A tooth, a kneecap, arm and finger bones ... as well as a shoulder blade.

It's St Andrew's Day - the national saint of my homeland, Scotland.  But lest we forget it's useful to remember we share this patron saint with,

• Amalfi,
• Barbados,
• Cyprus,
• Diocese of Paranque in The Phillipines,
• Diocese of Victoria in Canada
• Greece,
• Luqa in Malta
• Manila,
• Romania,
• Russia,
• Siciliy and
• Ukraine;

not to mention fishermen, fishmongers and rope-makers the world over.

According to legend the relics of St Andrew housed in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh include a tooth, kneecap, arm, finger bones and a shoulder blade.  The Saint's head is in Patras, Greece (along with the cross on which he was crucified) apparently.  And an unspecified set of relics of the saint is housed in the Crypt of St Andrew in Amalfi Cathedral.  Go figure.

SCOTLAND - the official internet gateway to the country offers these "ten fascinating facts about St Andrew."  

Here's fact 4:

In 832 AD Andrew is said to have appeared in a vision to a Pictish king the night before a battle against the Northumbrians in what is now the village of Athelstaneford in East Lothian. On the day of the battle a Saltire, an X-shaped cross, appeared in the sky above the battlefield and the Picts were victorious.

Fact?  

An X-shaped cross appeared in the sky the day after a vision of Andrew the Apostle appeared to the king.  Pardon my scepticism but I think we're stretching the definition of the word fact almost to breaking point.  But here's a less dubious fact.  I used to live a couple of miles from Athelstaneford.  Nice wee place.

Statue of St Andrew by Camillo Rusconi in the Vatican

Spike and the sunflower seeds

We expect great things from our little sprouts.  Spike ordered  sunflower seeds from The Diggers Club, an Australian plant supplier which describes itself as "the club for subversive gardeners".  It draws inspiration from the radical tradition of the Diggers Movement established in 1649 in England by a group of non-conformist Protestant dissenters who have been described by some as agrarian socialists.  I'm not entirely sure the socialist label exactly fits a movement of pre-industrial egalitarian thinkers and doers who not only thought about what Christian Scripture meant within a dissenting tradition but also took direct action to reclaim land to grow produce to feed the poor.  They were certainly on the right side of history even if their influence on events and the shape of Cromwell's England was slight.  But I digress.

Spike and the sunflower seeds

Spike ordered four types of sunflower (as well as fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and other flowers) from the Diggers Club, which has its base on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.  We bought organic seeding mix from corporate giant Bunnings (until the compost heap matures we must remain a touch compromised) and Spike made individual seed pots using old, unsolicited newspapers delivered to our door, rolled around the base of an empty lemoncello bottle from a (fairly) local wine-maker at the delightful Eling Forest Winery (my favourite stop on the Hume Highway when we're driving between Canberra and Sydney).

We have Van Gogh, Moonwalker, Giant Russian and Prado Red sunflowers in the making; all tiny seedlings at the moment but quickly establishing themselves thanks to sunny days and a decent amount of rain.  Snails have raided the tray of paper pots, unfortunately, to munch their laconic way through the barely established leaves of a few of the sprouts but some seem hardy enough to recover.  Here and there new leaves are replacing those that have been devoured.  Can a snail devour?  Whether it can or not Spike is on snail watch from this point forward.

I view the growth of these plants with mild trepidation.  The smallest of the variants reaches at least two metres in height.  The Giant Russian, we are told, can grow to more than 3 metres high with a flower head of approximately 40 centimetres in diameter.  And, of course, the heads turn to follow the sun as it crosses the sky.  That's a bit too Triffid like for my comfort.  In a few weeks we may need to lock the doors to keep ourselves safe as we sleep in our bed.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens Official Teaser Trailer #1 (2...

There is really only one piece of news today with any sort of significance in my cultural universe.  What can I say by way asking forgiveness?

It's Star Wars.  There's the first trailer of the re-launched franchised.  And there is a new hope (sorry, couldn't resist it) that the whole prequel aberration is dead and buried.  The ghost of Gorge Lucas's lost vision may now be put to rest.  Thank you for Star Wars George and The Empire Strikes Back and everything in The Return Of The Jedi (except the Ewoks of course).  Thank you George for taking the $4.9 Billion from Disney then stepping out of the way.  (Can you take that in properly - $4.9 Billion??).

Since I had my first look at the YouTube clip above this morning another eight million people have viewed the trailer.  138,807 people - me included - have given the thumbs up to the trailer; 6,324 the thumbs down.  So that looks like the jury is in.  Let's hope the full movie lives up to all that hope.

I realise, of course, this is all mildly ridiculous for a grown - not to say old - man. It's a science fiction movie, a popcorn blockbuster, Cowboys and Indians in space.  But it's impossible - if your a movie-loving man of my generation - not to recall how much fun that first film was way back in 1977.  I think I can still remember the first time I watched that opening sequence - the text advancing towards the vanishing point, the burst of speed as the wee space ship broke our attention on the words then that seemingly never ending space cruiser / destroyer entering the frame like a giant lumbering lethal beast to fill the screen almost to the exclusion of everything else.  From that very first moment you just knew you were safely back in the territory of cheesy B-movies.  What fun it was, what fun. And that's what sci-fi B-movies ought to be, escapist fun.  Let's hope J J Abrams and his team get it right.

Oranges are not the Only Fruit

Finally, nearly 30 years after Jeanette Winterson's first novel was published, I have finished reading it.  You have to forgive me if I missed it first time round.  I was still in spinal rehab or had just been discharged from Edenhall Spinal Injuries Unit in Musselburgh, ten months after my accident.  As excuses go it will suffice, I hope.  "Broke my neck in two places, officer.  Wasn't reading that much to be honest."

But what about the intervening three decades?  Good question.

It's not that I've not read anything by Jeanette.  I read - and fell in love with - The Passion when I studied it as part of an undergraduate literature course at the University of Sydney.  But even that was a bit delayed. The course ran in 2012.  The novel was published in 1987.  Of course, I read anything Jeanette writes in The Guardian.  And I subscribe to her web site's discussion forum.  So I'm not entirely beyond the pale.  

I even have more recent works sitting on my 'waiting-to-be-read-shelf'.  It may have been that fact which drove me back to the beginning (not in the way of T S Eliot's Little Gidding in Four Quartets, although there is a thread uniting the two oddly enough).  But having ordered and received through the post from the Book Depository The Daylight Gate (2012) I thought that maybe I should read earlier works first. Given my past performance, mind you, I am likely to start reading my latest Winterson purchase in about 29 years.  Will I still be reading in 2043?  I may have been dead for some time by then so reading may be beyond a man of even my skill set.  But then again, I would be 86; two years older than my mother is now and - shock, horror - she still reads, so it's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.  But that's not what I came here to talk about.  I came to talk about Oranges ...

Fabby (which is an often under-used term in literary criticism) Eff - eh - bee - bee - wi.

What do I love? The voice, wit, humour, seriousness, acute sense of place and time and people, an eye for the absurd without any hint of cruelty or condescension, the interplay between different forms and the mixture of genres - autobiography, reportage, memoir, observation, fantasy, fairy tale and romance all wrapped neatly in a piece of self-aware metafiction.  I like the tone and the ambition.  I love the bravado: if you're going to play post-modern games of intertextuality why not do your intertextualising with The Holy Bible, Le Morte d'Arthur and Jane Eyre?

If the novel - is it a novel? - has a flaw it may be (for me at any rate) the leap and the speed of that leap from the micro-detail of everyday existence, family and community life of the first 5 chapters to the ruminations of the final chapter.  But that may just have been greed on my part.  I would have enjoyed more of the Bildungsroman before I got to the coda. But I'm nit-picking and besides, what would I know?

You feel you're in the presence of a courageous, inventive and confident writing mind when suddenly you come upon this: 

"Whelks are strange and comforting.
They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly.
But they have a strong sense of personal dignity.
Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar there is something noble about a whelk. Which cannot be said for everybody."

The writer who gave us those words in her first novel either had no idea what she was doing or a wholly justifiable self-condidence.  I choose to believe it's the latter.

It was a quiz on Facebook so it must be true ...

I clicked on one of those Facebook quizzes that we circulate endlessly to one another.  Eleven multiple choice selections that answer the question, "What is your true personality?" In bold, indeed.  This is how I fared ... I wonder if one of the results could show SOCIOPATH.  I doubt it.

You are a Leader!
 

As you probably already know, you are a born leader! You are a very charismatic, passionate, mature and calculated person. You are always there when people need you, you always know the right thing to say, and you are always able to help.

Your sense for leadership has gotten you far in life: You have a great career, amazing family and lifelong friends, but you are no stranger to hard times as well.

You’ve had more than enough struggles through life, and although it seemed very daunting at the time, your good spirit and amazing set of skills has always helped you to overcoming them. 

According to the photo it would seem that leaders are well-groomed, white men.

Transformers 4 - Is it the most obnoxious movie ever made?

I should have known better.  What could I have been thinking?  What more might I have expected?

I made the mistake of downloading Transformers 4, now that it's available for rent.  In my defence I could say that I was led astray. There were signs (before watching it) that ... at worst ... it might be no worse than its predecessors or ... at best ... it might have picked up a bit, given some of the names associated with this monster of bad ideas.  It has Steven Spielberg as an Executive Producer.  It has some very fine character actors from television and film - Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammar, Titus Welliver, John Goodman and Ken Watanabe (doing voices).  But no.

I missed Mark Kermode's review when it was broadcast.  That would have warned me.  We were in Brazil at the time, a week away from the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final so that's my excuse.  But I should have known better just the same.  Dr Kermode correctly calls it "as repugnant as Transformers 2" and the series an "ongoing, awful lingerie and beer advert [which] will carry on forever."  I fear the good doctor is correct.

I would tell those who have not seen it to never see it, to avoid it like the plague.  I feel unclean after viewing its unremittingly awful 166 minutes.  But I'm on the wrong side of commerce.  According to Wiki, which I have no reason to doubt here, the movie has taken over $1 Billion already.  That number will just get bigger as downloads, rentals and DVD sales kick in.  What a depressing thought.

Promise yourself one thing Douglas.  Nothing will entice you to see Transformers 5.  Nothing.

The Twittersphere does not entirely ignore me

sugarglida favorited your Tweet 
@KarenMMiddleton @nevso @sugarglida @SBSNews Sen Johnston deploying one of several versions of the non-apology apology. Try SORRY Senator.

Senate censures David Johnston for canoe slur against submarine builder

Senator David Johnston claims he is not a numptie

 From The Guardian

The Hunger Games: MOCKINGJAY - Part 1

Spike and I caught Episode 3 of The Hunger Games at Limelight Cinemas at the Tuggeranong Hyperdome (and there is an overstatement if ever there was one).

I know I'm not in the 'demographic' but I did enjoy it. It's a good movie.

There have been a few smart arse comments online about there being no games in a Hunger Games movie.  Can't say that bothered me.  Much as I was captivated by the arena scenes in movie two (probably more so than in movie one) I think a third variation on the gladiatorial theme could have been a bit tedious.  I like the shift of tone and the new set of concerns - propaganda, media management, the creation of icons, preservation of your own identity versus surrender to a cause, the duplicity and cynicism of power elites (on both sides - that was a creepy 1984 style leadership style exhibited by Julianne Moore).  It may have been a bit more talky than earlier episodes but the dialogue was well written and the acting was mostly very good (I'm still not persuaded that Peeta - Josh Hutcherson - has been cast properly but I've not read the books so what do I know?  It could be perfect casting).  Jennifer Lawrence is believable throughout; her best Katniss Everdeen so far.  I completely accepted her as a teenager this time.   I suspect her performance is what holds the movie together.  Donald Sutherland seemed more rounded too and Phillip Seymour Hoffman was ... well ... simply the greatest loss to movie acting of the 21st Century.  

I know there are plot holes you could drive a bus through - for instance, why didn't the nasty Capital just keep dropping bombs for days on the rebel stronghold?  But you can forgive them, suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride.

I like the song, one of the most effective scenes in the film.

The debate begins

At the Carers National Conference 2014, Day 3 - the whole event now I think of it - came to an end with an old-fashioned debate: Living to 130 - can we cope?  My job was to kick-off the case for the affirmative.  We won, although it wasn't the most serious session of those three days.



"And another point ..."