Steve Augarde

More of Joseph Mendes

2011-11-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

I was introduced to the fantastic scraperboard artwork of the late Joseph Mendes by his son, Edward, since when I’ve become a big fan. Part of the appeal of Joseph’s work, for me, is that it’s so redolent of the age when it was created. This is the nature of advertising – it gives us a snapshot of the times that is as important as any historical document.

Edward has put together a website detailing Joseph’s life and work, and it’s really worth a look. Here’s a link: http://joseph-mendes.webs.com/

Trompe l'oeuil

2011-09-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

Don't know who the chalkman might be, but this is screever art taken to another level.

UPDATE: Turns out this is the work of

Julian Beever

This is a sign.

2011-09-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

The trouble with cameras

2011-07-30T01:06:00.000-07:00

Seeems to be getting a bit frowsty in here. An air of neglect? Maybe I should wash the net curtains, and give the rugs a bit of a shake. Or maybe life's too short...

Time flies, I do know that much. I went down to Brighton last week for my youngest daughter's graduation day, and engaged in what for me is a very rare activity: taking photographs. Looking through a lens can be a sharp reminder of how briefly we inhabit this planet. Is that really my little girl? And if so, what happened to the last twenty one years? Where did they go?

I'm not great at sitting through long-winded ceremonies, and with a couple of hundred graduands passing across the stage to pick up their diplomas this could have been an occasion where time dragged. But it didn't. Sanjeev Bhaskar is currently Chancellor of East Sussex University, and a very good one he makes. The man has plenty to say that's worth hearing, by turns funny, moving, and wise. A real trouper too. As each student emerged from the wings he was ready for whatever approach they might take. Some went for the simple handshake, others a demure peck on the cheek. Fine. Let's be sensible, because this is a university graduation ceremony after all. We'll have some decorum, thank you. But then there were some who sprang whooping across the stage to deal high fives, others who sashayed towards him with arms outstretched, in limbo-dancer mode. Some wanted proper whirly-bear hugs, like this was their very favourite uncle that they hadn't seen in donkey's years. And of course there were those who viewed this as a big photo opportunity, pointing out their parents in the audience and posing whilst said parents worked the shutters. Click-click-click. Again Sanjeev! Didn't quite get that one...

The man was up for it all, his timing perfect, generously giving of whatever people wanted from him. I was impressed. (And come to think of it, we've been lucky in our Chancellors. Former head of BBC Greg Dyke held the post at York Uni, where my eldest daughter attended. Another good man, if of a very different style.)

My only regret was in trying to take a picture myself. The trouble with cameras, and the reason I dislike using them, is that you miss the moment. You might capture it, but you don't experience it. So in dodging around the bodies all I got was this one lousy shot. Damn. Should have just sat back and enjoyed it.

Aloha!

2011-06-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

The last couple of years has seen an incredible rise in the popularity of the ukulele and in Hawaiian music generally. Here's a site devoted to Hawaiian sheet music. Beautiful images, and I wish the entire collection were mine.

The original sound of ukuleles and lap-steel guitars was appropriated by Western musicians and songwriters as early as the 1800s, so that what we think of as 'Hawaiian music' is actually about as Hawaiian as I am - ie not very. In fact there's a term for it: Hapa Haole (pronounced Howly), which means 'half white'. But the dreamy swooping sounds of a lap-steel and the chirrupping of ukuleles have become so embedded over the decades that we don't really care if the majority of songs were written by people who had never been anywhere near Hawaii, it's still Hawaiian music. The more complex influences of Jazz and Western Swing might have crept in, but the song themes remain constant - paeans to an imaginary paradise here on earth, where palm trees are always swaying and ukes are always playing.

The Hawaiian look is now fixed on one particular period, the 1940s, when US sailors were stationed in the South Pacific during the Second World War, and if you go to one of the burgeoning Swing/Jive weekends staged in this country over the summer (Hep Cats Holiday for instance) you'll certainly want to pack your sailor suit or hula skirt for the Hawaiian Evening. You'll also need a genuine Hawaiian shirt - always 100% rayon, never cotton.

Homer's Odyssey long ago covered the theme of sailors far from home, discovering a magical isle where their every need would be catered for by dark eyed girls who seemed to have mislaid most of their wardobe. I don't recall that there were any ukuleles on Circe's island, or that the Sirens were singing 'Wicky Wacky Woo', but it's essentially the same deal. And I suspect that in real life it could lead to trouble. We're probably wise not to draw too close to those little grass huts for two, and see exactly who was taking advantage of whom.

So back to the music, which has travelled to shores far beyond its origins. I personally know a Hawaiian band who are all Italian (the Honolulu Hula Boys) and here's a wonderful Japanese group: The Sweet Hollywaiians. We might be tempted to smile at their pronunciation of the lyrics, but if you're going to learn every word of 'My Queen of the South Sea Isles' phonetically, then you really have to want to do it. And that's love.

Les Triplettes de Belleville

2011-06-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

One of my daughters has just bought the DVD. Good to be reminded of this wonderful animated feature, so here's a little clip.

It's never easy to find the musical credits for any film, or indeed any suggestion that there were musicians involved. Usually they'll be tucked away far to the south of more important figures such as Assistant 3rd Grip and Nail Stylist - so it took me a while to discover that Canadian born guitarist Benoit Charest is responsible for Les Triplettes.

You can see him here in action, with a live version of the title music. Great vocals by Betty Bonifassi.

A balanced diet 2.

2011-06-18T05:40:00.000-07:00

It's important when you live alone to maintain healthy eating standards. All too easy to fall into the bad habit of ready meals and takeaways, the oven hob becoming nothing more than an additional work surface.

My biker friend Zak shows the way with this tasty recipe for motorcycle crankcase - and nothing could be simpler. He's gone for the Honda CR 250, lighter on calories than the CB 500, but just as nutritious. Bake at 250, Gas MK 6 for around 45 mins, and you're done. He has the main bearings stored in the freezer, where they should keep almost indefinitely. Perfect for a crumble in the cold winter months.

Norwegian Wood

2011-06-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

I got lost in the woods, yesterday – the terrible Norwegian woods of Ikea. Or are they Swedish? Either way a scary place. I thought I’d actually prepared myself fairly well for the quest, knew the name of what I was looking for, and what size it was and everything. Wrote it down.

Malm.

I’ve only ventured into Ikea once before, and on that occasion I was with my family. My position then was simply that of Card Bearer, so I suppose I must have trailed after the others in a kind of haze, blanking out the experience as I went until we got to the checkouts and somebody snapped their fingers to get my attention.

But this time I’m all alone, and it’s not two minutes before I’ve become sidetracked, looking at the strange signs. I’m almost sure I’ve met Farum and Dagny in schools that I’ve visited, and I’m thinking that maybe people are starting to name their children after bits of Ikea furniture. Then I look up and realise I’m miles from anywhere, adrift in some dark continent called Rugs, and wishing I’d brought a ball of string with me. Or some breadcrumbs. In the end I have to do what no man ever likes to do: ask directions. I stop a passing woman, presuming her to be another Babe in the Wood, and say ‘Do you think there’s any way out of here?’ She turns out to be quite a seasoned traveller, because she points to the ground and says ‘Follow the arrows’. Probably adding ‘dummy’, under her breath.

Arrows, though! Right there on the ground! As good as breadcrumbs, or better even. Certainly the most useful thing I’ve seen yet.

So I’m following the arrows, and after three or four miles it becomes automatic. I’m able to look around at the passing landscape, and I remember now the first time that we came here. We bought a big lump of something for the kitchen. When we got it home and unravelled it we found an instructional leaflet that read ‘In order to assemble this piece of furniture it is best to be two people’ – which existential thought has occupied me for many an hour since.

Eventually, travel stained and worn out, I stagger into a great echoing cavern called Self-Service Shopping, which is plainly where I should have started from because there’s my thing, the actual treasure that I’ve come here to find. The Malm. I’ve promised it to my daughter, currently Malmless of London. And there’s a trolley too, and suddenly it’s all going right because I can just make out the toll plaza, a fuzzy speck in the distance. Another couple of hours should see me returned to civilisation.

At the checkouts I find myself nodding to other whey-faced survivors, some of whom may well have been stuck in here for years. There’s an atmosphere almost of camaraderie, as I imagine you might find amongst people who’ve been involved in a terrible rollercoaster accident and somehow remained of a piece.

A bit of an argument with the lifts (I generally do argue with lifts, to be fair) and at last I gain the car park. I open the boot of the car, and allow myself to believe – perhaps for the first time since entering this hell-hole - that I shall see a teapot and a packet of biscuits once again. Just a matter now of transferring my spoils from trolley to car. The Malm is extremely heavy, and as my back goes pop I think, ‘They could be right, these Ikeans. Perhaps it really is best to be two people.’

UPDATE: Here's strange beyond belief. Just a few seconds after posting this, my phone goes beep. It's a message from Ikea!
'Good News...!'
For a giddy moment I imagine the Ikeans want to give me some kind of award, a medal maybe, the shopping equivalent of the DofE (Gold). But no. The message in full reads:
'Good News! Your product has now arrived'.

Whaat? Please don't tell me I've been dreaming. Please don't tell me I have to go back to Ikea and do it all again.

Later I shall summon the courage to go downstairs and see if there really is a Malm in my sitting room.

Seeing, believing.

2011-06-05T01:22:00.000-07:00

I got this via artist and musician friend, Joseph Ekers, and it's not your average optical illusion. The claim is that square 'A' is exactly the same colour as square 'B'. I glance at the picture and think, 'no it's not, and there's an end to it.'

So I duplicate the image in Photoshop, and prepare to test the claim. (You might want to zoom in on these pics to get a better view.)

Using the cropping tool, I select a section of square 'A'...

...and begin to drag it downwards. At this point my section of 'A' still looks very different in colour to 'B'.

But as I drag it into the 'shadow' of the cylinder the tonal value appears to alter.

And as I reposition the section on the page, so that 'A' now covers 'B', I see that the two squares are indeed identical in both hue and tonal value. I see it, but I still can't quite believe it.

For an even simpler demonstration, here's the same pic with the surroundings of 'A' and 'B' removed.

The End 2

2011-05-23T05:28:00.001-07:00

End-of-the-world predictions to end.

Disney spin-off.

2011-05-22T02:56:00.000-07:00

So the whole thing was just a Disney spin-off. I knew the Mouse had some clout, but this is pretty impressive. And all to sell a few more dolls...

A clever hoax of course.

The End.

2011-05-21T03:05:00.000-07:00

See, now I wish I had a credit card. I'd go out and buy me a '59 Corvette and cruise it on down to Armageddon. Somewhere to the north of Chichester, I belive.

Kaleidoscope 'I's.

2011-05-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

I shared the previous ‘cheesy-chips’ post on Facebook, where a couple of friends were impressed by my level of ‘self deception’. They don’t know the half of it – in fact I’m something of an authority on the subject. Let me chart my own journey so far.

1st Level of self-deception: Rejection
I see that in order for self-deception to be possible there would need to be two ‘I’s: the deceiver and the deceived. But ‘self’ by definition is singular. There can only be one ‘I’, therefore self-deception is impossible.

2nd Level of self deception: Doubt
The definition of ‘self’ is indeed singular, but ‘deception’ also has a definition. If one had successfully deceived oneself, how would one know it? Hm. Perhaps there is more than one ‘I’ after all. The concept is at least worthy of consideration.

3rd Level of self deception: Discovery
Yes, there is definitely another ‘I’ lurking within. I caught him just now with his hands in the biscuit barrel. He said that a Facebook friend had told him there were no calories in broken biscuits because they all ‘fell out’, and he was researching this idea. ‘Who are you kidding?’ I said, and he just looked at me.

4th Level of self deception: To infinity and beyond.
The discovery that two ‘I’s could simultaneously exist brings the realisation that there could be more. I’ve counted eight so far, but there could be hundreds. Or there could still just be one, of course. And who’s zooming whom? Which of me inhabits me at any one time?

So there seem currently to be eight of us in here, each vying for mastery, each intent upon convincing the others they don’t exist. Sometimes we give up arguing about it and go out as a skittles team.

A balanced diet

2011-05-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

There’s a tendency, when your children become adults and leave home, to go straight back to eating grown-up food again. It’s goodbye cheesy chips, spaghetti hoops, and Coke floats, and hallo carrot and coriander soup. Such a radical change of diet can play havoc with both chakra and digestion, and you have to be careful not to overdo it.

So, there being no calories in children’s leftovers (as any fule kno) I’ve made myself cheesy chips for lunch and pretended that someone just left them there, unwanted. It seems immoral to waste them.

My yin/yang equilibrium is thus restored, my conscience is clear, and I expect to have lost a stone by teatime.

Got a wedding to go to?

2011-04-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

Then here's your Royal Wedding name: Lord/Lady + grandparent's first name then first pet name hyphenated with the name of street you grew up on.

Mine works out as Lord William Winkie-Thurlocks, which I must say I rather like. That's Willie Winkie to my chums.

Think you know how to ride a bike?

2011-04-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is the Valparaiso Cerro Abajo, legendary urban bike race of Chile. You need to watch in FULL SCREEN mode to get the true effect. At first you think the film must be speeded up, but then you realise nope, this is in real time. Extraordinary.

Some neck

2011-04-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

I rebuilt a 1960s Fender Malibu acoustic guitar a couple of years ago, using a 22 fret Strat type neck to replace the missing original. As an experiment it works very well, and I love playing it. I've been promising myself I'd look out for a period Fender Strat neck, and occasionally take alook on ebay to see what such a beast might cost.

Price tag for the above 1950s example? £6000. Might have to wait a little longer...

Michelin's new see through tyres.

2011-02-23T02:35:00.000-08:00

It seems so obvious, doesn't it? The pneumatic tyre was invented to give a cushioned ride, a huge and necessary improvement over iron-hooped wheels, or solid rubber. And yet you wonder why Michelin's 'new' idea wasn't the first that occurred, the spoked technology reminiscent of the cartwheel itself.

These aireless tyres are apparently scheduled to be out on the market some time in April.
The bad news for law enforcement is that spike strips will not work on them. But think of the impact on existing technology:
* no more air valves...
* no more air compressors at gas stations...
* no more repair kits...
* no more flats...

The visual effect is really quite strange.

The pictures were taken Michelin's South Carolina plant.

Things Once Common, Now Extinct, No. 9: Whistling.

2011-02-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

Men don't whistle any more. I'm not sure why, but I expect I'll find something to say on the subject. In the meantime, and for tonight, here's a clip of an old guy whistling. Paul McCartney. Not bad at all.

So. Whistling. It seems to have almost died out. At one time men whistled as they walked to work, whistled while they worked, and then whistled themselves all the way home again. But now they don’t. Has it become uncool, I wonder, to whistle in public, or has the art simply vanished?

It’s not easy to whistle well. As with any form of music-making it takes a lot of skill and practice. Not everyone has the ear, or the tone, or the range required. You have to be able to hear the note in your head and simultaneously reproduce it, hitting it in the middle at the very instant of its creation. The more you think about it the more impossible it seems.

My dad was a pretty good whistler, and would usually treat his family to selected works of Schubert and Chopin before breakfast. Bit of Bach and Grieg, maybe, as he fried the tomatoes. He was conscious of his performance, the need to give it proper attention, and never indulged in aimless half-tunes and phrases, or under the breath ‘vistling’. If he started on Finlandia, then you got Finlandia. Including the middle eight.

And it was always classical. He hated pop music with a passion, and would stand in the middle of the room yelling at Ready Steady Go in the same way as I now yell at The X Factor. He did mellow a little in later years. I remember once catching him at the sink singing ‘Hey-hey we’re the Monkees’, and was never more astonished in my life.

But there’s whistling and there’s whistling. Possibly the best of all time was Ronnie Ronalde. I say ‘was’, when in fact I believe he might still be alive and performing. Here’s the king with ‘In A Monastery Garden’. It’s insane.

Wake 'n' Bacon

2011-02-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

Nicked this from my daughter's Facebook page. Fun, but it could be the last you'll see of your vegetarian girlfriend.

My Big Fat Royal Wedding

2011-02-12T01:12:00.000-08:00

Wills and Kate decide to do it in style.

Take a look. It's a hoot.

How to get rid of 'Smart Internet Protection 2011'.

2011-02-11T02:31:00.000-08:00

Here’s another very nasty piece of software. If the above image appears on your screen, you’re in trouble. ‘Smart Internet Protection 2011’ purports to be an anti-spyware tool, warning you that your computer is infected, and urging you to run a scan. But, like Security Tool, SIP is the very virus that you need protecting from. If you touch it, even by trying to delete it, your computer will be clogged within minutes.

Once again, the programme looks entirely convincing – high quality graphics that make clever use of a ‘shield’ logo similar to that of Norton and Windows Security Centre.

Automatic removal of SIP is possible - with the right software. AVG and Norton seem ineffective, but if you have the excellent Malwarebytes Anti-Malware tool already installed on your computer then you’re in with a chance. The free version works fine. However you do need to have the very latest updates – so get them now. The old one won’t hack it.

I found that a full scan with the updated Malwarebytes got rid of Smart Internet Protection 2011. My computer, however, was damaged. I couldn’t sign in to my Google account, so no email, and everything had slowed down to about a quarter speed. In the end, having got rid of the spyware, I used System Restore to take me back to an earlier date, and now it all seems OK.

If for some reason you can't install Malwarebytes, and there's no choice but to remove SIP manually then go HERE for the currently prescribed method. I gather that you can also call Microsoft support @ 866-727-2338, and they can help you over the phone. Either way, this will take you some time.

I would happily chop off the fingers of the designers of Smart Internet Protection 2011. Then I would deep-fry them in batter and sell them as tapas. Maybe in Glasgow.

Wine Bank, Marsden, Thurs. 3rd Feb.

2011-02-02T06:22:00.000-08:00

The quotation marks give the impression that there's a Steve Augarde tribute act playing at the Wine Bank this Thursday. Think I might go along and take a look at him. And as for whether he's easy to listen to...well, I'll be the judge of that.

My new album cover

2011-01-18T02:30:00.000-08:00

Got this idea from Rocket Calcutta. Here's what you do:

1 - Go to Wikipedia and hit random.

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr.com and click on “explore the last seven days”. The third picture, no matt...er what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it with this text in the "caption" and tag the friends you want to join in.

So now all I have to do is assemble the members of Selvas del Rio de Oro, and cut the album. I already feel that it's destined to become a classic.

Joy

2011-01-17T17:56:00.000-08:00

I have no idea who this lovely couple are, but I revisit them like old friends whenever the grey and dreary winter weather is upon us. They cheer me up no end.

$6000 for a Kindle download?

2011-01-16T23:50:00.000-08:00

Yup, this book costs nearly six grand. Not that it's an actual book, you understand - just a Kindle download. You should also know that the above title is but one of a series, so for the price of the full set you could probably buy the Isle of Wight.

This in itself is good for a laugh, but now read the REVIEWS. Here's my favourite: 'At 20% off, I was practically making the 2 grand I was saving. All it cost was a second mortgage on the house and my now estranged wife whom I didn't care much for anyway.'

There's a very funny fake review culture now fairly well established on Amazon. It usually involves truly terrible products, books and CDs, which are subsequently trashed by way of deafening praise. Supposedly delighted customers fall over themselves to give the god-awful squawkings of Peter Andre and Katie Price the highest possible recommendations. Some of the 'reviews' are really quite wonderful.

'If you can imagine a soothing blend of jojoba oils, vanilla, and WD40 being poured into both earholes simultaneously, then you will have only been able to scratch the surface of the feast of pleasure that is Katie And Pete's "A Whole New World" Album...'

So there you have it. If you're looking for yet more ways of wasting time on a Monday morning, then a whole new world awaits you.

More scraperboard

2011-01-08T01:51:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting piece from the Walt Disney studio. It was apparently issued as a Christmas card in the 70s, but I believe the illustration actually dates from the 30s. You'll need to click on it to see the close up detail - extremely fine work indeed.

This was sent to me by the exotically named Rocket Calcutta, a musician and artist who has worked on Disney films himself. Mr.Calcutta wondered whether I could help to identify the illustrator.

I can't say for sure, but I'd take a guess at Gustaf Tenggren. The piece is very much after Arthur Rackham, and Disney was a known fan of the man. He employed Tenggren during the thirties, and Tenggren himself was heavily influenced by Rackham so it's not a huge leap to suggest that Tenggren had a hand in this.

Whilst this scene is superbly executed I feel that the two styles, cartoon and scraperboard, sit slightly uneasily together. I think maybe it's a case of Walt trying to weld a bit of instant class to the cartoon medium - rather like Hollywood studios drafting in George Bernard Shaw and Graham Greene to sprinkle stardust on their screenplays. In fairness, though, WD was always reaching for the highest standards.'Quality control' embodied.

And Disney are reknowned for maintaining the same standards today. I visited Disneyland Paris a few years ago with my then young family. We stood together on Main St., and watched the Grand Parade. A pretty girl clown on a kid's scooter twirled to a halt in front of me and gave me a brilliant smile. Awww, I thought, there's cheerful, and I smiled back at her.

We were with a group of friends, and before parting we all arranged to meet the next day, same place, same time: 4.30 pm. As we arrived the parade was once again in procession, and at bang on 4.30 the same pretty clown did her little twirl in front of me and treated me to the same dazzling smile. Blimey, I thought, it's Groundhog Day.

The sourine intention here, which I'm sure the Mouse would defend, is that the same flawlessly choreographed experience be delivered to all. There will be no off days in Disneyland, and no detail will be left to chance. We got talking to some of the 'cast' later in the week, guys from the Tarzan set. They told us that after a long campaign they'd finally won the right to wear their own underwear. Now that's quality control, Disney style.

UPDATE: Rocket has discovered that the above illustration was produced by Hank Porter - a new name to me. Excellent. I shall look him up.See more below, and at Rocket's site.

FOR MORE EXAMPLES of scraperboard work on this blog, take a look *HERE*...
...and a few bits and pieces of my own can be found *HERE*

Merry Chrismas!

2010-12-25T02:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.facebook.com/n/?video%2Fvideo.php&v=1751859285077&mid=37f3439G5af369b2a719G1cd390G1d&bcode=uudc-&n_m=steveaugarde%40gmail.com

My friend Riccardo D'Angelo of the delightful Honolulu Hula Boys says it better than I can.

Bump on Facebook

2010-12-04T03:29:00.000-08:00

And so here’s this little guy again, walking stumpy legged down the decades.

He has his own Facebook page nowadays – something I only just learned. How very modern of him.

Bump was in no way a sophisticated show. The production budget didn’t stretch to that. As the sole illustrator on the project I knew that I would have to produce many hundreds of pieces of artwork, and so the drawings were as simple as I could make them. Charlie Mills and Terry Brain (of Trap Door fame) and a very young Steve Box (later of Wallace & Gromit) kept the animation to its most basic, the appropriate treatment for Dennis Hooper’s childlike stories.

The theme song was just a three chord trick, a tune that I’d written some time earlier and had done nothing with. We recorded it in a tiny studio on Bristol’s Gloucester Road. I asked a fellow musician, Chris Sedgwick, if he’d come down from Birmingham to do the vocals. He brought his eight year old daughter Lucy with him – a little touch of serendipity as it happened. She sang along with her dad, just great, and added some real warmth. In fact she sells the song.

We made two series for the BBC, 26 episodes in all, and a Bump Christmas Special. Maybe it broke even commercially, I don’t know. None of us came out of it any the richer, that’s for sure.

But, twenty years on, Bump seems still to be remembered with genuine affection by a particular age group, hence his presence on Facebook and the many ringtone grabs from this blog. So I suppose that in a quiet way we must have got something right. Good enough.

Mr. Tibbs: stretching it?

2010-12-04T03:19:00.000-08:00

I’m getting a bit worried about Mr.Tibbs, my giraffe-necked cat. A ring too far do you think? Like the parent of a precocious child I’m wondering if I’ve stepped beyond the bounds of encouragement and am now entering the realm of pushiness. He doesn’t seem so keen to put his head in the vice as he once was. In fact I’m having to buy really expensive cat food just to tempt him down into the cellar where the workbench is.

But hey, if you want the attention -and he does -then you have to put up with a bit of discomfort. Ask Ms.Gaga.

Headache

2010-11-11T02:35:00.000-08:00

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We've all seen those little keyboard emoticons that people sign off with - the smiles :) and the winks ;) and the laughs out loud :D

But the above takes it to a different level. Hours of work, I imagine, and so 'headache' is both witty and appropriate. I don't know whose creation this is.

Le Peuple Des Miniscules...

2010-11-09T07:22:00.000-08:00

Received from my publisher today.

Dear Steve

The French publisher of The Various has just sent me a lovely email, which I thought you might like to read…

Just to let you that I will present to the representative sales team, to our commercial team, “The Various” this afternoon for a launch in February 2011 - I am very moved by this so sensitive and wonderful book, it’s pure fantasy, with a great love for every human being, Various or not.

I would be very pleased if you could send all my admiration to the author. I believe strongly in that trilogy, I would like the Various to be a classic in my series and I am very proud to be the French publisher of the books.

We adapted the original cover and I just changed the title for the French audience. I called it “LE PEUPLE DES MINUSCULES”. I changed the title because "The Various" didn't fit in French and remains very obscure, but I wanted to keep the idea of strange and mysterious people. I chose "Minuscules " which means "little" and that word conveys the idea of little people.

I would like to add that Jean Esch who is the translator of the book (and the translator of Philip Pullman and E. Colfer) was very happy to have this book to work on.

Please find attached the French cover.

With all best wishes

Catherine

Carnegie Medal

2010-11-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased to be able to announce that X Isle has been nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2011. Being nominated is a long way from winning the elusive wee blighter, but it's an honour in itself and it's where all eventual winners have to start. So yay me.

How to spot a fake Elvis

2010-10-21T05:31:00.000-07:00

Elvis is alive and well, as we all know, and living somewhere in the Lake District, but I’ve noticed that there are a number of fake Elvises popping up here and there. Some of them are quite convincing, and it takes a keen eye to spot the difference between the impersonators and the real thing.

I was once booked to play as part of Elvis’s backing band at the County Hotel in Taunton. This was a great honour for a young lad, and I was very excited. We musicians didn’t get to meet the King in advance. He just appeared onstage as we were rolling into Blue Suede Shoes. Wow!

Elvis was in his Vegas jumpsuit period then, sporting the high collars and the silk scarves. I’d heard that he’d put on some weight, so I was prepared for that, but I was surprised to see how short he’d become. Even in his Cuban heels he was only about five foot two. Weird how some people shrink with age. But, he did a pretty good show and I was in seventh heaven. Look at me! I’m backing Elvis!

The place was rocking, and pretty soon Elvis was working up a real sweat. I was standing right behind him, and I noticed his high collar beginning to wilt. As the material became soggier the supporting structure became apparent. It was part of a cornflakes packet! I could see the Kellogg’s cockerel showing through. That’s when the scales fell from my eyes, and I knew this wasn’t the real Elvis. Damn me, it was Squizzy Squires, a local lad, in a suit run up for him by Mrs. Peach who had the junk shop in Castle Street.

Nowadays I’m less naive, and I’ve become quite good at spotting fake Elvises. There’s an Asian one here in West Yorkshire, for instance, who fools nobody. Plus his name kind of gives him away: ‘Patelvis’. I saw another one at a 50th birthday party in the Mechanics Hall, Marsden. He was very good and I know that a lot of people wouldn’t have questioned the fact that this really was Elvis. But I heard his wife nagging him about the central heating, between sets, and that made me a bit suspicious. Later, after the show was over, and Elvis was humping out his PA equipment, I inadvertently annoyed him by closing a fire door he was about to go through.

‘Don’t shut chuffin’ door’, he said, in a thick Yorkshire accent. ‘Can’t tha see Ah’m trying to shift chuffin’ speakers?’ Once again I’d spotted a fake.

Somebody should pay me for this service. I could save people a lot of money, maybe as much as thirty quid a night.

Waiting for Elvis

2010-10-21T03:54:00.000-07:00

‘Elvis comes into your life every day.’

This according to a lady friend I was talking to. Only keep your eyes and ears open, she claimed, and Elvis will be there.You’ll be flipping through the TV guide, and you'll see an Elvis film listed. Turn on the radio, read the newspapers, log onto the internet, walk past a record store, and at some point Elvis will appear unto you. Each and every day.

Her husband assured me this was true. ‘It’s true!’ he said. I was a bit skeptical – this after all is a couple who did the whole Elvis Wedding thing in Vegas. They were joined together by Elvis himself in the Little Chapel Of The Wooden Heart, or whatever it’s called. They’re big fans.

Nevertheless, I jumped when my mobile rang about twenty seconds later. ‘Blimey’, I thought. ‘He’s here already!’ But it was my sister – not quite the same thing.

Anyway, I’ve kept my Elvis antennae tuned in these last couple of days, in the hope of a visitation from the King. Sadly, I’ve nothing to report. I’ve seen plenty of George Osborne, but no Elvis. As with all religions, it must be a matter of faith - you have to be truly prepared to let the godhead into your life. I’m plainly not ready for that kind of commitment.

Silent movie...

2010-10-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

Schadenfreude isn't the most attractive of human traits, so apologies for posting this opportunity to smile at the misfortune of others. YouTube is awash with this sort of thing, and it's easy to get sucked into wasted hours of viewing pratfalls.

But this clip is made compelling by the absolute rigidity of the camera, and the lack of sound. The effect is just plain eery.

How to get rid of pop-ups. (Disable Pricegong.)

2010-10-12T03:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve nothing against advertising. As someone who worked for years as a freelance illustrator I can hardly afford to be sniffy about it. So I have no beef with the static banners and sidebar ads that appear on the sites that I visit. I understand that they’re essential to commerce, even useful on occasion - in fact there are a few on this blog.

But I can’t abide pop-ups – those infuriating little windows that appear every time you click the mouse, their function being to simply crowd you out, like feral street beggars, until you respond.

Here’s an example from Ebay. I click on a picture of a Sunbeam motorcycle, and immediately get an ad for some kind of tanning product. The link between the two? The word ‘sun’. Yup, they figure that because I’ve shown a passing interest in Sunbeams, I must surely be gagging for a bottle of their bronzing lotion. God give me strength.

Anyway, this morning I’ve made a determined effort to address the problem. How to disable the kind of pop-ups that continually appear on sites such as Ebay and Amazon?

I discovered that responsibility for these hellish little beasts is often down to a programme called Pricegong. If you can disable Pricegong the world becomes a bearable place once more.

Now I’m no computer geek, so I can’t promise that this will work for all, and there may be knock-on effects that I haven't anticipated. But with this disclaimer in mind, and depending on the toolbar you use, here’s what you do:

1. Go to the far right of your toolbar, and you’ll see a little chevron thingy >>.

2. Click on this, and other areas of your toolbar, to search for the Pricegong logo. It's a green price ticket.

3. Click on the green ticket for a drop down menu.

4. Disable the blighter.

5. Now get on with your life.

At The Walpole Bay Hotel

2010-10-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Kentish coast is a long way from West Yorkshire, so when The Gents were invited to play in Margate my first response was ‘no thanks’. A 600 mile round trip just for a gig? I’m not that desperate.

But I changed my mind for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’d never been to the East coast – a shameful state of affairs at my age. Secondly, er...my age. I had a big birthday coming up, which surrounding hoop-la I was keen to avoid. Margate suddenly seemed like a good place to be. So I said ‘OK then’, and last Saturday we tipped up at the Walpole Bay Hotel to play at a dance weekend, organised by The Cinque Ports Lindyhoppers.

The Walpole Bay was a wonderful surprise. It’s described as a living museum by its owners, the Bishop family, and that’s exactly how it’s presented – a glorious mish-mash of Edwardiana, thirties and forties artifacts, wartime memorabilia, and...tat. You could spend a very happy weekend there just poking about among the contents without even needing to venture outside to admire the sea views. Unsurprisingly the hotel has been featured in numerous films and TV programmes, and equally unsurprisingly the walls are peppered with photos of visiting and local celebs.

A perfect setting, then, for a weekend of jive and swing music, the dancers all immaculately dressed in their period outfits. And boy can they dance. The Gents are old hands at this kind of thing (see also Hep Cats Holiday) and it’s amazing to watch those crazy kids go. Playing double bass can be warm work, but it’s a breeze compared to what’s happening down on the dancefloor. I kid you not, we saw blood – a big trail of it across the floor – as we were setting up the gear. Although I suppose that could have been an example of local lass Tracey Emin’s installation art...

When we’d finished the gig it seemed too early to go to bed, so we started up again in the bar. Everybody packed themselves in there and we kept it up until three. A great night.

What was slightly weird was that there was a German film crew on hand making a documentary about the hotel. I don’t think they’d expected the dance weekend – the theme of which was WW2, it being the anniversary of the Battle of Britain and all that. So there were these wartime posters everywhere, whose message was hardly German-friendly. I don’t know what the film crew made of all this, or what they will say about it in their programme. 'Xenophobia alive and well in Britain', I shouldn’t wonder.

I was told by some of the dancers that such re-enactment groups don’t exist in Germany, and that they’re not allowed to wear their own military regalia from WW2, at least not officially. This leads to the situation where Germans who love the music and dancing come over here and don British and American uniforms so that they can be a part of it. I find this bizarre, but also rather heartwarming.

Amazing pole dancers

2010-08-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid that most trapeze and circus acts leave me cold, so when someone told me I 'must' watch this I thought, oh really? Must I?

I'm glad I did though, because these two dancers achieve the seemingly impossible with wonderful grace. You find yourself looking for hidden wires or supports. Astonishing stuff.

Scraperboard technique: a masterclass.

2010-08-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

This is not a photograph. Amazingly, it has been rendered by hand, a supremely authoritative scraperboard illustration by the late Joseph 'Joe' Mendes.

I've written about scraperboard technique before, and people have been kind about my own efforts, but here's a man who's in a different class entirely. A master class. As we zoom in, you'll see what I mean.

Scraperboard is essentially drawing in reverse. You start with a board coated in solid black, and use a special blade to scrape away that coating. Every white line and dot that you see here is actually a patch of exposed board, where the blade has removed a little of the ink.

These pieces were sent to me by Edward Mendes, Joseph's son, and it's an absolute privilege to be able to display them on my blog. There could hardly have been a finer exponent of the art at the time, and I seriously doubt that anyone could match it now.

In part this will be because the need has vanished. Commercial artists like Joseph Mendes were kept in employment largely by advertising agencies, who needed to be able to show their clients' products in newspapers and magazines.The pin-sharp line of a scraperboard illustration could be reproduced by letterpress far better than a photograph, which would look very dull and grey by comparison. Nowadays we have Photoshop, we have CGI, and the means of printing and reproduction have improved enormously. Human craftsmanship to this degree is no longer required by the industry, at least not in this field, and so it has largely died out.

Try to imagine the level of skill required to produce artwork of this calibre, the hundreds of hours of painstaking effort spent on what's essentially a newspaper ad. It's simply boggling. And yet Edward tells me that this wonderful artist referred to his job as 'scratching for a living'.

Bookcrossing

2010-08-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a story to gladden the heart. I received this lovely email just today.

Dear Steve

I was walking through the Valley Gardens in Harrogate the other day, near the bandstand, when I spotted a book left on a bench in a polythene bag (the book, that is, not the bench) by an old gentleman. Being a public spirited old gentleman myself, I picked it up and was about to call the old gentleman, but he had disappeared. On closer inspection, I found that the book was not lost, only travelling the world in search of new readers, courtesy of Bookcrossing.com

I am in the process of joining said organisation, but while I wait for my email confirmation to come through, I thought I'd google you too. I had never seen your work, and the book, (The Various), is silent about you, but your illustrations speak volumes - they are wonderful. I began illustrating a book in 1975. I may start on the text tomorrow, but no, I must start on your text tomorrow.

The Various has not come far since it started its 'travels' in Lincoln in 2008. It was left on a bench in a polythene bag (the book that is, not the bench), in a park, near the bandstand, by Stargirl...........

I have to say that Bookcrossing sounds like a wonderful idea, and I shall certainly be taking a closer look myself, with a view to joining.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

2010-07-30T04:03:00.000-07:00

I often get emails from youngsters enquiring as to when I’ll be making a film of The Various, and whether I would consider auditioning them for a part? The assumption that the author of a novel will be heading up the film-making process is both touching and startling. My rueful reply is always the same: if only such decisions were up to me.

The truth is that in the filming of any book the author will probably be the last person to be consulted. Nevertheless, we live in hope.

X-Isle was recently submitted for an initiative, run in conjunction with the Rome International Film Festival, to find books suitable for film/tv adaptation. The Fondazione Cinema per Roma will select 8-12 titles which will then be presented to Italian and international producers taking part in New Cinema Network in October.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed, of course, but it would probably be medically inadvisable to hold my breath.

Larkin's Book Bloggers

2010-07-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned Larkin’s Book Bloggers before - a great idea from the States. Click on the link to learn all about them, and to read an interview I did with some of their young readers. More power to them!

Timewaster.

2010-07-18T00:19:00.001-07:00

You're probably familiar with these ipod dancer images. But click on the ANIMATION of this one and ask yourself which way she's rotating. Clockwise or anti-clockwise?

The answer seems obvious, because you're seeing it the way that you're seeing it. But then you realise that with a bit of effort you can make her go into reverse. Or back and forth for that matter.

Good, eh? Now figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your day.

Kirkus review for X Isle

2010-07-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

On the day of X Isle's release in the USA, I've received this great review from Kirkus.

Kirkus is highly regarded within the publishing industry, but its reviewers are not known for pulling their punches, so I was holding my breath rather on this one. As it turns out, I could hardly have hoped for better.

X-ISLE
Author: Augarde, Steve
In a devastated future world, two boys struggle to survive a brutal, bizarre existence on X-Isle. Two years after the “floods came and washed the world away,” Baz leaves his Dad on the mainland when he wins a coveted place as a laborer on X-Isle, a mysterious salvage operation isolated on high ground.

En route, Baz is drawn to Ray, a small, smart and steely boy. Both expect to work hard in exchange for food, shelter and clothing. Neither is prepared for the abusive climate they encounter as captives of Preacher John, a religious fanatic convinced the floods are a punishment demanding biblical sacrifice. Treated like dogs, the boys eventually band together with fellow captives, devise an ingenious bomb and are forced to make life-or-death decisions.

In this dangerous, dicey and displaced world tainted by evil men and base instincts, the surviving boys of X-Isle foster hope in a surprising conclusion. A powerful, disturbing story laced with quirky, memorable characters and fast-paced masculine action and interaction—perfect for male teens. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

X Isle shortlisted

2010-07-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

Had some excellent news yesterday - X Isle has been shortlisted for the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards!

More information below from Joy Court - and here's a link to Joy's very generous review of X Isle at School Zone.

‘The fifth year of the Inspiration Book Awards will be launched in Children's Book Week (4 October 2010) and we are hoping to be even more successful this year .The last round of the Awards saw over a 100% increase in visits to our website with over 1.5 million hits on www.myvotescoventry.org and we again saw a big increase in the number of votes cast. The Coventry awards are unique in the country in that they have something for all ages, including adults and involve the whole family and the whole community and they are obviously the ideal vehicle to promote Reading For Life!

Each year we also have a high profile awards ceremony for the winners in each poll in the presence of the Lord Mayor. Adrian Johnson of Arts Council England called it an "exemplary book event". The provisional date for next year will be June 15th 2011so it would be useful to pencil that in your schedules now. Eliminations "Big Brother " style of the books with the least votes each week begins in January and you will know in February if they have won so invitations can be confirmed then! ‘

Joy Court
Learning Resources Manager: Learning & Achievement.
Past Chair:CILIP Youth Libraries Group

I do like to be beside the seaside.

2010-07-06T01:34:00.000-07:00

The area of West Yorkshire where I now live is about as far away from the coast as it's possible to be in this country. I do miss the seaside, and so every once in a while I have to drive down to the South West and sniff the seaweed, as it were. Take the ozone. I've just returned from a bracing weekend away in Somerset and Devon, visiting old friends - all writers and musicians.

On Saturday I looked in on my band mate from The Gents, Richard Madelin, who's recently had a quadruple heart bypass. Yipes. He has a scar from throat to belly button, which I suppose is to be expected, but the one running the entire length of his leg came as a bigger surprise. This is where an artery has been removed in order to provide the necessary pipework for the operation. The immediate thought that occurs is, 'Hang on. Weren't you using that?' Maybe, as Richard's wife said, this was merely a B road, sacrificed in order to make way for the new bypass. I'm not sure that I have too many such disposable bits left, so please God the same thing never happens to me. Get well soon, Richard.

Sunday lunchtime I played with a bunch of nutters from art college days, The Glad Band. This outfit goes back even further than The Gents, some forty years, which is just plain scary. We manage to get together every half decade or so, and folk come to see us less for the music, which was always pretty ramshackle, than to marvel at the fact that we're all still alive. 'How many kidneys do you suppose they have between them?' people ask. And really it's anyone's guess. I've said before that Glad Band stories have no place in a blog that's visited by youngsters, but I have enough material for a whole other publishing career should I ever run out of ideas for children's books.

In Exmouth I stayed with writer friends, the lovely Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham, who always make me feel as though I've been to a spa and psychotherapy session in one, to emerge invigorated, an altogether better human being. And if they, by contrast, are left drained and lacking the will to live, they never let on.

Mal and Ellie have a new book out: Cloud Tea Monkeys, exquisitely illustrated by Juan Wijngaard. The production is of a quality rarely seen nowadays, beautifully printed and stitch-bound, it really is special. I worked with Juan myself some years ago, although - like Mal and Ellie - I've never actually met him. It's a funny old business, co-producing a book with someone who lives thousands of miles away, your lives converging for the duration of the project, to then separate without (in my case) having ever spoken.

All in all a great weekend, and now I'm back. Sea air and renewed friendships have had an energising effect, and I open up my laptop with a fresh resolve: to take more holidays.

The Boys Are Back In Town*

2010-06-23T02:52:00.001-07:00

Here in the frozen North we have a few short weeks between the end of winter (June 1st) and the Longest Day (June 21st) when all is pleasant and charming. We can venture forth in something less than the standard six layers of clothing, sit outside the pubs on chairs that don’t have to be bolted to the pavement, and generally act normal. Some even go hatless over this brief halcyon period.

But then all hell breaks loose. Down from the hills they come, great gangs of the blighters, bent on rampage and destruction, and very quickly we’re sent scuttling back indoors to hide in the darkness until morning comes.
No, I’m not talking about the sheep – though they’re bad enough, hanging around on street corners, smoking tabs, and intimidating the old folk.

It’s the midges.

We’re famous for our midges round here. Marsden is to midges as Blackpool once was to mill workers. This is where they come for their holidays, and boy do they like to party when they get here. And just to extend the analogy a bit further, I’m the top attraction in town. Yup, one big amusement arcade, that’s me, a pleasure dome to rival Kubla Khan's joint in Xanadu, my pheromones sending out beacons of light lest any should doubt where the hot spot is. They all love me.

‘Let’s go to Steve’s!’ they cry. ‘It’s real!’ And go to Steve’s they do – in their millions.

It’s probably because I’m a softy Southerner. I just taste more better.

Anyway, the annual assault starts here, and so it’s time to erect the barricades once again. I have mosquito netting Velcro’d to all my windows, and that’s quite effective. In fact I love to sit at my desk of an evening, windows open, and watch all the midges batting in vain against gauze. Breaks their little hearts it does, not to be allowed in. ‘Sorry, guys’, I say. ‘Wrong dress code. Have you seen yourselves?’

Which bravado is all very well, but of course I have to go out sometimes and the midges know it. Pretty good at the waiting game is yer man the midge. A bit like yer man the triffid, in that respect. They sidle off into the shadows, hissing and muttering, maybe play a few hands of poker until I come out of hiding, and then they pounce.

I do have a second line of defence: Mosiguard. This is a great product in that it forces the little beasts to keep their distance, even the most vengeful being unable to withstand the smell. Unfortunately it forces everyone else to keep their distance as well, the choking fumes being more or less on a par with mustard gas. ‘Christ!’ they say, over in Slaithwaite, as I emerge from my front door, ‘What’s that stink?’

So Mosiguard does little for one’s social standing, and that's why I’ve decided to invest in some of this Avon Skin-so-Soft that I've been hearing about. Our troops swear by it, so I gather, but then they only have to contend with weedy foreign insects. I shall be pleasantly surprised if the Marsden midge can be kept at bay with something more likely to be found in the boudoir than the chemical dump.

But we shall see, and I’m keenly awaiting my bulk shipment, ordered on eBay this morning.

(*And yes, I know it should be 'The Girls Are Back In Town', it being the females that bite, but I don't care.)

To Kill A Mockingbird is 50.

2010-06-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

It's half a century, now, since this most treasured of books was published. Here's an excellent article about Harper Lee, where she lives and how she lives, with insights into why Mockingbird remains her only novel.

To Kill A Mockingbird at 50

No film could ever quite live up to the book, but the 1962 Alan J. Pakula production comes very close. This was one of those rare occasions where Hollywood showed some respect for the original story, and left it largely intact. Lovely central performances from Mary Badham as Scout Finch, and Gregory Peck as Atticus....

...also notable for Robert Duvall's first screen appearance, as Boo Radley.

Nelle Harper Lee in the 'colored balcony' of the real courthouse where Tom Robinson's fictional trial is set. Local productions of Mockingbird are now regularly staged here.

Bronte Sisters Power Dolls!

2010-06-18T01:30:00.000-07:00

What a hoot. Go Brontes!

Stroh instruments

2010-06-10T05:55:00.000-07:00

I'm a real sucker for old instruments, as some might have gathered. I like to restore things, the runtier the better, and bring them back to life. If I had but space and time, I'd be a one-man rescue centre for musical junk.

My dream would be a Stroh bass. There are only a handful left in the world, and I doubt one will ever come my way, let alone at a price I'd want to pay. The Stroh range of stringed instruments was developed for the early recording age, the idea being that the horns gave a directional sound and were thus easier to mike up.

This is the bass, pictured below. I've actually seen such a beast, in an antique shop on Kilburn High Road many years ago, but never played one. God knows what they sounded like, but boy do they look cool.

Those Good Old Days...

2010-06-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

You have to feel sorry for modern children. They’re continually being told how brilliant everything was back in the 50s and 60s – the clothes, the music, the freedom. It’s a wonder they find any point in being born at all, when it’s plain that they’ve missed all the fun.
In my mailbox this morning, I found the following; a hymn to those good old days...

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, 50's, 60's and 70's!
*First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
*They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
*Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.
*We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
*As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
*We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

*Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.
*Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!
*We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this
*We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
*We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter, and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
*We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
*We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

*We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents...
*We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
*You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...
*We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
*We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
*Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!
*RUGBY and CRICKET had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT
*The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

*Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'.
*We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !
And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

(All very well, and true to some extent, but let's not forget that we also had diphtheria, polio and thalidomide. We had regular beatings with sticks, rulers and belts. We had Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr. We had school dentists. And of course we had Sundays, bloody Sundays...)

Quasimodo and Quasi-modal.

2010-05-23T03:30:00.001-07:00

Chances are you won't recognise this diagram, or understand it, but you'll certainly have experienced its effect. It's a bell-ringer's chart.

If you live near a church, as I do, you’ll know all about the bells. You might bless them or curse them, depending upon the time of day and how you’re feeling (I happened to be ever so slightly fragile this morning) but you’ll certainly notice them.

To the untrained ear a peal of bells might sound like a random cacophony, no more structured than the noise from a hen-house. But it’s not so – or at least it shouldn’t be.

I used to do a bit of bell-ringing as a lad (anything to get out of school for a couple of hours) and whilst I’ve forgotten most of the little I learnt I can tell you that a peal of bells is as structured as a logarithm.

You have charts to follow, wond'rous complex, where you attempt to ring your bell at just the right moment - which will depend upon the bell before yours and whether that has been rung at the right moment. In the example at the top of this post, you are the blue bell, No.2. You can see that the order changes from round to round, and it’s your job to follow the bell that has just been rung.

Bell-ringing can be as physically dangerous as it's mentally taxing. This is the original heavy metal, after all, and trying to control half a ton of swinging bronze ain't easy. If you should hold on to the rope for a split second too long, you’ll find yourself whisked up to the ceiling and forced through a hole no bigger than a doughnut. No wonder campanologists have heads like traffic cones.

So next time you’re driven crazy by the sound of the bells (the bells!) spare a thought for the boys in the belfry, who are attempting the impossible – the Quasi-modal no less – on your behalf. Then curse them anyway, and put a pillow over your head.

Nuts in May

2010-05-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

The squawking of horsehair upon catgut, the thwacking of sticks, the merry jingle of noddy bells...

Ah yes. It’s that time of year again.

The Morris Men are back from wherever it is they migrate to in the winter, prancing about on my patio, and frightening the ducks with their strange cries.

It’s supposed to represent the heart of old Albion, the epitome of Englishness, but Morris dancing always seems vaguely foreign to me. Like Trick-or-Treating, or boules, I don't really get it, and so I can never muster much enthusiasm. Still, they’re the ones that are out in the sunshine dancing and drinking beer, whilst I’m sitting at my laptop working, so maybe they’re not as daft as they look.

Variety Performance

2010-05-20T03:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve been tipping up at a few open mic night sessions over the last year or so, inflicting myself on a blameless public and generally being a nuisance.

Playing semi-pro since I was in my late teens, I’d forgotten all about this world – reminiscent of the old folk clubs – where people get up and sing for free. It’s as mixed a bag as it always was, old hands, young guns, the ever hopeful and the forever hopeless. Here you’ll find seasoned players maybe road-testing a couple of numbers before taking them out to the bigger clubs, the one-trick ponies who’ll play the same song every week to ironic applause, the earnest self-penned songsters whose appearance usually indicates a swift trip to the bar. But you also get the occasional gem, some young girl who gets up and sings unaccompanied, awkward and shy, not knowing how to stand or where to put herself...and goes on to rip your heart out.

There are usually at least as many performers as listeners, but all do listen, which can be both gratifying and intimidating. Other musicians watch you with critical eye, sympathetic should you stumble, appreciative of any flash-gittery successfully pulled off, curious afterwards to learn whatever you might have to show.

And nothing goes on for too long. As a player you don’t have the normal gig pressure of trying to hold down a whole evening, and as a listener you don’t have to endure some interminable toss that makes you wonder where you can lay your hands on a pint of diazepam. Variety is what you get, and I suppose that this is where the great British tradition of Variety stems from. The roots of it remain, though leaf and branch have long died away.

The photos were taken by my friend Mark Kelly, last St. Patrick’s day. Suitably grizzled and grainy. It looks as though I've startled a leprechaun.

Sanseverino

2010-05-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

Musician and writer friend Richard Madelin sent me this great clip of French band Sanseverino. It was a reminder of another French band we saw some years ago in Austin, Texas, and then again in San Francisco - '8 and a half Souvenirs'.

It's a wonderfully assured performance. I said to Richard that as the Americans are with Country music, so the French are with this. If an American musician sat down with a French musician, each would recognise and acknowledge the other's identity and style. Whereas if an English musician were to to turn up, he'd be recognisable to neither but would rob both.

Richard said that the English musician would rob both and still get it wrong.

Reasons to be cheerful.

2010-05-13T04:44:00.000-07:00

It's always a relief to get appreciative reviews from the professionals. A good opinion can be very helpful in bringing a book into public awareness, and a subsequent boost in sales. On the other hand an ill-judged one can be very damaging, especially when it contains plot spoilers - as I know to my recent cost.

But it's the lesser heard voices of the target readership that are actually the most importamt. You can't fool young readers, or force them into being engaged, no matter what recommendations come from on high. If they find your work boring, or patronising, then they'll soon put it aside. But if they like it, then the chances are they'll let you know.

So I'm delighted whenever I get emails from readers telling me how much they've enjoyed a particular book, or when links to young readers' reviews appear in my inbox.

Here are a couple received this week that have cheered me up no end.

Larkin's Book Bloggers

Dear Steve Augarde, I ABSOLUTELY loved The Various!!!!!! My friend recommended the trilogy when I went to her house and I'm so glad she did!!!I really like Midge's character, in some ways she's a bit like me but that's not really the reason I like her I just think she is the kind of person I would really like as a friend!! I reccomended the books to my school library and they have just been put on the shelves so I hope everyone in my school gets to read them!! I can't wait till I read the next books! But anyway a couple of questions....... What inspired you to write the Various Trioligy? Was Midge based on anyone in particular? Which of your books do you like the most? Do you think people who read and loved the trilogy would love your new book X Isle? And FINALY my friend also asked you this question but i'm afraid i can't remember the answer !! Would you like to make the books into a film? And if you were would, where do you think would be the best place to film it? Anyway I love writing stories and I'm really interested in fairies and magic and stuff like that and was wondering if you have any tips for writing stories/novels etc.? Thank you so much!!
From Kate, Age;11 from London

Pulp fiction - hard facts.

2010-04-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

I picked up a bunch of old dime magazines some years ago when I was living in Bristol, a few of them pictured above. They stem from the 1930s, and it's interesting to find some big names attached to the stories within - Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler amongst them. I guess this was where they cut their writing teeth before going on to become popular novelists.

Better than the stories, though, are the small ads. Here's a real slice of social history, a clue as to the lives of Americans during the post-Depression era. It's apparent that jobs were scarce, money and health a worry, social contact limited. Take a look...

Learning to play a musical intrument was promoted as a way of gaining both cash and popularity. How many Hawaiian guitars were bought, I wonder, on the assurance that 'only four motions were required' in order to master the instrument? And how many such instruments would be laid aside upon discovering that a musician's life is about as glittering as that of a dirt farmer?

Money money money - ways to find it, make it, keep it. How desperate the eyes that scanned these pages, how vain the hope that a dime mag would somehow provide the answer, the quick fix needed to pay those bills. What punters probably didn't realise was that the hawkers of these schemes and 'opportunities' would have been equally desperate.

And look at this. America was apparently populated by bow-legged, crooked-nosed, kidney-strained men who were too old at 35 to be capable of reproduction. It's a wonder that the next generation ever came into being.

Finally, a little sample from the personal trading columns. I notice that there are a few musical instruments up for swaps - perhaps bought from these very pages - the idea that a banjo can be a ticket to riches and social acceptance being peddled to the next mug. And here's a guy in Arizona, looking around his empty apartment, wondering what his pickled tarantula might fetch on the open market, a Colorado farmer willing to trade his 320 acres for a two-bit filling station in town.

Hemingway must have been thinking of such hidden lives when he wrote his famous six-word short story: 'For sale, baby's shoes. Never worn.'

'Server rejected'

2010-04-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

I’m currently unable to upload photos to Blogger. They’ve updated the system, you see, and so of course it no longer works.

When changes like this are introduced, I’d like to be given a choice. I'd like to see a couple of option buttons on my screen.

Option 1.‘Switch to our new improved photo uploading system! It’ll mean using Picasa, a program you never asked for and won’t understand, but which you’ll need to sign up for and get your head around before you can post a pic. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Yes, we’re having problems with it at the moment, and you’ll get a ‘server rejected’ message on anything you try to upload. And yes we realise it might have been a good idea to test it first. But it’s new, you see, and that’s why it’s better. Unfortunately we don’t offer any official assistance, but you can always go to our ‘help’ forums and rummage around in there for a few hours, along with all the other dazed and confused bloggers suffering with the same issue. Other than that we can’t advise.’

And on the second button would be
Option 2.
‘Don’t’.

UPDATE: So it seems they fixed it, and now you can upload pics from your files without having to muck about in Picasa. Well, OK then. But in future...just behave.

String theory

2010-04-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

I was casting about for a bit of string this morning - in an attempt to make a pencil stay in one place for more than two minutes - and realised I had not a scrap in the house. No string! What kind of a man has no string?

My father would have been ashamed of me. He was a man who always had serious string. I’m not talking about the cheapo kind that you’d tie up a parcel with, the rough white hairy stuff that you could buy in any Post Office. No, I’m talking about brown string. Proper bees-waxed twine. The kind that sailors used to mend their sails with, the kind that would cut through your fingers like cheese-wire before it would ever break.

Waxed twine came on a tightly spooled drum, a solid object, full of purpose and possibilities. Here lay the cocooned beginnings of a hundred kites, a thousand bows and arrows, a million conker fights. Here was a thread from which you could suspend your life.

Yes, for a man currently in possession of no string, I’m a big fan of the stuff.

I like rope, too, particularly proper brown rope, made of hemp. Playground rope. Girls used it for skipping games – those endlessly inventive songs and rhymes and routines that have now vanished from break-time culture. But although I can recall the warm touch of natural hemp rope, winding it round my fingers to get a good satisfying grip, I can’t remember what we boys used it for. I think maybe we just tied a knot in the end and hit each other with it. That’d be about right.

Maybe that was it: boys were creative and inventive with string, girls ditto with rope.

Anyway, I wish I had some right now. A length of rope or a decent bit of string would improve my life no end, and probably everyone else's too. That’s my theory.

Security Tool: what it is, and how to remove it.

2010-04-05T01:06:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard of 'Security Tool', then chances are you soon will. This fake program is as aggressive as any virus, and if your computer becomes infected you're in for a fun time in trying to get rid of it.

Security Tool presents itself as as a bona fide anti-spyware program, popping up on your computer and informing you that you have dangerous viruses. It offers to cleanse your computer of said viruses, and very convincing it looks too (see above). But beware. If you allow the software to perform a 'free scan', then you very quickly realise that Security Tool is the virus. It shuts down all programs other than those necessary to keep itself running, and the 'threats' that it suggests you remove are in fact legitimate Windows applications. Your desktop will be jammed with pop-ups that are simply impossible to circumnavigate. No amount of deleting will get rid of them, and trying to access program removal is useless. Many of the big name anti-virus programmes currently have no defence against this vicious little beast. A member of my family inadvertently allowed Security Tool to run, and I've spent many hours of frustration in trying to deal with the resultant havoc.

Security Tool is a piece of work, sophisticated and cleverly designed. You have to wonder at the kind of person who would put their creativity to such damaging use, and why they would want to be so despised. It's beyond me. But, as always, there are superheroes on hand to vanquish the forces of evil!

So step forward Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. This is one of the few programs capable of defeating Security Tool, and I'm very pleased and grateful to be able to recommend it. Get it now. The free version works fine, but for ongoing real-time protection you might consider stumping up for the Pro.

You'll also want to visit bleepingcomputer.com's helpful site for more comprehensive information, and a step-by-step method for Security Tool Removal. This runs to several pages, so you'd best print them out.

Even with Malwarebytes excellent product successfully installed, you're still looking at several hours work. I had to download the software onto a separate laptop, put it onto a flash drive, and then upload it into the infected computer running in Safe Mode before I could begin. And this is part of the problem - the infected computer will be virtually seized, and so you'll need a second machine to operate from.

The best solution would be to install Malwarebytes in the first place, so if you're lucky enough to be able to read this then I suggest you act now while you still can.

Feeling like I'm in a Summer Wine sketch...

2010-03-26T01:40:00.000-07:00

I managed to lock myself out of the house last night - not for the first time. There's that hanging moment just as the door closes behind you when you realise that you haven't got your keys on you, but by then the Yale latch is already shooting home and...ka-lick. It's too late.

I was due to play in a quiz, so there was no time to do more than take a quick peek through the back door keyhole. Had I stupidly left the key in there, so that it couldn't be unlocked from the outside? Yup. So a night in the car was looming.

Fortunately my quiz mates are versed in matters beyond the cerebral. They'd know how to hotwire your motor, and they certainly know how to get into your house. So after triumphing in the quiz, three of us beery fellows returned to Argyle Street to do some burglary. I'd left a top window open, and Tweets thought he'd have a go at shinning up the drainpipe. He could probably have managed it too - except that there was no drainpipe. The bare stone walls offered little purchase, and it's not every rugby player that can double as Spiderman.

I was all for smashing a quarter-light. The opportunities for hooliganism diminish with age, and I definitely don't get to throw as many bricks at windows as I'd like. But Roy (let-me-through-I'm-a-roofer) Button thought we should at least give the lock a try. The voice of reason.

We all had a go at jiggling around in the dark with my spare back door key, but as the keyhole was already blocked from the inside we had no success. Well, I knew we wouldn't. Finally Roy had to get serious and deploy the builder's equivalent of the Vulcan neck-pinch. It's an emergency measure, potentially very dangerous, and not something to be used lightly. He gave the door his special kick.

Now this is a kick apparently known only to roofers, tax collectors and the Grim Reaper himself. No door is proof against it, and certainly no door in Argyle Street. If I'd clapped my hands and cried 'Open Sesame!' it couldn't have been more dramatic. The door flew back with a yelp of apology at having kept us waiting, and we were in.

So next time you're locked out, my dears, or your cat's stuck up a tree, or you're surrounded by Klingons, don't bother the Fire Service with your little problems. They have far more important things to worry about. Just call your local Yorkshire quiz team, and leave it to them.

Chinese sticky notes

2010-03-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been getting spammed by Chinese pornographers (what a weird sentence to write). This tiresome lot are somehow able to get their messages posted here without Blogger's little 'trashcan' symbol attached, which makes them very difficult to delete. I do wonder at the commercial logic in this kind of persistence. I mean, if you step in some dog mess and can't quite scrape it off your shoe, does that persuade you to go out and buy a dog?

Anyway,I've finally got rid of them, but I've had to temporarily do away with my 'Recent Posts' gadget, otherwise they just keep popping back up again. Apologies to all who leave comments here if it seems as though you've been censored. I suppose I'll have to get myself one of those annoying filter things.

Penance

2010-03-13T00:08:00.001-08:00

If ever you need to make serious atonement for your sins, and there's no church or synagogue handy, then force yourself to sit through thirty seconds of this. It'll be more than adequate punishment for anything you might have done.

Alternatively, you could creep your kids out by telling them that this is their Uncle Vasily, and that he's coming to stay for a month.

Bread

2010-03-12T01:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve gone all John Lennon recently, and started baking my own bread. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s an extension of the creative urge, or maybe it’s just a displacement activity – in lieu of getting down to some actual work. Either way it’s a cinch.
I’m using spelt flour. Spelt s-p-e-l-t. This is an ancient grain that was used before wheat became the standard ingredient for baking, and it gives the loaf a kind of nutty flavour. It’s also kinder to the digestive system, which is a big plus for health freaks like me (ho ho). I really like it.
Best of all, you don’t need any fancy kit – breadmaking machines and the like – just a non-stick baking tin and a mixing bowl.
Here’s my recipe for a small loaf of bread. Takes about ten minutes prep.
Ingredients:
250 gm spelt flour.
I teaspoon fast acting yeast.
Pinch of salt.
Pinch of sugar (if you're in reckless mood).
Sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, sundried tomatoes, or any other hippy stuff you want to chuck in.
200 ml. warm water.
Method:
Mix ingredients in a bowl. Add warm water and mix to a dough. This will be quite sticky, and you’ll wonder whether you’ve overdone it with the water, but it’ll be fine. No need to knead!
Put the dough into the baking tin. Cover with a damp cloth (I use a bit of kitchen towel) and leave in a warm place until the dough rises. Maybe 20-40 mins.
Shove it in an oven, pre-heated to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. Bake for about 40 mins. Turn the loaf out of the tin and put it back into the oven for maybe another ten minutes.
That’s it.
Now you can go and live in the Dakota Hotel and tell the world that you’ve made your contribution to society and have no plans to work again. How fab is that?

The rules of writing

2010-02-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

There was a recent feature in the Guardian where writers were asked to state their 'rules' of writing. ('Don't, unless you really can't think of anything better to do', would probably be mine.)

The question of how to write is as perennial as it's unanswerable. However, on the excellent Bookwitch blog, I discovered that Declan Burke had thought to go and seek the opinion of Mr. William Shakespeare himself. Thanks to Mr Burke, we now have it direct from the bard.

“1. Write ye not a new tale if’t can at all be helped. Plunder thou yon histories, myths and pre-Renaissance Italian romances for plot, setting, character, structure, style and theme. If anyone notice, claim ye homage.
2. Makest thou heroine a maiden as young as is strictly legal.
3. Lest there be doubt on who be your varlet, give him a hump. Or a hooked nose. Or black skin. If ye can manage all three in one villain, have on.
4. A good title be half the battle. ‘Big Fuss About Nowt’ flyeth not.
5. A pox on reality. Toss ye in some ghost, fairy, witch and monster for good jizz. If ye can handle a haunted kitchen sink, have on.
6. If ye suffer from block, have your mistress take up the quill while you cane opium and give her daughter goodly tup. If ye be nabbed, claim research.
7. Ne’er miss a chance for identity mistook, for such wrangling be good for fifty page or more. If they be cross-dressers, ye’ll get a whole tale.
8. Prithee, no more than one monologue per page. Unless folio pages they be. But e’en then, no more than three, max.
9. If the pace should flag, lobbest thou in a ‘Gadsooks!’ or ‘Forsooth!’ Or have skewered a king, general, politician or prince. For the money shot, go with ‘Gadsooks, I be skewered, forsooth!’ The plebs love’t.
10. Once in while end your line with a rhyme / ’Tis posh as a turret and waste some more time.”

Things once common, now extinct. No. 8: Milk.

2010-02-05T03:23:00.000-08:00

There used to be seven different types of milk, according to an ex-milkman friend of mine; Gold-Top, Red-top, Silver-Top, Blue-Top, Green-Top, Sterilised, and one more that I can’t remember. All of these could be bought, delivered, or thieved, from the back of a float.

If milk floats are not quite extinct they're definitely disappearing into the sunset, or sunrise, the whine of their electric motors and the clink of bottles on the doorstep our morning alarmers no more. And milk is no longer heavily promoted as a drink. It's just something to drizzle onto your muesli, the 'skinny' in skinny latte, the froth on your cappuccino.

At one time there were Milk Bars (how rock’n’roll) on every corner, and milk vending machines on every station. Petrol and railway. I don’t know how much it cost to buy from such machines – I never put any money into them. As an eight year old I would have been more inclined to spend my threepenny bits on Bazooka Joes, or opium. (Children, I’m joking, of course. Black Jacks were far better value than Bazooka Joes.)

At primary school we had milk delivered in 1/3 pint bottles, galvanised crates of the stuff, which in winter were parked next to the classroom stove in order to thaw them to a point where they were at least partially liquid. When Margaret Thatcher came to power she famously stopped all this nonsense, by cutting out free school milk. ‘Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher...’ was the slogan of the day. She would have got my vote as a child, but the mad old bat was about twenty years too late to be of any use to me.

I was no great fan of milk, and periodically petitioned my mum to let me have orange juice instead. Orange juice was available for those kids who had the necessary dispensation, but there had to be some pretty serious reason for it. I used to look with envy on those privileged ones, and wonder what they’d got that I hadn’t. Impetigo, maybe, or croup, or dengue. Whatever, I didn’t qualify.

Every billboard and TV advert encouraged you to ‘Drinka Pinta Milka Day', and you couldn’t argue with it. Milk was good for you - and it was especially good for your teeth. Milk was recommended by real doctors, along with Craven ‘A’ cigarettes, which were known to be kind to your throat. I'm surprised they didn't just add milk to tobacco (Milk Cut maybe) for a complete oral health package. But they put it into just about everything else, and we consumed milk lollies, milk loaves, milk choclolate, and milk shakes, knowing that we were really giving our teeth a boost.

I have a clear memory of sterilised milk, tasted for the first time when I went to stay with my cousins in Birmingham. As a West Country lad I’d only ever known untreated milk, bottled maybe a mile away from the cowshed. In fact I can recall my dad bringing milk home straight from the nearest farm, in a white enamelled jug. I've tasted it warm from the udder, too, one of those rites of passage you go through when working on farms as a holiday job. I can't say I liked it much. I do like cows, though, the smell of them and the heat they generate, so welcome on a freezing winter morning with an hour yet to go before breakfast time.

But Birmingham milk was different altogether, delivered in a tall bottle, sealed with what looked like a beer-bottle top. It had a very strong taste, not particularly pleasant, but not much like milk either, and so I preferred it.
The taste of Birmingham still lingers for me in what’s now called UHT milk – most commonly seen in those tiny plastic pots that squirt out more than they could possibly contain as you try to open them. So whenever I’m in a hotel room, and I make myself a cup of tea, I'm reminded of Brum. I think of the black pebbly soil, the echo of public swimming baths and the roar of the Midland Red buses. Hot summer holidays with my big city cousins.

School Zone

2010-02-03T12:10:00.001-08:00

Teachers and school librarians are the gateway to the minds of young readers, so I'm delighted when my work receives their approval. Here's a lovely review from learning resources manager Joy Court, writing for School Zone, where X Isle was Book of the Month. School Zone is a great reading resource for parents, teachers, and pupils alike - well worth a look.

Librarian's Book choice.

'This book is a complete change of genre for the author known for the Various trilogy. In contrast to the world of fairies, this is a quite outstanding example of a dystopian future novel and the most realistic flooded world scenario that I have come across. In a way, that is the smallest of its virtues. The novel's real strength is in the portrayal of adolescent boys and their interactions as individuals and the portrayal of group dynamics. These are very real and recognisable young men and it is how they react to the pressure and terror of life on X-Isle, and the ways in which the horrifying and evil adults delight in a policy of divide and rule, that is so gripping and thought-provoking. This is a dark and brutal place and understandably, most inmates are brutalised by it, but the book is ultimately uplifting. The boys come to realise they can be stronger together and eventually work to overthrow the regime. This book would make a worthy comparator to Golding's Lord of the Flies and generate some fascinating class discussion. Although it would appear to have most appeal to boys, everyone will enjoy the sheer quality and readability of the language and the depth of psychological perception as well as the fast paced narrative and immaculate plotting of this unforgettable read.'

Moto-Psycho Nightmare

2010-01-15T03:03:00.001-08:00

I drove to Brighton and back a few days ago, a ten-hour round trip from where I live, and no joke under current weather conditions. Had to be done, though.
Ten hours of the virtual reality that is motorway driving does weird things to your head, and so I pulled into a Moto services area to close my eyes for a bit. I awoke in terror, convinced that I was still on the road, asleep at the wheel. A true nightmare. Passers by must have wondered at the wild-eyed man in the VW, slapping himself repeatedly around the face.
I was so glad to be alive that even a MacDonalds coffee tasted good.

Last review of the decade

2009-12-31T10:17:00.001-08:00

I said to someone in an email today that this blog is in danger of becoming a perpetual plugging machine, but when you receive praise like the following (from ace US reviewer Robbie Fischer) it would be perverse to keep it to yourself.

A Fort Made Of Books

I always find New Year Eves to be faintly depressing - another year older and still no private jet etc. - so this cheered me up immensely. I've no excuses now not to venture out for a couple of shandies and a knees-up. Thanks Robbie, and a very Happy New Year to you my friend.

White Christmas?

2009-12-21T03:34:00.001-08:00

A White Christmas certainly looks like a possibility from where I'm standing (at the window of my studio for this snap).

Here in West Yorkshire this is regarded as being a mere dusting of the white stuff. We can expect worse as winter progresses - or better, I suppose, depending on your outlook. Mine tends towards bah-humbuggery, and if all this disppears come Boxing Day, I shan't be sorry.

Having said that, I'm feeling quite smug because my new Get-A-Grips have just arrived...

Urban crampons, my brother in law calls them. You stretch them over the soles of your shoes, and the spiky studs keep you from slipsliding away, whilst all around are on their backsides in the gutter gazing up at you with envy.

I shall be able to stride out with confidence, and I'm planning an expedition to the Riverhead Brewery Tap later on, to make sure they work. It's only next door, but you have to start somewhere.

Alien

2009-12-06T02:05:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me this by email. Haha. Eat your vegetables, kids, before they eat you.

Very much after the work of 16th Century Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, of course, whose horticultural grotesques prefigured surrealism.

Sci-Fi London

2009-11-27T02:56:00.000-08:00

Somewhere out there in the inky darkness lie parallel galaxies, strange universes we know nothing about, whose denizens march to the beat of a different drum. That's right, my dears. I'd never heard of all these Sci-Fi and Fantasy magazines before X Isle was published, and I have to say that I'd never thought of X Isle as being a sci-fi title. But it does seem to be going down well with this other-worldly readership, so am I complaining?

No. Or, as they say on planet Xon, 'nimpf'.

Take a look at this. Evidence, if it were ever in doubt, of extremely intelligent life elsewhere.

Sci-Fi London

Tough love

2009-11-19T00:47:00.000-08:00

If you write for a living then you must learn to bear the whip of editorial criticism, and strive to improve your work accordingly. But you don't pass such lashings on to your nearest and dearest. Spare a thought for this poor woman - Evelyn Waugh's wife - on receiving the following letter from her husband on January 7, 1945:

Darling Laura, sweet whiskers, do try to write me better letters. Your last, dated December 19 received today, so eagerly expected, was a bitter disappointment. Do realize that a letter need not be a bald chronicle of events; I know you lead a dull life now, my heart bleeds for it, though I believe you could make it more interesting if you had the will. But that is no reason to make your letters as dull as your life. I am simply not interested in Bridget’s children. Do grasp that. A letter should be in a form of conversation; write as though you were talking to me.

Flying ESC

2009-11-17T02:42:00.000-08:00

The glamorous nature of my job means that I’m forever jetting off to Rio, New York, Leeds-Bradford etc., which is a pain because I really don’t like flying very much. But every once in a while, provided there’s nobody more important on board, I get upgraded to Ejector-Seat Class.

I love Ejector-Seat Class. It’s a completely different flying experience. You’ll never see it advertised of course, and so I hope I’m not going to get into trouble with BA by giving away their secrets. But for those not in the know, the Ejector section, or ESC, is situated at the very back of Business Class, where the bar once used to be, behind a door discreetly marked ‘Precious Cargo’.

There are just eight seats, presumably because of the extra weight of the rockets, and you’ll rarely see more than three or four of them occupied – usually by celebrities of one sort or another, or politicians. As I said it’s an amazing experience, and knowing that there’s an escape route puts a very different aspect on your journey. It’s not that you’re actually hoping for disaster as such, but you can’t help wondering what it’d be like...floating like thistledown into the blue, as you watch the stricken plane spiralling downwards... then landing in a quiet water meadow, Cafe Americano still to hand, your pink parachute settling softly about you...

So whenever the pilot’s voice warns of approaching turbulence there’s a kind of frisson in ESC, a certain look that the occupants give one another. You check your console and lean back into the firm embrace of the padded headrest, staring at the hydraulically operated skylight above you in readiness, if not hopeful expectancy.

ESC is by invitation only, and said invitation is reversible. You can get upgraded at the gate, only to be subsequently bumped if somebody more important should show up later. I was once bumped in favour of the girl band Mis-Teeq, which hurt a bit. You do wonder where the priorities lie. In fact it can be quite a good game, sitting in Business Class, spotting some well-known figure and wondering who’s keeping them out of ESC. If you ever see Gordon Brown or the Pope flying Business Class then you'd have to assume that it was Bono or Macca back there in the hot seats.

I’ve never flown ESC in such heady company, but I did get to share with the Osmonds on one occasion. It was actually a quite a hairy ride. Once those boys got some corn liquor inside them and started with the Crazy Horses routine, I found my left hand permanently hovering over the big red button (see pic).

Not that the red button is going to work, of course, until proper disaster is imminent. You can’t have passengers pinging off into space just for the fun of it. No, I gather that there’s an automated lock on the system to which the pilots have a manual override. I worry about this. You see, the pilots themselves don’t have ejector seats, and so it’s rather up to them whether or not they decide to activate ESC as they go plunging to their own doom. They won’t care a fig about me, and so in the event of a crash I have to hope that I’m back there with someone really nice, someone worth saving. David Attenborough maybe, or Lisa Simpson.

Irish Times review

2009-11-14T08:57:00.000-08:00

Here's a (mostly!) appreciative piece on X Isle from the Irish Times.

'The X Isle Factor...'
ANNA CAREY YOUNG ADULTS : IF REVIEWING books teaches you anything, it’s that you really should never judge a book by its cover – or its blurb.

Steve Augarde’s new book, X Isle (David Fickling Books, £14.99), comes with an ugly cover with a blurb so cheesily melodramatic it should be declaimed by that man with the booming voice who narrates film trailers. The novel itself is much more interesting. Set in a very near future in which catastrophic floods have submerged most of Britain, it’s the story of a boy called Baz, who gets a chance to go to the “island”, a supposedly safe place run by salvagers. But the island turns out to be a harsh place, run by the messianic Preacher John and his cruel family, who force the boys who live there to work like slaves. It’s a gripping and often unsettling tale, and it’s suffused with a sense of genuine loss; amid all the action the characters are still grieving for their families and suburban lives.

Perspective

2009-11-04T00:31:00.001-08:00

Not a bad idea, every once in a while, to remind yourself of just where you fit into the bigger picture.

Interview

2009-10-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

Here's an interview I've just done for Fantasy Book Review. Cool beans.

Writing in my sleep.

2009-10-13T09:15:00.001-07:00

I've been and done it again. By day I'm a relatively normal fantasy author and illustrator, but when the moon rises I apparently undergo this strange metamorphosis, bursting out of my own skin to become a writer of non-fiction. Pretty wild, huh?

Here's my latest title, Business Letters Through Email, a snip at 313 rupees, and ascribed to me by a publisher called Petiwala Books. Very kind of them, I'm sure. Next time you get a 'business letter' from some Nigerian prince offering to inject squillions of pounds into your bank account you'll know who to blame. Me.

Long term readers of this blog may remember that I also managed to produce a book in German a few months ago - Sozialgesetzbuch viii - again unbeknownst to myself.

Quite impressive for someone who can say 'good morning' in German and very little else. I wish I knew how I did it - and more to the point when I can expect the royalties for my nocturnal efforts to start rolling in.

Marsden Jazz Festival...

2009-10-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

...hits town this weekend. Can't believe it's come round again so soon. Georgie Fame is headlining this year. I shall be playing double bass with The Gents, as usual, at the Liberal Club on Sat night (10th Oct) and at the British Legion on Sun afternoon.

And another one...

2009-10-07T02:44:00.000-07:00

This time from Armadillo Magazine. A wonderful review, for which I must thank the lovely Laura Brill, but again be aware that it does give away quite a lot of story detail.

And here's an interview I've just done for Falcata Times.

X Isle: London signings - and more reviews!

2009-09-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

I shall be signing copies of X Isle in London on Tuesday October 6th - at Harrods (Knightsbridge) and at Goldsboro Books in Leicester Square.

Update: Harrods signing (in Waterstones book dept) will be from 12.30 - 1.30.

In the meantime here are another two great reviews of X Isle just come in, from the FantasyBook Review, and from SFFworld. (Warning: Bridie Roman's SFFworld review is very comprehensive, and perhaps gives rather more of the story away than you'd want to know in advance!)

Leonardo da Vinci

2009-09-08T02:10:00.001-07:00

In the run-up to X Isle's release on Oct 1st, I should mention that I have another title due out on the 5th: Leonardo da Vinci, published by Macmillan.

This was a lovely project to work on. The brief was to try and give an idea of da Vinci's genius and scope by viewing him through the eyes of one of his young apprentices - someone who was 'there at the time'. We invented a character called Paolo, a ten year old boy, and placed him in Leonardo's studio amongst other apprentices whose history is to some extent known. Fictionally told, factually accurate, as it says on the Macmillan website.

Through research and reference we were able to put together a little adventure story that allows us some insight into Leonardo's 'Milan' period, culminating in his painting of The Last Supper. Along the way we learn that painting was only one of Leonardo's skills - and not necessarily the most important one to him. Architect, sculptor, scenery painter, costume designer, inventor, civil engineer, portrait artist...the man turned his hand to whatever was required, accepting commissions from whoever had the money to pay him.

The book is for young readers, beautifully illustrated by Leo Brown, and hopefully serves as both entertainment and an introduction to the work of perhaps the greatest free-lancer ever.

Woo hoo!

2009-09-06T05:01:00.000-07:00

Top review site The Bookbag have just made my day by awarding X Isle a full five stars! Here's an extract from what they have to say:

'This is a teen read of impeccable depth. The world has been fully realised, and the company of Baz is most welcome for seeing the ordeal everyone is in. While the language is pitched ideally for a 12-16 year old bracket, the book is quite a dark one at times. Nothing is gory or too graphic, but there are deaths, misery, sewage-based revenges, and more. It's not a very cheery book.

In fact I did take some time to get into it. At first it just seemed to be a retread of Floodland by Marcus Sedgwick, but things soon diversified. I sought a bit more sprightliness, before realising that would be counter-productive. And by the end I was most impressed by this author. He has put so much into this world, and as an adult reader I was aware, and waiting for everything to become relevant, and it often did in unexpected ways. There are several instances of him leaving something unsaid for hundreds of pages, then to give us the answer, and never patronise us with a flashback. Ray's mother is just one instance.

It's always up to us to put the pieces together. And that wouldn't work if things were not so memorable from beginning to end. The style is a great, cinematic one, with practically everything clear to the reader, and the plot and mood is brilliantly sustained. This is a title I hold in high regard, and while I have not read any of his other titles, such as Winter Wood, I can say with the highest recommendation that this book will go down exceedingly well with the target audience. It feels more than a little masculine at times, but young ladies - if your brother passes this on to you, you should not hesitate to snap it up.

I can see a flood of awards for X-Isle, and must thank the kind David Fickling Books people for my review copy.' (John Lloyd.)

All TalkTalk2

2009-09-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

Note: I removed the original post, detailing my battles with TalkTalk. Too long and boring. But this was the upshot:

So they finally sent a (BT) engineer out. Took him two minutes to remove a suppressor from the master socket, and now I'm finally online.

I can't believe it. Nearly three months of hassle for a job that I could have done with a pair of nail scissors. Anyway, I'm now waiting to see how TalkTalk are going to compensate me. I'm sort of hoping for a Mercedes SLK.

Red would be nice...

Bob who?

2009-08-24T01:47:00.000-07:00

Heard a good Bob Dylan story on the radio this morning. Apparently His Bobness was playing a concert with Willie Nelson - I didn't catch the name of the town, think it might have been somewhere in New Jersey.

Bob decides to take a stroll through the Latin quarter, and someone reports seeing a suspicious old vagrant hanging around. A police car shows up and the 22 year old female officer questions Bob. He doesn't necessarily expect her to recognise his face, but surely she's familiar with his name? Nope, she's never heard of him, and the Bobster is driven back to his hotel in order to verify his identity.

I gather the girl took some stick from fellow officers down at the precinct. The chief offered to play her some of his old Dylan albums, but the musically challenged lass had never heard of vinyl either..

Mr Tibbs update

2009-08-14T02:50:00.000-07:00

For those who have enquired after Mr. Tibbs, my giraffe-necked cat, here he is again. I've added a couple more rings and he's starting to look positively Egyptian, I think.

The cat flap is becoming a bit of a problem for him - difficult to negotiate with dignity - and I might have to alter the dimensions soon. He is finding it easier to flush the toilet, however, which is a bonus for us both.

I've ordered steel rings for his next extension, currently pencilled in for early October. I thought we might have some fun with fridge magnets. Mr. Tibbs is nothing if not an exhibitionist, a feline boulevardier, and some extra bling never goes amiss when he's doing his rounds of the cafe-bars.

I must repeat my earlier warning - please don't try this at home. Very few cats are suited to the giraffe-necked way of life, and I don't want any irate parents contacting me to say that they've come home from work to find their moggy trussed up in washing line or TV cabling or whatever.

First review for X Isle!

2009-08-09T07:54:00.000-07:00

Two months before publication date, X Isle has just received its first review. Take a look, over at Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books. The resourceful Mr. Ripley somehow managed to get hold of a printed proof copy, and I'm very glad that he did, despite the fact that at this point there were a number of final corrections yet to be made.

It becomes impossible, after a while, to judge one's own work. Editors too, through being so closely involved in the process, reach a point where they are no longer able to read with fresh eyes. Bits of text are inserted, bits are chopped out, last minute changes are made...a final polish...but is it actually any good? I'm sure none of us have a clue.

So then it's up to the bookseller, the critic, and the reader to deliver their verdicts. I can do nothing but sit on my hands, waiting to discover whether all the effort has been worthwhile. Mr. Ripley's top accolade, a five-out-of-five, is a tremendously encouraging start and I'm truly grateful.

Maybe now I'll be able to settle down a bit, and get on with some work.

Faeries

2009-08-03T05:30:00.000-07:00

These extraordinary little pieces are sculpted by artist and musician Ged Casserley. I think they're great, though maybe not for the faint hearted. Ged tells me he uses bits of actual insects in their construction - wings, legs, feet. Presumably these are insects that have lived a full and productive life, and died a natural death, before Ged gets his hands on them. Remarkably steady hands he must have too, in order to manipulate such tiny objects.

Here's a link to more of Ged's work, at the online Saatchi Gallery: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//82326.html

>

Lucky 7

2009-07-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

Bought myself a new guitar - a Rosetti Lucky 7. When I say 'new' I mean new to me. It's actually getting on for half a century old, having being produced by the Rose Morris company somewhere around 196o.

Rose Morris didn't make great instruments, in fact most of them were pretty cheap and nasty, but the Lucky 7 was the first guitar I ever coveted as a boy. It had a cutaway (wow), and it was electric (double wow). I had no chance of finding the necessary 14 guineas purchase price, however, and so the Lucky 7 remained a dream. Slightly richer now, if not much wiser, I saw this one on ebay and went for it. The poor old thing was in a sorry state, and it's taken quite a bit of work to get it back into playing order. Had to soak the neck in the bath and then clamp it to a hot radiator in order to straighten the blighter out. Not your standard luthier's method, perhaps, but it seems to have worked.

A strange thing happened with the bodywork. I rubbed it all down, primed and resprayed it, polished it up like new. If anything it looked a bit too new. A week or so later and the paintwork has crazed, inexplicably yet rather tastefully to my eye. Now it looks fifty years old again. There's probably a moral there.

Anyway, I shall take the old girl out on a date tomorrow night and give her a twirl.

Email

2009-07-18T23:31:00.000-07:00

I've opened up an email account with Google, which'll do for the time being at least.

Contact me at saugarde@googlemail.com

Re-entry

2009-07-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

Eventually, I'm assured, I'll have both phone and internet at my fingertips once more. In the meantime, as a temporary measure, they've given me a black dongle to play with. Oo-er missus, etc.

The dongle is quite impressive at first sight. You just plug it into your laptop and hey presto you're online. No wires, no modem, no bother. In theory I could take my laptop for a fishing trip to Loch Lomond, or on a walking holiday through the Peaks (were I mad enough) and still be in touch with the world.

In practice the dongle is such a feeble little affair that even as I type this I get messages warning me that I'm being disconnected. If I press 'publish' and this post actually appears it'll be a miracle.

Steve Augarde has left the planet

2009-06-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

No internet, and now no landline! The last children's author operating under these conditions was probably Arthur Ransome.

Apologies to anyone trying to email. I'm not here.

edits

2009-06-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Glastonbury cancelled!

2009-06-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Well, not quite. But due to a balls up with tickets and passes, The Gents have had to pull out. No point in opening the gates, then.

Oh well. What's another year?

Incommunicado

2009-06-19T02:06:00.000-07:00

I've moved house and am currently without t'internet - a situtation that's likely to continue for another week or two. I find it quite liberating. It's also useful to be reminded of just how many hours are usually lost in the black holes of cyberspace, although no experience is a complete waste of time, I suppose.

X Isle - first images.

2009-05-14T01:09:00.000-07:00

Well, they're displaying the cover for X Isle on Amazon, and so I guess it's OK for me to show it here on my blog.

The jacket illustration is by Steve Stone, and a great piece of work in my opinion. I'm used to illustrating my own books and so I've been fascinated to see how others interpret the texts - first with the Touchstone Trilogy, and now with X Isle. It's actually very flattering. A bit like other musicians covering your songs, perhaps.

Perfect martini

2009-05-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

Learning is such a joy. Tonight, from maths professor and all-round excellent cove Paul Glendinning, I discover the recipe for a perfect martini.

1. Put some crushed ice into an appropriate glass.

2. Add a measure of gin.

3. Position a bottle of vermouth in sunlight, so that the beams pass directly through it and mix with the gin.

4. Enjoy your martini.

(This according to Luis Bunuel, apparently.)

Dear oh dear...

2009-05-07T04:24:00.000-07:00

Aren't you intrigued? Don't you long to reach out and pick up these wonderful-looking books? No?
Well, it's easy to criticise, but really - is there any excuse for this kind of laziness? Here are two respected authors, James Runcie and Amanda Craig, favourably reviewed recently by dovegreyreader, and surely deserving of better than this.

Publisher: 'We need to evoke mystery, a sense of er...mysteriousness. But nothing too specific.'

Designer: 'I know! Let's have a picure of some geezer walking away from us! Like he's just been somewhere, and now he's going somewhere else. That works every time, for just about everything.'

Publisher: 'Ha. Not this time it won't. The protagonist's female. That's the twist.'

Designer: 'I know! Let's have a picture of some woman walking away from us! Like she's just been somewhere...'

What does it cost to get a decent designer in? Not much. I bet there are hundreds of young hopefuls who could do better than this for fourpence.

And if you thought that was bad, take a look at this:

Five covers, five different authors, same hackneyed image.

Great Inventions Still Waiting To Happen. No.1: Vegan Scratchings

2009-05-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

I was in a local refreshment room the other night with a chum. We'd ordered up some Yorkshire tapas - bag of nuts and a packet of pork scratchings - and were enjoying same.

Good man, the pork scratching, though of course not to everyone's taste. There are whole sectors of society who will never know the pleasure of this crunchy morsel, it being against either their religion or their conscience to touch the things.

So where is the kosher equivalent? Where is the vegan scratching? We fell to wondering what a vegan scratching might taste like. A bit like pork, we decided, depending on which bit of the vegan you used.

Oh, please yourself then...