Weeked Video 2

Weekend Video 1

Yes, the clip has an automotive theme, reflecting perhaps the thematic context of my day job. But it's also about Saint-Tropez, and that is reason enough for me to share it with you.

A reporter reports

While much is made of the impact of 'the publishing public' with their Tweets, their Facebook entries and their videos uploaded to Youtube in the context of the turmoil in Araby, the valour and the tenacity of professional reporters should not be underestimated.

When a BBC radio journalist finally crosses into Libya and speaks to us live on the Today program, I think of what he must have gone through to get there.

Here is a gripping account of what another professional reporter experienced in Cairo recently.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. 

Reading matters

Some have noted that posting to this blog has become infrequent since my return from the Sandlands to Munich. There is a very good reason for this. The assignment I have taken on here makes demands of my time far beyond what I had become used to in the past decade. The blog, general web surfing, my Tumblr efforts and my current novel manuscript can no longer be given half of each day's working hours.

Translating three or four stories per day for the Motorvision English language website, uploading these into a complex (although quite brilliant) content management system and then updating the online content is time consuming but also very satisfying. There is the evidence quotidian that my efforts actually produce a result. (And that is a welcome contrast to my attempts to get anyone to read my fiction!)

The reading which was my well earned reward last weekend was my third or fourth encounter with Kate Atkinson's work. My lasting impression is that Atkonosn has a lot of fun with her writing. I imagine her constantly collection behavioural gems, observational nuggets, hoarding them until the time comes for them to be added as unexpected flashes of perception into one or other of her narratives. 

Or do I impute to her something which I choose to see as an indulgence I permit myself as a storyteller?

A reviewer in the Daily Mirror sees Kate Atkinson's work from a different perspective...

Her latest, Started Early, Took My Dog, is Atkinson's finest novel to date. 

Indeed, it's one of the finest British novels, in any genre, to have emerged for years. While Atkinson uses [her protagonist] Jackson Brodie to add a moral weight to the crimes he's invariably been caught up with, and also to build suspenseful plots around, primarily she's in it for the writing.

However, right from the start it's very clear she has another agenda with this novel. She's angry with this country, with the injustice, the great social divide, the hopelessness, misery and inanity of a busted, careless state and the wretched lives of wretched people.

This is very much a state of the nation novel - it's far sharper and more observant and satirically understanding than anything else out there at the moment. 

Reccommended highly.
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Different this year...

The revolution was televised

This is astinishing DSLR coverage of the early days of the Egyptian uprising, Duncan Sharp's compliation of some of the footage he shot for Sky News. It should definitely be watched full-screen.

Reading matters

From Wired News...

Borders, which pioneered the idea that a bookstore could be more like a combination of a library and your living room — a welcome place to hang out and browse and relax and not just buy — filed for bankruptcy protection last week. The [American] chain is a victim of the harsh realities of operating a massive bricks and mortar operation as your product turns to bytes. Whether Borders thrives or disappears in the coming years, it is a poster child of life in the age of media disruption. 

This is radical discontinuous change which knows no borders (sorry about the pun). On the left is a Munich branch of the Hugendubel chain devoted to English language books. It is where I buy all my paperbacks. In fact it was here that the chain was founded in 1893. The branch is set to close next year.


And yet it strikes me that such processes are probably very much in the inevitable nature of things. The photo at the top shows that what became a Borders bookstore was once very proudly the Varsity, a cinema in Palo Alto, California, which opened in 1927 and where the last movie was shown in 1994.

Yes, that's Palo Alto, where Facebook and Hewlett-Packard have their headquarters and where near the cinema on University Avenue Google, Logitech and PayPal had their incubation phase.

It makes you think..

Reading matters

This was a good weekend read and I tend to share the view of the Amazon customer cited below...

"I'll admit I'm always excited when a new Robotham book comes out and, once again, he delivers. From the very powerful and disturbing prologue to the nail-biting ending, I was completely absorbed.

One thing I really appreciate is that, although this is the fourth book in the series, he doesn't assume you've read any of the previous books. Without burdening the plot or slowing down the story, within a very short period the author does an excellent job of providing a comprehensive back story on the characters. You never feel as though you've missed something. The portrayal of a couple who are amicably yet needfully separated is effective without being maudlin."

Weekend Video

 

The Internet Explodes As Egypt’s Dictator Finally Quits! Wired reports under the above headline. A colleague in the Sandlands, Karim Sarkis, has a thoughtful comment here.

Reading matters

It is yet another treasure quest yarn. There is yet another ex-Special Forces hero and the eager-beaver girl who pushes herself into the hunt is quirky and sexy but... a few chapters from the end... has not yet succumbed to the hero's manly charms.

You thought I had sworn to look for something more enriching than stories like this?

I have an excuse! The action is all set in Bavaria, the treasure appears to consist of the ill-gotten gains of mad King Ludwig and there's only minimal reference to Nazi iniquities.

It must also be said that Kusneski has been diligent in his researches. There are no glaring errors concerning aspects of German life and... unlike Dan Brown, who re-mapped Paris to suit his stroytelling needs... the geography of southern Bavaria remains remarkably intact.

Settling into a different Munich

How can Munich be different after my absence of just three months? It was understandable that I should see a huge transformation when I re-discovered Abu Dhabi after thirty-six months. And, no, the fabric of the Bavarian capital has not changed.

But I think my attitude to the city is a different one.

The welcome at the airport... my daughter's unanticipated trip to Munich to greet me... was of course a delightful push in the direction of being more open to emotionality than I was before. Looking back I feel that before I was living on the edge of Munich life, without too much engagement and concentrating on just getting by, keeping a profile which could hardly be lower, staying resolutely in my quartier.

In my first post after getting back I added a video which was a lyrical portrayal of Paris. I thought when I posted it that my pretext was a bit thin!

However, for the past couple of days Paris was in fact very present in Munich, or rather the wonderful Parisienne who I have known since the mid-seventies and who is my daughter's godmother was here.

But had known Bernd Eichinger for much, much longer. And she came to Munich to attend the memorial service for Germany's best known and most influential film producer. 

I shall not identify her, since she is a very private person,  but on Monday evening she invited us, my ex and myself, for drinks. And the venue needed imperatively to be one where she had often spent time with Bernd... somehow a very fitting way of dealing with the loss of a very close friend.

The conversation was long and intense. Not in any way backward looking, on the contrary. And for me it was like once again being in a stimulating Paris salon. It reminded me that I could probably benefit by approaching the next phase of my life in Munich with more boldness, verve and intellectual curiosity.

Our long evening also brought the discovery of a very pleasant bar I had not previously visited. The Mandarin Oriental is a very welcoming hotel and firmed my resolve to venture from time to time outside the 'village' which is Schwabing to discover more of a different Munich.

I think Bernd... for whom I worked for only a year in the early eighties and whom I would not claim to have known well... would approve!

Reading matters

The two books which got me through my final days in the Sandlands are these, the Karin Slaughter I finished during the first hour of my flight on Sunday, before the turbulence set in.

I must admit I am inclined to re-visit John Grisham. The Testament was a fine read, revelatory of a setting which is not one which I would normally find appealing.

Now that I am back in Europe I suspect that I shall be on the lookout for reading matter which is slightly less mainstream than that which helped me to cope with my three months in Abu Dhabi. And I shall continue to make my reports.

Munich, not Paris but wonderful nevertheless

What more could I have hoped for on Day One back in Munich? Now, mid-afternoon, the quicksilver has risen to 13 degrees and people are sitting in the sunshine at the tables outside Café Schwabing. That's warm sun from a sky as blue and cloudless as that I got so accustomed to seeing every day in Abu Dhabi!

Yesterday's flight was the usual agreeable Etihad experience. The captain was a man of humour who warned us of a rather turbulent flight and suggested that we eat quickly. Before landing he apologized for a the notable 'rock 'n' roll we had experienced... as if it had been his fault or that of the airline.

A massive surprise awaited at Munich airport, where it had been arranged that my ex would pick me up. She was not alone! My daughter had been pretending to engage in our chat sessions from her student flat in Maastricht but had in fact taken a quick trip to Munich in order to welcome Auld Da back with undending hugs. 

Could anything have been better? If I seek a tenuous pretext for posting the video below I might maintain that a return to Paris (including daughter surprise binus) might have been even more joyous... but only if Paris were truly the city so beautifully portrayed in this masterful piece of film making.

The 6th of February

 

Those whose perspective is historical might contemplate the century which has passed since the Rolls-Royce emblem made its first appearance.

Those who prefer the anthropological to the historical will be anticipating the popular festival which is tomorrow's SuperBowl.

And for me the 6th of February is the day I bring to an end my three-month sojourn in the Sandlands! 

Shall I head for Munich's Hard Rock Café to watch the spectacle live from Dallas? Not unless there's a Rolls-Royce to take me home in the wee, small hours of the morning!

Weekend video 2

"Banned in Boston!" It's one of the oldest tricks in the publicity man's book. How do you make an otherwise unremarkable stage play more interesting than it really is when it arrives on Broadway? Make sure that in conservative Boston, where theatrical productions were often trialled before heading for the Great White Way, the play aroused horrified opprobrium. Boston officials had wide authority to ban works featuring "objectionable" content, and often banned works with sexual or foul language.

And nowadays, how better to make sure that a television commercial spot goes viral than to have it banned by over-zealous advertising censors.

Doesn't this say it all?

(Early) Weekend video 1

German iconography

Wiki says...

Frankenmuth is a city in Saginaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located within Frankenmuth Township, but is politically independent. Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, which bills itself as the World's Largest Christmas Store, is located in Frankenmuth.

The area was settled and named in 1845 by conservative Lutheran immigrants from Franconian Germany. The German word "Franken" represents the Province of Franconia in the Kingdom of Bavaria, and the German word "Mut" means courage, thus the city name Frankenmuth means "courage of the Franconians".

None of this I knew before. It was the appealing graphic posted above which caught my attention and the tag line which at first I thought was the adjective 'Münchner' before realizing that an 'n' was missing.

It's just... I guess I have soft spot for Dachshunds!

Reading matters

 

As things become increasingly insane approaching the end of my ninety day sojourn in the Sandlands I have found myself more and more needing to escape into fictional normalcies. I enjoyed a further case solve by the intrepid Isaac Bell in the Clive Cussler novel.  The more recent past was the setting of "Darkest Hour" and although I tend to avoid military themed stories the adventures of Sergeant Jack Tanner had the familiar structure of a police procedural. Into which category "Dark Blood" certainly fits, dark to the point of noir, with an Aberdonian accent. But the storytelling followed on from a previous Stuart MacBride title which I eventually recalled having read with pleasure. The foul-mouthed and permanently randy gay woman Detective Inspector remains a character responsible for this reader's unseemly hoots of laughter, sometimes in places where such outbursts raise eyebrows!

I've got a Grisham again for the current week, but I hope to find something more adventurous for the Etihad flight next Sunday.

Shall I continue the reading matters posts when I'm back in Germany? I think so. Noting the books with which I have whiled away the time helps me to fix the titles and authors in my mind and to avoid buying the same bloody book twice!

My 1955 theme music

 

They were exciting months in 1955, after the decision that the family would be emigrating to the United States but while we were still in Edinburgh, wondering how different it would all be far across the Atlantic from Scotland.

The skiffle hit "Rock Island Line" featuring Lonnie Donegan was the sound track for my own musings about what life might be like in the New World. 

Now Wikipedia reminds...

Throughout his life, Donegan was fond of telling the story about how he only got a fixed fee from Decca Records for recording "Rock Island Line" (the stated sum varied between £3 and £10), despite it selling over one million copies world-wide, but he never told the story how he benefited greatly from music publishing. Over the years, indeed until his death, Donegan received considerable music publishing royalties from "Rock Island Line" simply by claiming the British copyright on an unregistered song which was considered to be in the Public Domain.

There is, somewhere in there, a lesson. Although it is one I could hardly have learned at the tender age of fifteen!