A powerful beat

We are a product of our environment. But our environment is also in part a product of us. I'm an untidy person. I create the mess that surrounds me. And yet, when I get around to tidying it up, I become aware of how much the mess around me creates untidiness in my mind, that turns a creatively non-sequential mindset slowly into an impenetrable thicket, so cluttered with detritus that I can no longer fight my way to the important matters buried within. And this process creates a feedback loop, so that the thicket of thought builds up a dam against action, the mess in the physical world builds and thus feeds the mess in the imaginative world, until something breaks and insists this will not do. And once the clutter begins to disappear somehow the mind begins to clear also, and one begins to think again of productive thought rather than the tiny, time-strapped whirring that dominates all too often.

There's nothing wrong with this cycle; it's a rhythm, and life needs a rhythm, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, and the simple rhythm must build to complexity and the complexity must in its turn give way to simplicity. It's just a shame that the moment of Nothing that acts as the agent of this change too often arouses out of imposition (of illness, say), rather than being allowed to emerge of its own will. Or is the illness simply a manifestation of this need occasionally to stop?

Here's Johnny

Johnny Hicklenton drew some of the most distinctive, visceral, and plain old bizarre art you could hope to have seen in the pages of 2000ad in the late 80s and early 90s. At a time when the entire industry seemed to be in the grip of Bisley clones churning out brown painted art, he stood out as someone doing something utterly unlike anything else around, and there's still really no-one quite like him.

Johnny's also got Multiple Sclerosis, and can't walk anymore. Fortunately he can still draw, but he knows it's a matter of time before that's taken from him too.

Fortunately Johnny's too much of a fighter to sit back and accept this, and one of the ways he's fightiong back against this horrible disease is by working with Animal Monday to make a film about his condition, "Here's Johnny", the first screening of which I attended last night at the Science Museum's Dana Centre. It's a powerful piece that pulls no punches in letting you know what the (often uncomforatbly personal) effects of multiple sclerosis are, not just physically but pstychologically. This coukld make for uncomfortable viewing, but it transcends the awfulnes of its subject matter simply by the fact that Johnny's such an irrepressible, tenacious and funny man. It's being screened at Sight and Sound in Austen next month, whether or not it gets a cinema release remains to be seen, but as channel 4 have part-funded its making it'll doubtless be coming to a tv screen soon, and you really should keep an eye out for it and make sure you see it, because it's a provocative and thoughtful piece of film-making, the sort of thing you used to see all the time on Channel 4 before they gave themselves over to Wife Swap and Big Brother.

There's an interview with Johnny here.

"It's either Romana, or Fred"

So, you're struck down with a particularly nasty bug, you've finished with one deadline, you can't quite rouse yourself to start the next job, what do you do? Well, if you're me, you sit down in front of the telly and enjoy a big box of Doctor Who!

The Key to Time is the complete 16th series of Doctor Who, first broadcast in 1978, and a novelty for the series at the time in having what we'd now call a story arc throughout the season, i.e. a vague plot linking all the stories together. This comes from the height of my first obsession with Doctor Who, so buying this was a shameless act of nostalgia on my part. I remember vividly reciting all the best lines from each episode on Monday morning in the playground, but of course it's 30 years later, and everybody knows the effects were crap and you couldn't get away with that now, don't we?

Well, ya boo sucks. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's surprising how well it all stands up. See, it doesn't matter that the effects were crap (and actually, considering how little money they had, what they achieved and the ingenuity they show in achieving it is remarkable), or that it's sometimes a bit hammy, because there's more imagination in the least of these stories (probably "the Power of Kroll") than a month of most kids' TV now. Tom Baker's in great form, funny and mad and not yet a parody of himself, Mary Tamm as Romana talks back, not something the Doctor had been used to before, and there are some genuinely wonderful stories in here, best of the bunch being the Prisoner of Zenda spoof "The Androids of Tara". And in "The Armagedon Factor" K-9 actually gets something to do other than make smart-alec comments to cover up the fact that he's got stuck in the gravel again. Lots of extras (I've not listened to any of the commentaries yet, but as Baker, Tamm and John Leeson are all present, along with a number of supporting actors and directors, I anticipate some fun there), including a very funny interview with Tom Baker on Nationwide where he accuses Frank Bough of being a fictional character. And of course in "The Pirate Planet" and the final scene of "The Armageddon factor" you've got some significant early writing by the late Douglas Adams. Perhaps not the very best of old-skool Who, but a welcome reminder nevertheless of why it was the best thing on TV ever when I was 8.

Gratuitous pimping

I was supposed to be dining with a certain long-haired writer from Northampton this evening. No, not him. I'm talking about Andrew Jerdin, creator of the popular fictional character Andre Jordan. Unfortunately the lurgee still has me in its grasp, so I'm stuck here at home, plugging his new book. I've read it, it's good. So buy it. Go on.

Go on, then.

Between Roky and a hard place

Roky Erickson is playing in the Royal Festival Hall right now. It's the first time he's played in this country, and frankly it's a miracle that it's happening. I should be there. I should be coming home later to write one of those drunken, gushing, rambling posts about how great he was, how wonderful it was to see him functional and rocking. But I'm not. I'm stuck here with a disgusting cold, barely able to speak and feeling wretched. It sucks, like a big fat sucky thing.

Judge Ignatz

When you're nobbled by a virus (again! I never used to get ill at all) what better way to distract yourself than to do a valentine's mash-up of two of your favourite comics?

What do you mean, you don't recognise them?? Go here, here and here, then.

Hooray for radio!

Maybe it's the Man-Flu making me even more of a grouch than usual, but isn't TV shit at the moment? The odd repeat (Life On Mars, Charlie Brooker) apart, it's wall to wall unwatchable trash that actually makes me wish Torchwood was still on.*

Thank god for the radio. Already today I've heard some great documentaries about memory, Woman's Hour, and some Beethoven. And I've got a Sibelius concert on Radio 3, a documentary on Herbie Hancock on Radio 2, Chain Reaction on Radio 4 and Lee and Herring on BBC7 to look forward to. And that's not even to mention all the stuff you can listen again" to on the interweb (like yesterday's editions of Ross Noble and Down the Line, for instance). And all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff on Resonance FM, where you really do never know quite what you're going to get (which is a Good Thing, of course). There's a ton of stuff there, so switch off the telly and use your ears.

Talking of radio, I've just heard professional shit-stirring twat Norman Lebrecht advertising his show this weekend on Radio 3, when his subject will be blogs. Read this, and then email him, and make him look like an ignorant fool.


*I must confess to a strange obsession with Deal Or No Deal, though. Especially this week, which has an astoundingly camp twat called Bunney on it, who sings a song about whoever's playing that day before he opens his box.

Man-flu and cake

The trouble with illness is that it gives you time off work to do all the things that you never get done, but robs you of the ability to do these things. So I find myself here, struggling to get my head around the fairly simple concept of drawing a new Big Dog cartoon, and feeling vaguely disoriented from lack of sleep and the Man-Flu (which is, of course, very different from a plain old cold). The situation is relieved by the fact that one of the last things I did last night before I succumbed to the lurgy was bake a cake, so I can now test the cold-fighting properties of my Genius Banana Cake. I know that cake is not a subject that normally comes up here, but it's never too far from my heart, and so in a spirit of generosity, I give you the recipe. this cake is the product of many hours intensive research, is a handy way to use up all those over-ripe bananas sitting in your fruit bowl*, and is widely acknowledged to be in the forefront of cakes. If enough of us bake it, it may even End War and Unite all Nations in Peace and Hope.**

2-3 bananas
9oz. self-raising flour
4 oz. brown sugar
4 oz. butter
2 eggs
2 dessert spoons golden syrup
nutmeg & cinnamon, to taste

Mash up the bananas. Cream the butter and sugar together***. Mix the two sludges together with the eggs and syrup. Add spices to taste, then mix in the flour. Pour the resulting goo into a greased cake or loaf tin, and bake at gas mark4/ 180° for about 40 minutes, or until done. Check with a knife or skewer, and turn onto a rack to cool. Although it's rather nice warm, too.

On a completely unrelated note, may I also commend to you Rachel Mayfield, whose album you should buy, because it's good.


*N.B. I'm aware this is a problem only suffered by sad live-alone types like me.
** N.B. this is a wild assertion, unverified by any fact.
***If you have a food processor, you can just bung everything in and whizz it round until it congeals.