Paper Art

 I'm very pleased with myself.  I haven't really tried anything like this before, but at the moment I have time to experiment.  I saw a picture of a stag made up of lots of little pieces of scrap paper, in an old copy of Big Issue, and I thought I could do something like that.  Then I combined that idea with the style of an old picture book of the life of St. Patrick that I'd admired when I worked at the Children's Bookshop, and I came up with this:

Paper Art: Crowley in black with black wings on a red swirly background, and Aziraphale in cream with newsprint wings, holding a green book, on a background that looks like planking.

I did Aziraphale first, and got a bit more ambitious with Crowley.

I'm thinking of doing Inspector LeBrock and Billie from the Grandville novels by Bryan Talbot next.

 

Mr Punch

 I've been reading Christopher Fowler's blog for a while now (at www.christopherfowler.co.uk) and enjoying it, so I thought it was about time I read one of his Bryant and May mysteries, about two elderly coppers in the Peculiar Crimes Unit.  The first one I found was Bryant & May and The Memory of Blood, which I think is quite late in the series.

It concerns Mr Punch - or at least a series of murders on a Punch and Judy theme, which leads Bryant into researching the history of the Punch and Judy show.

I was already fairly familiar with the history of Punch and Judy - Mr Punch is the villain in the first Rivers of London book by Ben Aaronovitch, and turns up here and there in the later books of the series, though in the Bryant and May book no real magic is involved.  I was surprised, though, that in all the discussions of the traditional characters and puppets used in Punch and Judy shows, the crocodile was never mentioned - I remember the crocodile very clearly from when I used to watch the Punch and Judy show on Blackpool beach.  The booth was built into the back of a van that drove up and down the sands, stopping at intervals to do the show:

This is what I remember - the picture was taken in 1963.

 There are digressions into the history of the building used by the PCU - once used by Alistair Crowley, and with a fairground booth automaton of Madame Blavatsky in the attic, and theatre history, as the suspects are all part of the cast and crew of a new play at a recently re-opened London theatre, and that was all fascinating.  I tend to be more interested in the background details of a murder plot, rather than the whodunit aspect.  There's also a B-plot which starts off as something quite commonplace (woman has troublesome neighbours) and ends up being a lot more sinister, and personal to Bryant.  There were also some very funny moments, mostly involving Bryant.

I'm going to be looking out for more Bryant and May stories now.

Organization for Transformative Works Elections

 I first became aware of AO3 (Archive of Our Own) last year, when I started dipping my toes in the shallows of some of the fan fiction I was most familiar with.  

Then there was the wonderful moment during the Hugo Ceremony at DublinCon when AO3 won the Hugo for Best Related Work, and the lights went up on the audience so that everyone who had written fan fiction on the site or been involved in AO3 stood up - because this Hugo was for all of them.

After that, I started writing fan fiction again, after a break of many years (I used to write Star Trek fan fiction for fanzines like Starship Excalibur, when the original 79 episodes were all the Star Trek that existed).

I've been having fun - I changed the ending of The Flashing Blade, which has been bugging me for nearly 50 years, so the hero chooses the right girl; I turned Lord Peter Wimsey into Lady Petra and wrote about her experiences in the Great War; and I tried to make sense of The Saint's timeline in the Roger Moore series.

I also wrote a story that brought together all the fictional jewel thieves in Europe with The Champions, set Liz Shaw and Kate Stewart on a new path to keeping the Earth safe after UNIT was defunded, and wrote a few little Aziraphale and Crowley scenes (they are such fun to write!).

I've also read some awesomely good fan fiction, and some that might not be technically very good but which was obviously written with love (I'd put some of my own fiction in the 'technically not very good' category - the main thing for me was having fun writing it), and I've started following some of the authors on Tumblr.

And, since I was using the site, I sent a couple of small donations when they asked.

So I was delighted to be eligible to vote in the elections for new Board members.  Reading the bios of the candidates, I learned a lot about what goes on behind the scenes to keep the site running.  There are hundreds of volunteers organising, translating, tag-wrangling, dealing with legal issues, and more.

AO3 is part of the Organization for Transformative Works, which also covers Fanlore, Transformative Works and Culture, Fanhackers and Open Doors.

It's nice to be able to vote for something positive.

More of Adam Adamant

Damn you, Guy Adams!

I was left so traumatised by the end of the first volume of Big Finish episodes of Adam Adamant Lives! that I had to find out what happens next!

Will Georgina escape The Face?

Will Adam ever find happiness?

So I've just pre-ordered Volume 2 from Big Finish, which promises a bank robbery by highwaymen and a show down between Adam Adamant and The Face, among other things.

Guy Adams has also written these three episodes, and also plays Simms, Adam's manservant.

I fully expect to be traumatised by the excellent writing and acting again, but this time I'll have a stiff drink ready....

Olivia de Havilland, Screen Legend

She was the last of the great stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and her most famous roles have her looking serene and beautiful in period costume, such as Gone With the Wind, above, and The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn (who once said that his ideal woman was a mix of Olivia de Havilland and various dusky maidens....). She co-starred with Errol Flynn several times - including the Western Dodge City, and she first appeared with Errol Flynn in Captain Blood:

Another early film role was as Helena in the Hollywood version of Midsummer Night's Dream.

But she wasn't always glamorous on screen - another famous role was as the star of The Snake Pit, where her character was in a mental asylum:

Off screen, she challenged Warner Brothers in a lawsuit over her contract with the studio, (they wanted to add to the original seven year contract) and won. The ruling is still called the De Havilland Law.

On TV, she appeared in Roots: The Next Generations as Mrs Warner, the wife of a former Confederate officer played by Henry Fonda (I'd completely forgotten this until I looked it up - I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the white characters when I watched the series).
I did know she was related to the de Havillands who built aeroplanes - the founder of the de Havilland aircraft company was her cousin.
She died at her home in Paris, aged 104.

John Saxon has died

John Saxon appeared in all sorts of TV programmes when I was young and square-eyed. I started noticing that a show or a film might be low budget but he would always be good in it. I particularly remember Planet Earth, a pilot for a series that never happened, with a cast made up of many actors who had worked with Gene Roddenberry (who wrote it) before.

And then there was Enter the Dragon, where he was one of Bruce Lee's rival martial artists.

He was 83, and died of pneumonia.

Earl Cameron, Actor

I just heard that Earl Cameron has died, at the age of 102. He came to the UK from Bermuda as a sailor, at the beginning of the Second World War, and quickly became involved with the London stage. He went on to have a film and TV career which included Doctor Who. In The Tenth Planet he was the first black actor on film or TV to play an astronaut.

He also read Brer Rabbit stories for Jackanory, and appeared in Thunderball with Sean Connery, which gives an idea of the range of parts he played.
The Earl Cameron Theatre in Hamilton, Bermuda, is named after him.