Nick Cave on a Fairy Tale of New York
One of the many reasons this song is so loved is that, beyond almost any other song I can think of, it speaks with such profound compassion to the marginalised and the dispossessed. With one of the greatest opening lines ever written, the lyrics and the vocal performance emanate from deep inside the lived experience itself, existing within the very bones of the song. It never looks down on its protagonists. It does not patronise, but speaks its truth, clear and unadorned. It is a magnificent gift to the outcast, the unlucky and the broken-hearted. We empathise with the plight of the two fractious characters, who live their lonely, desperate lives against all that Christmas promises — home and hearth, cheer, bounty and goodwill. It is as real a piece of lyric writing as I have ever heard, and I have always felt it a great privilege to be close friends with its creator, Shane MacGowan.
Simon Schama on Downton Abbey
‘a steaming, silvered tureen of snobbery … servicing the instincts of cultural necrophilia'
I don’t think he liked it very much :)
Currently reading: The Great British Dream Factory by Dominic Sandbrook 📚
I got a new old Salisbury postcard. Interesting bits are:
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the people queuing up for a bus, presumably not knowing that they are going to be stars of both postcard and micro.blog
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the designation of the Blue Boar Row as the A30 - before the ring road all the a-roads used to wend their way through town
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Sidney Herbert’s statue is still behind the War Memorial. From memory, it was moved to Victoria Park in 1953, to make room for celebrations for the Coronation
I like the informality of this postcard - it feels like a snap as much as a professional photo
Listening to Richard and Marina on The Rest is Entertainment and Marina mentioned that this advert came out in 1973
A couple of thoughts…
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I can’t believe it’s that old
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I don’t know how much TV I remember from 1973, but I certainly remember this
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I would’ve seen it on a black and white TV. I wonder whether many people any younger than me would know that black and white TV’s were a thing…or that, in the UK, cheaper black and white TV licenses were a thing
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should someone old enough to remember black and white TV’s really be using the phrase ‘is a thing’?
I found this pink-y, purple backlight on my keyboard. It makes me feel like Prince…while I’m turning things off and on again
‘Erstwhile’ is a great word.
Podcast episodes I enjoyed in November - Alex Salmond, Miriam Margolyes on Charles Dickens, The Labour Party, Brief Encounter, Bob Marley in Dublin, , Druids, Santa, King Arthur, JG Ballard, Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Shirley Ballas on Nirvana
These are the podcast episodes that I particularly enjoyed last month.
Episodes I’ve enjoyed previously are on the podcast pages for this year, for 2024, 2023, and for 2022
The Hated and the Dead - Alex Salmond (recorded and released before his death) - according to polling evidence, one of the significant factors leading people to vote ‘No’ in the independence referendum was concern about pensions
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The REAL Charles Dickens with Miriam Margolyes - some time around the end of the 1980s I heard Margolyes talking about Dickens in a bookshop off the Strand. It maybe didnt exactly chnage my life, but it did change my reading. I enjoy Margolyes on chat shows and the like, but she’s really, really good talking about Charles Dickens
Origin Story: The Labour Party – Part One – A Very British Socialism - Labour have had four leaders with the first name ‘James’. James Kier Hardie, James Ramsey MacDonald, James Harold Wilson, James Gordon Brown…but not Leonard James Callaghan.
Archive on 4 - Brief Encounter - Celia Johnson wanted to keep some of the clothes from the film. Not because she liked them, but because there was a war on, and clothing was rationed
The Rest is Entertainment - Is Social Media Dead? - I didnt know that Gwen Stefani’s “The Hollerback Girl” was about Courtney Love
Stuart Mitchell’s Cost of Living - Im not entirely sure this is the right episode, but the one i heard was very funny. Apparently Louis Vuitton bags need arent the most hard-wearing
Bob Marley In The Park - RTE Doc on One - Bob Marley’s only ever show in Ireland was at Dalymount Park, the home of Bohemians F.C. At the licensing hearing the judge asked whether the band would be “beating out their music on beer cans”
Desert Island Discs - Shirley Ballas - “‘Smells like teen spirit’ is a great paso doble”
Druids: everything you wanted to know History Extra podcast - Ronald Hutton says that there is some evidence that Julius Caesar’s account of the Druids of Britain, which is the most detailed description of them, was written by someone else
The Rest is Entertainment - Is Taylor Swift punching down? - i enjoyed Richard Osman referring to Max Martin as a “great unsung songwriter”
Iain Dale All Talk: 337. Sophy Ridge
Origin Story: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin – Part Two – Power - Churchill said this of Lenin ”The Russian people were left floundering in the bog. Their worst misfortune was his birth: their next worst - his death"
Origin Story: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin – Part One – Revolution - I think one of the guys on the podcast says that Lenin and Trotsky are the “Ross and Rachel of Marxism”. Despite that (unlike virtually everything else on these pages this is a subject i did once study a bit), this is a really good discussion of the big guns of Soviet communism
Saint Nicholas - Dan Snow’s History Hit | Acast - ‘Santa Claus’ is listed as one of the attendees at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Church established the orthodoxy that Jesus was divine. Legend has it that he slapped Arius, the main proponent of the Arian view that Jesus was human
King Arthur’s Sex Life Betwixt The Sheets: The History Of Sex, Scandal & Society podcast - I think Eleanor Janega says that the Victorians thought it unlucky to be married in May. Tennyson has Arthur and Guiniver marrying then.
BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, John Gray on JG Ballard - Ballard’s daughter, Bea, says she only realized how significant her father was when she read about him in the NME
BBC Sounds - Short History Of…, The Salem Witch Trials - the Salem witch trials happened as witch-hunting was dying out in Europe. This is a grim listen.
A Short History of…..Pearl Harbour - the Japanese air force planes were spotted on radar before the attack on Pearl Harbour, but it was first dismissed as a glitch in the system, and then as a group of B-17s being relocated from San Francisco
Episode 167 : Barbara Ellen on the NME + Madonna + Spinal Tap - I read Barbara Ellen’s column in the Observer for many years, and then realised recently that i think i knew her, very slightly. Odd to think she was going to the pub with a bunch of computing nerds at around the same time that she interviewed Madonna. Also features an chat with Spinal Tap, in character, which includes the bombshell that “Stonehenge was an amplifier”
Origin Story: Karl Marx – Part Two – The Father - Marx was called ‘the Moor’ by his family and friends because of his dark complexion
The Secrets Of Tipping Point–The Rest Is Entertainment - the discs on tipping point look and sound metallic, but they are plastic. Metallic-sounding sound effects are added on afterwards
Mark Steel’s in town - Lewisham - Desmond Tutu used to live in Brownhill Road, Catford
In honour of it being December, the Goth-iest Christmas record ever
The marvellous Il est né, le divin enfant by Siouxsie and the Banshees
I very much enjoyed this film. It feels like a properly grown-up film….in a good way
A new favourite Christmas film
Watched: The Holdovers 🍿
Watching Final Score or listening to Sports Report always calls to mind the people I’ve known who supported, or particularly disliked, each club
People I haven’t seen for years, who may even not still be with us live on in my memory through Walsall, or West Brom, Bournemouth or Tranmere Rovers
I hate to see our flag abused by the far right, and it was good to see the bloke from the Council taking them down.
Thirty odd years ago, I was working on the Strand. One lunchtime I wandered into a bookshop, and found someone I vaguely recognised talking to a handful of people about Charles Dickens.
It was Miriam Margolyes. She did a couple of readings, and was very, very good at doing the characters.
I bought a copy of Hard Times, and I’ve been a bit of a Dickens fan-boy ever since
Anyway, this is great
I thought this was a fantastic film. It was fascinating in the way that DJT has a dark fascination.
From a political point of view…. the shocking think about it was that it wasn’t that shocking.
Marvellous news. ‘The job of a lifetime’: Line of Duty to return for seventh season
England and Scotland….both got ex-Chelsea guys as managers. Both top of their groups. Just saying.
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
I thought Riot Women was great. There was a lot going on, but as Rabbi Lionel Blue used to say…isn’t that a bit like life?
Watched: Riot Women Season 1 🍿
