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 🍿
It’s very Beckham-esque the way that Rashford only needs half a yard to whip a cross over
It is, clearly, coming home. ⚽
Some nice quotes in the Cramps article in Vintage Rock magazine this month
“There’s a million sides to Ivy and I just love all of them,” cooed Lux.
And Ivy wrote this in the notes for Lux’s funeral - Lux was"creature from another world, with one foot already out of this dimension,”
AI just described the image on my last post as a “child-like drawing”
I mean….it is very child-like, in fact most children over the age of 3 could do an awful lot better, but AI is normally so polite ! 😡😡
Scored my first own goal for a few weeks.
I can’t think of another sport where own goals are a feature. Players of basketball, cricket, rugby, golf, netball, baseball and ice hockey will never have quite that feeling.
I’m getting attached photos through from Bluesky in my micro.blog feed now :)
(You can’t see too many photos of the Chelsea ’60s/’70s team)
Thoughts on Don’t Look Now at Salisbury Playhouse
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it’s very tense and very dark
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it’s well worth seeing
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you can’t quite get the “drowning in beauty” in Venice thing in the theatre
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I’d be interested to see the film
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I’ve been to Fowey, it was very sunny and cheerful. I can’t imagine the gothic and gloomy Daphne du Maurier living there
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….perhaps I need to go in the off-season