This was my article yesterday in La Repubblica - Italy's biggest newspaper. The title translates as 'One Step from the Cliff' - and it is an artcle about climate change in fiction, and about my novel 'The Wager and the Bear' (Soon to be published in English I hope).
David Bowie had a remarkable
talent for writing songs that could conjure up a story. It is impossible to
listen to ‘Space Oddity’ without imagining Major Tom, sitting in a
tin-can, drifting forever into space.
But the Bowie song that stays with me most is ‘Five Years’. It tells
a very simple story. News has reached us that the earth has only five years
left. The planet is dying. In the song, the newsreader weeps. All around the
market square people lose their minds.
What would it be like, I have
often wondered, if we really were told this news? If a solemn news report,
backed by all the world’s serious scientists, was to tell us we were running
out of time? How would we react?
Well we now know the
answer to this question. Newsreaders wouldn’t weep. No one would go crazy. We
would ignore the danger and carry on with our lives as if nothing had changed. We
know this because this is what we do. Every few months the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces a new report telling us the planet is
running out of time. Every year the COP climate change conference makes dire
predictions. Every year we learn that the previous year was the hottest on
record. We watch forest fires in Canada and Brazil. We see dramatic floods,
powerful storms, devastating droughts. We watch the collapse of animal
populations. World leaders fly in and out of conferences. They make vague
promises. But very little changes. And the world continues to die.
The challenge seems to be
a failure of human imagination. Perhaps it is the timescale. If the world was
doomed in just five years, we might be more alarmed. If it was an asteroid hurtling
towards us, we might make a real global effort to find a solution. But climate
change seems to be a long unfolding tragedy. We are like passengers in a
slow-motion train crash. The train is heading for a precipice, and all the
pieces are in place for a terrible disaster, but everything is moving so slowly
we stop worrying.
All this presents a
particular problem for story tellers. Climate change is the biggest story of
our time, yet very few novelists are ready to grapple with this. Ten centuries
from now, if humanity is still around, I suspect historians will only be
interested in one story from our generation - how we responded (or failed to
respond) to this existential threat to the planet. Science fiction, in general,
has done us rather a disservice here. Writers have sold us either Mad Max-style
desert dystopias, or impossible tales of starships taking survivors to new
green planets. What we don’t have are real world stories that could help us to
imagine the kind of earth we are creating. And that is a shame, because imagination is
what we need, now more than ever.
Once again, timescales seem
to be the challenge. Novelists need a central protagonist with whom readers can
identify. This character needs to have a story arc, and human dramas are
typically too short for climate change to feature very much. There is a second
problem too. It is hard to imagine any
character playing anything but a very minor role in what is a huge global
drama. No one is going to step forward like Bruce Willis and save the world. For
a writer, that is an unhelpful backdrop. We do not like to set up a jeopardy
for our characters, without giving them some way to fight back. But how do you
fight back against a warming planet?
In ‘L’Orso Polare e una
Scomessa Chiamata Futuro’ (The Wager and the Bear) I hope I may have found
a way to navigate a little around these two problems. The narrative unfolds
over a whole human lifetime, and the central characters are front-seat
observers of the climate disaster. The story involves two young men. One,
Monty, is a politician. He is a climate change-denier. He lives in a grand house
on the beach in Cornwall. He has a splendid lifestyle, and like so many of us
in the slow-motion train crash, he doesn’t see the precipice approaching. The
second man, Tom, is a climate scientist and campaigner. One drunken night, over
too many glasses of cider in the local inn, the two men get into a quarrel. It
ends with a deadly wager. In fifty years, either the sea will rise enough to
drown Monty in his home, or Tom will accept the jeopardy himself, and will walk
into the sea and drown. A video of the wager, posted online, goes viral. How
will it all work out?
Well we have fifty years
for the story to unfold. The lives of the two men cross several times, leading
them both onto a melting glacier, and ultimately onto an iceberg floating down
the coast of Greenland where their only companion is a hungry bear.
The story is not entirely
without hope. It is set against the backdrop of a campaign to restore some of
what the world has lost. Neither Monty nor Tom can save the world. But there is
at least hope, as well as despair.
Climate change doesn’t
have to be front and centre in contemporary fiction. But we shouldn’t be
ignoring it either. As writers we have a responsibility, sometimes, to make the
future seem real. We are hurtling towards a world of human-made disasters, of
dying oceans, of rising seas, of failing harvests, of droughts, of economic
collapse, and of climate-driven conflicts. We cannot ignore these things. If
these aren’t part of our fictional landscape now, then they need to be. Otherwise one day we may find we have just
five years left. And it won’t just be the news readers weeping.
Check out my website: www.johnironmonger.com
Check out my website www.johnironmonger.com
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I can’t remember when (or where) I first heard the expression, ‘herding cats.’ I don’t think this idiom was around when I was young. So far as I can tell, it was invented sometime in the 1980s and it took off. Soon everyone was using it. It’s a great little saying because we all know enough about cats to understand right away what it means. ‘I did my best, but it was like herding cats.’ At once we appreciate the futility, the complexity, and the sheer absence of co-operation from everyone concerned. You don’t get herds of cats. They are too bloody-minded.
My father had a saying that meant almost the same thing. But
not quite. He would say, ‘it was like trying to organise spaghetti.’
Somehow, for me, organising spaghetti feels like an enterprise even more doomed
to failure than herding cats. The cats may not want to be herded, but there is
at least the possibility that they might eventually succumb. Spaghetti on the other
hand will never submit to organisation. And unlike the cats this isn’t due to wilfulness
or contrariness. Disorganisation is a property of the spaghetti itself.
Efforts to resolve the climate-change crisis are often
compared to herding cats. In this metaphor the ‘cats’ are the 195 countries on the
planet, across 7 continents, where no two countries think alike, or act alike,
or have the same priorities, or enjoy similar political systems, or possess the
same resources, or have the same levels of understanding. How do we ever herd
these slippery belligerent cats into the same box? Even so, I worry that the problem is more like
organising spaghetti. There is no way to do this. We’ll never get everyone on
board. Perhaps we ought to accept this and find a different way.
There is, by the way, a rather clever online tool called ‘Google
NGram Viewer.’ It can help you to figure out when (but not necessarily where) a
word or an expression arose. It searches millions of books over the past two
centuries, and if the words you’ve entered appear in 40 books or more in any calendar
year, it counts them and plots a graph to show how the frequency has changed
with time. Forty books feels like quite
a high bar to me. If you enter ‘herding cats’ you won’t find any use of
this expression until 1938. In 1942 the phrase disappears, and it doesn’t
reappear until 1987. After that the frequency graph rises meteorically, like
the lift-off of a space rocket. It is as if there was something that happened
in the Eighties that made this expression useful.
If, by the way, you try ‘organised spaghetti’ in NGram
Viewer you don’t get any results at all. Maybe this expression was exclusively
my dad’s.
If I look up from my keyboard, and glance out of my window,
I can see a storm coming. The clouds gathering over the estuary look as grey and
heavy as gunmetal.
And now, in the time it has taken me to type that last
sentence, the storm is upon us. The rain is driving against my window. I no
longer have a view. Funny how the weather
can do that, and we all accept it. We look at the forecasts and we plan our
days around them. Let’s do the beach on Sunday when the rain stops. But
if we’re told the whole global climate is changing, we go into a complex form
of denial. We don’t really know how to plan.
We hope that tomorrow will be much the same as today, and on the whole it is,
and that gives us comfort. It makes us think this is nothing to worry about. Yet.
One metaphor I have heard used about climate change is ‘a
slow-motion car crash.’ I used this myself in a novel, ‘The Wager and
the Bear.’ The image I wanted was of
an impending catastrophe where the parts are all in motion, where no one is yet
hurt, but where terrible death and destruction await if no one acts to stop it.
A slow-motion car crash seems to tick all of those boxes. But all the
same, I’m not altogether happy with this metaphor. For a start it seems too
prosaic. (I’m using the word prosaic to mean lacking in poetry – but also
to mean lacking in purpose.) I’ve tried to think of a better image. A train
crash is better perhaps, because it involves more people. But slow-motion is
insufficient to describe the slow and gradual increments of change that the
climate crisis delivers. Sea levels are rising by around four and a half
millimetres a year. In ten years, at this rate, they will rise four and a half
centimetres. And the sea, as we know, moves up and down, sometimes quite
erratically so that doesn’t feel like a threat. Not really. In a century the
sea might rise forty five centimetres. About knee high. And none of us likes to
think forward more than a century. Do we?
Isn’t that odd? We don’t have this blind spot with history.
We’re fascinated by the lives of the Tudors (Henry VIII was on the throne 500
years ago). We love stories about the Romans (2,000 years ago). And yet we don’t
speculate much on where our descendants might be in 500 or 2,000 years – what kind
of world they will inhabit. Or what (since we chose this measurement) the sea
levels might be. So let’s speculate then. Assume that sea levels keep on rising
at 4.5mm a year (in reality the rate will almost certainly accelerate but let’s
ignore that for a moment.) Our descendants in 2000 years will inherit seas 9
metres higher than today. The map of the world will have been altered
irreversibly. Britain will have lost most of East and Central London, and great
swathes of the Thames Valley including towns like Dartford, and Kingston.
Hundreds of seaside towns will have been wholly lost to the rising waters -
places like Portsmouth, Southampton, Middlesborough and Blackpool, Cardiff and
Newport, and Gloucester. Lincoln (now 38 miles from the sea) will be a seaside
town. So will whatever remains of Cambridge. So will York. So will
Taunton. Across The Channel most of the
Netherlands and much of Belgium will be underwater. So will huge tracts of Northern Germany.
America will lose thousands of communities down the Eastern seaboard. China will lose Shanghai and Guangzhou. Bangkok and Kolkata and Ho Chi Minh City will be gone. And Basra, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
And here’s the thing. The water will still be rising. It
still has a way to go. If all the ice melts (and it probably will if global
temperature rises by 4 degrees) then sea levels rise seventy metres or so.
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| 9 metres of sea level rise puts the Netherlands underwater |
And sea level changes are, perhaps, the least of our
worries. A 4 degree rise would make most of the world between the tropics practically
uninhabitable. It would certainly make agriculture almost impossible. It will cause
catastrophic drought . And the Northern farmlands which will now be warmer will
not take up the slack. Celestial mechanics will still restrict sunlight in
winter, and the soils are anyway very unproductive. And anyway a weird side
effect of climate change might mean that as the world gets hotter (and sea
levels keep rising) Europe curiously will get colder as ocean currents slow
down.
Finally there is a terrifying threat. This is how it might be in, 'The Year of the Dugong.' If atmospheric CO2 levels exceed 1,200 parts per million (ppm) (and they could) it could push the Earth’s climate over a tipping point. This would see clouds start to break up, and, a cloudless world will reflect away less sunlight. According to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience, this could trigger another 8°C rise in global average temperatures. Game Over.
So slow-motion train crash doesn’t work, does it? ‘Ultra-slow
motion asteroid-collision,’ might be better. A disaster movie that runs at
one frame a year. But the disaster is still going to happen. And it is inevitable
unless we can herd the unruly cats who govern us and get them to start
organising the spaghetti. Now.
Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com
Back in January I wrote a blog post bemoaning lazy cliches in movies and on TV. https://notablebrain.blogspot.com/2023/01/movie-cliches-tropes-and-memes.html This, in turn, was prompted by an earlier blog post grumbling about the gun-related cliches in the new Avatar movie. https://notablebrain.blogspot.com/2022/12/avatar-2-and-all-american-love-affair.html
Well, as often happens, those posts got me noticing plenty more lazy cliches that movie makers use; so here, just for you, are a few of them. You’re welcome…
1. PSYCHO KILLERS ALWAYS PASTE THEIR BEDROOM WALLS WITH NEWS
CUTTINGS. When the cop finally stumbles into the lair of the serial killer/psycho
that’s how we know they’ve found the bad guy.
2. OLDER COPS ARE JUST ABOUT TO RETIRE. One extra case eh…
3. SENIOR COPS ALWAYS
BAWL OUT THE GOOD COP. This seems to be a rule. There is always a more senior
cop usually with a glass fronted office that looks over the incident room, and
he (or she) is NEVER pleased with the way the case is going, never says, ‘well
done,’ usually threatens to take the good cop’s badge, and generally pulls the
good cop off the case.
4. IF THE SENIOR COP ALSO HAS A BOSS, THAT BOSS WILL BE BENT
5. COPS NEVER CATCH ANYONE IN A CAR CHASE. Did you ever see a
car chase where the cops catch the guy they’re chasing, even if they throw a
hundred cars at it? No. The guy (who is being chased by cops usually because of
a misunderstanding) always gets away.
6. WRITERS ALWAYS WEAR SPECS. Also they either live in a cabin by a lake or in a New York apartment.
7. HEROES ARE NEVER HAPPILY MARRIED. Usually the wife has died.
Or else they’ve had an undeserved separation. Whatever, they are now available
but only reluctantly.
8. TEENAGE SONS ARE ALWAYS REBELLIOUS. If the hero dad gives
his teenage son an order, you know the son will flagrantly ignore it in the
next scene. But in the end the teenage son comes good, sees the errors of his
ways, and makes up with the dad.
9. TEENAGE DAUGHTERS ARE ALWAYS SUPER SMART AND USUALLY ABOUT TO
GO TO HARVARD.
10. DOCTORS ARE ALWAYS READY TO TELL YOU HOW LONG YOU HAVE TO
LIVE. AND IT’S USUALLY JUST SIX MONTHS. But protagonists with six months left
always look reasonably fit, they don’t spend the six months suffering in bed,
they get out there and fight the bad guys.
11. NIGHTCLUBS/SEEDY DIVES ALWAYS HAVE A STRIPPER IN THE
BACKGROUND, BUT NOBODY IS ACTUALLY WATCHING HER
12. IF A MOVIE STARTS WITH A HAPPY COUPLE MOVING INTO A NEW
HOME, YOU KNOW IT WON’T TURN OUT WELL.
13. IF A MOVIE INVOLVES A SINGLE PERSON MOVING INTO A REMOTE
CABIN IN THE WOODS, THEN DITTO.
14. MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS WILL ALWAYS QUARREL
15. THE HERO COP/DETECTIVE WILL CASUALLY SPOT A CLUE THAT THE
WHOLE CSI TEAM HAVE OVERLOOKED. Hmm. I wonder who left this cigarette butt …
16. IF A SCENE TAKES PLACE IN PARIS, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO
SEE THE EIFFEL TOWER IN THE BACKGROUND OR THROUGH A WINDOW. In London it’s
usually Big Ben.
17. THE BAD GUY’S HENCHMEN DIE FIRST. Finally he’s the last one
left alive, but he’s also the trickiest to kill. Also, have you noticed;
henchmen never have any lines. No henchman ever has a wisecrack, or says
something poignant while dying. A shot henchman simply does the decent thing
and dies quickly and quietly. Also where does the bad guy find all these
henchmen? Are they amazingly well paid? Do they get paid holidays? Do they
grumble over their conditions of employment?
Why are they always happy to do as they are told even when it looks as
if they’ll die doing it? Why do they never say: ‘hey, this isn’t my fight.
Leave me out of it.’ And on that subject ...
18. HELICOPTER PILOTS EMPLOYED BY VILLAINS ARE STUPIDLY RECKLESS. Where do you employ a guy who is happy to fly a helicopter into such a dangerous situation that he and his helicopter will end up as a massive fireball? There must be an agency somewhere specialising in suicidal pilots ...
19. THE UNIFORM ON THE PEG/DEAD GUY IS ALWAYS A PERFECT FIT WHEN
SOMEONE ELSE NEEDS IT. We never see a character struggling to get into a stolen uniform. A side door just opens and out they step, dressed up. And amazingly no one will question them.
20. WHEN THE BAD GUY GETS HIS CHANCE TO KILL THE GOOD GUY HE
ALWAYS CHOOSES NOT TO. Why would you do that?
21. BIG PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES ARE ALWAYS EVIL. So are the
billionaire owners of social media and tech companies except for Stark
Industries
22. IT IS REALLY EASY TO KNOCK SOMEONE UNCONSCIOUS. If you’re
cool and you know how.
23. IT IS REALLY EASY TO KICK DOWN A DOOR. If you’re cool and
you know how.
24. IT IS REALLY EASY TO SNATCH A GUN OUT OF AN ANTAGONIST’S HAND.
If you’re cool and you know how.
25. IT IS REALLY EASY TO HACK INTO JUST ABOUT ANY COMPUTER. If
you’re uncool and a nerd hacker.
26. IT IS ALWAYS EASY TO PARK. There is always a convenient
space.
27. GIRL WAKES UP IN BED – WONDERS WHERE HER LOVER FROM THE
NIGHT BEFORE HAS GONE – DON’T WORRY – HE’S COOKING UP BREAKFAST. And actually
he’s an amazing cook. Who would have guessed?
28. IF THERE IS A POKER GAME – SOMEONE WILL ALWAYS HAVE AN
UNBELIEVABLE HAND. One protagonist has a once in a lifetime hand. But what do
you know. Someone else at the table has a better one.
29. IF THERE IS A CHESS GAME IN PLAY, IT IS ONLY EVER ONE MOVE
AWAY FROM CHECKMATE.
30. IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND TO PAY FOR A CAB. Movie people just
pass over a banknote and get out without speaking.
31. IF YOU CHASE ANYONE DOWN AN ESCALATOR AT A TUBE STATION,
GUESS WHAT? THERE WILL BE A TRAIN RIGHT THERE AT THE PLATFORM (OR JUST ARRIVING) FOR THEM TO HOP
ONTO. Yet whenever I run down an escalator at a tube station I find I just missed the train.
32. THE HERO ALWAYS MISSES HIS DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY PARTY / CONCERT. It isn't his fault. He'll be forgiven at the end.
I'm beginning to think this is an almost endless seam to be mined. If you've spotted any more lazy tropes, let me know, or drop them into the comments. I daresay I'll keep noticing them.
Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com
 |
| Paul Mbugua |
But what’s the alternative? Safaris are expensive. They’re
complicated. They don’t always go to plan.
Well I thought I knew the alternative. We were travelling with friends and that would spread the costs. I would plan our
safari myself. It would be way cheaper. I knew Kenya. I knew where I wanted to
go. So I googled safari lodges, and I read online reviews, and I worked out an
itinerary that would suit us. We’d do Nairobi National Park and the elephant
orphanage. We’d visit Lake Naivasha, and Crescent Island, and Hell’s Gate. We’d
stay at Lake Nakuru for the flamingos. We’d go on to the Masai Mara and we’d
spend time in the conservancies as well as the Mara Triangle. It would be
awesome.
And so I booked it. Six hotels/lodges. Twelve days. I flirted briefly with the idea of self-drive but
quickly abandoned it. I contacted Rhino Safaris because I trust them. I wrote
to Lacty, the owner, at info.nbo@rhinosafaris.net
. And I told him I needed a good safari land-cruiser and a first class guide
for ten days.
Readers – that is what we got. And it reminded me how
essential a great guide is for a good safari. Paul Mbugua was more than a first
class guide and an excellent driver – he was a splendid travelling companion
too. His knowledge of Kenyan wildlife and geology is astonishing. And
considering he was ferrying two smart-ass zoologists, and a geologist, including
one who felt he knew it all already (that would be me) he still had a whole lot
to teach us. Crucially he had enthusiasm. In spades. He would urge us to set
off early and return home late and it always paid off. Once we did two
back-to-back nine hour days and he never tried to rush us, or to set off before
we had seen what we wanted to see. He persuaded us several times to change our
agenda. Once was to break with the plan and visit Lake Elementeita. What a good
decision that was. Another time we swapped days around because he’d picked up
rumours of a leopard. Another good decision. His knowledge of every park was
amazing. And the only time we flummoxed him was when we told him we wanted to
visit Mount Suswa for the caves on the way back to Nairobi. Well, he’d never done
that trip before. So he hired a guide too. This time a Masai guide called Kiano
(kianosempui2018@gmail.com ) And
what a trip that was.
 |
| Kiano Sempui |
 |
| Lake Elementeita |
 |
| At Kenton ... |
 |
| The Stanley |
 |
| Nairobi |
So did I do the right thing?
Memories are curious things aren’t they? If you live in a place
all your life, your recollections of that place evolve along with the landscape
as the years pass. But if instead, one day, you simply get up and leave, your
memories become frozen in time. Going back is like owning a precious vase, but alas,
the paintings on the vase are fading. Someone offers you a brand-new vase with
bright new paintwork. But if you accept it, you have to smash the old one. What
should you do?
Well of course, I went back. I smashed the old vase. (We
took a safari holiday with friends. I will blog about that sometime soon.) And guess
what? I didn’t regret a moment. Yes, it was strange. Embakazi Airport (Now Jomo
Kenyatta International) once the size of a high-school science block and comfortably
out of town, is now a huge complex bristling with dozens of airplanes and now
it is buried in a suburb of high-rise buildings, and the roads into town are
giant freeways and the traffic is terrible. But I found this exciting. Not
depressing. I knew the moment I stepped out of the plane I was going to love
this place. It was still Nairobi. (Perhaps that was the biggest surprise.) Lots
of the city is still absolutely recognisable. But even if it wasn’t, there is something
ineffable about this city, something I can’t quite describe or explain, that
stamps this place and its people with its mark and makes it simply the best and
most exciting city in the world. It’s a noisy, chaotic, colourful, amazing
place. Still. Thank goodness.
We stayed the first three nights at Masai Lodge – a safari
lodge in the National Park (a lovely place about an hour out of town. I’d recommend
it. Say hi to Cedric on the reception desk for me if you go there.) And we
stayed the last few nights at The Stanley. Good choices both. I’ve wanted to
stay at the Stanley all my life and it didn’t disappoint. And I visited my old
school (Kenton College) and had a very warm welcome there. It was emotional. I
watched a mixed-sex and multi-race group of kids doing football practice on the
very field where I once played (in an exclusively-white-male school), and it
brought a lump to my throat. I used my fifty year old memory to navigate
through the streets past the market and the University and the Norfolk Hotel to
the snake park (beware there is a new highway in the way) – and hey presto the
snake park itself is unchanged in almost every way. Even the black mambas are
in the same tank.
It was wonderful. It was cathartic. I left my fellow
travellers at the pool on our final afternoon and I took a walk around the city
centre on my own, and soaked up the magic and replayed my memories, and
relished all that was new and all that was unchanged. So yes – the old vase is
smashed; but I love the new one too. And my advice if you, like me, have been
away for too long, is very very simple. Go back. It’s wonderful.
Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com
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| Unchanged - The Snake Park |
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| Nairobi |
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| Nairobi |
The first time I read Jane Goodall’s ‘In the Shadow of Man,’ I was studying zoology at university, and this was one of our course-books. I was expecting a dry, academic tome. What I discovered was the intensely personal autobiography of a young English woman and a detailed account of the family of chimpanzees that accepted her into their fold. It is a book that has never left me, and I have re-read it several times. One feature that makes In the Shadow of Man so compelling is the family-tree of chimp faces that appears on the flyleaf. It is impossible to read the book without regularly consulting this handy guide to the chimps in the troop. Goodall was twenty-seven when she started work at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. It was 1960. For years she lived in the park, spending most of her daylight hours with the chimps. She is said, to this day, to be the only human ever to have been accepted into a chimpanzee group, and for almost two years she was the lowest ranking member of the Kasakela troop.
Almost every aspect of Jane Goodall’s work with chimpanzees
was pioneering when she started, and not always welcomed by the scientific
community. The idea that a researcher should live among a group of wild apes
was considered rather shocking, especially if the researcher was young, blonde,
and female. But Goodall’s most unconventional idea, perhaps, was to give her
chimps names. This annoyed traditional primatologists who accused her of
becoming emotionally attached to the animals. Today it is common practice for
zoologists to name animals, especially primates, and the names Goodall gave to
the Gombe chimps helped to bring their stories to a worldwide audience in a way
that would never have happened had they been Chimp A or Chimp B. I still
remember with affection the names of the chimps from In the Shadow of Man – David Greybeard, Goliath, Flo, Fifi, and
Flint.
 |
| The Family Tree from In the Shadow of Man |
I've been working on a novel, on and off, that may or may not ever see the light of day. It draws heavily from 'In the Shadow of Man.' At present my title for this book is Girl/Ape. It is the entirely fictional story of a young woman who lives with a troop of wild chimpanzees. I'm 38 thousand words in; but who knows. I shall let you know how it goes.
Sue and I have been lucky enough to meet Jane Goodall twice on
her UK lecture tours, and both times her stories have brought us to tears. If
you want to learn more about Jane Goodall I heartily recommend In the Shadow of Man, along with ‘My Life with the Chimpanzees’ and ‘Through a Window: 30 Years with the
Chimpanzees of Gombe.’ You might
also like to subscribe to the Jane Goodall Institute’s YouTube channel.
Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com
It is the year 50BC. After a long struggle, Gaul has been conquered by the Romans. All Gaul is occupied. All? No. One village still holds out stubbornly against the invaders…
And
there it is. The simple conceit that launched over forty books, a theme park, a film franchise, and one of the most enduring
partnerships in graphic literature – Asterix and Obelix – the
indefatigable (and indomitable) warriors of the little Gaulish village we have come to know so
well. If you’ve never encountered Asterix – where have you been? Surely no one can have escaped at least a
passing acquaintance with the books. In
a 1999 poll by Le Monde, 'Asterix the Gaul' was voted 23rd
greatest book of the 20th Century. And it isn’t even the best of the
canon. Not by a very long chalk. But it
was the first, published in 1959 (and in
English translation a decade later.)
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| Some of my dog-eared Asterix books ... |
Where
do I begin to catalogue everything that makes the Asterix books such works of
unrivalled genius? They are funny, witty,
touching, and beautifully drawn. They mercilessly lampoon every national stereotype in
a way (and to an extent) you probably couldn’t get away with now. They are charming. Original. Clever. And above all
they are great stories.
But
I need to make an important distinction here. My unrequited love for these
books is limited to the first 24 volumes – those written by written by René
Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo (and translated by Anthea Bell and
Derek Hockeridge) until Goscinny’s death in 1977. These are:
1. Asterix the Gaul
2. Asterix and the Golden Sickle
3. Asterix and the Goths
4. Asterix the Gladiator
5. Asterix and the Banquet
6. Asterix and Cleopatra
7. Asterix and the Big Fight
8. Asterix and the In Britain
9. Asterix and the Normans
10. Asterix The Legionary
11. Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield
12. Asterix at the Olympic Games
13. Asterix and the Cauldron
14. Asterix In Spain
15. Asterix and the Roman Agent
16. Asterix in Switzerland
17. Asterix and the Mansions of the Gods
18. Asterix and the Laurel Wreath
19. Asterix and the Soothsayer
20. Asterix In Corsica
21. Asterix and Caesar's Gift
22. Asterix and the Great Crossing
23. Obelix and Co.
24. Asterix in Belgium
I give you below, the opening page of Asterix in Spain. If you can show me a better opening page of any book, I should like to see it.
Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com
Never go back. I’ve been given that piece of advice plenty of times, by lots of different people, but always with reference to one particular place. Nairobi. The city where I was born. Where I went to primary school. Where I went to prep school. Where I lived until I was seventeen.
Never go back.
I get it. I do. I understand why you should never go back.
Memories are fragile enough as it is, why spoil them? Everything will have
changed. I left Nairobi in 1971, and when I did, I felt as if I knew every
street corner, every shop and bar and café and market stall. I knew the bus
routes, and the clubs, and the museum, and the National Park. I was a regular at the Impala
Club, and at Dam Busters, and the Snake Park, and the animal orphanage. I knew my way unaided around the city maze. I used
to sit at a table in the Thorn Tree Café at the New Stanley Hotel and spot
celebrities with my big sister. I was on first name terms with the man who ran Top
Ten Records on Kimathi Street, and with the Sikh who ran the camera shop next
to the market, and with several owners of second-hand bookstores all along
Bazaar Street. I knew the best stall to buy mealies and the best place to get
cut pineapple. My little brother Paul
and I used to take the lift to the top of the highest building (then the Hilton
Hotel) and climb the service staircase to the roof and we’d sit there watching
the whole city at our feet. It was our city. That was how it felt.
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| Me at Kenton College in around 1966. I'm the miserable looking one - second to the right on the front row. |
There is still a city called Nairobi, and it still stands in the same place - midway between Mombasa and Kisumu on the great railroad - but it isn’t the same city. I understand that. I look at the city on Google Streetview and nowhere is recognisable. I try to find the several old colonial bungalows where we lived at various times between 1958 and 1971, and I can’t find them. The houses all have high walls now. Nothing looks familiar.
Never go back.
But should I? Won’t I get a frisson of pleasure from
recognising the occasional place? Surely my old school won’t have changed very
much. Surely the Impala Club is still there. And the hippo pool in the National
Park. And the museum. And the Stanley Hotel …
Well it’s a moot question. I’m going back. Next month. With
Sue and with our good friends Graham and Jenny. Feel free to send me your advice. Places to
see. Places to avoid. I will blog about the trip and let you know how it was.
But I can tell you this already. Four weeks to go and I’m already ridiculously
excited.
Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com
I wrote a blog post last month about ‘Avatar 2 (The Way of Water)’ and I used this post to bemoan the prevalence of lazy movie memes – especially memes that involve guns. But maybe, on reflection, ‘meme’ wasn’t the right word. Some people, I’ve discovered, call these things ‘tropes,’ which makes them sound almost respectable. But I’m starting to think of them as clichés. When a hero is rescued by a gunshot from an offscreen character (the Deus ex Machina escape) this is surely nothing more than a lazy cliché – predictable, unoriginal, overused, and boring.
Clichés take the fun out of movies. They tell you, 'here is an unoriginal screenwriter and an unimaginative director and a studio that is happy to rerun old ideas.' It is time for us, the movie-watching public, to call out these mind numbing practices. So I
thought I might use this blog post to start a collection of these clichés, and
I shall add to it when I come across new ones. Feel free to contribute movie clichés
that annoy you – just drop them into the comments and I’ll add them on. Here
are a few to get us started.
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| HEROES ALWAYS RUN FROM AN EXPLOSION WITH NOT A SECOND TO SPARE |
THE TV NEWS FLASH IS ALWAYS
RELEVANT
If the TV is on in the background
of a scene, and the news is on (or there’s a news flash) – you can be
absolutely certain this news item will be central to the story that is about to
unfold. Particularly if it happens in Act 1. No other story will be aired and
the characters will turn off the TV before the football results come on.
LESSONS ARE ALWAYS INTERRUPTEFD
BY THE BELL
If a character is a teacher or a
professor we will join them in class, but only for the last few minutes of
class up until the point where they are interrupted by the bell. Never midway
through. During the few minutes we see, the teacher/professor will expound upon
a theory that will prove central to the story that is about to unfold.
Particularly if it happens in Act 1. Usually he/she will be interrupted by a
smartass student with a smartass question. This student will turn out to be the
hero or the nemesis of the story.
THE DOG WILL DIE
There’s a dog! Oh dear. He’s
going to die. Or go missing.
PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS WILL BE OVERHEARD
Two characters share their
suspicions about a third character. Big mistake. The third character will be
standing silently out of sight listening to everything.
DUCTS ARE EVERYWHERE
Every spaceship / building / ship
/ prison will have a network of ducts that are just wide enough to crawl
through. Each duct has a cover with just two screws. A character can also use a
duct to eavesdrop on conversations (see previous cliché).
BOMB TIMERS ARE REALLY HELPFUL
For no known reason, bomb makers
helpfully include a digital count-down timer (even when they don’t expect
anyone to be there to be there to see it.) The bomb maker is never smart enough
to have triggered the bomb at any point on the countdown except zero. This is
lucky because generally the hero will defuse the bomb with just three seconds
to go.
COSTUME DRAMA DRESSES NEVER GET
MUDDY
God knows there must have been a
lot of mud. But long dresses stay clean.
DETECTIVES LIVE IN ICONIC HOMES
Usually by water. Or in a trailer.
Or a boat. Or somewhere spectacular. Never in an apartment block or on a dull
estate.
NO ONE SAYS GOODBYE ON PHONE
CALLS
They just hang up. Rude.
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
This cliché annoys me more than
any other. We think we’re watching a bona-fide scene in the movie. Dreadful
things happen. They get worse. Oh my god! But then the protagonist awakes.
Phwew! It was only a dream.
DRIVERS LOOK AT THEIR PASSENGERS WHILE
TALKING
If a car driver has five lines of
dialogue, he/she will deliver this whole spiel while looking directly at the passenger,
and the passenger will never panic or say ‘keep your eyes on the road.’
COUGHING IN A COSTUME DRAMA MEANS
DEATH
One cough is all it needs and you
know the character has consumption and will surely die before the credits.
HIGH SCHOOLS ALWAYS HAVE BULLIES
But don’t worry. They will always
get their comeuppance in the final act.
BEST FRIENDS ARE ALWAYS QUIRKY
Usually a little overweight. Not
too bright. Not too good looking. Often a member of an ethnic minority. They
will fall out with the hero in Act 3. But they are staunch. In Act 4 they will
reappear just when they are needed.
I need to find a "moment" for a newspaper-column pitch, where my life changed. That’s the way the gig works you see. It’s called...
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