What if there were a clockwork family who lived in the house by the railroad from Edward Hopper’s painting? That’s the starting point for this odd and disturbing film.
Stanley Pickle
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Tag Archives: Love
The Lady and the Chocolate
A sensitive exploration of love and chocolate by Edward Monkton. The Lady’s voice thrills me inexpressibly. See his website for more interesting thoughts.
Memorial to a Unknown Dog
I came across this memorial while walking round the north side of the loch today. It’s beautifully made, quite elaborate, and a lot of care obviously went into its construction. The structure’s built at the side of a well-used path, which must have been the dog’s favourite walk. I don’t know how long it’s been there, long enough for the pictures to become damp and faded. Walkers seem to have respected the site, and left no litter, unusual for Campbeltown.
This collie must have been very much loved.
Doctor Who: Hide (7.2.4)
Clara: To you I’m a ghost. We’re all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.
Doctor: You are the only thing worth solving.
Another brilliant episode by Neil Cross, this one inspired by The Stone Tape, a 1972 television play by Nigel Kneale. That was set in a castle and involved a group of scientists deploying all the tools of their trade to catch the screaming ghost of a Victorian servant girl. As in Hide, there was something really nasty chasing her, and it even had the detail of a cache of tinned food left by scared GIs.
Hide is a properly scary ghost story that turns into a love story for all the characters, even the skeletal monster, without losing any of its tension. The writing is as complex as you could wish for, and certainly expect from someone like Neil Cross. He teases out the tensions between that threesome, the Doctor, the Tardis, and Clara, and between Alec Palmer and his assistant, Emma Grayling. Nice in joke, that, making reference to it being 1974 so Emma would not have been his companion. But it also makes an implicit comparison between the Doctor/Clara and Alec/Emma, which is reinforced by Clara and Emma talking about their relationships with the Doctor and Alec, and Alec confiding in the Doctor. It ends with two threesomes, as Alec and Emma are joined by their many times great granddaughter, Hila.
The plot is simple and gripping. Alec is assuaging his guilt about sending agents to their death in WWII by trying to contact the screaming ghost who inhabits the house he’s bought. He’s assisted by Emma, an empathic psychic, who can detect what the spirits are feeling. Their work seems to have some official backing, judging by the Doctor being able to pass himself off as the Man from the Ministry.
The Doctor rescues the ghost, in fact a time traveller, from a collapsing pocket universe that echoes this one. Emma is the lantern to whom Hila is attracted, and she’s hauled in on a rope and winch through a wormhole between the worlds. But that leaves the Doctor marooned with the monster who’s been chasing Hila. So Clara has to confront the Tardis, in the form of her own image as the Tardis Voice and Visual Interface, and persuade her to trust Clara enough to rescue the Doctor. Reminds me of the Tardis falling in love with her Doctor in The Doctor’s Wife.
Clara carries out her mission with terrible driving and great panache. Hila turns out to be Alec and Emma’s distant granddaughter (“blood calling out to blood”), as the Doctor blunderingly assumes they already know. But there’s still the monster, who the Doctor realises just wants to get together with its counterpart in their own world. So he goes to fetch him with the rope and winch method (“Hello, you old Romeo, you,”) and they’re picked up by Clara in the Tardis. Lovely ending.
The episode covers a lot of ground. The love story between Alec and Emma is beautifully told with lingering looks and unrequited sexual tension. Emma and Clara’s talk reveals that Clara is not in love with the Doctor, though she clearly likes his “big chin.” And her misgivings about the Doctor are brought into the open when a trip to the world’s beginning and ending doesn’t seem to bother him in the least. Hence her worry that “To you I’m a ghost.”
The Doctor’s reply, “You are the only thing worth solving,” continues the story arc of how do you solve a mystery like Clara. Emma warns Clara about not trusting him: “There’s a sliver of ice in his heart.” And Emma confronts the Doctor directly about his motives for helping them, understanding he had an ulterior motive. It was to ask her about Clara.
Emma: She’s a perfectly ordinary girl, very pretty, very clever, more scared than she lets on.
Doctor: And that’s it, is it?
Emma: Why, is that not enough?
Clearly not enough for the Doctor, judging by his expression.
A couple of niggles. For Alec to be an intelligence agent in WWII, he would have to be at least 55 in 1974. Doesn’t look anywhere near that. And the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, not 6 billion.
Apart from that, a scary, gripping episode, with a lot of emotional meat, and the usual nuanced dialogue that has me watching each one several times over.
The Smart Phone Has Landed
Then it had a mental breakdown, and so did I. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I feel a little dirty today. After years of holding out on principle against smart phones (or any mobile phone at all) I broke down and ordered an LG Nexus 4 with a contract that ties me down for the next 24 months. Now I’ve sold out to the Tech Gods, seduced by sleek, black lines and cool apps.
Madness!
And yet I felt strangely exhilarated when the phone arrived this morning. I opened the box to take a peek at the dark, pristine beauty of the glass body, but quickly had to cover it up again. I didn’t feel worthy, yet craved the forbidden fruit. Technology is so much more efficient and beautiful than we faulty flesh bags. That’s why beautiful, young people are portrayed in the ads, enjoying their freewheeling connectedness and urban lifestyles. I’m not handsome or young, and live in a remote rural backwater. What was I thinking? Did I dare take this alien technology out of the box and make it work? What if I got smears and fingerprints on it? What if its actual function was something merely tawdry?
I took a shower and drank a cup of tea before I could even approach the phone on something like an equal footing. But when I first lifted it out the box and felt the snug fit in my hand, the perfect weight, I knew I wanted it. And this is where the swelling music in major chords disintegrates into cacophony. Because I first had to set it up, and that meant deciphering the tiny print in the skimpy instruction manual, as well as using my fat, clumsy fingers to install the sim card.
What followed was an extended outburst of profanity, as I tried to install the card, after first dropping it on the floor. Then the set-up, during which the mood weather softened somewhat, though punctuated by some quite appalling language regarding the miniscule keypad, only to turn into a thunderstorm when I realised there was something wrong with the phone. Apart from my shitty attitude towards new technology. It would not scroll up or down in the Google apps I was playing with.
Then the phone died, its last will and testament being that it didn’t think there was a sim card installed. The only solution was to pack it up and return it for repairs or replacement. The end of the affair, though it started going south with the sim card installation.
Hours of wasted time, my blood pressure through the roof, and the air so blue you’d think it was a Tory Party Conference. Even now, though, I want it back. It was an extension of my hand and felt so right. Precioussss…
New MacBook
Last week my 4 year old MacBook went doolally. So I bought another (reconditioned) 4 year old MacBook with twice the RAM, a more current OS, and a DVD drive that’s not all bent out of shape and unusable from overheating. I love these machines and will stick with them until Apple produces anything better. And they’re black. Black is cool.
(Of course, the old MacBook has been almost trouble-free since I ordered the new one…)
It arrived this morning. So while the new kid is getting its software updated – it could take a while – here is a photo essay on the joys of unwrapping a new (reconditioned) computer.
The Box Has Landed.
Bubble wrap! Hours of fun and amusement.
Couple of scratches on the base – no big deal.
Top – almost perfect.
Keyboard and screen – almost perfect. Slight scuff on left side, scarcely noticeable.
Sibling rivalry.
That’s all for now. Have to get the new MacBook feeling like home. I might be gone some time.
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay 