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Now: 6 - 12 January 2025
It was pretty cold this week, so we took advantage of everything being frozen over to spend a bunch of time outside. The Met Office says that the weather is going to turn this next week, reaching balmy highs of like 14 degrees and turning the country into a massive mud pit.
Reading
I liked Sam Valenti IV’s review of pop music in 2024, where he basically argues that modern pop music is so multimedia that musicians no longer get anywhere without a big social media campaign and tie-ins with e.g. presidential candidates, even if the music on its own is critically acclaimed. Also some navel gazing about quite how much new music there is to listen to. Which, yep.
Also got back into reading Scott Galloway, whom I broadly agree with and who writes things that make me feel like a real smart guy for reading them. Typical of a Brand Guy to have a good brand.
Finished Yuzuki’s Butter as well, but I haven’t written that book review yet. I’ll probably give it
Listening
- MK.gee - ROCKMAN | I really like this sort of hearkening pop music. I can’t exactly put my finger on who it sounds like (probably because it doesn’t sound quite like anyone else), but it almost feels like it inherits some of the conventions of Yacht Rock in just the catchiest way.
- MIZU - 4 | 2 | 3 | Speaking of heavy music, this feels like the heavy music that I’m allowed to listen to: headphone-oriented, vaguely intellectual, extremely crushing.
- Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk - Plain fun. It feels like they’re never going to run out of ways to make fun synth pop. I especially like the way that singer Mica Tenenbaum takes like three or four syllables to say the word much on “Vampire in the Corner”.
At home
The “check engine” light came on early in the week but seems to have sorted itself out. The car continues to get pretty miserable mileage compared to what it should do, but started without trouble on even the coldest mornings.
Inside, some combination of grease and shoe mud plugged up the sink in the kitchen, so I got the plunger out and plunged the heck out of the pipes. After two or three good plunges the whole house made a noise like a dog throwing up and everything instantly got sucked down the drain with the explosive force of an airplane toilet. So uh I think I’d call that Problem Solved.
I also spent a couple of hours finishing off the grout in the office downstairs. Next up: washing it, sealing it, washing it again, installing skirting boards. Probably washing it again when Ghyll comes in from the garden with dirty paws and an eye to eat the cat's poo. Projects continue anon.
Outside
Back on a running plan, but not taking it too seriously. My Garmin is getting whiplash from my Training Load going up so precipitously. It’s like “please lay off for a day Charles” so I’m going to take Monday off.
Lots of lemonade made from the lemons of this cold weather we’ve had for the last week: Sam and I took Ghyll out for a walk to the nearby fishing pond, which had frozen over and which we were able to walk out onto; we headed down to Yorkshire to visit the Piercebridge Roman Bridge (much more impressive in person than in pictures) and for a good old-fashioned pub meal; I ran the Commondale Clart fell race on Sunday.
Watching
Started watching Small Brained American on YouTube; judging by his follower count I’m the last one to the party. I like his approach to experiences in foreign countries, which is basically “say yes to everything and don’t worry about it too much”. I think that there’s probably a little bit of international-friction-smoothing-over that happens off-camera, and I’m prepared to discover that he (along with probably like 95% of Travel YouTube) is Problematic. Oh well, it’s fun to fall asleep to.
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Now
Twenty twenty-five is the year I get my blogging groove back.
Listening
- Hell - Live at Roadburn, 2018, Dopesmoker - Sleep | Both of these are pretty “heavy” albums that I appreciate from an aesthetic point of view but which also I feel like I haven’t quite “earned” in that I’m listening to them on wired iPod earbuds from 2019 while at my remote deskwork job. Via The Verge.
- Inverse Field Vol. 1 - Inishowen | Airy ambient music from Ireland, apparently recorded on location in the Great Outdoors. Listened to this one with Ghyll on Saturday evening; the recording conceit probably comes across better when listening on headphones. Via Simon Collison.
Watching
Finished Wolf Hall. I feel a great sense of superiority at having read the books before I was even aware of the television programme, but not so great a sense of superiority that I forget that I read them after the first two were awarded the Booker Prize. So it’s not like I’m a champion of obscure literature or whatever. Anyway, the television series was terrific, elevating Mark Rylance to National Treasure status, perhaps.
Reading
Still working through Butter. It’s enjoyable but it’s not propulsive. It gives the impression of one of those video games with episodic quests. The characters all pop off the page, which is fun—except for the main character, who feels weirdly flat. Maybe it’s a reader-projection thing.
Catching up on end-of-year review posts from Simon Collison and Phil Gyford, the latter of which linked me to this interesting YouTube video about splitting a year into quarters to make life/work goals more manageable.
Outside
Ran a 5k in 19:57 on Tuesday, the culmination of a long process of training. Now I guess I need to figure out how to do this for 10k straight. Then I didn't run again until Sunday, nor felt any desire to: which is maybe a sign of something or maybe not a sign.
Spent a lovely night with Sam and Ghyll in Kielder at Flittingford bothy. On the plus side we brought in plenty of fuel for a toasty fire and we got to see an aurora, plus a skyful of stars; on the negative side Ghyll did eat human poo. I left a stern word in the overflowing bothy book.
On Saturday night it snowed heaps but was started melting before we even got up. Pottered about doing errands for most of the day, getting thoroughly cold and wet in some persistent sleet that fell all day. It's 9pm on Sunday now and my trousers are only just starting to dry out. A smarter man would have just changed trousers.
Inside
Trying to continue wrapping up projects from last year: installing a lattice above the garage door for storing e.g. plywood; finishing up the last of the grout in the back office. We will get there someday ok!
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Flittingford bothy
Nice midweek trip up to Kielder with Sam and Ghyll to spend a night in Flittingford bothy to celebrate the new year. Parked at Black Middens and took the long way round, rather than starting in Falstone as it seems most people do (at least, based on the bothy book).
Walked in with plenty of fuel (kiln-dried from Aldi, truly the lap of luxury) so we stayed nice and toasty overnight. Wandered outside to relieve myself at the late hour of 6pm and found a stunning aurora in full glory. Stood around taking pictures of the sky until our fingers started to numb with cold, then retreated inside and learned how to play rummy with the well-worn deck of cards someone'd left behind in ages past. Popped a couple of coals on the fire to keep us going overnight; asleep by 9pm.
The walk back out was in glorious clear weather (if a tad nippy). Stopped by the Sidwood Romano-Saxon settlement on the way out; little more than some earthworks to see, and a moss-overgrown plaque. Then popped up to Black Middens to ogle The Way the Other Half Lived (the Other Half are Border farmers from the Tudor period).
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Waffle House - FFSR
Fast Food, Slow Reviews - Sam's ongoing mission to review all of the USA's fast food establishments, one at a time, over the course of years of trips to the States.
We’ve been before but not done a FFSR so we returned to the notorious breakfast diner joint. It was a bacon, egg and cheese hashbrown bowl for me and an all-star special for Charles (eggs: scrambled, toast: white, waffle: plain, meat: bacon, side: grits with cheese).
I thought the hashbrown bowl could have been better seasoned and the cheese could have been either more plentiful or more powerful. But the bacon was really tasty and was the standout item. The hashbrowns are something I just can’t get at home so it’s always a pleasure. And of course the eggs were cooked just right.
I had some of Charles’s cheesy grits and yum yum yum! Again the cheese left something to be desired but grits have such a wonderful texture. Smooth and creamy but with a little bite in there too. I think I’d like to try adding grits to a Full English back home and see how it works. Maybe include some American diner-style hashbrowns to complete the melange.
Pecan pie was our dessert (which we needed like a hole in the head but when in Rome 🤷🏻♀️). Sara Lee does some fantastic things with sugar. The texture is of molasses or tar or something but with a deep sugary, nutty flavour. And then there’s the candied, crunchy pecans on top. A real treat :)
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Empire of the Sun
It’s good! It’s Spielberg so it’s going to be good. I watched this basically entirely on the premise that it's adapted from a J. G. Ballard book: the last J. G. Ballard book I read was a bit of a trip.
The pacing of The Empire of the Sun was a little weird, it kept going in fits and starts. There’s a big time skip in the middle that I think was the right thing to do. But also a lot of what we would now recognise as tropes that seem a little bit facile.
The kid on the other side of the fence basically just got used as a prop, and multiple props at that. I don’t know what the story was with his stand-in parents, Natasha Richardson and that other bloke. For a little while I thought they were his parents and I couldn’t understand why they weren’t reacting more powerfully to seeing him again.
On the other hand, boy oh boy can Christian Bale act. Seeing his face, already so expressive but so familiar from his adult work, was a real treat. And John Malkovich’s character was terrific as well, always ready with a bon mot. I appreciated that his disappearance in the end actually turned out to be a bit of a blessing: if Jamie had gone with him then I suspect that things would have gone poorly. Davy, the other boy that John Malkovich's character was close to, was nowhere to be seen later on (I think).
Although geographically I just could not figure out how everything hung together, how people showed up or disappeared. I guess that’s just the Magic of Moviemaking (tm)!
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