iainjclark | Recent Entries

Last night we went to the soon-to-be-refurbished Newcastle Theatre Royal to see Yes, Prime Minister, a new stage play from the original TV writers. With an all new cast, naturally.

( Read more... )

On Friday we went to the beautiful and impressive Sage in Gateshead (i.e. South Newcastle but don't let them hear you say that) to see Tom McRae supported by Brian Wright. It's by far the nicest venue we've ever been to, all glass and aluminium and polished wood and airy spaces. Maybe we've been going to the wrong gigs.

Steven Moffatt describes Doctor who star Matt Smith as an "elegant shambles". That pretty much describes this gig. Almost from the word go the bassist had problems with his amp, and Tom was forced to extemporise with a version of I Ain’t Scared Of Lightning (read from his own tea towel merchandise) while Things were done, none of which appeared to make much noticeable difference. Then it turns out cellist Oli Kraus had been urgently recalled to the US where his wife was having a baby, resulting in a large cardboard standee of Captain Jack Sparrow acting as hilarious stand-in for the whole gig (ably supported by the stylings of Brian Wright on his slide guitar). And just generally there was a spirit of fun, constant messing about: trying to get the drummer to crack up when the entire band was singing close harmonies; Brian whistling cheerfully during Still Love You; seguing from Still Love You into a version of Rihanna's "Umbrella" ("Tombrella"). Tom was in a chatty mood and it was a hugely enjoyable, relaxed occasion, and the bad were so tight and well-rehearsed they rose above every disruption.

I'm terrible at remembering the order of a setlist, but the songs were:

Mermaid Blues
Me and Stetson
I Ain’t Scared Of Lightning
Walking 2 Hawaii
Dose Me Up (End Of The World News)
Summer Of John Wayne
Streetlight
Please (up tempo version)
Still Love You (plus 'Tombrella')
Karaoke Soul
Silent Boulevard

(encore)
Draw Down the Stars (The Girl Who Falls Downstairs)
Bloodless
Boy With The Bubblegun

Given that we saw the opening gig of the Alphabet of Hurricanes tour, it's both remarkable and pleasing how much variation there was between the two shows. I got to hear a number of personal favourites, including Mermaid Blues, Walking 2 Hawaii, Bloodless, Karaoke Soul and Summer of John Wayne. There was also a lot of variety. Mermaid Blues was a stunning 'cold open'; pure A Capella, just Tom's soaring voice in a silent room for the entire song. Really great. Streetlight used the whole band in close harmony for the chorus. Draw Down the Stars was sung solo but with looped backing harmonies and lyrics from The Girl Who Falls Down Stairs near the end. Bloodless was sung entirely acoustic and off-mike, resulting in the audience spontaneously singing along to almost the entire song (something I don't normally like as the crowd invariably expect the album version note for note, but which really worked here).

Brian Wright provided some superb and at times frenetic guitaring, and sweet backing vocals. He opened the gig with a solo acousitc selection of some of his own fine songs, including one of my favourites, Radar, plus Former Queen of Spain, Striking Matches, and War on Wilcox and a newer song I liked but can't name.

If I've a complaint about the evening, it's that the room could have taken many more people, and those missing people really missed out on some good music. But the sound system was perfect, the view was perfect, and the audience were appreciative. A great experience, warm and inclusive, in a stunning venue.

I also picked up 'The Streetlight Collection' containing 18 of Tom's b-sides & rarities, only about seven of which I'd heard previously. 'Out of This' is outstanding and should definitely have found its way onto an album.

Frankly if there weren't a few plot holes in THAT there's no justice in the world.

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Big Bang )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Pandorica Opens )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Lodger )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - Vincent and the Doctor )

Very belated on these but I'm too much of a completist to leave them.

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - Amy's Choice )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Vampires of Venice )

Haz voted.

We're in an ultra-safe seat and I voted against the majority party. D'oh. My wife went on this website that calculates that votes in this constituency are worth the equivalent of 0.059 votes (based on the probability of the seat changing hands and its size.) But I still feel it's worth voting - important, even to vote. If nothing else I'll have kept down the depressingly non-zero proportion of the vote here that goes to the BNP.

We took Anna along so that she could watch us vote. At 9 months I don't think it made a big impression, but by the next general election she'll be nearly 6. How scary is that.

My gut says that despite all the polls showing the conservatives with a narrow lead, they'll actually end up with a straightforward majority, just because a) I'm feeling pessimistic, b) I suspect human nature means that when it comes to the crunch most protest votes against Labour are going to go to the traditional opposition party not a perceived wildcard like the Lib Dems.

Most polls don't seem to take into account things like marginal seats but bafflingly assume we live in a proportional representation utopia. I'd be extremely interested to see what a hung parliament looked like, though. It's tough to see how it could be worse than the status quo, which amounts to the usual suspects being decisively, dynamically, excitingly... self-serving and short-sighted.

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - Flesh and Stone )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Time of Angels )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - Victory of the Daleks )

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - The Beast Below )

And so it begins. The Election that feels like it's been upon us for months is finally upon us. Almost finally.

Now the parties can stop pretending to campaign and start really campaigning. Yes, apparently it can get worse. Since no-one was campaigning previously, all those increasingly intolerant poster campaigns that have blighted my trip to work for the last few weeks must only have existed in my imagination. (Which, given that two of them involved David Cameron's head photoshopped onto Gene Hunt's body, I can easily believe.)

Like everything in politics these days, even the Election announcement was leaked and reported in advance. Yesterday BBC News told me that the election would be announced today. And today it was, amazingly, announced. At this rate the next four weeks could last a lifetime.

The BBC seem to be at pains to talk up this election (which to be fair is probably a much needed shot in the arm for the electorate). To accomplish this they've been going out of their way to emphasise the allegedly massive differences between Labour and Conservative policies. Or rather, the differences in their rhetoric: 'cuts now' or 'cuts later', 'this is no time for change' or 'this is time for change'. The trouble is, when you get right down to it the slogans belie the essential similarity of the underlying policies.

In fact I'll go further -- I don't really believe that the parties mean what they say. I'm sure this comes down to my alarmingly detached view of the news, but my strong feeling is that the only reason Labour are talking about 'cuts later' is not because they necessarily think it makes sound fiscal sense but because it sounds slightly different from the Tory position. And vice versa. When everyone wants cuts, it's all about product differentiation. It's possible to argue that it does make sound fiscal sense, just as it's possible to argue that announcing an NI increase months ahead of time isn't like trying to have your cake and eat it, but when I listen to politicians at election time I find myself beset by an inability to believe a single word that comes out of their mouths.

I don't mean to sound like one of these disenfranchised apathetic stay-at-home voters the news is always telling me about. I'm not that. I do vote, and I feel strongly that it's our responsibility to vote (if only to stop the BNP increasing their market share). What I'm realising, other than that my cynicism may be at the stage where it has a clinical name, is that I don't really vote based on individual policies. Because I don't believe that the parties are sincere about their policies. More often than not they appear to be an arbitrary means to an end, an idea dreamed up in a campaign HQ as a way to sound good to the electorate.

Instead, I think my vote is driven by ideology. I vote for a party because I believe that what they stand for, in totality, is in line with my moral or social values. I don't even think I judge this mainly by aggregating all their policies together, I think it's about big statements: freedom, equality, social justice. That kind of thing. The broad political sweep of left, middle and right.

Where individual policies probably do influence me is that I may vote against the ones that offend me. In a world where the two main parties are hardly different in many of their policies, only one intends to overturn the ban on fox-hunting, and that party will definitely not get my vote. Both of the main parties are almost equally repressive, emotive and hypocritical on the subject of immigration so neither will probably get my vote. (This is because I'm a bleeding heart liberal).

All of which means that the less the parties have to say over the next four weeks, the greater chance they stand of getting my vote.

I have a dream.

What a relief.

( Spoilers for Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour )

We went to see what turned out to be the inaugural date of Tom McRae's Alphabet of Hurricanes tour last night, in the reasonably tiny upstairs room of the O2 Academy2, Newcastle. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, although the fact that the doors opened half an hour late did result in moderate hypothermia. Sadly no-one has yet invented Warm Mulled Guinness¹ so I was forced to warm myself on regular Guinness. You can't beat the taste of beer out of plastic².

Brian Wright provided a really fine support act with a stripped down one-man-and-guitar (and-beard) performance. It's also possible he was stoned. Although I'm allergic to country I can generally suppress my immune reaction if it's blended with healthy doses of blues, rock and folk, and it helps that he's a deceptively intelligent writer. Of the new material I think Queen Junk (or whatever it's called) is borderline genius. Great to hear Radar too.

Wright also provided guitar, harmonica, backing vocals and the occasional banjo for Tom's six-piece band, the largest group he's ever toured with and one that kicked out a lot of good noise. Tom played for about an hour and a half and delivered some powerful singing and his usual self-deprecating banter between the tracks. As near as I can remember it the setlist (in approximate order) was:

an alphabet of hurricanes can't blow this drifter home

Alphabet of Hurricanes
Me & Stetson
Summer of John Wayne
End of the World News
A&B Song
Please
Walking2Hawaii
American Spirit
One Mississippi
Still Love You
Silent Boulevard

(encore)
My Vampire Heart
Draw Down the Stars
Boy with the Bubblegun

I can't begin to imagine why Alphabet of Hurricanes is not on the album which bears its name. It's a lovely song and if it's worthy of starting the new tour it's surely worth a place on the record. I was surprised that the new material didn't dominate more, although the choices were undeniably the right ones. Summer of John Wayne is one of my favourites from the new album and Please was the superior downtempo version from the Recorded at Gunpoint EP, while Still Love You's spare charm was boosted by a bigger finish and plenty of audience participation, plus a valiant attempt to get the venue's mirrorball working.

The benefit of the bigger band was really felt on the pacier tracks. Me & Stetson really rocked with a six-piece band behind it, as did End of the World News, A&B Song, Silent Boulevard and Boy With the Bubblegun. Brian Wright knows his way around an electric guitar. The sound was comparable to the Tom McRae Live album with a couple of notches more oomph and the benefit of an actual drummer.

The other tracks were a mix of familiar standbys but nonetheless I was very glad to hear One Mississippi, Walking2Hawaii and My Vampire Heart. Draw Down the Stars was an absolutely beautiful interpretation with some great harmonies.

We had a really fun night. Janet picked up a couple of t-shirts (the McRae one bearing a quote from that title track that's not on the album³), and I picked up Brian Wright's new one House on Fire which is setting off my country allergies but has some interesting material when I can stop sneezing.

As for the album, I had the benefit of Amazon's snafu when they briefly released it on 1st Feb so I've lived with it a while. I really like it. Economical, bleak and uplifting it's a throwback to McRae's debut sound but also absorbs some americana to surprising effect. One moment he's croaking along to plucked strings, the next delivering a soaring ballad, then singing the blues by way of The White Stripes. It feels like a moonlit walk after the expansive highway of King of Cards. Although it slowly reveals itself to be less sombre than it first appears, it's as uncommercial as anything he's ever done. It's good, but it's tough to see this being his breakout success.
--
¹ And by 'sadly' I mean 'mercifully'.

² And by 'can't beat' I mean 'should never willingly experience'.

³ Okay, I'll let it go.

A new teaser image from the upcoming Doctor Who season, featuring the Doctor and Amy in silly poses, some returning and new monsters, and a swirly blue time vortex that looks like the Tom Baker credits reimagined in computer graphics. Wonder if the background is part of the new credits sequence...

We also caught up on some ye olde Doctor Who recently. City of Death is a serial I have very vivid memories of watching as a child in the 1970s: Scaroth revealing his one-eyed face, his spaceship exploding, the trip to renaissance Italy, the multiple Mona Lisas, the time bubble that accelerates egg into Chicken, and vice-versa. It's all there in my mind's eye. Fortunately this one holds up surprisingly well, even going back to it after all this time. Although we're moving into his later, less uniformly successful, years in the role Tom Baker is a joy. The location filming in Paris is effective (even if it gratuitously packs in every Paris cliche going, and seems to feature endless shots of the Doctor and Romana aimlessly wandering), and the pacing is snappy, particularly for vintage Who. Douglas Adams' (pseudonymous) witty script doesn't hurt, either. It's not an absolute classic, and in common with a lot of old Who there's a certain sense of gabbled exposition and rushed anticlimax, but it's very solid.

Next up was Masque of Mandragora, an earlier Tom Baker story featuring Sarah Jane Smith as the companion. In contrast to 'City of Death' I seem to have no memory whatsoever of watching this when I was younger. All my vague recollections come from the target novelisation. That makes watching it slightly surreal since I broadly remember key elements from the book, but imagined them completely differently. Viewed with modern eyes this one has a script, acting and production values that feel significantly above the baseline standard for 70s Doctor Who. There's a vigour to the characterisation that reminded me of a Robert Holmes script, and the renaissance setting really works; the Doctor fits in seamlessly into an era poised between superstition and scientific discovery. Seeing actors like Tom Piggott-Smith in essentially Shakespearean garb helps my suspension of disbelief immensely, and the setting is aided by unusually convincing location filming in Portmerion (looking not too much like The Prisoner). The set-up also feels unusual, with the Doctor being essentially responsible for the threat. There are a few wobbly sets and creaky special effects, and like 'City of Death' the denouement is rushed, but there's a lot to enjoy. Plus there's a blatant sequel hook at the end. Come on Mr Moffatt, you know you want to...

Belatedly..

( The End of Time, Part 1 )
---
( The End of Time, Part 2 )

I wish you a hopeful Christmas,
I wish you a brave New Year,
All anguish, pain and sadness,
Leave your heart and let your road be clear.

I Believe in Father Christmas (Greg Lake)

I chased a thief out of our kitchen tonight.

I was sitting in the front room typing on our shiny new laptop just after 10 pm when I heard a funny noise from the kitchen. At first I assumed it was a cat (ours or someone else's) - this would hardly be unusual! But it sounded odd so I went to look and found a stranger in the kitchen. Young, white, wearing a white tracksuit top¹. I yelled at him and he legged it out of the back door, around onto the drive and out onto the street. I saw him disappear around the corner but it was dark, wet, I was wearing socks and I'd tripped over something on the drive. Common sense reasserted itself and I gave up!

Turns out the thing I stubbed my toe on in the drive was his push-bike, which I (perhaps stupidly) carted back into the kitchen and locked the door. Janet and Anna had been upstairs but Janet was pretty shocked when I told her and immediately rang the police. An officer came around within 10 minutes, during which time we tried to work out what if anything was missing. Finally Janet spotted that my work briefcase was gone - and I'd seen him holding some sort of bag as he exited our drive. As far as we can tell that's all he got. In the grand scheme of things it could have been a lot worse - we're often both upstairs, and all sorts of kit including the laptop would have been lying around.

All told it was over in about 15 seconds but it's still really annoying and fairly shocking. The police took my statement, took the bike to fingerprint and tomorrow they come to do more forensics and take my prints for reference. I did get a look at the thief and said I'm prepared to ID him, but whether I could actually pick his picture out in practice is another matter. The police officer was incredibly professional and supportive and I can't speak highly enough of the initial support we've had.

Needless to say we'll be making sure to lock the back door in the future, even if we're in and up and about. It's more the principle of the thing - to have an intruder in your home, to think what might have happened, and worry he might come back. Fortunately he can't have seen much so won't know what's in the house to steal and hopefully there's no incentive for him to come back. Thieves are complete bastards, really.
--
¹Shops at Chavs R Us, basically.

That was awesome.

( Quick thoughts on Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars )

The new Steven Moffat era version of the Doctor Who logo has arrived. They announced it this morning. Yes, they announced a logo. Yesterday they announced the announcement. Sadly the ridiculous over-hype worked on me, and I turned up at 8 am to see it.

I'd put it behind a cut but it'll be all over the internet within... well it's probably already there.

My response? Hmmm. It's... a Doctor Who logo. The actual logo is nicely retro only with a new font, harking back to the first two logos the series ever had (I'm sensing a retro theme from Moffat, what with the Doctor's costume and the rejuvenated look of the Tardis plus St. John's sticker.) The Tardis version of the logo is gimmicky tosh. Let's hope we don't see a lot of that one.

ETA: It's interesting to me that Moffat is changing quite so many aspects of the show to launch his new era. Doctor, companion, Tardis (the interior is rumoured to be having a few changes), logo, plus presumably credits and maybe a remix of the theme? Usually regenerations cause so much nervousness that they like to contrive as much continuity as possible to reassure the viewer. This approach is certainly confident. But, particularly coming off such a popular and iconic Doctor as Tennant, will it alienate people or shed a chunk of viewers who feel that 'their' Doctor Who has finished?

We had a bit of an adventure yesterday when we found an injured cat in our garage.

After I got home last night I looked out of the kitchen window and spotted a grey and white cat with its collar hooked under its armpit, something that happens to our cats occasionally and severely hampers their movement. I dashed outside and saw its tail disappear into our garage through a hole in the door (must get that fixed!) Janet and I found the cat cowering at the back of the garage behind the lawnmower, and it quickly became clear that it was in a bad way. The collar was a nasty red plastic one and it had rubbed the skin raw under the leg, removing all the fur in a large area which was red and evil-looking. The poor thing must have been in agony.

Intrepidly donning a pair of chunky gardening gloves I managed to grab the hissing beast and desperately tried to remove the collar while it struggled and bit me frantically through the gloves (which proved fairly useless at resisting cat fangs). Finally Janet cut the collar off with scissors, at which point the cat settled down a bit and we managed to get it into one of our cat boxes.

Then we rang around every local vet we could find, all of which were shut. One answerphone directed me to a 24 hours vet helpline, which in turn sent me to the RSPCA, who gave me a log number and told me to, er, find a local vet. Finally we got one that was open til 7 pm and kindly agreed to stay open long enough for me to get there with the injured cat. The RSPCA log number means the vet can claim £60 + VAT, and ring if they need to ask for more money. According to the RSPCA this makes for much more cooperative vets!

Then I came home, slathered my bloodied finger in germolene, and Janet did some "Injured Cat Found" posters which we taped-up in nearby streets, pub and shop. I was still a bit worried to be honest. The wound looked like it was many hours or days old, and although the Vets took the cat in last night they couldn't treat it properly til this morning. Also the cat could have been miles from home and the owner might never be found.

Thankfully Janet took a call today from someone who saw our poster and recognised the description, and we've just had a call from the vets. The owner has collected the cat, Megan, and it should make a slow but full recovery. Apparently it's been missing since July, when it was being looked after by a friend of the owners during a holiday, and went missing. (Oh the guilt that friend must have felt!) They haven't seen it since.

All told that put paid to most of last night and I have a sore finger for my troubles. Cats mouths aren't the most hygienic things so I'm keeping an eye on the finger but so far it doesn't seem infected.

Phew. I'm very relieved, and the owner has passed on their thanks. As Janet says, we'd want someone to do that for our cats, so it's only fair we do it too.

Bugger. We don't have a good history of having Tom McRae gigs cancelled on us. This was just posted by Tom McRae on his forum (abridged version below):

"I’m very sorry to have to tell you all that the release of the new album and subsequent tour has been delayed until next year.

Due to circumstances I couldn't really control - and a last minute record deal being offered, which I desperately needed but wasn't expecting, I have been asked to reschedule the tour to early next year.
...
As you are all aware the industry is in turmoil right now, and while I was preparing to throw yet another record out there unassisted, only for it to vanish instantly like the last 3 - it looks now as if a label wants to champion it after all.

This is obviously still a gamble, and who knows if it will ultimately change anything, but I owe it to the songs (which I hope you’ll think are some of the best I’ve written – when you get a bloody chance to hear them) and I think I owe it to many of you, who have been urging me on with your support for many years.
...
If you can bear with me just a little longer, I’ll have more news, and some hard facts about the new dates. I think we’re looking at February now, which gives the label a chance to promote the record before and during the tour. There’s even talk of a single going to radio – so it seems I’ll have to adjust to working with crazy optimists for a while. But none of this gets you closer to hearing the new songs or seeing them performed by the amazing band I had put together. For that I apologise again.

I’m also going to look into ways which I can begin to make this up to you somehow in the short term, maybe I can do the odd solo show here and there, or ask to let you hear a song or two from the album – I’ll let you know how I get on.
...
Tom"

Fantastic news about the record contract, obviously, and wish him every success. Ah well. We'll get to see the gig (and hear the new album) eventually. Fingers crossed!

My latest film watching is here. Wonderfully we've been able to sneak out and see films at the cinema two weekends in a row.

[Poll #1454977]

Anna's been fantastically well-behaved recently, and even slept for five hours straight last night. That's five whole hours of sleep. I know. Also she's just started smiling a little bit, which is a huge psychological breakthrough. She particularly loves it if you imitate her little chirrups and gurgles, which results in a delighted smile. Most of the time she sounds suspiciously like a mogwai, which is slightly worrying since we've been feeding her after midnight.

We've been watching the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series from the start. We've just made it to 'The Final Problem', featuring Holmes's apparent death and the final appearance of Watson #1, whom I think I marginally prefer to Watson #2 for his eagerness and fantastically deadpan bemusement. I'm not sure what more I can say about Brett's merits as Holmes except that rewatching these episodes has reminded me just how very good he was in the role, particularly early on. Athletic, eccentric, rude, bursting with nervous energy, and the very image of what you want Holmes to be.

There's also a realism that this Granada series derives from having been shot on location that puts it streets ahead of any amount of over-dressed ye olde england sets, plush smoking jackets and fake pea-souper fogs. When you've seen Matt Frewer as Holmes (and generally speaking I have nothing against Matt Frewer) you realise just how badly wrong Holmes can go when treated like a Disneyland attraction. Brett's Holmes and the world he inhabits are perfectly real -- despite being inhabited by a parade of Victorian grotesques.

Despite all this I remain inexplicably positive about the ludicrous Guy Ritchie romp starring Robert Downey Jr. I put this down to an ability to compartmentalise.

On a related note I'm not sure how I missed this news that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are making a modern day version of Holmes starring the improbably named Benedict Cumberbatch. If it weren't for the writers I'd dismiss this out of hand. With these writers, well, I'll give it a chance.

Plus they've just found the Giant Rat of (Somewhere Near) Sumatra.

They've done what I would have done and dressed him older to contrast with Matt Smith's relative youth. Sort of like Indiana Jones in his day job, actually, but with modern footwear

.

Not blown away by it, and less impressed than I was with Tennant's first costume reveal, but it works. This is an official BBC release, but now we just need some proper promo pics.

EDIT: More pics here.

My film watching in the year to date can be found on

52filmchallenge here. Only 13 to date and I don't think we'll be doing a lot of film watching in the near future by all accounts! I'm quite keen to see Moon, but we're under no illusions about how much spare time we're likely to have...

Nothing new to report on the Bump front, so here's some nice eye candy that distracted me last night.

Here's a really impressive trailer for a film that was completely off my radar, Daybreakers. Stars Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe, and set in a world in which Vampires are the majority and humans the hunted underclass. Pushes all my buttons, really.

The surprisingly good, even mature looking (I know, I know), trailer for Torchwood's Children of Earth mini-series (running in five parts Mon to Fri in a single week.)

I'm intrigued by the Johnny Depp / Christian Bale / Michael Mann gangster flick Public Enemies, even if the trailer is just an abridged version of the entire film as far as I can tell. Although he can be quirky and mannered as an actor, Depp is such a chameleon sometimes.

And BIG 'SPLODY THINGS. Roland Emmerich destroying the world again in 2012. Unlike Transformers, the astonishing spectacle of this one may actually lure me to the cinema against my better judgement.

Finally, and on a slight tangent, I'm a complete nerd sometimes but this CGI image from a forthcoming Trek calendar is just stunningly beautiful. In a nerdy way. (From the blog of Doug Drexler, an FX guy from Trek / BSG.)

Woo hoo! Have tickets to see the Mope King himself (sorry Dan) Tom McRae in the autumn, and it turns out that his support act will be the inestimable Brian Wright. Two great acts for the price of one.

I first saw Brian Wright doing a guest song at a Hotel Cafe tour, then later supporting Mr Mcrae, and then as a full member of the Hotel Cafe. I think he's a deceptively rich songwriter who often transcends the various country/honky tonk genres he writes in. There are some good examples of his range of stuff on his myspace page (with his band The Waco Tragedies), from the foot-stomping Glory Hallelujah to the freewheeling Morning Cigarette and the wistful Neighborhood. The only one I'm not keen on is the None More Country Bluebird.

Had a gorgeously hot and sunny couple of days here, which in the last couple of hours has suddenly become that deep gloom that signals either a solar eclipse or a heavy rain shower. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be the latter.

Presumably this is because our cats have begun sacrificing mice to appease the Great Sky God. For some weeks now Pixie has been intermittently trotting into the house just after dusk with a tiny grey mouse clamped proudly between her teeth. I, in turn, have been rescuing said mouse, checking that it appears uninjured, and releasing it back into the wild where it runs off to forage happily (until its next impromptu trip to our hall carpet).

Last night however I was summoned to the hall by Pixie's plaintive cries, and discovered her patting her pet mouse indignantly. It had rudely stopped moving, probably on account of the gaping hole in its side. Sad. Even later last night I went into the kitchen to find our other cat, Charcoal, excitedly patting yet another small rodent in the hopes that it would rise from the dead and do a bit more scampering. This one had no injuries, but was just as deceased. Clearly it's time to keep the cats in of an evening, in order to spare the local mouse community any further atrocities.

On a positive wildlife note our swifts are once again nesting in the eaves of our house. Every so often they launch from the rafters in a high-speed parabolic curve and whoosh past your ear.

We also went for a nice walk in the local park on Saturday, which has some really big old trees, and came across a nesting pair of woodpeckers (possibly the same ones that visit our garden, but just as possibly a different pair). They were scouring the bark of an Ash tree, which had three neat circular holes drilled into its trunk. I've never seen an actual hole made by a woodpecker, so that was quite cool. I'm still amazed that a bird can drill-out such a large space. We could hear the near-constant twittering of what we assume were woodpecker chicks coming from the general direction of the holes.

Which reminds me - Springwatch starts again tonight. Bill Oddie has been replaced by Chris Packham, in what is almost certainly an improvement. I remember Chris from kid's TV, when he had the same hairdo as Limahl from Kajagoogoo.

Yay, bank holiday!

Apropos of nothing in particular, I indulged in a bit more nostalgic Doctor Who watching recently.

'Battlefield' starring Sylvester McCoy was the extended DVD version. While it's one of the Seventh Doctor's better outings (i.e. it's not utterly unwatchable), it's very stilted. In general it feels like it was shot on a shoestring budget in approximately two days with no time to rehearse. (Which knowing Who is probably exactly how it was shot.) McCoy does his best to appear, by turns, mysterious, impish and brooding, but I remain utterly unconvinced that he's any of those things. Worse, I can't help feeling that the Doctor is written significantly better than he's played, which is never a good feeling to have about the lead character. Likewise Sophie Aldred as Ace gets a lot of gushing teenage behaviour for which the actress seems too old. There are a few decent scenes and likeable supporting characters, and a welcome return for Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier. Oh and a cool blue demon. But overall: meh. Sorry, Tim!

'Image of the Fendahl' starring Tom Baker is better. Okay, it feels like it was shot on a shoestring budget in approximately two days with no time to rehearse, but at least Tom Baker is convincing. The story is an odd pastiche of 'Quatermass and the Pit', involving ancient aliens from Time Lord mythology who have somehow influenced human evolution. The plot is woefully illogical and under-explained, to the point where it feels like key scenes must be missing. On the plus side it has Chris Boucher's usual crackling dialogue and pin-sharp characterisation, and a very decent supporting cast. I have no recollection of watching it my youth so I can't lean on nostalgia with this one, but I do remember the novelisation which probably helps.

On a related-ish note, here are a couple of BBC News videos:

An interview with Russell T Davies about completing filming on his (and David Tennant's) era on Doctor Who. (It includes the trailer for 'The Waters of Mars' special that aired after the Easter special.)

A five minute interview with Richard Dawkins that barrels through all the questions you'd expect, against a ticking clock, and gets Dawkins's usual precise answers.¹
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¹ Dawkins is of course best known for his cameo in last season's Doctor Who finale (not to mention being married to Romana mk II), but has probably done a few non Who-related things in his life.

My review of the new Star Trek movie is at Strange Horizons today. I can't make up my mind whether I let it off the hook -- see what you think.

A gracious open letter from creator Josh Friedman on the sad cancellation of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. When it was bad it was slightly meandering, but when it was good it was excellent. I'm pleased it got two series; I'd have been far more gutted had it died after its first year, whereas this way it had a chance to tell a more rounded story.

A trailer for Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes film featuring a Holmes who is much more like Robert Downey Jr. than we'd previously imagined. The movie looks like a lot of fun on its own terms, but it bears so little resemblance to Sherlock Holmes that I'll just have to pretend it's something else. (Downloadable trailers in better quality here.)

Two clips of the surely superfluous new 'V' miniseries starring Morena Baccarin. It's not like the original 'V' was any great shakes. The very first miniseries was a lot better than the second (The Final Battle), with its infamous rubber alien baby, and the second miniseries was itself like Shakespeare compared to the short-lived weekly series that ended up as Dynasty with Lizards. I'm willing to give the remake a shot since any remake brings with it the potential to improve on the source material, but how exactly will they make a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing alien invasion feel fresh and relevant these days? Oddly the clips remind me more of Earth: Final Conflict than 'V'.

And finally, rejoice world for the superlatively quirky The Middleman is arriving on (region 1) DVD. It's not the greatest thing ever, but it's possibly the funnest thing ever.

Dollhouse has been renewed for a second season. Warner Bros are making a big budget movie of Primeval. And Star Trek is a smash box office hit. It's like the world's been turned on its head.

Still, this plus Niall's admittedly lukewarm defence of the show may finally prompt me to give Dollhouse a try.

EDIT: And as if that isn't enough craziness, they've greenlit a remake of alien-lizard invasion series V which stars Alan Tudyk (Wash) as a human and Morena Baccarin (Inara) as an alien. There's a spoilery review of the pilot, which I haven't read, here.

EDIT to the EDIT: Comment from Joss Whedon confirming the Dollhouse renewal.

No inhabitants in our bird box yet. Tantalisingly we actually saw a blue tit leaving the box a couple of weeks ago, but we weren't recording from the camera at the time. (Naturally.) Since then a couple of suspicious-looking feathers have appeared, but no actual sign of nesting. They're probably having trouble getting a mortgage.

On the plus side, last month we were pleased to realise that we have not one but two Great Spotted Woodpeckers visiting our bird feeders on a daily basis (they particularly like a hanging length of birch log plugged with bits of fat feeder). We've only seen them both together once -- if it weren't for that we'd have no clue it wasn't the same bird. The only difference between males and females is that males have a red flash on the back of the head, but we've only seen clearly enough to know that one of the two is female. If it turns out we have a pair nesting nearby that would be fantastic. Very pretty birds.

We also have several Dunnocks (aka Hedge Sparrows) hopping around our garden for the first time this year. They look a bit like a cross between a sparrow and a wren. The bird book reckons these are wee timorous birdies who are supposed to dart nervously from the undergrowth, but ours are bold as brass - all over the bird table and the garden. They've been fluttering around recently doing what we think is either Mortal Kombat or courtship displays; either that or they enjoy driving cats to distraction.

My wife still goes out for her nightly Newt Census. We're regularly seeing seven palmate newts lurking in or around the pond just after dark which is more than we could ever have hoped when we built the pond. Very gratifying. They don't actually do much, but it's the next best thing to having lizards in the garden.

Or maybe this is the next best thing to having lizards in the garden...

Some while ago I prodded Dreamwidth to see what all the fuss was about¹ and signed in using my lj details as an OpenID. Now they've noticed and invited me over to their Beta, so I've tentatively set up a journal over there: http://iainjclark.dreamwidth.org/

I don't intend using it very much for now, since I don't share the seemingly prevalent feeling that LJ is Evil, but I may crosspost. Anyway, it's there and if you want to friend me go ahead. If the whole of LJ migrates over there at least I have it staked out... :-)
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¹ It's basically LJ at the dawn of pre-history.

CBR has good interviews with creator Josh Friedman and Brian Austin Green (Derek Reese) about the very nifty Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. SPOILERS aaaalll the way to the second season finale. I hadn't realised that it was almost cancelled 13 episodes into Season 2.

( Vague spoilers for the end of Season 2 )

Had a great Easter weekend involving no (count it) no work, and lots of relaxing. We had friends over for most of the weekend which was fun.

We did a pseudo-BBQ on Saturday (cooked indoors, eaten outdoors to ensure that Janet didn't get any undercooked meat) which was lovely. We did some potato and tomato 'curry' as a side dish which in no sense is a curry involving only some chopped potatoes, tomatoes and onions fried with mustard seeds, turmeric and coriander. Very nice, very mild.

Then on Sunday the sky was blue and the sun was hot so we pottered around the garden fixing and weeding things while Janet's brother carved a new paddle for his canoe. The cats helped, of course. Here's Charcoal helping:

More helping here. Pixie helped too, but in a more sedentary way.

On Saturday night we watched Doctor Who (what I thought), which included a nice shout out to Tom Baker's first story 'Robot', but was otherwise slightly dull.

On Sunday we also watched Skellig on Sky, in which John Simm continued to be as great as he is in everything not called Doctor Who. I was expecting something slightly twee and cosy, which it was in places, but mostly it was surprisingly honest, real and edgy for a kids drama. A bit low key and moody, but otherwise quite interesting. It's possible that the moral is to talk to scabby-looking strangers, but I'll let that pass...

It's a good job we had the nice weekend because the weather has been relentlessly foggy ever since. Yesterday with sea fret (but we had a nice pub lunch anyway). Today with full-on fog and low cloud extending well inland. Chilly, dank, and gloomy. But at least we had a lovely Easter.

"I'm the Doctor. Happy Easter!"

( Spoilers for Doctor Who - Planet of the Dead )

I'm a contributer to the latest Mind Meld article over at SF Signal along with many others including

wrong_questions and

saxonb. My bit is allllll the way down at the bottom. Take that however you wish. ;-)

The rather leading question at hand is this: BSG has ended, and no one appears to be thrilled with the finale. What would you have done differently, if you could run the show?

It's a question I singularly fail to answer, on the grounds that it's much easier to complain and point fingers than to offer solutions *cough*. In fact I quite enjoyed the Battlestar Galactica finale, on just about every level except logic. I've been known to forgive a lack of logic when a) the writer is Joss Whedon, b) the characters and the emotion hit me the right way, or c) both of the above (e.g. Buffy's 'The Gift'). There are certainly some fine and poignant moments of character and emotion in the BSG finale, but somehow along the way I stopped caring, enough, about these particular characters.

I think BSG and I parted ways emotionally and intellectually at the end of Season 2, when I stopped my reviews, but the rot certainly set in before that.

( 1. The Subtle Knife / 2. The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman )

( 3. Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale – Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook )

( 4. Full Dark House – Christopher Fowler )

( 5. The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman )

Unexpectedly, the latest trailers (Trailer 3 in both cases) for Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation are not just good but *so* good they've more or less sold me on the films. I wasn't sure either of them would amount to more than superfluous cash-ins on their respective franchises, but the Star Trek one in particular reached me on a gut level in a way that previous promos for the film missed by a mile. Maybe it's just been so long since Trek had some genuine spectacle, drama and energy on its side.

If streaming video doesn't float your boat, both trailers can be downloaded directly here

This weekend we went on a flying visit to London, mainly to see the Babylon exhibit at the British Museum before it closed, but also to cram in a few other things along the way.

We had a chilly but beautiful night time walk around the embankment via the London Eye and Big Ben, a pleasant meal and a glass of Hoegaarden in the White Hart, and Janet got to buy half the stock of Falkiners a lovely little shop selling hand-made paper and bookbinding supplies.

The Babylon exhibit itself was an unusual blend of fact and mythology, including the many artistic interpretations of the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, but despite a couple of beautiful items it didn't inspire me in the same way that last year's Terracotta Army exhibition did.

If anything we enjoyed the new Egyptian room at the Museum more. The room contains items from the Tomb of Nebamun, including some fantastic and lively wall paintings. This image of a cat is excellent and surprisingly naturalistic.

And of course Janet got to commune with the Rosetta Stone again.

We also booked to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum (the Darwin exhibition was sadly sold out) which showcased some stunning photography that was only enhanced by being displayed on vivid high definition screens rather than prints. Despite allowing people into the exhibition in booked slots it got rather crowded, particularly in the corners, but it was well worth it. Then I queued for 30 minutes to get a cup of coffee while my legs begged for mercy.

The Natural History Museum is one of those places that's always fantastic to visit. The building itelf is so lovely, like a secular cathedral, and is stuffed full of wondrous things. I'd have loved to have stayed longer but the urgent need to fall over won out.

I'm absolutely knackered, but it was a good trip. Photos can be found on my Facebook here.

I do love our old Space Age hot water tank shorn of its cladding. Very steampunk.

We're having our central heating system completely replaced with a new boiler and all new radiators, which involves three days of British Gas engineers under the floor and in and around the house. I've taken holiday and am house-sitting, but unfortunately I'm also having to work. I spent most of yesterday holed up in the bedroom shortlisting CVs for an upcoming vacancy. (I was even in work for ten minutes first thing this morning.) This is becoming increasingly impractical since the engineers are flitting from radiator to radiator and no room in the house is safe! I can't get moved.

They even needed the power off earlier. No computer! I know.

The cats don't know what to make of it. It turns out that once you pull up some floor boards there's a dusty crawl space at least a metre deep under our ground floor, and the idea of one of the cats slithering under there doesn't bear thinking about. They'd never be seen again. Or if they were, I can only imagine the cobweb-strewn Poe-like apparition that would claw its way back into the light.

Yesterday we locked them out of the house, which was fine until it started to drizzle. When the Ringtons tea salesman came to the door Pixie seized the opportunity to dash inside like an indignant bullet train. Naturally she made a bee line for the hole in the floor, and only the presence of a man working inside said hole prevented disaster. Many annoyed mrr-OWWg noises when I scooped her up.

Today we've got them both shut in the bedroom. Unlike Pixie, for whom all this is just a terrible affront to her sovereign feline rights, Charcoal is actively terrified of the engineers and either slinks into a corner with her head near the floor or panics and dashes frantically from room to room (often back and forth between the same two rooms repeatedly) seeking an escape. Poor thing.

You're looking at the inside of the bird box in our garden. The so far uninhabited bird box in our garden, but we're coming up on that time of year when a young bird's thoughts turn to twigs and trying to impress Bill Oddie, so fingers crossed.

Here's the outside:

We invested in a bird box with camera and attached it to the side of our garage, and then I painstakingly laid the cable (just visible on the photo). The set up was very easy - plug and play, essentially. There are audio, video and power leads coming off the camera unit (which can be disconnected at the box end mercifully), and thankfully all three cables (bound with a single coating) run the whole 30 metres so the power can be supplied from within the house. The cable snakes along the garage, around the kitchen, into the house next to our patio doors, and around the wall to our DVD recorder.

(Or nearly all the way to our DVD recorder. The 30m cable sounded like a lot, but when you're hugging the contours of a house it gets eaten up pretty rapidly. At present it has to take a slightly more direct route under our armchair rather than hugging the wall all the way, but I'm sure I can get a bit of extension cable. We thought about wireless ones but internet consensus seems to be that the wireless bird box cams can be a bit flaky, and despite a bit of faffing the only real difficulty I had with this one was getting the cable through the wall and into the house.)

We're really happy with it. We now have a bird box with a live feed that we can watch on the TV and record from. The camera seems to be in focus, shoots colour in the day and infrared when light levels are too low, and has a built-in microphone which has already picked up bird song and the sound of birds hopping around the exterior of the box looking for insects.

We've been meaning to do this for years. We get hordes of birds in our garden and we know they nest all around us in the trees, and even in our rafters. You already get a fantastic view of them feeding from our kitchen window, from where the outside of the new bird box is clearly visible. We just want to go that one step further¹.

On the downside it cost us a fair chunk of money. It's this one as endorsed by Simon King. There are many cheaper ones on the market it has to be said! Ultimately we decided that we may as well buy a decent one rather than risk it being poor quality. It also comes with a bird feeder that the camera can slot into if the little buggers persistently refuse to nest...

*waits expectantly for birds to move in*

*drums fingers*

To be honest we've had three sparrow boxes up on the back of the house for over a year now without any sign of habitation, so I have no illusions about how quickly we might get a lodger. On the other hand the new box is well away from the house and several blue tits and coal tits have shown an interest already while foraging, so I'm quite hopeful. Possibly a "room to let" sign next to the bird table might help.

Progress reports will follow as and when we, y'know, have any progress.

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¹ Also it gives the cats something to watch on TV. You should have seen Pixie's ears perk up when the sound of twittering started coming from the speakers.

We're having a bit of a minor flurry of DIY at the moment (for some unknown reason...), getting things done around the house we've been meaning to finish for ages. And by ages I mean years.

One is this little bit of wall tiling in the kitchen. Very modest by most standards, but I'm really pleased with the results. The tiles have a lovely rustic feel, complement the terracotta wall colours in the kitchen perfectly, and (crucially) make the area next to the bin and the cat litter tray a lot more resilient/waterproof. Also this is my first foray into tiling, and it's gone pretty well. They're Elios 'Cotto' tiles, for what it's worth.

Also in the above left pic you can see our swanky new spice rack. Made (you may gasp) by sticking three spice racks together and screwing them to the wall. This really is incredibly convenient. These days we use quite a few herbs and spices, and now they're readily to hand rather than stuffed into any and every bit of space on the window ledge.

"Footprints uncovered in Kenya show that as early as 1.5 million years ago an ancestral species, almost certainly Homo erectus, had already evolved the feet and walking gait of modern humans."

This is truly fascinating, particularly with the accompanying photograph. I love little glimpses like this into the distant past, and a footprint is such a vivid and relatable image (and a ready-made metaphor of course.) 1.5 million years ago someone who was not yet fully human but with a foot essentially the same as ours walked upright, and we can see their footprint. For some reason this really touched me.

The only earlier prints are apparently more than twice as ancient, and much more apelike.