Loving Mouse Guard by David Petersen

I had been tempted by Mouse Guard for some time, and even bought the first volume as a gift, but had never found the time and the opportunity to read it before. Then I bought it digitally.

The problem with paper comics is that you have to be near a comic shop when you want to buy one (or succumb to the devil Amazon) and you have to be near the comic when you want to read it. With digital all you need is an iPad to do everything and I always have mine with me.

As is increasingly the case, the spur to buy Mouse Guard was a ComiXology quick sale (yes, I know they are owned by Amazon now but needs must), which had the first three volumes at £2.99 each instead of the usual £7.99. That worked out at about 50p a comic and was far too great a temptation for me to resist, so I swiped and touched the glass a few times and they were mine.

The story of Mouse Guard is fairly traditional anthropomorphic fantasy that sits somewhere between The Wind in the Willows and Lord of the Rings. It is both very cute and little dark. Some of the scenes are just beautiful, bringing back thoughts of people like Beatrix Potter and Tracey Helps (though not as twee as either of them) while in other scenes heroes die. There has been at least one significant death in each of the tales that I have ready so far.

The story does enough to entertain but it is the art work that has won Mouse Guard its reputation, as I hope this cover from the second volume shows. The owl, injured in an earlier encounter, had deadly intent in its eyes while one of the Guard stands small and defiant before it.

Mouse Guard is a sumptuous comic and I am loving it immensely.

Celebrating a Trio of Czechoslovak Musical Anniversaries at the Slovak Embassy

The classical music that I hear live these days is almost always at operas and it is nice to add to this the recitals that the Slovak Embassy hosts from time to time. I also like the venue and the other people who go there.

The occasion this time was a recital arranged by the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) to celebrate three musical anniversaries, though I suspect that was something of a contrivance to justify the programme; which was Martinů's Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, Janáček's Wind Sextet Mládí and Smetana's Piano Trio in G minor. As the billing suggests, these were three very different pieces played by three different groups.

I was aware of the composers and knew something of their works but only a little and none of these pieces. That did not worry me at all as, generally, I like Chamber Music for its simplicity and clarity (I like Minimalism for much the same reasons) so I was pretty sure that I would like this music. And I did.

The Janáček surprised me a little by sounding what I previously thought of as whimsical English music from the likes of Walton but readily admit that my knowledge of musical history is only one step above non-existent.  The Smetana was more like I expected with hints of traditional folk songs.

The concert lasted a touch over the hour and then it was the second part of the evening with conversations and refreshments.

As usual the Slovak Embassy put on a tremendous reception and there was soon a long queue for the food. I preferred to talk and to look at the art, the Slovak Embassy always has good art too. The high ceilings and concrete walls are a good setting for large bold pieces, like these.

I was especially pleased to be able to spend a good while talking to the wind quintet, Quintitus. They are from Paris so we started about why a French group were performing Czech music. From there we moved on to French music (not my strong point) and then on to opera houses (a little better). One of them was hoping to go to Glyndebourne that Summer and they convinced me to try the opera in Paris, an idea that was had to reject having admitted that I would be going to Ghent to see Akhenaten. It was an unexpected conversation in many ways and was all the better for being so.

There were other people to talk to and other things to talk about; there was some wine to drink too. I even found some bread and cheese to nibble on, not that I was that interested in food.

But all good things must come to an end and after a while people started to drift away and I slowly ran out of new people to talk to. Then I has somewhere else to be too and I made my excuses and drifted out toward Notting Hill Gate station and a District Line train.

LIKE Christmas Party 2014

I have been a member of LIKE, the London Information and Knowledge Exchange, for several years because it's a good group of people with a shared passion for managing information.

The business meetings are instructive and fun and the social meetings are even more fun, and a little bit instructive too.

So it was no surprise that I was quick to put my name down for this year's Christmas dinner at The Marquis in Chandos Place on the south-west corner of Covent Garden. I arranged to work in London that day and had a pleasant forty minute stroll down from Kings Cross to get some exercise and build up an appetite.

I also built up a thirst so my first stop was the bar before negotiating the steeps curving steps up to the function room.

Once I had collected my glass of bubbly and name badge, my first job was to find a spot for my £1 Secret Santa. There are no pound shops close to Kings Place so that lunchtime I had a pleasant walk to Camden to do my shopping. I also had to buy a Christmas bag to put it in, which strictly speaking took me over the £1 limit but that is the price you pay for leaving things so late. The present was left somewhere near a window and I claimed my seat on the far side of the room.

There was much chatting, or networking as we like to call it, before we were asked to sit. Without any planning I found myself sitting with Martin, Andrew and Sarah, two of whom I'd spoken to several times before and one of whom was a new connection (now formalised on LinkedIn).

Our first task was the Christmas Quiz set by a fiendish librarian. Actually the questions were pretty far, the fault was in our knowledge; we really should have recognised more of the lyrics from Christmas songs. I still think that the picture of Batgirl looked more like Hit Girl, though I have to concede that Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) was a librarian while Hit Girl was not.

After the quiz came the food. I started with a soup and then a very impressive mushroom wellington. I had not gone there for the food but having food as good as this was a help.

The food came and went but the conversations continued, and they were the real reason that I was there.

At some point some people started to leave and that generated a little space for the rest of us to move around a little and talk to other people. It was good to catch up with Jennifer, for example.

I had arrived at the pub soon after 6pm and was on the verge of being thrown out almost five hours later, still chatting and still having a great time. Even by the high standard of LIKE events this was a glorious evening.

Piranha Heights at the Old Red Lion Theatre was delightfully weird

I was vaguely aware of the Old Red Lion Theatre having been to the pub downstairs (prior to a visit to nearby Sadler's Wells) but had never been there, or had a particular reason to do so. Then a chance conversation at another Philip Ridley play at the Arcola alerted me to Piranha Heights.

The Old Red Lion is conveniently close to Angel tube and that made it fairly easy to get there, despite being forced to work in Reading that day. I even had time to eat in the pub, a vegetarian Bombay Burrito, though I did get a little nervous over how long it took to arrive. It all worked out in the end.

The theatre was upstairs but the box office was downstairs, in corner of the bar, and I was able to swap my email for a ticket while waiting for my food.

More or less on the dot of 7:30 we were summoned upstairs. It was a rather orderly rush and my years of training for such events meant that I was among the very first up and so was able to bag the front row seat that I wanted.

My first thought was it was rather like the White Bear Theatre, but much bigger, with a rectangular stage surrounded on two sides with seats in an L-shape. The size, but not the shape, were similar to Pentameters. Or, to put it in other words, this theatre in a pub was similar to other theatres in pubs that I had been to.

The stage was set as a somewhat dated living room. Here we met a middle-aged man waiting for somebody. That somebody was his younger brother who, it transpired he had not seen for a some time. We also learned that they were in their Mother's flat, that she had just died and they both had designs on the flat.

Then, much like a JG Ballard novel, the normal became strange and then outright weird.

An awful lot happened and it would be difficult and unhelpful to try and describe all of if; so here are just a few highlights. The younger brother had brought along a young woman and a baby who he had just met and who we wanted to have living in the house. The young woman had an exuberant young man in tow, not the baby's father. She spoke Gibberish. The older brother's teenage son arrived, he was weird in his own right (he spoke to an invisible Jiminy Cricket character). The son and the boyfriend met with a series of whoops and discovered a shared passion for violence and each other. The baby ...

Through this the relationship between the brothers, and with their families, got more complicated too; such as the younger brother suggesting that his nephew loved him more than his father and that he (the nephew) was going to leave his dad and come and live with his uncle in the flat.

The story was fast and chaotic; probably like a ride on Nemesis if I was brave enough to know what that is like. It was exhilarating, thrilling and exhausting. And, like a theme-park ride, reached a natural ending, though this one left me thinking about what was going to happen next to the brothers and to the two young men. Perhaps it was more of a pause than an ending.

There was a question and answer session with the cast afterwards which I stayed for. This gave some insights to their approach to the production, such as doing some rehearsals without words to get the movements right (there was a lot of movement). It offered fewer clues as to what the play was actually about as the cast had different opinions, the brothers thought it was about them but the others disagreed.

It was certainly about the stories we tell each other and how many of these are not true and what that means. Did the son really see Jiminy Cricket, did the others mean it when they said that they believed that they did, and did he believe them when they said that they believed him? You get the idea.

Piranha Heights was a frighteningly deep and complex play which I was able to navigate safely thanks to the superb crew. The ride was a very rewarding experience.

Informative but directionless Compass debate on immigration

I go to far fewer political meetings than I would like, which I think says more about the lack of political discussion in this country at the moment than it does about me, so I was pleased to be able to go to a Compass event on EU Immigration fears: Who is to blame?

The timing, 5pm, was a little awkward because they had to meet the needs of the various presenters but the location was close to Victoria station and I was able to work in London that day and to get away at 4:30pm to make it on time.

The event was supported by Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German think-tank. This meant that there was a decent menu, mince pies to go with the coffees on arrival and some refreshments afterwards.

I sat at a table at the back. I like to sit at the back of meetings as that gives me a view of the other people there so it is easier to judge the meeting overall and also to decide when to join in.

I was pleasantly surprised to be joined there by Alf Dubbs (now Baron Dubbs) who I had campaigned for when between jobs in 1992 and who I had met only the year before at the BCSA Annual Dinner. We had a short conversation and I was pleased that he remembered me.

The discussion on immigration was introduced by Neal Lawson then we had short talks from Michael Orton Senior Research Fellow Institute for Employment Research at University of Warwick, Martin Seeleib-Kaiser Barnett Professor of Comparative Social Policy and Politics Oxford University and (arriving a little late because of divisions in the House) Lisa Nandy MP Shadow Minister for Civil Society and Compass regular.

The usual disclaimer; these are my notes taken from the speakers, the other people at the meeting, my notes at the time and my subsequent thoughts.

We can see immigration through the lens of insecurity; insecurity through zero hours contracts, high rents, etc. leads to fear, and this leads to scapegoating.

About half the population are in the anxious middle, not opposed to immigration but wary of it.

Pro-immigration arguments only reach the liberal left (me!) who are already convinced and it scares the anxious middle. By arguing for immigration we raise the subject and make things worse.

We need a simple and different argument to change the game (the same is true for the economy). We have not been able to do this so far (why is this?, a serious philosophical question that may suggest a significant problem with the way that politics is framed in favour of the right-wing).

The (suggested) answer at the meeting was to oppose neoliberalism directly, i.e. attack the root cause of the problem and not the symptoms. I am happy with that but the problem remains that the riposte needs to be simple, understandable and convincing. The facts and figures are on our side but not the narrative.

One simple message might be We Are All Immigrants, It Is Just A Question Of How Many Generations You Go Back. But that in itself is insufficient, that fact that immigration was good for us in the past is no guarantee that it will be in the future. Blame The Bankers Not The Bulgarians was also suggested but this assumes that there is something wrong that needs to blamed on somebody/something rather than celebrating immigration in its own right.

The UK is not good at providing the data required to support pro-immigration arguments and is at odds with the EU on the conclusions it draws. EU funding is available to help communities most hit by immigration but the UK is not using this, on some bizarre principle.

Enforcing regulations, like minimum wage, would help locals and make jobs more open to other locals. The benefit changes proposed by the Tories would require a treaty change, and that would need an unanimous vote, which it would not get.

Not only is the UK's view on immigration shared across Europe but other countries have recently made moves to support immigration. The Swiss said yes to immigration on economic grounds and the USA recently admitted 5m illegal immigrants.

Immigration has some general flows, eg. south to North in EU. Climate change will exacerbate this. The free flow of capital should be supported by free flow of people.

The debate on immigration is too focussed on the economy, i.e. arguments over whether we have lost or gained financially through recent immigrations, when there is far more to consider, especially culture. This is a battle about values and we cannot afford to lose it.

The language used is a problem, e.g. immigration is tightly coupled with migration and emigration but these aspects are rarely spoken about. "Immigration" is a bogey problem that each person can interpret their own way, e.g. Lithuanians taking low-paid jobs here, some ethnic groups keeping to their own communities rather than integrating to the wider society or Russian oligarchs pushing up London house prices.

While some interesting facts and ideas were shared, I felt that the scope of the discussion was far too wide to reach any meaningful conclusions, particularly as we learnt during the evening that talks like this just preach to the converted.

What was a lot more successful was the informal discussions over drinks and nibbles after the main session. Lisa could not stay, they were voting in the House, but I managed to grab quite a few words with both Michael and Martin and several other people there. That was my favourite part of the meeting and a good end to the evening.