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I’m sponsoring a dark beer at the Wigan beer festival. It will be Beany’s Birthday Beer Barrel from 5th to 7th March. See you there.
A quiet month for me. Apart from enjoying a range of world music released in 2025, I set myself the challenge of listening to the nearly 1200 tracks I have from Word cover mount CDs, many of whom I never listened to before. About a quarter of the way through, there were only 5 I found objectionable, and 20% I scored positively for repeat listening. Not a great hit rate, but given the fairly common nature and limited range of the artists presented, not bad. Some of the tracks being at least 20 years old, the artists responsible have grown up, grown old, split up, reformed and generally reminded me of my age.
Speaking of age, I finally finshed reading The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s Nobel Prize winning novella, A comparatively short book, it has sat on my shelf for nearly 50 years since my beloved English teacher, coincidentally also called (Roger) Hemingway recommended it for me as he saw I was an avid reader. I never got into it beyond the first few pages every time I tried. But this time I stuck at it, and ploughed through. Probably a better read at my current age than as a child, the idea of heading out on a desperate mission with failing powers, almost succeeding after a herculean marathon, then losing everything but the protagonist’s life (spoiler alert), seemed so poignant and moving.
I look forward to reading all your adventures and pastimes of the last month.
It’s a while since I’ve seen or heard the verb “flitting” – or the alternative “doin’ a flit”…
Seen
Knives Out – Wake up Dead Man.
I enjoyed the first 2 films in this series, but I found this latest one a bit of plodder. Although I very much enjoyed Daniel Craig’s sartorial choice. He was rocking a nice 70s influenced suit and heeled boots.
Seven Dials
Spread across 3 snappy episodes, the Christie adaptation features murder, mayhem, secret societies and political intrigue. Special mention to Mia McKenna-Bruce who plays a capable protagonist and Martin Freeman as a lugubrious Detective Battle. Tim from the Office got old, didn’t he?
Weapons
A gnarly, creepy horror movie from the director that gave us the nicely off kilter Barbarian. The plot is teased out with assurance, and the tension is well judged. A weird combination of urban horror and Grimm fairytale.
The Rip
The solid and dependable Damon and Affleck feature in a solid and dependable cop thriller / drama. It’s tense and twisty with some nervy shoot outs and an itchy paranoia as our heroes uncover a huge pot of cartel money and must then determine who they can trust amongst their tight knit crew when faced with such temptation.
Frasier and Cheers
Channel 4 have been showing these on rotations for years. Over the last few weeks we’ve been dipping into them. It’s Kirstie Allie era Cheers (whom I far preferred to Shelley Long). 30 odd years since the last episode aired, it’s still a great show full of some sharp characters and script. We’ve picked up Frasier in the period just before and after Niles and Daphne get together. Without the exquisite will they / won’t they tension the show lost some of its snap, but it’s still great. At its best there’s an almost frictionless ease to the writing and acting – it often feels more like a musical populated with graceful dancers. And Niles is pretty much my favourite ever character in a TV show.
Stranger Things
We watched the final episode of New Year’s Day. I think they stuck the landing. And the needle drop for the final action scene gave me goosebumps.
Read
Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad
As we’re off to Japan in the summer for our holiday I thought I’d take a look at this, a memoir about a young man who moved to Japan to teach English. He’s an engaging writer and we’ve been checking out his youtube channel which is good fun, too.
Heard
Our neighbours have been conducting some noisy construction works so I’ve had music playing as a distraction when I work from home. I’ve been playing Mozart and Chopin, mainly. Nice.
I watch Frasier over and over again. Brilliantly written and acted, each episode like a short play.
Apart from YouTube I watched season 2 of The White Lotus, I thought it was very good. Am now in season 3. Goes pretty slowly at times and it’s a bit like the old disaster movies in that we are introduced to a group of people most of whom have significant flaws and we know something bad is possibly going to happen to one or more of them in the end. It’s incredibly beautifully made though and fairly addictive.
Didn’t make it to the cinema, wanted to see Sung Song Blue, but the day I was planning to go we had a significant snowstorm and I didn’t bother
Didn’t read anything, listened to mainly podcasts and the incredible latest Jeff Tweedy (triple) album over and over again
About to start my Hitchcock marathon with The Lodger, will report back. And it’s 6 nations time, tough for a Welshman currently, but the finest annual international sporting tournament rarely disappoints.
I’m also looking forward to the 6N. As an Englishman, even though things are not looking great for Wales, I am still very very wary of Rees-Zammit at full back.
I hope he goes well, but I think we are looking at probably only 2 Welsh players who would make the England side, the other being Tomos Williams (Jac Morgan would also be in with a shout). I am thinking 50 points will be par for this game. Could be more 🙁
Unfortunately for yourself an accurate prediction @dai
I’m not a RU fan myself although my son is he’s also a season ticket holder at Scarlets he’s also learning Welsh and has passed 2 exams so far, me ‘Ni allaf siarad gair’
Good for him!
Re Song Sung Blue. It’s great, even if you don’t love Neil Diamond.
I like Neil Diamond rather than live him but the film was very good indeed.
Come back to you on the rest, but wary that I’m probably seeing the last showings of it in Cornwall (let alone London)… you HAVE to see ‘Nouvelle Vague’.
An absolute classic, perfect in every way.
Whoosh! January went by very fast, perhaps partly because the first part of it felt like an extension of December, as my Christmas vacation continued a week into the new year.
Read:
A combination of continued reading slump and my then obsession with crossword puzzles meant that I only read one book in January (and still haven’t started another one in February).
But the book I did read was quite brilliant; Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. A fascinating memoir focusing on her complex relationship with her mother, her way into writing and her activism. A beautiful and engaging read that even accomplished the feat of making me want to re-read God of Small Things; a novel I read when it was first published and disliked – but that was a lifetime ago, books don’t change but we do, and I enjoyed the quotes from it in this book, and what she said about it, so I think I might like it more if I give it another try now. Anyway; her memoirs are great, and the insights into India was also very interesting.
Heard:
The new album from Courtney Marie Andrews; Valentine is wonderful, and grows with every listen. She’s one of the best songwriters in contemporary country – taking the best songwriting tricks from classic country, stripping away the glittery schmaltz of Nashville, and making it feel very intimate and very here and now. My stand-out track on this album is probably “Cons & Clowns”.
Imarhan has a new album out called Essam, and it’s brilliant. Very varied but – like CMA – taking a traditional style and making it feel contemporary. Especially on the track “Azaman Amoutay”, which sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a crime thriller set in the underbelly of a big city after dark… The tracks are expertly built up to get more and more hypnotic, whether it’s an intimate, quiet song or a rhythmical jubilant one sung by many voices. Love it.
A couple of my 2025 favourites (both on my Best Of list) finally came out on physical media, so I also spent January revisiting them and falling in love with them all over again.
If you missed my previous endorsement, I want to recommend the brilliance of Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover on their album What of Our Nature which is a brilliant folky album of protest songs and contemplations on the modern world. Think “Alynda Segarra (Hurray For The Riff Raff) meets the young Bob Dylan”. As a huge fan of Haley’s debut album, but quite underwhelmed by her second, this was a welcome return to brilliance, and Max is a new name to me, but a good one (although not quite up there with her when it comes to comparing voice quality…) They’ve both written five songs each and take lead vocals on their own tracks, but adding back-up vocals and harmonies for each other.
The other album finally showing up on CD was of course Lily Allen’s banger West End Girl, and again it’s been growing when listening again (and not on Spotify). The mood of it suits the melancholy and post-Christmas sadness of January, while also bringing bops and smiles.
The new album from Amanda Bergman; Embraced for a second as we die, is currently suffering from the Spotify-syndrome (I don’t like listening to Spotify, so don’t listen to it as much as I’d like), but it’s lovely, of course. I’ve also been revisiting the streamed YouTube-gig she did in January (see below) which is a wonderful way to hear the new songs.
Seen:
So being subscribed to Amanda Bergman’s YouTube channel I got the notification in good time to be able to watch her release-promo live stream gig, with Klara Södergren among others, on the day. It’s since been uploaded as a permanent video:
I also watched the Bowie documentary The Final Act, and didn’t enjoy it.
The usual YouTube channels and some added unexpected one-off finds (like a lovely animated short called “Cardboard” about a widowed pig dad and his two boys moving to a trailer park, or a moving short documentary about gay figure skaters).
I finally got hold of a DVD of That Sinking Feeling, restored by BFI, as well as a DVD of Gregory’s Girl, and planned to watch them as a double feature – but then my computer started acting up, so the plans got temporarily shelved.
AOB:
So my computer suddenly started to make an annoying noise, a very loud one – I believe that it’s the fan. It stops after an hour or so, and the computer works great otherwise, but as I mostly use my computer in the middle of the night when my neighbours sleep (and I live in a flat with fairly thin walls) it’s not very convenient and gets on my nerve. Some days the noise doesn’t appear at all! But when it first started to happen last week, I decided to buy a new computer on the weekend, as I’d planned to get one this year anyway. This was before I found out that the noise stops after a while, and was convinced it was going to shut down for good at any moment.
But after buying a new one last Saturday and sitting through the noise while doing some final admin on the old computer, planning to make sure everything important was saved to OneDrive before switching them out – the noise stopped, it never appeared the next day, so I didn’t install the new one.
I’m thinking I’ll “use up” the old one first, or at least wait until I have more time to get into it properly – I’m very busy this weekend and next week.
Also; I love my old computer (and rather like not getting any Windows updates anymore…) and buying a new one was quite a shock! They had very few stationary computers to choose from, and apparently these days you have to buy an external CD/DVD reader (idiotic! The salesman to me: “You can’t really get CD’s anymore anyway”, me to salesman “Ha ha ha – I get hundreds of them every year! You’re just not looking for them!”) and everything is connected through Bluetooth (you’ll probably think I’m weird, but hey; I just can’t stand it…let me be weird in peace, OK?)
The whole experience shook me. It didn’t make me feel old, it made me feel like the last sane person in a mad world…but we’re all narcissistic up to a point, right? 😀
Anyway, I have a new computer, but so far I’m using my old one. Today it only took twenty minutes before the noise stopped!
Tomorrow I’m going, alongside all of my family, to see my nephew in a play that’s supposed to be very funny. It has circus elements in it, which I’m a bit apprehensive about (I can’t stand circus, neither the old kind nor the new) but I’ve been assured that this is more of a regular play, but with acrobatics/physical comedy parts. Still, you have to show up for family, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself.
No extensive health update this month; it’s not great, but the assessment and possible referral has been delayed until March, so I just pop painkillers and soldier on for now. My back is at least slightly better, just not translating into any improvement in my leg!
I’m loving the weather – all of January was a snowy Winter Wonderland, and it’s still going on, and some colder temperatures lately, which I prefer.
I’m enjoying Courtney Marie Andrews’ album without being blown away by it yet – but I’ll see her live in a couple of weeks and hopefully it will land then as is often the case when I see the material performed live. Hadn’t heard of Haley Heynderickx but your description of Alynda Segarra meets young Bob Dylan sounds irresistible- will certainly check that album out.
It wasn’t an instant hit for me either, but repeated listening did the trick and now I keep waking up with a CMA track stuck in my head most mornings (except for when it’s a Haley/Max track…)!
I got the Imarhan album as well and really impressed so far.
They’ve yet to make a bad album. In fact, out of the “desert blues” boom they may just be the best act, IMO.
True, Locust. I have their other albums as well, but the atmosphere and sound on this one seem to be new. Was I reading somewhere that their live sound engineer has moved up to producer?
I hadn’t heard that, but it sounds believable, and like a good idea!
– That Imarhan album sounds pretty good. Thanks for the tip!
– Yeah, we watched the David Bowie Final Act documentary, too. Slightly disappointing, particularly the first half of the second episode, which consisted of various celebrities coming out with a lot of tired clichés about DB.
The links on this thread are waaaaay better. 😄
Read:
Fiction
So long, see you tomorrow – William Maxwell
Thanks backlisted podcast, this was excellent!
Collected Short Stories – John Cheever
Not sure reading these in one go was the right thing but you do get immersed in his world from them
The Sellout – Paul Beatty
Decent but not sure what all the fuss was about when it won the Booker, probably me missing something, usually is.
Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut
Really enjoyed this, wasn’t necessarily expecting to but more humour than I had expected.
Non Fiction
Soundtracks – Graham Lawson
Fascinating
Year of magical Thinking – Joan Didion
Something in my eye, will be giving this to people when they need it most
Silence – John Cage
Hard work but interesting, again I am probably neither musical nor smart enough to fully appreciate it.
Green Crime – Julia Shaw
If you are not angry by the end you haven’t read it properly, very good book
A Mind of my own – Kathy Burke
Marvellous, should probably have gone to the audio book though as the Kathy Burke voice in my head isn’t as good as the actual Kathy – Burke voice for her book
Our island Stories – Corinne Fowler
Fascinating look at the link between colonialism and the rural UK/Country piles around the UK funded by slavery
Listened
Trying hard to explore new to me music this year. This month I have particularly enjoyed the following;
Perverts – Ethel Cain
Groove in the face of adversity – Don Was
Music can hear us – DJ Kose
Seen
Knives out – better than the second one but not as good as the first
Santosh – excellent
Sorry baby – even better what a marvellous film
Islands – an OK “thriller” does washed up tennis pro better than most..
The Ice Tower – beautifully shot but quite pretentious
The Kingdom – fairly standard fare for an indie
Marty Supreme – mmm well he is good in it but not sure about the film in its entirety
Not Other Choice – best film off the month by far
The Steal – No idea what the fuss was about, fairly standard thriller series with the main twist telegraphed early and often
Just one gig: Mark Dowding is always welcome at the Folk Club.
Given that I was on holiday for a fortnight, for once, reading took centre stage. ‘My Camera, My Life’ by Mohinder Dhillon. Not on your radar? Well, that’s Sir Mohinder Dhillon to you. You have almost certainly seen some of his footage if you watched any ITN news from the 60s through to the 80s. Most biogs/autobiogs interest me mainly for the framework the subject’s life provides for the events through which they lived. Mohinder certainly lived through interesting times and inevitably he met some remarkable people. His camerawork went round the world with his coverage of African independence, war zones, national celebrations and celebrities and the famine in Ethiopia. This all from a man who grew up dirt poor in the Punjab before his railwayman father relocated him to Nairobi in the 40s.
Much much later, he became my brother’s business partner, hence my particular interest. I bought the book in person from the author.
January – that lasted about 42 days …
On the plus side, the cold/freaky flu I was suffering has subsided and the cough has gone, the constant bunged up head has passed, leaving only a slight deafness in one ear (basically my world is in mono at the moment)
Heard:
Nothing new until the back end of the month with the arrival of:
* The Damned covers album Not Like Everybody Else – covers albums are much of a muchness, but The Damned do covers well (faithful to the original, and properly Damning it up). This has extra significance, as is couched as a tributer to Brian James.
* The Molotovs – Wasted On Youth. Proper energy to round the month off. What an album this is … write-ups are citing The Jam, The Specials, The Libertines as reference points. They’re all there, and I’m getting touches of The Fratellis too.
Hoping to catch them live at some point
Seen:
* Re-watching Beatles Anthology on Disney+ (I watched them first time round, have the DVDs, but haven’t seen them for ages.
* Night Manager on BBC – 4 years removed from the first series (had to re-watch that to remind myself of the back story). Despite the ending being one of those “there might be another series” moments, this was just right for Sunday Night January viewing.
* Can You Keep A Secret – mildly diverting and amusing Dawn French sitcom. Worth a a watch, but unlikely to trouble the “Best Of The Year ” lists.
Read:
I finally managed to get through 2 complete books in 1 month
(granted, sitting on a plane and in a hotel bar helped).
* Looking For A New England (Simon Matthews) – looking at UK Films and Music from 1975 to 1986. He’s not a big fan of the Confessions films (described as execrable (possibly fairly)), and not a lover of Absolute Beginners (although he didn’t use the word again, you felt is was there in his thoughts)
* The Full English (Stuart Maconie) – SM follows JB Priestley’s journey round the spine of England. Like most others of his books, this one is just as good, just as informative, and written in a conversational tone (even if he does try to lever in big words every so often).
AOB:
Boiler failed, now fixed (I really must replace that 35 year old unit at some point). And there is a hole in my garage roof (I really HAVE to sort that as there is small lake appearing, and I may soon need a boat to get to my freezer)
Sport: Live (loads) / TV (nothing).
Pop: Getting confused with the months to know if it was this one but… another (two in one year) Small Faces compilation for nothing – ever-so-slightly the best value on the market.
And frankly just too many cheap CDs flooding the market to even start.
Go vinlys!!!
Cinema:
Sentimental Value – Great Scandinavian film about a fraught relationship between a father and daughter.
No Other Choice – As with many films… too long, and that really is its major fault.
Rose of Nevada – Mark Jenkin’s latest. Superb.
Marty Supreme – Yikes… a good film struggling to get out.
The bits that were ‘posh’, yes, go for it, the bits when he’s scrambling for money (we’ve seen it all before, it’s called ‘The Hustler’), ditch them big time. They didn’t.
But the weirdest thing is… the dog. Yes, the dog. The film suddenly turns into a complete different film when the dog appears, and the dog piece (45 minutes) is dog shite.
Nouvelle Vague – The best film of 2026… not ‘so far’, THE Best Film of 2026.
Absolute genius.
Seen it three times, embarrassed it hasn’t been more.
If you don’t like it, you don’t like cinema.
Seen
Two stage shows this month, but January is a quiet time of year for gigs. First was The Book of Mormon at The Prince of Wales Theatre. We had been looking forward to this, but alas it’s shit. There are a couple of catchy tunes but it’s just nasty in tone, irritating in performance and overall an unpleasant way to spend an evening. Lots of people around us seemed to be enjoying themselves though.
The Light will never let a tour of The Rocky Horror Show go past without a visit, and this year it was at The Regent in Ipswich. Happily, Stephen Webb is back as Frank after an underwhelming performance by Jason Donovan the last time we saw the show. You’ll all know if you like Rocky Horror or not, but we always find it a fun night out.
A couple of superfans in the front row tipped us off that their friends couldn’t make it leaving prime seats free, giving us a more intimate view of the cast than we are used to. The superfan dressed as Frank, who apparently has no job but plenty of money, showed us a list of venues on this tour he is attending. There must have been at least 30. ‘Are the marks against each one how much you enjoyed each show?’ ‘No, that’s how many times I’m seeing it in each town.’
I don’t go to the cinema often, but after seeing the last 28 Years Later I took myself along to 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and very silly it is too. Ralph Fiennes steals the show as the doctor turned shaman who finds a way to coexist with the victims of the rage virus, chilling with an alpha zombie and wigging out to Number of the Beast at the film’s climax as he persuades a gang of kids dressed as Jimmy Savile that he is Satan. There is quite a bit of gore, it will be baffling if you didn’t see the last one, and it’s best not to examine the plot too closely. Or at all.
On TV we watched the whole of Stranger Things and <Squid Game season 2, both of which engage the attention without demanding too much from the viewer. That’s just what you need in January.
Read
My January reading was dominated by Erotic Vagrancy, in which Roger Lewis takes 600 densely packed pages to examine the lives of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It’s an exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, book in which Lewis makes no apologies for his digressions and exploring his personal theories. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and although I can’t see myself reading it again I’m glad I took the journey.
Lewis doesn’t like his subjects much, finding them brattish and petulant, but, like a fascinated and sometimes appalled world, he can’t drag his gaze away from them. The title comes from a condemnation of the pair by a Vatican newspaper when their affair began, “You will finish in an erotic vagrancy, without end or without a safe port.”
By way of light relief I picked up Desmond Bagley’s The Tightrope Men from one of those free libraries which are such a welcome recent addition to the country’s streets. I was a big Bagley fan in my teens but hadn’t read one in 40 years. I have no idea if this is one of the ones I read then, but it’s a gripping read in which our protagonist wakes up one day to find himself with another man’s face and suddenly deeply involved in a plot to retrieve potentially world changing secrets from a part of Finland in what was then Soviet Russia.
WOW! The Book of Mormon is shit? I laughed my socks off – funniest thing I’ve ever seen in a theatre and I always thought that the only people who wouldn’t love it would be …er…Mormons.
I know, we were surprised too but it’s true. Look ⬆️
There are plot spoilers below, if anyone hasn’t seen it but still wants to against my advice.
I hold no candle for Mormonism, though my manager at work is a Mormon and a very decent bloke. We went along having vaguely wanted to for years, but the plot hinges around a gauche Mormon missionary, prone to fantasising, who convinces the Ugandans he and his colleague have been sent to convert that the correct way to cure AIDS is not by raping a baby (as a Ugandan had proposed) but by fucking a frog, as Joseph Smith had preached.
Once the Mormon elders visit and have been appalled by the Ugandans’ show demonstrating their grasp of the religion, the gauche Mormon realises that he doesn’t have to follow the teachings of the church and becomes a whole new kind of evangelist and white saviour. We just found it patronising to all parties, and unpleasant.
Desmond Bagley! The Tightrope Men!
Oh God, I’m Proustian rushing! I read all the Fontana paperback editions when I was a kid. Those with the posed cover photos. Models caught in a scene from the plot looking both hammy and stiff. Always a firearm involved. Wonderful things.
This one has a soldier in bush uniform running through undergrowth carrying a rifle, despite the fact that no one (so far) has appeared in uniform, and the action being split between Oslo and Finland.
The Fontana cover to Alastair Maclean’s ‘The Satan Bug’ was a clinker. A man in 70’s hair and ‘tache abducting a blonde woman, pistol raised firing at the reader. In front of a Mini Cooper.
As I recall.
I think you recall well.
“hot macho action, wartime commando sagas, and exotic settings”
Thank you so much for posting that. I’ve gone on a similar image hunt, and yes I was right about The Satan Bug.
I owned all of those and quite a few more. Puppet On a Chain is gruesome. Wouldn’t pass muster now.
‘Now A Major Film’. Debatable. Talking Pictures TV does sterling work digging up these ‘major films’ from the era.
I remember them from my childhood. My dad had several Bagley and Maclean books, but nothing by Hammond Innes. I remember trying to read one of them, The Vivero Letter I think, but it was the Fleming Bond books that I consumed. I recall watching Running Blind on TV in 1979 and found it very exciting.
I remember reading my uncle’s copy of Puppet On A Chain (same cover as above) when I was far too young to do so. Frightened the life out of me.
I always think of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as ‘there, but not really there’, much like I view Princess Margaret.
What’s left after the tabloid ‘scandal’? If indeed it was in anyway interesting in the first place.
You can do Elizabeth Taylor, no pun intended, she’s yours, Burton did Look Back In Anger and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (his best performance), and what else?
Slight diversion… surely anyone with a pulse would pick his co-star in those two films over Elizabeth Taylor any day!
A genuine complete waste of talent in Burton’s case, and he’s on a par with, say, The Troggs when he should be Jimi Hendrix or The Beatles.
His Under Milk Wood is simply phenomenal.
It’s a point lewis makes. Where Taylor was mobile and natural, so much so that directors often didn’t realised what she had done until they saw the rushes, Burton was all about the language and the voice. He is often almost static from the neck down, putting all his performance into the words and their delivery.
I can watch Cat On A Hot Tin Roof every day for weeks. Giant is best known for James Dean but Taylor carries the movie on her narrow shoulders. She is superb in A Place In The Sun. Suddenly, Last Summer, again with Clift, is just as good. She is something else in Butterfield 8. In Father Of The Bride, she proves she can do comedy. And, I haven’t mentioned any with Burton.
An impressive debut in The Last Days of Dolwyn. He was also great in his last film 1984, and neither of these feature in his 7 (SEVEN) Oscar nominations. And I think he thought theatre was more important than films.
A chain smoker and an alcoholic who fell in love with “the most beautiful woman in the world” who was also a decent actor
Both were amazing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
As December and January seem like one long month I thought I’d join the two.
Down to Harrogate folk club for Bryony Griffiths and Alice Jones with their Wesselbobs* concert. Always entertaining with Alice dressed as a ‘candle’ though with a seven wicked candle headdress I thought she was channeling St Lucia as that was the day I saw them.
* we called the decorations on our Christmas tree wesleybobs when I wor a lad.
Watched three seasons of 2 Doors Down on catch up still have two seasons to go as I started watching Patience (autistic self-taught criminologist in the police records office) some of the plots are a bit preposterous but enjoyable. I’ve now started watching Astrid et Raphaëlle on which the series is based.
Went to a Wassail at a nearby orchard with mummers and morris dancing. I’d been a mummers many years ago so it was good to see them, I’m thinking of offering my services as a sword fight arranger as their ‘fight’ consisted of barging into each other and clashing shields a bit shoddy.
Weekend in Whitby for a party then home for a couple of nights before training it to Sunderland for the Fast Show. A splendid night however the couple next to me didn’t appear to enjoy it as towards the end of the first half she started checking her watch, they didn’t return for the second half which gave me the opportunity to stretch the sciatic leg out.
Next day train from Sunderland to King’s Cross as we’d booked to see Sunny Afternoon at Alexandra Palace, we’d seen it before but to hear the Kinks music in Muswell Hill was a must. May go see it again in Middlesbrough.
My son visited and played Gwenifor Raymond in the car interesting stuff.
Also heard The Kinks (unsurprisingly) Gong, Five Hand Reel, @Sarah-McQuaid as she’s playing near here in May and the Limur compilation suggested by KFD.
Probably other stuff as well but I never write it down.
Just back from a w/e in the smoke, but that’ll have to wait till next month.
January was long, cold and wet. We watched loads of telly, but nothing of consequence or that has leapt out to remain in posterity.
My gig as a real life disc jockey is fun and time consuming. A tiny shoestring internet station, the experience has been both rough and ready. I have free rein in my choices of what to play, so a load of preparatory revisiting of my favourites, new and old, is ongoing. 3 shows done, 2 taped and 1 live, actually the easiest of the 3, and my listener says it’s good. More to the point, I enjoy it, both the preparation and the process.
I’m still writing at least one review a week, too, so my old work life seems a lifetime away. Best of Jan’s crop were the debuts from Scottish trad/neo-trad bands, respectively, Falasgair and Astro Bloc. Better than either, mind, is Fathoms, the 2nd from Inyal, which is a fabulous demonstration of classy Gaelictronica, just right for the Niteworks shaped hole in my life, since they disbanded, at the end of 2024.
Nearly finished Nick Cave’s Bunny Munro book, which remains a quandary as to how it can contain such well observed descriptive writing alongside puerile tosh of the first order.
@SteveT reckons he’s the best DJ in the Black Country I don’t know if his listener agreed
My listeners span the globe @Pyramid although none have yet called for a second instalment.
January hereabouts often involves people desperate for some cultural stuff freezing their arses off in churches. This year was no different. On 3 January we were in a packed church to hear the womderful pianist Patrick Hammerle play JS Bach Fantaisie and Fugue in A minor, Mendelssohn Variations Sérieuses and Schubert Sonata in B flat major.
Later in the month we all shivered at a violin and harpsichord duet, Rachel Striud and Andrew Arthur playing tunes by Handel and assorted chums and contempories,including Gambarini,Geminiani,Hellendaal, and Festing. A descendent of the latter was in the audience, although I guess that we might all be related after this passage of time.
Highlight of the month was the Death of Gesualdo, featuring the eponymous Gesualdo Six vocal group and a troop of actors ( and a puppet performing an extraordinary series of mimes/ tableau depicting the life of the infamous wife and her lover killing evil genius. Here’s the trailer ( sound up)
We enjoyed the ENOs HMS Pinafore. Others have criticised it for being a bit panto, but it was great fun.
The Echo Vocal Ensemble are a young choir and I have to say their verve, range and dynamism topped anything we had heard by the Tallis Scholars, the Sixteen and Tenebrae in recent months. Well worth seeing if you ever get the chance.
We went tonone student performance. Edie Behr sang songs by songs by Schubert, Debussy, Poulenc and Fauré. Not my favourite style, but Edie and Rosaly Cheng on piano are mighty fine perfomers. And the Alea Quartet plus Sohan Katirai on piano played a very exciting Dvořák’s Piano Quintet.
At th cinema we saw and liked Hamnet, Sentimental Journey ( which well deserved all its Oscar acting nominations) and the Bone Temple.
I’ve been so stooopid busy at work that I postponed my pre-Christmas week off to the New Year, and it is now booked for next week. Consequently…
Heard
Very little.
Viewed
Smother S1-3. A sort of modern-day Agatha Christie murder mystery set on the west coast of Ireland. A family of wealthy nasties has members being randomly bumped off. I nearly bailed on series 3, but there was a twist at the end of the final episode.
Read
Kevin Rowland’s autobiography. An honest (a little too honest in places) memoir. Troubled genius or just a bloody nightmare? Without Dexys he’d have ended up in prison. Cocaine addiction sounds like no fun.
AOB
I had a massive water bill in December, so have spent far too long turning off isolating valves and stopcocks, and reading the meter in the rain, in the hunt for a leak. One toilet flush was slightly weeping, which would account for 0.2% of it. I suspect the new “smart” water meter is at fault and have raised a complaint.
Changed my ISP deal (see thread elsewhere) which will halve my monthly data bill, which will go towards paying the water bill.
A bit late to the party, but I’ve not contributed to this for a few months as I always seem to be busy on the weekends when it drops, so if you will indulge me..
Read
A couple of gifts from the-season-which-shall-not-be-named, Bob Mortimer’s The Long Shoe which lives up to its Scooby Doo-esque subtitle – A Mystery With Three Or Four Suspects – being impressively neat in its number of characters and locations.
Coinciding with my trip to the cinema for Saipan (see below), I have begun Shattered Dreams, Sliding Doors, Paul Little’s detailed as-it-happened recounting of Ireland’s ill-fated and highly controversial World Cup campaign of 1982 which, so far, is tremendous.
Heard
They only just crept into my end of year top twenty, but Babygirl’s debut album Stay Here Where It’s Warm, a collection of pleasingly uncomplicated melodic indiepop like they used to make, has been a fixture of my listening schedule for the first two months of the year..
(Babygirl – Dancing With Her)
I’m quite enjoying Hammer Time the new Hammer Films podcast which takes you through all their films chronologically, but the lady presenter has one of those laughs that can irritate and she’s very quick to employ it.
Seen
As mentioned above, I was dragged to the cinema to watch Saipan, the very definition of a tv movie. A story of limited interest to those outside Ireland and which has already been flogged to death for those within, you do wonder who it’s supposed to be for. The acting is good enough although, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Steve Coogan is far too old to play Mick McCarthy and what should be an inexperienced, beleaguered manager caught in the middle, comes across as a weary old pro looking for a quiet life. Even more far-fetched is the casting of the Tom Humphries character – the subsequently disgraced Irish Times journalist whose interview blew up the whole time bomb – as an attractive young woman.
A much more rewarding cinema adventure was a trip to see the award-grabbing Iranian feature It Was Just An Accident, which I came to knowing nothing and was constantly surprised by where its meandering story took me. Its ethical questions and recriminations and believable characters talking over each other reminded me a lot of Once Upon A Time In Anatolia and that is praise indeed.
I also follow podcasts on YouTube and two that have been floating my boat are the new Harry Hill Show in which – as one commenter has remarked – Harry finds the sweet spot between his tv character and his real self. The format sees a new guest sit down every week to chat with Harry and it’s therefore not a stream of rapid fire gags, but I do find each episode is like a warm hug and a delight for anyone who has ever wanted to be licked by their ice cream. Also watching The Rest Is Science with Micheal Stevens and Hannah Fry. Both have produced much of interest in the past and they seem to riff off one another very well. The revelation that Prof Hannah has the quantum computer from the tv show DEVS as a chandelier in her house is somehow even more impressive than any of the fantastic facts discussed in the show so far.
On yer actual television I’ve been making my way through the original Twilight Zone and arriving at classic episode It’s A Good Life, in which an omnipotent six year old boy has the power to exile anyone who annoys him to “the corn field”, I found the thing that horrified me most was the character who, upon receiving a Perry Como vinly as a birthday gift, chose to hold it in one hand with his (no doubt, given the circumstances, sweaty) fingers across the grooves.