Category: Voice
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The Last Word in Spooky: The Deathbed Duties of a Spy
One of my regular jobs in espionage is what I call ‘the deathbed duties.’ Spies like to fact-check the passing of illustrious figures. It’s an eerie duty that puts the spookiness in spook. It all started because we once royally embarrassed ourselves. In fact it was one of our biggest boobs to date: Mr Alfred Nobel woke up one […]
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Chemical Brothers: Don’t Think
Most concert films are tedious. Sorry (I’m not sorry) but it seems as though every act and their roadie thinks that their fans will somehow feel more emotionally connected to them if they release a show video inter-cut with some black and white handheld footage of “the real them” arriving at the venue, preparing backstage and offering homogenised pearls of wisdom. I’ve been grabbed by very few concert films since Cocksucker Blues, Robert Frank’s cinéma vérité expose of The Rolling Stones ‘72 American tour. However staged parts of it may have been (I doubt even Keith and Ronnie would have bothered chucking that telly off the balcony if the camera wasn’t rolling) it gave an insight into the men behind the myth. Perhaps too much of an insight as when they saw it, the ever image-conscious Stones legally barred it’s public screening. The internet allows one to circumvent that sort of daftness these days but I wish I’d seen CS Blues before pretty much every concert film except Stop Making Sense and Gimme Shelter (notable exceptions as they don’t just feel like early rehearsals for Spinal Tap).
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Future Visions: The Bleak, The Brown And The Great
When I saw a Guardian headline warning the world that Gordon Brown was set to unveil his predictions for 2025, I thought I was reading The Onion. Oddly, yet predictably, it turns out I wasn’t. After all, Gordon’s exactly the kind of guy who thinks that everyone will benefit (if not exactly be entertained by) from his dour yet […]
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Dunwich Trilogy: The Climactic Conclusion
In this three-part series, Orchard Times scribe Oscar Rickett investigates the history of Dunwich: Britain’s wannabe Atlantis. This is the third and final instalment. Here’s Part One and here’s Part Two. Jumping Ship In Dunwich they used to hold a “Service of the Waves” on the cliffs in the memory of Saint Felix and Sigeberht, […]
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Animalistic Beats
Here’s plenty of boom-barking beats and rip-roaring instrumentals; from tingly, toe-tapping electronica to bestial, boom-bapping trip-hop. All these tunes are 100% wild productions.
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UK ‘subsidising nuclear power unlawfully’
They say financial rules for nuclear operators include subsidies that have not been approved by the commission. These include capping of liability for accidents, which they say at least halves the cost of nuclear electricity. The government says it is confident that policies do not provide subsidies. The complaint, by the Energy Fair group, also […]
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Newcastle United: Council plea over St James’ Park name
In November it was announced the ground was being renamed Sports Direct Arena, after owner Mike Ashley’s company. Many fans reacted angrily but the club said it was a prelude to securing a new global sponsor. Councillors agreed to write to media outlets “respectfully requesting” them not to use the new name. The motion was […]
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Podcast: Occupy Wall Street meets Occupy London
On the day that Occupy London lost their high court eviction battle and exactly 4 months since protesters set up camp in what’s now known as Liberty Square in New York, Orchard Times’ Kim Willis brought together Karanja Gacuca from OWS and Jamie Kelsey-Fryfrom Occupy LSX to look back on how this unprecedented global movement has evolved and what they each think of their sister camp on the other side of the pond.
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Whatʼs The Difference Between a Sleuth, a Snoop And a Snake?
In Britain we love to spy and be spied upon. Reality shows are novocain for the sharp pangs of our undercover yearnings. We cherish our mobile telephone numbers until they become our personal bar codes. National Express train posters encourage you to report fellow passengers who are propping their feet on the seat or hiding in the loo from the conductor. There is little irony in Big Brotherʼs Britain.
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A History of Dunwich: The Second Installment
When Daniel Defoe visited Dunwich in the 1720s he noted that “fame reports that once they had fifty churches in the town; I saw but one left, and that not half full of people”. Fame had exaggerated, but the fall from grace was stark. For Defoe, the ruin of Dunwich was particularly poignant because it had been brought about not by human folly but by natural causes. To him, the downfall of once great cities lacked the tragedy of the downfall of Dunwich: “The ruins of Carthage, of the great city of Jerusalem, or of ancient Rome, are not at all wonderful to me. The ruins of Nineveh, which are so entirety sunk as that it is doubtful where the city stood; the ruins of Babylon, or the great Persepolis, and many capital cities, which time and the change of monarchies have overthrown, these, I say, are not at all wonderful, because being the capitals of great and flourishing kingdoms, where those kingdoms were overthrown, the capital cities necessarily fell with them; but for a private town, a seaport, and a town of commerce, to decay, as it were, of itself (for we never read of Dunwich being plundered or ruined by any disaster, at least, not of late years); this, I must confess, seems owing to nothing but to the fate of things, by which we see that towns, kings, countries, families, and persons, have all their elevation, their medium, their declination, and even their destruction in the womb of time, and the course of nature.” For those in low-lying coastal regions, the battles and concerns of great civilisations are more often than not offset by the battle to prevent your family drowning. In this, the Suffolk coast shares a concern with the coastal communities of the Netherlands. The Dutch province of Zeeland lies below sea level. Its flag shows a lion emerging from the water (half of the lion is still in the water, so there is a suggestion that it could still drown) and its motto is “I struggle and emerge”, which leaves you in no doubt as to what the primary concern was for the people of the province. One folk tale from Zeeland, “The mermaid of Westenschouwen”, tells of fishermen who catch a mermaid in their nets. She is brought back to land and everyone in the town marvels at her. But her merman husband misses his mermaid and every day his voice can be heard calling for her, telling the people of the town he wants her back. Unlike Tom Hanks in Splash, the fishermen refuse to return the mermaid and they are shouted at one last time by the mermaid’s husband: