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).

Somehow - probably a combination of travel disasters and the General Election - several TV series got recorded on the PVR over the summer and autumn but I am only slowly getting round to watching them. I watched His Dark Materials as it was broadcast, though. Although it started in much the same vein as the film of many years ago, I couldn't quite recall where the new adaptation went beyond; though it certainly did go beyond, and I don't recall any other worlds actually featuring in the film. Lyra's Oxford was familiar yet different, with spires in particular replaced by squat domes. On reflection it seems children's classic stories are often set in the recent past; the steampunk of Lyra's world gave it a similar feel.

At the last minute I discovered the TV adaptation of The Name of the Rose, and recorded it. I found I preferred John Turturro's William of Baskerville to Sean Connery's; but the resident monks are all so weird and dysfunctional. The misogyny is creepy, but presumably has some authenticity to its time and place; it also felt that there was a lot of additional material, beyond what I remember of the book. It strikes me that I was similarly unsettled by the blatant anti-Semitism exhibited by some of Eco's characters in one of his last books, The Prague Cemetery.

More recently I have been catching up on Monkman and Seagull's Genius Guide to Britain - some fantastic bite-sized bits of a polymathic journey around the UK narrated by Simon Callow. Light-hearted but educational, too.

The current season of Doctor Who is also turning out to be rather good.

It's been a shorter season than usual, but the hole in my Sunday evening is easily filled by writing up my thoughts on the season. I've enjoyed Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, and the three companions - I don't think this has made the programmes intrinsically over-crowded, although it does feel that sometimes one of the companions is a bit of a spare part. If you were to cast back to the early years, then I do feel that there's a symmetry between Graham and Ian - the man who thinks he should be in charge, but has to realise he's completely out of his depth. On the whole, as a man of our times, Graham perhaps does this more gracefully, or with less of a struggle. Yas and Ryan don't match Barbara and Susan, though; perhaps Ben and Polly might be a better comparison there. As you might expect of a police officer, Yas takes it all in calmly and considers a course of action; Ryan is the easy-going type who finds it best to just fit in with the others.

Taking the stories chronologically, The Woman who fell to Earth was a reasonable first story. I did feel it was very dark (literally). It was sad to lose Grace so early on. The Ghost Monument could have been better. I thought this was a good storyline that was somewhat frittered away. Art Malik could have been a much more interesting villain. Perhaps this should have been two parts. I was apprehensive about Rosa, because it's playing with almost contemporary history and politics. I thought it was well handled, though Krasko was insipid and easily dealt with. Arachnids in the UK turned out to be better than I expected, mainly because I could see the resonances with The Green Death. But again the villain was very one-dimensional and unrealistic, as was his demise. Obviously the episode's spooky nature was tied to Hallowe'en. The Tsuranga Conundrum could have been better if it hadn't had such a silly CGI monster. It was a bit reminiscent of the adipose. The rest of the story held up well, all things considered.

Again courting controversy, Demons of the Punjab was probably the high point of the season, successfully handling its subject, filling in Yas's back-story and with, as it transpired, benign aliens. Again, timing of this episode, on Remembrance Sunday, was important. I had mixed feelings about Kerblam!. Again it seemed to be derivative - in this case, one part The Sun Makers, one part Robots of Death and one part Face of Evil. But they were mixed differently - the computer system was asking for help and the corporation was benign - well, not really, but it seems that's the way we have been conditioned in 2018 compared to the 1970s. I enjoyed the reappearance of the fez and momentarily wondered if we were going to get a Matt Smith reprise, this being a (55th) anniversary year. The Witchfinders didn't work all that well, perhaps partly because Alan Cumming's King James was so out of balance from the rest of the programme. It takes you away could have been located anywhere remote, so the choice of Norway was arbitrary. Oddly, in the trailer I thought I'd seen a shot with an image reminiscent of Munch's The Scream, which would have made more sense in pinning it to a location (I offer that up freely as an opportunity for some budding writer's future story). Either that, or the episode could have been located near Bad Wolf Bay. The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos was an indifferent final episode for the season, trying to pack lots (too much) of action in - again perhaps it would have been more effecive as two parts. I noted more derivativeness - this time, the crystal shapes reminded me of the Key to Time, and their subsequent contents fitted The Pirate Planet like a glove. The polyphase avatron would have been more entertaining than the Stenza, though.

Overall, I've not been blown away by the stories, but they haven't been terrible. From the start I didn't like the new theme arrangement; I've come to accept it, rather than thinking there's a fault in the signal, but I'm still not a fan there. I've concluded that I just don't like Chris Chibnall's writing. I didn't really get along with Torchwood and someone (I think either strange_complex or someone commenting on her journal) described the new series as "gritty", which I think may hit the nail on the head, though the stories have also ended up being quite simplistic and lacked any subtlety. For me, Doctor Who has at most only been "gritty" on occasion, but it's been a consistent thread in many of these stories. On that basis, it's no surprise that the two best episodes for me - Rosa and Demons of the Punjab - were both (primarily) written by someone other than Chibnall.