Pirate Master Tomorrow!
by John Walker on May.30, 2007, under Television
Pirate Master starts tomorrow night!
Seriously, can life get any better? And best of all, the Australian host, Cameron Daddo, claims to be descended from pirates himself. The show’s created by Mark Burnett, and that is a Good Thing, whether you love Survivor or not. It means it will be filmed like a multi-million dollar movie, scored by a composer, and rock like a thousand bells.
“But this time, they’re also on hunt for a half-million dollars in gold coins buried on the island of Dominica. The winning team each week gets to elect a captain and split the loot. The losers swab the decks, eat gruel and cook steaks for the winners. Everyone gets to keep the money they find. But the ultimate winner gets an additional 500 grand and the title “Pirate Master.””
(Comment on the fire story, you bastards. Especially to comment on Kim’s excellent photography).
Chicago Story #2: Fire
by John Walker on May.30, 2007, under The Rest
One evening, sitting in Kim and Nick’s beautiful basement, Nick and I were flicking through channels, juggling the double-TiVo to keep track of the baseball, as well as the remarkable output of a gay channel we’d stumbled on. You know, like you do. At around 9pm, Kim came down and asked if we could flick over to the news to catch the headlines.
WGN’s news led with a story about a building that had caught fire somewhere on the west side of the city. We watched the exciting flames and billowing smoke, and Kim asked Nick, “Hey, where’s W. Caroll St? Nick looked blankly for a moment, and then both their faces burst with realisation at the same time. “That’s CPE!” they both exclaimed.
A few days before, Kim had been telling me about some friends of Nick’s who had set up a business, CPE. They offered unsigned bands recording studios at affordable rates, complete with loan of all the equipment they might need. They rented the fourth floor of a five storey building on… W. Carroll.
Nick gave them a call to see if all were alright, and beyond being shaken and somewhat devastated, no one was hurt. In fact, the fire (which looks deeply like arson) took place in the early morning – a time when no band, nor anyone working with a band, was likely to be around.
The next day, late afternoon, Nick’s phone rang. It was the CPE guys. The fire marshals had told them that if they wanted to go into the building, now was their only chance, as the next day the building inspectors would arrive and never allow anyone in again. They were phoning everyone to get a hand shifting stuff out before dark.
Why was there stuff? The fire had destroyed the two three-storey buildings next to the five-storey in which their business was housed, where it had started on the third floor. This had, I’m told, created a pocket of CO2 on the fourth floor that caused the fire to go around it and burn the fifth floor next. Boggling. Apparently a great deal of their equipment was recoverable, even if the building was not. Nick, motivated by helping his friends, leapt to action. Kim, motivated by getting some awesome photographs of the inside of a burned out building, leapt into action as much as someone six months pregnant can. I followed, because that’s what I do.
So here’s what had happened:
Next to the taller building, the two smaller ones were all but gone. Just half-walls and rubble. The five-storey stood more firmly, but without glass in the windows, and soot everywhere. A doorway led into a dark opening, and some wooden stairs, that had impossibly survived.
We cautiously made our way up, stopping on the third floor to have a look. A doorway from the stairwell looked into a vast, empty room, made almost entirely of embers. The floor was missing in huge areas, and a foot put down would remove an awful lot more. It looked amazing.
The fourth floor, while not burned to bits, was hardly undamaged. Lots had burned, and everything had been cooked by the intense heat from above and below. It looked an awful lot like this:
A sad story: On the way in a guy asked me to take his photograph in front of a poster that had survived on the stairwell wall. In the process of trying, I dropped my camera, causing the lens to smash into a million pieces. The good news is it meant I got to buy a new camera in the amazing Half Price America (“Everything’s 50% off! Buy now before the complete collapse of the economy!”). The bad news is I could take no pictures, and so what you see here are Kim’s excellent snappings.
We explored the rooms, checking the floors before putting our weight on them, each of them looking remarkable where the effects of the fire had decorated with elaborate patterns. It was peculiarly haunting, like discovering the entombed remains of a 2007 civilisation in the distant future. Regular, familiar objects reduced to ash-coloured ghosts.
Kim and I explored, rather than helped. She had the rather valid reason of being heavily pregnant (although one might argue such an excuse should probably have kept her from being in the building in the first place). I was just being amazed at the amazing sights, and pretending I was checking Kim was OK.
We stood in one back room, staring in amazement at the bookshelves, and a clipboard on the wall that had been cooked brown but not burned. It was all hypnotising, as people busied around us, grabbing amps and drum kits and lugging them down the stairs. Kim looked up and nonchalantly said to me, “There’s a fire up there.” I looked up at where she was pointing, and indeed there it was. A little fire dancing in the rafters of the room we were in. How pretty. Waking up suddenly, I went to find a fire extinguisher. It was apparently on the bottom floor, and so I ran down the stairs alerting everyone I met. Maybe it was my odd accent, maybe it was their rock-addled brains, but no one seemed that phased by the news that the building we were in was currently on fire. Until I found Nick on the bottom floor, who flew into Action Hero mode, and learned that the fire extinguisher was apparently in the very room I’d started in. We ran back up, and Nick grabbed the extinguisher and aimed it at the flames, which had now spread further, and were very close to lighting a main beam in the room.
The extinguisher was empty. In a moment of fantastic madness, Nick became possessed by the spirit of every gunfight when the bullets are gone, and the only thing left to do is throw the gun. He threw the red canister like an American football, and perfectly nailed the shot, wedging the extinguisher into the beams on top of the fire. In fact, he almost snuffed them out. But, you know, didn’t. Sort of creating a big red bomb.
Nick got to cry, “Evacuate the building!”, as we attempted to shepherd people toward the stairs and down. This wasn’t easy. In complete reversal of every school fire drill, rather than being sternly told to leave everything we own in the rooms and file outside slowly, people yelled, “Grab an amp and run!”
So we all grabbed hold of something heavy to make one last run out the place, and called the fire brigade. Then people had to go back in and get the guy out who had decided he was going to rescue the last drum kit. The fire brigade turned up and ran in, and we all stood outside while the building’s owner, a twenty-something girl who had inherited it from her father, came down to watch. It was a sad story, really. She had hoped to fulfill her father’s wishes and use the building as an arts centre. However, others in the Italian family (Family?) had other ideas. This, of course, had nothing to do with the fire. Obviously.
The fire fighters told the group that they didn’t recommend going back in, but if they insisted they’d likely be fine. We decided to call it a night, since it was now night, and made out way home to unsuccessfully try and shower off the smell of fire. A rather remarkable evening.
All the photos are by Kim, and are rather amazing. Can be seen here.
An Appeal
by John Walker on May.28, 2007, under The Rest
Can whoever has my copy of The Perfect Fool by Stewart Lee (book) please return it?
Thanks!
Studio 60: The Return
by John Walker on May.25, 2007, under Television
I wish I didn’t feel the need to write “spoiler warning”, but apparently even when I do some people still can’t help but read it anyway, and then complain that they spoiled it for themselves. I can’t imagine what would happen if I didn’t.
Helpfully titled “The Disaster Show”, Studio 60’s ‘comeback’ demonstrated every reason why it needed to be left to die. What a horrible mess.
So it’s the hilarious episode where everything goes wrong. Danny pisses off the prop guys so they walk out at the last moment, and the cue-card guys are in the same union. So the guest host, Allison Janney, is left with no monologue to deliver, and only Cal in her ear delivering unhelpful words. Cue the first reference to The West Wing. Nggghhh. So all the sketches go wrong, the props are spiked, and wouldjabelieveit – a bomb threat has been phoned in. Then Frank Spencer slips on a banana skin and lands on a skateboard and crashes into a cupboard full of ladies’ underwear! Oh, Sorkin, fuck off into outer space.
We never see Danny pissing off the prop guys. Danny, we’re told, is in the parking lot trying to negogiate with the prop guys. It’s already too late for that, as they’re taping live. So why he is doing this, rather than directing the programme he directs is left somewhat unexplained. As such he never appears. And Matt? The reason for his not appearing in a single scene? Because he’s “helping the cast write their lines on their hands.” Good grief, what? At least try. This seriously is the given reason for his absence on the floor for the entire shoot. Rather than it being the episode that emphasises the rest of the cast by taking the focus from the main characters (something Scrubs does well, but too often), it became an awkward muddle where the two characters were refered to constantly, were integral to the plot, and were apparently just nearby throughout, but somehow never got caught by the cameras.
Of course, this is the second half of the season, so it can’t be about making a TV show. It has to be about relationships. So we get Harriet neurotically announcing that people are allowed to go out with Matt, which I’m fairly certain was a storyline covered quite extensively at the beginning of the season. Plus there’s an extraordinarily out of character moment where she spitefully refers to one of the minor cast members as “rook” and is disgusted that he would be in the same room as her, let alone speak in her presence. She becomes instantly hateful, and I now hope for nothing but her miserable, grisly death in every coming episode. This is as nothing when compared with the constant annoyance of a story following Simon’s fruitful lovelife. He gets dumped right before he was taking a girlfriend to Hawaii, then trawls the green room for another last minute date, finds one, then guess what! The first girl wants to go back out with him again, and he says yes! Then the second girl gets cross and slaps Simon, then Lucy tells the first girl about the second girl, then Simon gets slapped again! Why, his crazy lovelife! Somehow this most cliched of ideas is stretched out over the hour, as if we’re supposed to be either intrigued or in stitches over the wacky muddle of his womanising ways.
But worst of all is the impossibility of the premise. Every second of the show is a failure, but apparently they’ll air it anyway. And of course the cast are all super-cool about it. Hey, this happens every couple of years! Except, no, it doesn’t. With no props, all the sketches failing midway and being cut off, no monologue, and a bomb threat on a building filled with the public, just maybe, maybe they’d cancel the show and put on a re-run. The idea that we’re asked to suspend disbelief to this extent so that we can have the slapstick adventures of a prop table that collapses when it’s touched, and an actress so stupid that she can’t tell if the shirt she’s wearing contains squibs, is insulting.
As ever, the depth of frustration is only made worse by some really fantastic moments of dialogue. Best of all would be Tom explaining to Janney who she should thank at the end of the show, receiving a curt “Thank you,” to which he immediately replies, “Yes, like that, but nicer.” But they are tiny flickers in a very dark room. No Matt or Danny, nor indeed Jordan, makes it a pointless exercise, worryingly revealing the paper-thin nature of the rest of Sorkin’s characters. Janney appearing does little to help, only reminding everyone that he used to write the West Wing (and even worse, the repeated references to the show). I hate that NBC were right, but they were so right. Studio 60 had nowhere to go, and it’s determined to prove it.
My Nephew The Theologian
by John Walker on May.25, 2007, under The Rest
The t-shirt reads, “Cuter than Baby Jesus”.
End Of Season TV Round Up
by John Walker on May.24, 2007, under Television
As television (by which I of course mean US television, because good GRIEF there’s nothing else out there) winds down for the summer, it’s time to look back at the season gone, and see quite how right and wrong I was. Of course, EVERYTHING below contains enormous spoilers, and if you don’t want to know, don’t read it.
Shark – CBS
With remarkable prescience I announced regarding the House With Lawyers nonsense, “I can see it working if they don’t overplay the teenage daughter crap.” So that was a show I stopped watching once the teenage daughter crap took over entirely. How on earth it’s managed a full run, let alone being picked up for another season, is a mystery. Perhaps reaching into the extremities of the banal is the secret to television longevity. Whatever, no one with any sense is watching it. Which would explain the successful ratings.
Jericho – CBS
What’s wrong with me? 22 episodes of this ridiculous rubbish I watched. And it wasn’t until episode 19 that it got… not quite “good”, but close. It’s not that I saw the potential that was eventually touched on – I just assumed it would remain as idiotic throughout. And yet I couldn’t stop. Each week they’d find new ways to melodramatise the inane, treating a burning school story as if they were the first programme on television to have ever shown fire, and how people put it out. Relationships broke down and new ones started without a human being alive caring less. Oh no! Eric broke up with April! Who was April again? Oh, April’s dead? She was the one married to Eric? And so on. Nevermind the show’s only star, Skeet, and his groundbreaking off-again-off-again relationships with at least three characters. There was the sheer joy of the programme entirely forgetting characters, and then later desperately trying to make up excuses for their absence. There was the complete astonishment as nothing happened for episodes, then a flurry of activity presumably over sweeps. And then, for the last four episodes, WAR! Hooray! And it was quite fun. Finally everyone stopped keeping tedious secrets from each other and guns went bang. But it was too late. Amazingly enough, taking the show off air for three months was more than audiences were willing to wait between episodes – the idiots. And now, in my most ridiculous move, I’m disappointed it’s been cancelled. I repeat, what’s wrong with me?
Six Degrees – ABC
ABC’s treatment of Six Degrees was deeply peculiar. I really liked this show, despite its not being about very much at all. I liked that the relationships between the six main characters were so quietly established, and that even after however many episodes it survived, they still didn’t know each other despite the many coincidences and links. I liked that it ambled with its mysteries, as gentle as they were, and made the relationships more important. But most of all, it contained really fantastic acting. However, by taking it off air for over four months, and then starting it up again with almost no promotion and no recap for confused viewers, it was of course doomed to failure. Only lasting one more episode on its return, the remaining few have disappeared. Oddly, for a show so quiet and unimposing, I’d like to see a DVD release with the missing few, just to see how far they got.
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – NBC
Well, it’s dead forever now. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it ought to be. I think finding out that the decision to move the emphasis to the whiny, tedious relationships, almost completely forgetting about the TV show they were supposed to be making, was Sorkin’s own. I’m sure there was studio pressure, but he stated firmly that it was always his intention. Which proves that he never had the faintest idea what to do with the programme he’d created. Despite excellent acting, a great premise, and the sort of fantastic banter Sorkin can’t help but write, I think the real brilliance of Studio 60 might have been performed in our own heads. What the show could have been, what the show should have been, was bubbling potential in our minds, and was never really delivered. There were lovely episodes, and great moments. It was my favourite programme before Christmas. But ultimately, it was being made by people who didn’t know what to do with it, and as such the failure was inevitable. The last few episodes will be shown from this week onward, and I’ll watch them enthusiastically. It was great. It really was. But it should be judged by the high standards it announced for itself, and as such, a second season was never a great idea.
Battlestar Galactica – SciFi Channel
Excellent bonkers ending, pissing everyone off by including a Bob Dylan song for no reason and then leaving everyone else to try and make up excuses. Five new Cylons, non of whom should have been, which will make for some fun, if rather desperate writing next season, and Starbuck! Hooray! Even the cast and crew were tricked into believing she was really dead. Which makes them great big twits, as it was fairly obvious she wouldn’t be. But seriously, they went crazy trying to convince everyone, with Katee Sackhoff (a name that sounds like a protest to fire the famous Baywatch star) even auditioning for parts in other shows. Loonies. Really great stuff, constantly entertaining, often moving, and featuring lots of exciting things blowing up in space. Amen.
Help Me Help You – NBC
So here I was really wrong. The fabulous pilot turned out to be a fluke, and I stopped watching only a couple of episodes before it was cancelled.
How I Met Your Mother – NBC EDITED
The premise, in case you’ve not seen this, is that thirty years in the future, a father is telling his teenage children the story of how he met their mother. 48 episodes in, and Ted and Robyn have finally broken up. The writers told wicked lies in interviews, saying they intended to keep them together for the foreseeable future, but the season finale did otherwise. And as nicely as possible. Marshall and Lily, the other couple, finally got married at the end of the second run, and the wedding got everything right. They seemed to tease the audience by setting up a typical sitcom wedding, with everything wackily going wrong, and then in a splendid bait and switch, turned it into a beautiful and romantic moment. Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, remains ideal, his character never softening, always resorting to being the bastard. In fact, the writers say they think he’s become a bit too nice of late, supporting Lily and Marshall’s marriage, and plan to drag him down again for season 3. Consistently funny, and impressively inventive with its format, it’s unquestionably the only decent multiple camera sitcom on TV at the moment. Muddling time, flashing forward, and being remarkably rude (apparently they watch Two And A Half Men very closely, and then if they get away with anything risque, the HIMYM writers protest that they should be able to too), it’s great every week.
Heroes – NBC (Big spoilers)
The unquestionable success of the year, Heroes has managed something very rare indeed. It’s a huge ratings hit, critical success, AND a really damned good programme. I learned why recently, after reading an interview with creator Tim Kring. It turns out he has no interest in science fiction or comic books at all. Instead, he knows the ingredients for making good television, saw a marketable opportunity, and then here’s the non-soulless part: hired people who do care about science fiction and comic books to write it. If Kring doesn’t get something they’ve written, or finds it too obscure, it’s nixed. It means they’re creating a proper superhero show that’s open to everyone. The writers are full on geeks, hiding comic references throughout that I don’t even want to get, but they’re there for those who do. Characters who were meant to be one-offs have proven hit successes and stayed on to become incredibly important players (like Claire’s dad) (I have no idea what happened with Zach, and don’t much care), showing a will to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses, and adapt.
I think the other reason for Heroes power as a series is the real danger that anyone could die at any time. Because they do. Big, exciting characters are constantly falling, or having their brains eaten. It’s unlike most superhero fiction where you feel patronised by the pretence that Superman might be in any real danger. Here they are, and likely as not, they’ll not survive. Keeping Silar alive at the end, I’ve decided, is a good idea, as he was too good a baddie to lose. Losing Peter and Nathan was a horrible shock. (I love Kring’s answer as to why Peter couldn’t just fly up on his own: “You know, theoretically you’re not supposed to be thinking about that.”) I’m especially intrigued to learn more about the Watchmen… I mean previous generation of the current heroes, and their past, and how they got to a place where they believed slaughtering millions of people was the only route to mankind’s salvation.
And unlike silly people, I think Origins is a great idea. Instead of breaking the show up into lumps (Heroes never really recovered from its second hiatus), there will be one mid-season break of six weeks, during which Heroes: Origins will show, featuring the emergence of six new characters, from whom viewers can choose which should survive to season 3. And yes, the public are idiots, but let’s hope that they pick six excellent choices so it doesn’t matter which gets through.
Round up
House has been mostly excellent, with only a couple of weak episodes (including last week’s, which should have been so much more). The real strength of the third season was taking House from a grumpy-but-brilliant physician, to a sociopathic bastard. Characters have even started to refer to him as “evil”. Gone are the extremely silly episodes of the past where he’s got some daft motivation for saving a patient, his only remaining interest being the opportunity to experiment, win an argument, or improve his own health. It’s dark, man. But it’s so good. My Name Is Earl remains too preachy, but somehow always funny. Scrubs’ best days are clearly in the past, but that doesn’t stop it being very entertaining most weeks. The Kim storyline was very awkwardly told, and not much of a season finale. And please, God, don’t let the continuing (as it’s been renewed for a seventh run) story be that JD and Kim stay together for the sake of the unborn baby. A loveless marriage at the centre of a sitcom may have worked for Married With Children – I don’t see it succeeding here. Bones is the same as it ever was – fun, silly, and gross. Love it. Doctor Who has been a ceaseless series of barely watchable shite. Please, someone fire RTD. And 30 Rock has been renewed, proving that there is no Television God.
Pirate Master
by John Walker on May.14, 2007, under The Rest
TV reaches its absolute zenith this summer.
It can only go downhill from here.
Chicago Story #1: Customs
by John Walker on May.09, 2007, under The Rest
Going through US Immigration is something I do with frightening regularity. Normally this is for work, where I’ve developed intricate skills for surviving the confusing ordeal. Under US Immigration laws, one is allowed into the country for a maximum of 90 days, either on business or, as it’s now so eloquently known, not business. For business, you’re only allowed in if you’re not going to earn any money while you’re there. By the nature of my job, this is the case, and as such I have no need for a visa. This, however, doesn’t stop the customs officers from putting journalists in cells and deporting them, so it’s all a little bit scary. I’ve never had a single problem though, and find it all relatively smooth, so long as I stress “writer”, rather than “evil spying reporter”.
(Aside: My first time through customs for work, I stared at the form in confusion (not even the green one asking if I’m a Nazi) and had no idea whether the tick “business” or “pleasure” (as the form said back then). I tried to explain thie situation to the large, menacing looking man with the gun on his hip in a blustered, Hugh-Grant-a-like British muddle, how I had no idea which to choose. He sighed wearily at me, and ticked business, and then glanced to the right. I’d not noticed the field for “male/female”. Without lifting his head he raised his eyes toward me, curled his nose and drawled, “Are you not sure about this one either?”)
So you need to know that Chicago is a city of divisions. As a recent television episode of This American Life noted, Chicago is so segregated that demographers had to invent a new term to describe it: hyper-segregation. There really are areas which are white, those that are black, another Hispanic, and so on. One of the more trivial divisions is the North/South divide over baseball. The North, by tradition, supports the Cubs. The South the White Sox. However, for reasons even I don’t understand, my team is the Sox, despite my Chicago hosts having always lived nearer the top than the bottom. So, as ever, I was wearing my White Sox cap as I entered the country. I got to a customs desk in astonishing time, thanks to the sudden decision by O’Hare airport to employ more than two customs officers at once, and explained that I was here on holiday.
The officer asked me to remove my cap for the photo they now take every time you visit the US (as well as collecting fingerprints), and then added, “You don’t want to wear that around me.”
“Oh no!” I replied. “You’re not a Cubs fan, are you?” He grimly nodded a yes. “I’m doomed!” I said too enthusiastically.
Thinking I should engratiate myself with him now, I added, “I might be going to see the Cubs play while I’m here.”
“See them lose, you mean.”
Then he complained to me about how awful they were, and stamped my passport.
Since then, the Cubs are currently riding a five game winning streak, getting their winning average over 500, which is better than the Sox can muster. So there you go, Mr Grumpy Customs Guy, cheer up.
There Are Wolves In The Trees
by John Walker on May.06, 2007, under The Rest
I was chatting to my sister via instant message, gently mocking her for her daft fear of the potential reality of movie monsters. To worry about zombies smashing the windows and eating her brains, at 27 years old, seems just daft. Then she delivered her winning blow.
“It all started when a certain someone told me there were wolves in the trees at Newlands Corner.”
Newlands Corner was a local place filled with grassy hills ideal for rolypolying down, and woods perfect for losing your sister’s Aerobe within the high branches. We went there quite regularly with our parents, suited as it was to picnics, bike riding (especially the amazing deep craters in the woods caused by WW2 bombing – thanks Nazis for your excellent bike courses!) and the consumption of long-begged-for ice creams. I have no recollection of ever telling Catherine that there were wolves there. But apparently I did.
“[It was] when we were little. I remember cutting through the trees at Newlands Corner to get back to the path that leads to the carpark, hearing a rustling and you telling me it was a wolf and mum and dad telling you off. Then you told me that Woofle [my favourite toy – a dog glove puppet] would turn into a werewolf on a full moon and I told you he wouldn’t and you said I was right but there were werewolves out there and then you howled until I cried. Then you howled just too scare whenever you got the opportunity.”
My response to this revelation is confusing. I feel equal measures of guilt and pride. I do feel terrible to know that mean-spirited comments made under the age of 10 could have such a long-lasting, and apparently debilitating effect. But I also feel rather strongly that I met my responsibilities as an older brother with respectable vim. Surely we all have to have someone in our lives who is required to instill a fear of imaginary baddies in our tiny brains? I was recalling yesterday about my mad terror of catching rabies, after a school friend had told me all about how one of its more peculiar symptoms was a fear of water. Such a bizarre ailment was more than I could comprehend, and I became convinced that the only means by which I might ever die would be nuclear war, or a rabid dog bite. So surely I was only fulfilling my necessary brotherly duties for Catherine?
This, unfortunately, opened the gates for other forgotten childhood crimes. Apparently, a few years later, Phillip Kett (a very bad influence on me throughout my adolescence) and I told my sister to ask my mum what a blowjob was. I remember this incident arriving after Phillip said it in front of her, and my not wanting to explain. I think Catherine recalls it as all being much more malicious.
And then I mentioned the Boggle Crime. I was sure we’d already been over this. So much so that I even mentioned it in a review a while back.
“Boggle is perhaps most orientated for a single-player mode. I don’t have to have an opponent when challenging myself to extract as many words as I can from the grid of sixteen letters. In fact, after the way I treated my little sister as a child, I shouldn’t be allowed opponents. She would look up from furiously scribbling down words and ask, “How do you spell ‘COUNT’?” and I would tell her and then say, “But there’s no point in you writing that down now, cos I have it.” And she so naively would comply. Oh god, I feel terrible. I deserve this version of the game to be such a complete mess.”
I hadn’t told her.
“I’m slightly humiliated. When I read it, I can picture me sat on your bedroom floor desperate to find a word longer than 4 letters so you won’t take the piss out of me!”
And there, there’s no pride at all. It’s horrible to remember the abuse of power of being a bigger brother. It’s something over which I have no control. I can’t go back and not be pointlessly mean to my sister now I know not to. I can’t make sure she only has happy memories of our relationship. But I was a child too. It’s so unpleasant to realise now that she looked up to me, and that my brotherly horridness had a reaching effect. Although she reassures me that overall I was a decent brother.
I love my sister very much. It’s nice to say so.
(I should add, in the interests of balance, her greatest childhood crime. At an age far too young to be so ingenious, she would stand at the top of the stairs and shout, “Ow! John! Stop it! That hurts! Stop hitting me!” and then burst into tears and run into her bedroom. An angry parent would come into my room, where I sat innocently, bemused, and would be shouted at, and then moreso for “lying” about it. That racket lasted the good part of a year before she was rumbled).