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Blogger Takeover CVII

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It is the first Friday of a new month, so, by the powers vested in me by the Old Gods and the New Gods, I welcome you all to step forward and share what you have been listening to, reading, watching, and anything else you have been using to help you through Dry Veganuary

1

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  1. First cab off the rank.

    I have been bingeing on the David Keenan catalogue having seen him recently (see post elsewhere). His solo album Crude is great -a return to guitar and voice.
    Saw Derek Gripper the guitar/kora mimicking virtuoso from Sth Africa. Excellent as ever but in a hot and stuffy hall that required him to retune frequently.
    Local Melbourne band the Sand Pebbles had an album launch and we attended. Love their jangly guitars. They were supported by a Sydney band with an interesting semi spoken ambient/indie sound. I posted a track from each of theirs on YouTube
    Watched on Binge a local show which has 2 series. Mr GoBetween about an assassin/ heavy who is also a divorced caring father. Great show and very Australian with lots of regular Sydney locations rather than touristy stuff.Good acting the main character wrote the script and pretty funny too.

  2. We have finally made it through the 62 days of January! Although this month has dragged, a busy workload has resulted in rather a poor showing from me this month

    Read
    I only managed to complete one book this month, which seeing as I have a target of 50 for this year, means I am going to have to improve on this front drastically!
    The one I read was Politics On The Edge by Rory Stewart which is one for those with an interest in UK politics & those who enjoy his podcast with Alistair Campbell. This is a great read & we can only wonder how different the political landscape would be had he won out over Boris Johnson with his 2019 leadership bid. There are some staggering stories within, including some jaw dropping moments during the leadership bid where tactics his opponents applied were horrendous. This is particularly jarring when you realise a lot of these people ended up in prominent cabinet positions & it does paint a fairly downbeat picture of how shallow and superficial politics has become!
    This is well worth reading to get an insider’s account & Rory Stewart comes across very well. The chapters covering his tenure as Prisons Minister are very interesting & the book is at it’s strongest when he goes into this level of detail – you can only despair that there are not more MPs who value integrity & expertise.

    Watched
    Along with a lot of people, we watched Mr Bates vs the Post Office on ITV and marvelled at Toby Jones’ fantastic portrayal of the titular hero. An absolute staggering story which is far from over & this telling of it has at least raised awareness of the issues. I can’t help but fear we will see more instances of this as AI embeds itself into the workplace (based on what I have seen recently!), although hopefully the cover ups will not be replicated…..
    A series we have discovered on Netflix is Superstore starring America Ferrera & Lauren Ash (the latter of whom plays Dinah, who is fast becoming my favourite comedy character). It follows the staff of a Target/Walmart style store in Missouri & is very funny & packs a bit of a punch with some swipes at US culture, particularly surrounding sick pay, workers rights etc. Well worth a watch for fans of Malcolm In The Middle, Brooklyn 99, The Office (US).
    Another Netflix one was American Nightmare which has had a lot of praise. Personally I found it infuriating & it posed more questions than it answered. I should add that I am not a huge of fan of these kind of true crime documentaries, so I cannot say where it sits in the canon of these, but it was not one I would recommend.

    Heard
    A strong start to the year. I am limiting myself to 3 listens a day of Bill Ryder-Jones – Iechyd Da. I am utterly obsessed with this album, it has really got under my skin & being enjoyed more & more with each listen. It has also made me go back to his other albums, of which I only had a passing interest in, and I have uncovered some other gems within.
    NewDad – Madra had it’s release last week & is also being enjoyed. This is their debut & it is really really solid. I suspect they will gather quite a following & I am very excited about seeing them in Manchester later in Feb.
    LYR – An Unnatural History had a physical release in 2023, but made it onto streaming sites in Jan. This has resulted in me listening to it more (you can’t take a record player with you on the commute!) & I am really enjoying it. It is an album featuring tracks all based on Eldon Street in Barnsley & if you are fan of Simon Armitage (as you should be), then you will marvel at his wonderful lyrics. I am hoping they tour again soon as I quite like the idea of shouting out a request for ‘A Brief Chronicle of Birds in the Autumn & Winter months of 1886 Pt 1’

    Seen
    Just the one gig this month, but it was a belter! Depeche Mode at Manchester Arena was just about in Jan (29th) & they proved again that they are one of our isles greatest bands. The new stuff sounded great & has made me go back to the latest album Memento Mori which has not hooked me fully until now. They did a 23 song set & my only complaint is that I would have liked a further 40 or so songs adding so they did everything i wanted! 🙂 The highlights for me were Walking In My Shoes, Policy Of Truth & Precious, all of which have a bit of something extra when seen live. It has been 14 years since I last saw them, but i won’t leave it that long again!

    • Strongly agree on Bill Ryder-Jones. Its a brilliant album. Discovered thanks to a post on here. Have also investigated some of his other stuff and not been so impressed. Seems to really have taken a massive leap with this album.

      • If you haven’t read “The Spaces in Between”, Rory Stewart’s book about his walk across Afghanistan through the mountains in the winter, I can highly recommend that.

          • I find it quite surprising, after hearing him in interviews etc. that he’s a Tory.
            Given the enormous gulf between his demeanour and that currently of his party. He comes across more like a Social Democrat.

            • According to his book he approached Paddy Ashdown about becoming a libdem•

              In 2009, in the wake of the parliamentary expenses scandal, he was invited to meet Paddy Ashdown who was a fan of Stewart’s books on Iraq and Afghanistan, and who wanted to pick his brains on the latter. “Do you think I should be an MP?” Stewart asked. “Absolutely,”” replied Ashdown. “But for God’s sake don’t become a Lib Dem, the point is to be a minister. Lib Dems get nothing done.”

              • He had the whip removed – by text, classy! – after voting against the Government on a Brexit-related bill. He had previously resigned from the Cabinet when Johnson was voted in as Tory leader and PM.
                I guess it was a small step to breaking all ties to the wider party.

                • It interests me that quite a few MPs are not longterm party members, unlike the diehards who populate their constituency parties. It can feel like they only profess loyalty while it is required.
                  On his defenestration, it turned out that my former MP, the charming Neil Hamilton, was not even a member of the party he represented. He has since found a couple of other parties to act as his vehicle.

                  • Not quite the situation with Stewart. He was an old fashioned “one nation” Tory, rather in the mould of Ken Clarke, who found the party radically changed over a decade, to the point where he didn’t fit any more. Come to think of it, Clarke also got booted out round about that time.
                    It’s an interesting book – I consumed the audiobook version when I was in hospital last year.

  3. A funny old Jan, with lots of nothing for the first 3 weeks, a Jan mostly dry and recuperative, if with a once weekly splash. The wife’s keen on the whole TT, but knows a couple of pints of a Thursday pm keeps me sane. Not least while the NHS falls further down the shitter, as an experience to navigate, either side the consulting room. (Anyhoo, 15 workdays to go, and counting, 3 by this time next month.
    But, 5 days ago I came up to Glasgow for a week of Celtic Connections. Staying in a wee hotel in the centre, it is exploring all day and gigs every night. I’m lucky: all the tickets are gratis, but board and lodging is down to me. And blimey, how the dear green place has changed; it seems an influx of money has transformed the city, and it is more like Sydney than the rough oul place it used to be. No drunks and precious few Glaswegians, with vegan craft ale and craft coffee every second shopfront. I have had to walk to find some local colour, writing this in James Blaasts favoured Lauriston, a pilgrimage I wanted to make. Covid is decimating the Glasgow massive, amongst other things, meaning a hoped for blather fell over.
    CC is bloody great, the wealth of talent enormous. So far I have seen King Creosote, Thea Gilmore, Su-a Lee, Josienne Clarke and Colin Steele’s Stramash. Colin Stele’ Stramash? My top album of the century thus far, when we did a list. From 2009, it is a glorilous mix of jazz and trad Scottish fiddle and bagpipe folk. With a dash of chamber classical string quartet for good measure. Being, nearly, the w/e, the Drygate late night sessions were on last night, with, amongst others, Kathryn Tickell and Will Pound/Jenn Butterworth. Fabulous, if exhausting…
    Tomorrow it’s Lankum at Barrowlands. Fandabidozy!!!

  4. Early in the month I found myself listening to a lot of Welsh electronica from a label based in Anglesey run by the daughter of Johnny R. who was the main man behind R-Bennig Records that folded last year. They were consistent with releasing some of the weirdest music ever to come out of Wales and his daughter Emily K. carried the torch with similar but perhaps slightly more accessible sounds, however… I had no sooner listened and then bought all the tracks I wanted to use when she promptly deleted her entire Bandcamp back catalogue and all her social media accounts, but luckily I had the tunes to do an hour long set. I wrote to her via her Discogs page (also now deleted) telling her I was doing the mix but have not heard from her for several weeks. If you want to hear the hour long selection of what I considered the best tracks from her label of around 30 albums it’s available via Scottish radio station Tak Tent’s Mixcloud page : https://www.mixcloud.com/Tak_Tent_Radio/skylarking-co/
    I also listened to the entire 10cc output for another mix but after about 1977 they lost my interest so I concentrated on cherry picking from the years with Kevin & Lol. I did quite a bit of mucking about with samples from films like A Clockwork Orange, A Few Good Men, Brief Encounter etc and re-edited some of their more famous tracks, mainly as I thought folks wouldn’t just want to hear another band compilation mix and I was pleased with the results, that’s just gone up this week on my main Mixcloud page.

    Reading wise I have picked up a Gered Mankowitz book of his pics, but it has some interesting descriptions of how he took so many great record sleeves, though he does tend to fancy himself quite a bit. Oh and some old Private Eye’s from my mum.

    TV wise some amazing football matches, as a lifelong Liverpool fan I am on a high right now, finished series 1 and 2 of Slow Horses, loved The Curse especially the last episode and I doubt I’ll see anything quite as mind scrambling again this year. Series 1 of The Bear was great too and am currently going through The IT Crowd box set for light relief. Also enjoyed Poor Things at the flicks and although the teenagers I went with thought it was rubbish and “a bit nonsey” I’ll put that down to their age.

  5. Read: Listening, actually – to several Agatha Christie Poirot novels read by Hugh Fraser – an exceptionally good reader, with an array of voices. He gets Captain Hastings exactly right… because he was Captain Hastings in the ITV series.

    Watched: A few British crime dramas – they all blur into one after a while and it’s hard to recall titles. Currently watching (of titles I recall) ‘After the Flood’, ‘Madame Blanc’ and ‘Trigger Point’. Looking forward to the new series of ‘Blue Lights’ (the thing set in Belfast where the most charismatic actor was perhaps unwisely killed off in series one).

    Seen: Dead Men Walking – a campfire acoustic quartet featuring Jake Burns, Kirk Brandon and John & Dave from the Ruts – at the Empire, Belfast last weekend. Fantastic! As I’ve written elsewhere round here, great camaraderie, funny tales and some cracking tunes from the careers of all concerned plus recent collaborative works. Also, Dave McLarnon’s Shock Treatment launching their new album a couple of days earlier in Bangor, Co Down. Also fantastic! 🙂

    Heard: The Dead Men Walking album ‘Freedom – It Ain’t on the Rise’ (2021) and the Shock Treatment album ‘Exclusive Photos’ (2024) – both terrific, in my view. As mentioned elsewhere, I’ve dived deep into Kirk Brandon’s 2000-2024 studio albums in recent days – the 2018 Spear of Destiny album ‘Tontine’, in particular, is a masterpiece and several of the songs on its longer (perhaps too long) successor ‘Ghost Population’ (2022) – which I’ve only heard a couple of times so far – are of equal quality.

    I’ve also been listening to Cherry Red’s 3CD box set ‘Les Cousins’ – a lovingly crafted homage to the bohemian London folk club/all-nighter on Greek Street (1965-72) – compiled and annotated masterfully by Ian A. Anderson. Ian, who ran a similar club in Bristol during the latter part of the Cousins era, was often there and retains fond memories as well as exactly the right expertise. The written content is around 10,000 words and the 72 tracks are scrupulously drawn from the recorded work of artists who were advertised in Melody Maker as playing there or in some cases who have been confirmed as having been booked from the diary of the owner, the late Andy Matheou (“Van Morrison, £3”). Guitar heroes like Graham, Jansch and Renbourn share space with trad singers (Watersons, Dave & Toni Arthur, Young Tradition, Owen Hand), bluesers (Spider John Koerner, Jo Ann Kelly, Alexis Korner), buskers (Don Partridge), hippies (ISB, COB, Dr Strangely, Tir Na Nog), visiting Americans (Paul Simon, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Rush), people from Ireland (Sweeney’s Men, the McPeakes), also-rans (Andy Fernbach, Mudge & Clutterbuck, Gerry Lockran, Picadilly [sic] Line) and, yes, Donovan (who obviously invented Les Cousins, folk music and ‘the sixties’). Only the catalogues of one or two key artists evaded licensing – Stefan Grossman being the most obvious, though Stefan himself, as he confirmed on social media, could have supplied period tracks direct had he been asked. But this is a marvellous compilation and really captures a scene that seems magical. Recommended!

    AOB: Bizarre as it may seem, a one-hour film about me will air on BBC NI this month, on Feb 18 (on iPlayer thereafter). I haven’t seen it – which is fine and right. No chance of interference from the subject. Still, fingers crossed…

  6. I didn’t bother adding to this last time around due to a bout of couldn’t be arsed but this for what it’s worth is a synopsis of my various wastes of January time.

    Listened.
    A lot of Ambient inclined music. I seem to be listening to careful slowly unfolding music more and more apart from Jazz of course which is a given around these here parts and remains the dominant household noise. An occasional foray into bits and pieces of “other” musics for variety hasn’t really taken up much of my time.
    On pretty much repeated plays has been Ghost Stations and Weightless by Marconi Union, John Surman’s Saltash Bells, The Spaces In Between, Road To Saint Ives and his first collaboration with Karin Krog, Cloud Line Blue. It’s a rare month when nothing from Loscil gets a hearing from me and January was no different with Monument Builders, Sea Island, Endless Falls and Plume all occupying speaker and headphone time. I made space to listen to Still, Here and Cloud Corner by Marisa Anderson and as the month drew to an end 3 from Abdullah Ibrahim and The Room by Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Grendel along with This Is The Day and City Of Broken Dreams by The Giovanni Guidi ushered in February.

    Read.
    The Reformatory by Tananarive Due is a supernatural tale set in the Jim Crow South it’s an easy engaging read with few surprises but despite that or perhaps because of that it’s an enjoyable read.
    Trumpet by the Scottish writer Jackie Kay could possibly be a bit of a marmite recommendation. It’s set in the aftermath of the death of a fictitious jazz horn player. Upon “his” death it’s revealed that he was actually a she all along. The novel examines the impact this revelation has. It a tender, loving examination of one person’s unique life and the effect that life and it’s aftermath has upon those nearest to “him”. I loved it.
    I finally got around to finishing Americanah by Chimanda Ngozi Adiche. I started this a long time ago. I got distracted and put it to one side intending to finish it at a later date, that date arrived and it is of course utterly wonderful. Probably my favourite from her after Half Of A Yellow Sun. Unusually for me I read some nonfiction, I always mean to read more factual stuff but somehow never get around to it but I decided to change that state of affairs this year and to begin salting my usual fiction driven diet with the occasional nonfiction book so I read Japan Story by Christopher Harding. It’s a history of Japan from just before the start of the Meiji period to post Fukushima. It’s very well written, not at all dry and very entertaining. I learned new stuff and relearned old stuff.
    I found the time for Swan Peak the next one up in my slow read through of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels. It was predictable and predictably enjoyable. I though it was about time I read a bit of William Macilvanney so I read the first in the Laidlaw trilogy. It reads ever so slightly dated but not to It’s detriment. Thoroughly good fun.
    A couple more Maigrets bit the dust. Only around fifty more to go!

    Watched.
    The Traitors. I became a bit obsessed with this which took me by surprise. I don’t watch reality TV as a rule and only started watching The Traitors on a passing whim and blow me down it completely took over my TV watching for virtually the whole of the month.
    Having become hooked by the first episode of the second series of The UK version I plunged in and binge watched the first series of The UK version on iPlayer then I binge watched the first series of the Aussie version and the American one. After finishing the second UK series I immediately watched the second Aussie version. I found the subtle and less subtle cultural differences between the various incarnations of it fascinating probably more so than the basic nuts and bolts of “the various plot(s)”. It certainly helped with the January comedown blues.

    A.O. B.
    Health issues have become more dominant than I expected or wanted but that is what it is and at sixty eight I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. I am of course doing my best to treat this in the time honoured manly fashion by making light of my fears and cocking many a snook.
    Peace out.

  7. Work wise, January has gone “effin mental” – too many people promising things by the end of the financial year, and now realising they better get on and do something.
    But in the (relatively) quiet moments:

    Heard:
    * Green Day – Saviors is the first 2024 date stamped album to arrive on my shelves, and ignoring the fact they can’t spell Saviours it’s not half bad. It’s not up there with American Idiot, but maybe they’ve realised that nothing else they do ever will be. Redux review: they know the formuylae, stick to it, and deliver on expectations.
    * Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstacy arrived this morning. Only 1 listen so far, not convinced yet although there is some intrigue there in the baroque pop on offer
    Seen:
    Loads of TV things
    Mr Bates vs the Post Office – that it takes a very well written and performed ITV Drama to kick into action one of the great injustices of recent years still bemuses me.
    The Tourist – still not sure whats going on, but made Sunday nights a moment to enjoy
    Fool Me Once – every new year Netflix does a Hareln Coben adaptation, and have delivered another very watchable twisty-turny TV drama
    After The Flood – watchable, if inconsequential. Well written and well acted.
    Bodies – another Netflix job from a couple of years ago. Once you get used to the shifting timelines, the whole thing is eminently bingeable.
    The Miners Strike – 3 part Channel 4 doc 40 years after the Strike. I was 14 so knew it was happening, if not truly the reasons why. Episode 1 showed how many returned to work and divided once close communities, Episode 2 was The Battle Of Orgreave, and Episode 3 is pending a watch.
    I’m stuck in the middle of my thoughts on this – I agree with Billy Bragg that there is power in the union, but not sure Arthur Scargill was the right man to hold that power.

    Read:
    Previously reported I couldn’t get into reading – now post Christmas I have 2 books on the go (with a couple more waiting in the pile)
    * Triggers – Glen Matlock. Similar to I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol with more breadth and experience
    * Barry Cryer: Same Time Tomorrow? – biography written by his son Bob. Interesting so far (but I’m only 20 pages in) – according to the index, and given his working relationship with Ray Cameron, this book contains no mention of Michael McIntyre (not even in passing)

    (and coincidentally, Barry Cryer’s Heroes Of Comedy series on SkyArts is worth a watch – I stumbled across one episode, and then found the rest on catch-up)

    • I agree about ‘Mr Bates…’ – it’s horrifying that it took a TV drama to flick the switch of retribution on an evil known about, and chronicled relentlessly by Private Eye, for years. I couldn’t watch it at the time – too painful to contemplate.

    • I just finished Bodies today, RD. I struggled with the early episodes but I’m glad I stuck with it. Very well put together and it all made sense (of a kind) in the final two episodes.

  8. HEARD

    I checked out Joshua Redman’s album “where we are” which topped a few jazz polls for 2023. Most if not all tracks feature an amazing Italian born singer Gabrielle Cavassa. This is not “jazz singing” as we know it, Captain. This is a beautiful of reading of what is really a bit of a hoary old standard these days. Love the slight changes to the lyric too

    Also discovered that an album by Jorma Kaukonen called Quah turned 50 this year. I had never heard of it. I knew Hot Tuna and loved their early albums. This mines the same acoustic blues vein and is produced by Jack Casady

    Then this came up on David Byrne’s latest radio playlist. Extraordinary take on Yugoslavian folk music by guitarist Branko Mataja

  9. A modest January, still trying to calm things down and get things in order after Christmas. But ‘modest’ still means weekly visits to the folk club, with a couple of local acts, including the lovely Peter and Barbara Snape – voice and melodeon doing full-on trad folk song collector fare. For my part, I gave a condensed Breton dance workshop to the uninitiated. Great fun for all, but with more than a whiff of The Generation Game about it.
    February already is a lot busier on the gig front.

    Been reading a beautifully presented guide to Angkor Wat. Gorgeous, but academic and away from being coffee table. There are reconstruction overlays, informed by research of how these ruins would once have looked. It is enticing. I will be there in just over 5 weeks.

  10. Read
    The Last King of California
    A boy witnesses a violent act committed by his father, following which the dad is sent to prison and the boy and his mother flee to Colorado. The novel commences as the boy, now a deeply traumatised teenager, returns to his Californian roots. A coming-of-age story, wrapped around a crime novel.

    The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
    Numb, affectless teens, absent parents, ultraviolence, 80s new wave music, unbridled wealth, and social decay. So, just your typical Easton Ellis tropes. But despite the familiarity I found myself drawn into the story, a purported memoir told in the first person by ‘Bret Ellis’ himself.

    Seen
    Black Summer
    A wonderfully tense and scary end of the world zombie story told across 2 seasons.

    The Brother’s Sun
    By turns fighty and funny, this fun series could have been very disposable if not for some of the performances, particularly Michelle Yeoh who is majestic as the matriarch.

    The Killer
    Michael Fassbender’s assassin is cold and calculating, highly skilled and infinitely patient. At least that is what he tells us in his voiceover. Unfortunately, he is prone to making the odd, enormous blunder. By turns tense and blackly, bleakly comic.

    Culprits
    Twisty turny heist thriller with a nice turn from Gemma Arterton as a ruthless criminal mastermind.

  11. Heard
    Listened to (binged upon in some cases) music that either I missed in my rock-ist/pop-ist youth, was just too young for at the time or else missed in my more recent explorations of historical jazz.
    Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery, Lester Young, Louis Armstrong (hot fives and sevens), Freddie Hubbard, Booker Little, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, Charles Mingus, Chick Corea, Eric Dolphy. That kind of stuff.

    I also applied my ears to Bersarin Quartett (following some mentions hereabouts – a good find), The Legends Of Tomorrow (likewise), O’Higgins & Luft (new album and also a live appearance, of which more further down), Dinosaur, GoGo Penguin, Hiromi Uehara, Moses Boyd Exodus, Vels Trio, Yazmin Lacey, Yussef Kamaal, Ezra Collective (an unofficial live recording from Adelaide in November ’23), Hattie Whitehead(two EPs) plus Thandi Ntuli & Carlos Nino.

    All of this enjoyed to varying degrees.
    My usual BBC radio stuff (Freeness, J to Z, Jazz Record Requests, Late Junction, Music Planet, The New Music Show, Night Tracks, Sound of Cinema, Unclassified and Composer of the Week from Radio 3, The Jazz Show with Jamie Cullum from Radio 2, Jazz Club with Walter Love from Radio Ulster).
    (R.I.P. Walter Love, who died a few days ago. I gained an appreciation of Swing, New Orleans and Dixieland jazz from his excellent show.)

    Watched
    Junk TV:
    Death In Paradise (rewatching from the start – currently in series 4), Silent Witness (both new series and older stuff).
    Documentary:
    Jet! When Britain Ruled The Skies.

    Reading
    Private Eye (I’m a subscriber)
    Philip Kerr “Metropolis” (his final Bernie Gunther novel)
    Ian Rankin “A Heart Full Of Headstones” (most recent Rebus novel)
    Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) – The Ink Black Heart (not finished yet – a veritable tome of a book)

    Out and About
    A very quiet month for me, gig-wise. Car repairs/servicing/insurance and buying a mini-PC and monitor depleted my bank balance, necessitating some belt-tightening.

    Saxophonist Karen Sharp at my twice-monthly haunt The Elephant Inn, North Finchley. A good mix of her original compositions and some jazz standards.
    Dave O’Higgins (tenor sax), Rob Luft (guitar), Ross Stanley (Hammond organ) at The Elephant. An excellent evening of Dave and Rob’s own material from their current album “Pluto” plus standards (including 3 Monk tunes).
    I do like these Jazz at the Elephant sessions. The standard of playing is very high, the regulars are pleasant people, there’s relatively cheap Thai cuisine you can order at the bar and have brought to your table, It starts at 7pm pretty much on the dot and finishes at 9.15 after two sets have been played. A good discount on ticket prices (£13 instead of £17) for mailing list subscribers too.
    The only niggle is that the beer is a bit expensive.

    A.O.B.
    I’m changing internet providers, as Virgin Media want to increase my monthly payment from £31 to £51 and I’m not prepared to put up with that. I’ve signed up to a contract with another supplier for considerably less, but there is probably going to be a gap of 5 days with no access, by the look of things.
    Also need to get my arse in gear and renew my driving licence, which will run out in March (I am an oldie) otherwise.
    Got a late Xmas present book token (Waterstones) from my great-nephew and his partner that I need to spend sometime. Two of the three books that I’d like to get with it are not yet out in paperback, so I need to keep checking for when they’re available.
    I have tickets for four upcoming gigs this month and one in March. Total cost of £90 and some change.

    • After they tried to almost double the monthly cost at end of contract, I got Virgin down from our previous £29 to £22 by cancelling 5 weeks before expiry. I knew I could get a similar deal, around £30 pm so I called their bluff and they called next day with a better offer. The final reduction was not having a landline, which we haven’t used for years. We get double speed on broadband and double data on mobiles as we are on O2 so it works for us. Virgin are generally pretty shabby though.

      • The Vigin helpline has an option (and others probably do too) “press x if you’re thinking of leaving”.
        They know they’re probably overcharging, so make the call and they will do something to reduce the price. I did a bluff call last year and got £10 off my package for 12 months.
        Always worth a try

        • I got the best deal by cancelling and being prepared to go through with it because I knew what I could get elsewhere. The final price was about £10pm better than they’d offered the previous day when I’d pressed “thinking about leaving”. This time, I’d kept an eye on the expiry date so I’d have plenty of time to arrange a new contract with Zen. Knowing what else is on offer makes a big difference, as does being prepared to go through the pain of a new contract and installation. I’d also taken out better O2 contracts so if we lost the double data, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I got stiffed by Virgin a couple of years ago and was determined not to get shafted again.

          • I had a call today from Virgin Media offering me 250Mb internet (double the speed I currently have) for £19.00 a month on an 18 month contract. The other provider requesting to transfer my landline number seems to have stirred them into action.
            I have accepted their offer. Just have to cancel the other contract now.

  12. January was defined by three things: a complete lack of money, work worries, and feeling absolutely exhausted in a way that you can only feel in January in a northern country with hardly any hours of sunlight…

    The money situation meant not buying anything except food – and very little of that as well; I’ve been going through my pantry, fridge and freezer, only adding fresh veggies and dairy really, and toilet paper. Will continue being frugal in February too, maybe March as well – after that I have a lot of money coming in and can go back to my usual ways.

    The work worries have been partially cleared up, but we don’t have all the answers yet, so I’m still a little nervous. The exhaustion was cured this week after bombarding my system with all of the vitamins, iron and minerals…finally having some energy and not falling asleep every time I sit down!

    Read:

    Thanks to my lack of funds I decided to only read from my own shelves. God knows I have plenty of books there that I’ve never gotten around to reading…

    I decided on two projects for 2024, one was to write down twelve prompts on notes to draw one from each month. January’s prompt said “Read a previously unread short story collection”, and I chose a big volume of three collections from Tove Jansson, and I’ve read two of those in January – the third will be read this month before I choose my next prompt.
    The first one was OK, but she hadn’t fully mastered the art of short story writing yet. The second collection was brilliant from beginning to end, one of the best short story collections I’ve read.
    So that was a successful start to that project.

    The second project I decided on for 2024 is to reread all of the books written by one of my absolute favourite authors, in chronological order – read and reread, as I bought a handful of his novels last fall that I didn’t previously own, and I hadn’t read them yet.
    The author in question is Swedish author P C Jersild, I’ve collected his 40+ books (mostly novels, but also some non fiction, some authobiographical and a couple of childrens books) over many years and have very rarely been disappointed by any of them. He’s very versatile in style/genre and very funny, often sharply satirical, always interesting.

    So far I’ve read his first five books in January and is half-way through his sixth in February. The first two were new to me, and although the first one, a short story collection, was only promising, the second was a surprisingly brilliant first novel. The rest have been rereads, but all have improved by revisiting them later in life. I’m very excited by this project, and am looking forward to reading a few new-to-me and rereading favourites that I haven’t read in many years.
    I rarley take the time to reread favourite books anymore, so I’m loving the opportunity to do so now for a “good cause”.

    But the first books I read this year was a trilogy of novels that I originally planned to give away unread to my neighbours in the box of books I left out by the elevator on Christmas Eve, but something made me fish this one out to give it a shot. It was Rachel Cusk’s Outline/Transit/Kudos, and I’m not sure it neede to be three books of the same, really. The first one would have been enough for me, TBH. Not bad, but just not my cup of tea.

    Seen:

    Two films, unusually. Not in the cinema though…on DVD I watched a Swedish comedy from 1958, Fröken April (“Miss April”), an old favourite of mine that I hadn’t seen in years and was afraid I’d find dull today, but I still loved it and laughed both at the jokes and the brilliant acting.

    Then, prompted by reading reviews for the new film by G Lanthimos and remembering that I had yet to watch the previous one, I finally watched The Favourrite. Great acting, and partly fun, but I found it a bit too long/dull and, oddly, too conventional.

    Other than those I watched two documentaries about two Swedish comedy groups, some historical documentaries and otherwise just YouTube stuff.

    Heard:

    Nothing new (due to no-buy rule at the moment), but I’ve dived deeper into my December purchases, especially Anders F Rönnblom, which I suspected on first listen was a grower, and it is.
    I’m also listening to some old cassettes of radio shows etc, recorded in the late 80s and early 90s. I feared that the tapes would sound shit or get tangled up after just lying in a box ever since and never getting played, but they sound as good as ever.

  13. Two films. Enjoyed one, hated the other.
    The one i hated was The Holdovers. A written-to-formula cliched tale of old vs young initially rubbing each other up the wrong way before forging a meaningful bond. Nemesis? Check. Love interest? Check. Friendly sidekick? Check. The worst thing about it was the actor chosen to play supporting role to the always excellent Paul Giamatti. An unknown actor in his first role, I don’t know why he got the part. He was supposed to be 17 and this was such a vital aspect of the movie, emphasised repeatedly. The actor was actually 22 and looked older. Obviously not a teenager, he reminded me of Grease or Please Sir!. At one point he sits outside the headmaster’s office with head bowed in a guilty schoolboy pose and it just looks absolutely ridiculous.
    The one I enjoyed was Jules. A spin on an old story (ET, basically) but done with much originality, endearing quirkiness and some great characters. Especially Ben Kingsley as an elderly American slipping into dementia who befriends the titular alien.

    Oh and as mentioned elsewhere, I loved Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Already very keen to see it again.

    • Another one who enjoyed The Holdovers. Went to our local cinema on Sat night & was pleased to see Alexander Payne back on form after the awful Downsizing.

      I thought Dominic Sessa (thank you IMDB) was a good supporting actor & I didn’t have the same issues as your good self with the age. He certainly looks a touch older than 17, but I thought he got the acting spot on in this regards & was very believable.
      Personally I am a little staggered that Da’Vine Joy Randolph (again, thank you IMDB) is being lauded & spoken about in terms of awards. I felt her performance was a bit dialled in & other than the party kitchen scene (which admittedly was great) I found it hard to get on board with her portrayal & didn’t believe in it.

      Just proves it’s all horses for courses though. Me and my partner disagree regularly on films & like music, one mans Annie Hall is another mans Dumb & Dumber

      • I quite liked Downsizing. I’ve liked all the films of his I’ve seen (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways and Nebraska) up till this one, except The Descendants. As mentioned, I thought this one, The Holdovers, was too written to formula, full of cliches and had an already explored theme. Hunt for the Wilderpeople was a funnier take on the same sort of thing. But my main gripe was the so-called “kid”.
        Coincidental article about that sort of miscasting in today’s The Guardian:

        https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/feb/04/eastenders-actor-27-laughs-off-criticism-too-old-school-bully

          • I happened to re-watch A Clockwork Orange at the weekend, and something I had forgotten was the scene where Malcolm McDowell’s mother wakes him after a night of violence to remind him that he should be at school. He would have been 28 at the time. The 24 year-old Warren Clarke is also one of the Droogs, although he actually looks well into his thirties.

            It’s also entertaining to watch McDowell walk through the record shop and see that in this futuristic dystopia records by Keef Hartley and John Fahey will still be on display.

            • Anne Bancroft was six years older than Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate”, Dustin Hoffman’s character being the same age as her daughter, and Cary Grant’s ‘mum’ in “North By Northwest” was eight years older than Cary Grant!

              • Seem to recall there was a similarly small age gap between Angela Lansbury and her Manchurian Candidate son, Anthony Perkins.

                She must have raised him well as his fellow soldiers kept on calling him “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

  14. I’ve been listening to The Smile new album – see New Stuff thread – among other things. I pulled out some LPs that I got secondhand. Goat’s Head Soup was one such. 100 Years Ago is one of the highlights. They had a way of switching the pace of a song back then that got the pulse racing.

    Reading about Anita Pallenberg’s life at the moment. She was another Stone really, directing things and playing the responsible grown up in Nellcote, to a degree. I mean she saw to it that everyone got fed. But then inviting in a bunch of crooks to stay wasn’t so smart. A lot of this is familiar from Stones books but there are new insights to be found. She could have done something more in her own right, as an actress, but of course the drugs and The Stones themselves screwed her up in many ways.

    TV-wise there’s been a fair amount going on. The Gold, the story of the Brinks-Mat robbery made for a gripping, high quality drama that the Brits do so well with all the period details present.
    Fargo turned out to be reasonably good. A bit too much of the whacky and weird characters and not that much of a story in the end.
    There’s a documentary of the Israeli music festival that became a blood-bath. It’s largely those who were there narrating with mobile video footage of harrowing scenes. Young people hiding in portaloos, hoping they won’t be found while terrorists shoot through the doors. They lie on the floor thinking the shots will go higher. Miraculously they survive. A festival that is thought to be a safe place becomes the scene of a massacre. It’s all so vivid. Not so hard to imagine yourself in such a situation.

  15. I should also mention two other TV series of worth that I missed above. The most noteworthy two in fact.

    Rain Dogs is a British series. Like Withnail & I mixed with some Ken Loach type misery document. Homelessness, drugs, prostitution, self destructive behaviour and abuse. With laughs. It’s really quite something. A high c-word count.

    Somebody, somewhere is a US series. People with problems, involved in conflict, caught up in emotional dramas, yet finding happiness. An even higher c-word count. Touching and hilarious throughout.

  16. Seen

    The major excitement was on “television”, where Mr Bates was actually changing the world and Fargo had a climax as satisfying as it was unlikely. Fargo’s penultimate episode seemed to be setting up a pew-pew-pew gunfight, which was then completely dodged, disappointing some, I expect, but delighting me as I was hoping for something more subtle.
    And already series four of True Detective was up and running. As we know, the first rule of TD is that nothing is going to match up to series one, so, putting that out my mind I settled down to see what this series had to offer. Er.. Jodie Foster and Christopher Eccleston grunting and grinding, showing those Z-ers that us old folks can still get those knees a trembling. Jodie is delivering a serious performance of hard-nosed realism while surrounded by spooky surrealistic sh*t which is either happening in universe or the hallucinatory side effects of pollution from the local mine. Four episodes down, it’s hard to see this one finishing cleanly by episode six.
    I’m definitely not going to mention series one again, but the problem with these anthology series that fly under the same flag each time is that the “brand” gets a little more tarnished with every successive under par outing.

    No such worries for The U.S. and the Holocaust over on BBC, which was exemplary television. You know you’re in safe hands with Ken Burns, but I still found many of the first hand reports from this time eye opening. As the stories in a recent thread reminded me, we (in Ireland) didn’t experience the war the way you Brits did (you might say we didn’t experience it at all), but seeing how the horror unfolded from the American perspective (“these reports are so horrific they simply can’t be true”) and how a crackdown on immigration seasoned with a little antisemitism (and not just in the U.S. of course) cost so many lives gave this programme an edge, making it more than a retelling of what I knew.

    But I’ve also been continuing my movie odyssey, catching up on films from last year.
    In order of enjoyment I watched

    Brian and Charles is a delightful small scale British story about a hapless “inventor” (played by David Earl, Joe Wilkinson’s twin brother from the show Rovers) who finally tries to make a robot (“I don’t know why I never thought of it before”) and he only bloody succeeds. Earl’s co-writer Chris Hayward plays the voice of Charles and somehow makes his repetitive monotone funny. The local bully’s two evil daughters are thoroughly awful and Louise Brealey does that mousey girl thing she does. I was reminded somewhat of Aardman, but even more of Mackenzie Crook’s take on Worzel Gummidge.

    Decision To Leave is the most recent effort by Park Chan-wook, a director whose adventurous storytelling style I have admired since I saw his extremely unusual love story I’m A Cyborg, But That’s O.K. many years back. This movie has quite a conventional plot – Cop falls for beautiful woman during murder inquiry, but is she the murderer? – and I can imagine a dull English language remake. But what makes the film engrossing is not the mystery as much as the way the directing gets inside the characters.

    Here’s the pitch: What if the messy bank job escape in Heat turned into Speed? But with an Ambulance instead of a bus. Michael Bay gets a lot of sh*t, much of it deserved. But he does know a thing or two about filming action. He’s also worked with some pretty decent actors and here the always good-value-for-money Jake Gyllenhaal makes damn sure all the noise and pyrotechnics aren’t going to drown out his performance. This film flopped, but for a solid hour and half I thought it was terrific.
    Then comes a bonkers scene where the chasing police have lost their fugitives and waiting for Jake’s vehicle is a mate with another ambulance. A simple decoy trick, right? But no, Jake gets an amateurish paintjob on his ambulance so that it looks just like a fugitive ambulance with a hasty half assed paintjob and then the explosions get way more explodey and getting past two hours I’m starting to think I need a wee. I’d still give it three cups, mind.

    Marcel The Shell With Shoes On is a sort of American counterpart to Brian and Charles, being a whimsical, heartwarming small scale tale, although it is more meandering and ultimately relies more on its charm than the strength of its story (try not to smile when Marcel takes his first car journey).
    This is a skilfully animated film about a shell who has been separated from his family and tries to find where they have gone.
    I’ve got to say it felt long at 90 minutes and that’s not a good sign.

    Still, given last month’s movies as my yardstick, I think I’d still have Godzilla Minus One at the top and Saltburn at the bottom.

    Heard

    Further exploration of the AW albums of 2023 has brought me to the rather funky PRESHEATECHA by The White Blinds. In places it’s like The Meters and I must confess those are the parts I like best.
    It was probably someone on here who put me on to Soothsayers and the instrumental reggae grooves of Meets Victor Rice and Friends which, on Bandcamp, comes packaged with its dub album. Which is as it should be.
    And, ever since my boy deramdaze drew me to it, I’ve been playing Marva Whitney’s It’s My Thing. I may not like it as much as he, but when it’s cooking it’s really cooking.
    I’m still trying to get into the new Gruff Rhys and have been underwhelmed by new singles by The Staves, Pet Shop Boys and Camera Obscura. Although with Ver ‘Scura I’m just glad to see them back.

    Read

    Rather than trying to win favour for the tiny amount I’ve read, I’ll just say nothing.

    AOB

    On a rare night out, a piece of trivia I’ve only ever heard on this here blorum won me a point in a table quiz. Cheers! 🍺

  17. There was a Sky original called Fortitude a while back set in a similar location (although it was somewhere Scandinavian) and the first episode reminded me very strongly of that but it’s moved away from that over the next few episodes (thankfully).

  18. May I butt in here to ask whether any AWers who took up the Paramount+ offer at Christmas have seen the tv show of Sexy Beast and whether – against all odds – it’s any good? I’d consider popping in for a cheeky month if it was..

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