Ikiru / 生きる (1952)

Death is inevitable. We all know this at some level once we become aware of mortality but it is an unknown. A known unknown^[1], but what if it were known? Would we act differently? Of course we would^[2] but how would we change?
Ikiru is the story of a man, Kanji Watanabe, masterfully played by Takashi Shimura, who has worked hard in a standard job in local government, doing all the things that he should have done and become a respectable, upstanding citizen. But what, he asks, has that actually achieved - or what will it achieve? His job isn't to achieve things, it is to keep going (I assume most people have some experience of jobs that seem not to do anything worthwhile) and that is the purpose of so many jobs. When diagnosed with cancer, he realises that he has not been "living" for some time already. And so what does he do? What would you do?

The classic response is to drink and lose yourself in merriment which Kanji does in a local night time district. But, after some time, this joy is as empty a joy as the boredom of his work was. One thing he doesn't do, pointedly, is tell anyone, such as colleagues and family about his medical situation - including his own son. Watanabe lives with his son and daughter-in-law and they also have quite a frosty relationship with him. He seems to have no major friends at work either to confide in - he was already the owner of the rather unhappy nickname of "The Corpse" anyway. So he decides that, until he dies, he will live with a purpose -  a purpose to keep him living. A purpose to start living. Eventually within the film, Watanabe finds something to focus on - the creation of a children's playground, something to keep himself going and then he dies^[3] .

The "then he dies" is shown by the fact that you are then at Watanabe's wake and the rest of the film, which feels like about half of the film, is told from the perspective of other people which I think is an interesting way of approaching this. Those people all seem to have different views on those last few months and they have conflicting views on him from it.
I think Ikiru may be my favourite Akira Kurosawa film, which, with his CV, is pretty high praise. The nature of the film is relatively simple but the way of telling it enlivens the film considerably. Rashomon, which is a little more famous, has a nice way of dealing with how perspectives change the "facts" of an incident and here there is a similar aspect. Watanabe's death was a surprise to all of those at his wake and so people did not suddenly treat him differently as he became ill. His strange divergence from character was not necessarily seen as a forewarning for his death (and this may now be quite standard as a "mid-life crisis" but I am not sure that this phenomenon really existed in the 50's). I find it intriguing that he would not tell his son for, basically, an instant boost to his relationship with him. This may be, from his own perspective, be the punishment that he deserved for his dereliction over years as a father. There is something quite honourable about facing your punishment "like a man" and dealing with the consequences and not taking the easy route out and I guess this stoicism was seen as a large positive for a character. I am also kind of interested about the idea of someone doing good works^[4] that are not recognised at the time and only receive recognition posthumously. But we don't all need to have cancer to do good things, maybe we all need to find our own playground to build.
I would really recommend the film to everyone. Of course, for many, there are the issues of both being black and white and foreign language which may be two stumbling blocks too many for a lot of people. If you can get over those, this is a great film and if you can watch it, you really should.

1. Rumsfeld's Knowns and Unknowns: The Intellectual History of a Quip.
2. I listened to an interesting LSE lecture entitiled "After your death" recently about how we would react if we knew when we died, that everyone else in the world would too. It is here.
3. This is so Japanese in storytelling style! It is as sudden as in the text though.
4. This is rather like the opposite of the end of The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3, one of my favourite videogames that I have been playing recently, someone who was truly destroyed after death.

Perfect Blue (1997)

"Walt Disney meets Alfred Hitchcock"^[1]

Animated films always used to get compared to "Walt Disney" when I was younger. The content was entirely irrelevant but I guess it all depends on your cultural influences - and in the past, it was only Disney that could get animated films on to the big screen. That has changed a little with computer graphics allowing more companies to break out in the west but cel-animated films are very rare.

The 90s is probably when CG really came into its own and that, in many ways, diminished the ability of animated films to depict things that would be either ridiculous or prohibitively expensive to do in live action. The two seminal films, probably the best-known anime films of the time, Akira (1988) and Ghost In the Shell (1995), would be difficult to visualise in live action without a lot of money. The Matrix took a lot of ideas (and wholesale ripped off some shots too) from Ghost in the Shell but that was a very large budget film. Perfect Blue, however, could easily be replicated in live action form and so, it has to be said, there seems little point in animating it. But then that is approaching it from the wrong angle, I think. Animated films are not, really, a genre but they have almost cul-de-saced into one with the number of Western animated films that are anything but light and fluffy pieces aimed at children fairly low. Similarly, there are seemingly few Japanese animated films that are not filled with technology and/or copious amounts of violence. In actuality, there are different animated films made, but they are often not distributed widely outside of Japan (or even inside Japan)^[2] - which is something of a self-fulfilling notion of the market they can have.

At 80 minutes, Perfect Blue is barely even feature length in my opinion^[3] as I feel it is a film when it is 90 minutes, although this is a personal feeling. But those 80 minutes are quite densely packed with narrative and weight with the portrayal of a young pop idol's transition to the more grown-up world of acting. Idols, in this sense, were a quite domestic phenomenon but I think they are easier to comprehend now with the multimedia nature of stardom, so the opening scene of an outdoor show of the pop act "Cham!" is easy enough to get. Cham! appear to be a middling pop group that is coming to a natural end as one of their trio is to announce her departure - although pop acts can always continue with replacements of course. As a group of two or three years standing, they have a number of fans at the show and they are introduced as partly fanatical and partly understanding of the trajectory. The departure is so that one member of the act, Mima, can pursue a career as an actress - starting with a simple role in a TV drama^[4] which she hopes will lead to larger things. Actually, what she wishes seems irrelevant and we are shown her management team positioning her into roles and career moves - and Mima is happy to do what others want from her to keep everyone happy. I guess it is her way of repaying their efforts and faith in her.

At the same time as leaving Cham!, Mima also comes across the phrase "Mima's Room" which her manager tells her must refer to a website, or fansite, about her. As this is set in the 90s, this concept is not something that Mima is aware of so she gets a computer which her manager helps her set up (with a nice bit of Apple product placement) and checks in on Mima's Room - a site that seems to be a diary by Mima herself - which is kind of fun.

It appears that not all of Mima's fans have taken well to her departure and she starts receiving threatening and abusive faxes^[5] as she progresses in the world of acting. The progress does entail some more "adult" scenes to which her fan reacts quite badly - as does Mima herself and it is at this point that the film takes a turn into psychological thriller territory. When Mima realises that "Mima's Room" is remarkably faithful to the reality of her day, she is quite disturbed as to what it means. Is she writing this herself? Is she being stalked? Animation is a good medium for this mind-bending stuff as you can play around with scenery and ideas quite easily in terms of the way it is portrayed and this is done quite expertly (especially for a debut feature) in the second part of the film. As the strands of the reprisals and stalking come to a head, it is a truly impressive spiral down through a breakdown as Mima falls apart.

I really enjoyed Perfect Blue as it is actually quite a "straight" film in that it is clear what is happening at the beginning and end. The whole film is quite ambiguous as to what is real and what is not (though I understand that the dubbed version is less ambiguous) as well as the conclusions but it allows the viewer to engage as they want. These kinds of layered films are often difficult to follow but Perfect Blue does not really care if you follow or not - there are a few points when it is a bit over the top as Mima is unsure if what is happening is real on top of the viewer being unsure if Mima is acting or not as much of the TV programme she is acting on is a psychological thriller itself. As the film is not particularly long, the lengths of time that the confusion reigns is actually fairly short and the explanations are soon to hand. The length also makes the film tight and well-paced - the bulk of film itself takes place over a few days with a relatively simple story arc. Watching again, a few years later is very interesting as I think Perfect Blue's influence can be seen in a few more mainstream films. Darren Aronofsky was clearly a major fan and the similarities with Black Swan and some of the shots in Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler unmistakably inspired by this film^[6]. On that note, the visuals are nicely understated with good use of static shots and little in the way of unnecessary movement. The one chase scene in the film is brilliantly done with its mix of reality and imagination beautifully captured and the tension from it coming out very well. The unreal nature of what is really happening adds to the scene massively.

The story and message, for what it is worth, is quite rooted in the time but it is quite relevant today with the elevated entitlement and (cyber)stalking of fans/trolls being a recurring theme of modern celebrity culture. That balancing act and tension of being close to the fans but also the risks of that closeness are much more obvious to all now, but the film explores it quite well. I think that nature of the relationship being analogous to the growth in social media (probably most obviously twitter) is quite far-sighted for a 90s film and the duality of the character is similar to how a lot of people can be online - with a far more aggressive and extreme version online. There has been a bit of a general reappraisal of Perfect Blue, especially from when the director, Satoshi Kon, passed away and it is held in quite high regard now. At the time of release, it had a mixed reception but I would hope that some of the people that did not react positively would take the time to watch it again. It isn't very long, anyway...

Trailer here:

^{1. Apparently, this was in a review by Roger Corman  and was the main thing I remember from the cover of the video.↩}

^{2. In 2004, I very excitedly went to see an animated film, Appleseed, at the cinema in Roppongi Hills. I distinctly remember at the time being quite excited at being able to watch anime on a big screen and being conscious of the fact that I may never get the opportunity again. I am not sure what happened over the years that enabled anime to be released, in a limited way, in cinemas in the UK, but something changed. I have since been able to see quite a few animated releases at London cinemas - to the point where I don't feel I have to go to see them there.↩}

^{3. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, American Film Institute, and British Film Institute, a feature film runs for 40 minutes or longer, while the Screen Actors Guild states that it is 80 minutes or longer. My sense of 90 minutes is based on nothing other than my feeling, so it is not correct.↩}

^{4. It is this simple role that suggests to me that Cham! were not that big - I have seen a few reviews that suggest that Cham! were quite big, but I do not think this is a story about a "star", rather it is about the chasing of stardom.↩}

^{5. This does date the film a little, but it is interesting in this way - the pre-internet.↩}

^{6. I thought of this film quite a lot when watching Helter Skelter (reviewed here) which has a similar story arc although the details are not necessarily the same. Again, the thrust is similar but there are some fundamental differences but the similarities with Black Swan are arguably more pronounced. As I consider both Black Swan and Helter Skelter as two of my favourite films of the decade (so far), it does suggest that I'd like Perfect Blue.↩}

Footnotes: a study in not having a clear, linear path through conversation

Sometimes, I think I sort of live my life in footnotes.

I use footnotes quite a bit in my writing as I think they work quite well in explaining, and illustrating, my thought processes. My blog posts aim, in the main, to be my voice - to sound like me. I think that I do manage this a lot of the time but, in order to achieve that, I do have to weave together all the competing and complementary thoughts in my head into single statements. Of course, we all do this when talking and anyone that has spoken much with me will know that I make a lot of throwaway comments that seem disconnected from the thrust of a conversation but make perfect sense in my head. Thus, I sometimes laugh and smile at inopportune moments. Politeness means that often people will laugh or join in but I have noticed that a lot of people I speak to also do not know what I am referring to. This has happened a lot at work over the years, and it is here that I wish I could deploy footnotes. 

"You see this thing that I said, it does make sense - you just need to have grown up in exactly my background with the same interests. That is all."

-or-

"There is something to back this line of reasoning up you know."

Also, little comments can have so much of a story behind them or little bits of commentary, at least, that fleshes them out. I am a fan of extraneous information - footnotes allow you to add options to that extraneous information. They are like director's commentary tracks (which, ironically, I never listen to) on DVDs. My links, distributed unevenly through a post, also perform a similar function.

I have recently been thinking about why I do this and I have decided to term it "second-order" - this is where you need to have some knowledge (that is, apparently, not general) in order to get it. I know all conversations are essentially this and communication always needs shared knowledge to start from - whether that is a shared name for a colour or a shared understanding of what the rules of immigration actually are - but it is more about the less general nature of this shared knowledge. Basically, an unshared knowledge that I wished was shared.

I think my favourite joke/stand up [you can see it here] routine by Stewart Lee, who has a book made up of his scripts extensively footnoted, is basically second-order in its execution and the thing I like about things like this is that people obviously have different speeds of connecting two things together. That, I enjoy.

Apart from being an explanation, I also wanted to write this without the use of footnotes. I just about managed it although there were many temptations to stray and I have used a single link.

Northern Ireland day trip

Initially, when planning the Irish trip, I thought that I would go to Ireland via Wales and return home via Northern Ireland and Scotland which would form an interesting "state of the union" week. I didn't do this though - the connections from Northern Ireland to Scotland are not quite as smooth as they used to be in terms of the ferry and so I thought against it - but that did not alter my desire to go to one of the more interesting parts of the UK ^[1] - and the only one with a land border. And it seemed only sensible to cross that land border by train as there was a (relatively) famous train between the two capitals. I did not just want to go to Belfast though – ideally I wanted to also go to the Giant’s Causeway as the northern coast was also recommended to me. 

An early start is not always a pleasant one. The coach tour day-trip from Dublin to Belfast AND the Giant’s Causeway and then back again was barely more expensive than the return ticket on the train and it seemed a nice, packed timetable (as you can see here):

• An early start with two hour drive to Belfast.
• A nice morning in Belfast with an option of the Titanic museum or a political taxi ride
• Giant’s Causeway
• A rope bridge I had never heard of
• A longer than two hour trip back.

I won’t lie, the bit that appealed most was the “political tour” but it was merely an option. For I could also go and visit a museum dedicated to a ship that didn’t even finish one cruise as it was so shoddily made in Belfast. Pride of the city.

The drawback with tours, as with so much of life itself, is other people. Other people can be so annoying – getting in the way, being loud, enjoying themselves. I don’t go on holiday to see other people having fun.

The benefit of tours, as with so much of life itself, is other people. Knowledge can be infectious, and good tour guides can really make things come along nicely.

One of the things that I often like about train travel is the window seat and watching scenery going by – this is kind of the same on coaches but not quite as good. It was still interesting to see the Irish scenery and roads but, fortunately, we had a tour guide too – and he regaled us with tales of his youth and made a stab at presenting the thorny history of Ireland and Great Britain. He tried hard to explain that it was not a religious divide at all but it just happened to be along religious lines^[2]. And with religious reasoning. The questions that came from the tour group, which was fairly cosmopolitan but with more than a smattering of Americans (I would say that they were greatest in volume) generally tried to use the correct terminology and usually succeeded but it all seems so illogical seen through 21st century eyes that it became much easier to use P's & C's^[3]. It was said with sufficient humour and explanation but a little line of

“Sorry for any English here, but you really will be the bad guys in this story!” 

was jokily true. He did also mention that when it came to their post-crash time of need, the UK did show themselves to be friends indeed – and that they don’t forget that either.

In terms of difficulty, crossing the border was as uneventful as taking the 50 bus from Maastricht to Aachen, with no checks or border control. I was a little confused by this actually as neither is part of the Schengen zone and it meant that I had not shown my passport at all on the trip.

Driving into Belfast felt like a steady urbanisation of the roadside rather than a strict delineation, and we went to the Titanic Quarter where the new museum was based. Here, we were split into those that wanted to go to the Titanic museum and those that wanted to have the political taxi tour – and it seemed a pretty obvious split visually from how the tourists split. The taxis were black cabs and so were nice and spacious enough for a group of 5 – I was with two pairs of tourists from the United States.  

I didn't really know much about Belfast and, as a child, the troubles affected me in London mainly through the actions of the “gentleman bombers^[4]”  of the IRA. I knew that Belfast was “troubled” at the time, I knew that even recently there had been car bombs in Northern Ireland (surprisingly, this was not mainstream news – terrorist bombs, detonated or not, would normally be newsworthy, I had thought) but I was not really aware of the makeup of the city or the day-to-day effects of the dispute. The Good Friday agreement was almost two decades ago so I was not expecting a scarred city, as such, but a heritage of the troubles and a historical view of it.

First we were driven to some of the wall murals, which reminded me a little of Berlin, painted near the divide – in fact I was kind of surprised to learn that the city was still divided. We were on the Republican side (not Catholic, Republican) on the Falls Road which had quite a history of its own.

Just beyond the murals we were driven to, there was a large open gate on the road and the pavement. Beyond that gate was another gate – a double gate to keep it safe with a little DMZ between them – and then Shankhill Road on the Loyalist (not Protestant, Loyalist) side. This, I thought, was pretty interesting - a nice little relic of the recent past. What was sort of revelatory to me was to find out how recent a past it was – last night and they were also due to be closed later that day as they are every day. This was not a relic of the past – it was present day. I genuinely did not know this happened, the gates are closed and this portion of the city is divided along the Orwellian sounding “Peace Line”. It isn't completely divided as you can go around the gates but it is still seen as necessary to keep the gates shut in the evenings. Our taxi driver was pretty engaging on the topic and he explained that people on either side of the line did mix in other parts of the city and at work but not here. The same people that are divided here would be mixed elsewhere – although that sounded a little too positive for my liking with the fact of it being that the gates were still needed – and from about 5 in the afternoon. The murals were also not pure, preserved in aspic, tourism – they were fresh (including some anti-Tory ones too) and they would continue to be provocative as the equivalents would be on the other side. There were many referencing Bobby Sands, for instance. This did not seem a healthy situation at all and I had heard a few years ago that Belfast had the most discriminatory population of Europe though I cannot remember where that was, but I think the euphemism is that it is socially conservative.

My fellow tourists mainly talked amongst themselves but I did join in sometimes. I was asked how I felt as a Brit hearing all this stuff (inclusive of all the Irish commentary too) as it was all a little anti-English. I responded that what happened in the past was not, as far as I was concerned, a question of nationality per se, it was the oppressed versus the oppressors, and that the poor and dispossessed in England would have far more in common with the Irish^[5]. I also mentioned my memories of bombs in London and bomb scares on a regular basis – it was part of my childhood. The other point which got me a little annoyed was when one of the ladies in the cab was, proudly, telling us all how she used to go to St Patrick’s Day parades in Boston and donate money.

“Oh, we always donated a lot.”
“That money founds its way via bombs to London.”

An awkward silence followed, but, frankly, not awkward or long enough for my liking and it didn’t really cause a response. I don’t think she wanted to be funding terrorism,, and she had been – but the lack of any comment at all suggested that she didn’t really realise it. I did smile as I said it, maybe it wasn't understood.

We drove through the Unionist side too and there was some provocative murals here too – aggrandising some killers. Our driver then took us to the parts of the city without gates but still separated along the “peace line” by peace wall. Walls for Peace.

These peaceful walls were rather tall and quite imposing bringing their own atmosphere into otherwise normal looking parts of a city. The walls we saw had three parts to them which were an indication of the heightening of tensions and efforts over the years. The original wall was not tall enough at (2m or so) and so it was added to to stop projectile attacks. And the next part was also added for the same reason – not particularly peaceful sounding. At a total height of approx 7.6m, some do still try and chuck things over and you can see quite a bit of detritus at the bottom of the walls.

Some house even had bomb blast protection over their gardens, a little further along from her (I felt uncomfortable taking photos but I think you can see on google streetview here).
After meeting up back at the Titanic quarter, we made our way to the Giant’s Causeway and the Carrick A Rede Rope Bridge. On the way, we stopped at a castle that is used in Game of Thrones called "Dun Luce Castle". Game of Thrones seems a significant element of the apparent tourism push in Northern Ireland. I am not sure how I feel about this but a similar thing has been successful for Lord of The Rings and New Zealand from what I hear. All were stunning places but there is not much I can really add about them – except photos.

click here for album

<sup>1. The terminology around Britain and Ireland is a little confusing and fraught with the risk of massive offence. Was there a deliberate error in even that statement?↩
2. I find it interesting that we are at pains to say that this is not religious – this is not Christian fundamentalism backed up with explosives. It maybe a little simplistic to do this, but it is the same the world over and when it is not Christianity – it will quickly be labelled religious then.↩
3. It also reminds me of some of my old training sessions when learning about investment banking and the way trades worked. The trainers would explain, in detail, about the complexities and the correct words to use and what they meant. As the Q&A rolled around, they would try to avoid all comment about analogies to gambling until enough questions came and it was just the easiest way to answer it – we bet on this and if it pays off, we win big. And, the house always wins. Unless they have really messed up their credit risk calculations in which case they lose. But are reimbursed by the government and everyone else pays for it in a beautiful insurance scheme without premiums for the participants – which is, eerily, kind of similar to the CDS pyramid that collapsed...↩
4. A wonderful turn of phrase from Stewart Lee on the 2005 London Al-Qaeda bombings:
“Who are they, these inhuman bombers that strike at the very heart of our society with no respect for human life, without even the courtesy of a perfunctory warning? It makes you nostalgic, doesn't it, for the good old days of the IRA. ’Cause they gave warnings, didn't they? They were gentleman bombers, the finest terrorists this country’s ever had. We’ll not see their like again. Let’s have a little clap for the IRA . . . ’Cause the IRA, they were decent British terrorists. They didn't want to be British. But they were. And, as such, they couldn't help but embody some fundamentally decent British values”.↩
5. The rich and powerful exploiting difference to divide and cause pain for the poor is hardly something we have moved away from. And, as then, we still kind of enjoy being whipped up to hate people we don’t know about but some rich people have told us to hate.↩</sup>

A short time in Dublin

Dublin is a relatively small city and is sized such that it has a small tram system and buses as transport options but I felt I could walk around more simply, most of the time. I bought a 2 day city bus sightseeing tour which meant I could use it to go around - something that I had never done before.

Being heavily influenced by the independence from "England" and there are many parts of the city that are directly referencing it from the statues of the leaders to the names of the streets and buildings.

One of the sightseeing stops was to Kilmainham Gaol which is where a number of revolutionaries were kept captive by the British and also killed. It was here that the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 were executed and so I thought it was worth a visit and tour. The tour was very interesting (although slightly curtailed as one wing was being redeveloped) and well run. The Easter Rising captives were the main subjects but the jail itself was interesting as a building and as point in history. It was built as modern jail and prison records show the effects of the potato famine too with the numbers of children incarcerated for the theft of food - it is thought likely that many were happy to be caught so that they would get some food.

The size of Dublin makes it pleasantly walkable but I did fancy a change of scenery for that walk which took me, via recommendation to Howth. Howth is a suburb of Dublin but it feels so far away that it does not seem connected at all. In fact, as I walked around, you could look back on Dublin (or my image of Dublin). The reason for going to Howth is that it is an old fishing village with great scenery and looking out to sea, it was astonishing. The weather in Ireland is changeable - what many call "British weather" - and this meant that within the few hours I was there, I saw a lot of astonishing cloud movement. I was also able to look down on Dublin's port area and it was quite amazing to see a storm passing over.

There were lots of relatively interesting things about Dublin but not a huge amount stood out. I enjoyed it but I did find that the pubs that I saw were like Irish theme pubs - this may have been due to being in Dublin but I am not sure I'd enjoy that for very long

Ireland 2015 - click for photo album

On to Dublin

Aidan: You ever been to Ireland, Alan?
Alan: No, no. I’d love to go.
Aidan: It amazes me when people say that and it’s only forty-nine quid on a plane.
Alan: Yeah, I think that’s what puts me off. Well, that’s the smalltalk, now let’s get down to business. Now, your programme – [bad Irish accent] What’s de big oidea?

I’m Alan Partridge (1997)

Episode 5 – To Kill A Mocking Alan

Ireland was uncharted territory for me as it was, I was very surprised to learn, for a lot of people I knew. As a result, this little exchange went through my head every time and pretty much brought a smirk to my face every time.

Inflation may have changed the prices in the last 18 years but the sense of it is still correct – the costs of visiting Ireland are far from prohibitive. And planes are transport I try to avoid when I can and so I took the train. And boat.

The ever brilliant seat61 explains that there are two ways to take the train to Dublin and I chose the rail and sail option via Holyhead which meant a Sunday morning, 8am, start at Euston for the train. It takes a while but it should not be as frustrating as flying which involves, in my case, a long trip to the airport followed by a huge wait and faff to board the plane. The packing into a pressurised container with stressed people is also not huge fun, and this is then (though I do love the views at approach and landing) to be followed by customs and whatever weird transport is needed to get to the city centre on the other side. That extra time is not enjoyable, and usually not cheap either (unless LHR or LCY) so I avoid it where possible. There is also a less restrictive luggage policy – no worries about 100ml of liquids and getting things to fit into a particular bag^[1].

Train travel is so pleasant – or it can be but so often isn't in the UK nowadays. And very rarely on the weekends is it running as it should with a decent service. Virgin Trains rarely provide a decent service in my experience and so I went to Euston expecting annoyance and that is what I got^[2]. There was a huge queue to get onto the train from 15 minutes or so before. Tickets were being checked very slowly and the time for the train was approaching – there was a football match between Liverpool and Manchester United on the day and there were many fans using the train to go up to Liverpool… as they do most weekends. I also needed to change train to get to Holyhead as there seems not be a direct service on Sundays so after a change at Crewe, I took another train which was calm, peaceful and came with wonderful scenery attached to it on the way to Holyhead.

The train station at Holyhead is directly connected to the ferry port and so it is very easy to check in and board as a foot passenger from the train. On board, there is lots of space and a fair few things to do too – but first I wanted to check if they were showing the football. Judging by the noise and congregation, they were showing it in the bar so I settled down to watch for a less than happy experience^[3]. Once the game was over, I had a look around the open parts of the ferry and it was pretty spacious – a nice space in which to travel. I had about an hour and a half after the game finished so I found a quiet area outside the cinema to play some games. Being able to stretch out is nice and there were places to do so without having to buy food and drink. The only issue on this particular crossing were the numbers of kids (by which I mean under the age of 18) wandering about and that tension of people of that age being “hard” and aggressive and listening to pretty rubbish music on their phones. But there was still plenty of space to escape – the match probably made me more annoyed than I would otherwise have been.

Once we arrived at Dublin ferry port, it was a fairly quick disembarkation to the outside world, quicker still without passport control, whereupon I got a bus to the city centre. The bus was almost empty as there seems to be few foot passengers in total and even many of those probably make their own way from the port – so I went upstairs with my bag to see what I could see. It takes about twenty minutes into town and the bus is timetabled with the ferry so it is hard to miss unless you really mess it up. The overall trip is pretty stress-free and would be even more so if I had known the details. I had been travelling from 8am to about 6pm but when so much of it is uneventfully sitting, it is quite easy to fill that time.

Once I was in Dublin that night, I checked in to my Bed and Breakfast which was a short walk from the city centre, had dinner and then had a saunter to the Liffey. I noticed quite a lot of young Europeans that seemed to have made themselves feel at home staffing the cafes and bars – a European city.

^{1. This trip was my first with a travelling combination of a new compact camera and new tablet – replacing a netbook and SLR – which should make packing a lot easier anyway.↩}

^{2. This is not an unexpected rush and in any sensibly run world, there would be scope to have more services for busier days – I think this is not possible in the wonderfully fragmented world of post-privatisation British trains As the time for departure arrived, I had got onto the train but not to my seat as the aisles were full of people – like a commuter service at rush hour. I made my way to my reserved seat and asked someone to move. They did so without fuss but they then had to stand all the way for two and a half hours. It was cramped and uncomfortable with rival fans travelling together (without trouble, it must be said) but it really is appallingly run. The Pendolino which VT use regularly is quite an uncomfortable train anyway – how they have managed to advertise it as a “better” train is the majesty of glossy PR trumping what people actually feel. It works too – there was a campaign to keep gifting Virgin Trains loads of public money to run trains on the West Coast Main Line (the cash cow of the national rail network) in spite of the positives of the service – the best maintained track in the country – being nothing to do with Virgin. And now they have been gifted the East Coast Main Line service too – a service which was so unprofitable that the previous operating company, NXEC, walked away from it as they could not make money from it. The “dead hand of the state” then had to take over as the operator of last resort and managed to then be the best run and operated line in the country – which reflected badly on other providers and the overall policy of privatisation. So what does a government do when moaning about the public service deficit and owning a service that lowers that deficit? It re-tenders to the lively hands of enterprise.↩}

^{3. The match was Liverpool vs Manchester United – a tense game at the best of times but the score was a hammering. And Steven Gerrard also got very stupidly sent off after a few seconds on the pitch to kill any hopes of a comeback. As a game, it was depressing but I found the act of watching football with so many other people arguably more depressing. Liverpool and Manchester United are big teams and they have big followings in Ireland too –which mainly derive from the many Irish in both cities (Liverpool and Manchester). As a result, there were many fans of all ages and they basically all made me cringe watching the game. I used to watch a lot of football in pubs and it was not too bad with friends but I hated watching when there were more people – not because of the numbers but because you suddenly had to hear the thought processes of football fans. It is even worse at World Cup time as you then also have to hear the thoughts (there is no process….) of non-fans watching the game. Watching this game reminded me – that thought was most always just “get it in there” or “get stuck in”. I guess we just like different aspects of the game…↩}

Monument Valley

I was told about Monument Valley quite a while ago - and warned it was pretty short. On sale at 49p, that is not a terrible price for a few hours of enjoyment and it is apparently a pretty clever game. It has also been ludicrously well received with plenty of awards and lots of sales - a rarity in these freemium times.

The point of Monument Valley is to use the 2D image to pass over a 3D space and in that sense it reminded me of Echochrome (a fairly early era PS3 game by SCEJ which allowed you to traverse the paths with a change of perspective) rather a lot. Monument Valley is a mobile game and so it has the obvious control method of the touchscreen and it is also a relatively simple method. I don't normally play mobile games but I know a lot of people think that they have matured a lot (and you can, of course, now play ports of some older blockbuster titles such as GTA and R-Type) so I was happy to give it a go. But only after quite a lot of faff to get it installed on my mobile which required quite a lot of retries.

The art style is simple and clean and you are presented with a path to a goal which you must walk to - simply with a tap to where on the path you want to go. It is clear, later on, that the wayfinding goes beyond just straight lines so you can click the final destination that you want after clearing/making the path. The path is made by moving levers (using the touchscreen directly) and/or tripping switches with your character. Most of the puzzles, as they are, involve moving levers and platforms so that using the screen view, it looks like there is a clear path.

The art direction, as you can see, is nice and clear - with a story book feel and like a coloured version of Echochrome. It is apparently inspired my Escher and Japanese woodprints. The sounds are stark and there is an ambient soundscape which reminded me a lot of Fez as there is a slight background sound and the levers and switches result in big movements of large stone platforms and this sound is similar. Also, level completions and level select has a similar ambient soundscape.

The game itself probably took me a couple of hours to complete over 10 levels and the puzzles do get a little more involved over that time. The main issue is that they never get particularly tricky and there are not really enough variations or opportunities to be wrong. As a result, you never feel right. It is not the kind of game that allows you to solve levels in different ways, it is quite prescriptive and so it felt, throughout, like a marginally interactive story. The controls made me feel a little detached as the tap to walk mechanic just means that you don't have to do much, solve the puzzles until you have a path and then press the final door. This is later broken down into multiscreen levels but I never felt that the levels were taxing and felt uninvolved in the whole thing. Later, you do have some "crow" like enemies but even they do not appear to do much other than provide annoying cawing.

Overall, the style and idea of the game is quite good but it feels quite a lot like a prototype rather than a full game and has the sense of the training section of a more full game. There are more levels that can be purchased (and I have not done so - it didn't grab me sufficiently) and so it may have a lot more scope but it is unlikely that I will ever find out. Unfortunately, whilst playing it, I thought mainly of the unfulfilled potential of this game and that I much preferred the Echochrome method of being "clever". That, as a game, had a little more variety and was not hampered by the control method which therefore allowed you to get things a little wrong with having so much more freedom. That would be hugely frustrating on a touchscreen mobile game, but that is still how I would judge the game experiences.

Now, I cannot be sure that this is not how mobile games work, simple and always with a sense of progress - this is quite a regular feature of games generally but it felt like a time waster. Maybe that is all it was. Maybe that is all these things are ever meant to be.

I played Monument Valley on Android (shop link) and it is available on other platforms which you can see here: (Main developer page)