Passacaglia and Fugue

It's time for an end-of-the-year post. Lots of things happened in 2024.

At last we got rid of the Tories, although Starmer seems almost as tone-deaf as his predecessor (in either government or party dimensions). It's true, of course, that things can't be fixed overnight, but he doesn't seem to do "hope" particularly well. Locally, the Tories lost the seat to Labour, with a disappointing Lib Dem result, although recently I reflected that perhaps we had taken some votes from the Tories, which would have been important in the final result. I suspect there are quite a few places where the margin of victory wasn't particularly high, and as a result the parliamentary landslide is shallow. Reform are emboldened by Trump's victory in the US and the Tories seem determined to track them rather than attract voters by returning to more central ground. I have the feeling this won't end well.

Given my post from last year, I should observe that since November we've been connected with full fibre. So far, so good. It turns out, in a repeat performance of digging up the roads, Virgin Media is also an option now. It seems everyone apart from BT/Openreach think it's worth laying fibre here. There might be regulatory reasons for that.

A friend, who is a few years older, retired early from their job, precipitated by changes to USS. It was bound to start happening at some point, but nonetheless it was a psychological jolt. For me, work has been a mixed bag and there are definitely some things I don't like about it. Over the holiday period I have been researching, planning and playing what-ifs with spreadsheets. I can't quite access my SIPP yet, but it's getting close enough that I think it's worth contacting Pension Wise in the new year, probably following up with real financial advice. Things would be a lot easier if I thought there were benign economic waters ahead in the next four years.

Anyway, here are some highlights from my year:

• Fiction - The Assassin of Verona, by Benet Brandreth


• Non-fiction - You're Him, Aren't You?, by Paul Darrow


• Music - Henry Wood's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition at the Proms


• Film, TV and Theatre - Ludwig (unblogged)


• Museums, Exhibitions and Visits - Yoshida at Dulwich Picture Gallery


• Food and Drink - Kinnie Spritz at Aaron's Kitchen in Valetta

Honourable mentions for
The Devil's Flute Murders (fiction); The Subterranean Railway (non-fiction); The Britten Sinfonia and the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble at the Barbican, and Jonathan Scott's Organ Recital and two Kanneh-Masons at the Proms (music); One Life and Moonflower Murders (film, TV and theatre); MUZA in Valetta, the Tarxien Temples and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum (exhibitions and visits).

We went last night to Reading Biscuit Factory to see All of Us Strangers. Overall, it was a good film, but it was too disturbing for me to say I enjoyed it. I found it confusing that Adam's parents were about the same age as him; given that his parents had died in a car crash when he was a child, perhaps they were foster parents, I thought? The time-slip aspect wasn't really clear until later on in the film. And I suppose it had perhaps too many tropes for me: gay men, drug and alcohol abuse, death. I was surprised that it had received a 15 certificate, although I recall there were a long list of content warnings on the BBFC slide. Sometimes I think LGBT+ films could do with a bit more Socialist Realism.

I suppose 2023 was officially normal. It was the year Sunak took every opportunity to stay in the gutter when he had a choice to make. Wouldn't it be nice if the rivers weren't full of raw sewage, all the medics weren't on strike and the trains ran on time? It's the little things. Personally, broadband not working for nearly a month, catching covid for a second time, and having the gas hob condemned, was just indicative of the state of the country as a whole. (On the plus side, we now have a nice new induction hob, with which I am very happy; fibre has been laid in the village and I am contemplating the upgrade, although as it is not Openreach we do not have a choice of supplier). The media is talking up a 2024 general election for the UK (well, given January 2025 is the last possible date I suppose it's fairly inevitable). I wouldn't expect things to turn around overnight, but it would be nice to silence the dog whistles and make politics boring again.

Anyway, here are some highlights from my year:

• Fiction - The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman


• Non-fiction - Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes


• Music - Max Richter's Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons at the Proms


• Film and Theatre - Oppenheimer


• Museums, Exhibitions and Visits - M K Čiurlionis: Between Worlds at Dulwich Picture Gallery


• Food and Drink - Carbonara at The Spaghetti Incident in Bristol

Honourable mentions for
Silverview, The Underground Railroad, and Babel (fiction); British Rail, Venice, and Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle (non-fiction); Alma Mahler and Dora Pejačević, Isata Kanneh-Mason playing Prokofiev and Felix Klieser playing Mozart, and Finlandia and Snöfrid (music); The Herschel Museum, Bath, and Tyntesfield, and Italica, Seville (exhibitions and visits).

Well, who ordered that? But there must have been some good things in 2020, even if in some cases almost by default: here are mine.

• Fiction - The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth


• Non-fiction - The Powerful and the Damned, by Lionel Barber


• Music - The Budapest Cafe Orchestra


• Film and Theatre - Harriet


• Museums and Exhibitions - none


• Food and Drink - well, R and I have both become rather proficient at home-made cheesecakes.

Honourable mentions for I, Claudius (fiction); State of Emergency and In the Shadow of Vesuvius (non-fiction); all those involved in the curtailed season, but particularly Jonathan Scott's organ recital at the Proms (music).

I began the year by escaping from a job I knew I didn't want to one I was unsure of, having been made "an offer I could not refuse" as I was travelling for Christmas at the end of last year. Although I had only one day in the office, and struggled at home with laptop permissions for a while, it has turned into one of those better decisions. Nothing is certain, but it feels like a healthier place to be.

I keep wanting to write with rage about the dual incompetences of our government, but that will keep for next year.

May all our 2021s be filled with needle-waving medics. Unfortunately an online calculator suggests it may be 2022 before I can get vaccinated, but I hope the roll-out will be accelerated as much as possible.

As I booked my ticket for Reading Film Theatre, I read the (rather vague) update on the website's home page that the theatre is under threat of closure. It would be sad to lose it; the proposal for a new cinema in the Broad Street Mall isn't going to be a substitute, and the loss of a Europa Cinemas grant presumably can't be strictly due to Brexit if it operates in 43 countries.

Anyhow, on Thursday evening I went to see The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Notionally it's about gentrification, as Jimmie wistfully craves the possibility to reside in his former family home. Following a dispute in the family of the current residents, it becomes empty and Jimmie decides to squat there with his friend Montgomery. They enjoy their time there, although it's marred by a violent death in a group of friends with whom they have an uneasy relationship. But, eventually, harsh reality takes hold, the house is put on the market, and they are thrown out. In fact a fair part of the film is really about self-illusion and denial, as Jimmie clings to the belief, inducted into him as a child, that his grandfather built the house. The story doesn't really begin or end, it just drifts; a lament for the "left behind", perhaps, but full of ambiguity.

At the end of 2018 I noted it hadn't been a brilliant year. Well, the same goes for 2019, possibly in spades, and it doesn't look great for 2020 either. But in between, there have been highlights: here are mine.

• Fiction - The Bedlam Stacks, by Natasha Pulley


• Non-fiction - SPQR, by Mary Beard


• Music - Olivier Latry's organ recital at the Proms


• Film and Theatre - First Man


• Museums and Exhibitions - Cutting Edge at Dulwich Picture Gallery


• Food and Drink - Pelikan in Stockholm

Honourable mentions for A Vineyard in Andalusia and An English Murder (fiction); 4th Rock from the Sun and The Invention of Air (non-fiction); Canzionere Grecanico Salentino and Queen Victoria's piano (music); Skansen in Stockholm, the Gustavianum in Uppsala (museums and exhibitions).

Perhaps hibernation for the duration would be the best option.

It's been a while since anything at Reading Film Theatre caught my eye; last night, after dealing with the aftermath of an afternoon snowfall on my car at the station car park, I headed in to see First Man. It was billed as a biopic of Neil Armstrong, but really, whilst he is the central character, there's more to it than that. The film opens with one of Armstrong's NASA X-15 flights, in which he barely controls the aircraft at the edge of space, bouncing around the top of the atmosphere. But the action returns firmly to earth with his family life, and the death of his daughter; seeing the opportunity for a fresh start, he applies to join NASA's Gemini project.

There's a slight air of disbelief as the USSR beats them to one milestone after another in the early years of the space race, but Armstrong and the other recruits plough on with the training program, wondering who will get to do what, and whether they'll get to the ultimate prize. Armstrong's flight, Gemini 8, suffers a critical malfunction after successfully completing its docking test; later, the crew of Apollo 1 die in the spacecraft as a result of a fire during testing, and Armstrong is injured when he ejects from a test lunar lander vehicle. All of this weighs heavily on his family, but he remains dedicated to the mission. Both sides of this aspect of the film seemed a bit wooden, as though unconvincingly trying to make a point about his domestic life. There's also a rising background through this period of political questioning NASA's funding (which has continued to be an ongoing sore over the decades), and also of anti-space program protests (which look like a mixture of civil rights, anti-war and anti-austerity protests) which question the program's value.

Of necessity there's a fair bit of fast-forward in the film, so we jump to the successful Apollo 10 mission and finally, Apollo 11. I was impressed by the effects used to show weightlessness; on a lighter note, also by the importance of having a large allen key or socket to open and close the doors. You don't see that in Star Trek.

I went to see The Post at Reading Film Theatre this week, seeming particularly topical in the current turmoil about fake news, lobbying and corruption. I enjoyed the film, but it's difficult to pin down what it's about - the Vietnam War? the US government? the role of the press? the role of women? All of these, to some extent.

( Spoilers )

I'd missed Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge at Reading Film Theatre a couple of weeks ago due to illness, so I was pleased that last night I went to see Loving Vincent. The story is principally that of Armand Roulin, whose father, a postman, dispatches him, about a year after Vincent's death, to deliver a letter from Vincent to Theo van Gogh (by this time also dead). Armand travels first to Paris and then to Auvers-sur-Oise, in search of Theo's widow or another suitable recipient. In his task he meets several of the villagers who all have their own stories and recollections of Vincent, some of which cast doubt on the circumstances of his death.

But the story is only a part of the film, and probably wouldn't have drawn me on its own. What is perhaps unique about the film is that it's an animation, produced in oil painting, in the style of van Gogh. I had wondered whether this could be true - surely this could also have been done by CGI, and would have been more cost-effective - but the long list of sponsors at the start of the film, and the long list of animation artists (mostly in Poland and Greece) at the end, verifies it. The result is intensely atmospheric, and very cleverly done, as many of the characters were painted by van Gogh and are clearly based on those paintings. Like The Death of Stalin, there's no attempt to give faux-French accents to the characters, although in some of the flashbacks the voice of Vincent does seem to have a Dutch inflection. Amidst a strong cast I thought the voices and performances of Douglas Booth (Armand Roulin), Chris O'Dowd (Joseph Roulin), and John Sessions (Pere Tanguy) particularly stood out.

So, farewell then, 2017. Better than 2016, but that is setting the bar a bit low. The best of the year for me:

• Fiction - The Art of Noise, by Julian Barnes


• Non-Fiction - Kind of Blue [LJ], by Ken Clarke


• Music - Filarmonica della Scala Milan at the Proms


• Film and Theatre - The Death of Stalin


• Museums and Exhibitions - Paul Nash at Tate Britain [LJ]


• Food and Drink - Maria Catita, Lisbon

Other highlights: (Fiction) Nice Work (if you can get it) by Celia Imrie, The Spy of Venice by Benet Brandreth; (non-Fiction) The Eroica by James Hamilton-Paterson; (Music) Les Siècles, BBC SO with Semyon Bychkov, The John Williams Film Music Prom, The Fourth Choir; (Film and Theatre) A Man Called Ove, The Farthest; (Museums and Exhibitions) The Museo do Oriente (Lisbon), Hokusai at the British Museum, Hockney at the Tate, Sargent and Jansson (both at Dulwich); (Food and Drink) Restaurante Farol de Santa Luzia (Lisbon); Erebuni (London), Moya (Oxford), O ver (London). After a couple of quiet years for film I've seen quite a few this year; I also appear to be making good use of my Art Pass from work.

I moved from LJ to DW following sinister downtime and changes to T&Cs of the former; it's pretty quiet here, but it had become so there, too.

It's been an indifferent year at work. The move to Bracken House has been delayed until late 2018/early 2019. I survived what has become an annual cull, but whether I will do so next year seems in doubt. It would be a shame to be let go without the opportunity of working there.

From time to time I do feel distinctly middle-aged, and my health hasn't been the best this year, with several trips to GP and dentist, and making use of my employer's private health scheme. Nothing serious has been revealed and I still enjoy generally good health, and what I do have may well be triggered by stress. In general I'm sceptical of that as a cause, but I can see the case that leads there. Work is not stress-free, though it isn't the most stressful job I've ever had; but combined with travel and it does put me under pressure for time.

I probably had a better 2017 than Theresa May, though that's not saying much; I also had a better 2017 than the people who lived in Grenfell Tower. I think that's a significant symptom of the British disease: not investing, or minimally and misguidedly investing, in something, being surprised when it goes awfully wrong, and then finding it is much more expensive and disruptive to put it right. We did that with the trains around the millennium, with a number of high-profile accidents that led to the demise of Railtrack. See also Brexit. Which trains are metaphorically going to depart from which tracks, I am unsure, but I have the feeling 2018 will be an "interesting" year with good and bad in it.