Book of the Month: Kraken

Kraken was sort of a Christmas gift. At Christmas I was given a book I already had so I went to a bookshop and exchanged it. I had seen China Mieville's books recommended on Reddit so thought I would give one of his books a go. And the dedication page made me laugh.

Who wouldn't want a comrade-in-tentacles?

This was written in 2010 so I'm a bit late to review it but I will try to limit plot spoilers to anything you would read in the blurb anyway.

The story centres on the disappearance of a preserved giant squid, from a display in the Natural History Museum in London. A curator in the museum gets drawn into a shadowy magical underworld of sects and prophecies where everyone is predicting an apocalypse, somehow linked to the vanished kraken. But everyone is looking for it, either to stop the end of the world or to control the destruction for their own ends.

It's clear that China had fun making up different cults and churches and then pitting them against each other. He also develops London itself as a character, a gestalt entity that is both a location and a source of information, if a person knows where to look and how to scry the future from it. 

China wears his influences boldly. This book strongly reminds me of the Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman collaboration Good Omens, and also the alternative London Below in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I suspect if I saw China Mieville's bookshelves, I would see Douglas Adams alongside Pratchett and Gaiman (although he might, like me, have taken Gaiman off the shelves since the accusations against him were made).

There are throwaway puns aplenty and almost too much wordplay. Beyond that, though, China writes in an arresting style with a barrage of metaphors, neologisms and portmanteaus. This section describing a bit of the city is typical of his style:

"A space between two concrete flyovers. Where the world might end was turpe-industrial. Scree of rejectimenta. Workshops writing car epitaphs in rust; warehouses staffed in the day by tired teenagers; superstores and self-storage depots of bright colours and cartoon fonts amid bleaching trash. London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness. Here was an arena of scrubland, overlooked by suspended roads." (p.357)

China is happy to reference TV and other cultural elements throughout the book. I was delighted to see Farscape included in a list of science-fiction shows. (I blogged about rewatching Farscape a couple of years back.) At one point one of the characters has a dream where he is TinTin being attacked by Captain Haddock. 

But it's not all pop culture. There are descriptions of magical practices that show some research. A reference to 'tekel upharsin' as a prediction of doom shows some niche knowledge of the Old Testament. The real-life grounding of the fantastical story elements in established media and myths makes them more believable.

There are also a lot of swearwords. Characters swear casually in their conversations, which felt realistic, and there is plenty of 'creative swearing', which is a very British thing, and was often very funny. For example, one character coins "munching wanktoasters" to describe members of an occult fascist sect.

If the warning about language doesn't put you off, I would add a warning that there are a couple of gruesome murders and almost murders. They are quite vivid so I felt it worth flagging up because overall I'd recommend people read the book. 

However, London as the best city evvah, gets a bit annoying. There are too many claims made about its uniqueness and special nature, as a locus for magic and the historic depth to its streets. That started to grate after a while. 

And in an ironic twist, I ended up reading a large chunk of the book on train journeys to and from London as I was working down there. On the return journey a man sitting opposite me asked if he could take a photo of the book cover because he thought it looked interesting. I'd never been asked that before. It was a slightly weird encounter befitting a slightly weird book.

Lost Footballs III - The Search for More Footballs

The third instalment of my Lost Footballs blogging project. See the original post and the redux post for more sad footballs!

This was a recent find on a street near me.

On a social media reminder, I saw a picture I'd posted in 2023. I didn't include it in my Redux post, so, a few years on, this lost football finally makes it onto my blog.

I spotted this lonely ball stuck behind a high fence at the GP surgery next to the Cardiff Draconians' pitch. I expect it was a misplaced shot from training. 

And there was a lost football skulking under a station platform in Eastbrook (Dinas Powys) as well. (Reminding me of the clown from It.)

There's a possibility this ball lurking in the bushes of Grange Gardens is related to the one that was stuck in a tree in a previous instalment of this blog series.

This football had a happy ending. I went and fished it out so I could pass it on to my nephews for backyard footie.

This ownerless football was just sitting ready for a game in Llantwit Major.

A real gathering of ownerless balls on the banks of the Taff. It feels like there is a story behind this!

This flyaway had flown away into a puddle in Grange Gardens. 

This photo project has turned into a collaborative piece of work now. Cathy saw this ball stuck on the outside of the St David's 2 shopping centre and took a pic to show me.

And here's an interloper. A lost basketball on the track at Penarth station.

With spring now established and summer on its way, I'm going to be keeping my out for more lost footballs.

A week in the Shire(s)

The shires in question were Shropshire and Worcestershire to be precise. It was my birthday week and with big plans to celebrate my birthday itself with rhinos, we needed to stay relatively near to where the rhinos live, just outside Kidderminster. (I've already mentioned some of what we did in my round up for March as we were away on the cusp of the month.)

We opted for a cottage rental on a working farm and horse racing stable just south of Bridgnorth. We had a couple of trips into Bridgnorth itself. It's a nice small town with some lovely little shops including Booka, a fab independent bookshop, and some historic buildings.

Bridgnorth is blessed with interesting railways. We rode on Shropshire's randomest railway (the Bridgnorth cliff railway), and also took some photos of steam engines at the Severn Valley Railway terminus as well.

Spotter spotted!

Across the county border, we went to a falconry centre in Hagley. This was exceptional value, with two flying displays included in the admission price. All the birds get to fly daily and they all seemed very well cared for. 

One of the flying displays went amusingly awry when a peregrine falcon decided to fly off leaving the presenter in the lurch. He did a good job carrying on talking to the audience while the peregrine resolutely didn't come back. 

I put some pics from the falconry centre in the March round up post. But here are some more...

I had a fun week of football, with trips to Ludlow Town and AFC Bridgnorth before a Good Friday game at Shrewsbury Town, the day after my birthday. Salop were playing Tranmere and won! The three points were a great belated birthday present.

My friend Paul had come up from Cardiff and came to sit next to me in the second half. Here we are looking suitably thrilled during the match. (Thanks to Podge and his super zoom lens from the other end of the ground!)

I also saw my friend Jim and his son, Nick, at the game. Jim is the friend I went to Malaga with back in February. I made them pose for a selfie.

After the game we had a family pizza evening at my brother's house. I even had balloons to remind me of my advancing age.

And so, after a week that went by very quickly, we departed the shire(s) and returned home to Wales.

Bucket list birthday breakfast

Hitting the big five-oh, and Cathy had a great idea of how I could celebrate it in style, with rhinos!

Card made by Cathy

And so it was that early on my birthday we were at West Midlands Safari Park meeting the Asian rhinos and feeding them breakfast. I wasn't sure how close we would be allowed to get to the rhinos. (Petting a rhino has been on my bucket list for ages.) Turns out, we got close enough to get slobbered on as we fed them cabbage and celery starters. 

We met three adult rhinos and a baby' (less than a year old). The baby was adorable although his mum would push him out of the way to get to the cabbage. Rhino mums don't indulge their kids! Got to be tough to be a rhino. 

Asian rhinos have prehensile lips, which means they can grip things like door bolts, so extra security is needed on their pens. The lips are very flexible and they caress your hands while you feed them. They are very rubbery and warm, and I felt perfectly safe letting them engulf my hand to take the cabbage. 

However, while it's perfectly fine to put your hand into the mouth of a female rhino, the males have knife-like incisors in their mouths so it's advisable to just chuck the cabbage in from a safe distance. In the wild, male rhinos use their incisors for scrapping with each other over who gets to make it with the lady rhinos, and given they can do some damage to armoured rhino hide, they would make short work of a human hand if they accidentally bit you. 

For the main course of their breakfast the rhinos have a mix of different kinds of yummy pellets, mixed in with powder that simulates the dust that rhinos naturally consume while feeding in the wild. The dust helps them poop properly. Given how much rhinos can poop in an average day, it helps to make sure the poop is as solid and dry as possible. 

After breakfast was over, we bade goodbye to the rhinos. We then went on the Safari Drive, where we saw some more rhinos, and then looked at some of the other animals in the park. I enjoyed the sealion show and the nocturnal house with free-flying bats. But it's hard for any other animals to compete with the experience of being snuffled by friendly rhinos.