Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

 Vacation continued, still in Soho:

We toured Carnaby Street, marveling that it’s still able to trade on its name 56 years after London’s swinging creaked to a standstill. All the modern big names are there, even though Lady Jane and Biba are long gone. We didn’t buy anything. But at least it wasn’t closed.

The Coffee Store

My old not-very-happy hunting ground, Patisserie Valerie, is gone now, but the tea and coffee store a few doors down is still there. I couldn’t see any of the thick, embossed tea bricks that so excited my imagination in those days, but  you can get them on Amazon now. No need to visit the inscrutable orient, or for that matter Soho. 

We did eat pastries from Soho – I had a Mont Blanc, which is not, as I thought, a type of pen – from a patisserie nearby. Or it may have been a boulangerie. In standard Soho fashion, all three square meters of the patisserie were packed so we were sent upstairs where twenty to thirty people shrank to fit themselves around five small tables in an area no larger than my bedroom. At intervals, waiters and waitresses would appear at the top of the stairs and attempt to give random pastries to punters, who would point fingers at each other and shout out who needed what. (Each newcomer learned who had ordered which pastry from the previous round of groans and finger pointing.) It was like an Alice in Wonderland tea party, but the cakes were heavenly.

Third Man Records, London

Fender Triplecaster on Third Man stage

Pedal Board on Third Man Stage

Third Man Stage in basement

Edit to add (03/01/25): You can watch a video of Jack White demonstrating this equipment on

Instagram here.

Literarium, Third Man Records, London

Also on the menu, so to speak, were Third Man Records, Jack White’s record store, and the Sir John Soane’s Museum, a must-see. It’s been expanded since I was last there. Like the zoological-taxidermy addiction of Walter Rothschild, previous post, the architectural-stone jones of John Soane was quite insatiable and the museum, which is really just a London townhouse, holds so much carved and worked stone that it must be constructed of Tardis-material with steel foundations reaching below the Tube layer.

Talking of giant stone monuments, we also (after a couple of false starts) figured out how to queue for the British Museum. This *is* a place I visited many times while I lived in London, but seeing it again was wonderful. We spent a lot of time on the Elgin Marbles. (I’d never paid any attention to them before as my parents took one of their dislikes to them.) I then spent 90% of the remainder of the time in the Egyptian Rooms, a type of pilgrimage for me.

Below: Pictures of items from the British Museum Egyptian Collection

The British Museum, unlike most I’ve visited in recent years, has not dumbed down for schoolchildren and I’m pretty sure the schoolchildren don’t mind that. (There were a lot of them around, all engrossed.) There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of items on display, with cards giving basic details and there was a complete lack of “activities,” broken machines that show videos, broken machines that show how things were made or used, or crayons, coloring books, sandboxes or play bricks.

It would take days to properly explore the museum, but we didn't have days. We did have fun.

Vacation to be continued...

European Vacation series:

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

European vacation: We visit Père Lachaise cemetery

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Californians in Highgate Cemetery - Part 2

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Vacation, continued...

St. Anne's Church, Limehouse

Although I didn’t go back to the Isle of Dogs, where I once lived, we did visit Limehouse, because I wanted to visit St. Anne’s, the Hawksmoor church that is a companion to Christ Church Spitalfields. We took the legendary 277 bus, proudly tapping our Oystercards to the ticket reader as if to the manor born.

When I lived on the Island, I used to catch the 277 at Mile End. There were two kinds: one that went all the way around the Isle of Dogs and one that used to terminate half-way there, at Limehouse. I was sitting on a wall minding my own business one day when a bus came along. I got up to get on and the woman in front of me said, with extreme disdain, "Fack! Loim Arse!"

I was so taken with this inscrutable outburst that I rolled it around in my mind for a while and it wasn't until the bus terminated at Limehouse and threw us all off that I realized she had said, in East London-ese, "Oh, dear! This one only goes to Limehouse!"

St. Anne's Church, Limehouse

The bus we took this day was going around the Island, but we only went as far as Limehouse. 

I hadn’t realized St. Anne’s Church had been derelict for so long. There’s a movement to repair the roof and otherwise patch it up but it looks like it needs much more money than the few visitors a day it might get. The organ has been restored, along with the stained glass of the east window. An enthusiastic volunteer told us that there are more repairs in the works. I find it hard to believe that a country would let Hawksmoor churches melt away for lack of upkeep, but it does. (Today I heard that the government is reducing the money it spends on church upkeep, which sounds like it makes sense – the Church of England has plenty of money – but in the case of these architectural treasures, it seems churlish to let them decay.)

Restored Stained Glass

Damp and water damage inside St. Anne's

St. Anne’s, Limehouse is famous – at least to me – for a mysterious monument in the churchyard. For no adequately explained reason, there’s a stone pyramid sitting in the graveyard. It’s tall and thin, the sides at the wrong angle for an Egyptian pyramid. It bears a carving, now eaten away, and the words “The Wisdom of Solomon.”  Theories abound – was it built by the Freemasons? Placed here by the Illuminati? Is there treasure underneath it? The enthusiastic guide told us it was probably part of the roof decoration that just never got hauled up there and was left dumped in the yard. He sounded like he’d had to fend off quite a few “Is it Satanist? Occult paraphernalia?” questions over the years.  I told him I remembered hearing the peacocks calling in the churchyard when I lived nearby and he looked startled, which made me doubt my own memory.

Three views of St. Anne's Pyramid

Charing Cross Road - the grate

We paid special attention to Soho. I’d always wanted to visit a particular grate in the middle of Charing Cross Road, where you can lie down and peer at a road sign several feet below ground. Little Compton Street. And so you can. I attempted to photograph it, but unlike an old-fashioned phone lens, a cellphone doesn’t fit between the bars of the grate, so the snaps are not impressive. Still, I’ve seen it now – it does exist.

Little Compton Street sign visible below street level, Charing Cross Road

 We were delighted to see that one place we remembered well was neither closed nor demolished. The Wong Kei.  It was the same as we remembered, though the waiters were at least 79% less rude than they used to be. And it didn’t take credit cards, the only place in England that didn’t. There was a cashpoint nearby, but Soho seems to have only one and this meant there was at least three hundred people in line, none of whom read English, or had brought the correct card, or remembered their password. I got fifty pounds out, realized it would not be enough and queued up again. Eventually we started our first Wong Kei meal in thirty five years. Mmm proper British (Chinese) duck! However, I’d forgotten that tax is included in the UK and tips are optional so it actually came to forty eight pounds, so hello bank I’d like my $7 in transaction fees for the second withdrawal returned, please and thank you.

Vacation to be continued...

European Vacation series:

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

European vacation: We visit Père Lachaise cemetery

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Californians in Highgate Cemetery - Part 2

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

 Holiday part 3:

We went into London proper to recap the true London tourist experience. Both of us lived there for a decade or so in the seventies and eighties and got into that rut where you -could- go to the theater or a club or a museum every day, but since you live there you just -don’t-. We had about 24 hours over three days to rectify this situation. Luckily, they’ve invented the Oystercard, which is a credit-card sized ticket that you fill with skrilla at a machine and then rub it against ticket turnstiles on just about any form of transport. I bought fifty pounds worth of Oysters and by the end of the trip had just about spent it all. (The remainder stays in the card for the next visit, however long that may be.)

Speaking of moolah, I was very keen to find a bank or Cambio to get my hands on British money, but I was told I didn’t need it, because everyone takes credit cards from everywhere, even if you’re buying a newspaper or a bar of chocolate. This last part turned out to be true. (In the US, there’s often a ≥$5 limit on credit transactions, as no one wants to pay the fees if you’re just buying a pack of gum. Not the case in England, with only one exception on this trip.)

Our first trip took us to Central London, which was exactly the same as when we lived there thirty years ago. Oxford Street, Regent Street, Lions in Trafalgar Square, all the business. Christmas lights, conmen, fake Rolexes and people drawing huge crowds by doing “magic tricks” which had ten-minute build ups and unimpressive finales. It was absolutely rammed with people, all of whom trod on the back of my heel at one point or another. I'm short but in this crowd I was completely invisible. 

Oddly, Trafalgar Square was the least packed part of London.

We went to Foyle’s, the giant bookstore. Stephen predicted that they’d still have the same Edwardian payment system they had in our college years. In the olden days, you would find a book somewhere in the acres of dim, unmarked aisles, and take it to a counter where a young man in a three-piece suit wrote you an invoice. You then went up several floors in an elephant-powered brass birdcage elevator to a musty room in the attic where a Gringott’s Goblin behind three-inch thick bullet-proof glass read your invoice disapprovingly through tiny pince-nez, took your money in Gold Doubloons, sent the coins through pneumatic tubes to a Safe Place Elsewhere and issued a hand-written pink and yellow two-part receipt. You would then walk around for a few hours attempting to find your selected book again. On locating it, you would swap the pink receipt for the physical book. You could then take the book outside the store along with the goldenrod part of the receipt. At least, I think that’s how it went.

But Stephen was wrong. Nowadays they take credit cards at several cash registers, and you can pick up a book from a shelf that is not in semi-darkness and actually buy it. Oddly, we didn’t buy any books on our visit.  Business probably dropped off precipitously when they dismantled the old Diagon Alley system.

We visited our old university, now known as Queen Mary University of London. It is a great deal bigger than it was in our day, but since it was closed, there was no way to know if there was anything inside the new buildings. I assume there is. The People’s Palace, an entertainment venue built in Victorian Times, remains unchanged. I saw a number of terrific bands there when I was a student and I hope that tradition is continuing.

On emerging from the complex, we were startled to see that the City of London, at least the gigantic towers thereof, were far closer to Mile End than they used to be. Looming in the winter mist, they looked like a mirage of some Gernsback Continuum future, just out of reach. Mile End itself was the same – doss houses and pubs.

View of City from Mile End sidewalk

As the city has crept closer, it brought with it a little variety in the eateries, so we had handmade noodles at Biang Biang one lunchtime. Just a few yards from once-derelict Christ Church, Spitalfields and the garment sweatshops of the olden times (both still here) the eatery is in the shadow of the Gherkin.  We also climbed the Monument (to the Great Fire of London), another thing I hadn’t done while I lived there, and spent an afternoon in the Tate Modern. The Millenium footbridge was new to me, as was its startling view of St. Paul’s Cathedral (closed).

The Monument to the Great Fire of London

The Shard as seen from the Millennium Bridge

St. Paul's seen from the Millennium Bridge

The front of Hawksmoor's Christ Church, Spitalfields.
Those blasted coin-operated bicycles are everywhere.

View of Christ Church's side from the gardens,
showing the window arrangement

Two grave markers in Christ Church gardens,
now moved against a new building

I wrote a story recently that included a lot of Spitalfields' history, and has some details about Christ Church's garden and the removed graves. I was very privileged to get a chance to verify the details 'on the ground' so to speak. I did get 'creative' about the trees in the yard, but was pleased to see that they more or less correspond with what I wrote.  I used Google Street View when writing the story, an incredible resource but no match for being able to check sight lines yourself. 

More vacation to come...

European Vacation series:

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

European vacation: We visit Père Lachaise cemetery

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Californians in Highgate Cemetery - Part 2

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

England vacation part 2: 

After leaving our families and their Christmas cheer, I was treated to a return match for Batley, its Beck and its Zion Chapel: a visit to the places Stephen grew up. We stayed at Pendley Manor in Tring, Herts.

I’ve always wanted to revisit Tring. Its sheer commuter-beltiness has called to me ever since a trip in the early seventies. My parents had friends called Elsie and Somebody-or-other, who, on leaving the Peak-climbing, folk-singing clique Up North that my parents frequented, settled in Tring. 

I was a kid, and didn’t remember any of the town. I did remember that it had a pub, and that in the evening, my parents prepared to vanish into it with Elsie and Somebody-or-other.

“Will you be okay by yourself?” Somebody-or-other asked me.

“Of course. I’ve found a book to read in your bookcase,” I piped in my pre-teen voice.

“What have you got?” Elsie asked.

I showed her the cover. “The History of Bondage,” I replied.

Looks were exchanged, but no one took it off me, and by the time they returned, pissed, I was fully up to speed on the history of bondage.

This was the same visit when Elsie put a tune on the gramophone. “Air on a G String,” she declared.

“Hair on a G-string?” I inquired.

“Oh, you’ll never know what a funny thing you’ve just said,” Somebody-or-other laughed. 

I do though, and you’d think my picking "History of Bondage" for an evening’s reading would have clued them in on that.

I’m more than fifty years older now, and on arriving in Tring found that there was little in the way of overt bondage, though Stephen did inform me that Hertfordshire was the English capital of wife-swapping. (I did notice more than one garden with pampas grass on the lawn, as it happens.) It was frightfully cold. We don't know how cold because the natives in England use a different set of units for measuring temperature. Pretty darn cold, though.

Pendley Manor

Pendley Manor is a redbrick manor house converted to a business retreat, and the ghosts of PowerPoint Presentations Past were observed haunting the corridors and trying to obtain massages at the spa. Apart from the businessman-shaped voids which no doubt would be occupied again in the high season, the most interesting part of Pendley Manor was the flock of peacocks. As well as hanging about on the lawn showing off their tails, they sat on the wall overlooking the kitchen/bar yard waiting for food scraps or perhaps for someone to spill a keg of beer.

Pendley Manor Peacocks

From the manor, we drove the tiny, paper-thin roads of Southern England to Tring Natural History Museum, which is world famous for its incredible collection of stuffed animals. And beetles, wasps, ants etc. which are not, I’m told, stuffed, just mounted as is. Collected by the sort of person earnest young women write sepia-covered paperbacks about, Walter Rothschild, it truly is an outstanding collection of things, from sharks to champion greyhounds to my favorite animal, the Greater Bilby.

A Greater Bilby (deceased)

Stuffed Dodo, Natural History Museum, Tring

Another view of a Dodo

Then it was back on the road to visit Stephen’s childhood places in Chorleywood, Croxley Green, Watford and Rickmansworth, of which I had heard so much.  We had breakfast at Watford's best breakfast point inside Oxhey activity park alongside the river Colne – a full English. 

I don’t know why English people call English breakfasts an English Breakfast. It reminds me of a conversation I had with an American about the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Gerry and the Pacemakers und so weiter... I called them "British Invasion" bands and he said, "Do you really call it that in England?" I asked what else we'd call it and it transpired he thought they would just be "Invasion" bands. I understand why he thought that, but he was clearly no marketing genius. 

At day’s end, we stayed at a hotel in Harrow-on-the-Hill, though neither of us could remember why we’d picked that one. I have no photos of Harrow-on-the-Hill and that wasn't an oversight on my part.

More vacation to come...

European Vacation series:

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

European vacation: We visit Père Lachaise cemetery

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Californians in Highgate Cemetery - Part 2

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

 I spent Christmas in England and Wales and the next week in Paris and Amsterdam, so the next few entries are memories and photos. 

Stephen and I landed at Manchester airport after an uneventful flight – except for hours of searing agony in my restless leg – and immediately picked up a car, attempted to determine what side of the road to drive on and set off for York.

The M62 to York took us to the outskirts of Batley, my home town, so we turned off the motorway and pulled in for a bite at Tesco’s (only the very best for us). I had long wanted to a look at Batley Beck where it runs above ground near Iceland. (Not the country, the superstore.) I found that several short stretches of the beck, inside high walls, ran between the Bus Station and Branch Road where it meets Bradford Road. If I’d been twenty years younger, I would have jumped down into the stream bed to follow it into the tunnels, but I’m not and I didn’t. Much more about Batley Beck to come, I assure you!

Batley Beck behind Bus Station

It was half-past freezing in England. We are both used to the temperate Southern California weather. We knew that Batley, at 53.7 degrees north, would be a little colder but the glacier-like grinding cold dropping down my collar was unprecedented. I’d brought an ancient wool overcoat and a thick scarf. S. had brought a gaberdine and a Russian-style hat with ear flaps and a Tuva badge.

We quickly toured the site of the now-demolished maternity home on Bradford Road, the now demolished Boston House Flat on Zion Street and council house on Wilton Street), and the maisonette on Commercial Street, still there. We passed where my parents’ short-lived businesses were, on the corner of Henrietta Street, now demolished.

My drawing of (now demolished) corner of Henrietta Street
and Commercial Street

Stephen took everything in good humor, even when I insisted on going to Howie’s Fish and Chip shop, which was undemolished but closed. I have had many a fish and chips twice with bits from Howie's, but we were not able to reprise the event this trip. (And possibly never - there is a tiny 'for sale' sign in the window.) We had pastries from Charnock’s, not only undemolished but also not closed for the holidays. English pastries were a feature of this vacation. Having grown used to American ones, I’d forgotten what hand-made, reasonably-sweet pastries could be like.

Howie's, December 2024

We took the car back out on the minuscule one-car-wide roads and drove on to York. We parked in a Park and Ride (and downloaded our first parking app of about thirty), then walked to our creatively hidden hotel in Judges Court (which, once located, was great). We spent the next day in York, which was closed, the Christmas Market having packed up the day before and everything else being just averagely closed.

York guardians

York Minster Angel

York Minster Angel

York Minster Queen Elizabeth in stone

We did all the outside things, though. We went to the city wall and walked around it, to York Minster (closed), took a photo op with Paddington Bear (not sure why he was in York), the various ruins, Cliffords Tower (closed), lunch at a tiny hipster joint whose name I’ve forgotten where we two stout people and our food were allocated four square feet that teetered a few inches from the top of a flight of stairs. We finished with a jolly good walk around the place. We were further fueled by coffee from Caffe Nero, because Stephen warned me off Gregg’s. (Apparently just because it’s ubiquitous, it isn’t always the best…but this means I’ve still never been to a Gregg’s.)

York Wall Walk

I think this map of York walls has been here since
my last visit in 1965

We then hared off to my brother’s near Middlesbrough, a few more miles on the M62 and then on the A19. Or could have been the A1(M). British people memorize strings of road numbers and reel them off at the slightest provocation, but I got out of the habit in the US and it didn’t really come back to me on this trip.

Me and Paddington Bear observe York Minster

It was nice to have a warm bed and be with family for Christmas. And boy, was there a lot of family there! I’m not sure how our host and hostess managed to keep up with everyone, but a great couple of days was had by all.

More holiday to come...

European Vacation series:

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

European vacation: We visit Père Lachaise cemetery

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Californians in Highgate Cemetery - Part 2

Interzone #300 - Don’t you want to buy this issue immediately?

 A lovely write-up of Interzone #300 from Jonathan Laidlaw on The Supernova Short Fiction Review

including these kind words about my story, "Swim With the Space Whales." 

Lyle Hopwood’s story is a fun twisty-turny future noir, and it has talking whales. Don’t you want to buy this issue immediately? It strikes just the right note of absurdity, and sticks to the rules of the genre except when it chooses to break them in entertaining ways. 

As he says later, the best way to encourage short fiction is to subscribe and read. 

Should of stuck to bananas

 

There used to be a café on Old Compton Street in Soho, London, called Patisserie Valerie. Its location, opposite the 2is coffee bar, where British rock and roll first materialized and a few streets away from the row of studios where the music for the British Invasion was recorded, made it a place of pilgrimage for me. I arrived in London in 1976, and as soon as I'd mastered the Tube, I visited Soho and went to bask in the remaining vibes.

Everyone in Patisserie Valerie appeared almost magically hip. Everyone inside radiated cool. On my third or maybe fourth visit, I ordered a coffee and a millefeuille, chose a table, and sat down. 

The tables were communal. In England, at least back then, no one ushered you to a private table. You selected your own. The cafe was empty, and I sat alone with my thoughts and thousand layered, flaky pastry filled with crème anglaise. 

As I looked out of the window, someone must have decided to share my table. I don’t remember seeing him sit down. The first he impinged upon me was when he stood up abruptly and declared in a high, feminine voice, “Really! Some people do NOT know how to eat!” 

I watched him go, chewing my mouthful of flakes. After some time it dawned on me that he’d been watching me eat the difficult confection and I had somehow failed to live up to his standard of decorum.  He must have been disappointed at my lack of contrition. 

Somewhat later I read of a millionaires/movers-and-shakers party where the men sat down to a meal but the women hired to decorate the party were only allowed to eat a banana, “The only food that can be eaten delicately.” 

I should have stuck to bananas.

The House Opposite that lights up at dawn to presage the coming of spring...

The House Opposite that lights up at dawn to presage the coming of spring isn't looking too good right now. Its lesser-known manifestation, the House Opposite That Lights Up at Dawn in October put on a poor showing this year. 

The first couple of days of the phenomenon, it was misty. On the last day, a faint glimmer in the leftmost upper window appeared. On closer examination today, that's the only window remaining in the building. There's a tree growing in front of the window, too, which isn't helping. 

Gone are the blinding glints of yesteryear.

Two days ago, a faint glimmer, upper left.

Today, misty vista at dawn.

DIGITAL IMAGINING: Wordfest OC at Saddleback College, October 2024

 

From left to right: Brett Myron, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Amy Cameron and Rylee Robles. 

Friday 18th October was Wordfest OC at Saddleback College. 

The day featured poetry readings, a talk on Latinx voices, a conversation with Gustavo Arellano, a workshop on creative writing headed by Sarah Rafael Garcia and a discussion on artificial intelligence, DIGITAL IMAGINING: Creative Writing in the Age of AI. 

I was particularly interested in the last one. The panel included my Creative Writing teacher Barbara DeMarco-Barrett along with Brett Myron, Amy Cameron and Rylee Robles. 

Barbara's main point was that AI (or rather large language models, LLMs) is being 'trained' to write by hoovering up every book, article, blog post, and Reddit post along with any other digitized text. The texts are (in all modern cases) under copyright, and no one was paid for their participation - and not even informed about the project taking place. The products of this surreptitious activity are being sold for money. 

Ethically, writers are owed compensation for this unpaid work. Barbara mentioned that Amazon (the bookseller) now limits individuals to uploading three books a day in order to at least slow down the flood of machine-generated stories and novels. Soon there will be a mass transfer of wealth from current copyright owners and future writers to the owners and users of "Generative AI." 

Whether a LLM "reading" a text for its own use constitutes unlawful copying is yet to be decided by the courts, but cases of an LLM's output matching the input closely, i.e. plagiarism, has already been detected and apparently court cases are proceeding.

Amy talked about Narrative Magazine, where co-founder Tom Jenks has banned people submitting machine-generated text and updated the magazines robots.txt file to disallow web crawlers from 'hoovering' the magazine's contents.  I submit to a lot of speculative fiction magazines, and can confirm that most have strong policies banning AI-written submissions. But how to recognize and prevent it? Amy said that at UC Irvine, use of AI is not "policed" but she can recognize it because it "sounds robotic." She admitted that a time may come when she would be unable to recognize machine output.

Rylee, a high school senior, took a different tack. She is a Marvel fan and asked an AI if it could put her in a Marvel movie--and it made her a superhero. She said that her group created characters with AI and within 45 minutes they had produced three stories that gave representation to everyone in the room. As a base layer to build off, she said, it helped people create their stories. 

The panel discussed whether AI could be a valued part of the creative writing process in that way, by producing a "kernel of an idea."  Barbara said prompt generators (programs that give you ideas for characters, setting and/or plot) had been around for years, and AI was an "unnecessary" improvement. Amy said "rising waters lift all boats" and Google Search had raised the standard for good and mediocre writers alike. She felt that AI would do the same, and it was important "to have a boat in the water" -- get used to generative AI -- or be left behind. 

There was a general agreement that current AI models produced output that lacked nuance, did not adequately express human emotion, and in Brett's case, was "not weird enough." 

During the audience question time, a listener mentioned that sometimes an apparently clear prompt will produce an AI output that "goes in the wrong direction." Rylee answered that sometimes human communication does that too, and the opportunity to rephrase and redirect the AI is good practice for clear communication in general. 

And on that high note, I'll finish. 

Blood Fiction v3 book signing - Lyle Hopwood and other authors

 

A good time was had by all at the book signing for Blood Fiction v3 at Book Carnival in Orange on Sunday.  Thanks to editor Mark Sevi (shown in photo, speaking) and Anne, the proprietor of Book Carnival. 

And to everyone who came to listen to us authors read and bought books to sign. 

Blood Fiction v3 is available from Amazon, in print and ebook. Two stories by me- Lyle Hopwood - in this volume (and one in the previous one, v2.)

Batley's Torchlight Procession, 7th October

 

Tomorrow night, in Batley, it’s the annual torchlight procession. This historic tradition, sometimes called the "Lourdes of the North," brings together the Catholic community of Batley and surrounding areas in a display of faith and devotion to the Virgin Mary.

The first I ever saw of it, I was 11 years old. There were hundreds of people walking past our maisonette, each with a candle glowing in a paper holder. They sang, or chanted“Ave Maria.”  The line of reverential people went on, in the cold Autumn night, for almost half an hour.

My own family was not religious. I’d been to a protestant church two or three times in my childhood, and a Catholic church never. I had never seen churchy people outside a church or churchyard, and the effect on me was much like that of a somehow unsuspecting local of seeing the Padstow ‘Obby Oss come past unexpectedly. To my eyes, it was a “folk tradition” of people venerating an unfamiliar entity – a Wicker Man scenario, but reversed, as I was the pagan, and they were the Christians. (And, as far as I know, they didn’t barbecue anyone afterward.) There are many Festivals of Light at this time of year, and now, fifty years later, I can slot the procession in as one of these – comparable with Diwali, held this year on October 31^st, Imbolc and Kwanzaa. It’s one thing to read about it in a book, quite another to see people enacting it on your literal doorstep.

The procession was kicked off in 1951 by the arrival at St. Mary’s of Father Gallon, lately of St. Patrick’s Sheffield. The event is still organized by St Mary of the Angels Catholic Church on Cross Bank Road and has become a significant part of Batley's cultural and religious calendar.

The procession begins at St Mary's Catholic Primary School and wends its way to St Mary of the Angels Church. This route through the streets of Batley creates a river of light and sound. The sight of hundreds of flickering flames moving through the streets is visually stunning and moving for spectators and participants alike.

Like many public events, the Batley Torchlight Procession went into hiatus due to the pandemic. The 2022 procession marked a triumphant return, with the community embracing the opportunity to participate in this august tradition.

KAOS: When Greek Myths Meet Pop Music Nostalgia

Despite my best judgment I ended up watching KAOS on Netflix.  The premise seems to be, "What if O Brother Where Art Thou met American Gods and had a threesome with a high school book of Greek Myths?

Which sounds fine, I guess. The main problem - or attraction - is its use of a device I call Stolen Valor. (I'm aware that calling something Stolen Valor that isn't Stolen Valor is in itself Stolen Valor, but I can't think of another name.) This Stolen Valor - Mark II, perhaps - is bringing in legendary slices of pop music at chosen moments to substitute for an Eyeball Kick the visuals can't provide. I can understand why it's done, but the calculatedness takes me out of the moment. 

The very first scene of the series is double-underlined and italicized by the use of the stonking introductory riff of Dire Strait's "Money For Nothing." Whatever you may think of Dire Straits and their legacy, there's no doubt that guitar sound makes the heart beat faster. What was weirder is the director kept it going when the vocals started, yea unto the line "Look at them yo-yos." Slight loss of dignity there, I thought. 

One after another the hits kept coming, with a high point for me being a few bars of The Kills' "Future Starts Slow," another track where the guitar sounds as if it's about ready to burst its skin and swoop down to eat your face. 

By the third of fourth episode I'd gotten used to it, and then they used just a smidgen of Dawn Penn's 1993 reggae classic "You Don't Love Me (No No No)."

It was so good to hear it again, only to have it fade out after the 30-second-long scene was over.

The song goes all the way back to Bo Diddley's "She's Fine, She's Mine" of 1955. Which may be the best version, IMHO. 

But the version I grew up on - from the iconic Immediate Anthology of British Blues Volume 2 - is "You Don't Love Me" by Tony TS McPhee.  With me it's always the guitar sound.