Sunday Digest

Ah, Sundays. What would do without them? I’ve been trying to come up with something different to do with my blog on Sundays, so , if in doubt, revert to a list. Let’s have a look back at the week that was (Sun 1st Jan to Sat 7th Jan)…

• The Week: The week, and indeed the year, began with a pretty amazing firework display from London. The always-essential day off work on the 1st January fell on a Sunday, giving us the bonus of a delayed Bank Holiday (Tues 1st) and a short week back at work. Also got our summer holiday booked up and all my time off work scheduled through to May 2013. Organised!
• Technology: The artwork for 60+ albums in my iTunes library, has bizarrely disappeared. No idea if this is some kind of bug, but it’s going to take me ages to fix it. Also, having signed up for it months ago, finally got round to using instagr.am in anger. It’s very cool and I’m challenging myself to post a photo every during 2012 (find me there as “fazzinchi” or search on #3652012 on Twitter to see everyone’s attempts)
• Obituaries: Bob Holness, Gary Ablett
• Television: In main the broadcast highlights have been “Great Expectations” (all three parts) and “Sherlock” (A Scandal in Belgravia) but I also have my TV Rewatch Marathon continuing as I hurtle through “Babylon 5″ series 3 (seven eps this week), in which it seems like every episode is a classic.
• Sport: It’s been a football focussed week. Spurs sneaking a 1-0 win over West Brom in the league to consolidate 3rd spot and then a win over Cheltenham in the 3rd round of the FA Cup yesterday. The England cricket team travelled out to the United Arab Emirates in preparation for their matches there against Pakistan: although the batsmen have looked rusty in the warm-up game, the bowlers are doing well.
• TweetCount: about 72. BlogCount: 6. PhotoCount: 7

Housekeeping and Feedback

Time for a little bit of housekeeping round here and as a result I’ve tidied up the Pages on this blog. Over on the left hand sidebar you’ll see the bog standard “About” page, which does not appear to have been updated since this blog was born in December 2009. I’m looking for an interesting way to make this About page a bit more fun and/or informative and I’ve been looking at some other blogs for inspiration but so far drawn a blank. Please feel free to comment if you have an idea of what I could do with it. Below that you’ll see two main categories: “Lists and Essays” for the longer entries (which doesn’t actually contain anything new at all but may be of interest if you’ve not seen ‘em before) and the newly reformatted “Photography” page. There you’ll find my original photo-a-day challenge that I undertook in August 2010, and, as promised, the start of the record for the 366 photos I plan on taking during 2012. Finally, the eagle eyed among you will notice that the lists of movies watched and music purchased have disappeared following more than a year of neglect: never got many readers or any comments anyway. Let me know what you think.

While I am on the subject of pleading for feedback, I may as well go the whole hog as I’m also looking for ideas for blog entries. What kind of things keep you coming back to read people’s blogs? I’ve got a few ideas bubbling around for some pieces of substance, such as (1) a post about racism is at the forefront of my mind at the moment following recent stories about Luis Suarez, Diane Abbott and others, (2) Given my latest TV marathon rewatch of Babylon 5, I may write up about my impressions about getting back in to this story after eight or nine years away, and (3) I’ve also managed to get myself roped in to giving a 30-minute talk about Twitter at work next week and I might turn that into something more comprehensive here.

I Am Not Blogging

Finally got round to writing my review of the Christmas Doctor Who episode over on my other blog (13 out of 20 was the score in case you can’t be bothered going to read it). This means that there’s not much of an update here today. You may even be wondering why I came here to write any kind of blog at all… and those of you who think this is some kind of “Stealth Resolution” that I’m sneaking in under the radar to blog-something-every-day, then you couldn’t be more wrong. Oh, no siree bob, not at all. Well, you could be more wrong I suppose. In fact, you’re right but don’t tell anyone. Shh.

Love/Hate Football

There is a slightly well-known sketch from the Mitchell & Webb show that features David Mitchell pacing around the outside of a football pitch, talking over-excitedly about upcoming matches in the caricatured style of a SkySports trailer. It invariably makes Mrs F laugh as it effortlessly takes the mickey out of my second favourite sport by highlighting the inherent pointlessness of it all. It makes me wonder why I bother watching it sometimes. However, here are a few thoughts…

On Being a Spurs Fan: It’s never been particularly easy supporting a club like Spurs, they are quite easy to dislike if popular opinion is to be believed. Back in the eighties, we won a few things and the team was a fine one with many a great player. Through the nineties and the noughties it was tougher with a succession of managers and little in the way of consistency. They frequently promised much and nearly always failed to deliver. Things seemed to change in 2010 as we qualified to the Champion’s League with an away win at Man City  on the penultimate game of the season. The Champion’s League adventure itself was more than we could’ve hoped for in truth with memorable nights aplenty, but the league form seemed to suffer as a result and we didn’t make it for this seasons instalment. This season though, well, my flabber is well and truly ghasted. Half way through the games and we’re (comfortably) third and all the pundits keep on telling me we’re in with a shot of the title. This must be what it used to be like being an Arsenal fan.

On the Game Itself: The injection of money from Sky TV and international television rights may have bought England the greatest league in the world but it’s sold its soul. The governing bodies are beyond farcical with neither the FA nor FIFA providing anything like the kind of leadership that’s required. The refusal to incorporate technology in to decision making is Luddite-ism of the worst order. The players earn obscene amounts of cash and have lost all sense of decency, loyalty and perspective. Officiating the game is becoming impossible with a complete lack of respect from players and managers to the men in black and some pretty amateurish decision making in return. The high-profile players seem to do nothing but bring the game in to disrepute and either abuse or disregard their position as role-models. The much-talked about “club versus country” debate is effectively over and has been won by the wrong side, with the national team reduced to a second rate sideshow (and I’m sure I’ll have more to say on the England team as we get near to Euro 2012). The once wonderful FA Cup is a shadow of its former self. The roots of the game outside the top tier is replete with clubs going in to administration left, right and centre. And let’s not even get started with horror stories from the Sunday pub leagues and the behaviour of kids and their parents in the school/junior game. It’s a mess.

So how the hell am I supposed to reconcile the love that I have for club and country with vacuous cesspit that is the professional game in this country? And more importantly, why do I take it so seriously? But hey, 3 points against West Brom tonight, so it’s not all bad

Sofa Day

The 2nd of January and all is well. Not much has been happening in 2012 so far: After yesterday’s final family visit of the season, today saw the end of ten day’s holiday and, thanks to the proliferation of Bank Holidays at this time of year, I’ve only had to take three days off work. The net result of all the comings and goings of Christmas and New Year is that today was a designated “Sofa Day” chez Fazzinchi. This involved, (1) Grazing on festive leftovers (I’ll admit that Baileys-flavoured, white chocolate fudge has made me feel pretty queasy); (2) watching bits of TV (the licence fee continuing to prove itself to be gift that keeps on giving as we finally caught up with effortlessly classy Great Expectations), (3) watching movies (we’re half-way through the Lord of the Rings extended versions now); and (4) generally slobbing around.

Having said all that, we did actually book up the first part of our summer holiday as well and it’s really good to have something way off in the distance to look forward to. For those interested we’re going to Scotland. And also, I’ve decided, somewhat belatedly, to have a go at a photo-a-day kind of project. I’m torn between Flickr and Instagram as my tool of choice at the moment and have ended up starting one of each. Links, or some other way of informing you what’s going on will follow, once I’ve worked out a format. This, in case you’re worried, is not a New Year’s resolution: just an idea. And Arsenal lost. So, far from a wasted day in the end.

No Resolve

Following my minimal review of 2011 yesterday, 1st January has dawned with bloggers around the world making their resolutions, I’m sure you’ve been reading them and possibly even writing them and all I can say is the best of British luck to you. However, following about thirty seconds of careful deliberation I have decided to buck the trend and not make any resolutions at all. I’ve done them before and always failed, so this year failure is not an option. Clever, eh?!

Given that it’s only the first day of the year, I am also happy to report that the BBC has already earned my licence fee for the year. The first in the second trilogy of “Sherlock” stories, A Scandal In Belgravia, was a sublime piece of television. Complex, clever, funny, engaging with a great cast, some fairly unique direction wrapped up in 90 minutes of wonderfulness. If you missed it, go to iPlayer and catch up. And we’ve still got the Hound and the Falls to come.

My 2011

It’s New Year’s Eve and the internet is awash with bloggers working on their reviews of 2011 and their predictions for 2012 along with the inevitable resolutions. It would be churlish not to join in. We’ll start with 2011 in review.

Let’s start with my online highlights. On a personal level I made myself a whole bunch of promises on 1st January 2011, which I completely failed to deliver. On the blogging front, I managed a mere 27 entries on this blog and 36 over on my Demon’s Run Doctor Who blog, which has meant that initial predictions of a combined 300+ entries in the year was a mile off. Similarly my reading and writing hopes and the clever idea for more manageable “monthly resolutions” also failed. Makes me wonder whether it’s worth making resolutions at all. There were lots of bloggers whose output I did read religiously, such as Johann Hari (before his slip from grace), Charlie Brooker (as ever), Grace Dent, Caitlin Moran, Andrew Collins, Paul Cornell, Stephen Fry (natch), and Richard Herring, who all spring to mind. However, the winner of my online award is…. Twitter.  I think all my creative juices have been drained into Twitter where I have managed the best part of 2,450 tweets this year , which works out at well over 6 tweets a day. But thanks to this medium I’ve made friends, gained insight in to the news, discovered new music, heard some great jokes, laughed out loud at the X-Factor, found out many things about my home town, and generally been thoroughly entertained.

It’s been another year for me suffering from a paucity of movie watching. It’s entirely self inflicted, so I’m not really complaining but I’ve pretty much given up on going to the cinema other than when I’m on holiday. This year, to my best recollection I’ve made it to the cinema to watch “Paul”, “Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2″, “Super 8″ and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, three of which I saw away from my home town. There have been others where I’ve waited for the Blu-ray release, so we can add in to the mix the original Swedish trilogy of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and the “Social Network”. There have probably been a few other movies from this year but I cannot recall them at the moment. Perhaps I should keep a diary of movies that I’ve watched to make this review of the year easier (ooops). Anyway, my winner for what it’s worth for Movie of the Year is… Rise of the Planet of the Apes. A great addition to the franchise with a brilliant piece of work from Andy Serkis but more than anything else, it was a great action adventure tale..

From a television watching perspective, it’s been a lot more fulfilling with lots of candidates for TV Show of the Year. The first two series of the The Killing were certainly a highlight, bringing Christmas jumpers in to all year round fashionability. It would be easy to give the crown to Doctor Who too as it has been another great year for the show, but that is perhaps a little too obvious. We saw two great British series coming to an end as Waking The Dead and Spooks took their curtain call. Disappointment of the year probably went to Torchwood: Miracle Day that promised much but under-delivered. Continuing the theme of imports from the States we got Boardwalk Empire, which was a slow burn for me but was undoubtedly good quality fodder. Series 5 of Dexter also came to the UK on the FX channel and remarkably managed to keep up, if not exceed, the form of previous years. There was some home grown talent too. Fresh Meat debuted on Channel 4 and managed to reinvigorate the concept of comedy based on student life. And we also got a new political satire in the form of Ten O’Clock Live that was, after a stuttering start, happily more hit than miss. Other noteworthy comedy stuff included Trollied and The Cafe, representing a new investment in original material from Sky1, Twenty-Twelve which was an amusing Office-esque BBC2 offering starring Hugh Bonneville, and there were some new series of established good stuff like Him & Her, and Big Bang Theory which are both getting better with age. There were also some good short form dramas with The Hour, The Jury, and Acceptable Adult being worthy of note. However, my winner of the year goes to… Game Of Thrones. So good, it made me go and read the book…. and that is saying something.

My musical life was interesting this year. The arrival of my new Mac computer at the end of 2010 led me to rip my entire CD collection on to digital form and lurch, kicking and screaming, in to the 21st century. My library of 13,882 songs means that I have a lot to choose from, however, rather than going by a “best CD of the year” I am going with a favourite artist of the year. The reissues of the fifteen Queen studio albums has reignited my appreciation of their work and have got a lot of plays from me this year. Kate Bush has come back with two albums, one of reimaginings of previous hits and some brand new material in “50 Words for Snow”. I have also thoroughly enjoyed listening to Laura Marling whose soft folk vocals can erase the worries of the day with a single play. Late in the year I was introduced to the work of Sarah Blasko, whose Xanadu cover seemed to get quite popular but whose album “As Day Follows Night” was a joy. Most unlikely musical star of the year was probably Hugh Laurie, who’s well known love of blues music crystalised in to the excellent debut album “Let Them Talk”. Other notable mentions in my most enjoyed music of the year go to Just Jack, Elbow, Ben Folds and Adele. However, the winner is… Katie Miller-Heidke. A brilliant, quirky, classically trained vocalist who brings a sense of fun to her music as well as being able to emote like few others. Not well known, but she deserves to be a star.

Hopefully, I’ll be back soon with resolutions for 2012.

Back To Back

Many moons ago, sometime in 2002 I guess, I managed to damage the L5-S1 intervertebral disc in my back along with the one below it. The evidence is in the piccy above. If you look at this MRI scan of my backbone, you’ll see that the bits in between the vertebrae all have a nice, lighter coloured disc at the centre, which, in technical terms is the spongy shock-absorber bit. As you work your down to the point where the spine curves outward to the right, you’ll see that the two discs there have no nice, light-coloured, spongy bits because they have been squished out into the spinal column where all the nerves run. This, ladies and gents, is a classic slipped disc. Net result = much hurtiness. A combination of anti-inflammatories, epidurals and physiotherapy staved off the requirement for surgery at the time, but this did mean that the problem was never “fixed” and had to be something that I lived with.

I started to get a bit of an achey back on Monday and it got a little worse on Tuesday, but when I woke up this morning, I thought I’d done it all over again. I started the day in absolute agony… so-much-so it took me 15 minutes just to put my socks on, so it was off to the GP for an emergency appointment, with fears that my long-avoided destiny “under the knife” was not to be avoided for much longer. Happily though, and assisted by some pain killers and newly prescribed anti-inflammatories (diclofenac sodium, if you’re interested) has meant that the day has seen a remarkable turnaround back to something akin to a clean bill of health. I have to confess that it was a bit of a scare. Interestingly, the doc also prescribed a very small dosage of valium to take before bedtime because “it acts as an excellent muscle relaxant”. So I shall be avoiding heavy machinery and chilling out for a day or two to help me recover too.

The moral of the story is …. LOOK AFTER YOUR BACK!

X-Factor: Week One – A Look Back

The X-factor live shows returned this weekend with over 10m viewers (according to the overnights) tuning in to see the Saturday live performances and the reveal of the much discussed “twist”, which was that Four acts would be going home on Sunday, with each judge kicking off one their own. It was a bit of hard decision for the judges considering they’d all just made the call to put their four acts through from the Houses stage. In all honesty, the judges are probably a much better mix than the previous years with Tulisa and Kelly, two people I’d never heard of before, proving to be fun as well as insightful. However, it was a good way to cull the herd in the countdown to Christmas. From here on, I assume it’s back to normal with one a act a week getting the chop from the public. Here’s a little stake in the ground from me about the remaining dozen….

Louis’ Over 25′s: Kitty is clearly this year’s Katie who has already been the subject of the boo’ers from the over-enthusiastic studio audience, but, despite my initial reservations about her antics and a few boos of my own from the comfort of the sofa, she did a very passable Queen cover and she’s sure to get folk talking. Sami is a great singer and seems to be completely at the other end of the spectrum from Kitty with her down-to-earth charm. A powerful voice but I’m not sure that she’ll have the versatility or the appeal to enough of a demographic for the long run. Johnny with his high-camp and even higher pitched voice is irritating in extremis and has all the hallmarks of one of Louis’ variety acts without any potential other than for opening supermarkets. The casualty of the gang was Jonjo and, in truth, it was a bit predictable that he would be the one who went home. A perfectly fine, nothing-to-write-home-about, cover of a Kinks song was his undoing and would probably have become a bit boring by the end.

Tulisa’s Groups: Never have a group won the competition before and when you think that dross like JLS and One Direction are the best that have been thrown up by the X-Factor before, it seems like a poisoned chalice for Tulisa. However, The Risk delivered a fairly entertaining cover of Plan B’s “She Said” and will probably go quite far if they keep it together. Rythmix were only okay, although girl bands are not exactly “my thing” so I might not have the most objective perspective. Historically, girl groups don’t do well with the audience and the chances are they’ll be gone in three weeks. The other boy band, Nu Vibe were my favourites to get the chop, for nothing if not the rubbish spelling of the word “new” in their name not to mention the sloppy Saturday performance, but they somehow survived. And that survival was at the expense of Two Shoes. Female duos are few and far between at the best of times with Shakespeare’s Sister being the most notable in the field, at least as far as my iTunes compendium goes. So it’s a shame these two didn’t get the chance to do something more, although if the powers that be have any sense, they’ll find themselves on Eurovision soon enough.

Gary’s Boys: First off, I have to say I am loving Gary himself as this year’s new male judge and he has the stature to comfortably fill Simon shoes. During the Xtra Factor on ITV2 tonight, Gary (or @GBarlowOfficial as he will now be known) sent his first ever tweet. At the time of writing this, one hour later, he already has 185,000 followers! By the way, if you don’t watch this show with a smartphone in hand and your favourite Twitter app in action, you are missing out on three-quarters of the fun. Anyway, on to the acts. Frankie is a cocky little bugger, isn’t he?! The appeal to the girls is obvious but he hasn’t got the range in his voice yet to appeal to me. He’ll go far even if he just comes out and burps the national anthem every week. Craig could be a dark horse this year, likeable and with a strong vocal. I don’t see what everyone else seems to enjoy about Marcus. His cover of “Move Like Jagger” was not as good as the Maroon 5 version that sits atop the charts at the moment and he doesn’t have depth to his voice: a final five candidate perhaps. The be-hatted James was the loser of the week but I really liked his Beatles cover. Shame to see him go early, could’ve been the new David Gray.

Kelly’s Girls: By a distance this is the strongest category and I would be surprised if the winner was not to be found among its number. Janet might be the cutest contestant they’ve ever had and her charm and vulnerability will see her progress; sounds a bit like Ellie Goulding to me though, which is no bad thing. I look forward to more of her covers. Misha is a mystery to me and I am completely alienated by her outlandish hair, make-up and outfits. No denying the strength of her vocal or her personality though and she seems to be the finished article already. The final girl through to next week is Sophie Habibis. The real outsider who seemed to ghost through the preliminary weeks of auditions, bootcamp and judges’ houses to find herself on live shows. And she was amazingly good. A great song sung well and my personal Performance of the Week. For what it’s worth. Finally, it was a shame that Amelia had to go home so soon as she is significantly better than four or five of the acts still on the show.

Cold Caller

*ding-dong*

I pause the test match that I have been watching to quickly hunt for the door key to see who has so rudely interrupted my viewing. I open the door to reveal a small, wizened-looking man of indeterminate age. He carries a satchel and a clipboard. Not a good start, I fear.

“Hello?” I say, mostly deadpan with a hint of distaste.

“Yes. We sent a letter. Can I come in for five minutes?”

“No. I’m busy.” I reply, mostly distastefully with a hint of deadpan now.

“You’re not busy, you’re watching television” he replies. (If the curtains are open, you can see the television when walking to my front door).

“Cheeky bastard” is what I was about to say, but politeness changes my response thus, “Not that it’s any of your business, but I am busy. I am busy watching television”

“But I only need five minutes of your time. Did you not get the letter?” he asks nonchalantly, “I have a copy here somewhere” he says rumaging in his bag.

“I have no idea who you are” I say, “So, I’m never going to let you in”

“I’m here on behalf of the Electoral Register”

“Listen. I’m sorry, but we don’t accept cold callers here. So, goodbye.” I move to close the door.

“but… but… but we sent a letter”

“Just because you may or may not have sent a letter, doesn’t mean anything to me. I haven’t even seen your ID and you’re not coming in” (distaste, but on the way to pissed off now).

“Here’s my ID” he enthuses thrusting a battered looking business card in my general direction.

“That says ‘MORI’ not the Electoral Register” I point out.

“Yes. I am from MORI on behalf of the Electoral Register”

“MORI… the opinion poll people?” I enquire.

“Yes, that’s right”

“Well, what part of my opinion do you not understand? We. Don’t. Accept. Cold-callers”

“I’m not a cold caller… I’ve been here before”

“Just because you’ve been here two times doesn’t stop you being a cold-caller, it just makes you twice as annoying as the usual cold-callers we get. So will you please just leave?”

“Shall I put you down as a ‘refusal’?”

“If it makes you happy”

*shuts door fuming at my afternoon of cricket watching being disrupted*