HAPPY LISTMAS EVERYONE

It's the final stretch, the last month of the year. Nights are at their shortest, jumpers at their thickest, journalists at their laziest. You know what that means. It's LIST MONTH LISTMAS. I fuckin' love list month. Ranking things, getting unnecessarily angry when the Guardian inexplicably misses your album of the year off their top-50 list (NO M83 GRAUN, REALLY?). They at least got Alt-J on their countdown this year. I also like how the music people repeat, as they do every year, that this year has been truly, genuinely, undoubtedly a fantastic year. For real. When the case is usually that it's an average year. The film people are less hyperbolic about stuff like this.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is: I'm gonna make me some lists!

MY FAVOURITE THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2012

Note: I haven't been arsed writing something about every single one because it's SUPER BORING to do.

10. America - Dan Deacon

9. Bloom - Beach House

8. Budget Cuts - #Tags

It was about June this year buy it that I realised I no longer listened to #Tags because my mate writes and sings the songs, but because I just really, really like the music they make. Budget Cuts is an EP rather than a full album, and it isn't professional produced, but the songs buy it are all brilliant. They're fun and lighthearted but not lightweight, and their cheerful, colourful aesthetic is supported by serious musicianship. Sick of Heels and buy it My Father's House are excellent, but best of all is album closer Helena, which is a Paranoid Android-style mash of genres that almost falls apart but doesn't, and it's epic, and glorious, and catchy, and buy it.

7. Sweet Heart Sweet Light - Spritualized

It's possible you haven't heard of Spiritualized, but they're actually responsible for one of the best albums of the past 20 years, 1997s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (trivia: it was released on the same day as OK Computer, making 15 June 1997 the best day in music history). Since then, main guy J Spaceman (lol) may not have matched that effort but has come close several times, most notably with Songs in A&E, conceived while on the brink of death from double-pneumonia. I'm not going to be gentle: the lyrics in this album are cringe-worthy. He blabs generically while pretending to be a religious American about freedom, Jesus, pain and he drops bad metaphors all over the place. He is, at least, sincere in his sentiments though.

Musically, however, this is boss. It balances energy and the slower moments superbly, and is joyful and hopeful, and mournful and melancholy in equal measure.

6. Hot Cakes - The Darkness

After a few years of fannying around, in early 2011 Justin Hawkins decided it was time to get the band back together. I saw them in London that year and they smashed it. An album was announced. Hopes were high. Then they released Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now. It was a bit PG. Okay, fine, but that's just one track, I thought. Then Every Inch of You was put out, and...it was also a bit tame. Not abysmal, just too slow-paced and lacking an edge. I bought the album all the same, but it struggled make any kind of statement.

What's it doing at number six, then? There are two great tracks here, Concrete and a brilliant cover of Radiohead's Street Spirit. Concrete is what the Darkness should be: energetic. Hawkins wails fervently about 'searching for a sweet lady woman/ to share a little body heat'. He sounds impassioned, and consequently it's the best Darkness song since their 2003 heyday.

5. Lonerism - Tame Impala

It's like the Magical Mystery Tour.

4. Django Django - Django Django

I look forwards to the award ceremony where the announcer has to say, 'And the winner for best album goes to DjangoDjangoDjangoDjango! And then Jango Fett turns up or something.

Django supported Hot Chip when I saw them at the Guildhall, and they were ace. I knew of them bit, but not intimately. So I bought the album, AND IT WAS GOOD. Lead single Default remains my favourite track: the skittering, glitchy, fragmented vocal over off-beat guitars never fails to get the head-bob going.

3. Matthew Dear - Beams

2. Hot Chip - In Our Heads

Hit Chip's 2010 knockout One Life Stand was intimate often mellow. In Our Heads goes off in the other direction by cranking up the bombast and scope (by Hot Chip standards). Motion Sickness, Day and Night, Flutes and Let Me Be Him have a certain exultance about them and feel intended for the huge crowds of Glastonbury (though they worked fantasically when I saw them at Southampton Guildhall). In Our Heads also contains my favourite song of 2012, which is possibly the lowest-key track on it, Look At Where We Are. It's sad and mournful and I love it.

1. Alt-J - An Awesome Wave.

Those five words above are actually my least favourite things about this band and album. The shortcut for the delta symbol on a Mac? Fuck off. That's some hipster bull right there. And I resent the word 'Awesome'. Yank fucks.

BUT. This is a marvellous album. My rage at Laura Snapes of Pitchfork giving it a 4.8/10 was such that I sent her a mildly annoyed tweet. (Snapes is English btw; I was hoping she could represent the UK a bit more Stateside.) The Mercury-watching corner had this down as a typically Mercuryish indie record. It's not. Alt-J have a staggering degree of control over their compositions, directed by a rare musical intelligence. It's sometimes somber, sometimes giddy; sometimes sparse and cold, sometimes fuzzy and crunchy. The vocals yammer and lilt and sweep and whisper, textures meld and fragment, but it always feels cohesive. It's the best album of the year.



MY FAVOURITE THE BEST FILMS OF 2012

10. Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

I've already done a massive review of this so go find that instead.

9. Seven Psychopaths - Martin McDonagh

I don't often mention this film but Martin McDonagh's debut feature In Bruges just so happens to be my favourite THE BEST FILM OF ALL TIME so I guess you could say I had high hopes going in. The trailer looked sucky, but then again the trailer for In Bruges is the biggest pile of shite ever, so I wasn't taking it that seriously.

McDonagh loves the complicated script, but this gets silly. It terms of its structure it reminds me of this. Billy (Sam Rockwell), who plays Colin Farrell's best mate, starts trying to write the film that Farrell is trying to write, which is called Seven Psychopaths, and it becomes unclear whether the characters are living out the script, or if the script follows the characters, or whether we are watching the film that Farrell writes. It's ultimately self-defeating and is more trouble than it's worth, and makes excuses for having weak women characters, heaps of dead bodies and a climactic "shootout".

There are some great moments, especially the backstories of a few of the Psychopaths such as the Amish Psychopath and the Vietnamese (again with the Vietnamese, McDonagh!) Psychopath. Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken are great. Billy's enactment of his planned shootout is hilarious. But ultimately this is a film with great moments, but no real core; it's sugary but lacks nourishment.

8. The Dark Knight Rises - Christopher Nolan

This is one of those movies where I loved watching it but afterwards some of the sheen fell away a bit. Judging it on how gripped and enthralled I was in the cinema, this would be top five: I really thought Batman was going to nuke himself at the end. It was riveting. The famous spine breakage was similarly nerve shredding.

But looking back, it was a bit wobbly. Bane had a death ill-fitting of such a central character, and the Talia bit felt tacked on, like a fourth act in a three act film. The middle bit with the resistance movement was bloated, the plan didn't make that much sense, and it I'm not a fan of it's right-wing politics.

7. Skyfall - Sam Mendes

You know what Skyfall felt like? James Bond: Modern Warfare. The climactic shootout at the Scottish manor house is pure videogame, with waves of enemies, strategically placed traps and a sodding helicopter. For me, the whole film felt like a sequence of 'levels'. This episodic structure was supported by M's storyline, which was the real core, but it wasn't a match for Casino Royale, which remains the series high-point.

Javier Bardem's Silva is an entrancing bad guy, and the long take that was his introduction was mesmerising. Craig is still good as Bond, even if he's getting just a leeeedle bit old now. Skyfall is also a beautiful film, and the silhouette fight in Shanghai was supremely cool.

6. Ted - Seth MacFarlane

Comedies always get overlooked when it comes to end of year lists and award season. Maybe it's because humour is so subjective, or maybe it's because they're seen as diversions rather than films. But I don't buy that. Ted made me laugh. A lot. The plot is pretty by the numbers, but there are a lot of great jokes, and a few touching moments. There is also the best stroke gag ever. Plus it's got Mila Kunis in it, which is enough for me.

5. Looper - Rian Johnson

I've already done a massive review for this so go find that instead.

4. Cabin in the Woods - Drew Goddard

Cabin in the Woods is a horror film about horror films with a smaller horror film within it that eventually merges with the overall horror film. It's complicated, and breaks apart horror conventions while demonstrating that even though you may know the mechanics of it, you'll still be scared. Well, it would do if it was scarier, if that makes sense.

Depending on who you talk to Cabin in the Woods is either incredibly clever or not as clever as it thinks it is, but no matter how you look at it it's a thoroughly unique horror film, and is not to be missed.

3. The Raid - Gareth Evans

It suspect it's hypocritical of me to criticise Skyfall of being videogamey while complementing The Raid for the same thing, but I think it works with The Raid because it's completely unapologetic about the whole thing. The Raid is one protracted fight scene, and some of the fights are of an intensity rarely seen before. There were times when a fight would finish and I would only then realise that I had stopped breathing some time ago. The fights are inventive, tense and brutal, and the only real misstep is in the final "boss battle" where everyone takes a level of punishment that isn't in keeping with the more realistic levels of human physical resilience found in the rest of the film.

2. 21 Jump Street - Phil Lord & Chris Miller

Another comedy! I just really loved this film. It's adorable. The two leads, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, are charming: Tatum willingly sends up his lunk-head persona and Hill does his usual thing, but does it well. The set-up is good: the pair's discovery that the old highschool order of jocks at the top and nerds at the bottom has been flipped is a neat way of throwing the two out of their comfort zones. The drug sequences are brilliant, and the chase sequence has just the right level of self-awareness.

1. Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson

Anderson's certainly got his haters, but I ain't one of 'em. His 1960s aesthetic, his comic-book framing, the stilted but charming dialogue and all the other Anderson-isms all just work for me. There's substance to support the style though, and Sam's courtship of Suzy is heartfelt, genuine, and becomes a small-scale epic of love against the odds. The support cast is uniformly excellent, particularly Bruce Willis who plays a lonely policeman. It's the best film of the year.

Skydive: a splurge

Creative writing class nonsense ahoy!

***

So we strapped ourselves in and our group leader made a bad joke about not dying and this didn't ease my nerves at all which by the way were all over the place because there was a chance I could die even though I knew the death rate was only 0.02% that still sounded bloody high to me but anyway up we went and the higher and higher we got the lower and lower my stomach sank and then Josh was sick which actually made me feel better because I felt bad but I didn't feel that bad but then in no time at all we were at proper altitude and our group leader opened the door which made all the air rush out and caused a right racket and then I was strapped to my jump-buddy Rachel who was a total pro and made me feel instantly at ease - not - and before I knew it it was my turn so we shuffled to the door and Rachel gave my hand a squeeze which was trembling like an old person's but before we could jump our group leader stuck his boot into my back and would you believe it kicked us out and I think he got fired for that and Rachel gave him hell when we landed but anyway I shrieked and my belly flipped and I think I could hear Rachel swearing as we tumbled and tried to steady us because we were in a right spin but I couldn't be sure because the air was shouting in my ears and I was shrieking pretty loud too and then all of a sudden we were stable and had stopped accelerating or something and it was actually an amazing feeling and I couldn't stop laughing by the way and Rachel must've thought I was a right nut and then she opened the parachute and it yanked us up or that's how it felt at least and I knew then there was no chance I was going to die which I'd forgotten about anyway...

RANT: Football, Referees and Learning to Talk About Something Else

RANT TIME

After having a debate with my mate over whether Fernando Torres dived in the Chelsea-Utd match earlier today using slow-mo replay to try and discern whether he had any justification to go down, I reached a fucking amazing conclusion (this ain't aimed at you Ollie; it's been brewing for a while):

If after mulling over slo-mo replays for ten minutes and still not reaching a definitive answer then IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER IF THE REF GOT IT RIGHT OR WRONG BECAUSE HE'S ONLY SODDING HUMAN. People - fans, pundits, managers, journalists - don't  understand this.

(For what it's worth, he dived)

There is literally no point discussing it, and there is literally no point in chastising the referee and accusing him of being in Alex Ferguson's pocket, because sometimes refereeing is an impossible job. In fact, I can think of few jobs that are more difficult. The marginal calls come thick and fast, decisions have to be made near-instantaneously without the benefit of replays, the pressure of the fans, the players' ploys to con him, the going over he can expect in the press and on Twitter and on Match of the Day if he makes a mistake - all these add up to one of the most ridiculously difficult professions ever. Seriously.

So, if a player goes down and it's not clear whether he had any justification to even under close examination, ignore it and move on; nothing can be done. The referee certainly isn't at fault. If a player is a foot offside when a ball is played through and he scores, ignore it and move on. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make such perfect judgement every time? I heard about one example where some officials showed a room full of journalists a clip of an offside call from the linesman's perspective. They only got to see it once, and had to vote on whether it was offside or not. Nearly every single one got it wrong; the linesman who made the decision on the day got it right. So if these highly trained hawk-eyed ladies and gentlemen can't always tell, then no one can tell. So don't worry about it. These things happen. Such is football.

Another downside to analysing every aspect of the officials' performances is that Match of the Day and such like become tedious debates about marginal calls. This is the most boring possible thing to debate. "Oooh, if you watch carefully you can see there was contact" opines Mr. Hansen. "But it was minimal at best" retorts Mr. Dixon. "But there was contact". Enough. Talk about the actual football please. It's quite an interesting sport and there's a lot to analyse and discuss.

/rant


N.B This is somewhat moot after what I've written above, but whatevs. 'Contact' is not enough to call a foul. Football is, strangely enough, a full-contact sport. That means you are expected to take knocks and nudges and just get on with it. If the challenge makes contact with the attacker but is not heavy enough to fell him, but he goes down anyway, that is still a dive. We laugh/throw rotten vegetables at players who take a gentle touch to the face but go down like they've been punched; the same applies to feet and knees coming into contact with opposition legs.

Training

This is another of the spontaneous writing things. I've used 'we' because in my creative writing lecture she made us write in the second person plural. I don't really get why; it seems too limiting, having to keep the voice as a group the whole time.

***

We have this ‘do and die’ attitude, this endless well of machismo, which drives us to batter our bodies into heaving, crumpled heaps, legs and lungs burning and hearts pounding. After it’s over we curl up on the track as if praying, and it feels like we’re trying not to die. Sometimes we vomit as our bodies go into recovery mode, central nervous system fried, but we are not in the least bit embarrassed. We’ve seen it all before.

Running – sprinting, specifically – scratches some sort of itch that we all feel deep within us. It must be an addiction of sorts: even though Tuesday nights always seem to be cold and wet, we nevertheless turn up and batter ourselves for an hour and a half, then depart, feeling exhausted but satisfied. Purged even. This ritual is repeated three further times each week (excluding gym sessions). Strangely, the more you commit the stronger the hold it has over you; it feels inescapable. Everything comes second to training – university work, our social lives, holidays, everything – but unlike recreational drugs the mental pleasure we get from sprinting never diminishes.

I often wonder if any of my peers have any notion of what I put myself through; any notion of what it’s like to have exhausted yourself so thoroughly that you are able only to stagger like a drunkard back to the start for the next rep; to be overcome by nausea and puke on the grass; to wake up the next day with muscles that cause you agony with every movement. And to enjoy doing this, to suffer alongside friends, to savour the morning after’s dose of muscular pain because you know it is the pain of improvement. My housemate greets me, ‘Oh hi, Malcolm, how was training?’ ‘Yeah, alright, got soaked again’. She has no idea. 

Looper and The Perks of Being a Wallflower

It's been a film-heavy week. On Tuesday I saw The Hunger Games (good) and The Cabin In The Woods (incredible); in the past 24 hours I have seen two new releases, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky) and Looper (Rian Johnson). Fantastically, I didn't pay a penny to see any of them, despite going to the cinema for each. Anyway, I haven't done any reviews in a while so though it was high time I did some.

***

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 2012)

It's a fairly common occurrence that a writer will adapt their novel into a screenplay themselves; rarer, though, is for the writer to direct thing, although this is exactly what Stephen Chbosky has done for this complex, touching and highly-strung comedy drama. Charlie (Logan Lurman) is an outsider with a troubled past in his Freshman year at high-school, where he befriends a group of oddballs in their senior year, including Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller). As the year progresses Charlie grows closer to the group, and we gradually discover that our protagonists have much more going on under the surface than is immediately apparent.

The balance between comedy and drama is an interesting one. The suggestion that the film might take some dark turns is established from the off, with Charlie penning heartfelt confessionary letters (the source material was an epistolary novel) to an anonymous recipient, before switching to a more typical take on a boy starting high-school. The usual archtypes are all present - there's the friendly and understanding English teacher, the now-estranged friend from middle-school, the jocks, the bitches, and the weirdos with passions for old English rock music, who Charlie falls in with. Then the emotional bombs start falling, splintering this comfortable facade. The casual, off-hand way in which Charlie reveals a key cause to his alluded to difficulties is a real jaw-dropping moment, and credit to Emma Watson for ably conveying the wave of shock that knocked the audience out of their seats. 

It is a moment, and there is at least one other, that could easily feel contrived - the emotional equivalent to jump-scares in horror films - but the occasional oblique references to trouble pasts means they felt earned and justified, rather than being a simple Nicholas Sparks-style and-then-he-gets-cancer deus ex machina. 

Of the three main characters it is Patrick who is by far the most entertaining - witty, protective, humourous and camp - and while Sam may be a bit bland at times, all three character arcs are individually satisfying but are also woven together perfectly, with each characters' own changing circumstance and emotions having a knock-on effect with the other two. I did feel that perhaps some of the ways that Sam and Patrick were marked out as outsiders were a bit forced, for instance the appropriation of British rock music in service to outsider-cool was gimmicky. No points for guessing which band takes pride of place - who else but The Smiths - and what with their appearance in (500) Days of Summer it's getting a bit wearying. As for Charlie, while his struggles with his past and his psyche form a solid core for the film, Perks falls into the traps of telling us his character traits without actually showing them: he is presented as a quiet socially-inept misfit, but by the end of the first day he has made friends, and his love of literature is used in a similar way to the music in that the film assumes that because he reads he must be interesting. The reality is that apart from the (admittedly essential) personal trauma that underpins the film and provides much of the drama, Charlie is not a particularly interesting character. However, the surround cast cover over this deficiency ably.

Despite these few quibbles The Perks of Being a Wallflower is hugely involving, gripping and heartstring-tugging that packs an emotional punch that few films of this genre can match. With so much psychological damage scattered liberally across the characters it could easily have become overly-harrowing, but the line is well-tread and the balance superb. It's not the easiest watch, but it is one of the most rewarding.

***

Rian Johnson might not be a name to match the likes of Nolan, Cameron and Whedon quite yet, with only low budget noir indie-hit Brick (2005) and Brothers Bloom (2008) to his credit until now, but that hasn't stopped him pulling off this ambitious noir-sci-fi thriller with a panache equivalent of those aforementioned blockbuster behemoths. 

As with any story involving time-travel, the logic unravels if you look at it too closely, so here is some friendly advice from Austin Powers to remember when you go and see it. Essentially, it is 2044 and Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Joe, a 'looper' - an occupation in which the looper stands in a field with a gun waiting for an unfortunate target to be transported back in time, where upon arrival said target receives a chest-cavityful of high-velocity shotgun shells, administered with disinterested efficiency by the looper. It's easy work but it comes at a price: a an unheralded point in every looper's life their target will be their future self, 30 years older, transported back with enough gold to provide the looper with a comfortable lifestyle for 30 years, whereupon he is then sent back and killed; in Looper terminology this is known as 'closing the loop'. Like I said, don't think about it too much.

Of course, when Joe is faced with his future self (Bruce Willis), he hesitates, misses his shot and gets knocked out, allowing Bruce Willis to make his getaway. Failing to close one's loop is a heinous offence, so Joe has to not only track down and kill his future self, but also avoid the vengeful organisation he works for. Take that and add to it a young farm owner (Emily Blunt) with a mysteriously ominous child and you've got yourself a right tangled plotline.

Usually, sci-fi stories are allowed one or two leaps of faith upon which the sci-fi world is based: in Star Wars you've got the Force and intergalactic travel; in Children of Men you've got an infertile population; in 1984 you've totalitarianism taken to its greatest extreme. In Looper, you've got time travel and telekinesis. From these two Johnson creates a believable timeline - time travel is made illegal almost upon invention, and telekinesis - initially heralded as the next step of evolution - is actually quite rubbish, used mainly by desperate men trying to pick up women in bars by floating nickels around. Charles Xavier they are not. Essentially, despite containing two fantastical concepts, Looper tries hard to be plausible, and it succeeds, creating and maintaining a satisfyingly realistic sci-fi world.

JGL is great as always and in the last few years has become one of the most captivating and versatile leading men in Hollywood. Some subtle prosthetics on his lips and nose shape his face to look like a convincing younger version of Bruce Willis, and his voice and posture are spot on too. However young Joe is not a clone, rather the passage of time has given the two versions different sets of moral values and one of the greatest pleasures to be found in Looper is seeing how certain character traits are evident - or not evident - unchanged or altered by the 30 years that separate the two versions of Joe. Bruce Willis is standard Bruce Willis really - tough, grizzled, but with a deep love of those closest to him and complete disregard for anyone that gets in his way. The surprisingly few meetings between the two are great entertainment; what old Joe lacks in youthful vitality he makes up for in canniness. One of the best lines in the film is when young Joe quips "your face is on backwards". 

The supporting cast is excellent, too, with particular mention to Emily Blunt who plays a protective farmer with an unruly child, caught up in the film's tightening circles. Even better, though, is Noah Segan who plays a hapless enforcer called Kid Blue. His role is small and the character uncomplicated, but it's rare treat to have a someone so completely and hilariously incompetent as this guy. He seems to exist purely so Johnson can punish him, like a macabre puppeteer. 

I'm failing as a reviewer here. I don't do scores but if I did I wouldn't give Looper a 5, but I'm struggling to put my finger on why. Perhaps its that the time-travel stuff doesn't make sense (even though I'm doing my best to ignore that). Perhaps is that one of the characters is reveals to be unexpectedly powerful that didn't feel in keeping with the Looper world. Perhaps I wanted a slightly happier ending. However, I think it comes back to Joe. I just didn't connect with him as much as I would have liked. They've done a fantastic job with his appearance and mannerism, but he's just lacking a spark and the charm to lift the mood of this frequently thematically heavy film. He also turns into Rambo at one point, which felt a bit off.

But other than that, even though it's a month or two late, Looper is the film that this summer needed. Some have said it's like 2012's The Matrix; it's more like Inception in that it's sort of complicated (depending on how much time you spend trying to figure out the time travel stuff), has some great set-pieces, solid acting, and is a wholly original sci-fi film. 

Reminiscence Of My Garden

I wanted to write something earlier, anything, I didn't care what. The first thing that came to my head just so happened to be the best song in the world was my garden back home in Maidenhead, so I went and wrote 1300 words about my memories of it. This is pretty personal I guess, so it's not getting the usual airing on Facebook or Twitter, b'yeah, it's still tentatively being posted here. I might do a few more of these in the future.

As I slipped gently between childhood, adolescence and finally early adulthood, the time spent in my garden diminished slowly but inexorably. Other interest drew me away from the small green expanse at the back of the house, with the patio, swings and vegetable patch. It was screens mostly, first the television when we got Freeview for the first time in early 2003 then consoles – TimeSplitters 2, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and Guitar Hero were the main offenders – and the internet.  Not only that, but as I grew I was permitted more freedoms, and long afternoons playing football at the park were infinitely preferable to kicking a ball against the side of house.

Jumping through the sprinkler in Speedos. Chasing small puddles round the rubberised fabric that formed the den on the climbing frame. Coming away from climbing the tree at the end of the garden, hands sticky with resin. I can remember the curtain-call for each of these. At 9 years old playing around with the sprinkler was fun; the following summer I considered that extremely weird. Eventually we didn’t fit in the climbing frame den so it was dismantled one afternoon, but we still had the swings so that was alright. One afternoon I was in the den bit with my friend from nursery, and his Irish mum came round to pick him up. Neither of us really wanted to get down, so slightly irate she said ‘Get daaynnn niieee, Jornathaan’ (get down now, Jonathan), and it became something of a catchphrase in our house. And the day when the tree surgeons came, bringing tools of destruction upon our little tree, was a day of mourning. Mum said it was killing the surrounding plants, but my grasp of floral imperialism was limited at that point so I didn’t really believe her. All I knew was that the tree was now a stump, and that opportunities for playing with a stump were limited.

Badminton was popular in our house for a while. Dad was the pro, forever catching me out with frustrating drop-shots. Paul was the worst. He was completely shit. He is also three years younger than I and four and a half than Rob, but still. The tantrums were hilarious. To his credit he improved steadily until he was at least reasonably competent. I remember the day badminton was ended forever particularly well because I caused it. Keen for some football practice, I went into the garden and tried to use the net as a ‘wall’. I got it over a few times, then one shot hit it full on, snapping a guy rope, and it collapsed. I never owned up, in fact I actually lied to Dad for some reason, and that was that. Table tennis was a relatively short-lived replacement, but the nightmare of trying to find the stupid little ball in the itchy bush (our garden is littered with itchy bushes) was too much of a barrier to ever invest serious time into it.

Clearly, sport was the main focus in the garden, and the main sport was football. Penalties were fun for a while, although Mum hated it. She was too useless anyway. Then my cousin Matthew began lodging with us, and he could do 96 keepie-uppies. My best effort at that time (around year 4 at school) was 8, so I was suitably impressed (my all-time best up to this point is 92, so I got damn close!). However, ours wasn’t a garden suited to playing football. It was too thin with too many things in the way and too many plants round the edge. Every years the daffodils appeared behind the swings in springs; every year they got flattened by errant footballs and, uhh, feet. I didn’t really give a shit about those daffodils. The aforementioned itchy bushes were the bane of my footballing childhood. I never understood them. They looked like ugly. They were big, they were dense, they were in the way, and they were itchy! Most of the time a broom was required to dig the ball out but frequently I just used to whack the bush in frustration.

Only once did they provide me with any amusement. In one of his many short-lived phases, Paul wanted to improve his football skills so I got him to do a few drills I knew. Obviously the ball kept going in the bush, so I told him that getting the ball out the bush was an important skill. He bought it, the idiot. So I kicked the ball in the bush a few times and he would diligently go and dig it out, getting covered in that itchy powder each time. Simple pleasures.

Our garden was also  home to our guinea-pigs. There were two: a dusty-ginger one called Spike and a black and white one called Ollie. I think we got Spike when I was in year 2, and Ollie a year later. They had a decent innings I think; I can’t remember precisely when they died, but when Spike died the three of us sat and cried in the living room all morning. As Spike got older I remember being terrified that I would be the one to find him dead; we changed their cage on a week-by-week rota so there was a one-in-three chance. Paul ended up being the unlucky one; Dad buried them both by the rhubarb. I don’t remember much of Ollie if I’m honest, he was the quiet, meek one. When he died all I could think was how shit it much have been for Spike to have to share a hutch for a few hours with his only companion in the world lying dead nearby. In retrospect, I neglected them, but thankfully they had Mum to give them attention and broccoli stalks. Consequently they squeaked when she walked past, hopeful for food, but didn’t for me. Once Ollie was dead, Spike got lonely. I walked past his run once and he took a flying leap at the chicken wire in a desperate attempt to escape. I was shocked, and it was awful.

I got in a scrap with Rob over the guinea-pigs once. It was Monday, and the responsibility of cleaning their hutch had fallen to me, but Rob, caught up in the daily routine, forgot it had changed until he was halfway though. He accused me (correctly) of knowing it was my turn all along, and we had our first and last genuine fight. Matthew slunk off to get Mum, who threw us in separate parts of the house to cool off. It took a few days.

I won the fight, by the way (Rob will disagree).

Once the guinea-pigs were gone I could go the whole autumn and winter without venturing out into the garden even once. Then, once the sun came out I would spend half an hour or more each afternoon after school practicing keepie-uppies and ball control. I never really got it; I blame my gangly legs. Though if Peter Crouch could do it…

The last strong memory I have of the garden is a surprise birthday party when I was 17 that my then-girlfriend threw for me, in allegiance with Rob. It was lovely, it really was – just a simple gathering of friends enjoying being together. Also it was genuinely truly a surprise; I got back from shopping in Windsor with Mum and Rob made an incredibly shit reason for me to go in the living room – something about Kenyans running on the telly (possibly the Great North Run) – and I went in and heard giggling then they popped out from behind settees and chairs and stuff. Good times.

Writers and their Characters' Names

Hello again. Missed me? It's been a while.

I have a theory. The quality of a writer's books correlates very closely with how well-named their characters are. This is basically going to be a list, I've just realised. The reigning champion of character naming is by no coincidence the writer of the greatest trilogy of books, Phillip Pullman. Roald Dahl does well too; as do JK Rowling and Paul Stewart (writer of the Edge Chronicles, a hugely underrated series). It's not just applicable to children's fantasy writers; all-time greats of literary fiction also survive this test.

A quick Google search of the greatest characters in history also reveals a list of the best named characters in history, from many of the best books in history. There's Holden Caulfield, Humbert Humbert, Atticus (and Scout and Jem) Finch, Jay Gatsby, Kurtz and Marlowe, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf, to name but a few...and of course, Shakespeare does alright too. Also the Bible is worth a mention, and not just because the main 'characters'' names have all ended up as Western-mainstays, but because of Methuselah, Solomon, and uh, Paul.

I've mentioned many of these characters a few posts back, but Pullmans array of creations are worth repeating. So, here is the greatest list of character names from one man (from the same book, no less): Lyra Belacqua, Pantaliamon, Lord Asriel, Marissa Coulter, Iorek Byrnison, Serafina Pekkala, Lee Scoreseby, Iofur Raknison, Stanislau Grummann, Balthamos, Baruch, Mary Malone, Chevalier Tialys, Lady Salmakia, and Metatron. Maybe Will Parry's slightly dull name is a reason why I never took to him like I did Lyra (if I ever have a daughter, she's gettin' called Lyra) and the rest. Sally Lockheart from Pullman's other fantastic series also gets an honourable mention.

Having just watched the BFG on telly I've rediscovered all Roald Dahl's fabulous creations. To wit, Charlie Bucket,Willy Wonka (and all the kids in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory); Bruce Bogtrotter, Ms. Trunchbull (Matilda); Aunts Spiker and Sponge (James and the Giant Peach); Boggis, Bunce and Bean (Fantastic Mr. Fox); the Twits (The Twits...obv); Fleshlumpeater, Gizzardgulper, Bonecruncher (and the other giants from The BFG, Manhugger (LOLGAY) notwithstanding). Quentin Blake is also the most fantastically named illustrator ever.

It goes the other way, too. Bad writers that turn out dull, flat prose also lumber their characters with dull, flat names. One of the main reasons I gave 50 Shades of Grey a wide berth is that the main character is the crinegeworthy Anastasia Steele. You can tell she's trying: Anastasia evokes the famous Russian princess with hints of Old World fantasy and seduction; Steele undercuts that with a cool modernism, replete with that extraneous 'e'. However, together to two mix like milk and orange juice, and make me want to vomit. In short, Anastasia Steele is a porn-star name (which, I admit, is apt. But that doesn't make it any better).

Thinking of these bad characters is difficult, because I tend to forget about them.

What makes for a great name? I...I have no idea, really. In the case of Dahl, his characters' names plainly reflect their defining characteristic, none more so than the tall, gaunt, cruel Aunt Spiker and her counterpart, the rotund and piggy Aunt Sponge. Pullman seems to drawn on national naming divisions; his characters with religious relevance drawn on Latin (Baruch and Balathamos for instance); Lee Scoreseby is indelibly Texan, Iorek and Iofur Icelandic (I think); while Lyra Belacqua is just fantastic, wild yet dignified, classical yet modern, and beautifully mellifluous (cheers thesaurus).