A Postcard from Lincoln

So, Monday evening I was in Lincoln delivering my Skeptical Bobby talk at the inaugural meeting of Lincoln Skeptics in the Pub. A lovely group of organisers and a fantastic and enthusiastic audience. I'm sure the meetings will grow and grow. And, because of this, yesterday morning I had a chance to wander around the city and explore. And I'm so glad I did.

Lincoln is one of those cities where every era of history is visible. Roman ruins nestle up against Tudor timber-framed cottages and Elizabethan taverns overlook 20th century Bauhaus. My little walking tour started high up in the Cathedral Quarter where my hotel was and began with a slow walk down through Exchequer Gate towards the very aptly named Steep Hill.

 

Right from the off, you become hopelessly aware that the cathedral dominates the city. It is incongruously huge among the houses around it. In fact, the cathedral - technically called the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln - was, reputedly, the tallest building in the world for 238 years between 1311–1549. These days, the central tower is 271ft (83m) high but it once had a central spire that took its height up to 525ft (160m). This is even taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, which held the record for almost 4,000 years. The spire collapsed during a storm in 1548. It's an amazing building - parts of it date back to 1088 - and I would have liked to have seen inside but it was closed. This means I couldn't visit the famous Lincoln Imp, a small carved figure that has become one of the most famous emblems of the city.

According to 14th-century legend, two mischievous imps were sent by Satan to do evil work on Earth. After causing mayhem elsewhere in Northern England they headed to Lincoln Cathedral, where they smashed tables and chairs and tripped up the Bishop. An angel appeared in the Angel Choir and ordered them to stop. One of the imps sat atop a stone pillar and started throwing rocks at the angel whilst the other cowered under the broken tables and chairs. The angel turned the first imp to stone, allowing the second imp to escape. The imp that turned to stone can still be found sitting atop his stone column in the Angel Choir.

Behind the cathedral in Exchequer Square you find Lincoln Castle and the beautiful Tudor building that houses the tourist information bureau. I didn't have time to visit the castle, sadly, as there were some museums and galleries I wanted to fit into my morning. The castle is one of the best preserved Norman castles in the UK (restoration work was on-going as I passed by) and it's possible to walk around the entire 900+ year old castle wall and see a great view of the city sprawling below. 

You realise just how high above the city you are when you start the descent down Steep Hill. And it really is very, very steep. There's even a handrail for old duffers like me to hold on to.

There are some lovely little independent shops all along the length of the hill and a real hodge-podge of architectural styles. About halfway down, you come to the Jew's House and Norman House, two Norman buildings, one of which is an amazing antiquarian bookshop.

But then, in a pretty little close just off the hill, I spotted this amazing new build in amongst the cottages. I have to congratulate the local planning authority on their forward-thinking. I love the look of the place but I can imagine it met with some fearsome NIMBY-style opposition.

Very soon, Steep Hill became The Strait and I entered the city's cultural quarter. Here, I paid a visit to The Collection and The Usher Gallery. The Collection is a light, modern, airy museum that traces the history of the city from prehistory through to the English Civil War. Arranged inside a single large space, The Collection has everything from fossil plesiosaurs to Anglo-Saxon combs to Cavalier hats and is very child-friendly. In fact, the place was heaving with school parties drawing pictures, making silver foil armour and marching along shouting 'Sin! Dex! Sin! Dex!' That's really nice to see.

By comparison, the Usher Gallery is an older, more traditional style of museum with a truly eclectic range of art on display. I really liked the way that old and new are displayed side by side, such as this Grayson Perry vase sitting in front of William Hilton's Una and the Satyrs painted in the early 19th century.

Visitors are given quite a large degree of trust. You can get up really close to the exhibits, like this L S Lowry painting of the city; I was able to see every individual brush stroke and take photos on my phone. Such a thrill.

I then walked down into the High Street, snapping beautiful buildings as I passed them, stopping for a sandwich beside the River Witham and its iconic 'Empowerment' sculpture by Stephen Broadbent, and then down to Brayford Pool to feed some crusts to the ducks and swans before heading to the train station and home.

A truly beautiful city - I wish I'd had more time for exploration. I didn't even touch the many Roman ruins. Plus I'd like a gawk at the castle and cathedral.

I will return!

The Badger Hole of Ignorance Special #1 - All about Series 1

In this episode of The Badger Hole of Ignorance, producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner discuss Series 1 of The Museum of Curiosity, recorded in 2006.

Aiding host John Lloyd in this first series was guest curator Bill Bailey.

The guests, and their donations, were as follows:

Show 1: Professor Richard Fortey (Curators of the Natural History Museum and the Giant Hornet of Chang Jiang), Sean Lock (The modern Scarf Knot) and Brian Blessed (The Yeti).

Show 2: Fran Beaumann (A Pineapple), Dr Gary Sheffield (Anderson Shelters) and Ben Elton (Privacy).

Show 3: Arthur Smith (Arthur Cravan), Professor Frank Close (Nothing) and Professor Ronald Hutton (Father Christmas).

Show 4: Victoria Finlay (Pliny the Elder), Kevin Day (The Battle of Waterloo) and Alastair Fothergill (the Hairy Angler Fish).

Show 5: Sir Jonathan Miller (Nottingham Alabasters), Dr Phillip Ball (Phlogiston) and Professor Marcus du Sautoy (The Monster).

Show 6: Dr John Gribbin (The Big Bang when it was the size of a Grapefruit), Alan Davies (Epping Forest) and Martha Reeves (Silence).

So here's the podcast hosted, as always, by the affable Ken Plume:



(All photos copyright Dan Schreiber)

The Lost America of Troy Paiva

Photographer Troy Paiva spends much of his working life standing in the pitch darkness of middle America, his camera locked onto some desolate run-down building or abandoned car wreck. Using only the moon and starlight and a long exposure of up to four minutes, he captures the crumbling remains of buildings, cars and caravans. And, while the aperture is open, he uses flashes with coloured filters to add areas of interest to the exposure. He calls it 'painting with light'. The results are eerie and quite beautiful.

Paiva's low budget high impact technique has attracted a legion of fans (and imitators) but his work remains unique. You can see a lot more images at his Lost America site or on his Flickr stream:

The Plumptious Art of Fernando Botera

As you'll know if you pop along here occasionally, I've spent the past 20 months or so teaching myself to paint. My most recent canvasses have featured British stereotypes matched to British idioms; meat and two veg, vicars and tarts, teacher's pet, fisherman's friends etc.

One of my big inspirations is the late, great Beryl Cook and her hundreds of paintings of curvy women and chunky blokes having fun.

And, just recently, I've discovered the Colombian painter Fernando Botero, who seems to bring the same sense of ebullient joy to his paintings and sculptures.

 

 

 

 

Botero is held to be one of South America's most important living artists and his unusual figurative style has earned the name 'Boterismo'. Where he differs fundamentally from artists like Cook is that the subjects of his paintings vary wildly from happy circus scenes to stark depictions of world events, such as his recent series about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib; just one example of him depicting a historical event with the intent of creating what he calls a 'permanent accusation'. 

 

 

It's unusual to find an artist who can easily switch from the dark side of human nature to whimsy and yet still retain an identifiable and unique style. I guess that's why he's considered to be such an important artist. It's powerful stuff. But, for me, the whimsy will always win and I particularly love his take on the Old Masters.

 

 

 

Lots more Botero goodness here, some biography here, and although he doesn't seem to have his own website, a quick image search will turn up 100s of his works.  

Video didn't kill the Radio Star

Yesterday was an interesting day. It began at BBC Radio 4 and my appearance on the Saturday Live magazine show with the Reverend Richard Coles and Anita Anand and guest star Richard Osman of Pointless fame.

Great fun and lovely people. We discussed quizzes, Cornwall, policing and the curious subject of cows having regional accents, among other things. You can listen to the show or download it as a podcast here.

I then mooched around some bookshops and was delighted to see that the Connectoscope has started to appear on the shelves. I don't think I'll ever not be thrilled by seeing one of my books in the shops.

 

Then it was on to North East London and a video shoot for the new single by Emperor Yes. I've known the lads - multi-instrumentalists Ash Gardner and Hugo Sheppard and Three Trapped Tigers drummer, the mighty Adam Betts - for a few years. Their videos are always innovative and slightly bonkers, usually involving mad costumes, animation and nods to favourite film genres. Here, for example, are their videos for Wasps and Cosmos:

I won't issue any spoilers about the new video other than to say it centres around an apocalyptic party and some curious men in costumes. My role is the mysterious 'Straws Guy'. Intriguing, eh? I'll link to the video when it's released but, in the meantime, here are a few teaser photos from the shoot (apologies for poor quality - phone camera in low light) ...

Under the costumes you might recognise Museum of Curiosity producer Dan Schreiber (frog) and magician Pete Heat (polar bear). You might also, if you're a regular to this blog, spot my Carl Sagan cartoon behind the band:

More links to Emperor Yes here.

The Badger Hole of Ignorance - Episode 1 - Mummies, Jungles and Lost Properties

Last Monday (30th) the first episode in Series Five of The Museum of Curiosity was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It featured presenter John Lloyd CBE and new curator Humphrey Ker with guests Egyptology Professor Joann Fletcher, explorer and altruist Colonel John Blashford-Snell, and comedian and environmentalist Mark Watson.

Photo copyright: Stevyn Colgan

Here's The Badger Hole of Ignorance Episode 1 podcast in which producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner discuss the episode with host Ken Plume:



Secondly, here's Jo Fletcher's extraordinary documentary - in full - telling the story of how she and her colleagues revived 2000 year old techniques to mummify a modern man. Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret is the fascinating, touching and respectful story of a very brave man facing his own death and of the dedicated scientists who worked hard to make his death something special and celebratory while also increasing the sum of human knowledge.



Next up, here's the documentary The Mission: A Grand Adventure in which 'Blashers' delivers a baby grand piano to the Wei Wei tribe in the middle of the Guyanese rain forest. Glorious British eccentricity at its best (sadly, the sound quality is a bit rough but quite watchable):



And here's Mark Watson in Australia doing some fantastic stand up (NSFW!):



More next week.

The Badger Hole of Ignorance - Episode Zero

Welcome to The Badger Hole of Ignorance, the official podcast of The Museum of Curiosity! Hosted by noted American broadcaster, film producer and owner of Fred Entertainment, the ever-affable Ken Plume, Badger Hole (as I like to call it, probably) will take you behind the scenes at the Museum. You'll hear how the show gets made, who makes the show and learn a little more about the people who make up the show's steering committee i.e. the guests and what they donate. Here's Podcast Zero, a kind of prequel podcast in which producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner explain the history of the show and how, against all the odds, it was born in 2009.

The Greendale Chainsaw Massacre - Step by Step

In the mid to late 1990s, I shared an office with a wonderfully funny chap called Chris Hale. We both loved television and film and we were both aspiring comedy writers so we would often amuse ourselves by deconstructing children's TV shows which, if you look at them closely, make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I've done the same thing on this blog a couple of times since, firstly here with Camberwick Green and here with Thunderbirds. Or, if you like, you can watch the Thunderbirds one in podcasty form:


Colganology Episode 8 - Deconstructing Thunderbirds from Stevyn Colgan on Vimeo.

Anyway, Chris and I used to love pulling apart shows like Fireman Sam, which was set in the Welsh village of Pontypandy; a very strange place indeed. To begin with, the entire population of the village consisted of just nine people: Fireman Sam, fireman Elvis Cridlington, Station Officer Steele, bus driver Trevor Evans, shopkeeper Dilys Price and her naughty son Norman Price, Sam's nephew James and niece Sarah, and a suspiciously-named Italian restauranteur called Bella Lasagne (Yes, lots more characters have been introduced since but this was the entire cast of the original series). What's odd about that you ask? Well, what's odd is that neither of the two women in the village were married to any of the men and all of the men were apparently single. Secondly, all of the men in the village were fireman - even bus driver Trevor Evans was an auxiliary. How many fires did the village have for goodness' sake? Did the non-firemen - Dilys and Bella - take it in turns to set their properties ablaze? What in Hell was the fire service thinking in allocating resources this way? And what kind of mad business plan did Bella have setting up a restaurant for eight potential customers, three of which are children? It's a big bucket of madness.

Now you get the gist of the kind of conversations Chris and I used to enjoy. So you can maybe imagine my glee when Chris turned up for work one morning and presented me with a story he'd written called Postman Pat's Bloody Day. It was very funny and revealed the fact that gawky letter carrier Pat Clifton was, in fact, a sleeper assassin living in deep cover in the village of Greendale. Once 'activated', the carnage was copious and grisly. The story amused me so much I even did a few doodles to accompany it and, to my delight, discovered recently that I still had them tucked away in an old sketchbook:

 

 

Finding them again made me wonder about whether I could turn the idea into a painting. I love taking well-known TV characters and putting them in ridiculous situations - like I did with George, Zippy and Bungle, and Bagpuss:

 

 

So, what to do with Postman Pat? I was pondering this very thought when someone on the telly mentioned the phenomenon of 'video nasties' in the early 1980s. Chief among these were titles like Driller Killer, I Spit On Your Grave and the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I suddenly thought to myself ... 'That's it! The Greendale Chainsaw Massacre!'

 

Thus it was, I set to work on what became a very quick and dirty painting.

 

 

I based the composition on this poster for the original film:

 

 

Painting began in earnest with me blocking out the main colour areas and then starting to add light and shade:

 

 

I then marked the position of my cast of secondary characters in white Posca pen and gave some more attention to the background before painting them in:

 

 

Final details were added - including making the chainsaw look like the kind of chainsaw they might have on a kid's TV show - and the painting was complete:

 

 

What larks, eh?