Saturday fiction - 'lonely, despite a large sexual appetite...'

Baz Bamigboye in his Friday film and entertainment column reports that accomplished Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz fancies a film role as a spy. Someone who is lonely, despite a ‘large sexual appetite’.

To my mind, she would be ideal in the role of Tana Standish in The Prague Papers and its sequel The Tehran Text!

 

Rachel Weisz - Wikipedia commons

The Tana stories begin with Tana in Czechoslovakia in 1975, combatting the crushing Soviet presence. She meets again Laco, an old flame who is younger than her (she’s 38, he’s 25), rekindling a romance begun in 1968. But even in intimate moments, Tana is lonely, because she is psychic and must shut down her thought processes…

And in the exquisite throes of their lovemaking one special private part of her mind saddened, for Laco was right, so horribly right. She had known love, idealistic and physical, and she loved Laco as much as she was capable. But always her psyche must provide an impenetrable barrier between her and her lover.

Once, when she’d let an older man, Paul, talk her into letting him ‘go all the way’, she had absently spread out her prescient awareness as the man she loved entered her. Contrasts of pain and ecstasy, not too dissimilar, threshed in her body. Then she grasped hold of Paul’s thoughts, just at the pinnacle. The soaring onrush of pleasure from him accentuated her own, pushing her into multiple orgasms. But his thoughts had not been of her, nor of their lovemaking: he’d been reliving some lost love of long ago, far away, long-since dead. After that disturbing experience, she always shut down her mind’s receptors at intimate moments.

Rachel Weisz also likes the Angelina Jolie spy movie Salt, which was originally written for a man, and contains betrayal, action and blighted romance. In a similar (but different) vein, Tana is involved in plenty of action, intrigue and tragic loss as she discovers a shattering secret beneath the Sumava Mountains.  

The crowds around them seemed to be aware that something was amiss. The nearest guide was forcefully shepherding her tourists out of the way, towards the Holy Rood Chapel in the southeast corner of the courtyard. Behind them Tana glimpsed a khaki uniform, the soldier wearing a blue hat banded with cerise: presidential guard from the main entrance, with a rifle, the only weapon in sight, which was a blessing, she supposed.

Grishin hurried ahead of the others. Doubtless the fool was anxious for the glory. His weedy face twisted into an evil grimace as he grabbed Demek’s arm.

Demek swore and ineffectually tried jerking free.

Tana’s swift side-kick sank into Grishin’s back just over his kidneys and the force of the blow broke his grip on Demek and sent Grishin cannoning into the fountain.

One of the secret police shouted.

She grasped Grishin’s arm and heaved him round in the path of his oncoming comrades. The weight of the man and the sharp quick movement tore the dressing Laco had placed over her arm’s bullet-burn and she winced with the sudden pain.

“Get out!” she snarled at Demek. “I’ll hold them off. Go on!”

For all his rebellious nature, Demek’s instinctive hesitation was only a second. He scurried across the courtyard and through into the Third, heading for the back of the Cathedral and Golden Lane, to lose himself amidst the numerous stalls along the laneway.

Grishin’s flailing body bundled into the leading StB agent, unbalancing him.

Tana sidestepped them and sank a lightning-fast instep in the other agent’s solar plexus. He doubled-up in time to receive the rigid knife-edge of her hand on his neck. Her bandaged arm was already throbbing as she gritted her teeth and grabbed the man and swung him at the ceremonial sentry. As the two collided, the sentry dropped the rifle he’d been raising.

Grishin, half-supporting himself on the courtyard’s stone flags, called to the onlookers to apprehend Tana, explaining she had escaped from an asylum. But she met no resistance. The bystanders, having no love for the secret police, backed off and Tana raced past them, through the courtyards and out into the square.

Shallow steps, some two hundred of them, fringed the Castle on the town side. She descended them at a jog-trot, conscious of many eyes on her.

At the foot, she caught her breath and turned right by the Red Cross building, and came to a small slope.

Gaining her second wind, she hurried down Kamecka Street, turned left at the end, to find herself in a square virtually divided in two by the imposing church of Saint Nicholas and its adjacent buildings. Franz Kafka was born near here, though the actual house was demolished. He’d have been unsurprised at the schizoid nature of the Soviet mind, she mused, stopping for a moment to ease her pulse.

Well, most authors dream of bringing their stories to the screen.

After all, we’re dreamers.

Dreamers who transpose those images from mind to the page.

 
The Prague Papers

 
Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

'Lives in suspension'

Illegal immigration across the Mediterranean has been an issue for a long time. Yesterday, I mentioned a pile of Traveller magazines I was browsing through prior to disposal.  In the May-June 2005 issue, there’s a photo-article by Matias Costa showing the plight of migrants entering Italy illegally by boat. Here are a few passages selected from the article:

Immigrants packed into a tiny vessel travel under cover of darkness…

Landed at Lampedusa before going to a reception centre in Palermo…

The sea crossing is so fraught that Italian newspapers have described the stretch of water between Africa and Sicily as a huge underwater graveyard.

Sound familiar? Ten years ago!

In the same piece, also:

George Alagiah, BBC News Presenter: ‘If water is a force of nature, then migration is a force of history. The challenge is not to try to stop it but how to manage it.’

Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General: ‘For millions of refugees and displaced people around the world, ‘home’ is a place they have fled from in fear of their lives, in a desperate attempt to find safety.’

Angelina Jolie, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador: ‘Statistics tell only part of the story – behind the figures are families struggling to survive… all those lives in suspension for years and years.’

 

Brunson McKinley, Director of the International Organization for Migration: ‘Migration will be one of the major policy concerns of the twenty-first century.’

Then, the UN estimated there were more than 17 million asylum seekers and refugees worldwide. And that was before the appalling fighting and displacement in the Middle East and North Africa in the last few years, and the rise of the medieval so-called IS.

The writing was on the wall ten years ago.  And what has happened? It’s now much worse.

Until the continent of Africa is deemed safe from terror, the ‘great escape’ will continue.

Make a date - June 4, 12 & 22

Some time ago I published a regular monthly magazine column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 22 June, here are a number of linked events for that date plus two other June dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets. Apologies for the length of this entry! The three dates for this article are:
 

4, 12 and 22 June

If memory serves me right, June in England seems to be a time for pleasant warm evenings watching cricket on the village green, though it’s also the month when fetes are invariably washed out. That’s only one reason why many Brits have become expats in Spain! In 1896 J T Hearne set a cricket record for taking 100 first-class wickets (12).

Then in 1931 forty-eight-year-old Charlie Parker (not the Jazz musician!) equalled Hearne’s record (12); a day later, Tich Freeman achieved the same record. William Attewell was another bowler who took 100 (not first-class!) wickets (in 1884). He played in ten Tests; he was born (12) in 1861 and actually died a day before his birthday in 1927.

Still on the subject of sport – the sport of kings. The Epsom Derby in 1913 was sadly marred by a suffragette, Emily Davison, running out in front of the king’s horse Anmer (4). She was trampled underfoot and died a few days later. In 1994 sports superstar O J Simpson was accused of killing his wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman (12); he was acquitted though held liable in a civil case.

Eight years earlier Argentine soccer maestro Diego Maradona scored (22) against England during the World Cup in Mexico City. You know, that game where the Hand of God scored the winning goal.

Hot air ballooning is regarded as a sport, too. And it all started in 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated (4) their hot air balloon.

 

Montgolfier balloon - Wikipedia commons

 

Another pioneer in flight was the pilot of the Gossamer Albatross, which flew across the Channel in 1979. It was man-powered by Bryan Allen.

Irwin Allen produced many films, among them Five Weeks in a Balloon, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. He was born (12) in 1916. He was responsible for many science fiction series on TV, including The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space in the days when fiction was becoming fact, when, for instance, Venera 4 was launched in 1967 to become the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data (12).

In 1633 views on the universe were very different: the Holy Office in Rome forced Galileo to recant his view that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe (22). It wasn’t until 1992 that the Vatican recanted and effectively apologised for the treatment of Galileo.

A transit of Venus in 1769 was followed five hours later by a total solar eclipse (4); interestingly, on the same day in 780 BC the first solar eclipse was recorded in China (4).
 
On the same day Austrian astronomer Franz Xaver, Baron Von Zach, was born (4) in 1754 and he set out to find a predicted missing planet between Mars and Jupiter. His team located Ceres 1, which is the biggest rock in the Asteroid Belt that passes between these two planets.
 
In 1978 Pluto’s satellite Charon was discovered (22), some forty-eight years after the planet itself was actually found. Pluto was the Greek god of the underworld and Charon ferried the dead across the Styx to Hades; in August last year Pluto was declassified, no longer being a planet but merely a dwarf or minor planet, seventy-six years after its discovery.
 
Of course, instead of searching the heavens, many people simply explored our planet. One such man was George Vancouver, who was born (22) in 1757. He claimed Puget Sound for Britain (4) in 1792 and of course Vancouver in Canada is named after him.
 
Canadian actress Norma Shearer died (12) in 1983; she had been offered the part of Scarlett O’Hara in David O Selznick’s Gone With the Wind but he was overruled. Selznick died (22) in 1965; both he and Shearer were born in 1902.

Gone with the Wind poster - Wikipedia commons

Two of Selznick’s most popular films were Duel in the Sun, a western starring Gregory Peck, who died (12) in 2003, and The Third Man, based on the novel by Graham Greene. The Canadian actor Graham Greene, who captivated global audiences in Dances with Wolves, was born (22) in 1952.

The fifth century Capitoline Wolf statue symbolises the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus at the birth of Rome. It’s featured in the epic film Cleopatra, which premiered (12) in 1963.

 
Henry Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines and She also wrote a novel called Cleopatra in 1889. He was born (22) in 1856; he stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for East Norfolk in 1895. His tales of Allan Quatermain inspired modern interpretations like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft.
 
Tomb Raider star Angelina Jolie was born (4) in 1975. Her film Tomb Raider also featured Daniel Craig, who is the current movie James Bond, as well as Richard Johnson, who was in the TV movie The Secret Life of Ian Fleming.

Angelina Jolie - Tomb Raider - Wikipedia commons

 
Ian Fleming was actually in Intelligence during the Second World War. In 1940 the end of the evacuation from Dunkirk (4) seemed to offer little hope for the European continent’s future, with Rommel accepting the surrender (12) of 13,000 British and French troops followed by France being forced (22) to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany.
 
Two years later, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank received a diary on her birthday (12) – she was born in 1929 and was murdered in 1945.
 

And of course the war ended in that year with an Allied victory, thanks to Churchill’s leadership, among other factors. Prime Minister Churchill was succeeded in 1955 by Anthony Eden, who was born (12) in 1897.

Churchill, 1940 - Wikipedia commons

 
Perhaps because he was headstrong and stubborn, Winston Churchill didn’t get on well with fellow students in his early school years. He even had to hide behind a tree when some boys threw cricket balls at him. After this experience, he vowed to be as tough as anybody else. So with that cricket anecdote we’ve come full circle for this look at linking dates, people and events.