Anthony Adverse.
Captain from Castile is the classic film scores of Alfred Newman, and has a large portrait shot of Tyrone Power on the front cover, on a background of Spanish soldiers and (presumably) Incas or Aztecs. That one includes music from Wuthering Heights, The Song of Bernadette and The Robe as well as Captain from Castile.

I bought the lot, on the spot, and I'm looking forward to a quiet evening communing with the record player!

Unconditional Love

I just heard that Neil Gaiman's dog Cabal has died. That's them above, taken from Neil Gaiman's Journal, where he's written a beautiful piece about the dog that made me cry - because I lost my "best dog in all the world" just over a year ago.

Here's Islay lying on the wall outside my house as an old lady - she liked the sun, and being in a position where people passing by could make a fuss of her.
Dogs can break your heart - but better that than not having known them at all.