Robert Carter's Blog: http://novelcarter.blogspot.co.uk/, page 9

Bad TV - Sometimes so Bad it's Good ...

It should be admitted that even bad TV is not always without wisdom. According to "The Water Margin", that bizarre Japanese schedule-filler from the 70's, an ancient sage once said: "Do not despise the snake for having no horns."

Quite.

I, for one, can honestly say I have always abided by this advice.

Health Warning - Bad TV Rots the Mind

Leading writers, it seems, agree that bad TV rots the mind. This news is worrying enough, given our collective addiction to TV, but the situation may be worse still. It may be that @all TV rots the mind. Even good TV requires nothing very creative on the part of the consumer. This is why, by and large, we writers prescribe good books as the surest antidote.
Here at Carter Towers we are at present stuck in the groove that lies between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, a perfect time to be reflecting on the ghastliness of most TV. My spirits are occasionally lifted as I peruse the Electronic Programme Guide to see some classic film slated for transmission, only to have my hopes dashed by finding that the said film is a recent re-make, for which read: almost certainly an appalling piece of drivel that bears no relation to the original.  And why? Because it will have had every ounce of delight wrung from it by a producer whose sole aim is to make as much money as he can from our cherished memories.
This approach, I refer to as "mining." It's the very opposite of creative endeavour. It's cowardly and exploitative and I hate it with a will. Even as I write, there will be hundreds of maggots in the bowels of Hollywood, trawling feverishly through material we once loved, wondering how they can work up an angle sufficiently palatable to dupe us again.  Anyone who doubts this should compare the original "Bedazzled" with the re-make. Enough said.

Monty's Python? Monty didn't have a python but ...

Rommel was soundly beaten by Londoner, Bernard Montgomery, who was very fond of his pets. Here we see him with his two dogs. A cage of canaries can be seen in the background. He called his dogs "Hitler" and "Rommel."  It is not known whether Rommel had a dog called "Montgomery."

The Desert Fox

Say "Rommel" and people know immediately who you mean - the charismatic tank commander, the genius general, the "good Nazi."  Since the war there has been a tendency to idealize Erwin Rommel. James Mason played him in a Hollywood movie, and there are stories of U.S. tanks going into battle with a picture of the man taped up inside their turrets. But some of us have been guilty of slack thinking when it comes to appraising the Desert Fox.

To be sure, Rommel was charismatic. He had what modern TV executives call "a high likeability rating." This helps, as that other famously "good Nazi" the extraordinarily avuncular Albert Speer knew, when getting people to do things - usually for no pay. It also helps when historians later try to create a picture of a notable individual. The trouble is, being a general has only one judging standard: winning battles.

Rommel fought against those doughty soldiers, the Italians, during the First World War. There, amid Alpine snows, he won for himself a Blue Max, which was pretty medal reserved for soldiers with a nice smile. When his first attempt at war ended in utter defeat at the hands of real soldiers, Rommel slunk off to pen a military best-seller about how to use infantry against Italians, which put his name about somewhat.

Next, he popped up in 1939, victoriously commanding his panzers against the very best tanks that Poland had to offer - horses. In 1940, he swept through Belgium and France in a brief fight that saw the collapse of (ahem) valiant French forces, who had been trained to Olympic levels in sprinting and rifle throwing. It may not have been Rommel's fault that the British managed to evacuate almost all their troops (and quite a few French) from Dunkirk, but at least he wasn't saddled with any blame by his Nazi pals.

Rommel was not himself quite a Nazi, although he did fight for them without qualm, wore the swastika on his uniform and was best pals with a certain Dr Goebbels, German propaganda minister (a man who could make a military legend out of an old boot, and frequently did.) Oh, yes, and Oberst Rommel commanded part of Hilter's personal protection unit, the so-called Führerbegleitbataillon. So, not quite a Nazi, but not exactly a conscientious objector either.

The very next year we find a freshly-promoted Generalleutnant Rommel out panzering in North Africa. (Hitler had sent him there to sort out the mess left by those doughty fighters, the Italians - remember them?  They who had been busy in Libya surrendering to the British in vast numbers. Perhaps Mussolini's staff might have been encouraged to read Rommel's best-seller before they set off.) There followed some masterful to-ing and fro-ing along the Libyan coast, ending in utter defeat at the hands of Bernard Montgomery and five hundred borrowed American tanks. Rommel had by now developed a cold-sore on his lip and went back to Greater Germany to recuperate while his men, abandoned
in the desert and with no particular place to go, threw in the towel on his behalf.

It was all starting to go horribly pear-shaped for the Germans and the writing was appearing on the bunker wall. Next, Rommel was put in charge of "Fortress Europe," where he spent 4% of German GDP in having slave laborers pour millions of tons of concrete into places that were never going to be attacked. The wily
American and British Empire forces (let's not forget the Canadians!) waited for Rommel, the master tactician, to get another cold-sore, and as soon as he departed they landed successfully all over the French coast and began smashing the best the Wehrmacht had to offer in double-quick time. Winning, it seemed, was not turning out to be a noticeable German trait - at least when their much-trumpeted army were up against a proper ballsy outfit and not some pack of backward surrender monkeys.

At this point, Hitler, who had recently had his trousers shredded by a sadly underpowered bomb placed under him by another of this trusted officers, promptly pinned the blame for the Normandy debacle on our heroic tank commander. The deal was this: be a good chap and poison yourself for me and you'll get to have a state funeral with a swastika draped over your coffin and as many bunches of flowers as you want - or - fail to do so and we'll kill you and all your family in one of our luxury concentration camps. Nice guys, those Nazis.  Of course, Rommel knew his duty, and duly obliged his Fuhrer. He died with his boots on, and his men loved him.

V2 rockets - not my department ...

A few years ago, I happened to visit the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama -- yes, Noble Readers, I do get around somewhat - and I saw there preserved, almost as if in aspic, the office of Wernher von Braun.

Now, Wernher von Braun, you may recall, was the German rocket scientist who worked to develop the equipment that would eventually put a man on the moon. A previous blog of mine mentioned some of von Braun's earlier handiwork: the notorious V2 missile, used by the Nazis to kill several thousand people in my city. So you can imagine that I have mixed feelings about the man and my brief moment looking into his office ...

Did America do right by spiriting this Nazi (and he was a Nazi all right) off to Alabama to get the jump on the Russians so far as the next phase of weapons development was concerned? Sure.  No question. Much better than hanging him after a short appearance in Nuremburg. It might even be argued that we (I use the term loosely to include myself) managed to turn a Nazi back into a human being. Personally, I doubt von Braun spent much time confronting himself with moral
questions, but then what do I know?

One of my particular heroes is a guy named Tom Lehrer, part scientist, part piano-playing satirical song-writer, all-round genius. If you don't know of him already, go Google him and you could learn much from his current incarnation on Youtube -- "Lehrer" is, after all, German for "teacher."

For your edification, here's what Tom, writing in the early 'Sixties, said about Wernher:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V7me25aNtI

The Vengeance Weapon

Yesterday, I drove a couple of miles to a local spot that is quite significant in world history. Now, I know what you're thinking, Noble Readers: you only have to poke a pointed stick into the ground in London to have the the black gold of history come spurting out. But my short trip was not of the kind that results in the discovery of some lost medieval king under a car park.  No, it was a sad and poignant little visit to a very ordinary suburban street that for a brief moment within living memory was turned into a living hell.

At about a quarter before seven in the evening of the 8th of September, 1944, an explosion in Chiswick, West London, killed three people. One was 63 year-old Ada Harrison, another was a Royal Engineer called Bernard Browning who was on leave and hoping to see his girlfriend, and the third was a three year-old called Rosemary Clarke. Twenty-two other people were injured.

The explosion made a crater forty feet across and thirty feet deep, and demolished a dozen houses in Staveley Road. More had to be torn down because of the damage they sustained. The authorities said a gas explosion was to blame, but they knew very well that this blast was nothing of the sort. They knew, because they had been told by their military ntelligence people to expect it, that this was caused by a warhead.

Winston Churchill was informed that a rocket had been launched from the Hague in Nazi-occupied Holland, had traveled up to the very fringes of Outer Space, and had then dropped supersonically to earth, completing what was the world's first ballistic missile attack.

In all, more than three thousand V2s were launched on London and, later, Antwerp, killing and maiming thousands of victims. A very sad tale could be told about every one of them. There is a small, recently-placed memorial to the tragedy that took place outside No. 5 Staveley Road. If you wait there long enough, the sight of it will bring a tear to your eye.

You might like to see this video on YouTube   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjFTN-YdK_M

 

Anyone for Sphairistike?

As a previous blog has vouchsafed to you, Noble Reader, I did my teenage astronomy at Rossall College. This is a private school on the Irish Sea coast in an area known as the Fylde. Believe it or not, this unlikely spot is, after a fashion, the home of one of the world's greatest sports.

Whether or not the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton -- and it's rather doubtful that the Duke of Wellington ever made a remark to that effect -- it's pretty certain that the love of ball games was well established among the children of Britain's ruling elite even in the mid-eighteenth century.

Walter Clopton Wingfield, a Rossall old boy, later served in the Indian army, and on his return to England began to market a set of equipment to allow owners of country houses with neatly-kept lawns to play a new game he had invented. This diversion was more spirited than croquet and required fewer participants than cricket. He called it "Sphairistike." That is what you call a real fifty-dollar word. It's ancient Greek for "skill at ball games." Not the sort of trade mark you choose if you want your product to take off, you may say, but then at the time marketing was in its infancy and most of the people who could afford the kit (and the lawn) would have had at least a smattering of classical languages.

Many rule changes later, the game has evolved into a world sport which gives pleasure to millions and disappointment to English hopes every year. (Yes, Andy Murray, is indeed not English.) But just imagine if old Major Wingfield had opted to name his game after himself. Then, the sporting courts of Wimbledon might have been owned and organized by the All England Clopton Club. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

Watch out for Comet ISON!

Hi Noble Readers, it's time to turn your attention skyward in anticipation of what might be one of the great astronomical events of the decade. I have been an amateur astronomer for many decades and never seen a comet to compare with the gr...eat comets of history. However, despite our light-polluted skies, we may this December see one such.

Comet ISON is heading for a close encounter with the sun later this month, and if it is not vaporized or torn apart, it should be visible to the naked eye in December. It is expected to pass just about 600,000 miles from the sun's surface on November 28.

If predictions prove correct, the comet should be visible to the naked eye in Earth's early morning skies in early December and throughout the night beginning in January.

So keep those eyes peeled.

Watch out for Comet ISON!

Hi Noble Readers, it's time to turn your attention skyward in anticipation of what might be one of the great astronomical events of the decade. I have been an amateur astronomer for many decades and never seen a comet to compare with the gr...eat comets of history. However, despite our light-polluted skies, we may this December see one such.

Comet ISON is heading for a close encounter with the sun later this month, and if it is not vaporized or torn apart, it should be visible to the naked eye in December. It is expected to pass just about 600,000 miles from the sun's surface on November 28.

If predictions prove correct, the comet should be visible to the naked eye in Earth's early morning skies in early December and throughout the night beginning in January.

So keep those eyes peeled.   

The Law Really is an Ass ...

How is it that it takes graduates, supposedly the intellectual cream of society, two years at a specialist school and several further years working in practice, to acquaint themselves with the labyrinthine complexity of our system of law, but a person charged with breaking it will be told that ignorance of the law is no defence?

The only safe course is to assume that everything is illegal and do nothing, but then how can a person who dares even to walk down the street consider themselves innocent until proven guilty?