Posts filed under 'Media'
Here’s a thing: last weekend we had a food-related party, swapping jams, chutneys and so on. Yesterday I caught up with some newspapers from a few weeks ago, and found an article relating to people living in the country, with ‘any social occasion’ (including meeting at the school gates) resulting in frenzied jam swapping.
The part of the paper this was in has two regular columns - one is a country perspective (written from someone who seems to have started living in the country more recently, and at times is rather bemused by it), another a very townie perspective (particularly that week’s one, where life anywhere other than in London is treated with a certain suspicion).
Nothing new, eh, but given that most of us swapping jams etc live in or near cities, I wondered if that makes us city bumpkins? Perhaps there’s a lot of us in that situation - we may have grown up in smaller places, have come to the city to study or work. Several years on, here we still are, enjoying a lot of the benefits of the larger place but hankering after some of the aspects of smaller places, such as being a bit closer to nature.
Maybe instead those of us who got together are foodies, or environmentalists, or both, responding to this particular economic phase: looking at the recession, natural resources reducing and so on, and having a spot of home production to go with it. Or it may be a stage in life, if trying to feed growing families. (Maybe we can get a group grant from Good Housekeeping, or the Guardian, if we feel particularly self-righteous about it…)
Maybe it’s part of (early?) middle age - enjoying the little things in life, simple pleasures like watching the colour of elderberries as they’re cooking away; doing a task that allows you to slow your brain down a bit. Maybe it’s the belated fun of the pick ‘n mix - swapping things means that I get to try other people’s food that maybe I wouldn’t have thought to make, or to sample something new amid the other familiar items.
For my part, it’s also part of a growing desire to be creative - to make things, have fun doing so, and share a bit of that with others, particularly if they enjoy that too. Yes, I’m doing it in part to avoid too much Christmas present shopping later, but also because I like the process of making things - particularly food-related things.
All of the above. But what matters this weekend is that the apple chutney I made in September is now tasing very good with cheese…
October 11th, 2009
It’s good to know that, while some of us missed Beatlemania the first time round, there’s still opportunities to catch up - or get caught up - one way or another. Read my way through a fairly useful guide to all the albums and singles included in the weekend paper - I now have more of an understanding of the order of album production, which is sure to come in very handy at some point (Beatles pub quiz, anyone?).
What stood out for me more was a Storyville documentary on the impact of the Beatles on the young people of the Soviet Union in the early 60s, and beyond. An example of good journalism, I would say: the starting premise - that the Beatles’ influence helped the fall of Communism even more than perestroika etc - was actually confirmed, again and again, through the film. The maker of the film indicated his initial uncertainty at this claim, but there were so many people interviewed who iterated the claim that you got to feel by the end that it must be true.
The bit we laughed at was hearing how someone worked out how to make a guitar pickup out of telephone components - result: sudden rash of vandalism of call boxes the next day as lots of people rushed out to try it for themselves. (Not commending vandalism, but in terms of an example of effectively railing against the system, it did have a certain kudos.)
By the end of the programme, seeing footage of Paul McCartney playing a concert in Kiev - to a crowd standing there throughout pouring rain, hearing one of their heroes playing “Back in the USSR” to them - it was hard not to wipe away a tear.
For some of the interviewees, it also brought home to me the impact of banning religion under Communism, and the desire of people to find something to believe in. Lennon may have quipped about being bigger than Jesus, but if Jesus is banned, then it’s not entirely surprising if people choose to find something or someone else to believe in, and some people really did see the Beatles in a more religious light, even before their visits to India.
It also reminded me of the impact of what people pass on to you. Both Dan and I grew up with hearing the Beatles - my parents had the records, Dan’s mum even got to go to a concert or two and scream with everyone else. Reading this little booklet from the newspaper, with current and contemporary assessment of the albums and individual songs, it was interesting to compare their comments with my own take on some of the songs.
Sergeant Pepper is the album everyone know - or feels they do. As an adult, the trippy references become clearer - as a child, it just sounds like something akin to Alice in Wonderland “where looking glass people eat marshmallow pies”, part of that same happy environment of nonsense that is hardwired into children’s literature in the UK.
It was quite fun reading others’ comments in the booklet about their own take on certain songs, if hearing about the Beatles as a child. My brother thought that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was about our dog Lucy (there’s not a lot of dog references in the song, I’ll give you), for example. “Yellow Submarine” may annoy adults, but works perfectly well as a kids singalong - not every pop band can achieve that, as well as astounding the adults with their latest innovations in sound.
It wasn’t just that the songs were part of my childhood. References to the songs were also part of my childhood: Peter Sellers’ take off of “A Hard Day’s Night”, in the style of Richard III; “Here Comes the Sun” being used for the theme tune to the Holiday programme on TV.
They formed the backdrop to key activities such as holiday car journeys - the album Hard Day’s Night was a crucial part of the car tape repertoire, which in turn meant that we all sang along. Long car journeys from various parts of England, up to the west coast of Scotland, give you a long time to tune your ear into their harmonies, and to experience that thing so satisfying as a child, your parents enjoying something for themselves and including you in it.
So it seems that wherever we are on the long and winding road since Beatlemania, we still need them. We still enjoy them. Through new computer games, we can even learn to play and sing like them (finances and equipment permitting). And we still find new uses for their songs.
Reading this little booklet, there are several references to Paul McCartney adding in the song “Her Majesty” at the end of one album, and various people (Lennon and critics alike) disliking the song. Cut to a few decades later, and a certain concert for the Golden Jubilee - and suddenly we realise that there’s even a song there, ready made, when a certain songwriter is important enough, and long lived enough, to sing that song to the lady herself.
September 13th, 2009
So, hello! It must be the autumn, time to stay indoors, and maybe write a few blog posts again…
I’ll do a wee update blog in a bit, for anyone particularly concerned with chronology and Frydman activities in the last few months. For now, I’ll start with what’s been on my mind this week:
Started going through a whole collection of cards, birthday cards, postcards, letters, you name it - some recent, some going way back. I knew that my mum was good at sending cards of all kinds, but starting to stack them all up…really brought home her ongoing care towards me.
At this point, you may be wondering why I keep all this stuff anyway. But don’t we love rediscovering ‘treasures’ of various kinds from the past? Don’t we love receiving things through the post? According to a short piece in the Saturday Times recently (fount of a certain amount of my knowledge, as regular readers will know), there’s something of a renaissance going on in letter writing.
Email, texts, instant messaging, all good - but what happens when you turn off the device? I speak as one whose courtship partly started online (yes, there was a key email from Dan, and a lot more emails between us after that), but what I love to look back at is the cards and letters he sent me during our long first year apart, when I was teaching in Poland.
So far, so good, on the warm fuzzy feelings front. What feels stranger, and I’m still thinking over, is the potential for revisionist history when going back through all the letters. Friendship didn’t work out or only lasted for a time? Do I get rid of the letters they sent, and alter the history between us, as it were, or keep them but know I won’t necessarily read them again?
In other cases, there are friendships that have drifted - but I still think of the other person happily. The letter is a link with them - worth hanging onto a bit longer? And in a few cases, the other person has even taken the time to say that what you did, at a particular time, helped them or meant something to them. That thing may be long forgotten to them now - but it’s good to be reminded that you can help at points, even in a small way.
And in some situations, musing over a relationship that is not so good just now, the cards and letters remind me of another person’s care and attention, maybe over a long period of time. Is it not worth giving it another go?
I’m still working through the paper - and my reactions. I’m reminded of a quote I’ve used before, but this time to focus on another part of the quote:
“Sometimes the poet says to hell with words//And longs to dig ditches
She writes of her longing, and you, who are her friends, write back.”
September 8th, 2009
So, who got the latest Guiness Book of Records? More to the point, who’s prepared to own up to it? For years, it seemed to be standard issue that someone, somewhere, would be understanding of small boys’ needs for Facts, and make sure that the latest collection of Useful Information was dispatched. Henceforth, and, indeed, forthwith.
We happened to see a current Guiness Book of Records earlier in the year. Dan quickly checked key info - world’s oldest man, world’s tallest man etc. It’s rather more glossy now, and probably all highly weblinked, which partly defeats the point, in a way. In pre-internet times, that was why you needed the book, with all key info in one place, to be able to ensure that the world was still spinning as before, with the correct number of baked beans in a bathtub, and so on.
So, I didn’t receive the book, though my brother did, and I peeked over at it from time to time. I did however gain a love of facts, particularly offbeat ones which can be brought out as conversational morsels when the need arises. Which is more often than you think - particularly if you are in the company of others who also like facts.
Imagine therefore my happiness in discovering a new fact, courtesy of the Economist, in a book review. The book was all about hedgehogs, and I discovered that not only does North America not have any native hedgehogs (ie all imports), but also that hedgehogs have species-specific fleas. How mindboggling is that?
Sadly, I don’t think these elements are incorporated into Trivial Pursuits (favoured category brown (literature), general preference to avoid all questions on sport), but the flea one should definitely be incorporated into a family version. Small boys everywhere will be in agreement on the importance of knowing about fleas (if not, hopefully, being too closely acquainted with them).
This just leaves me time to pass on my favourite piece of information of this kind: that Sweden imports dust for use in scientific experiments. (I think it has something to do with not weighing things in a vacuum, so you add dust to an experiment so that it simulates normal conditions, or something like that.) Yes, I knew you’d thank me for that one.
I leave it to Robert Louis Stevenson to add his stamp of approval to the value of facts:
“The world is so full of a number of things// I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
January 1st, 2009
I’ve not ventured into Second Life - first life quite occupying, thanks. But there are still some attractions to having an alter ego, maybe particularly online, but perhaps a few variations in the everyday too.
Before this all starts sounding too ‘multiple personality’, we all do it - because we all fit into each others’ lives in different ways. I’ve sat in on those team build-y type exercises where you have to describe who you are - and often it’s in terms of labels, many we give ourselves and some we let others give us.
Back to online: I was expecting a few more pseudonyms in some of the Facebook applications, particularly the ones which allow you to beat up people who have (probably unwisely) agreed to be your friend. Given that a lot of superheroes do have alternative names, I decided to be Superfrau for the purposes of the game. (Superfrau has a real life aspect too: it’s written on a small soft toy key ring I was given by the German interviewer of the students I send abroad.)
Sadly, only one other person I knew picked out an alter ego, although there are plenty of others out there on Facebook who are perfectly happy with their pseudonyms, mostly nicked from the TV show Heroes (which seems fair enough, as the game I play is based on that premise). But it got me thinking about which of our alter egos we keep as we go on in life.
When I was 19, I did the gap year thing, went to Poland for half a year. And yes, it was the life-changing experience that gap years are heralded to be - in loads of different ways. I hadn’t expected to, but I linked myself with Poland. It influenced how I decorated my room at university, how I cooked, the kind of music I listened to. It had a major impact on how I viewed things like hospitality, and other positives I wanted to emulate, when back in the UK.
Part of this was also what I told others about myself. For some time, any connection with Poland - even if it wasn’t the exotic gap year that some had had - seemed unusual for a UK citizen with no family ties there. I enjoyed a perspective that was European, but a different kind of Europe.
Now, over 15 years since I first went there, I find myself identifying myself less with Poland. It’s not that the significance has faded. But Poland is less part of my life than it was. My point is, it is unlikely to regain that position it had - because I have moved on too. Other identities have entered my life, many of which get lived more on a daily basis than the Polish aspects I hung onto.
So what? Life today offers vast amounts of change, choice, alternatives. Perhaps I put more stock in particular identities because I don’t have the consistency of belonging that some do. I don’t come from one particular place - though Edinburgh does offer the best option, having been home for a good number of years.
There are other identities that we gradually realise have been passed on to others. Mid thirties, the desire to change the world quite so much, the capacity for large amounts of caffeine, these seem to have slipped quietly out the room, probably when I was doing something significant like hanging up washing.
Perhaps what I’m struggling towards is a notion of letting go of some aspects of who I’ve been - but not feeling diminished in the process. Quite enjoying a little more space - equally, not rushing to fill it. Meanwhile, can I recommend Captain Fantastico for your day to day superhero requirements?
December 21st, 2008
You know it’s Christmas when the fridge is full of cheese (a slight exaggeration, but happily, only slightly) and Aardman has decided to issue a new Wallace and Gromit. My cup, mulled or otherwise, runneth over.
We’ve got rather used to Wallace and Gromit now, but what the animators achieve, painstakingly, lovingly, is indeed a present of great proportions. Yes, they’ve done a film, but really, it’s in the half-hour special that they truly come into their own.
Flicking through the TV section in the bumper two-week listing (more on that later), I discovered that I had shared a ‘Wal and Grom’ moment with Russell T. Davies, no less (a chap also somewhat linked to Christmas, what with Dr Who specials).
It’s the moment in the second animation - the one with the dastardly penguin - when Gromit is chasing the penguin on a model railway, runs out of track, grabs the box and starts to lay new track. I too remember that delighted ‘no!’ moment, when you don’t know what is coming next but you know that it is going to be amazing…
Part of the enjoyment is an opportunity to rediscover my inner Yorkshirewoman, and soak up all the deadpan jokes. Wallace allows us to remember how British the slightly potty inventor is - British too the elevation of pets to equal, if not greater, characters.
We’ve become used to televisual sweetmeats, TV treats at Christmas time. But amid all the reruns - and reissues of previous comedy programmes - Wallace and Gromit are, like cheeses at Christmastime, something you can always take a little more of.
December 21st, 2008
I suspect it won’t become a hit single. But after fairly relentless wind and rain (both of us ended yesterday with broken umbrellas), a spot of sunshine today needs a mention, if only for how it changes your view on life.
Tomorrow is the shortest day, and after that, even where it’s not quite believable, let alone visible at that point, we’ll start to get more light again. I read a Monty Don book on gardening one time, where he talked about the time between the clocks going back, and the shortest day, as the hardest point in the year. Forget whatever date in January is meant to herald mass depression, being low on daylight makes it harder to add joy to whatever seasonal comfort you may be indulging in in December.
Last year, I felt very aware of looking out for this change, perceiving the creeping extension of daylight during January. This year, I know about it, but that doesn’t always bring the acceptance of it that I’d hope for. Different features of it seem to affect different people: some hate it being pitch black when the alarm goes off in the morning, others find the darkness so early in the afternoon a difficulty.
In my gap year, I spent the first half waitressing, and realised how easy it was in the winter not to really see the sun at all, especially where you are facing in from a shop window rather than looking out. In an office with large windows, or a home with a good amount of light, it’s a bit easier, but not that much. I should probably try to go out at lunchtime, while it is genuinely light, but that requires a bit of energy, which is also harder in the winter.
Somehow, when you’ve closed the curtains and settled in to lower levels of light for longer, it becomes easier. One of my friends referred to the season of ‘candles and snuggly blankets’ returning, and that helps it seem a cosier prospect.
What I’m trying to suggest is that this is a time of year for needing a little encouragement. Whether that’s enjoying a spot of sun, an extra slice of stollen, or a longer letter from a friend you’ve not heard from for a while, it makes it possible to go on living in the dark for a little longer, with some indication that there is light still to come.
December 20th, 2008
The season of hibernation continues. Do habits set in more quickly when it’s dark all the time? At any rate, we’re back to a reading aloud at the end of the day habit, and the book we’re on, “Full Tilt”, seems worth a mention, particularly when it contains descriptions of blue skies and heat.
We’re both keen on travel books, in this case the kind where someone else does the travelling and writes about it in a witty way. We have a few stacked up to read, and finally started this one, written by an Irish woman, Dervla Murphy, who decides to cycle to India. As you do. Or in fact, as she planned to do from the age of 10. But, unlike many of us and our early-stated ambitions, she actually sets off to do it, once in her 30s, and with a suitably heroic bike which becomes a second leading lady in the story.
She writes in the 1960s, when the Soviets are being seen to be gathering in around Afghanistan, one of her countries on route, but have not yet got going fully. The Shah is still in place in Iran (or rather, Persia, as she calls it), and hitchhiking is still an option - all to the good for Dervla, if her bike breaks down or the road gets impassable.
Rather nicely, she includes an equipment list in the back of the book, so you can work out how many tubes of sun lotion to take on your next intercontinental trek. She also packs a pistol, literally, and writes about the uses of it in amazingly understated ways (let’s just say, there are still wolves in the woods of central Europe at the time she is passing through).
In some ways, we are happily ploughing through the next set of adventures; at points, we look at each other and say ‘Nutter!’ at the general endeavour. People are often saying how it’s difficult to do travels that others haven’t done - but you would have to ask yourself how many lone women would set out to do that kind of journey now, only a few decades later, even if she’s had the sense to send spare tyres and inner tubes ahead to a certain set of international organisation’s offices.
We have just reached the point where she is entering Afghanistan, and it will be interesting to see how the descriptions compare with the images we have from news stories of recent years. And in our current midwinter torpor, reading about someone casually knocking off 80 mile cycle rides, day after day, brings only admiration.
Meanwhile, Dan looked up Dervla’s name online, and found that she is still trying to do epic cycle rides now, in her 70s, though somewhat hampered by hips and knees not behaving themselves. Once an adventurer, always an adventurer? I suspect we will be looking out for sequels.
December 9th, 2008
So which is the Christmas song that does it for you - that let’s you know Christmas is here? Do you need to stand up and bellow “it’s Christ-mas!” to get in the mood? Do you need some sleigh bells to jingle in the snow?
I am intrigued to know, because I am attempting to listen to Christmas-related music while Dan writes Christmas cards - and clearly, Christmas songs are a broad church. Admittedly, I’m listening to an Ultralounge Christmas collection, which makes it a slightly more chi-chi experience, but there’s certainly some stuff there that I struggle to relate to Christmas, apart from the slight note of cheese, which probably has to accompany many seasonal song collections.
Clearly, it’s something people take seriously, because otherwise, why would there be so many Christmas compilations on sale in the shops? And admittedly, if you give lots of parties at that time of year, it could be handy to have a collection of songs to put on that help your guests get in the mood.
Dan points out at this point (clearly he’s not concentrating that hard on the cards) that you could have a variety of Christmas collections, according to the various groups you might be dealing with at the meet and greet time of year. The subsets appear to be: cheesy, carols, classical music that makes you think of Christmas, rock Christmas.
So, for your entertainment, we present some of the music that helps us start to feel a bit more ready for/interested in Christmas. Mine combines classical and cheese, as I grew up listening to James Last German Christmas carols and classical music most years, while decorating the Christmas tree with my family. I downloaded it recently, and now the cheese factor does come through more than it did when I was 7, shall we say. But heck, German Christmas carols are really good, and bring us close to the second entry, which is Christmas related choral music.
When I was at secondary school, and getting into singing, we attempted our first oratorio type stuff in school choir: Vivaldi’s Gloria, plus Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. Not hugely well known, but a good excuse to sing a bit of Latin, bit of medieval English. The older the carol, the more it’s likely to challenge what you think the season is about. “This little babe, so few days old, is come to rifle Satan’s hold…” Not a crowd pleaser chorus, no mention of figgy pudding, but one that sticks in the mind.
While I’m at it, I’ll add my favourite carol, the Coventry Carol (Lullay, thou little tiny child). It does that great thing of being mysterious, beautiful, a bit scary (Herod the king, in his raging…), and uplifting (the wonderful change to a major key at the end of the piece).
We have to even the score at this point, and let Dan have an entry. His Christmas album is Take 6’s ‘He is Christmas’, which has probably become our joint ‘getting ready for Christmas’ album to put on. Lots of joy, lots of peace. I have also just consulted Dan on his favourite carol, which is Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
So there you have it. Feel free to add your own faves below. I’ve just realised that I have to add Mike Oldfield’s “In Dulci Jubilo” for a bit more cheese but good quality jingling. Moreish, these Christmas tunes.
December 7th, 2008
When it’s a Friday night, when you want some uncomplicated entertainment, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! Dan discovered that three out of four of them at work were very keen on the film, and suggested watching it again last night. Feeble protest from me. More, “I’ll get the film ready, then.”
Ghostbusters was probably my first real recollection of a film phenomenon. Now, with monthly passes for cinemas, or renting recent releases through the telly, it’s harder to get a sense of a big film even, for all of the efforts of bus advertising to make you think so. My upbringing was one of cinema being a treat, so when you went, you wanted it to be GOOD.
So, what of Ghostbusters? The first time we tried to see it, we queued round three sides of the block to get in to the cinema - and were turned away, with only 10 people in front of us, because the cinema was full. That makes it an Event. Thankfully we persevered and came back another time, without quite such a queue, and were able to get in. And yes, it was well worth it.
It’s also an early awareness of a film soundtrack being significant. Part of the continuing to enjoy the film, for me, was listening to the soundtrack again…and again…I even bought it on record, which shows that life and technology has moved on just a tad. But there’s so much humour and enjoyment in the soundtrack, as well as atmosphere - it does what you want it to, in underpinning and enhancing the story.
Despite 80s fashion reappearing (neon socks anyone? Seemingly very fashionable again), and 80s music being played in shops, watching an 80s film does show you that time does move on. The amount of casual smoking is a bit of a surprise. The haircuts are always good for a giggle. And in a film like Ghostbusters, where a certain amount of ‘kit’ is required for the story, carrying a tape recorder on a strap doesn’t really look like big science any more.
So why watch it? Because the humour is still good. It’s fun to be reminded of just how sharp the timing between Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd is. The effects are there to make you laugh, the slapstick is there too, but the verbal humour still sings, and not many films even bother with that now.
I rest my case. And my photon accelerator.
November 29th, 2008
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