A To Z Blogging Challenge 2022 - Shakespeare - D Is For Duncan And Demetrius

 

Oberon, Titania, Puck And Dancing Fairies by William Blake.

Today’s Shakespeare characters are Duncan and Demetrius. They come from two very different types of play!

Duncan first. He is the king of Scotland in Macbeth. Well… not for long. King Duncan is assassinated by Mr and Mrs Macbeth very early on. And this is after he did something nice for Macbeth by making him Thane of Cawdor! Talk about gratitude.

At the start of the play, there is a battle going on. Macbeth and his friend Banquo have done very well, fighting for the king against the traitorous Thane of Cawdor, who is executed offstage and his title handed to Macbeth. 

But three witches come and tell these two heroes that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor and then king. When Duncan’s messenger arrives to tell him that he will be Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth starts thinking - if one prediction is right, why not the other? 

So, he and his wife invite the boss home for dinner and… we know the rest…

Interesting point is that Macbeth’s castle is actually not a Gothic horror. Duncan says what a nice place it is when he arrives: “This castle hath a pleasant seat. The air/nimbly and sweetly recommends itself/ To our gentle senses.” 

Of course, he might not be saying that if he knew what was going to happen to him…

The role has been played by some impressive actors over the years. One was Anthony Head, whom you might remember as Buffy’s mild mannered Watcher and school librarian. Most recently Duncan was played by Irish actor Brendan Gleeson in the Apple + version, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the Macbeths. Gleeson was Madeye Moody in the Harry Potter films. 

Let’s move on to Demetrius, a character from Shakespeare’s crazy romantic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

I remember trying to explain the story to a bunch of Year 11 drama students whose teacher was absent. 

“So, there are these two young couples running around the forest… Hermia and Lysander are in love. They are being chased by Demetrius, who used to be dating Helena, but …” 

They did get it when I wrote up all the characters on the board and showed the links. Eventually, anyway.

So, who is Demetrius? He is one of four young lovers running around the forest which is full of fairies. Hermia’ s Dad has given his permission for Demetrius to marry her. But Hermia wants to marry Lysander, so the two of them elope, stopping only to tell Hermia’s best friend Helena.

Alas, Helena used to be an item with Demetrius, who has dumped her, so she tells him, thinking this will get her his approval. It doesn’t, and she follows him, while he tells her to get lost. Which they all do, but never mind…

Oberon, King of the fairies, feels sorry for her and orders his sidekick Puck to make Demetrius fall back in love with Helena, using a magic flower juice, but he does it to the wrong couple. Which leads to a lot of very funny scenes...

If you have the National Theatre At Home app, I do recommend that production. It features Gwendoline Christie, whom you might have seen either in Game Of Thrones as Brienne of Tarth, or as the evil Captain Phasma in Star Wars. She plays Titania, an amazing Fairy Queen. There was a quirk in this production as the lines of Oberon and Titania are swapped, so she plays the active role and Oberon gets all her lines and falls for Bottom, the guy with the donkey head(they share a bubble bath and drink  champagne). It’s on until June this year, so if you subscribe to this app, hurry.

If you aren’t subscribing, the film with Kevin Kline as Bottom is utterly magical. Demetrius is played by Christian Bale, who has a long filmography, including some Batman movies.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - C Is For Coriolanus

 

John Phillip Kemble as Coriolanus. Public Domain

Coriolanus, written some time between 1605 and 1608, is one of Shakespeare’s lesser performed plays, possibly because the hero is so hard to like. Of course, there is also the Scottish Play, but Macbeth is a baddie from soon after he hears he is going to be king. Coriolanus isn’t a villain. He just isn’t someone you would want to hang out with. It has also been banned in its time for various reasons.

I do have a soft spot for it, because I was in a production of it at university, playing the role of Third Citizen, a character described by Harley Granville Barker in his Prefaces To Shakespeare, as “a man who likes the sound of his own voice.”

Coriolanus is based on a story from Plutarch’s Lives, about a general, Caius Marcius Coriolanus, who started off as a hero of Rome and ended up exiled and fighting against Rome with the Volscians, their enemies. His mother and his wife came into his camp to persuade him not to attack. He agreed reluctantly not to do it, and was, of course, killed. 

Shakespeare’s Coriolanus has been brought up by his mother, Volumnia,  to have contempt for the lower classes. She is all too enthusiastic about his fighting and coming home with scars to show off. His wife, Virgilia, is not crazy about what he is doing, and their young son looks like he is growing up to be just like Dad, something Virgilia knows, but there is not much she can do about it with Volumnia in charge. 

He goes into battle against the Volscians, who are led by Tullus Aufidius. He wins, but shows more admiration for his enemy than for the lower classes of his own people. When they throw him out of Rome, he has nowhere else to go but to his admired enemy. He doesn’t know anything but fighting. 

When his mother, Volumnia, comes out to talk him out of attacking Rome, it’s one last thing she does that is not for his best interests, but which he is going to do because his mother asks it. He pays with his life when Aufidius finds out. 

I’ve seen it a couple of times. There is a film with Ralph Fiennes, done in modern dress, in which Coriolanus is pretty scary. You can understand why he isn’t popular. 

In our production, the aristocratic characters wore Roman dress(I was in the battle scene as a standard bearer, wearing Roman armour). The rest of us were in more or less modern dress. One of the lecturers, who directed the play, had a theory based on a picture from Elizabethan times showing actors in both Roman and contemporary dress. 

Most recently, I saw the National Theatre production in National Theatre Online, with Tom Hiddleston, best known these days as Marvel’s Loki, in the title role, with Mark Gatiss, actor and writer known for quite a few episodes of Doctor Who, and in Horrible Histories, as Menenius, Coriolanus’s elderly mentor and father figure. I thought Gatiss rather too young for the role, but he did it brilliantly.

Deborah Findlay, who played as Volumnia was also excellent; in her last scene, Volumnia’s pride and haughtiness is gone. She knows she was wrong and that it’s thanks to what she has done over the years that her son will die now. But she has to speak; it’s the only way Rome will survive.

This Coriolanus is an idiot. When he is told to do some things which might help him get the sympathy of ordinary Romans, he complains loudly and you can see the Senators cringe and shake their heads at his naïveté. 

Yet I, personally, felt for him in the scene where he has been made welcome by Aufidius and is being hugged by his former enemy, and the look on the hero’s face is “Oh, God! What have I done?”

A wonderful production! Unfortunately, the National Theatre has taken it off and it doesn’t seem to be available for purchase online. There are some clips on YouTube, plus a video “The Coriolanus Watch Along” in which Tom and some of his co-stars chat about it with the director. 

If you can see the Ralph Fiennes version, do so. It’s well worth a watch.

There is also a BBC radio version with Diana Rigg as Volumnia. 

Check it out here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p078q3q9

Also, check out the Wikipedia entry here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus - there is an impressive list of actors who have played the role in modern times, including Laurence Olivier.

A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - B Is For (Toby) Belch and Brutus

Malvolio And Sir Toby. George Clint. Public Domain

 Today’s first Shakespeare character is Sir Toby Belch from Twelfth Night. 

The play was probably written for a performance sometime soon after Christmas, 1601 or 1602. It’s a romantic comedy with a pair of twins, Viola and Sebastian. They have been separated during a storm at sea and each thinks the other is dead. Viola disguises herself as a boy and gets a job with Duke Orsino, who fancies an independent young woman called Olivia.

Sir Toby is her uncle, who lives with her. Heaven knows why she puts up with him. He is loud and vulgar, the kind of person who parties till the small hours, and something of a parasite, not only on his niece, but on his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whom he keeps around with promises of maybe being able to marry Olivia.

He does get a great line: “ Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” It’s spoken to the steward, Malvolio, who is a wet blanket. So, in other words, “Just because you can’t handle a bit of fun, why should the rest of us miss out?” A good line to wet blankets in general.

He and his mates play a practical joke on Malvolio which works, then he gets to marry Maria, Olivia’s maid, who has helped with the joke. 

The title may have been just about the date it was performed, but Twelfth Night was always about chaos and things turned upside down. There was a Lord of Misrule who presided over it all. I’ve often thought there was a connection to the Roman Saturnalia, which also was about turning things upside down. 

If Toby Belch isn’t a Lord of Misrule, who is?

I will be referring to Twelfth Night later in this series, so we will leave it here for now. There is an American production on YouTube from the Texas Shakespeare Festival.

Another Shakespearean B is Marcus Brutus from Julius Caesar. Despite the play’s title, Brutus is the lead role. The play is set in the days leading up to the assassination of Caesar and the time after, to the battle of Philippi, and seen largely from Brutus’s viewpoint. He is the only one of the assassins seen sympathetically. He loves his wife, Portia, though she is angry with him for not telling her what’s going on. He is kind to his young servant, Lucius.

He doesn’t really want to do it, but is persuaded that it’s his duty, because he is related to another Brutus, who did his duty during the days of the early Republic. The very idea of having kings was unthinkable to Romans, and Caesar pretty clearly wants to be king. The other assassins, however, do it for their own gains. Brutus does it because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. Even Mark Antony, Caesar’s friend, says so after his death. 

The classic film version had James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius - the guy with the lean and hungry look - and Marlon Brando as Mark Antony. That was the version I first saw when I was studying the play at school. There have been more since then, including one with Jason Robards as Brutus and Charlton Heston as Mark Antony. I haven’t seen that one, but I’ve seen it on stage before; the most recent production I have seen was done in modern dress with TV news reporters. Cassius was played by a woman. 

There is a lot of that happening these days, presumably because there really aren’t many roles for women. 

If you want to have a bit of fun with this play, look up “Rinse The Blood Off My Toga” on YouTube. It’s a hilarious skit by the wonderful Wayne and Schuster, done as a private eye story, in which the PI investigates Caesar’s murder on the request of Brutus.( “I told him, ‘Julie don’t go! Julie don’t go! It’s the Ides of March already!’”) 

There are other very funny lines, but I’ll leave you to find them. 

Tomorrow’s post will be about the play Coriolanus which is not performed often, but for which I have a soft spot. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2022: Shakespeare- A Is For Antony And Cleopatra

 

Banquet of Cleopatra by Tiepolo. Fair Use. 

Welcome to my 2022 A to Z! The theme this year is the works of Shakespeare.I hope you all enjoy. 

A is for Antony And Cleopatra, one of Shakespeare’s later plays. It was first performed in 1607, so in the Jacobean era. 

The painting above, by Tiepolo, is right here in Melbourne, in the National Gallery of Victoria. It is connected with a story in which the lovers challenge each other to do the most expensive banquet. Cleopatra won the bet when she dissolved a very valuable pearl in vinegar and drank it. Cheeky! 

Even if you have never seen or read it, you probably know some bits from it. Have you ever heard someone older speak of their “salad days”? It’s right here in this play. You may or may not have heard the speech that begins with “The barge she sat in like a burnished throne burned on the water”, but I bet you have heard “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”. I will talk more of this speech in my E entry on Enobarbus. 

It’s about the relationship between Roman General Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Well, mostly. A lot of it is also Roman politics. Antony is lounging around in Egypt with his lover. His wife Fulvia dies offstage early in the play, so not a spoiler. 

He makes some stupid decisions and loses his friends and his final battle and dies. Cleopatra also dies, deliberately letting an asp bite her. Again, not really a spoiler as we have all seen films and read stories about this. It’s just a really great play for speeches, and worth checking out adaptations. 

I’ve seen a few versions. Back in 1972, Charlton Heston directed and starred in a film of it. He wasn’t very good, alas, but he did choose a good supporting cast. There are names like Eric Porter and Julian Glover. The role of Cleopatra was played by Hildegarde Neil, who has done quite a lot over her acting career, and is married to Brian Blessed. I believe some of the sea battle footage was taken from Ben-Hur. Still, not very good.

I saw it on stage many years ago, done in Melbourne by the Bell Shakespeare Company. More of that later in “E is for Enobarbus”. 

Currently I’m viewing the National Theatre production, on the National Theatre At Home app. It’s in modern dress, which is fine. The role of Antony is played by Ralph Fiennes(well known for many roles, including Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films) and Cleopatra is Sophie Okenedo, whom I last saw in the Hollow Crown series as the elderly Queen Margaret in Richard III, with Benedict Cumberbatch. Interesting to see her go from old hag to glamorous Queen of Egypt! 

There are some other names of interest. Have you seen Good Omens? (If not, why not? Get Amazon Prime’s free week and binge) Gloria Obianyo, playing Cleopatra’s maid Charmian here, was in Good Omens as a truly dreadful angel, Uriel.  (Though all the angels were awful except Aziraphale and all the demons except his friend Crowley)

Unlike other Shakespeare productions I’ve seen, this one is the whole play, well over three hours, so if anything is missing, it’s probably just as well. 

Anyway, well worth a watch or a read. The 1974 Royal Shakespeare Company production is up on YouTube for free. I haven’t seen it yet, but I believe Patrick Stewart plays Enobarbus. 

A to Z Theme Reveal For 2022

 Time for this year’s A to Z reveal. And this year’s theme is…Shakespeare’s plays! 

Shakespeare - Public Domain

If you have been following this blog for a while, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the Bard, and have been since I was about twelve, at which age I first read Julius Caesar. I found my sister’s copy, which she had studied in Year 10, and opened it up to read. Next thing I knew I was reading it aloud, declaiming speeches all over the house. I had never before been so excited by anything I had read! 

Then there was Wayne and Schuster’s comic skit, Rinse The Blood Off My Toga. My father and I listened to a recording and quoted bits to each other. I’ll talk more about this further down the track, but meanwhile, you can see the visual version on YouTube if interested, along with other Wayne and Schuster skits. 

I’ll be talking about plays, characters, productions, actors and what films and books have been inspired by Shakespeare.

And, like every year except last year, when I did Greek myths, I will have a hard time thinking of something starting with X.

Oh, well. See you in April.

If You Want Blog Promo…

 In the last couple of weeks I have had several inquiries about doing reviews of self published books. I don’t usually do that, but I did offer guest posts for all those whose books fitted this blog.

I got one response. I published the guest post a few days ago, as you will know. It was an excellent post which got some impressed comments from you, and I hope will have made some sales for Hans since then. 

I’ve also had inquiries from people whom you would think would have paid attention to the blurb, or at least had a browse through some posts before emailing me. 

I said no. The most recent was from a woman who spent her entire blurb making her book sound like a romance with some adventure,  and not a YA one, which I could have considered. When I explained that it didn’t really fit due to this blog being about children’s, YA, historical, crime fiction and true crime, she said it was so a crime book! That might be so, but if she wanted to draw my attention to that, she should have said so in the first place, instead of all the romance stuff. Which told me she hadn’t checked out the blog, despite saying she had read some posts - I did ask which posts, and she didn’t answer that.

At least she didn’t claim to love my blog as did some of the others. 

So here are some of my suggestions to people inquiring about blog reviews. Firstly, check your market, just as you would a publisher market. If your book is self published, of course, you don’t have to check out publishing markets, but review markets are important too, whether or not your book is traditionally published. (And you will still have to do that, if you sell a book, because publishers are not helpful in that regard as I discovered when my one novel was published). Don’t send your inquiry for a children’s book review to a blog that writes about true crime or movies. 

Well, unless your children’s book is a true crime book, anyway, and even then read some of the posts first; it may still not be suited. 

If there is a contact name, use it; I have had too many inquiries that were obviously one of a hundred inquiries copied and sent everywhere, so I don’t reply to those that don’t use my name. I do understand, but half the time it’s for a book that doesn’t fit here, yet the author claims to love my blog.  

Which leads me to the next issue: absolutely don’t say you love a blog you haven’t read. The lie doesn’t flatter the blogger and just suggests you are using it to get their attention. And you do, but in the wrong way.

Interestingly, nobody who says this in an inquiry has ever answered me when I say, “Really? That’s great! What do you love about my blog? Any particular posts?”

Just a general suggestion to self published authors using marketing companies: be aware that they will charge you quite a lot of money just to send the same email to several hundred blogs, whether or not they suit your book. Better to do that yourself and spend the money on a good quality editor, especially if it’s your first book. And I don’t mean asking your family and friends to be beta readers; they will tell you what you want to hear so as not to hurt your feelings or lose your friendship. (The one time I was a beta reader for a friend, she ignored ALL my suggestions. I was lucky she didn’t take me off her Christmas card list. Never again!)

I do know someone who doesn’t bother with editors for her self published books, but she knows what she is doing, and has sold enough stories in the regular market to be allowed to join the Science Fiction Writers of America. And even so, I remember her sneering at the very idea of doing research for a fantasy novel. Fortunately she mostly writes SF.

Anyway, if you want to be reviewed or guest posted on a blog, and not offended by a reply, please do read the blurb and at least a few posts on the chosen site. 

I hate saying no to an inquiry! And I bet other bloggers do too.

Retro Review: Honk If You Are Jesus by Peter Goldsworthy

 

I read this novel when it first came out, and later heard the author speak at my school about a book the Year 12 students were doing for English. 

He did mention this one, though, and described it as his Jurassic Park book. 

Which it was, sort of. No dinosaurs, but certainly referring to bringing back extinct creatures…

I reread it recently, in ebook, and while I had thought it might be a bit dated, it wasn’t, really. There will always be something, of course. The Internet was in its infancy when this book was published, and not everyone had, or could get, a mobile phone, so certain things might have been different if it had been published more recently.. But the rest was not at all bad. 

For example, there has recently been talk of bringing back the thylacine, aka the Tasmanian Tiger. This novel, published in 1992, had a Tiger brought back, plus dodos. It even suggested that a thylacine might be started in the pouch of a Tasmanian Devil, later in an artificial pouch. 

The heroine, Dr Mara Fox, has been in a job where she does not much beyond abortions, though she is an expert in reproductive medicine. One day she gets a call from a Bible college in Queensland, run by American televangelist Hollis Schultz. She can be a Professor, in charge of an entire department in the college’s hospital, plus have whatever advanced equipment she wants. 

Suspicious - there has to be a catch - she accepts anyway and moves to Queensland’s Gold Coast. There, she meets youthful genius William Scanlon, who brought back dodos and has more recently revived a thylacine. 

But more is planned, much more, connected with all those religious relics being brought to the college from overseas; the thylacine is just a test run, though a very exciting one.

It’s pretty obvious from early on in the novel what the religious nut Hollis Schultz has in mind, but I didn’t mind; it’s great fun, if silly, an easy read for the beach. 

You may need to get this one in ebook if interested, but worth checking out. It’s available in both Kindle and Apple Books.

Guest Post by Hans Kullberg!

  

The author and his daughter Aviva

Recently, I received an inquiry from Hans Kullberg about promoting his new children’s book written in honour of his late baby daughter. I invited him to tell us about it himself rather than review it, as I think it’s more appropriate in this case. 

I will add links to purchasing sites after the post. 

Take it away, Hans! 

A father’s life is completely changed the moment he holds his child for the very first time.  Fathers receive a new outlook on the fragility of life while he cradles his tiny child in his arms.  Time becomes a precious commodity and the things we thought were important are re-prioritized. A father’s new priorities entail a well-nourished baby, clean diapers and a schedule that accommodates for naptimes. Even though we get less sleep, we are awestruck by the miracle that is life, and we start dreaming about our child’s future: her first words, her first day in kindergarten, her college graduation and watching her grow up into a thriving adult. 

But what happens when that dream ends? What does a father do for his child when the unthinkable happens?  After enduring the catastrophic tragedy of my daughter's death at 10 months of age due to an undiagnosed illness, I held her in my arms and promised that I would share her story with the world.  Losing my precious daughter at such a tender young age has cut short that future I had envisioned for her.  Aviva was full of life, love, laughter and had a contagious personality that lit up the room.  Her story was cut too short.  Knowing that such a force of life was taken from my hands far too soon has been beyond devastating.  However, as a father who still believes in giving his daughter the best possible future, I’ve been motivated to share her life’s story with all the children that never got a chance to meet her with the hope of inspiring others.  

The main orangutan protagonist in the book, Baby Aviva Orangutan Diva, embodies my daughter’s personality and characteristics including courage, joy, charm, fearlessness, teamwork and grace.  Relying on her vivacious spirt, musical melodies and can-do attitude, Aviva the Orangutan Diva’s quest for golden bananas leads her to confront dangerous encounters and overcome obstacles for the benefit of her community.  The uplifting children’s book on jungle animals teaches kids many important lessons including overcoming fears, adapting to new environments, the importance of teamwork and staying true to oneself.  By remaining true to own’s most authentic self and finding strength from within, almost anything in life can be accomplished and anything is possible.

As a heartbroken father and first-time author, my simple goal for the book is to spread my daughter’s joy, charisma, personality and love with all the children she would have met around the world.   Although I can no longer hold her in my arms, I look forward to the day this book brings smiles and joy to children reading it with their parents all over the world.  Perhaps it will even bring fathers closer to their own daughters, knowing nothing should be taken for granted in this life.  Through this, my daughter Aviva will live on, and her legacy will continue.  Even though she's no longer physically here, it is my simple hope that her legacy can have an enduring impact on many others around the world.  As a father who has lived through the unthinkable, my dream for my daughter never ends:  I still believe she can have a positive and impactful future and I’m excited to see how Aviva’s story unfolds.  By turning the page, her story is just beginning. 

Thanks, Hans! 

And here is where you can buy the book.

Amazon Link for Baby Aviva Orangutan Diva:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GG8SYD2

Barnes & Noble URL:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/baby-aviva-orangutan-diva-hans-f-kullberg/1140165959?ean=9781736986714

On Teaching Writing

I have never taken writing lessons, I just write. I’ve sold 14 books, including some that have still not been published(but paid for)and many articles, but not because I took writing lessons. It worked well for me. Nobody has ever told me to “write what you know” or “show, not tell” - well, one editor on my novel for Random House Australia did suggest this at one point, but I explained that in this case, “showing” would take up several pages while telling just took a paragraph, and left it up to her. She didn’t argue. I would have done it if she still wanted me to, though.

However, I did once have to teach Creative Writing. It was an elective for Year 9 and 10. The Principal simply told me “You’re teaching Creative Writing next year.” I had no idea what to do. There was no curriculum for it. He assumed that as I was a writer I could teach it.

So, I had a think about my approach. Nobody cared how I handled it, so that gave me flexibility. In the end, I was the only Creative Writing teacher in the three campuses who actually taught it. I only got in about ten minutes discussion with one of the others, who, I’m pretty sure, ended up turning it into English Extensions. The other one told me that his group were such poor writers, he changed it to a film appreciation subject. Which wasn’t what the kids signed up for, but hey! 

I told my students ahead of time that this was not going to be about how to write an essay.  

 The small group who chose to do my subject did it because that was what they wanted. Not all of them were good - one boy chose it because his friend was doing it. I ended up giving him a template with questions that let him write a short autobiography. I even discovered from it that his brother was a Bollywood actor! But he wrote something. That made him feel good about himself.

I subscribed, for that year, to a magazine that published teenagers’ work, in case any of them wanted to try. 

We read a short story every week before we began the writing, and discussed it. That gave them some idea of how these stories work. 

I showed them a variety of books in the first lesson and asked them to guess what they had in common - two of them were The Outsiders by Susan Hinton and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. What they all had in common was that they were written by teenagers. I did this so I could show them that you don’t have to be an adult to get published. 

We did something different each week, though I also gave them time to finish their WIPs. Once, when we were all tired, we did a round robin. I gave them a choice of opening sentences and they had a couple of minutes to write a paragraph. Then we passed it on to the next person to continue. It was hilarious when we read them out loud. It worked! 

Another time we discussed fairytales. I pointed out that Cinderella is the basis of pretty much every YA romance they might have read. Then they got to do fractured fairytales, which they loved. I was chuffed to overhear one student say to another, as they headed for the computers, “I wish so and so was here!” because her friend would have loved it.

Once, I passed on some advice from a writing book I had read. If you absolutely can’t think of what to write, start off with “I remember…”. One girl ended up writing a wonderful piece about an incident in her own family, one of the best pieces that year.

Another good one was a picture book text about a hat that was blown off a man’s head and flew to various places before returning to his head. If there had been time I would have seen if there was a publisher who might be interested. It was, I thought, publishable stuff.

We had one student who joined us a bit late because he couldn’t afford the fees for the Foods elective. We all made him welcome. A couple of weeks later, when the welfare teacher came to tell him he could now do Foods if he wanted, she had arranged it, he said, “No, thanks, I’m fine.”

I had some students who had been in my History or English class the year before, so it was nice to know they still wanted to be with me. In fact, the girl who had done the hat story, who was one of them, told me at the end of the course that she had really enjoyed it. She also told that to her older sister, who passed it on to me as well.

I put the stories together into a book at the end of the year, with artwork from the Internet, and handed them to the students, as well as putting a copy in the library. 

So, a successful year and I had a curriculum I had worked out myself to repeat the next year…but it didn’t go on, because the school scrapped every elective that didn’t lead directly to a Year 11 subject. That included Horticulture, and I was sad to see the Horticulture garden pulled up after many years.

Still, it was a year I was proud of - and I, as a writer who had never taken lessons, was teaching them! 

Who would have thought? 

Some Film Music And Me!

 

Album cover. Fair use

I love film music. I always have. I got my younger brother interested too, and I remember him saving his pennies for a double album of Star Wars - records, not CDs - which he still has. 

At one time, I could tell you which film composer had composed a tune, as long as I had heard their work before. I have favourites, mostly composers for historical films, such as Miklos Rosa, Erich Korngold, Elmer Bernstein and Alex North. Did you know Alex North, who did the music for Spartacus, also composed a score for 2001: A Space Odyssey? It’s true! The score we know now, a mixture of classical tunes, starting with Thus Spake Zarathustra was meant to be just a filler, to give some idea of what the producers wanted. They decided that worked really well and scrapped Alex North’s score. I believe you can still buy it. 

Elmer Bernstein, who composed the amazing score for The Ten Commandments, also did the theme tune for Arthur Of The Britons, a British children’s TV series about Arthur as a British leader living in a village with his adoptive father Llud and his foster brother Kai. I’m sure there is a story behind this gig, but I don’t know it. He certainly did The Ten Commandments before Arthur Of The Britons.

Erich Korngold was a famous Hollywood composer of historical film music, such as The Adventures Of Robin Hood, and The Prince And The Pauper, but also a composer of concert hall music. You can hear some recognisable film tunes woven into his concert hall music, and why not?

Who can forget Bernard Herrman’s score for The Day The Earth Stood Still, with an eerie theremin playing? That tune at the start is a favourite of mine.

These days, it’s John Williams, who wrote music for Lost In Space, as Johnny Williams, well before his glorious symphonic scores were connected with Star Wars and Harry Potter. Howard Shore, a composer in the style of Williams, made Lord Of The Rings come to life for me. 

Ennio Morricone was another favourite, but my first experience of his music was not a spaghetti Western or The Mission, but a TV mini series called Moses Lawgiver, with Burt Lancaster in the title role. I haven’t seen it in years, but I’m still humming Morricone’s music, long after forgetting the story details.

Film music is a vital part of the stories told in film and TV. Without it, the emotions, the excitement and drama, even the humour, just wouldn’t be the same. I know, there are films complimented for background silence, but either they are made especially to work without music, or they just don’t appeal to me. I have a friend who says she doesn’t notice film music, which is fine, because it’s there to enhance, not dominate, but she would certainly notice if it wasn’t there. 

As you probably know, I have been catching up with the Marvel universe, and that includes the music. Recently I have re-watched two of the Disney+ series, Hawkeye and Loki.

The series Hawkeye was about the most relatable of the Avengers, their archer. He did do some dreadful things in his grief at losing his family in the Blip, when half the world’s population was wiped out(he got them back at the end of Avengers: Endgame). But there is no secret identity, though nobody knows he was the vigilante known as Ronin. When a young woman, Kate Bishop, gets hold of his Ronin costume he has to find out what is going on…and then keep her from being murdered. And she is a huge fan of his who was inspired to learn archery by seeing him fight during an alien invasion. 

He just wants to go home to his farm to spend Christmas with his family. 

The mood of Hawkeye’s score, written by Christophe Beck and Michael Paraskevas,  is playful and humorous, mostly consisting of Christmas-themed tunes, including a very sinister-sounding version of “Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy” when the villains were driving towards the good guys! It even includes a song, “Save The City” by Mark Shaiman and Scott Wittman, supposedly from a Broadway musical about the Avengers, Rogers: The Musical. The first episode showed a bit of the song being performed on Broadway, then the full song as a post-credits scene after the last episode. It was hilarious! I actually wanted someone to write that show for real, though it was deliberately silly. 

The score fitted the series beautifully. It was set at Christmas, hence the Christmas songs, and while there were some serious bits, it was meant to be fun. The music enhanced that. 

The score of Loki, by Natalie Holt, though there is some humour in the story, is a lot more serious, as is the series itself. Natalie Holt has just been shortlisted for an award for this score, so I thought what-the-heck and bought the download, which I played as a background for my writing.

Each episode ended with an existing song that comments on the story of that episode. I didn’t get those songs with the download, maybe a copyright issue, but they were all well chosen.

There is one song on the album, in Norwegian and English, “Jeg Saler Min Ganger”, written for this episode, in the style of a folk song, by Benedicte Maurseth and Erlend Nodtvedt. In the show, it is an Asgardian drinking song, sung on a train by the drunken hero, with an English chorus and Norwegian verses. He is leading the passengers in the song, and teasing the beautiful Sylvie, the woman he has just fallen in love with. 

Natalie Holt uses different styles of music, whether something jazzy or symphonic - and a theremin is used several times. Various pieces of classical music are slipped in and, in the fifth episode, a 32 person choir is added.  

My favourite track on the album was the sweeping symphonic tune that is played when Classic Loki, played by Richard E. Grant, is distracting the cloud monster that guards the citadel at the end of time, to allow our hero and heroine to enchant the creature and get through. As he sacrifices himself for them, he builds a duplicate of his much-missed home, Asgard, towers and all, to a tune that begins with “Ride Of The Valkyries”, very appropriate for these Norse gods, even if it was written by a German. 

Do you have any favourite film composers or music? 

Book Blogger Hop: January 2022

 This week I will write on some topics suggested by the Book Blogger Hop. This month’s list include asking if there is a genre you haven’t read, but would like to, whether you have any bookish posters or artwork on your walls, the average number of books you read a month or whether you have attended a book signing. 

None are really questions for an entire post, for me, so I will answer them all, briefly. 

If there is a genre I’d like to read, I just read it. What’s stopping me? So no. I read SF, fantasy, historical fiction and non fiction, biographies, quirky non fiction, true crime, mysteries(preferred cosies) and others. About the only things that don’t interest me are mainstream adult fiction, and I might even read that if it’s funny. I do read mainstream YA and children’s fiction. Sometimes. I’ll give anything a go, once. 

I have some posters, more likely to be film than bookish, but the film is probably based on a book, eg Lord Of The Rings. See? One sentence.

I have no idea how many books I read. I don’t keep track, unlike a student I once had who used an exercise book to note what she had read. (It was July and she had read eighty already). At any one time I am re-reading as many as I’m reading for the first time. So - I haven’t a clue. Right now, I’m re-reading The Grey King by Susan Cooper and A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold and making my horrified way through Van Badham’s QAnon And On: A Short And Shocking History Of Internet Conspiracy Cults. I’m still reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic collection, Preludes And Nocturnes. Morpheus, Death’s younger brother, who has spent seventy years imprisoned by a crazy rich family, is now trying to get back his stuff from various people who have helped themselves to it while he was locked up.

Thing is, I have a lot of books I just had to buy, still on my TBR pile. I have started reading them all. 

Finally, of course I’ve been to signings, many over the years - which booklover hasn’t, if they had the chance? 

Mind you, there is a difference between straight signings and book launches. Signings are often by well known authors who are in town, maybe for a convention(at which they do more signing). Book launches are by anyone who has just had a book published. I do sometimes attend those if they are easy to reach by public transport and I know the author, either personally or whose books I enjoy. I don’t often get my books signed these days, because by the time I get to the launch, I have already bought the book in ebook, or I don’t know if I want to keep them. 

Of course, I do have some books signed by the likes of Terry Pratchett or Frank Herbert. I got those either at a convention or at a bookshop signing. Those I will certainly keep! 

The problem I have with books signed by people I know, especially when it’s their first book, is that they invariably - and I do mean invariably! - sign the damn thing “To Sue, thank you so much for your support,” even if I haven’t done anything except buy the book. I find it irritating, I’m afraid. 

I’d rather have my book either signed without my name, which enables me to give it away later, or just “To Sue, hope you enjoy it!” That’s what I do when I sign, unless there is a special reason to do it differently. And they usually have it signed before I can make my request.

Fortunately I mostly buy ebooks now. You can’t sign those! 

So, which of these questions interests you? Genres? How many books you read? Posters? Book signings? 

Just Finished Reading…Digging Up Dirt by Pamela Hart. Sydney: HarperCollins, 2021

Poppy McGowan works for the ABC as a researcher for a children’s TV program. She is renovating an old house she has just bought when bones turn up under the floorboards. Until it has been decided whether they are human or animal she can’t continue, and it’s not a good idea to call the police unless the bones are human, so she decides it’s time to call on the archaeologists from the museum to find out. 

Unfortunately, the only one available is Dr Julieanne Weaver, an old enemy, and though the bones are those of sheep, she wants to slap a heritage order on it, making it impossible for the renovations to go ahead. 

When Julieanne’s dead body is found in the house, there are several suspects, beginning with Poppy and Julieanne’s gorgeous boyfriend Dr Tol Lang. Is it Poppy’s own boyfriend Stuart who did the deed? What about members of the Radiant Joy Church which is behind the Australian Family Party, for which Julieanne had hoped to be preselected as a candidate? 

Will Poppy ever get her house back?

This cosy mystery is the first of a series by Pamela Hart(also known to her readers as  children’s author Pamela Freeman). It is great fun and the author certainly seems to know about how television programs work. The children’s show for which Poppy works is not unlike the ABC’s Behind The News, though with themes rather than news.

The regular characters of future novels in the series are introduced in this one, starting with Detective Chloe Prudhomme and her sidekick Steven Martin(and yes, he winces when he has to introduce himself). I think they will do well, though I’m hoping Chloe gets to do more than groan and sigh when phoned with new information. She does come through when needed, though, and possibly will trust Poppy more in the next adventure, when they know each other better.

Though the novel is humorous in style, Poppy herself is kind and decent; she finds herself pitying the victim, whom she disliked when she was alive, and finds sympathy to a badly treated teenage girl who is part of the family of one of the suspects.

Sydney, where the novel is set, is almost a character in its own right; the author makes it a part of the story without being just an exposition. 

Highly recommended if you enjoy a cosy mystery! 

As a recently published work, it should be easily available in all the usual places, including Amazon.