Happy Day!

[steepholm]

Stewart Lee talking about Children of the Stones (1977)! And it's going to be made into an opera! And there's to be a sequel! What's not to like?

I watched the series at the time, of course, and have it on VHS, but think I may now have to get the DVD as well.

I borrowed the title for a chapter in this book, but listening to Lee's programme makes me realise that I must also have had its opening scene somewhere in my mind when I wrote the opening of Death of a Ghost.

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Do you have a section on the ancient Roman belief that neolithic hand-axes were the cinders of thunderbolts, and that when farmers turned them up in their fields there were to be dedicated at a temple of Jupiter? There are quite a few preserved in that context from Britain.

I take it that many of these books:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_pg_1?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AJoanne+Parker&ie=UTF8&qid=1349377045

Aren't actually by you? I certainly hope the CAM ones aren't.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Did my link throw up all those books? Apologies if so: the one I was trying to link to was Joanne Parker's collection Written on Stone, to which I contributed a chapter (under my old name) called "Children of the Stones". It's mostly about Avebury, as it's used by Alan Garner in Elidor and by Catherine Fisher in Darkhenge, although there's a mention for Children of the Stones itself, and a little taxonomy of the fantasy uses of prehistoric monuments in children's fantasy.

Have you read Garner's Red Shift? The bronze-age stone axe in that is called the thunderstone by the person who finds it in the 1640s, which suggests that your Roman belief may have survived the Romans by some way - unless (as is quite possible) Garner is messing with us, since that person also has a spiritual link with some second-century legionaries. But that's another article...

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

No I rather foolishly assumed you were the editor--since I don't know your actual name--or didn't. You can;t imagine who distracted I am.

17th century scholars were certainly well aware of the Roman practice, but if I recalled correctly, they believed that the stones in question were natural.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Interesting. The character in Red Shift is uneducated, by the way - and it seems to be a common belief amongst his fellow Cheshire villagers.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It was an excellent programme: my only gripe was that his list of similar shows missed Ace of Wands.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too, and thought of you! But Lee would have been a bit young to watch it first time around.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It's hard to imagine it as an opera.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I agree, though stranger things have happened. Where the Wild Things Are made a pretty good opera, which I wouldn't have expected. But I'm not really an opera fan in general, and don't feel I "get" it.

(I'm now picturing a troupe of cricketers singing the Happy Day Chorus, while a village policeman asks the audience in a sonorous baritone, "You b'ain't from round here, be you?" But perhaps that's just a little too Royston Vasey.)