Who's Horse? (In a Northumbrian accent) Why, It's War Horse!

Von He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named rocked up his white stallion on Sunday afternoon to deliver my monthly thrashing and to drag me to see War Horse, the film he's been raving about all year. He hates horses and war, so this was the perfect film for him. I wanted to see it as well, because I'm SUCH A MASSIVE FAN OF THE BOOK, YOU KNOW, THAT BOOK THAT IS FOR CHILDREN. CHILDREN, NOT 37 YEAR OLD MEN.

Read an adult book, you slack jawed cunt...

I actually wanted to see it because Dr David Kenyon and TV's Andy Robertshaw had done the military advising on the film and Andy appeared as an extra. It became a game of 'Spot TV's Andy Robertshaw'. I won it outright as Herr He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named doesn't know what TV's Andy Robertshaw looks like.

That's one nil to me

There will be spoilers from here on in, so if you want to go and see this film then don't read on, though why you would want to spend your hard earned cash on this lump of shit is beyond me. I wasn't expecting greatness in the first place and I certainly wasn't disappointed. The film is full of the usual World War One tropes, but that is not the worst thing about it. We were supposed to empathise with the horse but He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and I were talking about what was so special about the horse and we couldn't work out why everyone human seemed to want to have a love affair with the beast. Sure, it was a good looking animal, but it was patently rubbish. Despite being able to plough a field like a modern mechanical tractor it couldn't jump. What kind of fucking horse can't jump? A shit one, that's what kind. I guess this was a plot device in order to allow the fucking dumb animal to get tangled up in barbed wire in No Man's Land so Tommy and Jerry could have a bonding experience whilst freeing it and demonstrating how futile the First World War was. This last scene was supposed to be tense, with threat of the horse being blinded or dying during the rescue, but all tension was lost when you realised that the film is about the horse and there is no way on God's green Earth that the producers will allow an animal to die on screen. It just became a farcical and over long scene.

Otto Dix was thrown off the production after the unveiling of his storyboard

Speaking of dying, there was another unfathomable factor in this movie. The human 'star', Albert, is given his father's cavalry pennant and this finds its way onto the horse's tack as the horse is taken off to war as a good luck charm. It actually does the exact opposite and brings black luck on anyone that happens across it. The young officer who first buys the horse is killed during an attack, the two young Germans who go AWOL with the horse are shot at dawn without a trial (give me fucking strength...) and then the young girl who seemingly spends two years (as dated by the German soldiers helmets...) trying to teach the fucking useless horse to jump ends up getting killed. Even Albert is scarred for life with a gas attack. What kind of luck is that?

 Where's me pennant?

The final scenes really wound me up, when Albert is reunited with the horse it is at an Advanced Dressing Station. The doctor on duty has been pulled out of dressing station to have a look at the horse which is wounded. Now, my first question is, why didn't the Private take the horse to the Veterinary Corps rather than a fucking human doctor? He would have known they existed as the British Army of 1918 was dependent on animals. Secondly, why was the doctor pulled out of the Dressing Station to look at a horse when the men he was supposed to be treating were dying? Why would a single horses life count more than humans? This is the main premise of the film, that we supposed to care more about the life and death of one horse over the thousands of injured and dying men.

Leave those men, a horse somewhere is injured!

Anyway, the horse is injured and the doctor declares it cannot be healed so recommends that it is to be put out of its misery and a Sergeant steps up to the task. This is when Albert reappears, does his stupid owl hoot call and everyone is happy and joyful that the horse is actually his and not just some random horse. But what everyone seemingly forgets is that the horse is still injured and should be put out of its misery. But this fact is conveniently forgotten and the horse miraculously survives its injuries! This is literally scratching the surface of what is wrong with this film and I neither have the inclination or energy to detail everything wrong with it. Modern conception of the First World War is as a futile and senseless waste of life. I would argue that War Horse was a futile and senseless waste of my life.

Anyway, I was actually told off by a woman sat next to me for laughing so hard at the film. She told me to get myself an Airfix kit, I told her I already had some. I'm not really sure what she meant by that insult. He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named suggested the film would have been better had it been filmed by Ken Loach and I can't help but agree with him.

One on Ten.

Bible Basher

The Education(!) Secretary Michael Gove wanted to implement a move to ship out thousands of King James Bibles to British schools to a tune of £377,000 at the taxpayers cost. Probably as part of the ongoing Tory Crusade against the Infidel amongst us (for Infidel read: Muslim, Jew, Sikh, the unemployed, anyone that doesn't earn over 50k a year, students, etc, etc). Thankfully the Government has seen sense and his plans have run aground (probably in the yacht he wanted to buy for the Queen the other week...). But my friend, let's call him Mr GB, wrote an email of disgust to Gove in light of this news. I present it below in full (with his permission):

Dear Mr. Gove,

I recently read in the press about your plan to send a single copy of the King James Bible to each school in the country at a reported cost of £400,000 of tax payer's money.  While I recognise that the Bible is a beautiful and important book and although I am personally very fond of the King James version, I find myself baffled and upset by this project.  At a time when frontline services are being cut, why would you want to allocate a large sum of money to a vain and obviously unpopular symbolic gesture like this?

How would a school use a single copy of the King James Bible?  Is it to be placed on a lectern at the front of the assembly hall like a copy of Mein Kampf?  If your goal is to give children the experience of there being a weighty and important book they are not allowed to touch, why not go for a spin around the charity shops and pick up a few copies of Moby Dick?  If you want children to actually become familiar with the content of the Bible, why not organise the distribution of an e-book copy of the King James Bible?  These can be read on computers, Kindles and smartphones, and there are a number of versions available freely in the public domain.  I'm not sure how effective this would be as I remember that every child in my school was given a Bible by the Gideons:  our response (which I very much regret now) was to graffiti them, actually wipe our arses with the pages, and finally see who could kick theirs the furthest across a wheatfield.  If you are hoping to instill Christian values in our
young people, I feel this is a naive way to go about it.

If I can be of any assistance to you in future, please let me know. 

Yours in anticipation of your response,

Mr. GB

PS If you have a warehouse full of unused books, I may be able to take a crate of them off your hands for no fee.

Did you know that 'Education Secretary' is an anagram for 'Cunt'?

The Autist

I went to see The Artist with Sam last night. It's a silent movie, so here's a silent review:

"






                                                                                                                                                                                                 !"

8 on 10

An Ecstasy of Fumbling

Yes, what did YOU do at the weekend? I bet you spent your weekend on your fat can shovelling jelly babies into your gaping maw. I bet you lay like a sloth ensconced on your sofa drooling at the latest idiots to parade across the screen in X Factor. I, on the other hand, spent last weekend in a replica First World War trench dressed in the Service Dress of a Great War soldier.

Now, I have made my opinion on re-enactors quite clear at this stage, I think, and you could level the accusation that I spent the weekend re-enacting, but this was certainly NOT re-enactment. Re-enactment involves a bunch of fat men dressing up like nineteen year old soldiers fielding questions from the public at stately homes before pretending to advance as a six man pike block and finally getting pissed up on mead at the campsite. Re-enactment is basically camping in period costume. This, on the other hand, was a tough challenge that was an attempt to understand a little of what the men of the Great War went through. TV's Andy Robertshaw is the luckiest man alive in that he has a patch of ground that he has constructed a Great War trench system in, complete with two fire bays, officers dugout, other ranks dugout, kitchen area (before it collapsed) and latrine.

Yes, that's me...

Andy was writing a book based on our experiences of being in a front line trench for 24 hours carrying out the trench duties that a soldier would have done in 1917. OK, so we weren't under the threat of death from artillery or snipers, but we certainly lived in the trenches pretty much as they would have been in 1917.

It was good fun, but beyond this there was a lot to be learnt. For instance, just the shear weight of Service Dress makes doing even the simplest job a drudging chore. even passing one another in the trench was a bloody hard job and led to argument and fighting:

The plan was to stay in the trench the entire night and although I almost made it, I knew I had a four hour drive back home the next day so made sure I got a few hours sleep at least. The problem was, in the firebay we were posted in the water had risen and taken away any space to sleep so by 4.00am the exhaustion was really kicking in:

Justin managed to stay out for the entire night however and sat on guard in our firebay:

The next morning after breakfast we got to write letters home, these were then passed on to the Lieutenant to censor. For some reason, mine passed censorship:

What we did get out of the experience was how much comradeship and laughter counted to keep us going through the night. The good humour of the British Tommy is famous and we were no exception. All in all, it was a great experience and I'm not going to relate everything that went on in that 24 hour period, you'll have to wait for the book to come out.

All photos by Dr David Kenyon and Martin Stiles.

Miserable New Year

I hope everything you've strived for in 2011 is dashed on the rocks like a ship wreck in a stormy ocean. I hope every new venture you attempt in 2012 is doomed to miserable failure. I hope your fate involves being strung out on the meathooks of dreary fortune. Fuck New Year and Fuck You.

Fuck Christmas

I hope all you got for Christmas was a dead rat in a box. I hope your Christmas turkey was riddled with listeria. I hope your house burnt down and all your possessions with it. Fuck Christmas and Fuck You.

King Kong merrily on high

I was at the pub quiz last night and as it is close to Christ's Mass, it was a Christ's Mass themed spectacular. I'm normally above such base degradation, but in this instance each team had to sing Christ's Mass carols at the interval of every two questions. We were all given a song sheet with the lyrics on and we ended up with Once in Royal David's City. 'Fuck that!' we three said as one 'We'll do Tannenbaum. We'll do Tannenbaum, in German.' Nathan wrote out the words, since he'd spent the week learning them and when it was our turn we belted out the ditty.

We do what we want, and we do it with style...

It went rather well, except of the three of us, two had shaven Neo-Nazi style skinheads and I was wearing my Tiger Tank t-shirt. Added to this Nathan's Seig Heiling posturing and also adding the last line' The Fatherland will rise again!' to the song and it was like the Bürgerbräukeller Putsch and Kristalnacht all rolled into one!

 C'mon Adolf! Sing louder!!

The night ended with each of the teams having to sing a line from the Twelve Days of Christ's Mass. We had Twelve Drummer Drumming. I like this song as it has nothing to do with religion and you can belt out
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive Gold Rings!! 
As the the entire pub did, every time it came round...

I spent today in a blasting icy wind on a hill in Huddersfield trying to hold onto the archive, directing Nick where to put his survey rod and fighting off a hangover caused by too many Roosters.