BLACK MIRROR - A CHRISTMAS TV REVIEW

I did rather enjoy Charlie Brooker’s version of the future where people live in cells surrounded by four walls of super wall screen TV then get up to spend the day on a treadmill – literally – a cycling machine at a global gym where you gain points for every kilometre notched up and, just like today’s gym, with a personal TV screen in front of you to keep you going. The screens in the cell and in the gym show much the same stuff every day, interactive war games, banal game shows, soft porn, and, the highlight of the day, ‘Hotshot’ where contestants perform in front of three judges and an audience of avatars based on real people in their cells. (No prizes for guessing what that is based on!) In order to enter Hot Shot, the points earned from watching the silver screen all day and for distance cycled could be exchanged for a golden ticket – valued at 15 million points. Penalty points are incurred for not watching the screen particularly the porn bits and even for putting your hands over your eyes.

The programme was aired on a commercial channel and, as ever, I turn on the mute for the adverts but still find myself distracted by the flickering screen. Even with dextrous use of the mute button, I am still familiar with the current slogans such as  ‘you’re worth it’, and am fully nauseated now by the excessively repeated creation of ‘black forest gateaux’ (it is Christmas after all). There is loud banging music and sounds for some ads and ‘funny’ regional accents on others, ‘gud with fud’. One channel advertises all night poker sessions as ‘WIN/WIN!!’ CSI promotion is getting ever more ridiculous and the money question this week is ‘which building is in the US: Empire State, Blackpool Tower, or Buck Palace?’ There are perfect families (just for Xmas), comedy ads, opera and fatmen, mellow deep throat BBC voices, computer game noises, jerky images, manic Xmas lights and Xmas music, lurid colours, happy voice overs and if that is not enough, constant promotion of programmes yet to be aired as if we did not have channel listings on screen, in the papers and on the computer. One such is for a programme about excessive compulsive disorder. Look who’s talking, methinks.

Back to Black Mirror where more semi familiar sights of twenty first century living are portrayed but where everything is accessed by a flick of the hand and a deduction of points: – the automated drinks machine that needs a judicious poke in the right place to work, toothpaste, water in the wet room, even a screen above the urinals – the latter has just arrived for real.

As the plot develops and the protagonist enters ‘Hot Shot’ with the intention of making a protest, it hammers on home the very current message that even sincerity and ‘authenticity’ can be marketed, just another commodity.

I turn to my other flickering screen, the home computer, where yahoo is offering information on ‘how to pull off wearing white’ and the latest news is about plans to use rubber bullets (‘kinetic impact munitions’, ‘energy activational system’) and water cannon against any future rioters. Indeed, the next article I read says that real bullets are now considered to be a necessity as, according to one MP, ‘the balance of risk has changed’. There has been a survey (one of those ‘consultations’ I daresay) where the majority of people have expressed that they are in favour of real rounds being fired. As for tent demonstrations, ‘more flexible and dynamic ways’ of dealing with them and a new law is being considered by our glorious Home Sec, Theresa May.

Yahoo public comments on these topics (I assume these comments are put up by real people but who knows….) range from ‘use petrol’, ‘use dye’, ‘then shoot ‘em’, to the rather outnumbered  mild remonstrations like: ‘slippery slope’, ‘compare the Arab Spring’.

I don’t bother adding any comments myself (already wondering who is watching….who is reading…..) but I am feeling like I am slipping into a parallel universe through the ‘Black Mirror’. I don’t remember voting for any of this. Maybe Theresa May is just an avatar in ‘Call of Duty’ and I can get a few points for blasting her and all who agree with this stuff off the planet. Maybe use an energy activated missile from my cartoon armoury.

Be very scared? Yep, I’m scared.

BUYING A TELEVISION

My old faithful and its freeview box finally keeled over with the impending stress of digital takeover. Neither it nor the remote were able to deal any more with the constant switching from digital to analogue when the signal went on the blink. I did consider ditching the damn thing for ever and renouncing what I like to call that ‘evil box’ in the corner. But I succumbed and went off to get an up to date flat screen with the digi thing included.

How hard could that be I ask my dear readers? I think you may guess that a rant is bubbling and I have to share this nonsense with you.

Naturellement I tried to survey the vast choice on the internet to get a grip on what was on offer for my budget and required needs. (Needs – just a telly really that would play the usual stuff I like to watch and I hardly need remind you that this is pretty much limited to CSI, Big Bro and Question Time. I definitely do not need a zillion channels because I can barely be bothered with the basic set of five.) And even more naturellymente I could not understand a word of the list of the modern accoutrements that now are standard fittings – I think, ahem, that your telly is now a computer that can virtually swing from the chandelier should that be required.

I gave up on the descriptors and got down to an actual shop with a human in it to explain all to me in basic English. The gist of it seemed to be that a greater proportion of something or other will give you a better clearer high definition picture. (HD being the big thing – they are all ‘HD ready’.) Well that sounded good. I do like a clear picture, no doubt about that, I still remember the days when getting any picture at all could consist of a lot of kicking and banging and sticking metal coat hangers in somewhere. Indeed you could be quite grateful for a picture that could settle for one minute in every ten amidst horizontal and vertical waves gone crazy. So, yes, I said, I want the best pic I can afford on a 32inch with whatever extra doodahs.

Then the sales person dropped the line, are you with ‘Sky’? No and nor do I wish do be, I reply. Oh, but then you will get the HD, good reception and your live sports will look even crisper and no footballers will be seen to wobble around the pitch. I’m kinda puzzled now and ask if I can have a telly from the huge selection displayed that can offer all that but without paying for ‘Sky’. And frankly, I am not too worried about the footballers. Apparently, (and I swear I have heard this correctly) no, it is not possible to have a perfectly working picture unless you get ‘Sky’ or some other kind of ‘box’. I am, of course, swearing profusely by now and saying loudly and embarrassingly, I daresay, that I will NEVER be buying any kind of ‘box’, least of all a “Murdoch’ box as I have no intentions of increasing the coffers of that old snake. I am definitely NOT going to spend a small fortune on the one ‘evil box’ only to have to pay out on a monthly basis for some other ‘box’. Streuth, what a con.

I bought the telly, assuming this was all a bit of jiggery pokery to get you to buy more – boxes and dongles and other weird stuff that will make it do computerish things like skyping. No need for any of that, just the telly please……

I get it home, set it up – perfect picture, all seems in working order. Lasts for three weeks until it rains. Then, just like my old set with the digi box, it loses the signal. No signal. No box, you see.

I HATE DIGITAL TELLY (AND RADIO COMING, OR RATHER, NOT COMING SOON). BRING BACK ANALOGUE!!!! OR DO WITHOUT??

Anyone with me on this?

I do know some who have managed very nicely without one for years. I know there is always the computer which if not watched live will also obviate the need for a licence……..

Where to start?

I wrote this one below before the riots but didn’t get round to putting it up. I will be putting in my two penn'orth about those in due course – but in the meantime, here is the ‘pre riot’ reflection’………

Damn, I just don’t know where to start with this blog. Shall I review some books? I am reading voraciously but not feeling much more enlightened. Maybe will by the time I have got through the tome on the roots of Murdock, yes, sic, I don’t care to give him the courtesy of good spelling.

TV? Still too addicted to CSI. Why oh why can we not get them down to a few ‘unexplained’ deaths round here. They are the new Lone Rangers of the airwaves. Fictional y’see. (I have been reminded on occasion that their high tech methods are in the realms of science fiction. Damn and I thought it was all so real.)

The state of the nation? Cost of living goes up by the minute but hurrah for Boris for recommending that the 50p tax rate is too much for the bleeding rich. Not a squeak about the bankers getting their fat bonuses. Again. Oh and why are we fining British Gas  (£3 million A DAY profit) for being incompetent; could they not have been forced to reduce their charges instead?? Doubt that £2.5 million will even dent their lunch budget.

My disgust at the government trying to make me work two more years than the four extra I already had added on to my ‘time’? I don’t want to work any more, pay more for my pension, contribute more tax for other peoples’ bonuses. Does that make me sound lazy? Why have I not found a new business plan or exciting alternative to work? I have not been paying sufficient attention to all those twittered punchy quotes about being eternally positive. Goes in one ear and then they go out………

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5q_EBNUTH8&feature=BF&list=ULH-xNa9NJj54&index=13

Or the horror of the latest atrocity fighting for air space with the passing of a pop icon? And do not get me started on the murderoch miscegenation of PPP – press/politicians/police. Still that’s all by the by, the media are on to blanket Olympics coverage now – trying to get us more jolly I expect. Not getting far with me though - I now have to pay three times as much as before for my parking permit and have to have three bins outside my house, colour coded.

Summer holidays and the screeching strangled amplified muzak of the icecream vans is upon us. Still ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’. Why not ‘Riding For A Fall’ by Horace Andy, I ask myself.

I am well past 50 and qualify fully for grumpy old woman status. I like sitting in the garden admiring flowers and birds tweeting. (As in singing: they are on trees, not online, yet……….)

Yes it has come to this…everything in the garden is just lovely.

WHEN WE WERE SIX

http://theadvanceguardess.blogspot.com/

Loving TYCOONWOMAN’s blog about the approach of the big 50. She has included a poem from her youth that made me think about my first decade and what poem would I choose. So Ola, this is my response to your challenge:

Growing up in the fifties meant I had the Beacon Readers as an introduction to reading. I still have those stories on instant recall; the three Billy Goats Gruff and their march over the dangerous bridge, Chicken Licken and her fears that the sky would fall in. For some weird reason, I even liked to recite the lists of words at the back, words that rhymed, words that were similar, all seemed very soothing to chunter through just before sleep.

There wasn’t that much telly in the fifties. I remember listening to the radio, sorry, the ‘wireless’, more. But there again, there was Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men with their little ’weeeeed’ in the middle. I loved them to bits and saw no irony at all there! I also watched The Woodentops who I did regard as a bit freaky as their legs seemed impossibly straight and thick.

I was also an obsessive fan of cowboy films, usually backing the Red Indians to win. My eternal favourite TV serial was Champion the Wonder Horse, followed by The Lone ranger with his mate Tonto, the loyal Indian;

‘In the early days of the western United States, a masked man and an Indian rode the plains, searching for truth and justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!"

I begged every wishbone I ever pulled till I was about 35 for a piebald black and white pony. Damn, it will never come true now I just told you that. I don’t care it is now not seen as quite politically correct, at least there were notions of truth and justice in it.

But my favourite poem? Hard to choose because I loved poetry as a child and had a big treasury that I would regularly plough through. Christina Rossetti was a fave I seem to recall. But how can you beat my eternal favourite – AA Milne and ‘Now we are Six’ which I read and reread and still read! Now I’m nearer 60 than 6, I‘ll just put a few choice extracts down:

Busy:

‘Perhaps I am a postman. No, I think I am a tram.

I’m feeling rather funny and I don’t know what I am.’

(I regularly quote that last line in my head.)

Binker

'Binker – what I call him - is a secret of my own,

And Binker is the reason why I never feel alone.'

(I am the sort of person who had a very real imaginary friend as a child and I am still sustained by inner conversations.)

Twice times

'There were Two little Bears who lived in a Wood,

And one of them was Bad and one of them was Good.
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times One-
But Bad Bear left all his buttons undone.

………….


They lived in the Wood with a Kind Old Aunt.
And one said "Yes'm" and the other said "Shan't!"
Good Bear learnt his Twice Times Four-
But Bad Bear's Knicketies were terrible tore.


And then quite suddenly (just like Us)
One got Better and the other got Wuss.
Good Bear muddled his Twice Times Three-
But Bad Bear coughed in his hand-ker-chee!


.............

There may be a Moral, though some say not;

I think there’s a moral, though I don’t know what.

But if one gets better, as the other gets wuss,

These Two Little Bears are just like Us.'

Oh I hope there is a moral, though I don't know what.....!

LUCK BE A LADY

My thoughts this week run on gambling.

I could go on about how lovely it is to work in a bookshop for a few hours a week – love reading as I work, (HA!), sorting out bookshelves, talking to other book lovers. Buying up a few bargains and birthday presents. Oh I could go on and on about the joys of the bookshop….

But no, I want to mention gambling. It’s been a sore point with me for a while. I felt a creeping distress when a third branch of a well known bookies opened up in my local high street. There are now at least six on the not so long road that is the hub of the community. I like my High Road as it still has small individually owned shops that have been there a long time and has been overlooked by all chains – except the bookie chains. (‘Bookie’ eh? Not quite the same as a bookshop).

The internet, of course, is full of ‘opportunities’ to win plastered all over everything and I regularly get held up in the queues in newsagents or the supermarket by people diligently completing forms and handing over hefty wads of cash for the fluttery.

There is not much on telly these days that I particularly like to watch, least of all such stuff like million pound Droop, a really gruesome torture chamber without  a passing nod to the contestants’ intelligence as attempted by its predecessor, Who Wants a Millionaire. And apologies to all those millions of fans out there of Deal or Deal -  that one for me is truly the most nauseating of wind ups. I reckon they change the amounts in the boxes as they go along to create the tension, a simple trick for any basic magician. The hosts of these shows probably earn many millions for their ability to coo over and get pretended excitement for their victims’ possible lucky break.

I do, however, have a slight obsession with CSI, something about the clean clinical detachment and analysis, following a variety of tortuous and often macabre murder scenes, where test tubes are swished about and computer graphics are generated to a selection of musical soundtracks. Always a little twist and an Aggie Christie desire to avoid the most obvious suspect until all ends are neatly tied by the end of the hour.  Then, just as one is enjoying the denouement, up pops a banner to tell me I can ring a number and win some phenomenal amount like £5000. They used to ask an inane question like, did the action take place in Miami, Bali or Tasmania, but now they don’t even bother with the question. Just ring in and we will bank the price of your phonecall, £1 minimum. I don’t like it on top of the way too frequent ad breaks. It’s disturbing, I don’t need it, I don’t want it, I will not be ringing in. I want CSI without the opportunity to win something, thankyou.

All the reminders that we could all do with the extra money, that this could be our turn, that win so richly deserved is just around the corner. So needed in times of recession, such a great niche market…….

A few years ago (yes this is a recurrent theme for me) I wrote a sort of poem dedicated to all those who want it to be ‘them’. These lines are theirs, I’ve heard them all. I still don’t know anyone who won yet but sure it is just a matter of time and Lady Luck smiling on you.

Ghetto Dreams

If I won a million pounds

I’d look after you

And you and you and

I’d have a car and a house

And a holiday and I wouldn’t

Forget you

I wouldn’t change I’d still be me

I’d be free

I wouldn’t have to work again

I might do work I wanted to do

Work for myself or not work

If it’s a nice day

Every day would be a nice day

Fly away to a sunny land

Everyone is smiling

And beautiful I would be attractive

And popular you will want to be my friend

Bouncers and police will be nice to me

Could even buy a peerage

Could go shopping buy whatever whenever

Pick up a phone and order

Make someone else clean up the mess

I’d be happy no matter what crisis

Money there to mop it up

Tidy away the inconveniences the stress

Order a massage

Pay someone to pay the bills

Never worry again about the knock on the door

Unrecognised

O life would be a peachy sunset beach

If I won a million pounds

It’s not a dream it could come true

You have to believe

If you don’t believe it can never come true

I want that fucking peachy beach thing

I really want it need it now

Believe.

MAY MUSE

Random thoughts this week:

Three months not working now and I have found plenty to do with my time, so much so, this blog is getting neglected. It’s already like, however did I manage to fit work in? I keep a diary to try and figure out where those spare minutes hours and days are going. I don’t think about the past. Except maybe the distant past.

So what’s new in the Hood:

Royal wedding – yes I watched it, small moderate house party to share comments on the outfits and say ‘aah’ at the appropriate moments. And what a lovely C of E service it was – brought a pang of nostalgia for that once powerful institution and my childhood Sundays that revolved around church, roast dinner and a walk along the prom.  Out dancing later where we dedicated ‘she’s royal, so royal, she’s a queen’, to Kate and ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp0ESS9V-wI

AV voting – yes I voted. Still can’t work out how AV would have improved anything. It’s not PR. And yes I did weigh it all up carefully, unswayed by which celebrities supported each cause. And yes I did understand it. Duh.

But what a bonus that Nick C got clobbered. He’s got lie for England on speed dial. I love his latest hard man tactic over the NHS and after he did sign the white paper (we all saw it Nick); Dave and Andy L must be quivering. Not. I bet they’ve cooked it up between them to add a bit of frisson to the ‘consultation’ before demolishing the NHS and handing it over to the privateers and insurance scammers. He’ll still be whinging that we do need to make radical changes to provide the best service for people and we do want to carry the public with us in the reform of the NHS etc etc. Funny how he’s not so vocal about the reduction of senior exec pay that he mentioned in ye olde libdem manifesto.

And what exactly does ‘free at the point of use’ actually mean? Is there a point of non-use where you have to pay? I hear some doctors think that the reforms will result in ‘NHS’ becoming a brand name only. All that ‘choice’ and ‘competition’ eh? It’ll be just like British gas or the railways…..

Ranting at the computer – yes it is such an enjoyable hobby. Those twitter links lead into all sorts of other worlds I never knew existed, some fascinating and beautiful too. Then I can actually read a book from start to finish if I so feel like it, what a joy! Or take time for a potter round the garden in this heaven sent sunny spring weather.

Oh yes, and I am tackling the spring cleaning, eating healthily (no choc croissants) and looking for a new job. I’ve found a voluntary job for half day a week in an Oxfam bookshop so that I don’t get too lazy and look forward to rooting out some good reads there. My new life is a’comin in and I am still ‘feeling good’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhY_fXLmo78

LIBRARIES – WE DO NEED THEM

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/most-popular/2011/04/01/zadie-smith-writes-in-defence-of-our-libraries-115875-23029320/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Willesden_Old_Library.jpg.

Thankyou Zadie Smith (see article) and all other authors in defence of libraries. Shame on Shaun Bailey for saying we don’t need them.

Here in Brent, six libraries are scheduled for closure but plans are currently being made for a brand new ‘cultural hub’ in place of Willesden Library – built as a new centre twenty years ago and included a cinema and café. Lack of investment or poor management has left the cinema and café abandoned. There is still a successful museum, art gallery and thriving bookshop. All these will go under the redevelopment which will see the small car park given to property developers to build more expensive boxes/’flats’ and the library squeezed into a corner surrounded by council offices. This is what they will be calling a ‘cultural hub’.

I remember the original Willesden Library, a small Victorian house that is still there and looks (see pic)  like something out of a fairy story. It was crammed full of books both downstairs and upstairs with a huge selection of fiction and non fiction. I remember when that was regarded as too small hence needing redevelopment. Around the eighties, many libraries ‘redeveloped’ to try and keep up with the modern times, even then already seeing a steady seepage of library users away to TV, to films and the computer world we now inhabit. There were massive sales of books from libraries: those deemed too old, too tatty, too unpolitically correct. Many a bargain to be had. As the computers moved in so the books moved out even more.

I have visited many a new academy school where what used to be well stocked libraries have turned into  computer rooms with an occasional shelf dotted with a few books. Yet when I visited my friend’s son’s private school recently, what a surprise it was to come across a sprawling suite of rooms all filled with well stocked book shelves and quiet tables to read and work on, just like the libraries of old.

There is a lot of talk about equal opportunities and social mobility but the cutting of libraries will see further erosion of these worthy aims.

Zadie is right to question the motives of this government in this wiping out of history. There will be one set of people who will rely on films, TV, Google and phone apps for their information and another set who will still have access to books. Google and Kindles can never quite replace books no matter how much they put on line. There will always be control over input. Remember the joy of finding a banned book or one not considered quite suitable for young minds?

I know that we are already at overload and choices always have to  be made about the information we access but we all deserve to have the choice.