Sea Change (Or: You Learn Something New Every Day)

I spent six hours on the train today, plus an hour and a half in the car and half an hour walking. I had a two hour meeting. I can't wait to get to bed.

However, this did mean that I got a fair amount of knitting done and I listened to all of A Tale of Two Cities, as planned. Once that was finished, I turned to the Play of the Week podcast.

I love Play of the Week because you never know what you're going to hear.
I hate Play of the Week because you never know what you're going to hear.

It's a great way to discover new things but it's difficult to feel in the mood for something that could be in pretty much any genre. That sort of diversity is great in many ways but, when my brain is a bit full of work at the end of the day, there's a very good reason that I listen to comedies.

So when I finished A Tale of Two Cities while wandering the streets of Birmingham in search of sushi,  I looked at the latest PTW podcast on my ipod. Sea Change. Well that could be anything. Absolutely anything. Especially as it was from Radio 3 (which feels a bit like treason). But it was an hour and a half which is a very good length if you need something to occupy you between Birmingham New Street and Bristol Parkway.

Sea Change is a drama set in the years before the second world war. It focuses on several key figures in and around government and their fight against appeasement.
My first thought was: This could be interesting.
Second: This could be interesting and Carl Prekopp.
Third: Is it appropriate to be listening to steamy almost-sex scenes on the train?
Fourth: Bridgwater?!

Although the play starts and ends in London, a large section of the central part of the drama takes place in the Westcountry. Burnham gets a mention, as does Higbridge (I'll brush over the fact that this is in connection with typhoid). A key political speech take place in Athelney. Why? Because the key turning point of the story centres on the Bridgwater by-election of 1938.

As far as I knew, Bridgwater's significance to history ended with the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685. Idiot.

Thanks to Radio 3 and their interesting, absorbing and surprising drama, I now know that the people of Bridgwater took a stand against appeasement. They elected a sort of coalition candidate, supported by all the major parties, on an anti-appeasement platform. He held his seat for 12 years.

I'm stunned. Partly because, well, it's Bridgwater! And also because it's rather sad that I didn't know this. I'm not particularly stupid, I have a fair-to-middling interest in both politics and my local area. I shouldn't have needed to learn this from a random podcast. I feel like the people of Bridgwater should be reminded of the important part that their town has played. A by-election in a piddling little Somerset town was fought on a national issue. Just about the most important national issue imaginable. 

So thank you, Radio 3, for the much-needed lesson in how local history played a part on the national stage. And for teaching me that stations don't need a 4 in their name to have good drama.

Our Mutual Friend

It's time for another under-educated Dickens ramble.

I wasn't really aware of Our Mutual Friend until I heard the fantastic 20 part Womans' Hour drama in 2009. I was a little confused at first but I think that's forgivable in any Dickens story where the main character goes by three different names, all of them beginning with J.

So when I saw that the current Dickens season included Our Mutual Friend, I assumed it was this version. I didn't even twig when I saw that it had 10 episodes rather than 20, I just thought they must have joined them together to make half hours. Then I noticed that each episode was an hour long and I made a definite note to listen.

Apparently the 10 hour version dates from 1984 and it feels old. Listening to two dramatisations of the same story made 25 years apart really underlines some of the things that I think we (over-critical, obsessive listeners) expect in our modern dramas.

The most interesting to me is that 1984 version is twice as long but contains about half as much atmosphere. Okay, so the 2009 version drops the sub-plots involving the Veneerings but this is supposed to be a radio drama and, whatever it is that's going on with the Lammels, you'd be hard pressed to call it drama.

I'm sure that the 1984 version remains more faithful to the content but, in doing so, the atmosphere and the very human stories of its characters are lost for large sections. I'm half way through listening at the moment and I honestly couldn't care less about John and Bella. Lizzie and Eugene are more interesting but then their story is much more interesting to start with.

The 2009 version is like a delicious sauce, reduced down from something that - though perfectly fine originally - has become tasty and strong and special through concentration. I felt drawn into the fantastic atmospheric world of the river, Abbey Potterson's inn, Veuns' shop and Harmony Hall. I could picture every scene as tendrils of mist crept eerily over everything and believe completely that John might fall for the sharp, fickle, mercenary Bella as she sparred with him.

But the difference that stands out most of all is the casting. Now I don't know the ages of the actors in either version but everyone in the 1984 version sounds around ten years older than the 2009 version. And considering half the cast is playing young lovers, or would-be-lovers, young is probably a good starting point. There's also very little variation in the 1984 voices. Compare that to Daisy Haggard's Bella and Lizzie Watts' Lizzie. It's a different world of distinctive and memorable individuals. Our Mutual Friend is next on my list of Dickens books to buy and, when I read it, Bella will sound exactly like Daisy Haggard and Lizze will sound exactly like Lizzie Watts.

I don't mean to suggest that I'm not enjoying listening to the 1984 version, because I am. But it's impossible not to be running a constant comparison between the two. I don't know if Mike Walker is intentionally working is way through dramatising all of Dickens but I say: crack on!

That brings me back to the subject of A Tale of Two Cities, which I wrote about before Christmas. Because the dramatisation was podcast, I held off listening to it. It's been sitting, unlistened to, on my ipod like the last chocolate that you've saved because you know it'll be the best of the whole tray. Last night I finally finished reading the book (no comment on whether I cried at the end) so it's time to listen. But I'm determined not to waste this on a week of 20 minute bus journeys, or to tune out in work while I'm doing something else. Like my last chocolate I want to savour enjoy it and I just happen to have a 3+ hour train journey to Warrington tomorrow.

I can't wait.

A Bedtime Story

I started this blog for a number of reasons but the biggest of the lot is the fact that I like writing things down. Though they're my main subject, my thoughts on knitting and radio aren't straight enough to form a post at the moment and I feel like writing something down. And so here's something a little different that I want to write down, if only because I never ever want to forget the first time I made up a proper bedtime story for my niece.

*****

Scene: Night time. A woman sits on a sofa knitting a Damned Frog. She's clearly babysitting because she has the requisite Babysitter Treats ready beside her. Suddenly there's a buzz on the baby monitor, followed by a little whisper.

Holly: "Auntie Becca. Auntie Becca. I'm not tired!"

Auntie Becca goes upstairs to find her niece looking rather pleased with herself after she has managed to wait a whole 30 seconds since her parents left the house before getting out of bed.

Auntie Becca: "Come on, Holly, get back into bed."

Holly's face falls as she realises Auntie Becca isn't going to say "Okay, forget sleep, let's play!"

Holly: "I don't want to!"

Auntie Becca: "But you have to try to sleep. Come on, back to bed."

Holly (reluctantly getting shepherded back into bed): "I don't want to!"

Auntie Becca (a little desperate): "But if you don't go to sleep then you won't have any dreams. What do you think you'll dream about tonight?"

Holly (sulkily): "Don't know."

Auntie Becca: "Well, I think you're going to dream about a princess. A beautiful princess who lives in a castle with her parents. What do you think the princess is called?"

Holly: "Don't know".

Auntie Becca: "Well, I don't suppose she needs a name for now. But she lives in the castle and it's on the top of a huge hill. And her room is in the tallest tower of the castle, so she can look out over the whole kingdom. She can see the fields all around the castle and the people travelling around. She can see people coming to see her father the king and she can see the really big river that stretches right across the land. It goes past the castle and off into the distance, past a huge forest and away into the distance where the princess can only see mountains.

The princess lives with her family and her friends but sometimes she wishes there were other princes and princesses for her to play with. So when she feels lonely she loves to look out over the kingdom and see how beautiful everything is. She particularly likes the days when she looks out and - really, really far away - she can see a group of white horses by the banks of the river near the edge of the forest. Now, the princess has never ridden on a horse but she's always wanted to so one day she says to her best friend friend, "Let's go and find the horses!" and her best friend thinks that's a brilliant idea. So the princess and her best friend - what do you think her best friend is called?"

Holly: "Don't know"

Auntie Becca: "Well, I think her name is Jenny. So the princess and Jenny pack up some food and the set off early in the morning to walk along the river until they reach the horses. On the way they meet a lot of people, they have some nice chats but no one knows anything about the horses. The princess and Jenny walk all day until it gets pretty dark. "I'm sure this must be the place," the princess tells Jenny. "But there are no horses here now," Jenny says. "No," the princess agreed, "And it's too late to walk back home now. What will we do?" Jenny thinks for a minute and says, "Well, I'm pretty sure I saw some lights in the forest. We should see if there's a cottage, they might let us stay over."

So the princess and Jenny go into the forest. But instead of finding the lights of a cottage, they find hundreds of beautiful little lights shining in the trees. There are more lights than they can count and they're all twinkling and pretty like the little lights in your garden, Holly. They look up into the trees and realise that there's a whole village of treehouses up in the branches of the trees amongst the sparkling lights. There are people up in the houses and they wave to the princess and Jenny, and they call for them to come up.

The princess and Jenny climb up into the treehouses and the people are lovely. They give them a tasty hot dinner and a bed to sleep in, which makes the princess and Jenny very happy because they've been walking all day and they're so tired. So they spend the night sleeping in the treehouse up amongst the sparkling lights in the forest.

The next morning they get up and their new friends give them a tasty breakfast. The princess tells the treehouse people all about the horses and how they've walked all the way from the castle to see them. But the people laugh when she talks about the horses, which makes the princess a bit annoyed.

"But you wouldn't find the horses out in the field," one of the villagers says.

"Why not? I've seen them by the river lost of times," the princess says.

"Yes, they come to the river to drink sometimes," the woman says. "But they're very shy so they wouldn't be there if they saw you coming."

"But we've come all this way to see the horses!" the princess says. "We'll have to look for them until we find them." And again the villagers laugh.

"You can't look for them, princess, they're flying horses!"

Well, this surprises the princess a lot. But she thinks about it and she realises that the horses have always been so far away that she couldn't have seen their wings. Now she wants to find them even more than ever!

"Come on Jenny," the princess says. "We're going to go and wait by the river until the horses come back for a drink." So the nice people in the treehouse village give them a picnic and show them the path out of the forest to the river.

The princess and Jenny find the field where the horses came to drink. They can see hoof marks in the ground so they know it's the right place but there are no horses in sight. So they sit down on the grass and wait.

They wait all morning there in the field but they don't see any horses. They open up the picnic the treehouse people gave them and.... what do you think they have for lunch, Holly?"

Holly: "Cheese sandwich!"

Auntie Becca: "Yes! They have cheese sandwiches! Fortunately the picnic is really big because the afternoon goes by and there are still no horses.

"Maybe we should go back," Jenny says.

"But these are flying horses! Don't you want to see flying horses?"

"Of course I do, but they're shy so they won't come. We have to be sensible, we should at least go back into the forest and see if the treehouse people will let us stay again."

But just then, they both see someone coming into the field. It's a young man and he's all muddy and he looks very tired but he's smiling and he's walking straight towards where the horses drink from the river.

"Hello!" the princess says

"Hello," the young man says, "My name is John. What are you doing here?"

So the princess tells John all about how she and Jenny have come to see the horses.

"That's why I'm here too!" John says. "I come to see the horses all the time."

"But they're too shy to come close," Jenny says.

"Don't worry," John says. "They know me. They'll see you with me and they'll know that it's safe."

So the three of them sit in the field together and eat some more of the picnic while they wait and the sun goes down. But they don't have to wait long before Jenny points up into the evening sky and says,

"Look! What's that?"

"It's the horses!" John says

In the bright light of the moon they all see a flock of horses spiralling down towards the ground. The horses are more beautiful than the princess had imagined. They have lovely white wings with soft, long feathers that sweep up from their backs. They're the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

John walks up to the horses and they nuzzle his hand.

"Come on," he says to the princess, "come and meet them"

So the princess and Jenny make friends with the horses and the horses like them as much as they like John.

"Shall I tell you a secret?" John whispers to the princess. "Sometimes the horses let me fly on their backs. Would you like to fly with them?"

"I'd love to!" The princess says. "What do I need to do?"

"Well, the horses love a snack, do you have any of your picnic left?"

"Yes! Do they like cheese sandwiches?"

"Of course!"

So the princess feeds the horses some cheese sandwiches and they love them. One of the horses dips its head and neighs and the princess climbs on its back.

"Come on, Jenny," she says.

"Oh no, I'm not flying on a horse!" Jenny says, because she's afraid of heights, "I'll stay here with the picnic basket."

The flock of horses leap into the air, one horse has the princess on its back and another has John. They hold tight as they fly up into the sky. The princess' beautiful dress and her hair are flying out behind her in the wind as the horses fly round and round, taking them up high then swooping down low. The princess laughs as they fly round because she's having just as much fun as John and the horses. They go so high that she feels like she should be able to touch the moon, then the horses fly back over the field and she waves at Jenny down below.

After a long flight, the horses bring the princess and John back down to the ground. The princess gives the horse a hug and says thank you. The horses take off again and fly up into the sky, out of sight and back to their home.

"Do you come and see the horses often?" The princess asks John.

"When I can." John says. "I'm quite busy but whenever I can get away from the castle I come and see the horses."

"The castle? What castle is that?"

"My father's castle is the other side of those mountains," John says. "I can look out of my window and see the horses."

"But I thought my father's castle was the only one near here! You're a prince?"

"Yes, you're a princess?"

"Yes!"

So the princess and Prince John talk and they realise that they have quite a lot in common. They agree that they should probably get back home but they arrange to come back two weeks later and see the horses again.

So Prince John goes back over the mountain and the princess and Jenny stay another night with the treehouse people before they go back home. They tell the treehouse people all about meeting the horses but they don't tell them the secret about flying on the horses' backs.

Two weeks go by and they meet again in the field by the river. The princess and her best friend Jenny see that Prince John has also brought his best friend with him. What do you think his name is, Holly?"

Holly (sleepily): "Umm..... maybe another John?"

Auntie Becca: "Well, that might be a bit confusing if they were both called John. I think maybe he's called Peter. And I think that Peter and Jenny probably have a lot in common too.

So the princess and Prince John spend a lot of time together and so do Jenny and Peter. Each time they go to see the horses together they realise they like each other more and more until they fall completely in love and get married.

The end.

*****

And so ends my bedtime story for an almost-three-year-old princess-obsessed girl who doesn't want to go to bed. It's not exactly word-for-word but it is rather-lame-ending for rather-lame-ending. Poor Completely Pointless Jenny, at least she ended up with a boyfriend and he even had a name of his own.

The Maltby Collection

4extra is just starting the second series of The Maltby Collection. Before I say anything else, I have to begin with: Series 2? Again? There are several programmes on 4extra that are looping round the first series, or occasionally the first two, over and over again without ever making it to subsequent series. I am this close to starting to gather statistics. Don't make me do it, 4extra, don't make me start a graph!

Anyway, while I was muttering to myself about the second series being on again, I also thought "I do quite like the Maltby Collection", followed closely by, "What is it I like about it?"

this is something I never really questioned until I started recommending radio programmes to my dad. And I've been questioning myself more than ever since I started this blog. Good thing? Bad thing? I'm not sure.

There's something rather old-fashioned about the Maltby Collection. Other than a few references I could imagine it coming from more or less any period in radio history. The humour is in the characters, not in specifically clever jokes. I don't think I've ever heard a clip from it in one of those incessant 4extra trails, it just doesn't lend itself to one-liners.

I think it rather washed over me the first time I heard it and there are certain characters (I'm looking at you, Stelios) that I just don't get and probably never will. But when the third series aired for the first time, something clicked and I got the joke. Perhaps that's why I'm so annoyed that I've heard series one and two half a dozen times since then but I'm still waiting for a repeat of the third.

The Maltby Collection has a slow-burning but usually engaging storyline (I really didn't warm to the idea of Susie Maltby and Walter Brimble) but the real jokes are the characters. It's so tempting to describe them as caricatured - because they are - but they're almost all studies in wanting what you can't have.

Museum guide Wilf and cleaner Eva spend the first series determinedly in love but impossibly separated by her ailing husband. Until he dies and they're faced with actually having to follow through on years of forbidden love across the exhibits. Rod's uncommitted pursuit of Prunela drives her into Julian's arms and a marriage that neither seems particularly committed to. Something that should surprise no one as they'd clearly worked together for years without anything coming of it until Rod's arrival played catalyst and muddied the waters.

At times the individual characters border on the two-dimensional (is that possible on the radio?), especially Prunela, but the dialogue between them and the constantly shifting tensions is where the humour is. It's not jokes, it's funny.

Besides, if you listen for nothing else, listen for Des, the ex-SAS security guard and his truly commendable diligence. Is there any other radio programme that would get away with having a character that repeats everything that's said? I think not. No, I think not.

Nimu Torva

0 - 60

This is not the post I was intending to make this weekend. I had planned to ramble a little about my new bus project (which I'm very much enjoying) or maybe, just maybe, to be feeling triumphal about finishing Winterthorn 3. As it turns out, the poor hat hasn't moved in over a week.

My weekend began with below-zero DIY with my parents. Recommended dress code for below-zero DIY is: Socks, slippers (knitted), walking boots, jeans, long sleeved top, roll-neck jumper, multi-purpose cowl-thing, hoodie, hats × 2, gloves (fingers), gloves (fingerless) and big jacket with built-in fleece. Not exactly attractive but very warm.

After my parents rescued me from bits of my house getting detached by coastal winds, they popped into the local garden centre where they found a new bird feeder and an unexpected wool shop. By this point it was not only snowing but the snow was beginning to settle on the ground but there was no way I was going to miss out on a new source of yarn only three minutes from my house!

There are a lot of things I like about where I live and I can't really complain about a town that has four different shops that sell wool, at least not justifiably. Unfortunately they all cater to a certain type of knitter. Perhaps because Burnham is pretty much a retirement community, Rico CanCan is about as ground-breaking as you're likely to get.

Well, things have changed now! Once I got to the garden centre (through crunchy snow!) I found Manos del Uruguay, Debbie Bliss, Lousia Harding, Rowan, Rico (more than CanCan!) and many other brands that I've long wished I didn't have to drive to Bristol for. The shop is being run from December to March by http://www.andeeknits.co.uk/ and, if there's a suitable space, they may move out of the glorified tent they're in now and move into the larger (and warmer) main building.

I tried to keep in mind my recent splurges on http://www.nimuyarns.co.uk/ and at Get Knitted so I was very restrained and bought a single skein of Manos Wool Clasica in a fabulous riot of rich colours and some interesting super-fine mohair from Italy that I've never come across before.  I'm planning to keep the mohair for my Chiminea pattern and try knitting it with two strands together. If that works then it should also work with Rowan kidsilk haze.

So. The mohair was sorted but what to do with the Manos clasica? I'd dithered a lot about exactly which Manos to buy and I almost fell for some stunning cranberry-coloured laceweight but I've been doing so much 4 ply lately that something in my brain snapped and demanded some substantial big, fat wool.

Although it's listed on Ravelry as aran I'm certain it must be chunky. It's single ply, rather thick-and-thin, 100% wool and utterly lovely.

There's something about Manos del Uruguay - probably seeing the hand-written name of the woman that dyed this beautiful masterpiece - that demands you do something special with this yarn. You owe it to them to make something worthy of it, something that you're really proud of.

So. Something beautiful. Something I'll actually wear/use. Something a bit different. And something I can make with one skein. I'll be honest, I truly expected this to sit in my spare room for several months until I found something on Ravelry that felt right.

My normal knitting process goes something like:

1. Buy beautiful yarn
2. Come up with a plan
3. Test to see if plan works
4. Knit it

Normally there's an extremely long gap between one and two. Steps two and three get repeated a LOT. But for some reason the Wool Clasica hotwired my brain and I went from one to four, via two and three, in about half an hour.

By the time I got home I was pretty sure it was going to be a little scarf. It's been cold in the office a lot lately and I feel like an idiot wandering round in a full-size scarf. Plus, being nearly chunky, it would knit up quickly. But that means nothing complex so how could I make it interesting? Edgings have been in my brain a lot lately and there's something I want to try that has involved stripping out the tiny mini pom-poms out of some Sirdar Snowdrop but that's another story.

I was thinking about fringes for a while but I only had the one skein and fringes can go a bit rubbish, especially if there's any risk of them felting a little with body heat.

Five minutes after I got home I was struck by an idea but I assumed it wouldn't possibly work in real life so I tested it. And it worked. It worked so very well.

It's a sort of spiral-y cast-off that I figured would go well along the cast-off edge. Though working it on every stitch looked a bit busy so I tested it on alternate stitches and I liked it even more.

All that was left was to trawl my stitch dictionaries for something that was pretty but simple enough for me to work out the repeats along with rapid increases. Plus it had to not use a huge amount of yarn as I only had 126m to work with. I tried a rather boring rib variation then something described as "Knotted Openwork". The effect is very similar to an open, latticey star stitch, something I didn't really notice until I started on the Manos.

Within half an hour I had started on the scarf and, though I had to rip it back once and accidentally stayed up to midnight, it was about 60% done by the time I went to bed. This morning I slept in late but still had it finished by midday.

I'm not sure I've ever gone from buying a random skein, to having something planned, knitting it and getting it all pinned out for blocking within 24 hours. As much as I would've liked to get a little further with my hat, I think this might have been more rewarding. I'm pretty proud of both the result and my half hour of high-velocity inspiration.

The Power of the Internet

For a geek I'm shockingly technophobic. I don't have a smart phone, I've never bought anything from e-bay and I just don't understand what the big deal about twitter is. The internet has a lot of benefits but championing brevity through messages of 140 characters? Is that really the best of use those sizeable resources of bandwidth, boredom and creativity?

Of course not.

I'm used to being behind the times on technological developments and crowd sourcing is no exception. The difference is that even those of us that took years to get a facebook account and still think that RT stands for Radio Times can understand the benefits of crowd sourcing.

Crowd sourcing plays to the internet's biggest strength: the internet brings together people with a common purpose. Anyone who has taken part in an internet forum will know the sheer weight of pressure that can be brought to bear once a group of users have been roused by a righteous cause or grievous injustice. It's staggering.

If anything, the only surprise is that it's taken this long for people to realise what a phenomenal resource this is. Okay, from a software point of view it's not so new (remember the SETI program that would find aliens using tiny amounts of your processing power?). But it's not crowd sourcing of software that has really inspired me over the last few months, it's crowd funding.

There are a lot of statistics bandied about but everyone has seen a variation on those spammy chain e-mails that put our first-world wealth into proportion. I'm not claiming that everyone on the internet has cash to throw around but, if you have access to the internet then there's a good chance that you have a computer. Internet users are a group that, on the whole, is not living on the bread line.

So you have a group of people. They like communicating. They might have a little cash to spend on things they care about. And they're GOOD at caring about things. Really, really good at it. Thanks to the internet, those people can now be connected to the things that they care about and really put that mob mentality (in the nicest possible sense) to some use.

A few weeks ago I mentioned Unbound and the Warhorses of Letters book and I'll admit that there's something magical about helping books come into existence. But it wasn't the first public funding site I joined, that is a micro-financing site called Kiva.

The idea is simple: If you can spare $25 (around £15) then you can help people around the world. The site lists hundreds of small business owners who need loans to improve their business. And we're not talking about big loans, some are as small as just $125. Together with dozens or hundreds of other people - each with their £15 - you fund that loan. It's not a charity donation, they pay you back a little every month and, although there are some defaults, there is a 98.8% repayment rate.

It's really quite addictive. So far I've helped:

• Essi, a 32 year-old woman from Togo to improve her charcoal-selling business
• Marlene from Peru to buy new stock for her clothes shop
• Babak from Azerbaijan to diversify the stock in his food & drink shop

Is there a better use of £15? I don't think so.

Less altruistic but more creative is Kickstarter. Fancy supporting an independent film maker? Kickstarter has dozens! Want to help bring an album into being? Kickstarter can sort it for you. Art installations, performance pieces, games, comics, design, fashion, theatre... the list is extensive and Kickstarter has it all.

Much like Unbound, you donate money and you get a reward. Rewards are better the more you donate. It might be a copy of the book/film/clock that you're funding, or a walk-on part, or an executive directors credit or....

You get the point.

Although I came to kickstarter through a much geekier route, I am now helping to fund a graphic design student who wants to knit a 7ft-wide map of the world. Without leaving my sofa I have supported an art project and, in return, I will get: a knitting pattern; a high-quality photo of the map; and the warm feeling that comes with knowing that I helped someone achieve something pretty crazy and epic.

But crazy and epic doesn't happen without yarn. A lot of yarn.

Help her get yarn.