The origins of Café Candlebra by Sparclear
Late in 2009 the children finally persuaded me to get a computer. They came along and tapped into this mysterious white box they'd insisted upon, my son to register and introduce me to the digital camera and a concept of on-line security, and my daughter who visited especially to sign me in as a Guardian commenter in June 2010. In this version of the paper headlines were colour-coded and a tiny gloved hand turned pages electronically. All the favourite supplements were there, only now you could access them any time in the week and see what sort of debate they were generating.
Then I asked my daughter whether the machinery offered a Quick Crossword, and the pair of us wobbled around looking for a signpost. There are as many ways you can locate it from the Guardian website's front page as there are to skin a cat. Up it clicked, as sanity-inducing as ever, exactly the same neat grid and familiar, simple-looking sets of across and down clues as that daily quarter-hour paper puzzle on which I'd been dependent for a quarter century previously. Alongside the tea and toast of a morning, now sitting there in a pool of screen light with a keyboard and cursor, the Quick Crossword on line soon looked like Magic.
I can't remember how long it took me to join the comment thread beneath. Perhaps an ordinary old plain 2-dimensional dose of crossword sufficed for a while. If I thought about the comment thread, I envisaged a drab bunch discussing the crossword's solution, tediously intellectual types, academic point scorers aiming to look "erudite". In a flash appeared a stuffy common-room, people with plain brown ties and ancient shiny-seated serge mufti and incomprehensible Shakespeare or Homer tripping off their corrective tongues every day, ice melting in an almost drained gin-and-tonic by the ashtray. I made an experimental comment about one of the clues I'd solved and an unpleasantly superior responder immediately arose for a swipe at me. I hurt so much I rebelled. It was clear that such a culture would merit Properly Gingering Up.
Luckily, I soon discovered that another commenter had the same agenda. Every day, the barmy, quizzical Marty Feldman face he had chosen for an avatar would pop round the edge of my screen. Its ability to address me exactly when there was a silence at my desk was humane and touching. At that time the life I led was remote and rural and it had contained a great many silences for a great many years. Hardly even able to use the computer at this stage, everything the keyboard offered experimented with terrifying technology and pratfalls always hovering in the background. The manual did not make sense to me and I was too marooned to reach classes. My working life had been spent with the hand-written word and a million pages of impersonal essays had passed through my brain.
This fellow scamp had the gift of solemnly creating a complete send-up of himself, others, and the entire human condition. His irresistible stream of verbiage he often nicknamed tripe, drivel, or piffle. Bright fantasy flew into the airwaves from his keyboard, alternating with acute logic, both of which stimulated applause rather than offence.
As time went by instinct began to take over. I dedicated myself towards adding beauty to the comment thread as often as possible, to make it a place of the unexpected. It would be somewhere people could look forward to every day, leaving behind boredom and dementia, somewhere for experiment, in which all kinds of solo writers and maybe immobilised or work-trapped people could find a Muse, release a creative part of themselves. People could topple the old hierarchical tiers instilled by their schooldays or office politics, and instead entertain and offer warmth to each other.
Searching for a real-world analogy I briefly imagined it as a radio station, Radio QCC, because it seemed all the different personas would come on line in little 3-minute bursts of theme tunes. To fill the empty slots so hospitably offered by the Guardian, some old computer hands were marvellously resourceful with YouTube, cross-references, quotations and biographical details of authors they had studied. In the lovely egalitarianism possible on the internet, people began to chime in with one another. By common consent we developed long running philosophical discussions and jokes, adding to them like all groups do when they work together over time, humour becoming a dialect, stories spiralling out like soundtracks for all receptive. This was indeed music.
While the companionable prose was building up, many cautious friendships between QCC commenters developing as a result, the daily coming and going made the site seem more like a café than a radio station. Its atmosphere of lively hospitality both sustained and energised me. I wanted to give something back, so as well as posting descriptions of the natural world around me, I posted menus of some imaginary lunches I wished we were cooking, to keep people fortified and down to earth. Across vast distances geographically and across major changes in their lives, the readers were chattering away just as if they were sitting opposite each other at table, sharing a pot of coffee while they read aloud their postcards and diary pages and experimentally drafted ideas. In the evenings people engaged in banter. They popped corks or bought each other virtual pints, and at certain moments supplied descriptions of celebratory teas for birthdays, complete with typeface to look like cake and candles. There was dressing up for parties, an affectionate degree of admiration. Imported toys and pets and mythical creatures leapt to life.
It became a place where old fairy tales were given new scripts. Sometimes bouquets of flowers, and paper chains, would adorn the thread.
The uses of the QCC could be limited only by our imaginations.
About this time a famous spelling slip resulted in our creation receiving its own name: the Café Candlebra. A splendid varicoloured window display complements this image.
A few churlish commenters complained when it became clear we were there to have fun. They tried to involve the Moderator, on the grounds that we were off topic, and after some messy argument the space seemed to need mopping and cleaning until this virtual dining room was fit to enjoy again.
The criticism had been levelled that it was just indulgence, 'a lot of splother'. This was altogether too tempting a word for True Scamps to overlook. Splother has become our unashamed name for the all-day, all-night, stream-of-consciousness 150 strong comment thread, the Windmill QCC which never closes.
Here, I am proud to say, everyone has permission to be an innocent child again. You can debrief from whatever life is doing just now. Set your harmless oaths and dreams afloat, let us tend your grief and frustration and ambition and old shreds of raiment. Words convey your soul and contributors since the early days in the QCC have cherished that fact. A person will always find out more about themselves in this 'caff.'
Sparclear, 20th February 2014
Then I asked my daughter whether the machinery offered a Quick Crossword, and the pair of us wobbled around looking for a signpost. There are as many ways you can locate it from the Guardian website's front page as there are to skin a cat. Up it clicked, as sanity-inducing as ever, exactly the same neat grid and familiar, simple-looking sets of across and down clues as that daily quarter-hour paper puzzle on which I'd been dependent for a quarter century previously. Alongside the tea and toast of a morning, now sitting there in a pool of screen light with a keyboard and cursor, the Quick Crossword on line soon looked like Magic.
I can't remember how long it took me to join the comment thread beneath. Perhaps an ordinary old plain 2-dimensional dose of crossword sufficed for a while. If I thought about the comment thread, I envisaged a drab bunch discussing the crossword's solution, tediously intellectual types, academic point scorers aiming to look "erudite". In a flash appeared a stuffy common-room, people with plain brown ties and ancient shiny-seated serge mufti and incomprehensible Shakespeare or Homer tripping off their corrective tongues every day, ice melting in an almost drained gin-and-tonic by the ashtray. I made an experimental comment about one of the clues I'd solved and an unpleasantly superior responder immediately arose for a swipe at me. I hurt so much I rebelled. It was clear that such a culture would merit Properly Gingering Up.
Luckily, I soon discovered that another commenter had the same agenda. Every day, the barmy, quizzical Marty Feldman face he had chosen for an avatar would pop round the edge of my screen. Its ability to address me exactly when there was a silence at my desk was humane and touching. At that time the life I led was remote and rural and it had contained a great many silences for a great many years. Hardly even able to use the computer at this stage, everything the keyboard offered experimented with terrifying technology and pratfalls always hovering in the background. The manual did not make sense to me and I was too marooned to reach classes. My working life had been spent with the hand-written word and a million pages of impersonal essays had passed through my brain.
This fellow scamp had the gift of solemnly creating a complete send-up of himself, others, and the entire human condition. His irresistible stream of verbiage he often nicknamed tripe, drivel, or piffle. Bright fantasy flew into the airwaves from his keyboard, alternating with acute logic, both of which stimulated applause rather than offence.
As time went by instinct began to take over. I dedicated myself towards adding beauty to the comment thread as often as possible, to make it a place of the unexpected. It would be somewhere people could look forward to every day, leaving behind boredom and dementia, somewhere for experiment, in which all kinds of solo writers and maybe immobilised or work-trapped people could find a Muse, release a creative part of themselves. People could topple the old hierarchical tiers instilled by their schooldays or office politics, and instead entertain and offer warmth to each other.
Searching for a real-world analogy I briefly imagined it as a radio station, Radio QCC, because it seemed all the different personas would come on line in little 3-minute bursts of theme tunes. To fill the empty slots so hospitably offered by the Guardian, some old computer hands were marvellously resourceful with YouTube, cross-references, quotations and biographical details of authors they had studied. In the lovely egalitarianism possible on the internet, people began to chime in with one another. By common consent we developed long running philosophical discussions and jokes, adding to them like all groups do when they work together over time, humour becoming a dialect, stories spiralling out like soundtracks for all receptive. This was indeed music.
While the companionable prose was building up, many cautious friendships between QCC commenters developing as a result, the daily coming and going made the site seem more like a café than a radio station. Its atmosphere of lively hospitality both sustained and energised me. I wanted to give something back, so as well as posting descriptions of the natural world around me, I posted menus of some imaginary lunches I wished we were cooking, to keep people fortified and down to earth. Across vast distances geographically and across major changes in their lives, the readers were chattering away just as if they were sitting opposite each other at table, sharing a pot of coffee while they read aloud their postcards and diary pages and experimentally drafted ideas. In the evenings people engaged in banter. They popped corks or bought each other virtual pints, and at certain moments supplied descriptions of celebratory teas for birthdays, complete with typeface to look like cake and candles. There was dressing up for parties, an affectionate degree of admiration. Imported toys and pets and mythical creatures leapt to life.
It became a place where old fairy tales were given new scripts. Sometimes bouquets of flowers, and paper chains, would adorn the thread.
The uses of the QCC could be limited only by our imaginations.
About this time a famous spelling slip resulted in our creation receiving its own name: the Café Candlebra. A splendid varicoloured window display complements this image.
A few churlish commenters complained when it became clear we were there to have fun. They tried to involve the Moderator, on the grounds that we were off topic, and after some messy argument the space seemed to need mopping and cleaning until this virtual dining room was fit to enjoy again.
The criticism had been levelled that it was just indulgence, 'a lot of splother'. This was altogether too tempting a word for True Scamps to overlook. Splother has become our unashamed name for the all-day, all-night, stream-of-consciousness 150 strong comment thread, the Windmill QCC which never closes.
Here, I am proud to say, everyone has permission to be an innocent child again. You can debrief from whatever life is doing just now. Set your harmless oaths and dreams afloat, let us tend your grief and frustration and ambition and old shreds of raiment. Words convey your soul and contributors since the early days in the QCC have cherished that fact. A person will always find out more about themselves in this 'caff.'
Sparclear, 20th February 2014