marramgrass

You may have noticed over to the right that I’ve signed on for NaNoWriMo 2003: the challenge to write a novel in the month of November.

Yes, I am a fool.

The target is 50000 words. To write every day in November, that would be an average of around about 1700 words a day. But I won’t be writing every day, because we are moving house on the 7th of November. Rule out a day before and a day after, as well. And we’re going to visit family in NI at the end of the month. Scratch another couple of days. Add in my general lazyness and my general busyness, and you have to seriously question my ability to complete the challenge.

Still, it’s worth a laugh, don’t you think?

Turns out some nice, kind person [arsehole] has decided to make a rather fetching alteration to the bodywork of our (two months new) car [sit on the bonnet and leave a bloody great big dent in it]. I feel so grateful.

Grrrrr.

Contemplating how quickly I munch through novels. In the last couple of weeks: the previously mentioned Adam Williams, an old Terry Pratchett I must have read a couple of dozen times (anyone else do that?), the new Terry Pratchett (this one not really very good), some girly thing of my wife’s that I happened to pick and just kept going with, and a chunk of the latest Neal Stephenson.

I reckon I must average between 80 and 100 novels a year. That gets expensive. And it may say something about my life, although I’m not sure what.

The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure by Adam Williams
BEWARE: Here be spoilers!

Adam Williams’ first novel (written during weekends and holidays over the last five years) is a sweeping, lengthy - 700 pages almost exactly - story telling of the experiences of a group of European missionaries and businessmen in a fictional town in north China immediately before, during and after the Boxer uprising in 1900.

One of the most affecting, and certainly thought-provoking, books I’ve read in some time, Palace powerfully portrays the consequences of cultural superiority at the uncomfortable interface of ancient Chinese culture and the ‘modern’ European ways of technology, as each group openly views the other as ‘barbarian’. Williams says much about tradional approaches to Christian mission (not all bad, by the way), and about suffering and sacrifice: his scenes of mass execution as missionaries are martyred are humbling and moving.

The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure of the title is the town brothel, run by a vicious madam and her sadistic son, where the rich and the powerful meet to play and do business. Here, as well, is where one of the central themes of the book dealt with most openly: the medical missionary’s black and white Christian morality comes up against the local Mandarin’s honourable but ultimately self-serving pragmatism as the price the Mandarin demands for conveying the remaining small group to safety is an hour alone with a certain pregnant young Englishwoman. The clash of cultures is brought down from academic consideration to an issue of life and death for the doctor, his wife and children, and the unborn baby.

Williams’ prose is not always the most skillful, and he occasionally gets bogged down in unnecessarily lengthy descriptive passages, but as a man whose family has been in China for generations (his great-grandfather having been a medical missionary in China at the time this story is set) and who lives and works there himself, he displays the country and life there in vivid colour and clarity.

His characters are intriguing mix: most of the ‘baddies’ are quite two-dimensional, but almost all of the ‘goodies’ are much more complex. For example, the Mandarin himself is primarily self-serving, concerned with himself and his position, yet risks both to save the lives of his philosophical sparring partner and his family. Henry Manners, the semi-hero of the piece is anything but virtuous, yet still a sympathetic character. And even though the Boxers are drafted as villains, Williams’ makes clear their motivation in a way that leaves plenty of room for sympathy.

It’s not all high-brow philosophising, though. Palace is also a gripping story of action and romance and good old-fashioned swashbuckling that should translate very well to the rumoured film and/or mini-series. Apparently he’s even writing a sequel, although how well the surviving characters will stand up without the dramatic historical backdrop is open to question. I’ll wait and see.

(BTW, the post title hasn’t really got anything to do with the book. It’s just the first quote that came to mind that had to do with a brothel!)

From the LICC mailing:

“David Blaine is now over halfway through his 44-day isolation in a perspex box suspended above the river Thames. He has consumed nothing but water since 5th September. According to his website he is ‘motivated by the possibility of pushing our perceived boundaries.’ ‘It’ll be triumphant for a human being to survive this,’ he has said.

But human beings already have. The effects of starvation and isolation are well-documented. Nothing Blaine endures will advance medical knowledge. He is not fasting to listen to God or protesting against injustice. His ‘performance’ seems without a purpose, art for art’s sake.

The various advertisements on his official, Channel 4-hosted website –McDonalds, Ford, BT, Mastercard, O2, Hyundai – suggest there might, perhaps, be some other motivation.

If and when Blaine completes his ordeal he will be thinner, weaker and richer. The media circus will dismantle and the crowds will drift away. We can only hope that some seed of interest in the loneliness and hunger millions endure every day will have been planted in their minds, if not by the showman, then by the person beneath him parading the placard which read, ‘A fool chooses to starve himself and we choose to watch. One billion people have no choice and we ignore them.’”

That’s a long break. First in a while.

I will be back.

Honest.

Steve Earle: Jerusalem

I’m a new discoverer of this name-you-know, and I’m enjoyng the political stuff very much. Highly recommended.

Brian Houston: Big Smile

If you’ve heard of this guy, then I’m impressed and I must ask which part of Belfast you’re from? (Only kidding…) At the risk of sounding like Steve Stockman’s liner notes on one of Houston’s earlier CDs, I really don’t like listening to worship music. Add to that the damning reports I’d heard about this disc from a couple of my friends, and you’ll understand why I’m only really listening to it now - it’s a 2000 release!

However, I was really fed up tonight (fed up with being ill all week - although I’m much improved this weekend - fed up with not getting much time with my wife, dare I say it a little fed up with work just now - it’s been a tough few months - fed up with the stress of trying to move house, fed up with all the things I’m just a little bit fed up with) and as I was leaving to drive Rebecca to work I reached into the CD collection and my hand came out clutching this. Just what the doctor (or more likely the Big Man) ordered, it succeeded in lifting my spirits for the duration of the drive home, and I really didn’t want to get out of the car: in the car you can sit in the dark by the side of the road in a quiet, darkened, night-time street with the volume way up catching the wave of truly honest yet worshipful lyrics over some properly joyful guitar lines, and feeling the bass and drums deep within you in a way that you just couldn’t get away with in a tenement at ten o’clock at night!

Still rather fed up, but with just a little hint more of a smile on my face.

Catching up from this post, everything has changed.

The original phone hasn’t found its way back to O2, and after a little convincing they accepted that this really couldn’t be my problem (since they sent it to the wrong place). I have been ordered up a new phone and SIM card. This succeeded eventually by ordering the phone to our buildng number and sticking a note on it to tell the courier which flat to look for! I now have the SIM card - was addressed wrongly but the postman knows where I live - and it is working in an old handset, but the phone has been held up. Apparently there’s been a recall on the chargers as they are exploding (!), and the warehouse has to inspect all their stock before they send it out. I still await…

On the plus side, I figured out why my address wasn’t working. The system (including Experian, the credit reference people) has our postcode wrong. The other flats on this stair are under the correct postcode, while ours is under the one for the other end of the street. Now I know.

Modern technology. I complain about it, and then I jump through all these hoops to get it.

Once again, this weekend is a holiday weekend in Edinburgh.

I still haven’t got a handle on all these holidays. In Northern Ireland there’s a few bank holidays a year, but over here it seems like just about every other weekend brings another one.

I wonder if there’s a list somewhere…

[moan]

A funny thing happened while I was at the rugby last weekend. All of a sudden I was hit by this mad wave of dizziness - couldn’t see straight, couldn’t sit upright, generally not very happy at all. The doctor on site, and since then my GP, reckoned a viral inner ear-thing that’s knackering my balance but not doing much else, and should be gone by this weekend.

Here’s hoping, because I can’t drive and I can’t walk very far, which means I’m stuck in the flat doing prep stuff and being taken out by my wife for the occasional short drive for a change of scenery. This means I’ve had to call off a couple of things this week, and tomorrow evening’s youth club is looking shakey, since the uni term hasn’t started yet and all the usual help has yet to return to Edinburgh. Meanwhile, I’m going nuts sitting in this flat, running out of patience for various papery things I have to do.

[/moan]