River of Adventure

This week has been hell or so, been hit with the mother of all flu that left me no choice but to call in sick for the first time in ages.

On the plus side I have finished my entire book log and have finally read through The River of Adventure by Enid Blyton.  This is the last of the series of Adventure stories for older boys and girls and of course old gits who like to poke fun out of things.  This is no exception. 

Remember how they would say the Famous Five stories were problematic and that they were racist, sexist and contained the word queer far too much.  This is basically them but with everything turned up to 11, as it were.  Contains 4 kids and a parrot, rather than the usual 4 kids and a dog also with a bit more parental guidance than usual.  This time it's secret agent man Bill, his Mrs. Allie and Kids Phil, Jack, Dinah and Lucy Anne.  The Parrots name is Kiki and is some sort of Cockatoo.   

Tasked with keeping an eye out on shifty Arab Raya Uma, and with his kids recovering from a bad case of flu, he has them accompany him on a case down the Abencha River on a trip to recuperate, while keeping an eye out on wily foreign, Mr. Uma.   They have a native guide called Tala who pilots the boat and has comedy broken English.  And following a stop at Cine Town a makeshift settlement created out of an old film set, they pick up the snake charmers nephew Oola who basically becomes Phil's slave for most of the trip.

You are here for problematic stuff and lets face it most of the time its them filthy smelly A rabs and Oola in particular who seems to get beaten and slapped around, when he's not Phil's slave.  He's also noted as being unclean and in need of a wash.  Something only the gypsies were in Classic Famous Five.  The other thing is that the word queer is liberally sprinkled throughout the text, if you are a sensitive prick and can't tell when that word is used for something genuinely strange, then it may trigger you.  My suggestion is to go fuck yourself, and get over it.

Worst thing is far into the book where events have happened and its just the kids and Tala sailing down the river trapped in the current, they overrule him to go down some dangerous path, true  they do end up in a lost temple in the dark, but this is an experienced boat man they just pull rank (dare I even say privilege) on and set down that path.  It just stuck in my craw, that a bunch of white kids would know best instead of the boat master.

Also this is modern day Syria they are sailing through or some such analogue of, no one is Muslim, There is talk of the bible, with names and such, and they also spell Sargon of Akkad as King Saigon, you know that Vietnamese king of the Akkadians.   Some of the places also seem rather close to Arabic,  places such as Ala Ou Iya (Al Laouiyah ot more like a corruption of Hallelujah) and Ullabaid (Allahbaid) I don't know if Enid Blyton ever left the UK or just consulted an atlas or local library. 

Finally Phil gets a snake courtesy of Oola.  Its a defanged poisonous reptile and spends most of its time in his shirt.  Some times his head pokes out, please do not confuse this with his penis which plays no part in the story.

Old Mill Done.

Finally finished up transcribing The Secret of The Old Mill. Will have to say that all in all that I enjoyed getting back into typing stuff up again.  Took all in all, about 8 weeks to do (in spare time after work and sometimes before work, I'm not the fastest typist.) Now going through some downloaded files to see what is the originals and what is the books we got here, in all to do it again. 

I'm only going to be looking at those stories that got an extensive rewrite in the 60's, so its basically the first 24 books and probably less if the pdf.s I downloaded are what they say they are.  The downside is that the originals aren't cheap, $25 (£18)per copy and the same again to ship to the UK on Ebay and around £10 for  the Applewood reprints which cover the first 15 or so books.

Any way, here is the original Secret Of The Old Mill, all proof read and typeset correctly.

On  a side note when did we drop the hyphen from to-night and to-day. It seems weird seeing this in period texts as its entirely absent from "today's" written language.

Oh and I may have touched on this before, but if you'd like some Cliff Notes to go with this explaining stuff then I will only be too happy to oblige.  As some of the terms used are quite obscure, especially the old underworld slang Mr Hardy uses from time to time. Chet Morton for that matter has some pretty obscure slang too for the interested.

Croydon

First trip in ages back to Croydon for a good old junk tour, and to be honest nothing really changes.  Though this time I managed to find all the Charity shops.  They are up past the tram lines at the top of the town. 

Did see a few promising places and find a few things.  Managed to grab Butt of Course by the  Jimmy Castor bunch, from the legion, cool sleeve on this and I believe its funk if Discogs doesn't lie to me. 

The hate foundation had a few good CD's in including The Knife (Dull) and a secretsudaze double mix which looks promising.  And the first ever Fabric mix CD from Craig Richards, which is also a good un.

Worse though, Croydon still has its problems including weirdo christians, no kangz this time but what I believe to be followers of John The Baptist.  There is still the Grenfell cunt spewing his hateful left wing bile about the tragedy.  Also a poster showing the Asian Phillip Schofield (the mayor) with the signs no blacks no dogs no irish lined out with bashment, dubstep and Grime.  Which is probably even worse, I believe hip hop culture, and its tropes hold back black culture even more and listening to just this is even worse for young folk. 

In short, not a bad day but still glad to be home.

New Year.

Never really did give you the round up of other stuff from the past year.  We covered TV and music and didn't cover other types of video content or books and games.  Will have to compile a proper list this year of stuff we enjoyed especially TV and music.

TV because there are still things here I missed out on.

Maya documentary about using LIDAR to discover new ruins in Guatemala.  I know I should get  the proper title from Tivo but I cannot be arsed.  Remembered this as I was watching Reeves and Mortimer's big night out.  Essentially its using Radar on a plane to look through the jungle to find new ruins.  Also.

Reeves and Mortimer's big night in.

Vic n Bob with stances, dances, Ghostbusters, and George Ezra singing with a burning heater on stage with the two interrupting him with requests.  That is what would stick in my mind the best.

Books

Just finished Past Tense Lee Child and can heartily recommend this.  If you like genealogy and a creepy motel in the woods, oh and birdwatching too, you'll not be disappointed.

Can also recommend  Carlos Magdalena Plant Messiah, with his talk on endangered species and his dedication to resurrecting those that are at the edge of extinction.  For cactophiles there is a bit on Graffiti on Neoraimondia in Peru, providing a glimpse of culture and weather back then.  But even if you don't like cacti and its coverage is minimal, there's much more food for thought and asides on everything from island endemics to waterlilies in Australia.  Also a sobering thought at what we could lose, due to climate change and rampant human overpopulation.#

Online Video.and YTP and the state of this.

Like I said before we had a few people killed off by Youtube last year, the entire Tomservo channel got mixed due to some humourless bastard not getting a joke.

Not many landmark videos this year, We already gave you a new Digitiser the Show as part of the TV line up, so I'll direct you there. 

Potholer 54 on a Conservative challenge to climate change is my stand out of the year.  Apparently Thatcher got it whereas Reagan didn't, she foresaw the  world warming at an alarming level and wanted to do stuff about it.  It elaborates on and is quite excellent showing new technology around renewable energy from a side you wouldn't think is pro environmental or just climate sceptic.