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2022-12-14 11:23 am
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2002 in books

Some books Ive enjoyed this year, or at least given 4 stars to on Goodreads.

  1. The Girls by Emma Kline. Suburban boredom, adolescent yearning, a murderous cult.

  2. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. We got stars directing our fate....Walter Moody and The Mysterious Case of the Missing Aurora Gold.

  3. The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre. Death in Kenya.

  4. Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. Voodoo in Manhattan.

  5. Winter by Ali Smith. Christmas in Cornwall.

  6. In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes. The Making of a Murderer in 1950s San Francisco.

  7. King of the Badgers by Philip Hensher. Small town class war shenanigans in Devon, kind of like Jonathan Coe, if JC wrote gay orgy scenes.

  8. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. In which Jonathan Lethem invents a new genre - neuro-divergent noir.

  9. Outline by Rachel Cusk. A Greek businessman, an Irish writer and a Sapphic poet walk into a story.

  10. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Little Women in the Congo.

  11. Station 11 by Emily St John Mandel. What will remain of us is art.

  12. The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith. A night in Tunisia; moral relativism in 250 pages.

  13. Who Will Run The Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore. Bildungsroman in upstate NY.

  14. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. Like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson crossed with Philip Pullman.

  15. A Word Child by Iris Murdoch. A darkly funny melodrama about lives of quiet desperation and drinking on the Circle line.

  16. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd. On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Subjects of Literature.

  17. A Writer's World by Jan Morris. Travel stories from Hillary on Mount Everest to the fall of the Berlin wall.

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2022-12-13 02:02 pm
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2022 in vision

Some TV I have enjoyed in 2022.

Station 11
Station 11 is set during and twenty years after a deadly flu virus. Just what we need in these pandemic-y times, right? Strangely enough, it was. The storyline jumped around and so we saw that Kirsten, a child extra in a production of Macbeth survived into adulthood, becoming the leader of a ragtag bunch of touring Shakespearean players. It was almost a utopia, rather than a dystopia, as the gang travelled the eastern seaboard, all summer dresses and long grasses, contrasting with the almost nuclear winter that Kirsten and her involuntary guardian Jeevon survive after the autumn pandemic. Of course, there's always an antagonist and in this case it's an apocalyptic cult run by the Prophet, who turns out to have links to Kirsten. There's the notion of working through trauma via art as the Prophet plays Hamlet with his faithless mother playing Gertrude and father figure as Claudius, just as we're working through our pandemic trauma by watching this TV programme. There's also the tension between the befores and afters, the pre- and post-pandemic people with the under 24s rebelling against those who remember smartphones and ubers. This is a different twist to the generation gap. Finally, the Station 11 graphic novel has become a sacred text from the old times, used for good or evil depending on who is interpreting it.

The Woman In The House Across the Street From The Girl In The Window
Supposedly a parody of domestic noir such as The Woman In The Window, the pastiche bits weren't actually that funny. If the writers had played it straight, replaced the most obvious rip-offs with something more original, then it would have been pretty good in its own right. As it was, I enjoyed it but I am a Kristen Bell stan and only want the bet for her and her tousled bob (#hairgoals).

The Afterparty
Coming off like a millennial Breakfast Club - with murder, as takes-no-prisoners Tiffany Haddish investigates the death of a singer-slash-actor-slash influencer at an afterparty of a school reunion, featuring The Nerd, the Princess, The Jock, The Basketcase and the Criminal as well as Stath from Stath Lets Flats, Jean-Ralphio from Parks 'n' Rec, Alison Brie's husband, and Vicky the demon from The Bad Place. Each episode (chapter) is told from a different character's POV and each prefers a different genre: rom-com, action thriller, musical, psychological thriller, high school party film, anime, police procedural and Disney/Jim Henson kiddie film. It's a bit worrying that mid-noughties nostalgia is a thing now though.

Chloe
I thought this was a variation on The Talented Mr Ripley in which a lower-class person inveigles their way into the higher echelons, but it was a bit different. The titular Chloe was someone that the (anti)heroine Sasha (a.k.a Becky) stalks on Instagram and then when she commits suicide, Sasha/Becky is devastated enough to commit fraud to befriend the dead woman's friends and family and to find out what happened. There is a twist, although it's revealed slowly rather than being a shock at the end. In a story about duality - Becky pretending to be Sasha and then ending up living Chloe's life - it was interesting that two things could be true at the same time. Chloe could have mental health problems and be a victim of coercive control, Becky could be a right fuck up and be right about Chloe's hubby. There was a little dig about the power of social groups as well - how they close ranks to protect the group, abjure outsiders and excuse the bad behaviour of a group member.

Yellow Jackets
The title put me off (I thought it was about the RNLI) but it's a tale told in three timezones of a teenage girls' football team flying across the country whose plane crashes. We see them in 1996 in school, then later in the forest after the plane has crashed, and in 2021 when some of them have become 40-somethings and some....haven't. The 40 year olds are played by stars of the 90s - Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lyndskey. I liked that the writers had made it about a soccer team, rather than cheerleaders (which a lesser writer might have done) and that some of the characters were quite questionable - none of the girls is very nice, but they are all very watchable. This is the first survivalist drama I've seen which deals with periods and washing rags. It's annoying in other TV shows *cough* The Walking Dead *cough* we see raids on supermarkets to get tinned food and bottle water but never sanitary towels.

Hacks
A Joan Rivers-esque comedienne has her Vegas club Friday and Saturday night slots cancelled unless she can bring in more money. At the same time a millennial SNL-type writer has been sacked for a twitter joke. Their agent puts them together and blam! comedy gold. I liked thaty it was about two spiky, snarky women, who are nonetheless eminently likeable. There is some millennial vs boomer humour (Debra berating Ava for not working hard enough whilst at the same time spending $10K on an antique pepper pot) and a load of great lines:
"This town is full of criminals  and hookers and magicians - they don't care!
- You're forgetting about the group of people who love me: people from Florida"
"You look like Rachel Maddow's mechanic"
"This must be karmic punishment for getting fingered at my uncle's wake"
"Jokes are so male"
"Some people think it's rude to make fun of other's appearance.
- Yeah, ugly people"
"I don't like all this therapy stuff...
- It's not therapy, it's mental health TikTok"

Shining Girls
A story about a time travelling serial killer sounds schlocky as hell, but this was really good. Elizabeth Moss plays the hunted-turned hunter, tracking down Jamie Bell playing against type as a charming misogynistic murderer. It's not so much a whodunnit as a how's-he-dunnit. She is aided and abetted by a handsome Brazilian newspaperman and her sometime(s) husband Chris Chalk, another actor playing against type. It's set in the 90s, as everything must be these days in order to activate the Gen X nostalgia gland (mine was definitely stimulated when Elizabeth's riot grrrl mom complained about The Jesus Lizard) and also to make people solve things the hard way with microfiche and poring over newspapers, rather than just googling it.

Severance
As if Charlie Kauffman decided to do a remake of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
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2022-12-12 11:54 am
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2002 in sound

My fave songs of the year.

A Certain Ratio: Shack Up. Let's start with something from 40 years ago. ACR were the best band at Rockaway Beach, bringing the party, the funk, the whistles. Of course, because all modern (6)Music is post-punk, this sounds like something released this May.

KVB: Unite. The second best band at Rockaway Beach: girl-boy synth-goth.

LIFE: Friends Without Names. The fourth best band in Hull go all moody 'n' melodic, like the autumnal sun setting behind the bridge in Hessle. I really miss yer.

The Lazy Eyes: Fuzz Jam. Funky, dreamy, rockin'. I want it all to be OK. I want it all to stay the same.



Wet Leg: Ur Mum. The Wetties continue their world domination with another single from their debut LP. It's almost kinda impossible for me to love them now that they're used as incidental music between TV programmes and are mentioned favourably on soap operas, but I still do.

Thank: Dread. I often hear a song on the radio and think: what the heck is this? before looking it up on the 6Music website and then never hearing from them again. This tale of renting horror is full of creeping basslines, spanking, spiky guitars, and incendiary shouted statements. And a saxophone.

She Drew The Gun: Behave Myself. I loved 2019's Something For The Pain and I love this one - about the power of misbehaving - too.

Nation of Language: This Fractured Mind. Synthpop-a-go-go.

Automatic: Strange Conversations. More moody dreampop. I go out, I go out, I go out on a Tuesday.

Nick Cave: Get Ready for Love. I've never liked Nick Cave, I thought he was an aged misogynistic goth singing about murdering women. Then I saw him at Primavera Porto and this upbeat slice of Cramps-y gospel-pop changed my mind.

Little Simz: Introvert. The best performer at Primavera.



Dry Cleaning: Strong Feelings. Another great Primavera performance, with the entertaining contrast between the static goth singer (she very much makes me think of the murderous Merricat from We Have Always Lived In the Castle) and the ebullient, metal face making guitarist. Spent £17 on mushrooms for you

Jungle: Good Times. I thought this song was recorded in 1975 in Detroit or Chicago, but nope, it's from this year from London.

Lande Hekt: Gay Space Cadets. This song has arrived here on a space ship from 1988. I'd be surprised if Miss Lande hasn't got some Motorcycle Boy or A.C. Marias in her record collection. I'm not that fuckin' stupid.

Gorillaz feat. Thundercat: Cracker Island. Usually I avoid anything Damon Albarn is involved with but I like this slab of electro-pop.

Special Interest: Herman's House. Really liked this punk-funk whoop-whoop song.

Morrissey: Trouble Loves Me. This song is not about being ill, it but just as when I was 15, Moz's lyrics seemed to be all about me: Just when it seemed like everything's evened out and the balance seems serene - trouble loves me.



Archie Bell and the Drells: Tighten Up. On a day at my lowest ebb, this came on the radio and I managed a shimmy around the kitchen to it and everything felt OK. I challenge you to listen and not want to dance.

Pigs x7 feat. The Lovely Eggs: Hot Stuff. I really dislike Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, but I really love The Lovely Eggs. Turns out when you put them together, they make a sleazy, hysterical version of the disco classic.

Deadletter: Binge. There are an inordinate amount of bands made up of athleisurewear wearing northern lads with a 'tude somewhere between Ian Brown and Mark E but I really dug this one.
Wants!
Needs!
Hopes!
Dreams!
Life's a binge!

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1HkbjKOgwcUJ0jqoTGsiEn?si=f47fda3958cf48f9
Also includes an in memoriam section: Roni Spector, Cathal Coughlan, Mimi Parker
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2022-08-26 01:45 pm
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Thoughts on being ill

I've always thought that if i had a serious illness, I'd do malicious and vindictive things that I wouldn't dare do in normal times, like acquiring a cattle prod and using it to get through crowds, emailing one specific person to tell her she's a self-righteous hypocrite and my life was made immeasurably better when she moved away, or dropping heavy objects on the bonnets of cars that park outside our house and play loud music or idle their engines. On the less malevolent side, I thought it'd be nice to go to places I've never been (Not Disneyland).

But when you're ill, your purview becomes a lot narrower. I just want to be better, I want to be well, that is all I want. Oh and to see the sea.

Hospitals are like airports, with the same personnel. At the top of the hierarchy is the consultant (the pilot), then the drs and surgeons are the co-pilots, the admin staff the air traffic controllers, the porters the luggage guys. And the nurses are of course the cabin crew, who look after you and bring you food and drink and are nice or indifferent according to their whims and personalities. You're waiting around for hours, no-one gives you any information and things don't happen when they're supposed to.

Talking of admin staff, the hospital care has been very good but the administration is fairly hopeless. I ws given an appointment for bank holiday Monday by phone, but received no confirmation letter. At one of my out patients appointments i queried this and was told it had been requested but not booked but I should still turn up. I didn't want to schlepp to the hospital on a bank holiday only to find out there was no appointment, so I called my support worker. She confirmed that it was happening, only to ring back 15 mins later to tell me that the relevant department claimed it had never been booked and of course it wouldn't be booked for a bank holiday and it was ridiculous to suggest it had been. I mean. Come on.

However, this is kind of a good thing that you have to keep advocating for yourself. It's very easy just to be ill, to be passive and dependent. When I was in hospital having fluid drained, a nurse asked David if i'd finished with my dinner plates, as if i couldn't answer myself.

That said, I bless the memory of the OG socialist Nye Bevan and the 1945 Labour government who made it possible for me to have all this treatment without going bankrupt or having to cook meth (I'm sure I'd be very bad at that).
"I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one."

I'm not jealous of other people going about their normal lives, but i am jealous of my younger self - by which I mean me before 18th July, which is when I started to feel ill. I look at my Facebook photos from, like, June and think: that poor innocent girl middle aged woman.

Also re: Facebook, I look at my FB memories most days to see what I was doing on this day in history (back to 2008 anyway). At the beginning I used FB more like twitter to make funny/moany/dumb comments. One thing I wrote was: "i wish i was an invalid, lying on the chaise longue, being exhorted to "try a little something", Yep that's the life for me." Be careful what you wish for seems to be the maxim here.

One thing a nurse said to me that resonated was that it's often harder for those who've never been ill to come to terms with cancer. I had the usual childbhood things and I've had colds and migraines and sciatica and Covid, but I've never been ill-ill. The last time I had to stay in bed for more than a day was Xmas 1998 when I had a chest infection. I've always prided myself on my tough immune system. No longer.

It's weird who gets in touch with you and who doesn't. I 've received lovely messages from people i haven't spoken to for years and invitations to go recuperate in Melbourne, Kenya, Wiltshire. One friend even offered to pay for me and Dave to go on holiday! But then people who you consider close friends don't say anything, including those who have been ill themselves and know what it's like. I'm trying to focus on the positives though (apart from when I don't want to).

Speaking of positives, i now get free prescriptions and will be able to access free massage, shiatsu or aromatherapy. I told my mother this (not the world's cheeriest person) and she said: "Well I'm sure you'd rather pay for those things and not have cancer." Touché, mother, touché.
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2022-06-22 01:55 pm
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Coastal Fever

Last time we went to Porto, it rained for a week. On touching down, it's drizzling and it seems like history is repeating itself as we wander round the streets of Matosinhos admiring the art and eating veggie food at Ginger. Last time I was here there was one vegetarian cafe, which was more of an anarchist drop-in centre that also did food, now there are three just in Matos.







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We are staying behind the sealife centre in a tiny bungalow (or casa de praia as I prefer) opposite the Castle of Cheese, a fort you can visit for the bargain price of 40p and which looks nothing like cheese, unless you'd forgotten about something in the fridge for a long time. A group of oldsters pulls up in a minbus outside the sealife centre, which has disappeared by the time we get back - do penguins feed on pensioners?


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*
Thursday is bright and hot and we wander the back streets of Matosinhos, which is all fish restaurants and heavily tiled buildings. There is a market selling cheese, tripas (not tripe, but filled biscuits), waffles, weird dolls. There is an impressive church, called Bom Jesus because all churches are called that in Portugal. Matos is trying to be a separate place with its own street signage (and explanations of who they're named for - some of them (the Portuguese equivalent of conquistadors) probably need to be cancelled). There's also a photo booth where you can take pics of yourself and local scenes and we are forced into it by a tiny, voluble Portuguese man. I'd forgotten how small the Portuguese are - I loom over them like a great Dane. We find a) a veggie restaurant on a tree lined avenida and b) a craft beer place, which doesn't open til 4 so we're standing outside, noses pressed against the glass like an English tourist in Spain waiting for a restaurant to commence the evening service. I drink 2 halves and then have a headache for the rest of the weekend, precluding any more drinking, which is - as Larkin said - not the place's fault, but my middle aged hormones, or lack thereof.


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The festival is a lot smaller than Primavera Barcelona and it has also grass! Free stuff to claim! Wooded bits! Beanbags to sit on and let Stella Donnolly's music waft over. The first band we watch properly is the Unbreakable Kimmy Gordon, whose music I'm not that into but she's a performer and a half. The woman is almost 70 but she looks 45 and stomps around the stage like someone even younger than that in her silver boots and shades. Quelle senhora.

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Later we watch Nick Cave. I have never really been into the wailing goth singing about murdering women, but when he strides onto the stage to the gospel-soul sounds of Get Ready For Love, I am smitten, even more so with I Need You, a song about a woman leaving him, but I wonder if it's about his son who died. His intonation: just breathe, just breathe just breathe just breathe just breathe could be about someone trying to get through grief or it could be someone willing someone else to live. We wander off to take a look at Black Midi and then wander back again and Nick is doing Ship Song, a big old romantic ballad that I do love.








*
It's Portugal Day so everyone is on the beach and there are helicopters and assorted planes flying over. I'm not sure Portugal has ever been involved in a war of the air, but so be it. Having gone north yesterday we go south today to Foz, the Broadstairs to Matos's Ramsgate and look at the Atlantic bashing itself against the beach. None of the locals, apart from a few hardy surfers, are in the sea. The warning flags fly perpetually red. The seafront is lovely though: a lighthouse, ice cream cone streetlamps, vanilla ice coloured promenade architecture, a cafe called Tavi, where the food is only OK but we sit just inside near the balcony, out of the wind but with a lovely seaview. It's great when we leave the holiday complex in the morning and (as well as the main road) the first thing you see is the sea.


There is an obelisk amongst the rocks, potentially a monument to shipwrecked sailors and a sign showing the spot where some pagan knights converted to Christianity after witnessing a miracle. These old timey knights and barons and whatnot seemed very easily converted, it almost seems like they wanted to go with the prevailing orthodoxy and just waited for a convenient coincidence to come along.


Festival fashion: Out - Four things t-shirts, plastic daisy crowns, In - ironic slogan t-shirts ("Record collecting ruined my life" "Tuning is not a crime"), fascinators made from actual flowers made by onsite florists. In - smoking, everyone is at it, even in the middle of a crowded front row. In - twenty-something Beanie Feldman lookalikes in square shorts. In - ugly shaved at the side haircuts which then fall to the collar like a de-gelled 1983 Howard Jones. I notice that old people wear band t-shirts and young people dress to impress. I also notice a kid without ear defenders and wonder who I should report his parents to.


We lie on the grass letting Slowdive wash over us like the sea, waving at the drone flying over. Then Beach Bunny, tuneful if unoriginal indiepop, then Rena Sawayama, a popstrel with bits nicked from Ariane Grande and Beyonce's careers and lyrics about being a boss, slaying, crushing it, loving yourself and other Millennial propaganda (being a slacker Gen X is a lot easier).


Rolling Blackouts run onstage enthusiastically. Aren't indie types supposed to mooch on looking sheepish? It makes sense when I realise that they're Australian and by local by-law gave their formative years to the Go Betweens and as such they now bleed Forster and piss McLennan. Two of them look like they work in a garage and I strongly feel that one of the guitarists goes surfing, so there's only the lead singer who looks like he doesn't believe the millennium ever happened (i.e. like an indie). They make a lovely pop racket and finish with their best song (as all the best bands do) and people mosh. I'm not sure anyone ever moshed to the Go Betweens.







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*
Spend the morning on the beach trying to paddle but it's too cold.

At the festival, we watch Dry Cleaning, nonchalant goths with a penchant for autofiction lyrics and looking (the lead singer at leat) like a character in a Shirley Jackson novella. Then Khruangbin whom we "watch" from behind the bleachers on a small hillock. They do a megamix medley of everything from Abba to Talking Heads. Then Dinosaur Jnr, who are more like Dinosaur Snr nowadays. Their luggage ended up in Valencia so they are borrowing instruments. I worry about the guitars getting back to their rightful owners - I hope someone's put stickers on things. They end with Freak Scene and then Just Like Heaven, which sounds...heavenly in the early evening air. One of the cleaners outside the toilets starts dancing and air-guitarring along with the music.

Last of the night is Little Simz, who with supreme (and deserved) confidence plays her hit first. She has a live band, rather than a backing track and is a massively charismatic performer: even though I only know two songs I'm quite bowled over.

We can hear the Grimes DJ set as we walk along the beachfront home and long after we've fallen asleep. DJ sets seem like a bit of a rip off. I mean, if you went to see Ian McKellen talk about his life and career and instead he just played his favourite Brahms concerto, you'd be a bit miffed, no?

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*
For the first time, we're not woken up by bands soundchecking at 9 a.m. There are bands I'd've like to have seen - Gorillaz, Tame Impala, Pavement, but all of them were on after the witching hour and I was exhausted each day by 11.30 p.m.  After midnight, I start to turn into an abobora.

We get the hot tram into Central Porto and walk down the steep hill from the train station to the riverfront. I remember this road from 2012 when it was dark and lonely, now lined by cafes, brunch places, coffee shops, tourists as far as the eye can see. The buildings no longer look like they're about to fall into the Douro. I think EU money has been here. What idiots we are. We have an iced coffee and pastel de nata in a tiny cafe half way up a hill, then venture across the bridge to the rive gauche then back again to meet the others and have another (we're on us holidays) nata at a cafe that specialises in them.

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There is even a nata menu - pastel de nata and coffee, pastel de nata and port, pastel de nata and orange mocha frappuccino. We get a lovely wooden boat down the river, then up the river to see all 5 bridges and get a bit of a river breeze, then huff up the hill to a stretch of bars in the Miragaia area, which aren't that amazing but are cheap and have a westerly viewpoint so you can sit and watch the sunset with your Super Bock. We eschew this however for food, a little place found serendipitously which does a veggie set menu of bread and olives and cheese and salad and tart and with a glass of wine from the vineyard that the restaurant owns.

Walk back down the hill, clinging to the side of the wall, amusing an old lady taking the evening air. We get the bus back, which is like a London bus in reverse: double decker but you get on the wrong side, the stairs are on the other side, and it's blue. Oh and everyone wears a mask. It's made for Portuguese height, I have to dip my head as I walk along the top deck. It goes along the riverfront then makes a right turn where the river meets the sea at Foz. If only there were a river taxi/bus from central Porto to Foz, that would be amazing.

Its nice to be back in Matos with its wide streets, flat roads and the cooling ocean breeze.


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*
We go for second breakfast a.k.a Brunch at Picaba Natural cafe, a beachfront caff where I order a salad and get a toastie and an unexplained espresso, which I drink anyway. We go take a look at the park where the festival took place - the festival is still being taken down, the skeletons of the stages are still there (earlier, we saw chairs from the festival being returned to the seafront cafes) and will be for the next 6 days but the rest of the park is a shady delight, with a pine wood, very free range chickens and solitude until we come across several large schoolgroups.

Ditto when we go to Serralves - a tour of teenagers is being show around Mark Bradford's Pollock-esque work which is all about gay identity, systematic racism and the AIDS epidemic (apparently). Maybe Monday is school trip day? There is also Ana Jotta's exhibition of frightening masks that, as you approach, start talking to you in Portuguese-accented French. Creepy. Serralves is an open air sculpture park with 3 additional galleries/museums: as well as the cinema museum, the afore-mentioned Bradford/Jotta exhbitions, there is also a Miro exhibition in the Casa Rosa, an art deco ex-house. I'd've loved to know more about the house and its former occupants but the 1930s was a bit of an uncomfortable time for Portugal, perhaps they prefer to gloss over it.


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We came here before but in the rain so didn't get past the first few installations. This time we get to the farm at the bottom of the park and see some goats, although not the wine press.

We get the bus back into Miragaia, cunningly cutting off most of the hill and are queuing outside Farinha (Porto's "third best restaurant") ten minutes before it opens. Twenty minutes after it's opened and we are seated outside (next to some chatty baby- boomer Americans about to cycle to Lisbon) it's full and the waitress spends the rest of the night taking names for a list. The owner or manager sets up an impromptu bar at the wall next to the church, ferrying aperol sprtizes to waiting customers. I have a giant salad (and a smaller pistachio creme brulee, which is bruleed at the table for us) - it's nice to get some vegetables down my gullet as the festival food was mainly chips or the world's worst noodles, something Camden Town would be ashamed to sell back in 1992.

Back in Matos, we watch the egg yoke sunset melt over the castle of cheese.


Screenshot 2022-06-22 at 13-52-54 Rachel_S (@rachelinthatlondon) • Instagram photos and videos







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millionreasons: (Default)
2022-04-18 02:43 pm
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En Lille

When we're through security at St Pancras, I realise that our train is going to Disneyland Paris. That explains the hyped-up kids and the hen party in Micky and Minnie mouse ears. However, the kids in our carriage are well behaved and I wonder if it's not kids that I dislike but parents, specifically London parents who live in flats and small houses and let their cooped up kids run wild when they take them out, and are more likely than non-Londoners to keep hold of their previous childfree lives by taking their kids to pubs (a bugbear of mine).

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The first thing you see when you come out of Lille Europe station is a Westfield shopping centre. We might as well have stayed in Stratford! But once I've left the new(ish) buildings of Lillaeurope, and head towards the old town I realise I'm abroad! The fin de siecle buildings, the wide boulevards, the tiny strangenesses of different pedestrian crossings, street signs and car registration that tell you you're in a foreign country - even if it's entry-level abroad.

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Our hotel is just off the Place de Theatre, near la Grand Place with a view of the post office tower. We wander around the old town, past la Bourse (now housing a second hand book fair, which would be amazing if any of the books were in Anglais), the Saint Maurice church with its stained glass, new and old, the Notre Dame cathedral (commenced  in 1984 and finished in 1999, hence the mish-mash of styles), the hotel de ville with its Unesco-approved art deco belfry, and the Gare De Sauveurs, an old goods yard now a bar/arts centre with une bonne terasse pour une biere. I do like new buildings but I'm also always happy to see them recycled rather than knocked down. We also pass la Pharmarcie Camus, where you can presumably get a cure for la Peste.

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There are plenty of domestic hen parties here (and even one stag party, all in red berets). I guess this is an import from England, but perhaps it is progress: when I lived in France, you'd never get groups of girls going out without men. Also everybody speaks English, perhaps because Lille is the first tourist stop on the way to Paris but perhaps also because we're in Flanders, where traditionally people spoke Flemish and English is an easier alternative to that language. I definitely hear other European tourists use English as a lingua franca - it's cheering considering the UK's current status as a European pariah. I thought there was no second language in France (apart from in Brittany and I suppose also verlan) but on the east edge people speak German and here official notices are translated into Flemish. I also notice that Easter doesn't seem to be a big thing, there are a few choccy eggs in supermarches but not the big window displays or adverts. Neither are there any billboards or political graffiti re: the upcoming election. I think Lille is just too bourgeois to get involved in tacky commerce or political machinations.

In the evening we eat at Itsy Bitsy, a very vegetarian vegetarian restaurant and have beers in Beer Market where they serve me an end of barrel which has a delicious taste of pipe cleaner fluid, so have to swap it for a new one.
*
It's Easter Sunday and I expect everything to be closed. When I lived in St Etienne in 1993/94, the only things open on Sunday were Auchan supermarket and McDonalds. But the Australian cafe we've chosen for breakfast (rather than eating at the hotel) is open, as are various other cafes. We take a Sunday morning stroll down to the market (where Stroopwaffels are purchased) and then the park and river, past the Zoo where monkeys do tightrope tricks for tourists.

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We take the train out to Baisieux and then set off for le Carrefour de l'abre, which is nothing to do with the supermarket chain, or trees, really. When I first booked this trip for July 2020 (shortly before cancelling it), we were just going to go to Lille. Then David wanted to go on  the same weekend as the Paris-Roubaix one day classic (cycle race). So I rebooked it for October 2020, shortly before cancelling it again (with a little bit of relief as the weather was cold and rainy in Flanders). Paris-Roubaix was considered for April 2021 but the thought of leaving the country before we'd left lockdown seemed like madness and by October, when it actually ran, Delta was in the ascendency. But here we are. Leaving the train station we just follow the other people, who set a punishing pace and we're soon dropped as there's a breakaway and we struggle to bridge across to the remains of the piedoton, trying to get on terms. We walk through the town but then take a left on a gravelly path through a field to the Carrefour (I consider taking a short cut through the field but don't want to start an international incident). It's hot and the land is flat and un-ending, just dirt-fields, a few trees and miles of gravel and cobble.

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When we get to the Carrefour corner, Belgium has planted its flag to take the terrority and unfortunately someone has let the Italians choose the music. There are no UK flags, that would be even more embarrassing than Russian ones (we are handed two tiny Ukrainian flags to wave) but when it comes to watching it on TV later, our faces are obscured by the Finnish flags of the two Finns next to us. There is a party atmosphere: RVs, coolbags, sound-systems, picnics, beer, grown men doing a conga in the road, a carnevelo if you will, but what else are you going to do on a sunny Easter Sunday? Go to church?? We perch on a verge next to the cobbles, eat some lunch and get some genuine Paris-Roubaix tat from the caravan (an egg shaped stress-ball and a small Asterix comic). It's terrifying when the team cars go past at speed (the Ineos one has tinted windows so you can't peer in at Sir Dave Brailsford inside) and the cobbles are a mere 6 feet across,leaving me worried about cyclist crashes. I like Felippo Ganna as much as the next person but I don't want him tumbling on top of me.

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When it comes to it though, when we see the dust rising on the other side of the field and the helicopters hovering, it's like a war:  he noise and dust and confusion, helicopters and vehicles and huge grim-faced dusty men moving at speed through the countryside to cheers and roars of onlookers and the rush of adrenaline. Not a conflict in Flanders fields, but like an ancient Mediaeval campaign to rid France of invaders.

We get the train back to Lille and go for the Eurostar which leave an hour late (or annoyingly 50 mina so we can't claim compensation). This time last year we left London for the first time after lockdown and all the trains were messed up. We leave the country for the first time in over 2 years and the same thing.
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2022-04-08 02:41 pm
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In Caerdydd

We went abroad! To the nearest country (Wales). The 6Music Festival/Gwyll was taking place and we took our place in it, staying in a B&B in Pontcanna, the Islington of Cardiff: all leafy streets, pastel coloured cottages, brunch places and portals to other realms:

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We also visited a vermouth bar, a Tiny Rebel pub in what used to be a redbrick treasury vault, an outdoor drinking/eating venue in what was once a light industrial estate, which was very Londony but without the hundreds of braying people or hyperactive kids, and Corp - an old pub, now co-operative crafty/food/things small businesses. We walked through the park, over the Taf, and past the castle, to Club Ifor Bach to see Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, who are what would happen if Status Quo and Queen had a quite ugly child.

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Sunday, we took a cheap but untimely train to Penarth, staffed by an overly bantery conductress who insisted that we sing her a song (we demurred). This was preferable to my last visit to Cardiff circa 1993 when someone spat at me in the street.

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Penarth is an upright Victorian seaside town with a slight pier and a chip shop and a shit load of hills that we walked up and down to get to the Barrage (reclaimed land/walkway/docks) through Cardiff Bay, back into the city where we found Ianto's shrine. Some twenty somethings walked past, one explaining it to the other "but it was a long time ago". On the way, we spotted the Scott memorial/museum, the Norwegian church where Roald Dahl was christened, a large fiberglass crocodile which has its own twitter account so you can read its thoughts on the geopolitical situation, the old customs house, and the Millennium Centre, which, unlike the Dome in Greenwich, doesn't seem to have moved from building- with-stuff-in-it to concert hall (yet).
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At the festival were Wet Leg who played the hits and made it clear that their album is out on Friday. I walked through the humanitarian corridor at the back of the packed gig to the bar where I could see that the drinks prices are in tiers - students (£3 a pint), private parties (£4) and the rest of us (£5). I found a table to sit on at the back of the room where Huw Stephens and Cerys Matthews were doing their bits to mic. I wanted to ask Cerys if she still wakes up every day and thanks the lord she's Welsh, but it seemed a bit tacky. However, I did come to the conclusion that no word in Welsh would look out of place in a H.P Lovecraft story. March is Mawrth - that's a two headed succubus if ever I saw one. I wouldn't be surprised if Cthulhu actually meant cottage, or something. Also, the local beer is called Brains, which must bring all the zombies to the yard.

Then it was Self Esteem, who are full of it. Esteem that is. When I saw them previously, i thought Self Esteem was the band, an indie All Saints, but it was quite quite clear who the star is. Rebecca's backing singers are now her beyatches, shimmying up to and rubbing themselves against her, prancing around the queen bee. Last time we saw her, she was in black jeans and a crop top, this time it was a leotard and diaphanous skirt, like a white Lizzo. She was great though, and I Do This All The Time was amazing and moving. A manifesto for modern womanhood. We were going to stay to watch Johnny Marr, but after the long walk back from Penarth, all I want to do is sit down in a pub - which we duly did and where the barman said: "Johnny Marr, he's a country singer, isn't he?"

Monday, a lot of Cardiff is shut so we spent a long time drinking coffee in the rather good Hard Lines Coffee Shop and Diner, as well as wandering around the market and buying Welsh cakes (40p each!) and a rather more expensive cup of tea in a fancypants tea shop in the High Street Arcade. Cardiff city centre is rather dull, dominated by a large shopping centre and a lot of the shops have turned into Five Guys type eateries, but the Victorian arcades are lovely, filled with small shops or cafes. We passed the Owain Glyndwr pub, outside of which Dave claimed that he's a son of Kinnock.

And then it's back to Llundain.
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2022-02-13 11:38 am
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Brighton (slight return)

We had originally planned to go abroad, but the thought of airports, queues, people, PCR tests seemed unbearable so we visited our old friend Brighton once more, this time staying in a central Brighton hotel, rather than an Airbnb in Kemptown or Hove. The Georgian hotel had a lot of faded glamour (more faded than glamorous), but with a (sea)view of two piers, from which we watched the sun set over the sea.

Overheard in Brighton#1
"I want to be a full time tantric teacher or a Buddhist monk"

The town is full of graduating students in suits and skirts and high heels unsuitable for the prom, having their pics taken in front of the dilapidated west pier, probably because the very ugly Brighton Centre is the official graduation venue.

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Overheard in Brighton#2
"You're just going to have to do some manifesting"

At dusk we wander down to the pier and watch the starling murmeration: the birds swoop as one under and over the pier like iron filings dancing, black bees swarming, a Marvel supervillain's atoms reconfiguring. Windfarms like ghosts of ships on the horizon. At night, they pulse red: dot dash dot dash.

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Overheard in Brighton#3
"I just need to park my skateboard"

Having done Hove and Kemptown (culturally), we go to a new area, Preston Park, which seems to be where the actual people of Brighton live. The park is very charming with a Japanese rock garden, art deco cafe, Alpine chalet, manor house, pet cemetery, clock tower and hundreds of crocuses.

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Overheard in Brighton#4
"Days go quick when you're coding"

The frail silhouette of the pier framing the setting sun for social media snaps and creators of local scenes greetings cards. The frilly bandstand next to the sea. The crack and snap of a skateboard hitting the prom.

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Overheard in Brighton#5
"I've joined Lulu work. People say it's a cult but that's just because they don't want you to change."

The smell of gear and incense in the air.
Old Steine with its hurrying cars and art deco bus-stops.

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Overheard in Brighton#6
"She speaks Arabic. Not classical Arabic, but real Moroccan Arabic."
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2022-01-11 10:02 am
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Beginning to rock to Rockaway Beach

Some highlights from Rockaway Beach:

1. The rock 'n' grrrrl beats of Grandma's House.
2. Tricky doing Hell Is Round The Corner in the dark (his choice).
3. Bobbing around on a pink flamingo float during the wave machine (half) hour in the pool to the sounds of Bronski Beat and Aztec Camera.
4.The electro-noodlings of Maria Uzor.
5. The cocktails at Papa John's, which I'm pretty sure were made by il Papa himself in an illegal still 'round the back of Butlins from left over tater- tots.
6. A Certain Ratio bringing the funk (and the cowbell). This band of unholy joy, like a cross between LCD Soundsystem, Chic and a bearded jazz-funk collective, made everyone dance and also played their Top 100 hit The Big E, when they turned briefly into James meets New Order.



7. Becoming the West Sussex Champion of crazy golf.

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8. Walking along the seafront to Felpham (Bognor's Hove) inc. lunch in the sunshine outside of the lovely Lobster Pot cafe.

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9. Bognor's bleak pier and coffee afterwards at the charming Coffee and Cocktails Cabana.
10. The electo-goth-synth-indie-jangle stylings of attractive young things The KVB (like Laytron recording at Kling Klang studios)

11. Jarv(is), who left me a bit conflicted. On one hand, I always preferred Pulp when they were a bit weird and soundscapey (Sheffield Sex City, Styloroc Nites of Suburbia) to their Big Pop Hits, but on the other, the best songs that Jarv performed were Pulp ones (She's A Lady, My Legendary Girlfriend, that sixth form one about who is running the world).
12. Dancing at the indie disco to Wet Leg and The Flirtations.
13. The millennial angst of Porridge Radio

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2021-12-31 04:23 pm
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2021

What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?
Went to A&E, had an ECG (two different incidents).

Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't do NY resolutions as January is the worst possible time to start new things.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Someone at work.

Did anyone close to you die?
No.

What countries did you visit?
None.

What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021?
To go abroad; I think this is the first time I've not had a foreign holiday since 1995, when I was a student.

What date from 2021 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
15th April - first vaccine. Also 29th Nov, when we saw our friend, who despite being vacced had spent 3 weeks in hospital with Covid (and may've died if he'd not had the vaccines).

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
None.

What was your biggest failure?
See above.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
The A&E trip was because I thought I had appendicitis - I had severe stomach pains and was vomiting. I didn't have appendicitis but I've discovered I can't digest sweetcorn, which is a pain in the butt because I love sweetcorn.

Also slipped on some gravel, fell over and twisted my foot, which still hurts a bit 8 weeks on. Top tip for being in your late 40s: try not to injure yourself because you are too old to heal quickly.

What was the best thing you bought?
For the first time ever at my work, we got a bonus and I bought an exercise bike. I like watching John Rogers walking videos as I cycle.

Whose behaviour merited celebration?
All doctors.

Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Tories, obviously. Anti-vaxxers and general conspiracists.

Where did most of your money go?
Going out to make up for all the not going out.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Seeing Wet Leg in Brighton.

What song(s) will always remind you of 2021?
Chaise Longue - Wet Leg.

Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) Happier or sadder?
Sadder - whist lockdown had its own novelty value, the fact that the govt were pretending it was all over in summer/autumn and relying on people's personal responsibility just made people behave irresponsibly. Also, I was optimistic this time last year that vaccines would be the magic bullet, but this is obviously not the case.

b) Bigger or smaller?
A tiny bit thinner due to more exercise biking and giving up dairy/pastry/cakes etc (see above re: ECG).

c) Richer or poorer?…
About the same, although inflation/utilities prices threaten this. Thanks, Brexiters!

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Travel.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Being ill. I did not catch Covid, but the vaccines knocked me out for about a week each time. Plus three colds, plus periods that went on for 1-2 weeks, plus migraines, meant that I was probably out of action for about 2 months this year.

How did you spend Christmas?
Chez nous.

Did you fall in love in 2021?
Nope.

How many one-night stands?
Nope.

What was your favourite TV program(me)?
Mare of Easttown

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
My hate levels are maintained at the same level.

What was the best book you read?
Zoo Station by Ian Walker.
The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Wet Leg.

What did you want and get?
To keep WFH.

What did you want and didn´t get?
A winter holiday in the sun.

What was your favourite film of this year?
I only went to the cinema three times, but I very much enjoyed Last Night In Soho. On Netflix, Power Of The Dog was great.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?..
48. Went to Kew Gardens.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Travel abroad.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2021?
Unwashed.

What kept you sane?
The Boyf and the cat. Although also a bit insane when either of them wakes me at 4 a.m.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
My hormones are too shrivelled to fancy anyone.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Tory corruption (at least in the old Thatcherite days, they used to resign).

Who did you miss?
Seeing people for the first 4 months of the year.

Who was the best new person you met?
I met a nice woman at someone's birthday party who called me "pragmatic", which is fair enough.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021:
Things don't follow a narrative.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue, on the chaise longue, on the chaise longue, on the chaise longue.

Post a picture of something that made you happy this year:

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Did you wrong or hurt somebody in 2021?
Oh, probably.

Is there some new place you are planning to visit in 2022?
Hopefully.

Where would you have wanted to go and did not in 2021?
Anywhere!

Did you learn any new life skill in 2021?
I set up my first zoom meeting, does that count? I was more of a passive zoomer before that.

Any new food or drink preferences developed in 2021?
I've eaten quite a lot of bipbimbap/poke bowls/donburi (essentially all the same thing)

What is your greatest fear for 2022?
The ongoing pandemic. That people will forgive Boris Johnson all of his sins

Did you follow any sports event in 2021?
The Euros.

Which social media occupied most of your time in 2021?
Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Instagram).

Is there somebody you feel particularly grateful to this year?
davidnottingham

Name a hope you have for 2022
An end to all of this.

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2021-12-11 08:47 pm
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TV 2021

Two Doors Down. The Guardian recommended the Hogmanay special about a couple adapting their summer holiday to a highlands getaway, and I watched it whilst not realising that there were another four series, all featuring the nice couple next door (Arabella Weir as the lovely wife/mum) and the considerably more horrible couple two doors down (Doon Mackinnon from Smack The Pony as the screechy harridan) and in between, Elaine C Smith as the "you'll have had your tea" Glasgwegian tight-arse stereptype and her permanently embarrassed daughter (her from My Big Fat Mad Diary). Like a cross between The Royle Family and Mum (the sitcom, not the deodorant).

Staged. I didn't watch the first series of this during Lockdown 1 as I assumed it would be luvvie hell, but it was actually very funny, particularly David Tennant's and Michael Sheen's rows, Michael accusing David of over-acting, David saying that Michael's acting style is "Ok for Theatre Clywd". Could be filed under Middle Aged Man Banter, along with The Trip, Mortimer and Whitehouse, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.



Wandavision. I don't care about superheroes but I did enjoy this high concept sitcom pastiche series, which only became boring when it was the final battle of goodie witch vs baddie witch. Riffing off of sitcoms through the decades, such as I Love Lucy, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, Malcolm in the Middle, & Modern Family, the series had amazing attention to detail, not just in the sets, the jokes and the stock characters, but also the way the episodes were filmed, using the techniques of the time. A one-off, quite literally.

It's A Sin. Eighties nostalgia for the landline in the hall mixed with AIDS crisis horror. If you weren't crying in the first episode, you'd be crying by the last. Davies didn't make his characters into victims, in fact some of them were pretty self-centred, shallow and obnoxious, but you still cared about them.

Counterpart. The concept of this show was that the world split in two during an east German experiment with each universe carrying on ignorant but in parallel to the other one, with only an elite number of people able to pass from one world to the other at a Checkpoint Charlie type border. It was as if John Le Carre had written a sci-fi. It was first shown in 2017 and it was odd watching it in Lockdown 3 as the characters wore masks and used hand sanitiser following a deadly flu outbreak, which turned out to have been caused by the prime world infecting the secondary one.

Behind Her Eyes The TV equivalent of an airport novelette, but it was good schlocky fun: a single mum has an affair with a man who turns out to be her new boss, then befriends his wife - BUT WITH A RIDICULOUS TWIST.



Resident Alien. This seemed like an old fashioned weird comedy about an alien crash landing in space and having to fit in with the locals, Northern Exposure or Due South-style, with trad. quirky characters, but then had subplots of domestic violence and threats to kill a child, making it a bit darker than the average fish out of water sitcom.

Flight Attendant. Hot mess/functioning alcoholic, Kaley Cuoco, wakes up with a dead man in her bed and, on becoming a suspect, has to solve the case herself with the aid of her frenemy, Rosie Perez, nonchalant lawyer, Zosia Mamet and GBFF, Griffin Matthews. It also features Ann Magnuson as mother of the dead man, whom older readers may remember as the cigarette girl in Desperately Seeking Susan.

Mare of Easttown. Hurrah for the Monday night date with marvellous murder maven, Mare. It was perfect TV, brilliantly acted with great accents and the Pennsylvania backdrop becoming part of the story itself - as it should in all good detective stories. As in most whodunnits, it's not who did the dark deed that's important, more the secrets exposed, the seedy underbelly revealed, the perfect lives shown to be a lie. MoET had all this and more: female bonds, dysfunctional families and of course Murder Durder.

Kevin Can Fuck Himself. Another high concept sitcom pastiche show. Alexis from Schitt's Creek plays a sitcom wife who is disparaged, ignored, and ridiculed on screen and going mad/murderous off screen. It was never quite clear if she was actually in a sitcom and we were seeing behind the scenes, the life of a minor character exposed, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern style, or whether the sitcom bits were all in her head. It was good to watch a feminist TV show that wasn't about rape and murder - Kevin doesn't beat Allison, he isn't violent or a drunk. What he does do is belittle her, disregard her and deride her to his best friend and father, with whom he prefers to spend his time. With a bright palette and a laugh track, this is funny, to us it's heartbreaking. The show seemed to be criticising traditional sitcoms as well as traditional man-child behaviour and Allison gets no help from the other women: the next door neighbour's sister puts up with the men's boorish behaviour to be one of the boys, her co-worker says she ought to "dress nicer. Kevin deserves it".



The Chair. Eve from Killing- (Sandra Oh) stars as the chairperson of an English department at an Ivy League college. The series featured a lot of inter-generational humour and conflict, firstly the half-dead boomer academics who want things to remain as they always have and don't understand their increasing irrelevancy or their students and overlook the up and coming BAME lecturers vs Gen X who want a more modern approach and then Gen X vs Gen Z as the students use their internet addiction and cancel culture to bring down a lecturer who didn't mean what he is accused of doing. Best character is Joan (Holland Taylor), who starts a bin fire in her office to set alight student evaluations and wildly flirts with anyone 30-40 years younger than herself. If you did an English degree, you should definitely watch it.

Back to Life S2 and Guilt S2. Usually second series after brilliant first seasons are disappointing. Not so these two. In both series, it seemed that the stories had wrapped after the final episode: in Back To Life, Miri found a kind of peace as she discovered why her best friend Lara had attacked her back in 2001, and she finally enjoyed an ice cream on the beach at Hythe with her on/off/on/off/on/off love interest. S2 stayed on the same path with more or less the same characters continuing the story, with the new big bad being Lara's father (Ade Edmondson, having a second career playing deadbeat dads) determined to get his revenge on Miri. A big TV show this year was Ted Lasso, which I tried and didn't like. The characters were cliched and the jokes mouldy (English people like drinking tea! And eating hot curries!) and the hey diddly iddly Flandersishness of the main character irritating. What it was trying to do - a basically decent, slightly bonkers person tries to do good in the world but is stymied at every turn by people and circumstance - was done much better in Back to Life (imo).

Not so Guilt. This was about a man who tries to do bad in the world. Again, S1 seemed to have everything wrapped up, the bad big brother took the rap for the younger, hapless sibling for an accidental killing. But now big bro is back, he's taken over a children's play centre to create a legal centre with a PI whom he once pushed off the wagon. and they're now dealing with a new story, which involves bent coppers, undercover alcoholics, money launderers, corrupt priests, dodgy planning deals. Never mind Succession and NYC, I was more interested in Edinburgh and whole load of Guilt.



Only Murders In The Building. I bought [livejournal.com profile] davidnottingham 3 months of Disney+ so he could watch his superheroes and his star wars. I'm not that interested in Marvel or Millennium Falcons but I did like this comedy-drama of 3 true crime podcast nerds discovering a murder in their building (the beautiful art nouveau Upper West side Belnord) and vow to solve it, whilst keeping secrets of their own. Like Search Party with more babyboomers and less brunch.

The Boys. More superhero stuff but in reverse. In this series the superheroes, who all work for a private company, are the bad guys, whereas the good guys are a ragtag bunch of vigilantes, desperadoes and New Zealanders doing bad English accents. I preferred S2 which was written and filmed before Trump was ousted and featured a new superheroine called Stormfront who at first seemed like a good kickass female addition to the gang, but soon turned out to be a lot more than she seemed, with a subtle nod to growing fascism in the US.

“You can’t win the whole country anymore. No one can. You don’t need 50 million people to love you — you need 5 million people fucking pissed."

”The entire concept of a hero who unites the world is dead in 2020. You have fans, I have soldiers."

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2021-12-05 09:56 am
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21 Books of 2021

I've been mostly reading non-fiction this year, not because I was bored of fiction, but because there were a lot of factual books on my to-read list, which I never read because I prefer losing myself in the world of a novel. However, I've read a lot of good stuff: memoirs, pop-sociology, pop-psychology, feminist polemics, travelogues and books with a lot of facts to entertain people at parties.

1. Sylvia Beach - Shakespeare and Company. Literary lesbians in pre-war Paris.
2. Tim Jenkin - Escape from Pretoria. A Boy's Own Anti-Apartheid Adventure Story.
3. Tracey Thorne - Another Planet. Tracey does the suburbs in this second memoir from the indie-jazz-electro popster.
4. Paul Morley - The North. Paul does the north: a cross between a memoir, history, social commentary and cultural investigation.



5. Lee Israel - Can you Ever Forgive Me? If you like nice stories about nice people doing nice things and having a nice, happy ending, you won't like this book. If you like stories about quite objectionable people doing questionable things and being rather bitchy and hilarious along the way, you will.
6. Michael Booth - The Almost Nearly Perfect People. Tales from Scandiland.
7. David Sedaris - Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim. In which I discover my one true love.
8. Joan Wyndham - Love Lessons. Loves and losses in boho Chelsea during the war.
9. Michel White - Popkiss, the Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records. Nineties nostalgia a-go-go.
10. Nina Stibbe - Love, Nina. The new Sue Townshend.



11. Emily Chappell - What Goes Around. Life on a bike.
12. Will Ashon - Strange Labyrinth. Into the woods, or rather the forest (Epping).
13. Rob Baker - High Buildings, Low Morals. Tangential tales about London from the pre-modern times (post-WW1 to the 1970s), from Noel Coward to Ronnie Kray.
14. Quentin Crisp - The Naked Civil Servant. Camp as not just Christmas, but Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and NY Eve as well.
15. Laurie Lee - A Moment of War. Laurie goes over the top (of the Pyrenees) and fails to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
16. Ian Walker - Zoo Station. Tales of communism and capitalism and late night bars in 1980s Berlin.



17. Gareth Rees - Unofficial Britain. Finding the weird (or wyrd) in industrial estates, electricity pylons, motorway service stations, council estates, roundabouts and flyovers.
18. Joyce Johnson - Minor Characters. The Beat generation, grrrrl-style.
19. Elspeth Huxley - The Flame Trees of Thika. An Edwardian childhood in Kenya.
20. Joe Moran - Queuing for Beginners. A deep dive into Extreme Sociology/social history, perfect for the nerd in your life.
21. Francesca Wade - Square Haunting. The history of a Bloomsbury square through the lives of five female pre-war academics and writers.

My full Goodreads reviews are here, in case of interest.
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2021-12-04 11:05 am
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21 Songs of 2021

1. Roisin Murphy - We Got Together. Because of her Celtic name, I assumed Ms Murphy would be a whispy-voiced singer-songwriter with maybe a little ukulele thrown in, but this is the bangiest of bangers.
2. The Wild Swans - The Worst Year Of My Life. We had a Friday night listening party on Facebook and this was one of the songs played. It seemed to sum up things back in Lockdown 3.
3. Alanis Morissette - Hand In My Pocket. Sometime early in the year, I pivoted to mumcore and started watching Harlan Coben adaptations on TV and listening to this (and You Ougtta Know) quite a lot. I think it was the line "and everything's going to be fine, fine, fine, fine, fine" that seemed quite soothing.



4. Jane Weaver - Heartlow. I thought this was Lush or The Heart-throbs when I first heard it. Mellow and melodical.
5. Orville Peck - Turn To Hate. Someone has a few Lloyd Cole records.
6. Ayo & Teo - Rolex. Because I am 48, i'd never heard of "the rolie", a dance from Fortnite based on the dance from the video of this song. Despite the hideous autotune, I really liked the song - the twosome seemed so desperate for their bling, and it seemed quite wholesome compared to tracks about murder or being rude about women.
7. Courting - Grand National. ART ROCK AGOGOGO!
8. Ezra Furman - I'm Glad That We Broke up. One of the songs played to death by 6Music that you end up humming when you least expect to.
9. Lonelady - (There is) No Logic. Pack away your keytar St Vincent, you can stop now.



10. Self Esteem - I Do This All The Time. My favourite song of the year (until it was superseded by no. 14). Rebecca T doesn't so much wear her heart on her sleeve as all of her internal organs and there was so much for me to relate to: "Don't be intimidated by all the babies they've had", "You're a good tall girl, you're a good sturdy girl", and of course the refrain: "Look up, lean back, be strong, you didn't think you'd live this long".
11. UNKLE - If We Don't Make It. Another one promoted by 6 Music, i didn't actually realise this was a new band, it sounded like Bianca Jagger was grooving on down to the song in Studio 54.
12. Sharon van Etten vs Angel Olson - Like I Used To. God I love this song, such a big ballad, a tortured torch song. I'm a sucker for strings in pop. A song to drink red wine to whilst ripping up photos of your ex.
13. Marie Davidson - Work It. I don't agree with the work ethic in this song, but I do love to workout (i.e. dance for a couple of minutes) to it.



14. Wet Leg - Chaise Longue. I heard this on Steve Lamacq's show and thought it sounded like 90s lo-fi superstars Lungleg. I watched the video and was blown away by the insouciance of the protagonists, the innocent-dirty lyrics, the Amish-core couture. It sounded like summer was coming.
15. Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends. Such a hopeful song.
16. Superstate - Yogatown. This is a Graham Coxon production, him out of Blur, but sounds nothing a Kinks rip-off. The plaintive appeal to call the police had me dialling 9 9 a couple of times.
17. Pip Blom - Keep It Together. Dutch indiepoppers pop off.
18. Goat - Queen of the Underground. Not to be confused with Goat Girl (or Goatse). Myself, I am Queen of the Overground, grumbling about cancelled trains and sitting outside Hackney Wick station for 15 minutes to regulate the service.
19. Tirzah - Tectonic. Minimalist electro-pop
20. Wet Leg - Wet Dream. When I first heard this i thought it wasn't as catchy as Chaise Longue (which i had to ration myself to one listen per week as it would get in my head and refuse to leave), but after a while I realised it was as catchy as Covid at a Cornwall surf festival. The intro owes something to Bohemian Like You by the Dandy Warhols but the rest of the song is pure Leg and what could be more nonchalant than ending a song with "Let's begin"?. We were lucky enough to see them in Brighton (for free!) in August with only a handful of other people.
21. Remi Wolf - Quiet On Set. Love this bubblegum pop-rap song.


Spotify link - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Y5lfgppCHzIuUGLJ1HCle?si=4fc6c06599334bb3
Also includes an in memoriam section: Mike Keds from The Senseless Things, The New Yorks Dolls' Sylvain Sylvain, and the wonderful Stephen Sondheim.
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2021-09-21 05:34 pm
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Weekend à Canterbury

We went to Canterbury for the last of the summer wine (or rather, some stout in Pegasus craft beer bar). First thing you notice about Canterbury is that once there were Mediaeval walls, now there's a ring road and there's definitely an in crowd and an out crowd. Our B&B is outside of the ring road, although it's only a 15 minutes walk along the River Stour to get into the city centre. It's been so long since we stayed in a traditional B&B with a landlady and a mini kettle (although in this case it's a Nespresso - babyboomers are so hot for Nespressi) and small packets of biscuits that I'd forgotten how guesthouse owners love to chat or write three page essays in the B&B binder about how they set up the B&B, including details of wall painting and boiler replacement. There's also an advert for a wood cabin they own in Wales which they inherited from a friend "who sadly died of Covid". Ok then.



Second thing you notice about Canterbury is that a lot of the chain shops have closed down - no more Cath Kidston, Yo Sushi or Costa Coffee. However, for small independents the markets seems to be booming:  there are three book shops (and several charity shops selling books), two record shops (and another one opening soon), three retro gaming/computer nerd shops and innumerable craft shops selling jewellery, pottery, hippie-ish clothing etc.

The third thing you notice is that all the cafes serve the same rather boring food (Paninis (sic), baked potatoes) until we find the hipster place with its flat whites and sourdough sarnies.



Fourth thing is that Thomas à Beckett was a martyr for tourism. The cathedral is expensive to visit but pretty good VFM with the spooky atmospheric crypt and the outdoor space with herb garden and remains of the monastery. But if T à B hadn't gone and got himself murdered by accident, the
pilgrims wouldn't have started walking here and Canterbury wouldn't have become a tourist mecca (nowadays we get here on HS1 in 48 minutes, which is more efficient). I wondered why people schlep over to Spain to do the Santaiago de Compostela when they could do the pilgrim trail here from Winchester to Canterbury but I then discovered that it's mostly A-roads nowadays. Of course it is.

Reading about Thomas and Henry II, it seemed that the trouble was started by Thomas who got a cob on when Henry decided to get coronated at York, rather than Canterbury, and Thomas ex-communicated him on the spot, which is a bit extra. It's like the ultimate rap beef.



The next thing is the Roman museum, which is the usual collection of pots and statues of Romans "how they lived". There are the remains of a Roman street in the basement but behind glass. I prefer St Albans where you don''t have to pay to get into the Roman town and you can wander freely around the ancien bits 'n' bobs (for the same reason, Avebury will always beat Stonehenge). There's a tedious tendency in this country to cover everything in glass, precious and untouchable. I realise you need to protect ye olden stuffe from the general public, but at the same time, you don't get Hadrian's wall behind a glass facade.

Final thing is that Canterbury council needs to ban cars within the walls. It's ridiculous that there are giant SUVs careering around narrow mediaeval streets. the city centre is about 15 minutes across, no-one needs a car to cover that distance. Take the Nespresso machines and the cars away from the baby-boomers and life would be so much better.

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2021-08-31 08:32 am
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Brighthelmstone

We tried to work out how many times we'd been to Brighton, but it was pretty impossible especially as we had been several times with other people. At a guess, 15 visits, but there's always more stuff to find when you walk the back streets, over the top from the station to Kemptown, past the pepper pot folly, the Phoenix red brick brewery, now a community centre, which wouldn't look out of place in Manchester, past rows of sweet pastel coloured terraces. We're staying east this time as opposed to Hove's west (last time) - you wonder if they get along or have Kemp-Hove battles like the mods and rockers in the early 60s, or whether they find common ground in hating Brighton and its tourist tat, crap pubs, psychics on the beach and ugly 60s monstrosities? Talking of mods, there are hundred of them here, from aged boomer mods to baby mod-lings, the (great?) grandchildren of the original, Lambretting up and down the pier, posing for money like 80s punks and not having any fights with rockers because it's their time next weekend (Ace Cafe revival meet up).



We wander around the Lanes and North Laine, drinking fancy chocolate drinks in Knoops fancy chocolateria and then take the Volks train (nothing to do with electric railway for the folk - the original owner was called Volk) and overshoot our destination. Instead of ending up at our destination of Concorde 2 under the beautiful sea-green Madeira terrace (which was opened as a covered walkway in the late Victorian times and closed down a hundred years later. Once upon a time you could get an elevator from the cliff top into the venue (which was then a shelter)), we end up at Black Rock, which seems as unBrighton as you can get, a dilapidated and empty place, bereft of tourists or anyone really. We pass the Old Reading Room, a neo-classical building, now derelict, that was built as a place for local residents to sit and read whilst looking at the sea, which sounds like the most marvellous idea anyone ever had or did.



We also have a vegetarian afternoon tea in the lovely Terre a Terre restaurant that also does a vegan option because under Brighton by-law, vegans are a protected group and not to serve vegan options in an eaterie is officially classified as a hate crime. Indeed, the high street Greggs is the only one I've been into where the person in front and the person behind me order a vegan sausage roll.

The main purpose of our visit is to go to the Find Joy new music festival, and my particular purpose is to see Wet Leg, who have made the most perfect song of the year, to wit:



They are less insouciant at the gig, more sweet and giggly, with no leg kicks. They also have three man-buns playing with them, to my disappointment, Later we spot the keyboard player outside of Purezza Vegan Pizzeria (see above re: hate crime) and then as we're walking through Kemp Town's neon-lit, karaoke soundtracked night, we see the Wet Legs themselves, piling into a taxi, but I have to drag David away before he embarrasses everyone.

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2021-08-03 09:27 am
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London Belongs To Me

This time last year, as many people were leaving, had left or were talking about quitting the city, I wrote a blog in praise of London, or at least my corner of it. This weekend, another couple left, for Lewes and a cute cottage with a garden rather than an ex-council place in Wandsworth and I can't really blame them, although I still can't think of a place I'd rather be. I don't get on with the countryside and the cities I do like (Manchester, Brighton, Glasgow) all have terrible weather (rain, wind, cold, respectively).

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The received idea during lockdowns was that local was busy, central was not. Indeed, we went into the west end in March and walked about and I took pics of empty Piccadilly Circus, empty Leicester Square, empty Carnaby Street etc. But since lockdown ended, it's harder to predict where the empty/busy bits will be. Shoreditch and Farringdon both seem full of girls with orange legs in heels sobbing in gutters at 6.30 p.m. because the hen party prosecco has taken its toll. Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross is always hectic, perhaps because you can sit outside to eat and drink. Ditto Kingly Court (no tables available when we tried to have some lunch a month or so ago and ended up at Veggie Pret, which in a city full of good food was....average)

Conversely, we went to Hyde Park (Kensington Gardens) to meet some friends who were staying nearby. I met David on Oxford Street which seemed half as busy as it would usually be without all the summer tourists barging you with their backpacks. We went to look at the mound, which was as terrible as the reports said it was.

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We sat in a little garden next to the Serpentine Gallery and Pavilion (above) for a while and then moved onto a fairy-lit rooftop bar. This was not the usual kind of place I'd go to at all, normally it'd be packed with tourists or people with jumpers around their shoulders braying about stock options, but it was half empty and we watched the sun go down over the water and it was all terribly pleasant. On the way back to the tube, we saw a woman feeding meat directly into the beaks of swans.
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2021-07-24 09:42 pm
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What I did on my holidays

Thought I would write about recent trips so that when I look back at the year in December I'll be able to see that I did do things in this, the year Covid II.

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When restrictions were lifted, we went to see both sets of parents, whom we'd not seen for almost eighteen months. My parents have been in the same village for almost 50 years, whereas Dave's parents have lived in 8 houses since I've known him. After having lived in Sutton on Sea, southern Spain, Mablethorpe and Grimsby, thy've finally moved back to the Nottingham suburbs - where they were when I first started going out with D. It's near a nature reserve (an ex-gravel pit) and used to be a village, although there's no village centre there now, just an out of town shopping centre.. There is a really lovely pub called the Victoria Hotel about 5 miles away; we didn't go there, but instead visited the one at the end of the road, which had two bitters (one of them off) and three veggie options (2 not available). It made Wetherspoons look good.

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Then we did a series of one days - to Broxbourne (messing about on the river), St Albans (walking around Verulamium in the rain), Reading (a hot day along the canal) and Southend (also hot and full of people from Barking). I really enjoyed walking along the pier, the longest in Britain (only a mile and a bit in actuality). We got the little train back to the prom, because I like little trains, but I preferred the walk - fewer people. We also had a very nice lunch in a quite adventurous veggie cafe where, after every menu choice by a customer, the millennial waitress said: "I support that".

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Last weekend we went to Sussex. Originally, Dave and I were going wine tasting (at Hidden Springs vineyard) and then we invited our pals Jeremy and Viv along as well and it became a weekend, complete with 9 mile ride in the hot hot heat up the cuckoo trail (ex-railway cycle track) and a stay in a little flint cottage in Pevensey. Pevensey is a tiny village but in 3 parts: Westham, where we stayed, Pevensey itself - which we accessed by walking through the grounds of Pevensey castle with its Roman walls and Norman keep - where there was a nice pub and even nicer tea rooms. In the latter, we had scones for breakfast because there were no shops in the village, not even a Spar (later we found that that there was a big Asda 2 miles away where presumably everyone buys their groceries), and also Pevensey Bay, about a mile away which is a proper old school seaside place with a chippie, a cafe selling steak and kidney pudding (etc) and a pebbled beach where I paddled and Dave swam (and who was then the gentleman?)

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We also visited Cambridge last week. I've been there before but once to go to a pick your own strawberry place outside of the city centre and another time to walk down the river to Grantchester (to have honey for tea), but had never gone the city centre before. We booked to go to Kettle's Yard, which is four workers' cottages knocked into one and decorated in the 1950s by an ex-Tate curator with sculptures, paintings and some found art. It was very peaceful and cool (air conditioning for the objets rather than for the visitors) apart from the guide taking us 'round, who wouldn't let us look at things without telling us all about them, rather than letting you make up your own mind. We also went around Kings College, or rather the chapel (where the choirboys bring in Christmas) and the grounds, which were beautiful in that English pastoral kind of way: lawns and meadows and the gently burbling river. Instead of delighting in England, this England, I'm afraid that my inner revolutionary communist came out and I ranted about how you could only get to this part of the river if you pay the entrance to the college. Even though the whole day was terribly hot, compounded by Greater Anglia trains running ancien rolling stock with no air con, it seemed like a good time to visit: after the students had left but there were very few American/Japanese/French tourists ruining the place.
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2021-01-03 11:53 am
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2020 In Review

What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
Worked at home

Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t believe in NY resolutions - what's the point of pretending you're going to do something that you'll give up on by 11th Jan? But when I started home-working I said I'd get through all the teas that people buy me (gunpowder! chai! chocolate tea!) even though I prefer coffee. Still working my way through.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Two and another who got pandemic-pregnant, due in a month or so.

Did anyone close to you die?
Yes, both people in their 50s, both unexpected, neither from Covid.

What countries did you visit?
Majorca.

What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
A big old holiday.

What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
17th March - the day I was sent home and the thus the day I realised it was serious.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Work stuff.

What was your biggest failure?
Work stuff.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Only ongoing migraines.

What was the best thing you bought?
No one thing but I've loved getting random things through the post. Posh pot noodles! Conditioner! Pasta!

Whose behaviour merited celebration?
NHS, obviously.

Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
People who believed conspiracy theories. The irony is that these people think they are the only ones who can see through lies, whilst being the most gullible of us all.

Where did most of your money go?
Food

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Vaccine!

What song(s) will always remind you of 2020?
Summer Ghosts by Ben Watt.

Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) Happier or sadder?
Possibly happier? Bizarrely. I enjoy not feeling that i need to go out on a Friday night, i enjoy less choice about what to do, i have enjoyed lots of walks, exploring this fantastic city. I've enjoyed fewer people around.

b) Bigger or smaller?
Fatter, less exercise, more sugary things

c) Richer or poorer?…
Richer although that's due to not going out/not going on holiday. I did set up subscriptions though - to the Guardian, to the Food Bank, to Shelter.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Days out, leaving London, exercise

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Worrying

How did you spend Christmas?
At home, inc walk in the Olympic Park, got a bit drunk on champagne and fell asleep on the sofa

Did you fall in love in 2020?
Nope

How many one-night stands?
Nope

What was your favorite TV program?
Lots of good TV this year. I got heavily into Schitt's Creek. My fave BBC programme was the adaptation of Lethal White (Robert Galbraith).

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Some Tories I'd never heard of before this year.

What was the best book you read?
Either Actress by Anne Enright or Out Of Africa by the original Karen, Karen Blixen.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
LIFE

What did you want and get?
To sleep in on a week day

What did you want and didn´t get?
A day trip

What was your favourite film of this year?
Make-Up. Teenage girl goes to caravan park in winter. Sees ghosts, falls in love.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
47. I cycled to Epping Forest (and back again), had a takeaway and watched Eurovision. This was peak Lockdown, when you weren't even allowed to sit down when you went for a walk.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If the right wing/culture war idiots hadn't decided to make the lockdown the new thing they were against.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Comfy

What kept you sane?
The Boyf and the cat.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Quite keen on Imran from Corrie

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What political issue stirred you the most?
Apart from the virus, Brexit (again) and when it looked like it was going the right way, the American election.

Who did you miss?
Far away friends.

Who was the best new person you met?
Some folks in Brighton I met at a music festival in Jan whom we then visited in July.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020:
I'm not as introverted as I thought I was

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
twenty ternty four hours to go, I wanna be vaccinated.

Post a picture of something that made you happy this year:

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Did you wrong or hurt somebody in 2020?
Oh, probably.

Is there some new place you are planning to visit in 2021?
See below.

Where would you have wanted to go and did not in 2020?
Had plans to go to West Wittering, Lille, Tromso, all cancelled.

Did you learn any new life skill in 2020?
I made mince pies for the first time ever (from a kit)

Any new food or drink preferences developed in 2020?
I eat everything (except meat and fish) so no.

What is your greatest fear for 2021?
That we'll still be waiting for the vaccine this time next year.

Did you follow any sports event in 2020?
I got far too into the three grand tours (cycling), including the Giro, won by an English cyclist from Hackney (Tao Geoghan Hart)

Which social media occupied most of your time in 2020?
Indubitably twitter

Is there somebody you feel particularly grateful to this year?
[livejournal.com profile] davidnottingham

Name a hope you have for 2021
That some idiot refuses the vaccine and I'm called in, last minute, to get jabbed!

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2020-12-31 10:49 am
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Brexit Schmexit

Even though we leave tomorrow, and we, the losers , have lost, it remains impossible to respect the result of the referendum, just as if the Tories win a general election, then Labour and other voters don't automatically become conservatives. It's been shonky from the beginning, from bus lies to easiest deal in history to ministers claiming that the Covid 19 vaccine was because of Brexit. Also:

1. Cameron called the referendum for various reasons, but none was about democracy. It was about shutting up the right wing of the Conservative party and seeing off Farage, it was about using referendums to push his policies. It was hubris.

2. People didn't know what they were voting for. I don't just mean the numpties who googled What is EU the day after. Literally, nobody knew what they were voting for. Everyone had different views on a post-Brexit world and it stands to reason that not all of them could come true. Most people were voting for a feeling (Remainers too, of a rather fake version of the wonderful, unifying EU) rather than hard practicalities. No-one really thought they were voting for or against a British firm exporting parts to the EU subject to points of origin certificates, export credit guarantees, import licences, customs declarations, VAT documentation etc in lorries that must still comply with EU regulations but subject to complex documentation and long delays at the border.

3. I would posit that great swathes of Doncaster, Hartlepool, Wigan, Sunderland and so on were trying to cock a snook at Cameron, without really seeing that they were voting for a right wing project.

4. I would also posit that great swathes of the south east who voted Leave are the kind of people who a few years ago were outraged about windfarms and now are outraged about lockdown. The kind of people who blame the BBC for all ills. The kind of people who feed into whatever Farage is against this week. It's pretty hard to take them seriously.

5. A lot of people were not voting against roaming charges or tariffs on services or even fucking blue passports but against immigration, never really answering the question of who was going to do the care working or bus driving or fruit picking. I suspect it will be immigrants, but with visas.

6. It's never been about serious, mature debate with the EU, or even about getting the best deal for Britain. Its always been about politics and vote-winning. Theresa May, who now seem a wheat-field running saint compared to Boris Johnson and his band of incompetents, lest we forget, was banging on about a "red white and blue Brexit" from the off. If it had been about an actual negotiation, then the government would never have sent David Davies to Brussels and these talks would have gone on over many years (a la Canada), rather than rushing into A50 and then failing to leave twice because everything was happening on the fly. None of it has been managed by serious adults with decent aims but by shysters and fraudsters, whom it's impossible to respect.
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2020-12-17 03:46 pm
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Twenty Things That Sparked Joy In 2020

I don't have to tell you that it's been a funny old year, and not in the ha-ha sense. But there have been some rubies in the rubble, some pay amongst the dirt, some silver linings behind shitty grey clouds. Twenty times I was happy this year:



1. Pre-Covid trip to Majorca.
2. The first few weeks of working from home: I really enjoyed the lack of people, the lack of phones ringing, the being able to work in my dressing gown, the lunch breaks with Netflix. I've tired of it a bit now, but at first, the novelty was great.
3. Westfield during lockdown 1. The first time we went to Waitrose after only using the local Co-op, I was dazzled by all the food buying opportunities. When I was beckoned into Superdrug and there was nobody inside and I just walked the aisles, marvelling at the shampoos. When we went up to the top floor of the shopping centre and no-one was around.
4. When the first lockdown Ocado order arrived and a nine pack of loo roll was included. I hugged it, I was so happy.
5. The first time we went to the Olympic park in lockdown 1 and it was quiet, just a few people walking. One of the cafes was open so we could enjoy iced coffees on the first hot day of the year. This was at the time that you weren't even supposed to sit down and men in high viz jackets followed people around telling them to get up, so we had to walk and sip.



6. When we finally left London in early July and went to Hove and saw the sea. That was probably the most joyful moment of the year.



7. All of our exploring of the 'hood and further afield, particularly the Royal Docks (my new safe space), the Bow back waters, Wanstead flats, and the River Roding.
8. Visiting usually crowded places that were empty: Covent Garden without the market, Greenwich in the rain, St Paul's without the tourists, even Trafalgar Square was quiet.
9. My birthday, when we cycled to the Woodford bit of Epping forest to look at the Gypsy Stone, had a picnic, then back at home, Eurovision and takeaway from a restaurant, proving that you can have fun in reduced circumstances.
10. The first eat out to help out meal in August. We went to a chain place, The Real Greek, and sat outside. It felt like being on holiday. I can't pretend to have learned any great truths from lockdown but I have realised that rather than having a lot of things, it's better not to have something and then to have it. Deprivation, then the absence of that is better than abundance.
11. Meeting picnicking pals on Hackney Downs, or outside pubs before they opened again, with meetings anticipated by me, rather than stressing because I'm double booked, or too tired to go out.
12. The first post-walk drink outside of the Holly Tree - it was great just to be able to go for a stroll and end it a pub.

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13. Short holiday in Ramsgate in September. Everything just felt...normal.

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14. Our cat becoming our cat, officially. Her microchip says "Dave and Rachel".
15. Tao Gaeoghan Hart winning the Giro D'Italia.

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16. Lunch out at the Gherkin and afternoon tea at the Ned.
17. Biden being elected. There was cheering outside, so I went online and the victory had been announced. The dread of the last few weeks lifted, the knowing for once that the bad guy had been defeated, that the sales of justice sometimes do tip our way. That people can do the sensible thing.
18. Putting the winter duvet on. I don't mean to get all twee and The Joy Of Small Things and hygge and all that stuff, but it felt so warm and cosy-wozy and secure under that heavy hot duvet. Never mind returning to the womb, I'd rather go back to bed.
19. Seeing Jeremy Corbyn in Finsbury Park and him giving me a little wave. I blushed like a Victorian maiden.
20. The vaccine. Obviously.
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