2023 > 2024: Show you care!

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 of 2023, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, I gambled wrongly and missed the ending. But did I care? I know people like that film but maybe I've seen enough superhero stuff by now. The third film of 2023 I saw quite recently, and I did put down some thoughts in this blog, namely about Napoleon. Click on that if you very much have to see how physically excited I was by it.

The second film more than made up for much of my failed cinema going of recent times. I loved Past Lives, and I'm so glad people have been to see it. I may be in a minority but I relished its understated story telling, its understanding of real life and the way time passes and we change with it. It's so grown up, and the director - her first film, but an accomplished theatre director - crafted her narrative with such a sure touch, and drew wonderful truthful performances from her cast. I can't imagine anyone especially 30+ seeing this film and not reflecting on their own past life and not wanting to talk about it with others. I wish the poster quote didn't call it a romance. Not that there isn't romance running right through it, but there isn't an actual romance between the two principals. The comment misses the whole point of the film I think. Which is there in its title. It's a conundrum we all have when we reflect on what we once were. We know we did those things, and were like that. But we know we're not that person any more. And those lives have gone.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" L.P. Hartley

Books - avid reading as ever. Not as large a number as before, but most of them were good food for the brain. And as the year progressed, it became clear that I was going to achieve something never accomplished before: this year, for the first time ever in my reading life, I read more books by female authors than male ones. The actual count is 15 by women, 8 by men. Honestly, I don't know if this amounts to anything of any value, at all? Is it a good thing? Is it maybe a sign that in the last fifty years or so, female writers have been more successful in getting published? Who really knows, except that in my case, it is at least in part the consequence of accidental factors. The main one is that I paid another visit to my Devon cousins, and there my chief book swapping accomplice happened to lend me a much bigger pile than usual - and yes, she does read predominantly female authors. If she says a writer is good, I have tended to find I agree, so I've been successfully introduced to several new writers, mostly though not exclusively female ones, and have even surpassed her with one or two, by which I mean lending back to her other books by one or two of them which she hadn't read yet - two such favourites of mine, both read this year, have been Sarah Moss and Sue Gee. But I have to make the point that the femaleness or maleness of all these writers is surely irrelevant; I can see that there's greater diversity just between the various female writers, and also between the male writers. The female writers read this year range from George Eliot to Kate Atkinson and Tove Jansson, the male ones from Albert Camus and Alan Moore to Mick Herron.

And then maybe at an even further extreme, there's this gentleman. I'm singling out Eric Goulden's A Dysfunctional Success because it's the book which made most impact on me, certainly towards this end of the year. I was going to say, "You may know him better as Wreckless Eric", his stage name; but it hits me that even then he's probably a bit obscure these days. He's from the long ago late Seventies, the era when British Pop (and indeed, Rock) was given a kick up the jacksie by Punk, Pub Rock and New Wave. He was a major part of a pivotal moment in that history, the famous/infamous Stiff Records Tour, the one which included a load of soon-to-be-big names, notably Elvis Costello. He had one big hit, Whole Wide World, and for a host of music industry and personal conflict reasons, he fell from the barely touched limelight into the hinterland of dodgy labels and agents, a life not far removed at times from that seen in Spinal Tap. The book is frequently very funny - no word of a lie, I spat out my tea a couple of times. But more often it grips you in your guts with its visceral depiction of the dysfunction in its title. He wanted to make music, to do pop and rock and everything. But the music 'industry' - it really does need those inverted commas - is just the worst, at least as he encountered it. Selfish, greedy, exploitative. And it all flushed further down the tubes as he drank. Weirdly, he doesn't seem to have got into the other stuff. But the drink did for him, until, many years too late, he knocked it on the head.

That's as much of the story as I want to spill. All genuinely fascinating if you remember those times and were into music. But the joy of the book is that Eric can write. Of course he can, lyrics were his strength, weren't they? His story grips from start to finish. Sometimes it's mundane, briefly it's almost glamorous, but it's never boring. Don't be fooled by the anarchic style, the jumping forwards and back, it works brilliantly. Write more Eric, please, if it can be this good. I'd better add, it's honest. So honest in fact, that he's open about telling us some stuff, and leaving out the rest of it. You don't get the feeling that he's that bothered about secrets, just that this, nothing else, is what he wants to say.

Music - Mostly on YouTube. Traffic, L7, Django Reinhardt, Electric Six, Screaming Blue Messiahs and so on and so forth. Anything new? Now and again :)

I used to write about Christmas cards and their trends in imagery in these end of year pieces. Okay: my verdict is that on the basis of what I've received (~40-odd physical cards), there were no clear trends, certainly as regards particular animals. But quite a few did seem to focus on the Christmas tree itself. We don't really learn anything from this. But we never did, did we? I was sent a few e-cards, more than previously. That's a definite trend, especially now that stamps are so expensive. The "writing's on the wall". Or it would be, if the handwriting habit wasn't vanishing fast along with it.

So there's a cheerful message to sign off with - let's have more handwriting! It's creative, it's rewarding, it's good for the brain, and some vital bits of muscle memory. And it shows you care.