Falling Sky

Homecoming

It's been less than five days since we went into Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, but it feels an age ago, inconceivably distant. Today, finally, Katherine & Magnus were both given the all-clear to come home. Given the bogglingly odd weather over Scotland today we had to make sure he was nice and snug on his first introduction to the outside world (hence the second photo, Magnus clad in a jacket, hat and gloves knitted by his own Mum). And now they're home, Magnus snuggled up against Katherine while he gets his first introductions to music (we're finishing up the evening with Celtic Dreamland, with bedtime round the corner). He seems to be asleep, even if his hands aren't.

So - that's us now, the two of us now three. The next few days are going to be spent settling into this new life with a new life, free of the drama and anxiety of a hospital stay (as lovely as the maternity unit staff undoubtedly were), as we get used to having this little human being to look after. Thank you to all those who've been in touch one way or another to give their support and congratulations, it's meant a huge amount to us and been a great support to me when coming home on my tod. What a joy, then, to have my family home at last. Our old normality is long gone. Let's see what this new one's like.

Delayed Familification

Aw. Despite my hopes yesterday, sadly Katherine & Magnus are spending tonight at the hospital after all. I really miss them - I'm rubbish on my own, mooching around the house and looking lost - but given the happenings of Saturday morning I'm glad that the Maternity Unit are looking after them so well and making sure everything's tickety-boo before release.

Today went fine, with me changing a couple of nappies entirely on my tod with minimal disaster, and Magnus having quite the appetite. He's got a touch of the jaundice (though not as much as the above photo suggests) so gets placed in the sunlight whenever any happens to appear in Kirkcaldy, counter to the usual advice on babies and sunshine, but seems fine otherwise, veering from dozy slumbers to wide-eyed mouth-clucking milk-hunger (and, oh, his utter disappointment when I pick him up and he roots around for a nice milky nipple, only to get a mouthful of t-shirt).

Anyway, time for bed, back to the hospital again tomorrow - I can only hope that this time tomorrow there'll be three of us here, not just me (in which case I probably won't be blogging, so if all's quiet here tomorrow evening then all's gone fine). But if you've not read it yet I've got to point you in the direction of Charlie Brooker's latest column in the Guardian.  Partly because it's a wonderful piece of writing, partly because the events he describe are very close to what happened with ourselves (the only notable deviation being that when I put scrubs on it all proceeded to go ahead) and as such he nails the emotions, feelings, the sheer holy-shitting-fuck-WHATness of it all - and the overwhelming feeling of love and euphoria that quickly followed. Here's an excerpt but, seriously, do read the whole thing. It's all true.

Apologies for swearing in the presence of a child, but the first thing I thought was "Fuck me". Not just as an expression of surprise, but as a mission statement, as in: "Fuck me and what I want – from now on, my task is to protect you, whatever or whoever you are." Prior to the birth, other dads had warned me that "bonding" might not happen for weeks, even months. Also, I was worried I might simply feel nothing. Instead I felt reprogrammed, head-to-toe, in an instant. That was a shock.

Day Two

Another short blog-based update, having spent the day at Victoria Hospital with my lass and our boy. All going fine, hoping they'll be able to come home tomorrow but not confirmed yet. Katherine was delighted to hear about all the good wishes from all the many many good people over the last day. Had my first attempt at changing a nappy (with the help of Wifey, thank the stars) and in doing so experienced the kind of disaster that existing-parents warn parents-to-be of with the thousand-yard-stare of veterans - more on that in a future post, no doubt. Here's a couple of photos from today, along with a sketch of Magnus I drew on the iPod - awfully difficult to draw a two-day old, they're pretty much lacking in solid lines (unless you draw the hands, which are nothing but lines and lines and lines). Anyway, time for bed. Tomorrow - fingers crossed.

   

A Birthday

Welcome to our universe

Welcome to the planet earth

- Intruder, Susanna

Magnus David Peter Nagl, born today just after 7am. Mother and baby are both fine, staying overnight at hospital, while I've been sent home until visiting time tomorrow. Even in the silence of this house, I can hear in my mind the squelching pulse of the baby's monitored heartbeat during labour, and the wailing of his cries during his more aggrieved moments this afternoon. Not a day old, and he's already got me wrapped around his fascinatingly wrinkly little finger. And I couldn't be any happier.

I'm also absolutely shattered, with hardly any sleep since Wednesday, so I'll be heading up to bed in just a minute. But I wanted to have something posted to mark today, though the overwhelming feelings and emotions of the last few days feel beyond even my usual hyperbole-drenched words. I'll let the above picture and lyrics from a couple of songs do the job for now.

Will you stay in our lovers' story

If you stay, you won't be sorry

'Cause we believe in you

Soon you'll grow so take a chance

With a couple of kooks

Hung up on romancing...

- Kooks, David Bowie

 

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

WATCHING: Hairy Bikers' Bakeation (BBC2/BBCHD/iPlayer). Normally I really dislike cookery programmes.  With cooking (like sport, or sex) it's usually much more fun to be an active participant than a passive observer - and after watching someone prepare some delicious food on such shows, you don't even get to taste it! Oddly, the rare few I have actually enjoyed enough to watch all the way through have all been focused on baking. I'm not entirely sure why that is - perhaps because I'm already comfortable with basic bread making, perhaps the relatively messy aspect of baking helps avoid the soft-focus tweeness of other shows?  Dunno.  Whatever it is, while I really enjoyed Rachel Allen's Bake! series (her visit to Falko led directly to our choice of wedding cake), I quickly lost interest with her Home Cooking series despite following a near-identical format. And while I normally wouldn't bother watching the Hairy Bikers cooking their merry away through a series & tie-in book, I've found myself cheerfully tuning in to the Hairy Bikers' Bakeation this month.

Two episodes in, it's an odd but generally endearing mix of a) yon Hairy Bikers baking a recipe available on the BBC website (and the tie-in book), b) a baker from whatever country they're in demonstrating how they make their own particular specialities, and c) general travelogue malarkey as they make their way around Europe. The first episode was cracking, focused on Norway, complete with oodles of beautiful vistas, quietly polite people, a jaw-dropping hotel and gorgeous bakeries, culminating in a bread that looked so good the inability to taste it was infuriating (where's my Wonkavision?). The cooking highlight was probably 95-year-old Nikka, a lovely old lady who looked like she'd been drawn by Sylvain Chomet, and her decades-old waffle iron - good luck getting one of those in Lakeland. The mix of travel show and cookery show isn't the smoothest, and the second episode (cramming in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) was very much travel show first, cookery second. Still, hopefully upcoming ones will spend a bit more time back in the bakery, particularly the episodes in Germany and Austria. And while the Hairy Bikers' schtick is laid on thicker the stodgiest wholemeal ever, somehow it's on just the very edge of the right side of cheery-daftness/downright-annoyingness. Now if only they didn't have such a propensity towards nudity... 

Anyway, you can get recipes from the show up on the BBC Food site, while the trans-European nature of the show has been picked up by the Open University who've produced a fascinating interactive map on the language of baking across Europe. And while there are clips available to view, there don't seem to be any embeddable ones - silly Beeb! - so we'll just have to make do with this not-safe-for-work spot of re-editing by Cassetteboy instead.

 

READING: For fans of all things Moominage and Moominish, I'd highly recommend this article that caught my eye, The Moomins, and their gift for tolerance written by Gordon Campbell over two years ago. It's a lovely piece of writing that captures the joy of the Moomins, the emotional heart, the depths, the things that have made the Moomins ring true for so many people over the last 60+ years.

What makes the Moomin stories so enjoyable – and so popular with parents as well as children – is the wit, compassion and energy present in such abundance. Adults and children respond alike to the same elements in these books, which is quite a rare event.

[...] One English boy wrote to her : ‘I enjoy the Moomins so much because they are so unreal in form, and so real in person.’ No author, Jansson wryly responded, could ask for a higher compliment.

It also links to this equally beautiful obituary for Tove Jansson by Shelley Jackson from 2002.

Melancholy, ambivalence, loss and disillusionment, yearning and disappointment are Tove Jansson's great themes; she is also really, really funny. The unnameable may be no farther away than the bottom of the garden, but it is also no closer. Moominland has floods, comets and tornadoes, but it also has Moominmamma, who can banish most terrors with weapons no stronger than a cup of coffee and a good spring cleaning. 

LISTENING: Just getting into the latest album from School of Seven Bells, Ghostory. It carries on the lovely jangly wall of sound from their previous records with a great pulsing relentlessness, like Cocteau Twins doing krautrock. The standout so far for me is the first track, which is rather scuppering the rest of the album because as soon as The Night finishes, more often than not I'll press |< and play it again (it's great for getting a fast walking pace going, particularly for marching up Leith Walk after work). 

BEING IMPRESSED BY: I'm at least a week behind the rest of the Internet on this, but stuff it - if you've not had the pleasure yet, do watch this five minute video of the Wrecking Crew Orchestra from Japan. It's thrilling stuff, using electro-techno like Daft Punk and Justice to soundtrack dancing in 'neon suits', said suits being turned on & off to give the boggling impression of video editing cuts happening in reality. Definitely one for watching in as HD as possible.

From Here To Paternity

(What the... is that a moustache?)

Blimey. Seems like only yesterday I was writing this post announcing our status as parents-to-be, though it turns out to have been six months ago. This Thursday sees the Sprög-to-be - who has become known online as Bagl (I think it was Stu N who came up with that?) - reach the ripe old age of 39 weeks in utero... except he would only have been conceived 37 weeks ago, such is the slightly confusing way of dating these things. ANYWAY, the point is that the little bounder should finally be making an appearance into the world very flipping soon indeed, so before he does so and everything goes totally babybatshit crazy, I thought I'd try and write about what the last eight months have been like.

And yet... now I'm actually sat here, trying to put it into words, it seems damn near impossible. There's been so much, such a conflict of emotions, that whenever I try to express them in words I feel the need to add a bucketload of provisos and context. It all gets terribly complex and putting stuff in writing can over-simplify, leaving out things you think go without saying but, it turns out, don't. One tweet expressing anxiety at the upcoming birth was misinterpreted as a horrible winge at the child itself, an experience that underlined the risk of getting into this stuff in 140 characters or less, at least if you're as clumsy at expressing yourself concisely as I am.

Because I don't want to just say the pregnancy was 'good' or 'bad' - it's nowhere near that simple or clear-cut. It's fair to say it's not been the pregnancy neither Wifey not I expected, with hyperemesis gravidarum hitting hard from early August to... well, there's no one day where suddenly everything was tickety boo again, but the second half of the pregnancy was certainly an improvement on the first. I found it profoundly difficult to see Wifey so wiped out by the sickness, for so long, and given what she was going through she handled things amazingly - she's been incredibly strong throughout all this. It's awful to see someone you love suffering and feeling utterly unable to make things better, and during those early months I hurtled about the internet looking for possible solutions that might help. Of those, we can (cautiously) recommend the following for at least making it very slightly less horrendous, with the proviso that what works for one person might not work for anyone else on the face of the planet:

• smelling a freshly-cut lemon;
• drinking ice-cold water, through a straw;
• Wifey was able to drink lemon barley water when all else seemed unbearable, again through a straw (we've still got three unopened bottles of the stuff!)
• freezing packets of Capri-Sun, then sucking them throughout the day slushy-style;
• Gaviscon (note: in the UK you can get big bottles of this on prescription);
• rich tea biscuits, Ryvita, Crispbread, toast, crackers, all with a very thin layer of butter spread on top;
• Polos - good way to 'drown out' too much saliva;
• Tracker bars are handy for nibbling for if you have to go out;
• for dinner: baked potato, noodles, rice, pasta, gnocchi, but not with any rich sauces;
• if you can stomach cereal with milk, small bowls of corn flakes or rice crispies.

I stopped drawing faces on them after the second day

With regard to that last one, having breakfast as early as possible (part of the problem seems to be excess stomach acid building up while you're asleep with nothing to do) seemed to help - I've brought her breakfast at 5:30/6am every morning since last summer, the contents of the breakfast changing as we tried to figure out what worked best for her (get a sturdy tray and a cool bag).  Indeed, multiple bowls of cereal throughout the day have been a real help to Wifey when little else would stay down. The word you keep hearing when looking for guidance is GINGER - be it ginger snaps, ginger tea, ginger cake, anything ginger is apparently a real blessing.  However, if ginger causes your tummy to do somersaults at the best of times, that's chuff-all use. And don't assume it's just a part of pregnancy to be endured - getting help from the doctor made a big difference.

All that said, through no-ones fault, I still felt both helpless and useless, and that stung. I felt a failure for not being able to make Wifey feel better, and this was something I had to deal with over those months. I can understand, though certainly not sympathise with, men who look for some kind of escape when it all gets heavy - be it booze, adultery or just generally avoiding going home. I can understand it, but also despise it, because it's weak, and unbecoming of a man. Because no matter how tough it's been for me, I've no doubt it's been far worse for Wifey - and if there's one life lesson worth learning in advance of parenthood, it's not to run away from problems, from whatever's making you feel bad, awful, a failure, but to face them. And while I often felt drained and hollowed from keeping everything going at home and at work, that's what had to be done, and while I didn't try to escape it I also didn't try to bury it (well, not too deeply). Talking to others helped a lot, though only in person - it's the kind of thing that just didn't seem to belong on Facebook, Twitter or email. To verbalise these feelings, to speak them out loud, makes them manageable, not the vague amorphous clouds of doom floating around the noggin, and if there's one thing I dearly want my son to learn it's that - to really talk, to be able to say how he feels.

Looked at logically, I wasn't useless - I was doing all the housework, shopping and cooking! - but in the depths of a gloom logic doesn't shine too brightly. But this is why you're both in this as a team, together, and while you can't take the sickness for her or carry the sprog-to-be yourself, you can still do so much. Being there counts for so much - when you're going off to work it's difficult to imagine how isolating it must feel being stuck at home for weeks on end.  While I wouldn't have done things any differently, in retrospect I wish I hadn't been so hard on myself, so quick to find fault with what I was or wasn't doing. Silly boy.

Now I've made it sound as though the whole pregnancy has been a massive cloud of misery with Wifey constantly sick and me constantly sad. Not so - it's just that often pregnancy seems to be presented as a time of babymoons, the best sex ever, working until the waters break, and while that'll be the case for many couples out there, it's not for all. There were lows - see above - but highs too, along with generally content middly-bits. Because as the root of it all - an ever-growing embryo - became more apparent, it was easier to deal with everything. Both the 12 and 20 week scans were huge boosts, but so were days when there wasn't sickness, days when ante-natal appointments filled a room with the sound of the fetal heartbeat squelching away furiously like vintage Aphex Twin.

Friends and family visiting gave us both a great lift, negating that sense of isolation. As the bump became ever more apparent, it all felt realer and realer. And, crucially, it felt increasingly like something we were in together, rather than something that was just happening to Wifey. I know, I know - she was still the one doing the really hard work, but by getting as involved as possible I didn't feel like I was on the outside looking in, as though I'd done the one essential task for the father and now didn't matter. I loved the antenatal appointments, the scans, the classes, and would urge every father-to-be to go to every one, it makes a huge difference. As it progressed we spent less time talking about sickness and more & more about the Bump, the Sprög, the Bagl. I'd talk & sing to him even when I knew he didn't have functioning ears yet, playing reggae music to him through the iPod Touch. Throughout pregnancy there's a constant underlying fear, like a drone that never quite silences, that it could all suddenly end, but as the week numbers rise the fear recedes and you feel comfortable shopping for clothes, for nappies, for all that baby stuff (oh, that's for another post). We even came up with our own 'private' name for Bagl which we call him, but no-one else knows - it certainly won't be a name he's given once he's born, but it's added to a lovely feeling of togetherness. And that counts so much.

At the beginning I kept looking on the Baby & Bump First Trimester message board for indications of what would help Wifey, how soon the sickness might go, and given that we'd not announced the pregnancy at that point it wasn't possible to talk about things with others. The board helped a bit, in that I did get a few hints that we tried, but I soon gave up on reading it after some particularly idiotic anti-vaccine gibbering, mums-to-be showing off about just how much great sex they were having, and smoking mums-to-be complaining they were being strongly advised to stop smoking. There aren't really any established messageboards along the lines of B&B, Mumsnet or Babycentre for dads-to-be, but then it's hard to imagine chaps feeling comfortable with that format - I certainly wouldn't have been. But I did enjoy using the Sprout app (even if it is targeted at mums-to-be - dads can be interested too, y'know) which gives a week-by-week depiction of how the foetus is developing, usually with some kind of fruit/veg comparison (ie he's the size of a courgette!). I remember looking at this at 8 weeks and thinking how impossibly far away 39 weeks looked. How time flies...

Having brooded so much on the sad stuff, I'd like to wrap up by thinking over some of the nicest times. I've mentioned the ultrasound scans already - you get the 12 and 20 week scans on the NHS as standard (yay NHS!), but because the bump was measuring a little small we were also offered scans at 32 and 36 weeks to ensure he was developing okay (again, on the wonderful NHS, where they didn't even charge us for scan printouts). I'm happy to confirm he measured absolutely fine on those scans, and while the key purpose was to ensure he was healthy rather than give us another look at him, to see his face at these later stages was quite amazing. The real standout moment was at the 36 week scan when we were shown his face - and, as we looked, his mouth moved and his eyes opened and closed. A stunningly odd moment, in the best possible way, bogglingly reminiscent of the end of 2001 (hence the poster up yonder).

Also - while the above has me going on about feeling bad seeing Wifey so sick, the flip side was the joy of seeing her slowly improve over days, weeks and months. The delight of cooking her a proper dinner for us to eat together, making recipes like veggy shephard's pie, lentil dahl, risotto - once upon a time this wouldn't have been a big deal, but after months of hyperemesis each meal was a victory. And there's an extra frisson of pride knowing that the food I've made for my wife will indirectly make it's way to the Sprög, helping him get all the goodness he needs.

Also - having friends (both local and far-flung) who've either been through pregnancy recently or are on the way has given an awful lot of succour. I've particularly appreciated the blogs set up by Dietsch (Daddy's Whiskey) and Jenblossom (Feeding Julian) since they had their son last year - really inspiring. There's been plenty of articles at The Good Men Project over the months that have also been a help. And then there's the baby books - ah, but that's for another post too.

Also, more than anything else - Wifey. She's just amazing. She's coped with so much, but still remains an absolute star and my favourite person to be around. Even during the worst of it we would still find time to talk, to laugh, to just be together. Whenever we go outside, be it for an antenatal appointment or a walk, I'm so goddamn chuffed to be with her. And I will always, always be utterly grateful to her for going through all this to bring our son into the world.

Everyone changes over time, so it seems silly to say I'm not the same person I was nine months ago. Nonetheless, the experience has forced me to come to terms with some of my more annoying flaws (the one about talking in silly voices remains) which may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Better to get over my selfishness, my neediness for approval, before there's a tiny little lad here inadvertently exascerpating such flaws through no fault of his own. I'm hardly the perfect person now, but I feel better, readier, and possibly, hopefully, just a tiny bit more grown-up - though no doubt there's plenty more change to come in the next few weeks. But the silly voices are staying.

Well, there we go. If you've made it to the end, BRAVO. I'm not sure if that post adds anything to the world but I feel better for getting it out there, and what else is a personal blog for? I've no idea how this blog will change once Bagl appears, and things may go quiet for a bit, but I've taken to gibbering on Twitter an awful lot these days (having gone off Facebook - ah, another post!) so if you want to keep up with what happens, lookee there. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week (and hopefully not later than that) our little world is going to change - and I can't wait to embrace it, to embrace him.

(Should you be remotely interested, we've set up a wishlist for Spröggy stuff over at Amazon filled with all sorts of things that should be ideal for dressing/amusing/poking the child with. Romper suits! Totoro rattles! Finger worms! And a few things for Bagl too.)

Less Matrix, More Manic Miner

 

In the last 48 hours I've discovered the über-handiness of Read It Later combined with Tweetbot, Byline and Reeder, giving me the chance to catch up on long article reading while offline and commuting. This was perfect for getting my teeth into a snappily titled article from The Atlantic, We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction. It's an interview with Nick Bostrom of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, and the whole piece (as you'd expect with such a headline) well worth a read and immensely thought-provoking, if somewhat laden with existential dread for our species. Anyway, one particular bit caused my brain to squirm as the implications of the hypothesis filtered through my grey matter, so it's quoted in full below. Read and frown.

Can you explain the simulation argument, and how it presents a very particular existential risk? 

Bostrom: The simulation argument addresses whether we are in fact living in a simulation as opposed to some basement level physical reality. It tries to show that at least one of three propositions is true, but it doesn't tell us which one. Those three are:

1) Almost all civilizations like ours go extinct before reaching technological maturity.

2) Almost all technologically mature civilizations lose interest in creating ancestor simulations: computer simulations detailed enough that the simulated minds within them would be conscious. 

3) We're almost certainly living in a computer simulation. 

The full argument requires sophisticated probabilistic reasoning, but the basic argument is fairly easy to grasp without resorting to mathematics. Suppose that the first proposition is false, which would mean that some significant portion of civilizations at our stage eventually reach technological maturity. Suppose that the second proposition is also false, which would mean that some significant fraction of those (technologically mature) civilizations retain an interest in using some non-negligible fraction of their resources for the purpose of creating these ancestor simulations. You can then show that it would be possible for a technologically mature civilization to create astronomical numbers of these simulations. So if this significant fraction of civilizations made it through to this stage where they decided to use their capabilities to create these ancestor simulations, then there would be many more simulations created than there are original histories, meaning that almost all observers with our types of experiences would be living in simulations. Going back to the observation selection effect, if almost all kinds of observers with our kinds of experiences are living in simulations, then we should think that we are living in a simulation, that we are one of the typical observers, rather than one of the rare, exceptional basic level reality observers.

The connection to existential risk is twofold. First, the first of those three possibilities, that almost all civilizations like ours go extinct before reaching technological maturity obviously bears directly on how much existential risk we face. If proposition 1 is true then the obvious implication is that we will succumb to an existential catastrophe before reaching technological maturity. The other relationship with existential risk has to do with proposition 3: if we are living in a computer simulation then there are certain exotic ways in which we might experience an existential catastrophe which we wouldn't fear if we are living in basement level physical reality. The simulation could be shut off, for instance. Or there might be other kinds of interventions in our simulated reality.

Here's A Health To The Burryman

In the last couple of months I've been getting more and more interested in the more peculiar, non-religious traditions and ceremonies to be found out there, particularly in the UK. I've previously yelped excitedly about Mitteleuropa traditions like Krampus and last month's Lucerne Carnival, and I'd do a christmas card based around the Icelandic tradition of The Yule Cat if it wasn't basically a cautionary tale against being poor. But with a Sprög on the way I want to become more aware of enjoyably odd traditions in the British Isles (and beyond) that we can bamboozle our child's young mind with.

To be fair, there's more to it than befuddling our offspring. There's something really fascinating about this stuff and why it happens. As our lives have become less about local communities and great extended families, there are less and less opportunities to feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself. Organised religion meets this need, likewise the supporting of sport teams (though arguably both scenarios are as much about defining the group by its rivals as anything else). But what about us godless sport-spurning heathens, wifey & I?

We've previously marched through Edinburgh holding flaming torches (see above) and gave the Beltane Fire Festival a go. And although the latter was too over-subscribed to feel a part of what was happening, the former was really enjoyable (at least until we started seeing toddlers in pushchairs holding flaming torches, or that guy who shoved his still-fiery torch into his backpack so he could take a photo). There really was a strange thrill about being one flaming torch out of many, something oddly primal about walking through these streets usually filled with cars and buses carrying fire on a cold December night. There was no obvious religious aspect to it, yet it scratches a certain itch for enough people that it's become a key event in Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations. 

We've moved out of Auld Reekie, but curious local traditions remain. I'm looking forward to taking the little 'un on the village parade that forms part of the Aberdour Festival later this year, but for real nearby oddness there's no beating The Burryman. An annual tradition in South Queensferry, just on the other side of the Forth, the Burryman's Parade takes place in August. A local man is covered from head to ankles in burrs, complete with a bowler hat of flowers, and paraded around the town, supping whisky through a straw along the way (the issue of going to the toilet has thankfully been addressed, lest ye worry). According to A Dictionary of British Folk Customs (1978), referenced in the above Wikipedia entry, the giving of whisky and money to the Burryman brings good luck, while discontinuing the custom would bring bad luck. That said, there seem to be numerous other theories as to what it's all about, from scaring away evil spririts (or possibly children) to human sacrifice, but that doesn't really matter anyway - it's simply what's done, a splendidly odd ceremony that halts normality in its tracks once a year. I'm really looking forward to popping over there with the sprög for future appearances from the Burryman (and if there isn't a local 80's indie-jangle-rock covers band called Echo & The Burrymen, I'm bloody well starting one).

I was delighted to see that the Burryman makes an appearance in a recent DVD collection of film on traditions across the British Isles - he's even on the front cover, backed by the Forth Bridge! Here's a Health to the Barley Mow is a real treat, a collection of documentary footage dating from 1912 to 2003 compiled by the BFI onto two DVDs + 58 page booklet (it's priced at £23 on the BFI site but you can get it for half that on Amazon). There's six hours of film in there, capturing a surprising range of folk traditions and customs from Kirkwall to Cornwall.  There's 1920's morris dancers (complete with some unsettlingly eerie costumed characters), the Stonehaven fireball festival, accapella pub singing, tar barrel rolling and loads more - and I'm tickled to see it's rated 12 for "dangerous activity which could be copied."

 While you wouldn't spend six hours playing it from start to end, it's a joy to dip into now and then and see a side of Britain that's reassuringly odd, separate from organised religion or state-sanctioned celebration, something earthier, primal, unsafe, unpredictable, yet inclusive and communal. It makes me wonder if kids growing up today suffer from the lack of local customs that would previously have brought everyone together, making them feel part of where they are rather than being treated as suspicious outcasts just for being young. Here's a wonderfully exuberant clip from one of the highlights of the DVD, a 1953 film called Oss Oss Wee Oss about the May Day celebrations in Padstow.

For a more contemporary view of what traditions and customs are still being practiced across the land in the 21st century, check out Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids. It's a collection of photographs by Sara Hannant, and although it's limited to dear old England (I'd love to see a companion book of Scottish rituals) there's still plenty of variety in the rituals on show. The photography itself is excellent, capturing a sense of action, colour, chaos and fun, complemented with text explaining the ritual. It's all the more fascinating for the now-ness of the surroundings (Somerfields, travel agents, a Tube station sign, digital cameras) juxtaposed with horse skulls, maypoles, green faces, hobby horses, fire. Just like the Burryman, there's a delight in seeing these strange other-worldly symbols appearing in what looks like modern normality. Click through to Ms Hannant's website to see more.

Then there's this fantastic selection of photographs from carnivals across the world last month at The Big Picture. They're all fascinating, but picture 32 particularly caught my eyes - again, it's the juxtaposition of the everyday city with something altogether different, out of place. It jars the mind, as though for a brief moment there's a glitch in the Matrix, the facade has fallen, an unexpected answer to that children's book.

A man in costume passes a ticket control gate in the train station during Carnival in Cadiz, Spain on February 20, 2012. (Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters)

It's No Mononoke, But...

After getting pretty excited last year by teaser images of the new Highlands-based fantasy feature from Pixar, Brave, I've found the footage released so far to be disappointing. Narrative-wise it doesn't appear to stray from paths already walked by films like How To Train Your Dragon and Mulan, while the Scottishness is the clichéd arse-flashing boorish nonsense that too often acts as lazy shorthand for a Scottish character. Watching a complete 2 minute sequence from the film didn't help much - while technically it's astonishingly good (the detail on the hair! the archery!) it felt like Mulan by way of Disney's Robin Hood. Boo.

Huzzah, then, for living in an age where you can see what trailers are being used for other countries, because the Japanese trailer for Brave knocks the stuffing out of the English-language version (and it's got subtitles too!).  Like the Japanese poster (see right) there's a much greater focus on the woodland fantasy that was so initially enticing - perhaps the whopping domestic success of Studio Ghibli's masterful Princess Mononoke had something to do with that. Also - and this may just be because I recently spent a huge amount of time playing it - this felt far more reminiscent of woodland levels in The Legend of Zelda than anything else presented before, the forests more primal, shadowy and ancient than the fairytale woodland of Tangled. There's hope yet.

 

In The Clouds

I've been drawing the view from Castle Von Naggle since we moved in last year, albeit with huge gaps between one drawing and the next (see the not-exactly-heaving-with-pictures Aberdour sketchbook). Anyway, it's been absolutely months since the last attempt but, inbetween sniffles, I had a go at a few soft pastel pieces over the last few days (see here, here and here) but the above is the latest, and the first time I reckon I've at least started to get things right. Not so much the bottom 1/3rd, but the clouds in the top 2/3 are a definite improvement on what I've been drawing thus far. Progress!