I’m trying to think of as many TV shows as I can whose name can be sung along with the theme tune. So far I’ve got these:
The Sweeney
This Is Your Life
Emmerdale Farm (it only works if you include the “Farm”, and even then you have to fill it in with scat singing: Emmerdale Farm, do be do be Emmerdale Farm…)
You’ve Been Framed
There must be more, right?
I picked up Gods Behaving Badly at the weekend, in a haul which also included various complicated and improving books which I meant to start with. But I needed something to read in bed a couple of nights ago and GBB somehow made its way to the top of the pile. I didn’t love it to begin with. I thought it was – and really, this is something I should have been able to guess in advance – silly. But the further I get through it, the more I like it. It is silly, but it’s also charming and clever, and it has a proper story, which at first I thought it mightn’t. I can tell I’m gripped because I am sneaking little bits of reading time where I normally wouldn’t bother.
Don’t read any further if you consider that any information about the contents of a book constitutes a spoiler, but I am especially enchanted by the entrance to the underworld, which is reached via Angel tube station: you take the escalator all the way down and then keep going. What fun to take somewhere that’s well-known in real life and turn it into a fictional place that belongs to only you.
These are the nominees for “Best act ever” in the MTV European music awards, which take place next month:
If, like me, you find that one name on that list stands out especially for you, you can register your preference by voting. Far be it from me to suggest whom you should be voting for, of course.
I don’t know why it is, but those crappy disposable cameras keep coming up trumps with photos of beaches. After the shot of Margate that looked like an Edward Hopper painting, I now have this lovely photo of the beach at Cannes, which looks exactly like the sort of “mood” poster one might have found in Athena in the 1980s. I especially like the palm tree and the mountains in the background, which look like they were added on in Photoshop.
Full set is here.
I went in for a crime-fest on holiday:
Hurting Distance and The Point of Rescue, both by Sophie Hannah, are dense, cleverly plotted thrillers with breathtaking denouements, but that’s not what I liked about them. At least, I did like it, but there are lots of other books you could say that about. What I especially like about Sophie Hannah is how human and likeable her characters are. They’re never there just to serve a clever story: they’re living breathing people whom you could imagine meeting and having a conversation with. This is very rare, I think. My favourite book by her is out of print, but if you can hunt down a copy, I recommend Cordial and Corrosive, which is just one of the funniest, cleverest and most unexpected stories I’ve ever read.
I also read two new (to me) Agatha Christies. Ordeal by Innocence was a fairly standard whodunnit: if you like Agatha Christie, you’ll like it well enough. Endless Night is creepier and more original, and well worth reading, especially if you don’t know the ending, which I did.
To balance out the thrillers, I also read some location-specific fiction: Super-Cannes, which I enjoyed in a sort of plodding way – I couldn’t ever quite reconcile the intensity of the action with the languid tone in which it’s conveyed, though I suspect that’s partly the point – and Tender is the Night, which I took a little while to get into but which I ended up loving. I also noticed some unexpected similarities between the two, which I don’t think are coincidental: a character in Super-Cannes is reading Tender is the Night very early on in the book. But I shan’t go into specifics here because I don’t want to spoil anyone.
I am a sucker for a book on language, and I like swearing very much indeed whilst not being very good at it, so I also enjoyed Your Mother’s Tongue: A Book of European Invective, which more or less does what it says on the tin. When it comes to saying the unsayable the similarities between European languages are interesting, and the differences even more so.
Having successfully read some proper books (by which I mean the kind other people write about), I went back and read another Sophie Hannah book. The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets is a collection of short stories, and it’s a bit more literary than its terrible title makes it sound. I didn’t find every story a hit, but the ones which were good (which crucially included the first one and the last one) were very good.
Then I read two Blandings books, but I couldn’t tell you which they were. It doesn’t really matter: they’re all good. And now I’m on a Jeeves and Wooster, which I’m also enjoying very much.
I first saw this years ago, but it’s worth posting anyway because it’s just about the best thing I’ve ever seen and I had forgotten about it until I found myself poddling about on YouTube this afternoon. For as long as we live in a world where this is possible, there’s always a reason to be cheerful.
I got out of the habit of keeping track of the books I was reading here. Let me see how many of them I can remember.
The Periodic Table, which I can’t believe I hadn’t got around to before. Lovely; everyone should read it.
The Mezzanine, which marked a pause in my relationship with Nicholson Baker, as the ratio of style to content seemed to tip too far in favour of the former. That’s not really a criticism I can justify in any detail, but this is my blog and I don’t have to. I have since read some of his New York Times articles and my Baker-love is back.
The Uncommon Reader: there’s nothing wrong with this, but I’m as big a fan of Alan Bennett’s prose as you’re likely to meet, and I didn’t love it.
The Rain Before It Falls – see above, but replace “Alan Bennett” with “Jonathan Coe”.
Bollocks to Alton Towers, which despite its title is a sweet and thoughtful guide to some lesser-known tourist spots around Britain.
Frantic – Scott Pack, whose judgement I trust, recommended this, but I’m afraid I found it a fairly run-of-the-mill thriller. If you’re looking for a story about missing children (and who isn’t?) then I suggest Sophie Hannah’s Little Face as a more interesting example of the genre.
Wrong About Japan, which is nothing like anything I’d usually read, but which I enjoyed very much and finished in a couple of hours (it is very short). It’s the closest I’ve come to an account of Tokyo that makes it sound as exciting, as bewildering and as alien as I found it.
I have also read four library books, all of which I have forgotten the names of.
I’m listening to this soundtrack album, because the Magnetic Fields played a song from it when we saw them last week and it made me want to hear more. I didn’t know anything about the film, but its IMDb plot keywords are
Gay Romance | Deaf Mute | Gay Interest | Harmonica | Homosexual Teenager
Kind of sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? Sadly, the only review on the IMDb begins:
This film is offensive and admirable at the same time. A kind of message movie about the loveliness of adult-adolescent gay romances, the film actually does have some guts because it allows everyone a fair chance to make their case. But the film itself is so bad!
I’d still quite like to see it based on that, but it doesn’t appear to be available anywhere, despite only having come out in 2000.
Anyway, the music is very good. I do like story songs. I think this is the first CD album I’ve bought in…um, longer than I can remember. I get all my music off the internet now. But it’s not as much fun – the CD case even comes with the lyrics printed inside! If I weren’t at work I’d be singing along.
I’ve just finished reading We Don’t Know What We’re Doing, Adrian Chiles’s account of the 2005-06 season as he travelled around the country watching games with West Brom fans even more fanatical, in some cases, than he is. I’d recommend it to anyone, but especially to anyone whose team aren’t traditionally a big winning side. It’s heartening to discover that promotion and relegation feel the same for everyone else, too. Although I can barely call myself a fan in comparison to most of the people he meets.
But it’s a really really wonderful, heartwarming, funny, sad book and I’m glad I picked it up. Buy your copy now. Buy two!
Glad All Over 