Great documentaries - The First Eden

I just want to alert everybody to this amazing but little-known documentary series.  This weekend, left to fend for myself whilst Lizzie visited friends in Worcestershire, I delved into my DVD collection and picked out The First Eden.  First aired in 1987, it's a stunning celebration of the Mediterranean, its history, wildlife, people and culture, all delivered in Sir David Attenborough's inimitable style.  Kicking back and watching this series is like taking a wander around the entire region whilst wearing hiking boots as soft as eiderdown, and all in the company of a great, benevolent, engaging, inspirational uncle figure.  Attenborough's enthusiasm is infectious, his care for the natural world inspirational, and the way he speaks through the TV screen, as if addressing you individually, makes him a true master of the television age.

 One of the things I love most about this series is its age - now 28-years-old, it lacks the super-special effects and cutting-edge scientific representation, leaving the whole production down to the skill of the camera and the authority of the presentation.  There is an air of the technologically archaic about it, but delving into some of the older series is in itself a history lesson - we know how people viewed the world 28 years ago, we know what conservation concerns were pressing them, and we already know the next chapter of the story, as to whether their concerns were addressed by an increasingly aware world.  Older documentaries such as this were the best, in my opinion, and you can add to that distinguished list other Attenborough classics such as Life on Earth and The Tribal Eye, the ground-breaking Second World War documentary The World at War, and the quintessential and iconic volumes of Whicker's World.   They were authoritative, intellectually stimulating and cultured - and with the odd exception (such as Attenborough's excellent recent works, Palin's travels, and a thin smattering of other top-class series) how often can you say that about television nowadays?

The First Eden was four hours of my life that I'd gladly spend again.  But it doesn't end there for, perhaps even better, a quick scan of my bookshelves revealed the very book that accompanies the series.  With its musty smell and slightly browning pages, you'd be forgiven for overlooking it in favour of more up-to-date reads but, look beyond its faded cover, and a whole world of colour is waiting within.  I can't wait to start reading this in the comfort of my armchair!

Our own amazing Amazon

Welcome to the Amazon.  The greatest river, and the greatest rainforest on earth, home to an extraordinary biodiversity matched nowhere else on the planet.  Green.  Pristine.  Perfect.

The Amazon river system

Francisco de Orellana's 1541 expedition down the Amazon River (source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Ok so Lizzie and I haven't managed to get a last-minute deal to the lungs of the world, but we have brought a tiny piece of the Amazon river to our own front room, courtesy of a tropical fish tank!  It has been quietly bubbling away for nearly two months now, and I have been busy monitoring water chemistry, establishing filter bacteria, and cultivating a number of live aquarium plants, all of which are native to the south American river system.  Everything is now settled, so yesterday, the tank's first new inhabitants moved in; a school of lovely black widow tetras.  see their video here:

Now despite the poisonous name, these are a very harmless and peaceful fish (unless you're a bloodworm or a water flea.)  Their black colouration makes a wonderful and striking contrast to the rich green foliage, and their energy and activity is infectious, compelling to watch.  These are amongst my favourite aquarium fish, and it's great to be keeping them once again - they're real characters to have around the home.  On a drab, cold, rainy Sunday afternoon, it is a pleasure to pull up a chair and watch these little critters fuss around their new home - indeed, it becomes a real escape from the downpour going on outside, to be instantly transported to some unknown tributary, high up the river system, shadowed by the forest canopy and shrouded in mystery. It's like embarking on an adventure, following in the footsteps of great explorers, and all without leaving the comfort of home.

A river taxi on the Peruvian Amazon (source: Wikipedia)

The Amazon rainforest (source: Wikipedia)

I have always liked fish, and put together my first tropical fish tank at the age of 13 or 14.  I had to abandon the hobby a few years later, but always vowed to return to it in the future.  The years passed, but the enthusiasm never diminished, and all that excitement and fulfilment came flooding back yesterday.  As for what's next - we'll be looking to add some rummy nose tetras in a few weeks time, and also some cory catfish, which will really bring this little biotope to life.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army.

"Hurbinek was a nobody, a child of death, a child of Auschwitz, he looked about three years old, no-one knew anything of him, he could not speak and he had no name; that curious name Hurbinek, had been given to him by us, perhaps by one of the women who had interpreted with those syllables one of the inarticulate sounds that the baby let out now and again. He was paralysed from the waist down, with atrophied legs, as thin as sticks; but his eyes, lost in his triangular and wasted face, flashed terribly alive, full of demand, assertion, of the will to break loose, to shatter the tomb of his dumbness. The speech he lacked, which no one had bothered to teach him, the need of speech charged his stare with explosive urgency: it was a stare both savage and human, even mature, a judgement, which none of us could support, so heavy was it with force and anguish.

None of us, that is, except Henek; he was in the bunk next to me, a robust and hearty Hungarian boy of fifteen. Henek spent half the day beside Hurbinek's pallet. He was maternal rather than paternal; had our precarious co-existence lasted more than a month, it is extremely probable that Hurbinek would have learnt to speak from Henek; certainly better than from the Polish girls who, too tender and too vain, inebriated him with kisses and caresses, but shunned intimacy with him.

Henek on the other hand, calm and stubborn, sat beside the little sphinx, immune to the distressing power he emanated; he brought him food to eat, adjusted his blankets, cleaned him with skilful hands, without repugnance, and he spoke to him in Hungarian naturally, in a slow and patient voice. -After a week, - Hurbinek could say a word, what word? It was difficult to know.

During the night we listened carefully. - It was true, from Hurbinek's corner came a word- it was not admittedly always the same word, but it was certainly an articulated word: or better, several slightly different articulated words experimental variations on a theme, on a root, perhaps a name.

Hurbinek continued his stubborn experiments for as long as he lived. In the following days everybody listened to him in silence, anxious to understand, and among us there were speakers of all the languages of Europe; but Hurbinek's word remained a secret. - Perhaps it was his name, perhaps it meant "to eat" or "bread".

Hurbinek was perhaps three years old born in Auschwitz and had never seen a tree, who fought like a man, to the last breath, to gain entry into the world of men from which a bestial power had excluded him; Hurbinek, the nameless, whose tiny forearm - even his, bore the tattoo of Auschwitz; Hurbinek died in the first days of March 1945, free but not redeemed. Nothing remains of him: he bears witness through these words of mine."

Primo Levi, If This is a Man

Blistering Barnacles and Thundering Typhoons! - The Tintin Factor

Those who know me will be aware that I've always held a place in my heart for the adventures of the boy reporter, Tintin.  The intrepid investigator first burst into my life when I was a kid, that iconic and dramatic "dun-dun-dun" theme tune booming out of the television, drawing you in to whatever international plot awaited.  The stories were always sophisticated, involved and utterly enthralling, and this enjoyment has never left me although, as I grew older, I started to find an equal, if not greater pleasure, through the Tintin books. A few years ago I started collecting these and, this New Year, I added the final few of books to my collection, forming a complete library of the Belgian reporter's finest investigations.

Captain Haddock and Tintin in The Secret of the Unicorn

Thomson and Thompson in Land of Black Gold

I absolutely love this series of books.  The artwork is second-to-none, phenomenal given its time, with a detail given to each and every frame that today's comic book artists could certainly learn from.  Equally important in this respect, I've collected the series in hardback, which really shows off the quality and genius of the cover art.  Now, we all know that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but these covers are simply beautiful, proper works of art in their own right, front pages that whet the appetite and invite you to delve a little deeper.

Perhaps what stands out best for me is the depth to which Hergé produced every single one of the characters, across 24 books.  And there are a lot of characters - beyond Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and Snowy lie a whole host of supporting personalities, many regulars throughout the series.  There's Interpol's finest detectives, Thomson and Thompson, criminal mastermind Rastapopoulos, Milanese opera singer Bianca Castafiore, evil dictator General Tapioca, colourful (if not drunkard) military officer General Alcazar... In fact, the list extends to nearly one hundred individuals playing out their lives in both real and fictional parts of the globe, an amazing feat of imagination on the part of the author, created to fit Tintin's adventures into a more realistic world.  Indeed, of all the series' characters, it is Tintin himself that is perhaps the most beige.  As Harry Thompson, radio and TV producer, novelist, and author of Hergé and His Creation said: 

"Tintin is almost featureless, ageless, sexless, and did not appear to be burdened with a personality.  Yet this very anonymity remains the key to Tintin's gigantic international success.  With so little to mark him out, anybody from Curaçao to Coventry can identify with him and live out his adventures..."

The result of this undeniably genius casting makes for brilliant viewing or, as I'm now finding out, brilliant reading, for children and adults alike.  And what better what to escape the drab, cold January evenings than to slip into a world of exotic adventure and intrigue?

A hero's parade in Tintin in America

A plane crash and a missing friend takes Tintin to Tibet

So, what are the origins of this wonderful adventure series?  Well the reporter's creator, Georges Remi - Hergé - was employed as an illustrator at Le Vingtieme Siecle, a Belgian newspaper based not far from Brussels.  Hergé rose to be appointed editor of the Thursday youth supplement, but soon became dissatisfied with his role, and started his own cartoon strip instead, adapting the new innovation of speech balloons to depict words coming out of the characters' mouths.  Hergé already had experience with creating comic strips, having written Les Adventures de Totor, about a boy scout with a strong resemblance to Tintin.  Tintin as we know him first came to print in 1929, when Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was serialised.  Hergé had wanted to send his new hero to America, but was ordered by newspaper boss, Abbe Norbert Wallez, to send Tintin to the Soviet Union, to provide anti-socialist propaganda for the right-wing newspaper.  The cartoon proved popular, and so more stories followed - Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, The Black Island, then King Ottokar's Sceptre were all serialised and released in black-and-white before the outbreak of a Second World War that would change the direction of Tintin forever.  What happened then, and what happened afterwards, will be the subject of a future blog.

Totor, sometimes referred to as "Tintin's younger brother"

Tintin meets a lifelong friend in The Crab with the Golden Claws

So that's my collection complete and, as with so many of my interests, it's a collection that has a free history lesson thrown in for good measure!  Now I'm sure I know all the stories off by heart already, but there's no harm in revisiting some classics, so if anybody wants me, I'll be in the reading chair...

Merry Christmas!

"The days are coming," declares the Lord,

"when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,

a King who will reign wisely

and do what is just and right in the land.

In his days Judah will be saved

and Israel will live in safety.

This is the name by which he will be called:

The Lord Our Righteous Saviour."

Jeremiah 23:5-6