I remember this blowing my mind when I first saw it shortly after my 21st Birthday (which for us Brits is kinda your coming of age birthday) and it still blows my mind (in a good way) 21 minutes after my 44th Birthday 🙂
Ladies, Gentlemen and Wild Things of all ages I present for your viewing pleasure, and enlightenment, Mr Bill Hicks!
Every now and again I do a Google Search for my Granddad on my mother’s side, Ted Roocroft. I have very fond memories of my visits to his and Grandma Edna’s small holding in Cheshire as a boy, just south of Knutsford. Unfortunately he fell out with my mother and I stopped seeing him when I was about 8. As well as being my Granddad his chief claim to fame was that he was a Sculptor and a lecturer at Manchester Art School (now part of Manchester Met).
I’ve been aware of this film for some time, Manchester Met has it in their public archive. It’s by a film student and makes big about the fact that he’s an ex-pig farmer turned sculptor. Warning the quality is a bit iffy (since it was done a good 36 years ago) and there’s a bit of a meandering intro so my Grandad doesn’t start talking about his art until a good minute in.
What this film doesn’t tell you is about his career in the military Police at the end of WW2 in the British Zone in Berlin, the most of which he told my dad on a visit to the pub once, leaving him visibly shaken afterwards and would only repeat his quote “It’s amazing what someone would do for a cigarette”.
Or the fact that by this time this film was made he was a Senior Lecturer, a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts (apparently the only sculptor at the time). He also makes big of the fact that he keeps most of his work, unless someone wants to buy it, in the film but neglects to mention that he also made casts of his work that his agent used to sell abroad. So between that and the day job (which was only four days – he had Friday off) he was comfortably off. He was crafty like that and liked to spin a yarn.
His tale of how him and Grandma came over from Ireland in a cowboy wagon and how he defeated a Giant and his pet sabre-tooth tiger to take possession of his small holding which he told me when I was knee-high is probably responsible for firing my imagination up and all the Roleplaying nonsense I’m into now. In fact the whole short film is a typical Ted Roocroft yarn 😉
It does mention his love of animals. I was quietly surprised to hear of his obsession with pigs (the pig farm was long gone by the time I knew him). He would regularly take me out to Chester Zoo, the Reptile house was always a highlight (and I’m glad even with the modernization I can still see the old tanks) and one of my more vivid memories of his work was of an elephant carved from a 6 foot oak trunk! He also took me to the Salford Museum and Art Gallery and the Victorian Street there has a magical place in my young memories.
Ted’s influence on my early life, through only a few short visits (at most we went twice a year for a couple of days), was huge. He’s definitely the strongest male role model from my immediate family, and while I’m aware of his flaws, he was a bit sexist ( there’s a very telling quote in the film which as a modern man made me wince) and could be quite over bearing, which is why my mum fell out with him, I miss him greatly.
(Although I do wonder what he would make about me being a vegetarian 😉 )
Singing along with the good old Capt, common kids! 😀
So aggrieved at watching the BBC’s quite frankly venomous & ridiculous Election Show last night, I headed upstairs to watch some TV on the computer. I considered watching Apocalypse Now, in tribute to some of my Labour supporting pals reaction to the even early results/exit poll. Nah lets put on John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow…a kick ass gun-fu film where a villanous Triad member Chow Yun-Fat stylishly shoots his way to redemption. Kinda nodded off through that. Logged onto Sky On Demand and ended up watching an episode of the sublimly funny and magical Yonderland, a show for kids (and their parents 😉 ) , where a mildly depressed housewife travels through her pantry door to the magical kingdom of Yonderland. There she learns that she is the Chosen One to save the land from the “Negatus” and spends most of her time foiling the ridiculous plots of said darklord and calming the argumentative and childish residents, by being down to earth and wagging her finger at them pointing out how silly they are 🙂 It’s done by the same folk who do Horrible Histories on CBBC who are kinda like a modern-day Monty Python (just in case you need any more selling on it).
I’m sure there’s a post election message in there somewhere from the Universe 🙂
My soundtrack, to my thoughts and feelings as the UK hurtles towards General Election 2015.
After listening you probably should go listen to something cheerful (like Mr Newt’s Optimistic Positive Super 7)
All the jolly hijinks of the leader’s debates, interviews and stuff in the ‘news’ bring this quote to mind….
“All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit. ”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, published 1958
Oh well it will all be over in a couple of weeks time….or will it 😉
Here’s my thoughts on the current UK election.
It becomes ever clear to me that the ‘Government’ is not there for our benefit, but for the gain of the ruling class (who’ve been in place for much longer than you’d think). That their is no difference between the mainstream parties. That the minor parties (like UKIP and the Greens) are only there to distract and obfuscate from the elaborate parlor trick that is being played upon us.
I believe that the biggest thing that will come out of this election is that more people will decide to take control of their lives to the better and make changes to their own lives that benefit others around them, and that the current system will start to be come irrelevant as a result 🙂
Oh, post title nicked from a Killing Joke Song…from the aptly titled “Democracy” (which came out in 1996 one year prior to the 1997 UK election).
Since we all create our habitual reality-tunnels, either consciously and intelligently or unconsciously and mechanically, I prefer to create for each hour the happiest, funniest, and most romantic reality-tunnel consistent with the signals my brain apprehends
Robert Anton Wilson
More explanation about Reality Tunnels here.
Well three years to the day in the early hours (3am to be precise) I got the phone call from the Macmillan Nurse up in Sunderland that my father had passed away from lung cancer.
Now I could be all maudlin about this but instead I’m going to listen to this Stan Getz/Dizzy Gillespie concert, which opens with a rather manically upbeat version of “A Night in Tunisia”. Somewhere on a higher frequency, beyond our doors of perception, my dad is listening to it with me too 🙂