Five-word Reviews: Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds...

F-amazing exhibition. Go see it.

Cross Bones Graveyard...

Today, I finally visited the site of the graveyard for prostitutes in Southwark, London. 

The Cross Bones Graveyard in Redcross Way began as a cemetery for medieval prostitutes, who worked in the stews or brothels of Bankside under the auspices of the Bishop of Winchester, who also took a slice of their earnings. Sadly, these working women weren't allowed a burial in consecrated ground among 'respectable' people, regardless of how much their efforts filled church coffers, so this is where they ended up.

Used as a cemetery for the poor and the undesirable until the 1860s, it lay neglected and undiscovered for more than a century. The graveyard was then re-discovered at the end of the 20th century and cared for by a group of supporters and friends. 

It's an astonishing place. I may be spending some considerable time here in the future, particularly as I'm about to start work on version two of the play about the Contagious Diseases Acts. 

I also adore the term 'the outcast dead' that adorns the gates.

Back on the Baize...

I’m on a good run at interleague at the moment, having won 11 out of 12 frames against some decent opponents. I’m well aware there are stiffer tests ahead, but I’m trying to do simple things well and it’s working so far.

I’m putting in some table time and I’m on course to be in decent shape when I make my return to county next year. I’m also hoping to qualify for county by finishing in the top eight of the county-wide interleague, which pits the best players from different leagues in Surrey against each other.

In my most recent match, we played an all-ladies team and they had some solid players. I met a few of the newer county ladies, too, and this was good. I also saw a teenager play and her temperament was superb. I went over and had a chat with her parents later and, after explaining that I wasn’t some sort of weirdo, said I’d like to spend some table time with her because I think I could help her game improve.

I’m really excited when I see potential and I think I could help her develop into a really good player. It’s a path I’ve trodden once before when I spent some time with a county junior player and helped him become an England international.

If I’m going back to play county pool, I also like the idea of helping to bring somebody else through. It will help focus me and give me a defined pre-match routine for practice and it will also mean they get something out of it by practising with me.

It’s something I’ve learnt from a decade and a half of martial arts: by teaching others we help refine and define ourselves

I hope she and her parents realise it’s a genuine offer and don’t peg me as some sort of freak.

The 2016 British Soap Awards: Part II...

The first thing to report about the 2016 British Soap Awards was how slick Philip Schofield was as the host. If you've ever seen anything filmed before, you know that it can often go on a bit. But Schofield was amazingly slick and polished and the filming of the awards ceremony itself, which was held at Hackney Empire in London, was pretty much done and dusted in about two hours.

Two of the biggest winners of the evening were Lacey Turner, who plays Stacey Fower in EastEnders, and Danny Miller, who plays Aaron Dingle in Emmerdale. 

Lacey's a very good actress and one of the most recognisable faces on British TV and she's been good in Enders this year, with a sometimes bizarre but emotionally high-voltage story about her character suffering post-partum psychosis. She picked up two awards for Best Actress and Best Dramatic Performance Female and her mental health story also won the Best Storyline gong.

Danny Miller is a real fan favourite and his character's harrowing story about childhood abuse saw Miller pick up the Best Dramatic Performance Male and Best Actor gongs. 

Their awards were probably deserved and the fact that the panel votes were echoed in the public votes probably means there's some sort of across-the-board consensus. I think Jeremy Sheffield, who was excellent as Motor Neurone Disease sufferer Patrick Blake in Hollyoaks, and Rhakee Thakrar, who played Shabnam Masood in EastEnders, would also have been incredibly worthy winners, too.


Two awards that I was delighted by were the victories for Doctors for the Best Single Episode for their 3000th episode, The Heart of England, which saw the conclusion of their Treehouse storyline. This was quietly brilliant and managed to combine child abuse, a shooting and police corruption on a small-budget daytime soap. An amazing feat.

Ruby O'Donell also won Best Young Actor for her role as dilemma-struck teen mum Peri Lomax in Hollyoaks. I'm watching a lot more Hollyoaks at the moment and it's generally pretty good and can sometimes be excellent. My favourite character in it, however, is Nico Blake, the deranged and damaged daughter of Sienna Blake. She's quite compelling and there's something of the night about her character.

The award that cheered me the most, however, was the gong for best soap. This went to Emmerdale and it was thoroughly deserved. The show has consistently been one of the best things on British TV in the last 18 months and it was a worthy victor. 

Its executive producer, Kate Oates, has now moved across the Pennines to run Coronation Street and I expect Corrie, whose excellent live episode went criminally unrewarded, will be back gunning for the big one next year. I hope so. I genuinely love Corrie.

The 2016 British Soap Awards: Part I...

I'm not very good at doing events. I sometimes struggle with small talk, I sometimes don't play well with others and I don't really have the hustling gene necessary to get the most out of such things. I also don't do clothes. The whole dressing-up thing escapes me. 

However, I was invited to be a judge at the 2016 British Soap Awards earlier this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed assessing the entrants, then taking part in the panel day and discussing and debating, then voting for the high points of the last soap year. 

Then, this weekend, it was time for myself and the Missus to don posh clothes and head to the glitzy event itself. 

First up was a haircut, so it straight to the barber's shop for a No.1 all over. Coupled with massive Seth Armstrong sideburns, it was job pretty much done. I had a bit of a shoe disaster so had to improvise, then found I'd lost so much weight that my suits didn't fit properly. 

On the plus side, the lady hairdresser said I had lovely, strong hair and a beautifully defined hairline. I wasn't wearing my specs so I couldn't see if I could repay the compliment by pointing out that she had, too. 

On getting to the event, I met a few people I sort of knew and discovered the following: 
i) Telling the story about my injured penis and how it was held by a man who ended up on the Sex Offenders Register is still quite funny. 
ii) My fellow soap magazine editors are facing the same declining market problems and large corporate insanity that I am.
iii) My plumbing joke is still funny. This goes: 'I'm thinking of a career in plumbing when the world of journalism finally implodes. But that's because I've watched an unhealthy amount of 1970s pornography and it seems to offer a lot of fringe benefits...'

Preacher...

Cards on the table: I am a huge fan of Preacher, the irreverent, violent, macabre, brutal and blackly funny Vertigo comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. So it was with trepidation that I prepared to watch the opening episode of the new series on Amazon Prime. 

But the show opener is shit-bricking brilliant and I have high hopes for the rest of it. 

It was obviously never going to faithfully follow the comic series panel-for-panel, but it's already introduced the key players: disillusioned Preacher Jesse Custer, who suddenly develops an extraordinary celestial power; his love interest and one-woman arse-kicking army, Tulip; and fruit-loop Irish vampire Cassidy. 

There are a few nods to other characters in the comic that will probably develop more fully as the series and its narrative progresses, but the thing I'm most excited about is how they've absolutely nailed the tone of the comic and managed to translate it to TV.

This could good. It could get a five-Herr-Starr review. 

That last thing was a reference to another character in the series. I used that one because working in a reference to the Saint of Killers was far too complicated.

Cue Wank...

I recently needed to get my cue re-tipped and I was also having problems with my ferrule, so I made the trip to Forest Hill in London to see John Parris. 

For those involved in any cue sports, John Parris is well-known. For those not involved in cue sports, John Parris is the world's leading cue maker and he makes snooker cues for Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins and a host of other top players. And me.

For a cue geek like me, visiting John's shop remains a bit of a treat. It's quite a small shop with racks of cues lining the walls, and it has a workshop out the back at the side of the shop. It's an unassuming oasis of absolute craftsmanship in a quiet London suburb. I can spend a decent amount of time in there just looking at the cues he has for sale and admiring how excellent they are.

My cue re-tipped and my ferrule checked out, I returned home and was having a polish of my cue in my office. I also have a few collectible cues, so I was having a bit of a cue polish and sort-out in general. I'm always worried that my tip will fly off is the cue has been re-tipped, so I was working out which other cue to take to my match the following night just in case this happened. Just to put this madness into perspective, a re-tipped cue losing its tip has happened once in my life. But the memory and the fear remains.

The Missus entered my office, looked at what I was doing, asked me if I was a 'cue wank', then left. 

She was right. I probably was.

Strategy...

The Missus is in a playful but combatative mood when I come home from work, and the second sentence out of her mouth is as follows:
'Why do you talk such fucking cunting shit?'

I hadn't even done anything stupid. Or said anything stupid either. 

So I don't answer. This is probably a wise strategy...

Edinburgh: Part II...

First up on the Things to Do in Edinburgh List was a trip to the Beltane Fire Festival. This is  'a dynamic reinterpretation and modernisation of an ancient Iron Age Celtic ritual of a pagan festival to welcome summer', according to the website.

This saw me, the Missus, the Other Woman and the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella, plus several thousand other folk, gather on Calton Hill in the middle of the city to watch some pagan re-enactors crown the May Queen and set fire to stuff before processing around the hill.

It was quite a fascinating event, mainly because the PA system was awful so you has to fight your way close to the action to have any clue about what was going on. The lighting of the fire from the temple (pictured badly above) was quite impressive, but it also happened an hour later than advertised.

Pagans and pagan re-enactors are clearly no the most punctual of people. There were other events going on but it was a slapdash on the organisation front and information was quite hard to come by, despite the fact there was a printed leaflet.

So we stuck it out for a bit, then left and went to the pub. 

'We'll talk about this for minutes to come,' commented the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella. I think even he realised he was being optimistic about this prediction.

 The following day we went to Edinburgh Castle, which was a much more organised and enjoyable experience. The Missus tried to attack a cannon and won, and we also had a poke about in the jail cells, which were very good.

In the evening, we ventured out to the Pleasance, which was one of the venues hosting TradFest. This is a lowish-key festival celebrating traditional art and music, and we saw a folk-meets-bluegrass out called Blue Flint. Fronted by two banjo-playing women, they were excellent, and I bought their most recent CDs, Stories From Home. This has been getting a lot of air play at home and I'll be investing in their other two CDs.

Injury News: Part II...

I was looking forward to competing in my first BJJ tournament of the year. I'd made weight and I had some decent training behind me... then my hamstring went doing kicking drills at Hapkido three days before the event. Bugger!

Last year, I missed two of the three events I entered through injury and the pattern has started again this year. I'm not doing stupid things or taking unnecessary risks. I'm just being unlucky. 

So, apart from being a bit grumpy because I don't like not training, I just need to be sensible. My time to compete this year will come. And, while I'm healing up, I have a play to rewrite. 

Every cloud and all that...

Five-word Reviews: Flowers...

Brilliant, original, darkly absurdist comedy. 
or 
Deserves to win a Bafta. 
or
Stonkingly fabulous original comedy series.

Injury News: Part I...

I always felt that the back injury I acquired while hanging a pair of boxer shorts on a washing line was the most ridiculous injury I'd ever had. But there's a new contender. 

We're currently having work done at Brooks Towers and a floorboard was left up to connect some water pipes. The cat, Buffy, took this as an invitation to explore and jumped down five feet and decided to go hunting in the foundations of the house. She couldn't, however, get back up. 

Cue myself and the Missus pulling a up a few additional floorboards and me lowering myself into the bowels of the house to get her out. The gap, however, meant I needed to do some twisting and turning to get the cat, then get back back out. It was a like a shit version of subterranean horror, The Descent. 

On the way out, a few things went click in my back as I dragged myself up. This hurt. The next time, the fucking cat can stay down there.

Edinburgh: Part I...

The Missus bought me a surprise trip for my birthday. She didn't, however, tell me where we were going until two weeks after I turned 47, and we arrived at King's Cross Station in London to embark on our adventure. This drove me slightly insane and she milked it for all it was worth. It's fair to say that she squeezed the teat of secrecy bone dry on this occasion...

The bad news was the leaving point meant the suspected trip to the World Snooker Championships was off. The good news, though, was that it meant something else was happening, and I didn't have to wait long to find out. About five minutes later, the Other Woman and the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella mysteriously appeared and everything fell into place: a Bank Holiday weekend in Edinburgh. 

Getting to Edinburgh, however, entailed a five-hour train journey with the Missus and the Other Woman, who veered between congratulating themselves on their cunning planning... and ripping the piss out of me. This was made even worse because I felt like somebody who'd been on the end of a Jeremy Beadle prank, but who couldn't repeatedly punch those responsible because it was a beautiful and thoughtful kindness. I fear I am not good at not knowing things.

We did some cool stuff and a long weekend with three people I love very much was ace.

How Not to Be Old...

As I've mentioned before, I'm planning on making a return to playing proper competitive pool next year and I'm keeping my hand in by playing interleague pool for my local league. This essentially means the best players from a local league form a team and play against a representative team of the best players for other local leagues. 

This involves us playing at the national finals in Great Yarmouth a couple of times every year, where a few thousand players gather at a caravan park and compete over a weekend. I've been playing in these events for about 25 years and it was good to be back again. Our team did pretty well, but one of the highlights of the weekend was an altercation with an old woman who's infamous for her foul mouth and bullying behaviour. 

Playing in a packed room, she came over to our team to demand we move and make extra space for her side. This was impossible and, when a polite explanation of this failed, we either opted to ignore her or argue with her. She eventually left us alone, but she's essentially a bitter woman who seems to get her kicks from spouting bile and insulting anyone she can insult. You get the impression that there's not a lot of joy in her life. 

About an hour later, I was stood in the queue for the on-site chip shop when I heard the tap-tap of her cane behind me. She then spent the next 10 minutes complaining about the length of the queue and how she feared there may not be one of her favourite pies left. 

She tried to engage me in conversation about this, but I decided not to engage. I suspected she only one comment away from criticising the beleaguered server in the chip shop for being from Poland and coming over here and stealing chip shop jobs from local people. And I wasn't going to be racist out of politeness.

I eventually order, then the woman in question eventually gets to the front of the queue.
'That took bloody long enough!' 
'How can I help you, madam?' 
'You got any mince beef and onion pies?' 
'Sorry. We've sold out!' 
'I fucking knew it. What you got left?' 
'Chicken and mushroom...'
'Don't want that muck!'
'Cornish pastie?' 
'You can stick your Cornish pastie up your arse...' 
'We have chips left.'
'I'll better fucking have them then.'

Rude, cantankerous and full of anger... with no good reason that I could see. That's probably not how to grow old.

How to Be Old...

I recently turned 47 and, with work rapidly becoming a constant source of anxiety, I've made a real commitment to train whenever I can to assuage the worst excesses of work-related stress. Sadly, my hapkido class schedule has recently changed, which means I'm struggling to make regular classes at that, so I'm throwing myself into my BJJ training.

BJJ is ridiculously hard and, after four and a bit years, it hasn't really got an awful lot easier. The only way to learn how to eventually win is to constantly lose and to figure out how not to lose quite so badly the next time.

It's also by some considerable way the most physically demanding thing I've ever done, and I genuinely understand why wrestling training is considered one of the most brutal things anyone can do. It's very tough. It's designed to make people quit.

But I'm hanging in there and sometimes that's the real wisdom that age and doing another martial art for a long time brings. You know how to hang on in and ride the difficult times, whether it's work or training or anything else. 

Because bad times do pass. It's a just matter of getting through them.

Brian Fallon...

New wave punksters Gaslight Anthem remain a firm favorite at Brooks Towers. The Missus fell in love with them when they released their second album, The 59 Sound, and we’ve seen them several times. Their musical output is impressive and their front man, Brian Fallon, is a great singer and lyricist. As a live act, I’ve seen few better bands than the New Jersey outfit.

This year, however, Fallon is taking a break from Gaslight Anthem and recording under his own name, and he recently released the album. Painkillers. If Gaslight Anthem are Green Day meets Bruce Springsteen, then Painkillers is Gaslight Anthem meets Hank Williams.

It’s a remarkably assured solo debut and it explores a familiar Fallon lyrical landscape, with songs about love and loss, and romance tinged with nostalgia. It’s much more haunting and tender than Fallon in Gaslight Anthem mode and the country-tinged Honey Magnolia is a truly heartbreaking lament.

It’s a beautiful album.

Back on the Baize...

I'm returning to competitive pool next year. I've missed playing and it's been too frustrating to play a little bit and keep my hand in by playing interleague and not perform well enough. 

So I'm 'negotiating' getting a table at home and sorting out a return to playing county next year. The goal of going back to county is obviously to get back into the A Team and secure another trial for the England team. I'm looking forward to it. 

So I'm starting to factor in one regular session every week to get some form and consistency back. It will be a long road, but one I'm looking forward to travelling again.

Snooker: The Players Championship...

ITV4 is rapidly becoming one of the most regularly watched channels at Brooks Towers. It features several darts tournaments and it also televises three or four snooker events throughout the year, too. 

My favourite bit about the ITV4 snooker coverage is that Clive Everton, the voice of the game and by some considerable degree its most knowledgeable journalist, is in the commentary box. 

Everton worked for the BBC for decades, until he was criminally marginalised then dumped when he was at the height of his powers. Rumours at the time suggested this was a political move because Everton was a vocal critic of the WPSBA.

With Everton gone, the BBC elevated the moronic pairing of John Virgo and Willie Thorne, perhaps the worst 'experts' to ever pass comment or judgement on any professional sportsmen, as its key voices. It was like replacing Shergar with two Blackpool donkeys and expecting either of the donkeys to secure a win at the Derby.

It's great to hear Everton back on TV. It was poor of the BBC to 'lose' its most authoritative voice on one of its flagship sports and replace him with 'colour' commentators.

Tattoo Fixers...

I love Tattoo Fixers on Channel 4. It's car crash TV where a steady stream of ink-on-skin calamities get their disaster designs covered up by a trio of ace artists.

In the latest episode, however, it may have transcended from guilty pleasure into poetic art. This is because when one young woman was asked to describe her favourite tattoo, she came out with the following words.

’It’s two nuns lezzing it up on my arm.’

It may be the best sentence ever spoken on TV anywhere....

Some Thoughts on Daredevil: Series Two...

Daredevil was always the superhero I loved. While every other geek was waxing lyrical about Spider-Man or the X-Men, the blind-lawyer-turned-crimefighter was my entry point into comics and also my introduction to the work of Frank Miller, who first run on the title, beginning in issue 158 and ending in 191, pretty much marked the start of my mature love affair with all things comics.

The awful Ben Affleck film version from 2003 ruined any hope I had that some form of Daredevil screen success would ever happen. Then Netflix produced an absolutely arse-kicking series in 2015, and have followed it up with what looks like an equally awe-inspiring second series in 2016. 

The villain in series one was the Kingpin (the brilliantly controlled and malevolent Vincent D'Onofrio), while series two has so far featured a stonking Punisher (played with grit and grim determination by Walking Dead actor Jon Bernthal), and the introduction of assassin-for-hire Elektra (Élodie Yung).

At five episodes in, I was genuinely wowed. As a writer, I loved the promising story arcs; as a comics fan, I loved the nods to the other characters in the Marvel universe; and, as a viewer, I loved the production values, the fight scenes and some of the beautifully framed shots, which are clearly influenced by the source material. 

I've now watched the entire second series and, even though that initial euphoria has dissipated, there's stiil so much to commend it. But there are some gripes. 

So, SPOILER ALERT, if you're going to read this any further. 

Charlie Cox is great as the title character, but Matt Murdoch/Daredevil spends far too much time struggling with ethical dilemmas about justice, faith and taking a life in series two, and not enough time showing his human side and caring for and relating to the people closest to him. It's out of keeping with the character developed in series one. It's not consistent enough and his actions spend too much time serving the drive of the plot. This is a shame.

Elektra is a fantastic character in the best of the Daredevil Miller comic books and the stand-alone graphic novels. As this series continues, though, she comes across as a bit of a spoilt rich girl who kills for kicks, rather than a ruthless killer-for-hire whose love for Matt Murdoch makes her occasionally conflicted about her profession. I'm also not convinced by Yung in this role.

The whole Elektra, Hand, Stick and Chaste storyline feels a bit too convoluted and chase-find-fight-escape-and-repeat. This element of the plot does hang together, but it has holes. It feels a bit too thrown together and the fight scenes, while very impressive, are a bit over-long. 

The Punisher story arc is one of the two best things in the second series. It takes a damaged character and the story comes out of the character and what has happened to him. As a viewer, I had an emotional investment in The Punisher and the plot is well paced and it never feels over-extended or gratuitous.

The other element I really enjoyed in series two was the disintegrating relationship with Matt Murdoch and his business partner and long-term friend, Foggy Nelson, played by Elden Henson. The friendship becomes compromised as Murdoch spends more time as Daredevil and less time practising law, and Henson is excellent as the funny and vulnerable lawyer. With Berthnal, he delivers one of the show-stealing performances of series two.

The development of Karen Page felt a bit forced, going from a para legal, to the woman prepping the Punisher for his trial, to ace investigative reporter taking over the mantle of Ben Urich and penning a front-page story. It seem career progression in Hell's Kitchen can be fast, particularly if there's a demanding narrative to support. Deborah Ann Woll puts in a strong performance, though. She's eminently watchable.

Those flaws aside, I'm genuinely delighted to be watching this series and I'm already looking forward to series three, and the loosely connected series of Luke Cage, too. It's making me relive my comic geek teenage years, and it's exciting to see a whole new universe unfolding. This time, though, it's on the screen and not on the page.

And, even though series two of Daredevil may lack the coherence of the first series, it's still pretty kick-arse. Enjoy...

Akhnaten...

I have a sort of bucket list of things I’d like to do before I die. Unusually for me, it’s not actually written down or systematically planned out with specific deadlines. That either means I’m not too fussed about my list or it means I still think I have enough time left to not fret about it.

One of the things on that list is seeing all three operas in the Philip Glass trilogy about famous historical figures who’ve changed our perceptions of the world. The trilogy of works is: Einstein on the Beach, about theoretical physicist Albert Einstein; Satyagraha, about Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi; and Akhnaten, about the pharaoh Akhnaten, who introduced a new monotheistic religion into Ancient Egypt.

The tickets for Akhnaten at the Coliseum in London went on sale last year and I snapped up two front row seats in the dress circle. I figured that if I was going to do this, then I may as well do it in style… although my credit card did yelp in pain when the initial payment went through.

Fortunately, the expense was worth it. It was astonishing experience. 

Staged as a co-production between the English National Opera and Improbable Theatre, it was a visually stunning affair. The set constantly changed to create tableaus of hieroglyphic scripts, then switched to a mass coronation scene, a royal palace, an intimate chamber scene and a street riot, before returning to a tableau of the family of Akhnaten, his mother, his wife and his father reunited in death. The costumes were amazing, too.

I was already familiar with the music and the libretto because it’s one of the classical CDs that’s had the most air play at Brooks Towers. Glass remains one of my ways in to not only modern classical music, but pretty much all classical music. But there was something incredibly absorbing and engaging about hearing it live with a full orchestra and seeing it, too. It was sensory overload.

To paraphrase This is Spinal Tap, it turned the volume of the whole experience up to 11.

I’m still unsure where I stand on opera. In the UK, it’s quite an expensive and an elitist art form, even though a trip to the opera is about the same price as a trip to see a Premiership football team. But I think football is way over-priced, too.

I would, however, rather pay money to the ENO than to a multi-millionaire professional footballer. At least the artists involved aspired towards excellence and pleasing the audience, while too many footballers I've seen seem not to really care about the fans or be very good at their jobs. But that’s an internal debate for another time.

I hope to similarly mesmerised by Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha.

Five-word Reviews: The Revenant...

It's grim up north (America). 
Don't watch on date night.
Death, violence, death, more misery...