Why do men kill men?

 

My childhood home was nothing but a 70's four bedroom suburban build at the bottom of a sloping Cul-de-sac, nothing untoward or dark was ever present between its walls. There was a rumour it was built on the site of an old farmhouse but that's hardly a Saxon burial ground. My next door neighbour's the Harrington's had two children both my elder, a boy Nigel and a girl just 1 year my senior Catherine they were a pleasure to grow up with.

As the oldest sibling of my household it was a joy to have an older brother and sister if you will guiding me through my formative years. We spent many an innocent afternoon playing games over the back garden fence, tennis, water pistols, I even recall a spud gun being introduced to proceedings somewhere along the line. When Nigel was out with his mates me and Catherine would talk for hours over the fence and sometimes when plotting something mischievous would crouch and talk through a small hall our eyes peeping through as if by being crouched and talking through this hole prevented anyone seeing or hearing us.

One afternoon much like any other I was playing at the back of the garden in the muddy bit where dad used to pile leaves, dreaming up tactical military manoeuvre's with my plastic soldiers. There I heard a call from the other side of the fence, just the usual voice of a pre-pubescent young lady which in thinking I suppose more or less sound the same as each other depending on your region. I assumed this was Catherine and wondered over to the small eye hole we shared many chats through, there I crouched down and looked through to see the eye of catherine, I put this down to the fact that I had never seen any other eye through the hole before and in fact at my young age was more interested in what was going to happen in saturday mornings cartoons than girls eyes and more to the point their eye colours. We chatted as usual,

“what are you doing?” she said, her voice was sweet and calming,

“not much just playing army's”,

“oh, I don't like that game”

“why” I replied,

“I don't like it that you should make men kill men”,

she made me think, and that awoke something new inside me I had never experienced before, I started to notice how pretty her eye was and how brown and never ending it was as I looked into it. “I see what you mean” I said thoughtfully, “We should talk more through the fence its fun”.

Her eye blinked and I saw sadness in the abyss of her pupil. “I can't”, and with that the eye disappeared from the hole.

“Catherine” I shouted, “where have you gone?”.

There was no reply and no sign of her. My heart sunk, I left the soldiers at the back of the garden and went back inside.

I carried on my day as normal, cartoons on the sofa with a Pot Noodle as a treat, Grandstand with dad and then final score. But although all these things were enjoyable they were just distractions and I couldn't stop thinking about her and that somehow it was bad to do so, even though I longed for her to come and knock at the door. As it came round to about 6'o’clock I heard next doors car come down the drive, and when I heard the doors open I ran outside to say hello to Nigel. To my surprise the whole family emerged,

“Hi catherine” I said somewhat confused,

“Hi Lucas” she replied “how was your day”.

My confusion rose ten-fold, and my relief to see her was unfounded “good thanks, how was yours?”

I am not sure why I replied like this knowing I had spoke to her through the fence not 3 hours earlier.

“Great, we went to Colchester zoo!” ,“all day?” I asked,

“yeah we went this morning...”

and she trailed off into talking about feeding the elephants and such. I didn't bother to ask who I was speaking to if not her, I was young but old enough to know people would think I was crazy and I definitely didn’t want to lose my friends over it. But by knowing that somehow whom I was speaking to wasn't Catherine my feelings for the eye in the whole got even more confusing and I longed to see her again. Most afternoons for weeks I sat around the back of the garden hoping that she would re-appear. Even when playing in next doors garden I investigated all along the fences and the garden gate but to no avail there were no ways of entering or exiting except through the house and the fences were far too tall for a 9 year old girl to climb. I never got to speak to the girl that wasn't Catherine again and never found out who she was or could have been, two years later we moved out of the house but I never forgot that one brown dark beautiful eye.

Extract from Down and Out in London and Essex or Jimmy's old man (as entered into Ghost Story Comp for White Rabbit theatre competition)

Jimmy Whiting was one of those kids who when you get older you meet them again, in another form, they are the same at whatever age they are or whatever stage of your life you meet them. Tale tellers, truth twister, life fabricators, story weavers or in many cultures quite simply referred to as liars. I don't like liars as much as the next guy but liars have to be put into category’s. Liars that lie to cover falsehoods their ashamed of, liars that lie to cover up things that may harm yourself, liars that lie to get themselves ahead in the game, liars that lie about everything, or my favourite liars, the ones that lie for the benefit of the story, entertainers as it were. Jimmy fell in to the latter, a harmless liar, he did it not maliciously, only to enhance the enjoyment of the story to the audience.

One such lie I can recall specifically and let it be known the lie wasn't entirely a falsehood and may well have not been entirely made up independently. One can only assume perhaps his mum or dad may have weaved this one into his head not realising he would pass it round the playground like cheap heroin – creating story addicts and leading others to push his story on to other kids. Besides I liked it, I was hooked and that tale he sold me has stayed in my bloodstream ever since.

I had since moved out of Bollingbrooke close to 23 Audley Road and dear Jimmy who was one year my junior had moved into my old house. I was climbing the social ladder, moving up the class system. Dad had got a job with the council and his and my mums hard work went into a nice four bedroom place on the bottom of a slopey little cul-der-sac which was brilliant for kettle car racing. This exchange of abodes between me and Jimmy, (we imagined it was us that did the buying and selling of houses, fuck the estate agents, fuck Wimpy homes, me and Jimmy ruled the property market!) cumulated in a strong friendship. We stalked the playground together on sunny June days pretending we were the Rays, ratatatattingting our school mates with our invisible Tommy guns, ratatat ratatat ratatatatatatatatatatatatatratatatatatatat. We weren't the strongest of lads so when we weren't mowing down fat Mrs Tiller the dinner lady from behind trees, we sat on the tyres by the climbing frame, which we couldn't use because our arms were too small, and filled each others minds with stories. Mine on the most part were true, but Jimmy's, Jimmy’s were long tall tales that excited me and kept me up for nights on end.

The story I remember the most came when the village had been flooded with press, The Essex Chronicle, The Braintree and Witham and even a national magazine all came down to visit St Annes Castle were a spat of hauntings had been reported. A series of witch hangings had apparently occurred several hundred years ago and then during WW2 some bumbling American soldiers from a nearby base came out of the pub and moved a large stone that was said to cover the ashes of murdered witches of the village. Ever since St Annes has exchanged hands every couple of years without a word.

Jimmy's dad Graham frequented St Annes castle pretty regularly and it was during one of his visits that Jimmy told me that his dad and his mates witnessed a haunting –one quiet thursday night a glass fell from a hook and flung itself across the bar- smashing against the wall. Then a bang was heard from outside, the punters were alarmed to say the least and drunkenly stumbled outside to investigate.

Let it be known, these are not hard men, these are Great Leighs men they live in a village, they are not like the surrounding farm workers, tough from the land or the nearby town geezers of Braintree or Chelmsford, they are run of the mill 2 point 4 children dads with a cat and a Fiesta. Graham, being a regular and all, decided he would have a look in the shed at the side of the car park whilst the others who weren't really bothered any more went back inside. As Jimmy approached the old wooded shed he could definitely clarify the banging was coming from the shed. Granted he hesitated, who wouldn't? But Jimmy's dad was pretty brave (Jimmy's words not mine) so he approached the shed. Undeterred he unbolted the door and looked inside, the banging stopped. Graham went inside just to have a quick look, it could have been a dog or something you know – nothing scary. As he reached the back of the shed, which wasn't very long after he had entered it, because, well, its a shed, the door suddenly slammed behind him – shut. He ran to the door and tried to open it but it was locked from the outside, he began to bang on the door, screaming shouting for help.

Then the most wretched sounds erupted from inside, as if his intestines were being dragged from inside of him and made into an 1004 mile length of sloppy bunting. Upon hearing the shouts his mates ran out from the pub across the gravel car park and kicked open the door. The door was kicked down by one of the burlier fellows and he was sitting in the corner of the shed covered in sick. “It's not mine, he proclaimed, it's it's hers” Graham sat forlorn covered in an unexplicable amount of Lentil soup shaded vomit pointing with a limp wristed shakey hand to the opposite corner of the shed.

Jimmy claimed this was the ghost of St Annes Castle, the legendary witch. Jimmy also claimed, and this was the shitter, this was the deal sealer, that the ghost wasn't just content with haunting the pub, she also wanted to have a pop at the whole of the village and make kids everywhere puke all over themselves. It was that little piece of information that kept me awake for weeks.

Poor Jimmy probably didn't realise that his dad was actually locked in the shed by his mates then proceeded to puke up his mums Shepherds pie all over him and that this tale was woven to somehow save his integrity, his honour, and his manhood.

Introduction to the Studio Ghibli Season at The Victoria, Mile End, Nov 2011

 

As a youngster in suburb of Essex Anime wasn't something I would commonly come up against. The four channels stuck to the western output of animation, it wasn't until I moved to London and met a girl from the continent that I was introduced to the mind-blowing art, magic, stories, moral messages and complexity that comes from within the Studio Ghibli house of animation. Those of you from Asia and any country in Europe outside of the UK were probably bred on Japanese animation but for many it wasn't until Spirited Away got international acclaim that they delved in to the country’s rich animated history.

Despite the common assumption that Studio Ghibli's films are for children, they are infact full of social, global, historical and environmental questions and debates. Two of the films in our season Pom Poko and grave of the fireflies are both known for their hard-hitting nature and bringing adults to their knees in tears circling around themes regarding the destruction of the rain forests and America's catastrophic bombing of Japan during WW2, whilst My Neighbour Totoro and Porco Rosso show the lighter side to the house and highlight the notion that Studio Ghibli's creations and characters are on a par with disney if not better which is probably the reason disney bought studio ghibli's distribution rights outside of Japan.

Introduction to The Alan Moore Season at The Victoria, Mile End, October 2011

Alan Moore Season will include V for Vendetta, The Watchmen and From Hell. 

V for Vendetta brings us nicely from the Freedom season with its dystopian view of the future and its revolutionary ideals. Alan Moore is the best graphic novelist of our generation and arguably Great British literature's most genius and incendiary left wing literary mind since George Orwell. He has enjoyed being courted by both Marvel and DC comics and has created some of the most influential and iconic comic book characters the world has ever seen. It was inevitable of course that Moore would be swamped upon by Hollywood and from this has resulted in 4 films both heralded and damned by audiences, critics and Moore himself. The Alan Moore Season brings you the best 3 the 4th being The League of Extraordinary Gentleman which despite being one of his best comic series is the worst of the films despite its all-star cast and is frankly not worth the bother.

V for Vendetta caused a controversy when it came out due it's scenes of 'terrorism' and the blowing up of certain landmark buildings apparently to close to comfort to the 2005 London bombings. Since then the film despite mediocre critical acclaim has now somewhat of a cult following, whether it is from its superb and groundbreaking inspiration in the Graphic novel or the disturbances it stirred in its release and the appearance of Natalie Portman with a skinhead. Thousands now adorn the mask of V as a form of protest, whether against scientology or an identity guard in student protests whether or not he likes the film, Moore must take pleasure in the fact the character of V takes such a part in modern left wing protests against the big brother like establishments we now face and which are fought against in the film.

Alan Moore famously said of the film adaptation of his best selling series Watchmen, “I will be spitting venom all over it” but despite Moore's hatred of the hollywood treatment on some of his best comic works watchmen actually came out boosting the franchises fan-base and ignored the lure of casting huge hollywood names to the 6 main oddball characters. The overall look of the film is true to the comic series and Zack Snyder makes a 100% better film than most Watchmen readers expected him to. Comic book adaptations suit sunday nights to a tee and with Watchmen easily sitting pretty amongst the top 5 its well worth a revisit with a pint or two.

As we draw nearer to all hallows eve the Alan Moore season winds down with a nod to England’s most infamous villain and links nicely with our two part Jack the Ripper halloween special sundays.

'From Hell' is the War and Peace of Moore's back catalogue, an epic collection of twists, turns and conspiracy’s surrounding the man, the prince, the butcher, the physician, the monster, the legend that is Jack the Ripper. The serialisation now finds itself together in a doorstop heavy graphic novel.

Without giving too much away Moore's take on the case was that he was heavily involved with a cover up involving the Royal family, a scandalous affair and the free masons. Despite being blighted with a flurry of hollywood names such as Johnny Depp and Heather graham and the familiar splattering of those actors that appear to have to feature in any Hollywood film set in the UK such as Jason Flemyng, Robbie Coltrane and Ian Holm, From Hell paints Whitechapel in all its 19^th century squalor.

Its a pint sized compact version of the Moore classic by any means and Moore fans will be disappointed in its skimming of the surface, but nonetheless From Hell still remains as one of the only good films to London’s favourite murderer and its always fun to play spot the location where I once puked up, drank a pint, pulled or bought a ridiculously shit pair of expensive jeans from in All saints on a jolly to the consumerist bourgeois vintage heaven that now is Spitalfields.