Category: whuff

In Here Life Is Beautiful

‘Come and have a dance.’

Your response to that demand (and it is a demand, not a question or request) depends entirely on who says it. From your beloved? No option but to comply. It’s likely one of Your Songs has hit the decks. You need to throw shapes with them, right now.

If a drunken relative puts out a hand, you have more swerve room. It’s within your rights to fake the flare-up of an old sports injury or the development of a new twinge—say from the strenuous shape-pulling you’ve just thrown with your beloved—as an excuse to cry off. It’s also a good cue to make for the bar and grab a glass of something to ease the imaginary pain.

Exceptions to the rule? If your mum or gran make the demand, get over yourself and get back on deck. It’s the least you can do after what you put them through as a child.

If a large sweaty bloke in pancake makeup and a corset who you’ve never met before invites you up, well, what do you do? More specifically, what did I do when it happened to me last week?

Continue reading In Here Life Is Beautiful

Memory Palace: Snowshill Manor And The Mind Of Charles Paget Wade

Focus has been hard to find this week. Rather than offer up a half-hearted edition of The Cut, we’re offering a treat from the archive, first published in 2017. Join us as we take a wander through a haunted house which was the home of one very eccentric Englishman… Continue reading Memory Palace: Snowshill Manor And The Mind Of Charles Paget Wade

The Cut🩸Issue 32

Christmas in Tier 3, whoop de bleedin doo. Like we needed any more excuses to roll up the drawbridge and set the minefields and robot gun emplacements and fill the moat with shark-infested acid and dig into the booze and grub stockpile and drink and eat ourselves into a hibernative food coma all the while singing SKRU U 2020, ENUF IS ENUF.

Ahem. A shorter film-heavy Cut this week as we consider our options for the ‘festive’ season. Christmas Day is next Friday, and we do intend to have a thing for you. What shape and smell it will have is yet to be confirmed. But we’ll be double-dog-damned if we’re gonna leave you hanging just when you need us the most.

Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it. Strike a pose there’s nothing to now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.

Continue reading The Cut🩸Issue 32

The Cut ⚔️ Issue 27

This week’s featured image comes from Times cartoonist Morten Morland.

Well, phew, glad that’s all over and done with, eh? A neat, clean and gracious transfer of power—oh yeah, silly us. We forgot for a moment we’re living in The Darkest Timeline. Hey ho. Let us (quite literally in one case) shine a little light on Things That Are Not The Election. Added proviso—Nanowrimo is keeping us busy and also thinking about our own invented worlds instead of whatever this batshit crazy simulation we find ourselves in is. Which on the whole is probably a good thing, but is also our explanation for a slightly shorter than usual newsletter. No apologies issued. This is our art.

Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.

Continue reading The Cut ⚔️ Issue 27

The A To Z Of SFF: H Is For Hard To Be A God

Over a decade in the making. Three hours long, black and white, an uncompromising political allegory and treatise on the dangers of anti-intellectualism.
Sounds like a laff riot, right? But Aleksei German’s Hard To Be A God has a lot to offer, if you’re prepared to put in the effort. Let Rob and Clive be your guides through a visit to Arkanar…

The Adventures Of Whip Crackaway And Honcho The Indian Boy

Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve posted. The reason? Clive and I have been working hard on the Speakeasy. Here’s the first fruit of our labours.

As a bit of a departure from our usual fare, The Speakeasy is proud to present its first foray into radio drama. With help from friends and contributors, Rob and Clive have put together a tribute and/or parody to classic 1930s horse operas. Please to enjoy the pantomimic stylings of the Speakeasy Players in…

THE ADVENTURES OF WHIP CRACKAWAY AND HONCHO THE INDIAN BOY.

Ask nicely, and we’ll never do it again.

 

The Speakeasy Players:

Clive Ashenden As Whip Crackaway
Rob Wickings as Honcho The Indian Boy
Simon Aitken as Hector Villianous
Alice H. DeVenns as Kitty Carmichael
Rick Bowsing as Pa

with special appearances from Graham Williams as Timmy
and Chris Rogers as The Voice Of Caversham Cigarettes.

The narrator is Kyle Eddley, who appears with the kind permission of Keith Eyles.

The show was written and directed by Rob Wickings, with production and sound design from our friends at All Hallows Post in Reading–‘the finest sound available anywhere’.

Poster design by courtesy of Ashenden Arts.

Direct Download

Radio Serial poster

Devading The Tarn

With reference to the Invader I posted last week, I thought you might like to see this. DocoDom enjoys making his own versions of the Invaders, using figures taken from the old school classic video game Defender. He calls them Devaders.

This short film shows him putting up a Devader on a quiet road in rural France. The whole thing is a really rather lovely marriage of sound and vision. Highly evocative.

Pewpewpew.