Pun based title, when I think of one

I was just looking at one of those music lists , best albums of the year and so on, on the BBC web site. They'd viewed the year via aggregation of lists from all over, including entities like Rolling Stone magazine in the US. To their credit, also a French and probably other non-Anglosphere sources. So, some interesting artists mentioned, some I'd heard of, some I hadn't. But no one I spent any time listening to in 2025. I'm generally decades out of date. Of course, nothing dates you more like your taste in music. New music I do like - which I'm going to mention here - isn't of any consequence in current music media. Sometimes because it's Finnish, often because it's by the sort of rock band who do their very exciting thing live, but isn't much liked by image orientated tv. Though Die Spitz ought to be, as attractive young women. This (right) is the first full album, just out this September, Something to Consume . I love it, especially how heavy i...

I want to say that cinema's going to pot, but maybe it's just me that's jaded. I only went to an actual film theatre once, and that was to see the latest Alien film, much of which was a retread of the first Alien film I saw um over forty years ago I believe. It wasn't a total waste of time; at least it sidestepped the pointlessly distracting mythos of mankind's foundation which was introduced in Prometheus and Covenant .  I used to rely on Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode's film reviews on Radio 5 for new films to investigate, but since they decamped elsewhere I've been left with Empire magazine for reviews which I don't trust so much. The basic point is about just knowing what new films are out. But these days they merge films tv series and even games into their star reviews section. So book reading continues to dominate my cultural mindscape. There were three books which made an impact on me this year. The first was  Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks ...

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...

Quite. The apocalyptic wish for a giant asteroid, sure, does reflect emotions I find it hard to let go of about 2021; however, it sort of spins off one of the most hopeful things all year which has just occurred, namely the launch of NASA's fab new space telescope . Some will nitpick forever about projects like this, especially the money, but it offers a prospect of discoveries even more wildly amazing than Hubble, and that can retire happily with all that it achieved for human knowledge. So, despite an inclination to get down about what I 'only' managed this year, let's talk about some worthwhile cultural things which I did or enjoyed, despite some tough stuff which happened. I actually saw two films in the cinema . This isn't enough to pretend to comment on 'the year in film' or anything like that, but it meant a lot to me, having that experience which I enjoy a lot. I saw Dune in one of the new little boutique cinemas, the sort where they bring food to y...

2020!!*!%&!! 😬 This year... I've read a lot of books. I may even manage a 34th by midnight! That's a lot for me. However, there's a lot I haven't done. Like see a film. A big regret is that I failed to visit the cinema before my trip to Finland in early March. In other words, the last time there was no issue about going to a cinema. There's all the difference in the world as far as I'm concerned between idly watching a film on the telly, probably with lights on, probably with adverts, lavatory breaks and so on, and actually going to the cinema. HOME includes Manchester's arthouse cinema, and I miss that place, right down to its sweet potato chips and boutique beers. Even if it is a bit of a trek from the station to get to it. I want to see a film with someone, take a trip, have a meal etc. quite apart from enjoying the full experience of great sound, widescreen and everything.  That's seeing a film properly . Worse, at this end of the year, I don...

I'm having to scratch my head a bit about any culture I enjoyed in 2019. One overarching factor was British politics which seemed to infect life with more and more depression as the year went on. We've just had an election which seems to have at last broken the parliamentary deadlock, but may prove to be a false dawn, once they get back to talking to Brussels. Me, I voted Green anyway, knowing full well that it doesn't force anybody to do anything. This is a safe Conservative seat. I'm one of those who think climate change is far more important than Brexit. I simply wanted to give a minuscule bump to the Greens' national percentage. I saw four films ! Stan and Ollie , Apollo 11 , Transit and The Irishman . Yes I certainly like going to the cinema but for circumstantial reasons that means organising a day around a train journey into Manchester. Especially because that's where the most prominent arthouse cinema is. All four films were good, and very differe...

Books, films, music; but 2018 for me was mainly about books . The thing is, I've kept up a record of books I've read since childhood, in a succession of notebooks, and I noticed this year that - since even if I read little or no books, I still move on to a new page - I would run out of pages in a very few years. So, I bought a new fancy notebook and in thoroughly OCD fashion, copied it all out again. I made a few adjustments to correct various mistakes etc., but things are looking good once more. Especially since it led to a resurrection of my set of Rotring ArtPens, ie. my fountain pens . I ditched my use of disposable cartridges, and fitted them with refillable ones, and then a set of nice inks. Mostly blues and blacks but also red, green and so on. Some have been used to colour code types of book in the notebook - eg. blue for prose, purple for poetry. But more satisfyingly I began to write letters. I knew full well that only one or two friends and acquaintances were lik...

Let's start with cards. Christmas cards . For information, I make a list each year, and end up giving or sending around 70 cards, to family and various groups of friends from past and present. I keep up with who I'm not hearing from, who I'm still in touch with, that sort of thing. But the stat I want to mention here is one which gives me weird amusement; weird, because it doesn't mean anything. It's to do with the subjects featured on the Christmas cards, and the apparent trends each year. As far as figures go, it's almost always Santa that wins, or else it's the Holy Family. In the objects or symbols category, I noticed quite a few wreaths this year. But the big perennial fascination is animals. I have no idea how fashions or trends would work on this one, all I can say is that it doesn't seem to be utterly random. Some years there really is a predominance of eg. reindeers, others, of robins. As a footnote, when I was checking out the Christmas po...

The inverted commas are because this isn't going to be that at all. When I had a blog before, like a lot of people I would present my own lists of the year's best films and music though I don't think I ever got round to doing a books lists as well. I hope I never pretended to be demonstrating any kind of definitive judgement. For one thing, who except for a professional critic can claim to have seen/listened to/read enough of a year's output to be qualified to cite the 'best'? This year in particular has been thin for me as regards new films or records. I've only been out to see a handful of films, and I only bought two or three records. As for books, oddly enough there are encouraging signs of a revival of my reading, but not of new books - I find it really hard to get interested in the marketing of the publishing world, even more than in the music industry. However, I'm not impervious to pop culture around the movie industry. I regret this, beca...