And the winner is... chapattis?

School of Saatchi time again. This week I can imagine people sitting and swearing at the TV. I was tempted myself. A couple of the pieces had something about them but for the most part they were the kind of modern art that makes the newspapers scoff, the Colonel Blimps have fits of apoplexy, and the Turner Prize judges wet their pants with joy.
Each of the six contestants had to remove a piece of existing art (though the definition appeared to be wide) from a room in Sudeley Castle and replace it with a contemporary take on the theme. So Suki removed the books from a bookshelf in the library and replaced them with mirrors. To enhance her work she spray painted a lot of books black and spread them around the shelves and floor of the room. In the same room Saad placed a carpet on the floor where a table had previously been and covered it with piles of chapattis, nearly 2000 in all we were solemnly informed.
Over in the chapel Matt took down a candelabra and replaced it with a sphere full of red wine that had been solidified with gelatine. Sadly it had also gone opaque but the judges seemed not to realise that this wasn't his original concept. It reflected the stained glass windows rather prettily and was quite pleasant which is more than can be said of Sam's installation a few yards away. This was a copper plate and frame which issued a constant annoying hum and changed to a slightly different annoying hum if anyone touched it.
Back in the main castle Eugenie and Ben were at work transforming a bedroom. Ben took town a classical painting (which seemed to be of Queen Elizabeth I) and replaced it with a stark painting of grotesque figures and large blocks of white and black done on what looked like a piece of scrap wood. Eugenie started off by having a tassel pulled back and forth on a piece of wire attached to an electric drill but then contrived some nonsensical explanation of why it was better to have it hanging stationary and leave the motion in the mind of the viewer.
I'm pretty open-minded about art but to me these all looked like conceits looking for an expression rather than anything genuinely creative. One of the judges, speaking specifically of Eugenie but accidentally describing all of them, said that there is a fine line between something you would order from the BBC props department when you wanted a piece of joke modern art and an actual piece of modern art. Most of these particular pieces seemed to be on the wrong side of the line. For the record the public seemed almost completely underwhelmed by all of it but Charles Saatchi heaped lavish praise on the chapattis and the glass sphere. Incidentally the chapattis provided the humorous moment of the night when Saad had a hissy fit because he thought Suki's black books clashed with the concept of his piece.
Next week is the last of the four programs when they get to mount a joint exhibition at the Saatchi gallery. My money is on Saad as the winner. He deserves it just for sheer entertainment value.

Warning: Spoiler Alert. Don't read the comments if you want to maintain the mystery until after the final. They contain what may well be the result.

To Put Away Childish Things: Christmas Special

Around the streets as I walk home from work there are houses decorated with all manner of flashing Christmas lights. There are giant inflatable snowmen and polar bears, flashing lights in the form of a Santa on a helicopter, a Santa parachuting from a flying sleigh, a Santa climbing a ladder up the side of a building. There are reindeer and elves, there are snowdrops and bells, there are twinkling cascades of faux snow in blue and red and green and white and gold.


We've never been a family for ostentatious displays but we used to celebrate Christmas. Nowadays we don't. At least not in any way you'd notice. There's only my father and me in the house and it seems rather a pointless exercise to get the decorations down from the loft, spend time putting them up, sit and look at them for a couple of weeks, spend time taking them down, and then put them back into the loft. The limit of our Christmas celebration is to buy each other a couple of cheap gifts, stand any Christmas cards we get on the shelf and, on Christmas day, eat the smallest piece of turkey we can possibly find. If we actually bought a real Turkey, no matter how small, with just the two of us eating it for breakfast, dinner and supper every day, we might be finished in time to buy one for next year.
It wasn't always thus.


I remember all kinds of things that make me nostalgic for the old Christmases. Different things from different Christmases. The first thing that springs to mind is the annual ritual of paper-chains, strips of coloured paper glued into linked loops by pudgy infant fingers and hung across the room proudly, no matter how inept the execution might be.
I remember back when my Granddad was still alive and my brother and I were young enough to share the box room at the back of the house. We never hung up stockings, we always placed baskets at the foot of the bed and tried to keep each other awake to catch Dad and Mom putting the presents in. We never succeeded.
I remember that back in those days Dad, as dads did, always went out on Christmas morning to have a couple of drinks with his friends and that we moved all the furniture round and laid the table properly with the best crockery and cutlery and a new crisply white table cloth (the only time in the year when we actually did so). And he'd come home and we would (also for the only time in the year) sit down around the table and eat a meal with three actual courses. Then we'd clear away one lot of food and load the table with Christmas cake, mince pies and trifle ready for the next meal.
I remember the feeling of excitement at opening Christmas presents which were always something I wanted (including the toys mentioned in previous entries) and never something I needed - apart from my aunt's present: a new pair of gloves every year.
I remember the crepe paper streamers that we had for years before they were eventually thrown out to be replace by glossier, shinier, foil streamers that inspite of being glossier shinier and foil were somehow just not as "real" as the old ones.
I remember the Christmas when I wasn't supposed to be in the Nativity play. I was a helper, gluing little sweets onto circles of gold card to make crowns for the three kings. And how I got to wear one after all when one of those kings came down with Chicken Pox.
I remember when I was in the Christmas play - not a nativity that year, but the Trial Scene from Alice In Wonderland. I was the Knave of Hearts. I remember my two lines: "It wasn't me" and "Do I look like it?"

And there is, of course, nostalgia of more recent vintage: Goat Curry for Christmas dinner in the Himalayas, the Sherpas decorating a branch with tinsel and a cake with jam; the noise, bustle and chaos of the Santuranticuy Christmas Market in Cuzco, threading my way through the stalls with their rows of plaster saints; kids singing Christmas Carols outside in the rain as we ate dinner in Banaue in the Philippines; the scariest Santa in the world at the kids Christmas party in Zomba, with his sinister white face mask and bare feet.

I can't imagine that I'll ever be especially nostalgic about these last few Christmases or that this Christmas will generate any great feelings of comfort and joy. Not that I expect gloom and misery but nowadays it's chiefly remarkable for being a couple of weeks when I don't have to go to work. Oh, I'll do the drive round to relatives and drop off the cards. I'll give gifts to the chosen few. I'll watch Christmas TV and go out for beer a few times but these are not substantially different from the rest of the year. No nostalgia to be had.

Of course that's what nostalgia is: the recollection of how things always used to be better, or as Ambrose Bierce had it - "fond remembrance of imaginary times past".

Mixed Messages

It's not a film I am likely to see but I was confused by a review I read of the DVD for Transformers 2:Revenge of the Fallen.
It starts by saying that it's a "turbo-charged, special-effects saturated" film that "surpasses its predecessor in every way" and finishes by saying that it's a "tedious rehash of the first film that overstays its welcome by about 90 minutes."
Did they like it or not?

To Put Away Childish Things #4

Da da dee da deeee daa, da da da dee da da da da deee

Ah I can see it now, waves breaking in glorious monochrome on an empty and decidedly untropical beach*, not unlike the one at Rhyl where we spent so many childhood holidays; captions appearing on the screen - "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", "starring Robert Hoffman"; the swelling strings sounding for all the world like a stretched and slipping audio tape as the notes wowed and fluttered their way through the opening credits and under the voiced-over narrative. Yes it was summer holiday time and the apparently interminable Robinson Crusoe was on daily throughout the whole six weeks. Though it seems from my brief researching that there were only thirteen episodes, my memory is that not only was it on every summer, and every day of every summer it lasted so long that I had always gone back to school before managing to see the end of it. There must have been, my memory tells me, falsely , dozens and dozens of episodes. And I really never did see the final one. For all I know poor old Robinson is probably still on the island now, patiently waiting for me to buy the DVD and watch the end.
Children's television in those days was very different to now and the summer holiday schedules were repeated year after year. I'd outgrown the childishness of Watch With Mother (Andy Pandy, The Woodentops**, Tales of the Riverbank et al) and moved on to the altogether more sophisticated continental fare of Robinson Crusoe, The Singing Ringing Tree, White Horses. They were all bought in from overseas (usually Germany, but in the case of Robinson Crusoe it was France), all very badly dubbed into English, all filling the endless rainy days of my early holidays.
But it's that musical score that sticks most in the memory***. It was hypnotic and the frequency of the episodes and the fact that it played throught most of the running time in the background drilled it so solidly into my brain that if I live to be a thousand it will never be forgotten. More than anyhting else it is the soundtrack of my early years. Even now writing about it, I find I am uncontrollably humming "da da da da deeeee daa". I'll probably be unable to sleep tonight as it rattles around in my head.

* though the beach itself was, apparently, in Gran Canaria

** and I still remember the "biggest spottiest dog you ever did see" with a great deal of fondness.

*** and it seems I'm not the only one, Art of Noise covered one of the other "popular" sections of the soundtrack.