Pun based title, when I think of one

Writing one of these again? A sort of end of year review ? More a sign of nothing better to do I might think. I don't think I bothered last year. But I am pleased with one or two cultural glimmers from the last 12 months, and I never wrote about some of them, so here's a series of barely connected reports about films and books and; not much else actually. Films - off the top of my head, I saw barely three films. But at least I have been getting to the cinema. The thing is, for reasons of circumstance, the cinema means Manchester, which entails an unfun car journey, or what used to be a train journey I was quite happy with, once. But the train services have been getting poorer in the North West in recent years. It's all a matter of slow deterioration, but the little losses make a difference. In my case, the loss of a particular afternoon train from the timetable meant that for most films of typical blockbuster length, I could no longer get home off peak. For the first film...

Watching Napoleon has left me feeling a little sad. It's also left me feeling violently shaken, but more about that later. As it says on the poster, this is a Ridley Scott film. I can't claim to have seen all of his films, but I have seen many of them, in the cinema, and the fact that he was the director was usually the main reason I went and parted with cash, to see a film on the big screen. I'm certainly drawn to science fiction, so Alien and Blade Runner are the films of his which figure most prominently in my mind. But I've enjoyed his work in many other genres as well, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator and so many more. I'd barely heard about Scott before I saw his first film, The Duellists (who are Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel), which made a big impression with its spectacle and its rendering of its almost Shakespearean theme. Interestingly, it also has the Napoleonic Wars as its background. I got to wondering how many times I'd seen Napoleon Bon...

Let me just say first that the picture below is indeed a really terrible picture . I'm not pretending for a moment that I'm providing a useful illustration of what these birds look like. The thing is, I was caught by surprise: I wasn't expecting to see any interesting birds at all when I walked up to the service area this morning, for a sandwich. The route passes the small pond where I used to see various species of birds, as written up (according to their Finnish names) in this ridiculous wildlife series previously. I only had my cheap smartphone on me, and taking bird pictures greatly exceeds the practical specs of its camera. You might want to check back through this absurd little series. Most of the pictures were taken at this pond, though any future pics are likely to be taken at the much larger fish pond over on the other side of the dual carriageway here. It just became a thing for me, when I began to spot interesting birds at the small pond now and again, other tha...

Do you still read any of the 'classics' of English Literature?  By which I think I mean any of the great monumental novels of the Nineteenth Century. I was wondering about this having just read Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot . I looked back through my reading record for the last few years, reading 20-30 books a year, and saw that I read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park last year, and several books by Jerome K. Jerome at various times, though they're not exactly 'great novels'. That's all. Also, there have been a couple by Joseph Conrad, however now we're edging into the Twentieth Century. So it seems I don't read 'classics' that often myself, despite having a Lit degree and being a keen reader. (FYI - there will be a few remarks about Scenes of Clerical Life , eventually, but this didn't turn out to be the usual sort of review I'd planned) Do you remember Heron Books ? You'd have to be quite mature; they were advertised al...

Lists here, lists there, lists everywhere on the World Wide Web. They're ridicuous. The value of a 'best ever' list ends as soon as you've read it. Your taste isn't the same as the person's who devised the list. And when we're talking about pop culture, what could be more disposable? However, here is a list of favourite music videos. Mine, just mine. Its main purpose is to remind me of them - then I can go straight to YouTube and watch them. They're all there. You may have noticed I have a 'Desert Island Discs' page. But this isn't really appropriate for that. Partly because of the inevitable confusion with the 'favourite music' theme. A lot of 'best ever videos' lists I've seen are clearly lists of someone's favourite music, when they've simply gone and found the video made for the various songs. Not here. These are film pieces . True, they are all for songs I like. But in my humble opinion, with each one, a film...

Space pirates!! Revenger is what you might call a ripping yarn. Two kids steal aboard a pirate's sailing ship and go in search of treasure, hoping to repair the family fortunes. They have to prove themselves to their shipmates, deal with abrasive friendships, betrayals, tragic losses, and all sorts of nasty surprises; all in all growing up very quickly. A great range of unearthly threats and devilish traps confront them, not to mention some very unpleasant villains. Yes, Revenger might well have been a typical classic boy's adventure story; except that this isn't the 19th Century, it's set in space, the 'ship' sails on the sun's light, and the two sibling teenagers are girls. It's the first book in a trilogy by Alastair Reynolds . He's best known for his Revelation Space series, the epitome of what most would think of as 'hard sf'. Which means that the real meat of the books is the speculative science, and its far future setting. I have re...

Longbourn is home to the Bennet family. They are Mr and Mrs Bennet, with their five daughters, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Lydia and Kitty. If this sounds familiar, it's hardly surprising. However while  Jo Baker's book Longbourn is set in the Bennet household which readers worldwide know and love from Jane Austen's most famous novel, it has as its focus a cast of characters who are usually only fleetingly seen in classic novels, the various servants who keep the household running.  There is quite a cottage industry - or should I say, stately home industry - devoted to spinoffs from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . Many years ago I gave my Mum one of the better known examples, Pemberley by Emma Tennant. At that time I hadn't read any Jane Austen myself, but I knew she was a fan; as far as I remember she was non-commital about its worth. I've just had a quick check online and it does seem that the majority of these books are continuations of the story. I confe...

 You will know the riikinkukko better as the peacock . Or, strictly speaking, the blue or Indian peacock. I didn't know until just now that there are three species of peacock. The green peacock is found in South East Asia, and a third, the Congo peacock in Africa. Quite mysterious how that one ended up where it is. They all have striking trains for display. Of course the extraordinary multi-eyed feather display of the male peacock isn't evident in this picture, not least because that isn't a male peacock. Peacocks have been introduced all around the world, especially for decoration in ornamental gardens . My local tip (ie. local council refuse disposal site) is not an ornamental garden. Nevertheless, from somewhere nearby which I haven't figured out yet, they come and hang out at the tip. At first it's a pleasant surprise to see them, but soon they're more of a nuisance, getting in the way as you park and unload your stuff (today, hedge clippings, cardboard, ...

Coming Home by Sue Gee tells the life story of a family, born at the end of Britain's time in India and then making its unassuming way in the aftermath of the Second World War, sending two new lives out into the world while experiencing the fading away of the old. Many of the books I've read recently have been thought provoking and worthy of comment, and yet I haven't done so. Yet this... Maybe I shouldn't write about it, because there is so much that is personal attached to my response to it. Which I can't ignore. I have glanced at some other reactions to the book, and while it's been mostly liked, it doesn't seem to rank as highly as others of her books. Myself, I have read The Hours of the Night and loved it, it's beautifully written and left a lasting impression. I knew I'd read more by this author. Coming Home seemed a natural choice, because of its background in British India. This is one of a long list of story elements which are echoed i...