MediaGulch

Spiral Notebook: When the world brings me my breakfast

2014-12-06T10:08:00.001+00:00

I had a Waitrose moment the other day, which somewhat elevates the Tesco products that were its genesis.

I was de-stalking strawberries to put in my porridge when I was struck by the incongruity of summer fruits in a winter breakfast.

Their marriage was like that of bat and bobcat - unlikely and unnatural. It turns out, using blue and red LED lighting, strawberry plants can be convinced it's spring and carry on producing fruit throughout the winter.

These strawberries came from The Greenery in Netherlands and packed by Tesco in Cheshunt.

The Greenery has a "sustainability strategy" that involves a "healthy supply chain" a commitment to reduce CO2 and incentives for green innovations. Tesco Nurture is the retailer's "independently credited quality standard" that "assures you, our customer that fruit and vegetables are grown in an environmental and responsible way".

I couldn't square these green ideals with the tricking of nature to produce bounty all year-round, free of sunshine and vitamins, so that please-yourself consumers like me can whip up all-year mix 'n' match breakfast to order.

All this makes a point about the weird dislocation from the natural order of things that has followed globalisation.

Although I'm not sure whether this point is good (the endless engine of human ingenuity) or bad (the inevitable consequences of foodie hubris) as I haven't had my morning porridge yet.

Film review: Hello Carter (15)

2014-12-03T21:02:00.000+00:00

Hello Carter
(15) 81mins
★★✩✩✩

According to the support notes to this film, Londoner Anthony Wilcox sold his house and spent a year writing the script for Hello Carter, his full directorial debut.

It is hard not to admire such commitment. But this was no shot in the dark for he is a seasoned assistant director, working alongside Michael Winterbottom, who exec-produces this low-key, humdrum outing.

The result of his sacrifice is a mixed bag which is best considered as a showreel rather than a cohesive film.

The slender tale takes the form of the day in the life of hapless, jobless Carter (a nicely hangdog Charlie Cox). There is something of The Hangover here, as Carter finds himself embroiled in all sorts of capers and scrapes, one including a baby, while he goes in search of his ex-girlfriend's phone number.

Coincidentally (and that word is the engine of most plot points) he bumps into her brother Aaron (Paul Schneider) over from LA as well as frequently and improbably bumping into dispirited office drone Jodie Whittaker, with whom a romantic spark is ignited
The plot is contrived, and implausible and seems present to showcase Wilcox's handling of the camera - which is confident and assured.

So, a mini-police chase with Carter crisp and professional at the wheel is neatly edited but bares no relation to anything we know about Carter and his passengers say nothing in response to his surprising skillset.

The film is not without odd pockets of charm and the director draws some good performances out his ensemble (notably Judy Parfitt as eccentric Aunt Miriam) but the quirkiness serves no purpose except to draw attention to itself and the director's wider ambitions.

Working Mum: The arty battleground has shifted to breakfast

2014-12-02T21:46:00.000+00:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

First it was impossibly creative lunches. Mums with way too much time on their hands creating elaborate lunchbox artworks.

Sandwiches shaped like cartoon characters, animals, iconic buildings; salad and vegetables carved to resemble fauna and flora; food patched and pieced together to resemble colourful miniature works of art.

According to the mums behind these culinary Monets, Van Goghs and Sánchez Cotáns the creations are a way of encouraging their children to eat.

There may be some truth in that but my experience of this trend, is that it's more about the mummy showboating, scoring sneer points against her fellow school-gaters, than about the nutritional welfare of the child.

Master A still goes to a school where they provide a hearty lunchtime meal. He regularly returns home questioning why his home-prepared food (oven ready) doesn't ever taste as good.

However, since the rise of this florid food fad, take up for cooked meals has plummeted, with mums battling it out through cucumber crafted crocodiles and pastrami and Gouda cheese shaped Angry Birds to be crowned Supreme School Lunch Box Queen.

I normally try my best to keep up with the Jemimas but this time I will not be dicing a Leaning Tower of Pisa carrot.

Not content with hijacking lunch boxes, these oh-so fiendishly fabulous Domestic Goddesses have now started on breakfasts.

Pinterest pages are springing up every day taunting the mere mortals with breakfast masterpieces.

Eggs - poached, hard-boiled and scrambled - alongside sausages and grilled tomatoes to recreate a scene from SpongeBob SquarePants. A Vermeer reproduced with some blueberries, a pancake and a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

"Mummy, can you make me a breakfast that looks like something?" Master A asked me the other morning.

I served up two banana skins. "It's a pair of slippers," said I.

Working Mum, pondering on the merit of arty breakfasts. Seriously, why would you?

Spiral Notebook: What is the point of a council, if not this?

2014-11-27T20:25:00.000+00:00

Recently Mayor Lutfur Rahman blew tens of thousands of pounds on a longshot attempt to save himself from humiliation.

Despite a High Court judge telling him that his claim against communities secretary Eric Pickles was "hopeless" he still opted for a second hearing.

Why not? It was free. What is £50,000 when millions comes rolling in the door from taxpayers.

Selling Poplar Old Town Hall, a building worth well north of a million, for just £875,000 is just a hiccup, not a crime, right? Who can miss millions that never existed?

Such sums are so large they cease to have any meaning for people on normal salaries.

Young Hamza Begum, who is profoundly deaf, makes those figures meaningful.

As his mother Husna, pictured, tells The Wharf without council support part of his support network - Overland Children's Centre - might close.

These are not abstract figures on Excel spreadsheets, shifted between columns on a whim, they are the answer to the mundane, everyday travails of people trying to raise their families against formidable odds.

The missing money from Poplar Old Town Hall is not an abstract weapon in a political battle fought through semantics and small print. They are someone's life made harder or someone's life made easier.

That's what this money means. A helping hand. A sense of security. A worry eased. This is what a mayor can do. He can be a hero to Hamza.

Parents leave chamber in tears after @MayorLutfur's councillors dismiss their concerns as spin and lies
— Cllr Joshua Peck (@CllrJoshuaPeck) November 26, 2014

Forget the talk of £100million of Government cuts. Of course it's tough but it's too convenient to point the finger elsewhere when the council regime seems wholly focussed on its own perpetuation.

This is simply a matter of will and a matter of choice.

Lutfur Rahman, if he so wished, could save Overland. He could rally the council. He could devote the money and the energy he normally expends on himself and fight for the people he represents. That would be a purpose worthy of a mayor.

The choice is this. Do we pay taxes so Lutfur Rahman can fill the coffers of a QC or do we pay taxes so little Hamza Begum can learn to engage with the world around him?

Isn't Hamza facing enough obstacles in his young life without coming up against a mayor bunkered and blinkered by crisis?

Sure, there are many good causes but surely the base level, bottom line, this-far-and-no-further quality of any progressive society is measured in the support it gives to vulnerable and disabled children.

If not them, then who else? If not them, what's the point at all?

UPDATE: DECEMBER 5, 2014

www.wharf.co.uk

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Film review: Paddington (PG)

2014-11-25T21:19:00.002+00:00

Paddington
(PG) 95mins
★★★★★

Clear the decks, grab the children, make a note - there's a new tradition elbowing its way into Christmas schedules.

Surely Paddington will become a festive favourite alongside those two other London flicks from which it - loosely - draws thematic inspiration - Mary Poppins and Oliver!.

Although the Christmas link is nominal, there is plenty of snow in this gorgeous super-saturated hyper-real London wherein the eponymous bear finds his feet and his family after he stows away from Darkest Peru.

Director Paul King, given the task of translating the much-loved bear from book to silver screen, has taken not only the mechanics of the story but the magic too.

After audiences received a cynical mauling from those ghastly re-booted Mutant Turtles, there was good reason for trepidation. Would Paddington be too knowing? Too modern? Too bolshy? Too annoying?

The answer is "no" to all of these. This Paddington hits the spot. From the moving sequences in Peru at the beginning to Mr Gruber's gadget-filled antiques shop and on to the performances of Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins as Mr and Mrs Brown, this is an unending treat - charming, moving and very, very funny.

The marmalade-munching duffel-coated newcomer (voiced by Ben Whishaw) finds himself at the station with a Please Look After This Bear, Thank You label around his neck after leaving Aunt Lucy back in the old country.

But the capital appears not to be the welcoming city that he had been told about by the mystery jungle explorer who first introduced the bear family to the joys of the famous orange spread.

Risk analyst Mr Brown knows the odds of likely trouble if they take in the stray but Mrs Brown has room in her heart and their delightful London home for another member of the family. Sage Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) sees that the impish bear is just what the family needs.

Aside from Paddington's self-starting chaos, trouble is afoot in the shape of meanie minx Millicent (Nicole Kidman) who wishes to add the bear to her taxidermy collection at the Natural History Museum - setting of the epic roof-top climax.

There's even time and room to cram the cast with cameos from familiar faces like Matt Lucas's taxi driver and Peter Capaldi's curtain-twitching neighbour Mr Curry.

And forget any awkward melding of animation and real life. The effects are seamless - the furriness of the bear is hair perfect.

If there is anything modern then it's the "everyone in London is different, come one, come all" message that is a fitting riposte to a Ukip surge.

But you're looking for cultural or political resonance shame on you. There's way too much packed into this plum pudding of a treat to waste time mulling over the dreary rot that exists beyond the cinema door.

Everything a Paddington bear film could be, this is. Enjoy.

Working Mum: Taking a Punch from little madam Judy

2014-11-22T15:03:00.000+00:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

I was called in to see Master A's teacher at pick-up on Friday. Although small in stature, she has an almighty presence and is thoroughly intimidating.

She just has to look at me, with her withering stare, to reduce me to a quivering wreck. Heaven knows how my little boy survives in class.

I stood, head bent, waiting to be hit by her wrath.

"Miss Ronson," she growled. "We have to discuss your son." Gulp! "I'm afraid that there was an incident with him today." Gulp! Gulp!

I braced myself for what she was about to say. "He was hit over the head by one of his classmates."

I let out a huge sigh of relief, my shoulders relaxed. Phew! He wasn't in trouble.

A few seconds later, my brain suddenly engaged. "What? Hit over the head?"

According to his teacher, Master A was with a group of his friends playing Dungeons and Dragons in the playground when another of his classmates became rather heated at being excluded from the game.

The group Master A plays with is a formidable bunch. A chunky little seven-year-old who stands her ground, a wiry six-year-old who is happy to push away irritants who get under his skin... and my boy.

Master A is happy to pull on a pair of boxing gloves and pummel a punch bag, whip roundhouse kicks at his kick-boxing instructor, muscle his way around a rugby pitch but, as his sensei reminds him after each lesson, it must never be used outside the ring, a lesson he has taken to heart.

Apparently, he sat there stoical while a spiteful little madam by the name of Ivy thrashed him over the head with the end of an umbrella, Punch and Judy style, just because one of the other children wouldn't let her play the game.

His teacher assured me that the girl had been severely reprimanded.

Although, she was given the lead role in the Christmas play yesterday as part of her rehabilitation.

That's the way to do it!

Working Mum, questioning whether the meek will really inherit the earth.

Book review: How We Got To Now, by Steven Johnson

2014-11-18T19:17:00.002+00:00

BOOK
How We Got To Now
Steven Johnson (Penguin)
★★★✩✩

The world is rich with academics with a good turn of phrase exploring the history of ideas and innovations, making the mundane endlessly fascinating.

Examples include our own Mark Miodownik who does materials science so well and Brian Cox pondering the magic of stardust.

Johnson's 12 stories of time, radio, ice, glass et al, are fascinating and well told and even landed me a few QI points (for the elevation of Chicago for the installation of sewerage).

What rankles though is Johnson's promotion of his convoluted theory of convolution which he calls - with a degree of marketing elan - the "hummingbird effect". He wants, I sense, to land an populist term that sticks and thus achieve immortality.

The long-standing "butterfly effect" proposes that unforeseen consequences occur from the slightest of changes in initial condition (a butterfly flaps its wings in Bishop Stortford and triggers a storm over Brazil for example).

The hummingbird effect is a variation on the theme. If the nectar wasn't so difficult to access, the hummingbird would never have evolved its marvellous physiognomy.

There already is some kind of take on this in the social sciences - the law of unintended consequences - but Johnson is keener on his own thesis.

So keen that he stretches credibility to make a point. He hoovers up the furthest flung advances to bring them back to source with the discrimination of a factory trawler sponsored by Dyson.

So, for example, the Gutenberg press helped us to understand our bodies at a cellular level. The logic being - the press made people read, so they wanted to see better, so they needed glasses, so lens technology improved, so the microscope was invented, so Robert Hooke studied life at a tiny level etc.

"You wouldn't think that printing technology would have anything to do with the expansion of our vision down to the cellular scale, just as you wouldn't have thought that the evolution of pollen would alter the design of a hummingbird's wing. But that is the way change happens," says the American.

Er, yes. Up to a point. But this is a classic case of hindsight bias, isn't it? Looking at a procession of incidents backwards and formulating a narrative that suggests there was always a logical and inevitable progression. The "aw gosh" epiphanies begin to grate eventually - and this is a short book.

Surely, there has to be a statute of limitations on consequences. Otherwise next we'll be suggesting that McDonald's Sweet Chilli Crispy Chicken Wrap is the predictable result of primordial cellular mitosis (Come to think of it...)

Breathless TV documentary makers looking for drama are the worst exponents of this false jeopardy, suggesting everything that ever happened was - phew - a close-run thing. But, of course, if didn't happen, it wouldn't have happened and there wouldn't be a TV documentary. But it did, so it did so there is.

If you want a neat summary of stuff that happened and the people who made it happen - like the eureka moment an entrepreneur came up with the dumb-but-smart idea of selling ice to the Caribbean - then this is a compact, friendly study. But be prepared to swat a few hummingbirds along the way.

Working Mum: My boy is a magnet for nasty critters

2014-11-17T19:51:00.000+00:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

When I think we are safely over one thing where Master A's ailments are concerned along comes another.

I have spent hours researching Molluscum Contagiosum. It may sound like a spell cast by Harry Potter but this horrible little critter is not the stuff of fairytales.

Several weeks ago, I noticed he had a few little spots appear on his arm. They looked harmless enough so I ignored them. Fool! That's how I gained 7lb believing that innocent looking granola was a healthy breakfast alternative. When will I learn? Now, his whole tummy is covered in them.

According to my investigations, millions of British children suffer each year from this unsightly condition. It's as common as nits.

Further surfing revealed that the small, flesh-coloured lesions feed off a host and are caused by a double-stranded DNA poxvirus. It can last for between 12 and 18 months, in some cases even four years. Who needs the horror of Alien when you have a child of school age?

I booked an appointment with our GP, hoping that he'd have any answer. I was wrong. After inspecting the lesions, he diagnosed Molluscum Contagiosum and rubbing antibacterial soap into his palms and fingers quite literally washed his hands of us.

"It's a viral condition and will heal in its own time."

Despite Master A not seeming to be troubled by the Molluscum, I am. I'm not proud to say that I can't bear the look of them. The other day, I even flinched when he threw his arms around me.

My name is Tabitha Ronson, and I'm an uncaring, unfeeling mummy.

From reading blogs to watching YouTube videos, I could probably go on Mastermind with Molluscum Contagiosum as my specialist subject.

I have spent a small fortune on remedies including Colloidal Silver spray and amber balm; Thuja tablets and cream; MolluDab. I've even resorted to old wives' tales such as rubbing the growths with garlic and yet the spots keep on coming.

Working Mum, desperately wanting the horror to stop.

20 fascinating facts about east London

2014-11-12T19:55:00.001+00:00

Recognise this? (See 17)

1. Wilton's in Wapping is the world's oldest surviving Music Hall, built in 1743 and still a living piece of London's musical history. There are more than 17,000 music performances a year across London's 300 venues with The O2 arena named the world's most popular music venue for the last five years running.

2. The clock of St Anne's Limehouse is the highest church clock in London and was designed as a special maritime clock for shipping on the Thames: it chimed every 15 minutes to guide the 6,000 ships that moored in the docks every day in the heyday of the docks. It was named after Queen Anne (1714-1727) who raised money for it by taxing coal arriving by river.

3. Until 1994 there were no Roads in the City of London. The first, Goswell Road, became part of the Square Mile in 1994 after boundary changes. There are plenty of Lanes, Streets, and Ways, but the term "roads" wasn't generally used until the 16th century.

4. In 1852 Samuel Winkworth Silver moved his rubber making company SW Silver and Co north of the Thames from Greenwich to manufacture waterproof clothing. Later this site became the works of the India Rubber, Gutta Percha And Telegraph Cable Company, which constructed and laid submarine cables. However, the original owner's name lives on in... Silvertown.

5. Arsenal are the only football team in London to have a Tube station named after them. The station - Gillespie Road - was renamed in 1932 after the team moved from Woolwich to North London. Woolwich is not the only place to lose its team. Millwall disappeared from the Isle of Dogs to south London while West Ham - the Irons - grew out of the Thames Ironworks on the Lea Peninsula.

6. Unusual street names in London include Ha Ha Road in Greenwich, Hooker's Road in Walthamstow, Quaggy Walk in Blackheath, and Cyclops Mews and Uamvar Street in Limehouse.

7. The oldest church in the city, All Hallows by the Tower, near Tower Hill, was founded in 675. The undercroft has Roman pavement dating from the 2nd century AD. The beheaded victims of Tower of London executions were sent there for temporary burial.

8. You could fit the Great Pyramid at Giza inside The O2. Its dimensions and structure reflect Greenwich's connection with time measurement and the new millennium: 365m in diameter; and 52m high in the middle; with 12 supporting poles, symbolising days, weeks and months of the year.

9. The 62m Monument to the Great Fire of London was also intended to be used as a zenith telescope to study the motion of a single star by Robert Hooke, who designed the structure with Sir Christopher Wren. It was also meant to host gravity and pendulum experiments but traffic vibrations rendered it unusable. Officially, more people have been killed falling off the Monument (8) than were killed in the Great Fire itself (6).

10. The gravestone of the famous Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage in the graveyard of St Leonard's, Shoreditch, reads simply "Exit Burbage". The church is sited near England's first purpose built playhouse and its acting connections do not end there, as it was used as St Saviour's in sitcom Rev.

11. A small trackside sign to the east of the East India DLR platforms indicates the Meridian Line - also signalled by a laser from Greenwich. Those travelling to the next station - Canning Town - cross hemispheres to do so.

12. Of the capital's four Unesco world heritage sites, two are in the east - Maritime Greenwich and the Tower of London. The other two are Westminster Palace and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

13. The pair of bronze lions that guard the main entrance to HSBC in Canary Wharf are replicas of those which have stood outside HSBC's Hong Kong HQ since 1935. The only difference was that sculptor Mark Kennedy was told not to recreate the "war wounds" of the HK lions. The pair, completed at Bronze Age Foundry in Limehouse, had to earn their own battle scars. The base of each lion contains eight coins, the number representing good fortune in China.

14. John Strype's map of 1720 describes London as consisting of four parts: The City of London, Westminster, Southwark and "That Part Beyond the Tower". Strype was a member of a Huguenot family who, in order to escape religious persecution, had settled in "That Part".

15. Brick Lane Market, as shown in the film of Monica Ali's book Brick Lane is not actually Brick Lane market. Following protests by the local community's portrayal of them, the producers of the 2007 book used locations elsewhere, although Brick Lane does appear in the film.

16. A "London tunnelling marathon" of 26 miles (42km) of new tunnels beneath London is a feature of Crossrail including a Thames tunnel at Woolwich. The first Thames Tunnel, Rotherhithe to Wapping, was the first tunnel under a river in the world and Brunel's creation is still in service as part of the Overground Network.

17. The principal architect for One Canada Square Cesar Pelli based the shape on the World Financial Centre in New York and the Elizabeth Tower. Although when he came up with the design the Elizabeth Tower was known as the Clock Tower - commonly known as Big Ben.

18. The three Royal Docks formed the largest enclosed docks in the world, with a water area of nearly 250 acres (1.0 km2) and an overall estate of 1,100 acres (4.5 km2). This is equivalent to the whole of central London from Hyde Park to Tower Bridge. They are known as the Royals because of their names - Victoria, Albert and George V - not because of any Crown interest.

19. Robert Douglas Norman, 27, had resigned his position with AEG Electric Company and was on his way to Vancouver when disaster struck on board the ship that was taking him to New York. Robert found a place for a woman in a lifeboat but he perished on April 15, 1912, when the Titanic sank. His watch when he hit the water, at seven minutes past three.

20. The UK's tallest sculpture - the 114m ArcelorMittal Orbit - was designed by Sir Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond. The design brief was to build a tower of 100m to match the Eiffel Tower. Kapoor said intended to give a sense of "building the impossible" while Balmond wanted a tower that appeared unstable "Never centred, never quite vertical".

Film review: Third Person (15)

2014-11-11T19:34:00.002+00:00

Third Person
(15) 137mins
★★★✩✩

There's something wrong here. You ask yourself, how come something that reeks of quality, with a quality cast and a quality writer-director reprising - structurally at least - his finest hour, feels so limp and insipid?

Paul Haggis won two Oscars for Crash, which presented vignettes of individual stories to present a damning essay on race and politics in the US.

Here, he adopts the same portmanteau technique for an appraisal of grief, trust and betrayal but the impact is largely muted, despite a velvet script and interesting cast.

Different European capitals host different stories. In New York, Paris and Rome, three couples appear to have nothing in common except heartbreak, grief and yearning.

So, against endlessly beautiful backdrops, we see detached author Michael (Liam Neesom) and his tempestuous young lover Anna (Olivia Wilde) in Paris. (Wilde is the best thing in the movie.)

In Rome dodgy businessman Scott (Adrien Brody) meets prejudice and mistrust in his wooing of sad immigrant Monika (Moran Atias).

And smug Rick (James Franco) exchanges blows with his unstable ex Julia (Mila Kunis) over custody of their son. And, is that......Yes, it is. Kim Basinger in a cameo.

These stories play out with a stately, if not compelling, progression. Written nicely, played well and presented with assurance.

There has to be something else, you think, as these vignettes tend towards their satisfying conclusions.

And there is. There is something else. The clues are all there but I missed them. A second viewing is probably necessary as the Bigger Picture is revealed, not by a camera slowly inching backwards, turning pixel into portrait, but in a rush.

I, for one, still don't get it. I walked away from the screening still baffled by the thread that links the tales and the extent to which these acts of misdirection rendered the stories invalid. More likely the indistinction is to give room for multiple interpretations, which is no bad thing.

The film could have survived without any twists for it is a pleasurable, if undemanding, watch. But, ultimately, it falls short because it tries too hard to do something and be something that is entirely out of character.

Book review: The Story Of The Human Body, by Daniel Lieberman

2014-11-10T19:24:00.000+00:00

The Story Of The Human Body
Daniel Lieberman
(Penguin)
★★★★★

This book was published in October. It has taken me several weeks to complete. This could be for two reasons.

Firstly, as author Daniel Lieberman argues, reading is not natural. Myopia (from which I suffer) is an inevitable result of close work, a product of the modern age and the hunter-gatherer bodies we inhabit have yet to catch up with our habits.

Secondly, this work is so profoundly fascinating, so important and its pages so full of mind-blowing and revealing truths that I had to ration myself to a few pages a day.

The alternative was to run around in circles shouting incoherently and ramming this work into strangers' hands.

If we could send one book to our alien cousins, this book should be it. For it is the blueprint of what it is to inhabit this shabby old bag of skin.

"Like it or not," writes the avuncular professor, "we are slightly fat, furless, bipedal primates who crave sugar, salt, fat and starch but we are still adapted to eating a diverse diet of fibrous fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, tubers and lean meat."

Lieberman, a constantly wise companion, splits the book into two. I came for the evolution and stayed for the "dysevolution".

This is more than an instruction manual, it is the ultimate Just So story, explaining in detail how and why the human body evolved through natural selection to make the best use of its environment.

And then, having become self-aware and intelligent, how we manipulated that environment to undo billions of years of good work in a few hundred.

Why, for example, do we have noses when the apes do not? Why do we have impacted wisdom teeth and our ancestors did not? Why do we crave the wrong kind of sugar? Why is there a prevalence of back pain, flat feet, cancer, why, why, why?

The professor of human evolutionary biology explains all this through detailed examination and under the guiding star of Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous quote: "Nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution."

I have been on diets but none has ever explained the purpose of nutrition as well as Lieberman. I have read books on fitness and exercise and none has ever told me exactly what I was doing and why I should be doing it. I have skimmed computer manuals but none has been a better guide to how something works than this.

Why shoes are wrong-ish. Why the health industry works contrary to our best health. Why children should start chewing gum.

Why cultural evolution is now the strongest influence in our development. Why "no strain, no gain" is not an exhortation of Mr Motivator but a biological imperative. Why our 21st century lifestyles are out of sync with our stone age bodies.

Why athlete's foot, lactose intolerance, ADHD, depression, glaucoma, hammer toes, acne, multiple sclerosis and countless other condition are not inevitable deteriorations but are willed, mismatched conditions of the modern age.

"Billions of people suffer from diseases of affluence, novelty and disuse that used to be rare or unknown," says Lieberman.

Hunter-gathers had it all apparently. Except antibiotics. And this book. Which makes me sad.

Stage review: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Gielgud Theatre

2014-11-05T19:03:00.002+00:00

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time
Gielgud Theatre
★★★★✩

The torment of living in a world that is threatening, jagged and strange is given full expression in this inventive and intelligent adaptation of Mark Haddon's award-winning book.

That the production is uninvolving, at least in the first half, is oddly and accidentally fitting. As a whole it lacks a gut punch but is never less than intriguing.

Christopher Boone, 15, is lost somewhere on the autistic spectrum. He loves order, maths and space and dislikes yellow, metaphors and hugs.

Since the book was published in 2003 we have become used to Christophers as they tend to crowd out high concept US crime dramas and earn a million bucks an episode in The Big Bang Theory.

So the tropes of a behavioural spectrum disorder, without the snazzy, superhero advantages, are perhaps behind the stuttering start.

Christopher finds Wellington the dog stabbed with a garden fork. An aficionado of Sherlock Holmes, he knows an investigation is necessary.

"When someone gets murdered you have to find out who did it so that they can be punished," he says in his blank voice.

Along the way, he uncovers family secrets that would be difficult to stomach for a boy with a well-balanced outlook let alone one who needs diagrams of facial features to help him translate emotion.

And yet his inability to cope with the simplest of everyday challenges - like talking - lessens the impact of these bodyblows.

If a simple hug is the peak of exquisite agony, then lies and deception of the most egregious kind are merely another strand of white noise misery, indistinguishable from the cacophony of his Swindon existence.

The play invites us to empathise with the parents who (understandably) are more sinners than saints. Dad Ed (Nicolas Tennant) stays and takes the stick, while Mum Judy (Emily Joyce) flees and takes the guilt.

Both ultimately pay for betrayals, underscoring the play's message that isolation is on the spectrum of the human condition too.

Christopher runs away to his mother's house in Willesden encountering the full-on London experience of noise, dissonance and violence.

At last Bunny Christie's imaginative graph paper set fulfils its potential with a variety of fireworks along its X-Y co-ordinates. Meanwhile the ensemble march, shout and do all the other things that intrude on Christopher's small besieged patch of peace.

"Count the rhythm in your head like when you're doing music," says his teacher Siobhan in his head.

All this jumble is held together with nimble brilliance by Graham Butler, whose wide-eyed naivety and confusion put some traces of humanity into a tragically robot soul.

Siobhan (Sarah Woodward) is the one character with heart while his parents are strangely unaffecting.

There is no ribbon to tie up the story. Christopher will not collapse in his parents' arms in a moment of self-recognition and good humour.

But there is a (real) puppy that wags its tail joyously, eliciting "oohs" and "aaahs" - emotional responses which are in surprisingly short supply elsewhere.

Until Feb 14, 7.30pm (mats), £20-£76, delfontmackintosh.co.uk.

Working Mum: All dressed up with one particular place to go

2014-10-29T19:41:00.000+00:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

It was a last-minute arrangement, and one that I had mixed feelings about, but MCM London Comic Con turned out to be an absolute blast.

I managed to get some tickets to the Sunday of the three-day event as I knew it would be Master A's Nirvana.

A world of comic book heroes, computer games and people dressed up as their favourite characters - what's not to like for a six-year-old boy?

However, I can't say the ultimate Geek Fest was going to be my idea of a fun Sunday outing.

When we arrived at Excel it was like entering another universe. People of all shapes and sizes, race and age, were milling around, sporting wildly creative costumes and colourful garb.

Although on-trend dressed in a pair of jeans, cowboy boots and a poncho, I felt rather out of place in this bizarre world.

Master A, who was dressed as Cole from Lego Ninjago, was like a kid in a candy store - he didn't know where to look first. His eyes on stalks, he kept pulling at my arm and pointing out all the wonderful characters around us.

"Mummy, there's Green Lantern ... Batman... Harry Potter... a Storm Trooper... Jack Frost... Harley Quinn..."

He didn't seem to notice that several of the Batmen had missed rather a few gym sessions or that most of the Robins were girls.

In fact, that was notable about the event - it was non-judgmental. Everyone could be who they wanted to be. The atmosphere was warm and welcoming, with an overwhelming feeling of camaraderie.

All around people were chatting to one another, all appreciating the effort that their contemporaries had made with their costumes (or Cosplay as its official known).

What was particularly charming was that not one person whom my son asked to be photographed with refused. Instead, they chatted with him, asking him about his costume and character, telling him about their own, before happily striking a pose with him.

Working Mum, thanking all those wonderful people who attended Comic Con for making the world seem a more wonderful place to a little boy.

Spiral Notebook: Bridging the gap between now and the climate apocalypse

2014-10-29T19:39:00.001+00:00

"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors," said Jonas Salk, the polio vaccine pioneer.

The problem for the Green Party therefore is one of timing. Even the most sensible policies play nicely to the ancestors but swoosh over the heads of Generation Indulgence.

London Assembly Green Darren Johnson is wrong on the east London crossings. Wrong for now, at least.

This area is criminally bereft of crossings compared to the west of the capital and any combination of the tunnels, bridges and boats is welcome.

When Mr Johnson proposes better public transport links and some help for cyclists his arguments seem puny, almost risible, compared to the scale of the problem. A third of new houses in London will come here in the next few years, in addition to an explosion of brownfield businesses.

This is the way of London.

London is a city built on wealth creation and ambition. It is voracious and merciless. To suggest that such economic growth should be strangled is akin to suggesting a vegan diet for a T-Rex. Some things exist to consume and are otherwise pointless.

At one and the same time, Darren Johnson and his party are right. In the light of all we know about limited life choices in a post-climate change world, bridges and cars and congestion are reckless and, except in the short term, futile.

One day the case against crossings will be as utterly compelling as the case for them is today - but for that to happen London, and its inhabitants, must change their character beyond recognition.

That's not happening till Armageddon swings fully into view.

Stage review: Shakespeare In Love, Noel Coward Theatre

2014-10-27T11:15:00.000+00:00

Shakespeare In Love
Noel Coward Theatre
★★★★★

The genius conceit of Shakespeare In Love - plunging the young Bard into the sort of fictional, farcical world that he might have concocted - is endlessly delicious.

Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's inventive 1997 screenplay did not waste an ounce of the potential. They found funny parallels, delighted in the cross-dressing improbabilities and balanced perfectly the broad schoolroom skits and the wry insider jokes. Oscars were inevitable.

If it were possible, Lee Hall's stage adaptation is even better.

A play that delights in sending-up - and adoring - the theatre has found its rightful home. Scenes are set backstage, on balconies, with flashing blades, lit by candlelight. Meanwhile, director Declan Donnellan has packed the gliding three-tiered Globe-alike stage with romance, japes, crinolines, eerie Renaissance music ... and Romeo And Ethel The Pirate's Daughter.

And in a moment, he turns this joyous comedy into a heart-stopping tragedy of two star-cross'd lovers. The switch never jars, the intensity never falters and the audience is so utterly lost in the magic of the moment that the only danger is a misstep. It never comes.

It relies, inevitably, on Tom Bateman's Will - the blocked writer - and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Viola De Lessops (and occasionally Thomas Kent) as the wealthy, out-of-reach woman pledged to ghastly Lord Wessex but loving the penniless poet instead.

Bateman is a sinuous, passionate and bouncy stage presence bolstered by his merry band of brothers (and enemies) that includes louche Marlowe (David Oakes), portly Henslowe (Paul Chahidi), cartoonish John Webster (Colin Ryan) and bombastic Burbage (David Ganley).

Briggs-Owen manages to combine smoky sultry sexiness with gauche girlie giggling in the same taut comportment - and often while dressed as a man. Her dazzling performance is to Gwyneth Paltrow's efforts what a triple-thick ice cream milkshake is to half a glass of semi-skimmed.

"Comedy, love - and a bit with a dog. That's what they want," says Thomas Henslowe of us fee-paying groundlings. Tick, tick and tick (courtesy of faultless four-legged Spot).

It is difficult to imagine a rival for your West End pound. Unless there are pirates in it.

Until April 18, 7.30pm (mats), £27.25-£89.75, noelcowardtheatre.co.uk

Sherlock Holmes and the case of the icon decrypted

2014-10-23T22:25:00.001+01:00

Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle provided the key element of the Sherlock Holmes myth - the character himself - with his scientific approach to crime, his bohemian lifestyle and his restless curiosity.

But, as a major new exhibition at the Museum of London aims to show, the image of the detective evolved as new generations revisited the icon.

Conan Doyle established the physicality of Holmes. In A Study In Scarlet he describes Holmes' appearance: "His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin, hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness."

Other illustrators had attempted to capture the image but neither they nor the stories really caught the public's imagination until they were serialised in The Strand magazine.

Sidney Paget (1860-1908) was hired to illustrate 12 short stories running from July 1891 to December 1892. Altogether he illustrated 356 scenes until 1904 and created much of the significant iconography of the character.

Film director Michael Powell said his work "as much as the text created the immortal folk figure".

He captured the pose and poise of the detective - earnest, pipe in hand - but perhaps his most famous addition was the cape and travelling cloak and deerstalker hat.

In the stories, Conan Doyle never specified the nature of the headgear. In The Adventure Of Silver Blaze, Dr Watson, describes him as wearing "his ear-flapped travelling cap", and in The Boscombe Valley Mystery, as wearing a "close-fitting cloth cap".

The deerstalker was an interpretation that fitted popular fashions of the time and chimed with Holmes as a hunter.

American stage actor William Gillette (1853-1937) embodied the physicality of the actor portraying him as human rather than machine. He played the detective 1,300 times on stage over 30 years and in one silent film, now lost.

His most famous evolution is the pipe. It is said he found it difficult to enunciate or be fully seen with a straight-stemmed pipe so he adopted the bent briar pipe.

Curator Alex Werner said: "William Gillette makes a lot of the dressing gown and for the new Sherlock the Derek Rose dressing gown that Benedict Cumberbatch wears at home is an important symbol as well as the Belstaff coat.

"Gillette's interpretation of the role was used by many of the actors who started to interpret the role firstly in silent films of the 1920s, then with Basil Rathbone. It is really Jeremy Brett, one of the greatest interpreters of the role, who goes back to the stories, back to the original Paget illustrations."

Mr Werner said: "Our perception of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson has been shaped by a long line of film, TV and theatre adaptations. Conan Doyle had no idea that popular culture would embrace his creation in such a dramatic way."

Incidentally, the detective's most famous phrase - "Elementary, my dear Watson" - was never actually uttered in the books.

Instead it was taken from PG Wodehouse's novel Psmith Journalist, in 1915 and then claimed for stage and screen versions.

Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived And Will Never Die, until April 12, Museum of London, £12 (concs), museumoflondon.org.uk/sherlock

Images © Museum of London

Green: How east London keeps west London cool

2014-10-23T09:03:00.001+01:00

What Shoreditch hipsters will tell you is confirmed by the environmentalists. It's east London that makes west London cool.

And that perennial role - as temperature regulator rather than fashion barometer - will become increasingly important as the capital comes to terms with the impact of climate change.

More extreme weather is predicted over the next few decades and the city's leaders are looking at the measures that are needed now to ensure the type and amount of building work in the capital does not make the problem worse.

Extreme rain storm events will create significant local flooding while any rises in temperature will be exacerbated by the "urban heat island" effect.

Greater London Authority adaptation manager Alex Nickson said: "We're very keen to manage the overall urban heat island.

"Increasing the amount of green space in the city to bring down the temperature across the whole of the city can have a very marked effect.

"If we green the city substantially it may bring the overall temperature down by a degree but on an individual street it may bring it down by 8C."

He cited the work of UCL's Prof Mike Davies in modelling the potential impact of a fully urbanised east.

Mr Nickson said: "If we were to build east London to the same density and availability of green spaces, what would that do to the rest of the city?

"His model shows we would raise temperatures significantly across the rest of the capital, particularly west London because, in hot weather, the prevailing winds are easterly.

"We need to make sure new east London is very green to keep west London cool, which is the reverse of how east London performed in the past."

But the lack of free space in the capital is a bar to a number of greening programmes, including growing more trees (see panel) and developing pocket parks and rain gardens.

Prof David Balmforth, of the Institute of Civil Engineers, said: "What we are seeing in some cities is adaptation to the vertical - cascading rain gardens at different levels of high rise buildings.

"There is an opportunity to recreate some of the features we have been successful at implementing at ground level and turning that into something vertically."

Other simple steps include putting a "lip" on entrances to the Tube. In Singapore, the metro system keeps operating despite significant floods because of the entrances are all raised by a metre, keeping the water out.

The London Assembly environment committee was told recently dual aspect apartments would help create natural air conditioning but there was little to stop developers building how they liked.

Mr Nickson said: "Single aspect buildings tend to be reliant on forced air movement for ventilation. But sometimes the constraints of the site mean you have no option.

"In a couple of places the residents have resorted to propping open their doors on the communal corridors which is clearly not what we really want.

"A lot of buildings that we see go up are highly glazed and entirely reliant on centralised ventilation plant for both heating and cooling."

THE WONDER OF TREES

Trees are a one-stop solution to much of the impact of extreme weather, according to experts.

David Lofthouse, of the London Tree Officers Association, said Amsterdam didn't have air conditioning - it had trees.

He said: "If you're looking for a definition of a heat pump in reverse then you could use a tree.

"Or take cladding. If you have trees in your street, you have cladding of a sort. Trees slow down wind speeds so that's going to save us from some of the effects of climate change.

"Flooding. Just the bio retention of a tree and its soil will help. Individually that's a small advantage but if we're talking about 30% of London being covered you have a major input."

The 30% tree cover for London is a target for 2050. The figure currently stands at 20% and there is little optimism the extra 10% can be found.

Mr Lofthouse said: "We are not on course for that target. There are losses and new tree planting takes a long time to deliver."

He added that people turning gardens into car parks and the loss of revenue budgets for local councils were added impediments.

Mr Lofthouse said: "It's always thought the local authorities will be delivering this extra percentage of trees but, if 70% of London is under private ownership, we have to rethink that and to start looking at citizens helping us to deliver."

Stage review: Neville's Island, Duke Of York's Theatre

2014-10-23T08:52:00.004+01:00

Neville's Island
Duke Of York's Theatre
★★★✩✩

Rain pours down on a verdant inlet and the perfume of pines fills the auditorium. Stormy camps, reluctant kindling and a fragile grasp on fortitude.

These things are presented like a sensory overture before the first member of this blue-chip cast steps foot on Neville's Island thanks to Robert Innes Hopkins' perpetually damp lakeside set.

And when they do arrive - Gordon, Angus, Neville and Roy - they make a splash. Gordon, particularly, as he swims ashore through the ever present puddles (front row beware). Water cascades from anorak sleeves, serving to separate the plucky stoics from the griping moaners.

They dry and dress - not an easy thing on stage - and set about their purpose. This is a Lake District team-building challenge gone hopelessly wrong and likely to turn Lord Of The Flies if the inner demons of the middle aged middle managers of Pennine Mineral Water are unleashed.

And you can bet they will be as a cold night approaches on Rampsholme.

The cast is more than a match for Tim Firth's updated 1992 script, peppered with lush jibes and neat reversals.

Indeed, packing in a few more one-liners would help a story that is (physically) discomforting even for us watchers from the shore.

There are some good visual gags in a busy production - Angus' rucsac is a Tardis of useful equipment - from chopping boards to dinner jackets - while Roy's, er, religious conversion (no spoilers here) is a neat twist on a theme.

Adrian Edmondson, as sarcastic chip-on-his-shoulder Gordon, leads the line in a sure-footed performance.

He gets the best gags and when he is off-stage, energy sags, which says something - for his compatriots are Miles Jupp (Angus), Neil Morrissey (Neville) and Robert Webb (Roy) - all fine comedy names.

Uptight Angus and weedy Roy each have a dark secret that will find voice as the hours pass while Neville, the nominal leader, has nothing much to do but keep things together, which wastes Morrissey's patented hangdog schtick.

All the parts are underpowered as Tim Firth tries to pack into one box both the comedic potential of urban middle managers going all Bear Grylls and the collapse of their out-of-office personas.

Each theme is compromised but comedy must win and the inevitable meltdowns should be viewed through the lens labelled "black comedy" rather than "existential crisis" if the piece is to hold together.

Until Jan 3, £15-£85, 7.30pm (mats), atgtickets.com

Working Mum: The kids are alright, but what about the guilty mums?

2014-10-17T16:14:00.004+01:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

According to a new report, women can have it all.

Yes, it's official. Woman can go to work, do all the housework, raise a family, enjoy regular nights out with the girls, look like Amal Clooney (alright that may be pushing it) - all without damaging their offspring.

What a relief! I can now dump the angst and guilt in the knowledge that it will have no impact on the long term wellbeing of Master A.

Teenagers with working mums are no less likely to smoke, suffer with depression or have low self- esteem, quit school early according to a recent study by Silvia Mendolia, an economics professor at Australia's University of Wollongong.

In fact, the survey found children of women who work are more likely to continue their studies into higher education.

I will take comfort from these findings every time I drop off Master A at pre-school breakfast club, where he is one of the first to arrive, and collect him from after school club, where he is always the last to leave.

I will no longer express any concern when he pleads "why can't you be like the other mummies?" after I say I can't take him to the park or to swimming after school because I am work. I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing my actions will have no impact on him.

What about me? Where are the studies that say I'll be fine that my long-term wellbeing won't suffer or be damaged because I not spending time with Master A - because I have a sneaky suspicion that it is and will be.

I'm mindful of Time and that he is no friend of mine. He is taking my baby away. Each hour not spent with Master A is another lost, never to be reclaimed.

Before long he will be that teenager who is not affected by having a working mum because he is so conditioned, so used to not having her there. He'll stay on at school because that's where he's spent most of his days - it's a second home.

Yes, we can have it all - but always with a price.

Working Mum, both welcoming and dreading the moment when the pleading stops.

Film review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (12A)

2014-10-15T19:47:00.000+01:00

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
(12A) 101mins
★★✩✩✩

When mindless Megan Fox thinks about the loss of her father and her role in the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle circus, her eyes tell a story.

She must have left the cooker on.

Fox's April O'Neil is an intelligent, ambitious, fearless journalist determined to... no, still caught up on the cooker. That hotpot is ruined she must be thinking as flashbacks and convoluted mythologies are used to smuggle obscenely implausible plot past dulled common sense filters.

The outcast TMNT gang are all grown up by the way. Innocence gone. Check the certificate - 12A. Not for the young ones.

These turtles are grungy about the gills, quick with the quips, stuffed full of testosterone. They rap. They hit on Megan. They have impish boy band larks.

Everybody is going to hate this movie.

Except Pizza Hut, Skype and Victoria's Secret who get plenty of bang for their product placement bucks. And 15-year-old boys for whom the movie is cynically constructed.

So when we're done with the cartoonish story about Eric Sachs (William Fichtner) and his silly plan to blackmail New York with a toxic spray, there are some fast and slick visuals to keep the lads happy.

The 3D is put to good effect. The digital foursome are well executed, their rat mentor Splinter - a proto-Yoda - better still.

A sequence when the heroes on the half-shell are careering down a mountainside dodging lorries, baddies and each other is immense fun. And when they're tackling robot samurai Shredder on a skyscraper, palms do sweat.

It's trash, of course. Soulless derivative corporate trash. With clunk at every turn. Even the subtitles need subtitles ("You have trained for such contingencies") although sometimes you wish for silence ("Tonight we dine on turtle soup.")

Everyone attacks producer Michael Bay because in his films noise replaces character.
But when you're 15 "character" is something that happens in Eng Lit. At the cinema with your mates, you just want Turtle A to gets busy on Bad Guy B, fast, again and again, like a video game.

"And to think we were going to use rabbits," says Sachs of his amphibian experiments. "Can you imagine that?"

If there's a market, Bay's imagining it right now.

Book review: More Fool Me, by Stephen Fry

2014-10-14T21:48:00.001+01:00

More Fool Me
Stephen Fry (Penguin)
★★★★✩

Oh, Stephen. Oh, deliciously wicked Stephen. What troubles come your way and how quickly they pass on by. For yours is a life of ineffable privilege and Houdini sleight.

Fry's life story has reached his 30s when wealth, fame and friends ensure he negotiates bumps like a hovercraft. He is as comfortable as a tweed jacket and a pair of well-appointed brogues.

A Bit Of Fry And Laurie, Blackadder, copious writing and theatrical exploits, his first best-seller. Every friend a name, every scrape a humdinger.

The Prince and Princess of Wales drop in for tea and crumpets in Norfolk; Damien Hirst drops £20,000 Turner prize dosh at an all-nighter at the Groucho; Fry is slagged off by a Gallagher, loved by Johnny Mills and dines endlessly at high-end clubs and hotels with celebs, confidantes and insiders although he's politely discreet about anything untoward.

Except his own brazen vice. For at every opportunity our hero is in the lavs snorting coke like there's no tomorrow.

Pish, tush and never mind. A brush with police glides by, the Aids epidemic crosses on the other side. Say "botty" and doors that are closed for others, open for you.

These stories in the hands of a less entertaining raconteur would be fingernails on a chalkboard. But silky, self-deprecating Stephen has a way. A way with words, of course, and a way with story, a way with people.

"But truly," he says fluttering a fan coyly over his embarrassment. "I hear what I consider to be the voice of the reader, your voice. Hundreds of thousands of you, wincing, pursing your lips, laughing here, hissing there, nodding, tutting, comparing your life to mine with as much objective honesty as you can."

Yes, he is that imp. The boy who looks to his gran with illicit chocolate round his chops and says, "I cannot tell a lie" with such wide-eyed bravado that he gets, not censure, but an extra slice on the sly.

There is much about this book that provokes frustration. It has a half-baked, flung-together feel, old material is re-hashed and slabs of diary feel like place-holders for the bits he never got round to writing.

But, Fry is such an endlessly enticing companion and his writing is such a guilty pleasure. You shouldn't but you will.

Working Mum: Down at the nail bar, I scratch an itch for gossip and glam

2014-10-10T13:33:00.000+01:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

Pre Master A, I was a regular nail bar visitor. Every Thursday after work, I would take my spot alongside other clients and let Janine get to work on taming my talons.

It was a ritual that not only left me feeling more feminine but also more in touch with life.

For those 20 to 30minutes, I would engage in putting the world to rights and sharing histories with my fellow regulars. It was a modern day equivalent of visiting the baths in Ancient Rome.

I had forgotten just how much fun the ritual was until, on a whim, I popped into a nail bar that was new to me.

The latest health scare suggested I might be risking fungal infections and puss-filled cuticles but I pressed on.

I was lucky there was a spare slot. I took my seat and let Albert loose on my weakened, unsightly fingernails.

This was a regulars' haunt. At first, like in Sergio Leone movie when an out-of-town stranger walks into a saloon, I was viewed with suspicion. The conversation, loud on entering, became muted. I had to earn my place, their trust.

I eyed the nails of the woman next to me. Acrylic, fuchsia, long stiletto. Even though I've been out of the game for almost seven years, I was pleased I hadn't lost my touch.

"I'm going on a first date," I lied. "What would you recommend?" This was not directed towards Albert but to my fellow nail barers.

It worked. The five customers each chipped in with their suggestions, each playfully poo-poohing the others' ideas.

The ice broken, I spent the next half-an-hour discussing with my new BFFs everything from fostering (one woman, already a mother of four, was considering the option because "I want another baby but I think I've already done my duty to the human race") and Nigel Farage (marry, snog, avoid? - you'd be surprised at the responses) to the merits of Aldi's Peach Bellini and Amal Alamuddin ("just how long will it be before she's in the White House?")

Working Mum, currently admiring my petrol blue almond shaped acrylic talons and counting down the days until I get my infills.

Film review: Effie Gray (12A)

2014-10-08T19:12:00.004+01:00

Effie Gray
(12A) 108mins
★★★★✩

If Effie Gray lacks the emotional release that the painstaking accumulation of frustrations appears to demand, it is perhaps testimony to the artistic courage of script writer Emma Thompson (who also stars).

How easy would it have been to surrender to heaving passions and happy endings. After all, that would have been historically accurate. Instead Thompson, and her director Richard Laxton, sidestep Hollywood in favour of understated heartache.

This tale is relentless in its depiction of Victorian spirit-crushing but there are marvels on view in every scene. Costume, set dressing and lighting make the film a thing of beauty. The autumnal hues first suggest festive promise, then the brittle dryness of a loveless marriage and finally the dun deadening of despair.

We take this journey in the company of perspicacious and patient Effie Gray. Despite the cruelties she endures, she will not surrender to her anger or her illicit passions in order to provide the villain or hysteric that her contemptuous husband John Ruskin expects.

Some of the cream of British actors (Sir Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane et al) pop up for a line or two and then vanish revealing the strength of Thompson's contacts book. None is better than Julie Walters as Ruskin's poisonous and monstrous mother although David Suchet as her glowering husband matches her for thunder.

But the camera lingers on (American) Dakota Fanning who plays the porcelain cheeked beauty admirably. She moves from capitulation to dismay to the first stirrings of rebellion with unshowy rigour.

The cell of a marriage in a prison of society is the backdrop. Spoilt art critic Ruskin (Greg Wise) erroneously chooses his young muse for marriage and they are both clueless as to what should happen next.

"What do married people do?" Effie asks.

"I have as little idea as you, dearest," he replies.

Famously, he shies away from "relations" leaving his teenage bride so frustrated and forlorn that her hair falls out. Although his physical neglect may arise from shyness and shock, it quickly becomes loathing and abuse.

She is not without temptations. In Venice, a man makes an improper advance and she is both intrigued and horrified by his brusque physicality. But it is on a trip to Scotland - her homeland - where she begins to understand what must be done.

Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) is commissioned to paint Ruskin and the threesome find themselves locked in a rain-soaked croft. Millais becomes increasingly disgusted by his mentor's disregard for his wife while his own enchantment with her simplicity, tenderness and beauty seizes him irretrievably.

She recognises both her own emotions and the impossibility of their expression. But, in the quiet moments of her torment, she formulates a plan as cool as her husband's ardour and as brilliant as her new love's art.

Film review: Filmed In Supermarionation (PG)

2014-10-07T19:38:00.000+01:00

Filmed In Supermarionation
(PG) 119mins
★★★★✩

Thunderbirds visionary Gerry Anderson railed against the limitations of puppetry.

Although his genius was defined by a string of hits with his Supermarionation heroes - including Captain Scarlet, Stingray, Joe 90 and the Tracy brothers - he dreamt of something bigger, better and more human. Something that could walk from A to B without suggesting piles would be a start.

Anderson fell into puppetry early in his career in his quest to make "real" films. He was held there by acclaim and money and would inevitably break free but not before re-writing the rules of television.

If he was the driven, thorny genius, his wife Sylvia was the soothing balm of AP Films, which occupied anonymous warehouses in Slough. When the pressure was on, the cool tones of Lady Penelope would introduce effortless calm to the fractious heat.

Stephen Riviere's affection and definitive documentary Filmed In Supermarionation is a witty, knowing retrospective charting the rise and fall of the Andersons' empire, from their early days doing shorts to the fully-fledged mini-epics that were the hallmark of their ground-breaking output during the 1960s.

Along the way, we get to see the faces behind the voices, previously unseen excerpts from the shows and the secrets behind those Hollywood-style explosions.

Lady Penelope herself and adenoidal sidekick Parker narrate much of the story.

("Well milady, 'ave you hever wondered 'ow you came to be, why ham I 'ere, what is the meanin' of life hetcetera?" he asks. "Why Parker, having an existential crisis?")

We travel with a band of former staff to revisit their old studio - now a garage - and share their memories of back-breaking toil in cramped conditions waiting hours for the strings to be made invisible.

We hear how their little adventures lit the eyes of children and turned the heads of TV moguls.

The ultimate demise of AP Films was written into that early Anderson frustration and signalled by the physiognomy of the puppets. After the caricatures of the Tracey brothers - big eyes, big heads - Anderson evolved his marionettes into the more human proportions.

Anderson even offered a curious, risible crossover The Secret Service in which long shots were human.

He finally made the jump into live action in the 1970s, without much success, ending his career reliving the Supermarionation days through its evergreen cult following.

Despite the gloomy trajectory of the final chapter, this is a delightful retelling of the tale. For those who took part - the voices, the actors, the FX guys - those were the days of their lives.

And those early fans, grown up now, will fidget excitedly in their seats like five-year-olds and delight again that such fitful figures could realise their slick dreams of adventure.

To a fully fired imagination, strings are always invisible.

ANDERSON'S OUTPUT
■ Adventures Of Twizzle 1957-59
■ Four Feather Falls 1959-60
■ Supercar 1960-61
■ Fireball XL5 1962
■ Stingray 1964
■ Thunderbirds 1964-66
■ Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons 1967
■ Joe 90 1968
■ The Secret Service 1969

Working Mum: Why I confronted man filming kids in the park

2014-10-03T17:20:00.002+01:00

GUEST BLOG

By Tabitha Ronson

Over the weekend, Master A and I went along to a free family event in our local park with one of his classmates, Talia, and her mum.

The sun was shining and laughter filled the open space. Children of all ages were taking full advantage of the activities on offer from old school fairground games and cake decorating to model car racing and crafts.

First stop was the face painting, with Master A opting for Batman. Talia a butterfly. While waiting for the transformation to take place, I became aware of a third adult standing alongside us. A presence that was rather too close. I turned to find a man, in his late 50s, positioned a few steps behind the face painter filming Talia.

I was very uncomfortable.

I am normally mild-mannered, reserved even, but without giving it a second thought, I confronted the stranger. I demanded he stop filming and to delete all footage of Talia.

He mumbled something about not knowing that he wasn't allowed to film and pointed out the signs that read: "Photographs at this event may be taken for future publicity purposes."

He started to walk away - still with the footage on his camera.

Again without thought, I blocked his path and insisted he delete the material he had taken. A crowd had formed around us, nudging and whispering. The man remained passive.

Drawn to the ruckus, an event co-ordinator came over. On hearing the issue, she immediately requested the man delete any material featuring Talia.

He continued to play daft laddie, fumbling with his phone's controls, before eventually handing the phone over to the event organiser.

The phone was cleared and the man shuffled off.

In hindsight, I probably over-reacted. The man was quite likely enjoying a wonderful carefree day.

However, with the news about the Southend deputy head who hanged himself before it was revealed he was a paedophile, one can never be too careful.

Working Mum, despising those who would rob children of their innocence.