Madly, Deeply – The Alan Rickman Diaries

This morning I finally finished the weighty tome that is Madly Deeply – The Alan Rickman Diaries. I started it back in June 2023 and have been reading a section, usually 3-6 months of entries, most weekday mornings since then. So, it has been a long read and, to some extent, a bit of a slog.

I was attracted to reading Madly Deeply after reading a review article in a newspaper soon after it was released. The article made quite a big play of how wonderful Rickman’s actual diaries were to look at, often illustrated with really nice sketches and drawings relating to the themes he was writing about, so it was something of a let-down to find that the published book contained only five pages (of over 450 in total) that showed any of these illustrations (and two of those five pages were the inside front cover). But never mind, there would always be interesting insights to read about the Harry Potter films since he surely must have loved his involvement in those in his role as Severus Snape…

Alas, it turns out that Rickman clearly didn’t much like being such a major part of the HP film series to the extent that he almost bailed out part way through (imagine if that had happened…).

The first thing that hit me smack bang in the face when I started reading the diaries (they begin in 1993 and run through to his death at the age of 69 in 2015) was that his life was absolutely, completely, inexpicably busy. Hardly a day seemed to pass when he wasn’t flying somewhere, seeing a film or play, dining out with friends, rehearsing, discussing things with directors and producers and agents, fending off critics etc. In fact, it felt like he did most of these things on most days – one day in New York, then on to Paris, Prague, South Africa, Italy, California, London in an utter whirlwind of activity. Just reading about his life left me exhausted and I still cannot comprehend how anyone can cope with such a life and, apparently, have so much energy. [I wasn’t surprised when, quite far on in the diaries, he casually dropped in a reference to his ADHD… although his flavour ADHD was certainly not much like my flavour of ADHD!]

I can’t say that I particularly warmed to Alan Rickman as a person through his diary entries which surprised me a little, although on reflection there is really no reason why I might have expected to. His entries often paint a picture of a slightly bitter man, somewhat intolerant about the ‘failings’ of others (of which there seemed to be many), who seemed to feel a little under-valued and, perhaps, frustrated that he was not always understood as he felt he should be. But then there are also clear indications of loyalty, a desire for fairness and a love of his art and a quirky sense of humour.

Overall, it was interesting to get a little glimpse of a world that I was almost completely oblivious to prior to reading the book – an insane world of rushing about and pouring oneself into project after project – a world that truly must have been madly and deeply exhausting but, I guess, full of experience and excitement. I don’t want to rush about quite to the extent that Alan Rickman seemed able to but it’s perhaps useful to have received this glimpse of just how much a life fully lived can contain.

Stillness Is The Key (Ryan Holiday)

Stillness Is The Key was the third of author and modern-day purveyor of Stoic wisdom Ryan Holiday’s original set of books about the application of practicing Stoicism in everyday life. I read (actually listened to) the first two – Ego Is The Enemy and The Obstacle Is The Way – back in late 2017 soon after I started to become interested in Stoicism. Since then I have worked my way through the rest of his more recent output such that I would now probably have to label myself as a committed Ryan Holiday disciple. In 2018 I read The Daily Stoic one day at a time (something I am in the process of repeating this year) and then I listened to the first two volumes of his ongoing Stoic Virtues series – Courage Is Calling and Discipline Is Destiny – in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Last year I completed Lives of the Stoics and I have the third installment of the Stoic Virtues series (Right Thing, Right Now – Justice In An Unjust World) on pre-order for its release later this year. So with all of that in mind it is somewhat odd that it is only now that I have gone back to complete the original trilogy by listening to Stillness Is The Key.

With Ryan Holiday’s work I have always particularly enjoyed listening to the audiobook versions. Not all readers are the right person to narrate their own words but I find that Holiday’s narration brings the words to life and always keeps my attention (usually I am walking to or from work when I listen to audiobooks).

As with all of his other books I enjoyed this dose of Stoic wisdom. Holiday makes the simple wisdom contained in the ancient writings of Epictetus, Seneca and, of course, Marcus Aurelius relevant to life in the present day, treating them like mentors who we can lean upon for advice whenever we feel in need of a slight nudge or some help to become unstuck. The general theme of Stillness Is The Key is, naturally, one of slowing down a little, considering, maintaining a sense of balanced calm and, let’s face it, we could all do with some of that at times (or even often!).

I don’t think Stillness Is The Key is Holiday’s best work. In fact, I think his more recent Stoic Virtues series books are much better crafted than his earlier ones, but then that is surely to be expected as he has lived, practiced and absorbed Stoicism for longer and, I tentatively suggest, become a better writer too as the years have passed. But Stillness Is The Key is still worth reading (or listening to) because above all else it is important to remember that Stoicism is a more than a philosophy – it’s a way of approaching life and something that needs to be practiced, practiced and practiced, day in and day out. Anything that sets out Stoic ideas as clearly as Holiday’s writing and puts them in the front of my mind for a bit is going to help ensure that all of that practice helps to push me a little closer to that impossible to find place where practice makes perfect!

The Bigger Picture (Petrus Ursem)

Last November we popped up to Yelverton to visit a local event for artists and makers from the Tamar Valley. There were quite a few stalls with different types of artwork that I really liked, one such being the work of artist and writer Peter Ursem. As well as his wonderful lithograph prints of various locations in and around Dartmoor and the Tamar Valley he also had a few prints and cards of some poetry and copies of his books – a children’s adventure story trilogy that I really must read sometime and a small volume called ‘The Bigger Picture’ written under his pen-name Petrus Ursem. I got chatting with Peter about is work and immediately felt a strong mental connection – we talked about the process of writing and where ideas come from and he told me about how TBP was a collection of short fables written in similar form to those of the Master of Fables, Aesop, with a group of animals interacting to discuss and explore different pieces of wisdom and thought. I was immediately hooked by his description and purchased a copy of TBP which I have been reading on and off since then – one fable (of forty in total) each morning.

Many of the fables in The Bigger Picture take a word or short phrase and then have the different animals (a rather odd mix including a crocodile, an owl a peacock, a worm, a bull, a bee and others along with a few non-animal characters like Cloud) riffing on it as they meet up and go about their daily business, always uncovering some little nugget of wisdom along the way. To give an idea there are fables called ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’, ‘Point of View’ and ‘No Half Measures’. Talking with Peter I was interested to hear that partly this construction stemmed from him originally being from The Netherlands and so being intrigued by certain turns of phrase in English.

I finished the last fable ‘Being You’ last week and as I did so I found myself wishing that during my first readings I had made some notes to capture a few quotes and some of the glimpses of wisdom the fables contained. At first, I was a little disappointed to reflect that most of what I had read had slipped straight out of my head but then I realised that this was actually a bonus… because I have now promised myself that at some point in the not too distant future I will read The Bigger Picture through again, with pencil and notebook in hand, and be inspired and enchanted once more.

The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)

Way back in 2020 I started a ‘project’ of reading my way through an alphabet of author surnames using the wonderful book ‘1000 Books To Read Before You Die’ by James Mustich as my inspiration. The idea was to deliberately pick books and authors that I wouldn’t otherwise or normally read, selecting titles from those for which Mustich’s entries piqued my interest in some way. These weren’t the only books I read at the time but I made a point of moving quite swiftly through the alphabet and it took me just under 15 months to make it through from A as far as W but missing out Q because the only option suggested by Mustich was The Q’uran and whilst I would actually like to read that book I just didn’t want to have to devote so much of my reading time to that kind of challenge. The options for X, Y and Z were also really limited and so I decided not to force myself to complete those last three letters. It was a really interesting experience and one that introduced me to some really excellent books including one of my now all-time favourites, Jeanette Haien’s ‘The All Of It’.

In summer 2022 I decided I would repeat the challenge and started again on A, but this time I only got as far as C in the space of two months before my reading went off in other directions. I picked things up again last summer and made my way through D to G during the rest of 2023. Having gained a little momentum again I decided to keep going with my second author alphabet this year…

My first completed book of the year was ‘The Maltese Falcon’ by Dashiell Hammett – a 1930s thriller involving various rather odd and somewhat incompetent criminals and somewhat too invincible private eye who are all caught up in pursuit of a valuable old, bejeweled statuette of a bird. The action moved on quickly, rather too quickly for any significant plot or character development in my opinion which in the end left me having quite enjoyed the read but certainly not drawn to explore any of Hammett’s other work.

And A Writer

Following on from the poetry website that I set up in September 2023 (And A Poet)* I thought I would create a home for some of my assorted pieces of other writing. After a brief flurry of activity this morning I have finished setting up the site and uploaded three pieces that I wrote back in 2021. These are what I call Glances and Glimpses – reflective pieces on a possession I own or an activity I enjoy(ed) that form a bridge between me now and back at various other points in my life.

The website is called: And A Writer and the three pieces that are currently available are:
– Bilbo Comes To The Huts Of The Raft-Elves
– Welcome To The World Jigsaw Completion Championships
– Flick To Kick

Hopefully there will be more of this kind of writing and anything else more substantial that I get round to producing available at that site as time unfolds.

Tim O’Hare, January 2024

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* On publishing this post I have realised that somehow I have managed not to mention my foray into poetry already on this blog despite this being A BIG DEAL (for me at least). I am definitely going to have to remedy in the coming days. Watch this space!

Rediscovering the Artist Within

When I was in Primary School I was pretty good at drawing. I remember winning a prize for an art-based project to capture a week-long residential trip we made to Tenby in South Wales and my teacher being thrilled at being able to keep a detailed pen and ink drawing I made of a monastery building in Pembrokeshire which was where she was from (Pembrokeshire that is, not the monastery). I never really got on with art at Secondary School. I think perhaps I didn’t have the patience to stick to a task long enough to turn out something worthwhile and there were 101 other things that I could be doing that grabbed my attention instead. But I have always wanted to learn to draw properly, to take up water-colour painting (perhaps not the best choice as I think it is actually one of the more difficult types of paint to use) or to have some kind of (graphic) artistic endeavour that I could lose myself in. I think I like the idea of being a wanderer, stopping here and there to whip out my art materials and conjure up a piece of magic. It’s never happened of course – life has got in the way.

My most recent attempt to get a brush-hold in the artistic world was towards the end of 2022. At a Maker Fair in South Devon in November I saw some pieces of artwork that I really liked – big abstract pastel drawings of wind-swept Dartmoor landscapes – and that led me to suggest that Father Christmas might like to give me some pastel crayons and drawing paper so that I could have a go at producing something similar. FC duly obliged and I was all geared up and ready to go…

…but time passed and, of course, it didn’t happen – life got in the way…

A couple of days ago, more than a year after I was gifted the materials, I settled myself down and had a play. I have to confess that the reason I finally got to make art that afternoon was that whilst out on a walk with my wife the day before I had been musing about how bad I am at getting myself to do the things that I say that I want to do (my self-analysis tells me that this is a combined result of three things: i) a continuous feeling of guilt that I hold inside me that there is something more important that I should be doing for someone else, ii) a ridiculously crippling tendency towards perfectionism that stops me starting things so that I don’t have to run the risk of the outcomes not being good enough and iii) the fact that my brain is always distracting itself to think about other things leaving me completely unable to decide what I will settle down to do in any given moment). My wife’s response was to suggest that we set aside the following afternoon for us both to make some art and because she had fixed that as a plan it was then possible for me to follow it through (I have no problem doing things when other people ask or tell me to do them!).

The result was that I spent a couple of hours with my little pack of pastel crayons and drawing paper and without any real idea about how to use them to best effect I just picked a photograph to base the picture on and dived in… What I discovered is that pastel crayons are a perfect medium for me to use because they seem to be very forgiving. I started with just a little colour and gradually built up the picture from the top downwards not thinking to much but just feeling what colour I would place where, how hard I would press, how much I would blend or smudge colours etc. and, amazingly, the results came out far better than I could ever have hoped. One good decision I made was to start small – with some postcard-sized paper – as this meant that I could produce a finished picture in less than an hour.

My first picture was from a photograph I took when visiting Langport in Somerset back in October. It’s a view from a bench across the River Parrett. I’ll add the photograph to the end of this post but here’s the picture that I drew:

My initial reflection was that I could have used a little more solid color but, on the other hand, I quite liked the rather sparse and washed-out look.

Having made a start with one picture I kept going, immediately setting to work on a second picture, this time a view of the Yealm Estuary near Warren Point (again, see the end of this post for the original photograph). This second picture ended up with much denser colour and if viewed from a distance almost has a photographic quality about it. The paper I used was very rough/bobbly hand-made paper which led to an interesting pointillism-like effect. I also added a few details with a fine ink pen – something that I think was only partly successful. Again, I am rather please with the result:

All of which means that I seem to have magically found myself being an artist and I am absolutely sure that it will not be long before I am having another go because I loved the deep-concentration and freedom of the process. When producing these pictures I was able to completely lose myself in the flow of the work, almost becoming part of it – in fact on reflection I would definitely say that the word art became a verb describing how I chose to spend a little piece of my life (I was ‘arting’) and not simply a noun describing the little pieces of coloured paper that I ended up with. Now I am really looking forward to seeing where this new pursuit takes me!

For completeness, here are the two photographs on which my first two pictures were based:

Back on the Blog

After a long absence I have found myself drawn back to this blog with a strong desire to get back into the groove of writing entries on a fairly regular basis. Much of the drive to do that has come from another area of writing activity that I have indulged in over the last few months, namely my entry into the world of poetry. This was all entirely unexpected but has now reached the point where I have written a good number of poems and set up a new website to give myself a place to publish them. If you are interested in looking at that site and reading my poems you can find it here: andapoet.blog.

I suppose that having set up my new poetry blog I started to think about other writing and I remember how much I used to enjoy rattling out little pieces for this blog even though I always knew that pretty much no-one ever read them. In addition, I have changed quite a lot over the last couple of years (something that I am sure I will write about here soon), and I am now much more comfortable with throwing my thoughts ‘out there’ without worrying about how that might be judged by anyone (or, probably more importantly, by myself).

So here I am, back on the blog. To help draw myself back in I have changed the design theme of the blog (it now matches my poetry site), simplified some of content being shown and begun to work my way back through past entries. I have been tidying them up, correcting obvious typographic errors etc. and in one or two cases removing them from view if I felt they didn’t fit anymore. I’ve done this tidying process back to the beginning of 2018 and intend to go further back over the next few weeks. I’m also going to add some comments to some of the posts to give a little update on what happened next where this feels relevant.

If you have stumbled on this blog for some reason then I hope you will find something here that you enjoy or find interesting. I’m planning on adding a page that links back to some of my favourite past entries and I am hoping that I might be able to add a new entry on a regular, perhaps near-daily, basis.

Finally, please don’t be shy – leave a comment on a post to let me know what you are thinking etc. I can see from the blog stats that random people do visit this site every now and again and it would be brilliant if sometimes a visitor stopped to actually say hello!

Life and Death

I think it is hard to beat an interesting tree – sometimes it is the shape that speaks to me, sometimes the colours and sometimes it’s the the signs of a hard life lived. So, you can perhaps imagine my excitement when I spotted this particular tree with its strong, thick trunk and its beautifully rounded and perfectly balanced shape all thickly enveloped by deep green leaves, so full of life… and yet, running upwards through its core, emerging to thrust like inverted lightning flashes from its top (and less visible in the photograph, a withered tendril reaching downwards on the left side), the sharp, angular, stripped-bare branches, absolutely dead to the world. This is a tree that is both dead at the core and alive at heart and I have never seen its like before.

The Secret to Success

A few weeks ago, while reading Theodore Zeldin’s great book ‘The Hidden Pleasures of Life’ I came across a quote which resonated with me at the time and has stuck with me ever since. It comes from a 1967 New York Daily News interview with Bob Dylan in which he was asked about the delay in him producing a new recording and media reports that he had been offered a huge sum of money to switch record labels. His response was:

“What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the mornin’ and gets to bed at night and in between he does what he wants to. What I want to do is make music.”

I’ve picked out the middle sentence in bold because that’s the part that I read in Zeldin’s book and the part that is relevant here.

It’s possible to read this sentence as a simple instruction to do whatever you want to do, perhaps being selfish in the process. But that’s not how I read the quote or all that I take from it. For me, there are three elements to the quote, three ‘secrets to success’ – things that could be considered as markers of a successful life. One might also see them as essential ingredients or instructions…

1) Get up in the morning
It sounds simple but there’s quite a lot in this. First, if you get up in the morning then that implies you have made it through another night; you have survived to live another day – that’s Success Number One. Secondly, if you ‘get up’ then you have gone into active mode; you are engaged with life, doing something (anything) – and that’s Success Number Two.

2) Get to bed at night
Similar to ‘Get up in the morning’ there are two parts to this. First, if you ‘get to bed’ then you’ve clearly got a bed of some sort and that implies a least some degree of safety and security which has to be a good thing – Success Number Three. Secondly, the phrase implies that you have made it through another day and, no matter how easy or difficult that has been, I would count that as Success Number 4.

3) Do what you want to do in between
I guess this is obvious – a day spent doing things that you don’t want to do could still be regarded as a success in some ways (see above) but I think it is self-evident that a day spent doing what you want to do, whether that is one thing, a calling such as ‘Dylan’s “make music'”, or a multitude of things big and small, is going to be a better (more successful) day than one where much of your time is given over to activity that is misaligned with your personal values and interests. That’s Success Number 5.

I think it’s obvious that Success Number 5 is THE BIG ONE but I’d also argue that a single day of Success Number 5 would not really make for a successful life – that would only come when it is coupled with Successes Numbers 1-4 over and over again. I would just add here that what is good for one is surely also good for everyone else and so an interpretation of ‘do what you want to do’ that is generous to others and does not work against their own success will most likely lead to the greatest success in life overall. I certainly don’t take this phrase as an excuse for selfishness.

So, that’s the goal: get up in the morning – do what you want to do – go to bed at night; the secret to success in a nutshell.

The Curried Icelandic Name Game

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to visit Iceland. I’m not sure what the trigger for this was but I do know that I have always had a bit of a fascination with Scandinavian countries. When I was about 11 I had the idea that I would one day live and work in Sweden. It might have been something to do with a feeling that Sweden was a country that seemed very modern with lots of cool science and engineering although I think that perhaps it also had something to do with Agnetha Faltskog (forgive me, I was only 11 at the time). As far as Iceland is concerned, I’m pretty sure my interest was more to do with the volcanoes, lava fields and geysers. Then, perhaps 10-15 years ago, Plymouth Argyle signed an Icelandic player called Kari Arnason and at the same time I started reading the Detective Erlendur novels written by the Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason which are set in Rejkjavik, and at that point I became just a little obsessed with the child-naming convention that is used in Iceland.

For anyone who is new to Icelandic names, the convention is that a child takes on their father’s given name as their surname but with the suffix ‘sson’ or ‘sdottir’ (or a similar variant) depending on whether they are a son or a daughter. I think that’s such a neat and simple way of doing things, albeit rather patriarchal, but I guess there would be no reason why the mother’s name could not be used instead, thereby nicely sidestepping that problem. Following this approach, I would be called Tim Colinsson (or perhaps Colinason) which kind of works although it doesn’t have quite the same allure as a proper Icelandic name.

But this post isn’t meant to be a lecture on Icelandic naming and if you’re reading this piece and noted its title you are probably wondering exactly when and where the curry part is going to come in to things…

…which brings me on to my discovery.

I have no idea how I made this discovery and I admit that if anyone else had come up with it I would be a bit worried on their behalf… anyway, for some reason I stumbled on the idea of mashing together the names of curry dishes and their ingredients with the Icelandic child-naming convention. By curry names and ingredients I mean the words used in the kinds of dishes served in Indian restaurants and take-aways, things like: Korma, Dopiaza, Bhaji, Madras, Bhuna, Brinjal, Bhindi, Chana, Sag, Tandoori, Vindaloo, Biriyani etc.

So… it’s time to put all of the pieces together and play the Curried Icelandic Name Game. Here are the steps:

1. Select any single word from the curry names and ingredients list
2. Select a second single from the curry names and ingredients list
3. Add ‘sson’ or ‘sdottir’ to the end of this second word
4. Smash the two words you have from steps 1 and 3 together and there you have it – your first Curried Icelandic name
5. Choose another word from the curry names and ingredients list
6. Take your first word (from step 1) and add ‘sson’ or ‘sdottir’ to the end of it
7. Smash the two words you have from steps 5 and 6 together to create your next Curried Icelandic name
Then repeat the process from steps 5 onwards ad infinitum (or more likely until you get bored)

For example:

1. Brinjal
2. Bhaji
3. Bhajisson
4. => Brinjal Bhajisson
5. Korma
6. Brinjalsson
7. => Korma Brinjalsson
5. Biriyani
6. Kormasdottir
7. => Biriyani Kormasdottir
5. Chana
6. Biriyanisson
7. => Chana Biriyanisson
5. Bhaji
6. Chanasson
7. => Bhaji Chanasdottir
…

Go on, give it a try.