The Moment To Choose (as Romana might say)…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Doctor Who

…or, to bafflingly quote an entirely different cult property, Who is Number One?

I’m in a quandary. It’s something trivial and unimportant, so naturally it’s occupying my thoughts to an absurd degree. It is in fact the Doctor Who Magazine’s 60th anniversary survey, looking to rank Doctor Who’s entire TV output from worst to City of Death.

This isn’t the first time. If there’s one thing Doctor Who fans love more than Doctor Who, it’s LISTS about Doctor Who, and we certainly haven’t gone fifty-nine-and-a-half years without thinking of rating each story. But it’s a slightly different process this time, which is interesting. Rather than tackling all three hundred in one go, a preliminary round has ranked each Doctor’s output. From this ‘first cut’ the top three per Doctor have gone through to (which is where we are now) the final.

So in a sense a lot of the heavy lifting is already done and we’re left with just thirty-seven stories. I can sort of see the logic behind it, it means that in the final countdown every Doctor will be represented, which is nice. On the other hand if, say, you happen to think Tom Baker’s fourth best story is also the eighth best story EVER – tough, it’s already out of the running.

To be honest, therefore, the final ‘1 to 37’ list is already contentious for that very reason. But then, it’s not really about reaching that rare beast, the definitive answer. The main purpose, I suspect, is to give us something to endlessly debate and dispute for the next decade-and-a-half until DWM’s 75th Anniversary Poll rolls around.

As ever my problem, my opening quandary, is how should I choose? Are we looking for the ‘best’ story, or the one that is most people’s ‘favourite’? In other words, how should a story be judged? Is it a mix of the quality of its script, the direction, the performances, the incidental score… or is it just the far-more subjective, “I really like it”?

If a story has a good script, good direction, good acting, is that enough? Does it actually matter whether or not it’s entertaining? I mean, take James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s generally accepted as a literary masterpiece, but I’ve only ever heard it referred to in sentences such as “I’ve finally managed to finish…” or “I’m afraid I’ve been defeated by…” Nobody has EVER said, “loved it, what a page-turner!” (Me, I’ve never even bothered, I’m going to wait for the movie.)

In the earlier rounds I tried my best to be fair – so, good news for The Caves of Androzani which is objectively superb but which I’ve never really warmed to. Now we’re into the final furlong though, and I sort of feel (in a wishy-washy “you’re all winners” kind of way) that we can take as read that these final thirty-seven are all a bit tasty. So the only way I can really separate them, rightly or wrongly is, well, the enjoyment factor.

On that basis, and bearing in mind we can vote for five stories, I’ve whittled it down from thirty-seven to thirteen.

It would be tactless of me to say which stories I don’t enjoy so much, so I won’t specify which twelve-part Dalek epic I’m not voting for, and will similarly keep shtoom on which of the ‘Doctor meets sunflower-painting Dutch artist’ stories doesn’t delight me.

I will say though, which is partly what has prompted this navel gazing, that at the moment Paul McGann’s movie-length outing is looking like it’s very likely going to get my vote. I accept that the story is a bit ropey, that there’s some twaddle about the Doctor being half-human which is there solely to try and help the plot hang together, and that the resolution is baffling to say the least (twenty-seven years on and I’m still not really sure what a temporal orbit is). However, and despite all that, I love it more every time I watch it.

Which rather sums up the whole show in fact: it’s a load of nonsense, but I love it.

The Age of Ignorance

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused

I never expected to find myself envying the Koreans*.

I’ve nothing against them per se, he added quickly. I drive one of their cars for a start, and by all accounts their response to the Covid outbreak puts ours to shame. (I fear I’m in danger of becoming a Monty Python routine now: “Yes, but apart from the superbly-produced mid-range cars and the expert pandemic procedures, what have the Koreans** ever done for us?”)

No, but it turns out that this past week, the very week that I turned 52, the Koreans** have all become younger. That is to say, the country has finally adopted the international standard approach to age, which is to count it from the date of birth.

It had never occurred to me, if I’m honest, that there could be any other way of doing it but it turns out, and not for the first time, that I was wrong. The method in various East Asian countries has been to say that you are one at the moment of birth and thereafter, on 1st January each year, you (along with everybody else in the country) are another year older.

It sounds absurd (to us) and it sounds like an absolute nightmare of feast & famine for the Korean** greetings card industry – AND it means that, born on 29th June 1971, I would have officially been two in Korean** terms by the time I was, to our way of thinking, only six months old. So anyway, cultural differences notwithstanding and setting aside the question of whether my labelling it ‘absurd’ a few lines up is a bit offensive, they’ve decided to do away with it, and accordingly this week everybody’s age has been reduced by one or two years.

Sadly the BBC report didn’t give much detail so I don’t know if this has been the culmination of years and years of campaigning, or if it’s a relatively recent idea – and nor were there any vox pops from ‘the man on the street’, so I’ve no idea how it’s gone down with the population at large. I am now old enough that I have to stop and think when asked my age, so I can imagine that it would take some getting used to, to now have to remember a different age.

Probably the most surprising piece of this already-surprising news story is right at the end, where the BBC tells us that Japan abandoned this system in 1950 – and North Korea in the 1980s! I mean, I don’t want to sound all judgy, but I would have thought that if you share a border and half a name with a, well, a desperately secretive hereditary dictatorship ruled by a borderline-megalomaniac, and even THEY think it’s a good idea to start counting age like the rest of the world, then surely you wouldn’t take another FORTY years to do the same?!

All in all, it was another reminder that things I consider obvious, self-evident even, aren’t in fact anything of the sort. It’s not that long ago I discovered that, whereas in the UK we use ‘half past eight’ and ‘half eight’ interchangeably, in almost every other country ‘half eight’ means ‘half past seven’. It begs the question how many Anglo-European romances fell at the first hurdle due to a simple misunderstanding. (“I was there on time, but the English guy never showed up!”)

It’s not only things I never knew either, I also find as I get older that I’m whittling away at the things I thought I knew, discovering I’ve either not got them quite right or (more often) not right at all. So, for example, I also learned this week that despite my cast-iron certainty on the matter, Legionnaires’ disease is nothing whatsoever to do with the French Foreign Legion, and was in fact only identified and named as recently as 1976.

You live and learn, as they say. And I suppose, to put a more positive spin on it, it’s exciting that there’s always something new to discover, whether you’re nine or ninety. Or fifty-two.

Fifty-one? fifty-and-a-half? Erm… 

*             South

**           *

Another Bloody Sequel

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics

Or in the words of Brenda from Bristol, “Not another one?!”

Not the imminent fifth Indiana Jones film (which I’m rather looking forward to) I refer to what feels like about Partygate Seven, released on Friday with the subtitle Stropping Off.

Yes, our old friend Boris is back – or at least, back long enough to tell us he’s going. Prompted by the investigation into the ‘Did He/Didn’t He Mislead The House’ saga he has dramatically resigned as an MP.

It was quite a… well, whatever the word for the exact opposite of contrite is, it was quite a that word resignation letter. He labelled it a kangaroo court, he railed at the injustice of it being led by a Labour MP (ignoring the fact that the majority of the committee is Conservative) and he huffed & he puffed that there wasn’t “a shred of evidence.”

The report hasn’t come out yet, so it’s hard to entirely dismiss the last claim – but unless the Committee are planning to issue some wafer-thin pamphlet next week I suspect they may have at least some evidence. Either way, Boris has quit rather than waiting to suffer the full and terrible punishment of…

…Oh wait, no. It turns out the worst the committee can do is recommend he be suspended for 10 days. Which recommendation then has to be approved by the House of Commons, which can decide not to. And even if they agree, it then falls to the Constituency that Boris represents (er, represented) to decide if they want to call a By-Election. So that’s pretty tenuous – and that’s pretty much it!

In every other aspect of life, there are consequences and comebacks. Written or verbal warnings, fines for taking your children out of school during term time, removal of benefits, parking fines, bank charges… But in politics, apparently not.

It’s not just the ‘misconduct’ procedure either, it’s the whole system that lacks any apparent accountability. Take the last election and the promise to build forty new hospitals by 2030. We’ve long since established that this particular pledge was playing fast and loose with the words ‘build’ and ‘new’ – but regardless of that, 2030 was over ten years away. Most Prime Ministers don’t last a decade (although, granted, I’ve lived through two exceptions) so Boris was never going to be held accountable in 2030 if they’d only actually managed one small maternity unit. It simply never happens.

I appreciate that things can change – wars and pandemics aren’t easy to predict; but other excuses such as there wasn’t any suitable land, or the public finances couldn’t stretch to it, those should be assessed before making the promise in the first place. And for that matter, I can’t help thinking a decade seems an awfully long time. Unless you’re planning to hire just one firm of builders to painstakingly build them one at a time, then a lot of those projects would be happening in tandem. I mean blimey, my Dad and Grandparents would wallpaper a room overnight or in an afternoon, if you scale that up I reckon they could have knocked up at least one hospital by Christmas.

But no, there’s nothing, and somehow we’ve tacitly accepted that if a manifesto promise comes to nothing, that’s not a lie it’s just a fact of life. Just as we seem resigned (as it were) to the fact that whatever else they find out about Boris’s behaviour in office, it won’t make a scrap of difference. Adding insult to injury, the same day he flounced away his resignation honours were published. (‘Honour’ being another word he plays fast and loose with.)

There’s also nothing in the rules (if there even are any rules) to stop Boris standing again. Jacob Rees-Mogg (who is mentioned in the aforementioned honours, so I suppose we’ll soon have to get used to calling him Lord Snooty of Beano or somesuch) has already intimated that this could happen, warning other Tories not to block Boris if he does.

Dare I say, I think his lordship has accidentally given away the plot of the next instalment there.

The MP Strikes Back – ANOTHER bloody sequel!!

PS: Not that I’m the BBC, but in the interests of balance I feel I should also mention the official opposition. Because, despite all the ghastliness of the past and current Tory governments, I find myself looking across the house and thinking – Sir Keir Starmer?! Really Labour, really?!!

PPS: In as far as it may give some insight into my psyche I wrestled with that last line a long time because The Empire Strikes Back isn’t in any way ‘a film too many’ – in fact it’s one of those rare instances where the sequel is at least as good, and arguably better, than the original.

PPPS: I also toyed with Return of the Boris and Revenge of the (Taking The) Pith.

Advent The Last

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

In the words of Professor Noderick Holder (himself building on the earlier “So This Is” thesis by Dr Lennon) IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!!

Well, almost. Christmas Eve (often a day with a sense of “Why am I always the bridesmaid?” about it) is nearly over. Ours has been spent cleaning, pleasingly put on hold mid-afternoon by a quick visit from bruv and nephew. All being well we will be seeing them again on the other side (or “Tuesday” as it’s more commonly known). There was also a moment of realisation that having nagged her mercilessly to do a present list, we haven’t actually bought our daughter ANYTHING off her list. Oops!

The Advent part of the month is over too – and having worried I might run out of things to comment on (and by ‘comment on’ I mean ‘moan about’) ultimately there hasn’t been time to mention the Yorkshire Pudding controversy, the mystery of Freda & Laurie, or my several very specific issues with The Twelve Days of Christmas. Count yourselves lucky is all I can say!

Various kind people have sent us cards/letters/tree decorations, so this is probably a good moment to say thanks/it’s good to know the art of letter-writing hasn’t died out/it’s on the tree looking lovely (and smelling fantastic).

In a very specific sense I hope my work colleague managed to get his van sorted and that it was indeed Option A The fuel pump, rather than Option B Oh no not the bloody engine! In a far more general sense, I hope you all have a fun and relaxing Christmas Day, whoever you are spending it with and whatever you are doing.

With which, it’s nearly time for bed. Because, as Dr Presley’s essays on the matter put it, Santa Claus comes tonight, tonight.

Merry Christmas.

X  

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas, Family, Pets

We have a “Baby’s First Christmas” tree decoration which goes up every year. Naturally, the baby in question can’t remember that year, any more than I can remember MY first Christmas when “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” was number one.

Not just my first one either. My grandparents used to have a photocube atop their telly one of the images in which was the whole ‘tribe’ together one Christmas. I’m in it, probably about three or four. Bruv’s there too and various of our cousins (one is so young, it was probably ‘s first Christmas). But I don’t remember the occasion, only seeing the photo years later.

There’s something both good and bad for the ego, to know that people were perfectly capable of enjoying Christmas, and indeed happily went about doing so, without me. Just as we’ve ‘inherited’ Christmas from generations before, similar in many ways, changed in others, I expect that in fifty years time our descendants will have kept the bits they liked, dumped the bits they don’t, and added their own traditions into the mix.

Because although Christmas often feels like returning again to the same familiar things, it’s never quite the same twice. Long after that first Christmas, our baby has moved out, but only recently so she’ll be with us as usual this year; meanwhile our old dog is fifteen but probably doesn’t have sixteen in him… So I’m aware that with baby steps this year, but larger strides next, our Christmasses are already changing.

The time may even come when people will have to go back to enjoying Christmas, and indeed happily go about doing so, without me! I wish them as good a batch of Christmasses as I’ve been fortunate to see!

Although not for some time yet I hope!

Advent #22

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas

“Some nuts and a tangerine in the toe of your stocking” has become a cliché but it presumably accounts for why we have them still at Christmas. Certainly when I was young, although they were never presented singly in any kind of hosiery delivery system, tangerines would always be a Christmas thing. Nuts too.

Oddly I’ve not continued either tradition – and when I say that it’s only within the last five years that I’ve stopped buying the traditional Christmas Radio Times, even though I never ever referred to it because we have an onscreen TV Guide instead, you can see what I mean by ‘oddly’. I have nothing against tangerines, but because we get them all year round I think the association with Christmas is lost. Well… What I actually mean is we get ‘small orange fruits’ all year round. If I’m honest I’m still slightly reeling from my daughter’s recent revelation that tangerines, clementines and satsumas are three different things rather than three names for the same thing. (I sometimes feel that nobody ever tells me ANYTHING.)

As for nuts, I’ve never been a nut person. I don’t mind the occasional peanut, but even with a walnut whip I usually leave the nut and just eat the, um, whip. Nevertheless, probably the sound I associate most with my earliest Christmasses, knocking ‘the crunch of snow’ and ‘sleighbells’ off the top spot, is the cracking of nuts.

We had two nut crackers at home – your standard hinged version, and a carved wooden thumb-screw type affair – and many an evening over the Christmas period we’d watch TV to the background accompaniment of shells being cracked.

All of which nonsense probably indicates that my sanity is up for debate and I’m probably a bit, well, crackers.

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, TV

There is a fine line between singing the descant and just randomly singing something that isn’t the tune – or, to put it another way, when I sing along I may be singing the right notes but not necessarily in the right order. With a link as seamless as that (so seamless, in fact, that you can’t see the join) it is of course time for Morecambe & Wise.

From 1969 to 1977 on the Beeb (with 1974 off), and from 1978 to 1983 on ITV, their Christmas Specials have become the stuff of legend – and even though Eric and Ernie are no longer with us, showings and reshowings have allowed them to remain a part of our Christmas ever since.

1971’s legendary Andre Previn sketch is the bit of telly that I have seen more than any other; and it still makes me laugh every time. It may well be the funniest routine they ever did, although my absolute favourite, and from the same year, is the Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers routine with Glenda Jackson. (Or rather, the Fred Astaire & Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers routine).

Arguably it only contains one gag, and it probably wasn’t a ‘new’ joke even then, but the business with Eric’s cane getting larger and larger, the brilliance of the way that it gradually dawns on him, and the various ways that the routine uses the canes as props, is just wonderful.

Maybe the age of the traditional double act has gone, but at least we’re lucky enough to still be able to watch the greatest of them all. I for one am very happy for them to keep bringing me sunshine every Christmas.

Advent #20

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Christmas

When I was a child, there were certain places that seemed like Mecca. I’m not talking Hollywood or Disneyland – far more thrilling than either of those was BBC TV Centre, Wood Lane, W12 8QT (the phone number for which is engraved in the memory of anybody my age). Another was the Doctor Who Exhibition at Longleat. And another was the Palitoy factory at Coalville, Leicester.

It was from that humble-sounding location, neatly printed on the back of their cards and on their boxes, that the headline acts of many a birthday and Christmas came. The Millenium Falcon, the cardboard Death Star – not to mention the figures which were always my favourites even over the big playsets and vehicles. I have a feeling that by the time of the last great plastic-moulded Christmas present, 1982’s AT-AT walker, the branding had switched to USA company Kenner, and a little bit of the magic went with it.

Years later, four or five years ago, BBC2 had a Christmas documentary about the Star Wars toy range, going into detail about the Palitoy story. To be able to see it in its heyday was thrilling – but even more so, as if they’d secured a candid chat with Father Christmas himself, were the interviews with some of the people who worked there. It was unexpectedly moving to see the actual people whose output thrilled me and so many of my schoolfriends back in the day.

What struck me most was that, although their small involvement in the Star Wars phenomenon has given them a tiny bit of immortality, they were just ordinary people. They didn’t make a big thing of what they did. They just did a good job and they made it look easy.

Child’s play, in fact.

Advent #19

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning

Maybe I’ve just led a very sheltered life, but when did Cranberry sauce become ‘a thing’ (THE thing!) for turkey. I don’t recall seeing it before at least the turn of the century. The otherwise-excellent illicit turkey dinner I had last week came, of course, with a bowl of the stuff and it was, of course, the only thing left on the plate when it returned to the kitchen from whence it came.

Then there’s the nutcracker. It didn’t figure in any of my school-day Christmasses, but now not only do we have nutcracker decorations on the tree, the huge stone pillars lining Exeter’s Guildhall are this year decorated like the nutcracker characters –thirty foot tall soldiers looming over them MAY be nice for kids, but might also be the sort of thing to give them nightmares. However, making the case for it being me who’s wrong (normally a role reserved for my wife, but to save her a job) I accept that Tchaikovsky died in 1893 so perhaps it has been around longer than I think…?

But what about kissing under the mistletoe? That seems much too informal to be any kind of English tradition (if it was a comradely handshake under the picture rail, that I could believe). No doubt if I were to bother Google-ing it I’d find it dates back to Pagan Times, or the ancient Greeks or something; but setting that aside, not only do I not remember it being ‘a thing’ when I was young I’ve still yet to come across it anywhere!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been kissed under things in my time. I was once almost-kissed in the doorway of Lloyds bank (insert joke about interest rates rising) but- Mistletoe? and Christmas? I don’t think so.

Merry Kiss-mas!

Advent #18

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Doctor Who, Weather, Work

Having survived the past week of sub-zero temperatures, when the mercury dropped and the red light on the electric meter was flashing like the strobe at an illegal rave; today, with the weather a good deal milder, I’ve come down with something. As a result I’ve had to pace myself – which mainly means I stopped halfway through the ironing for a snack and a nap. After all, the last thing I want to do is be ill over Christmas.

I can only remember being ill at Christmas once, in 2010, when I woke on Christmas Day feeling achey and cold and not keen on going anywhere without a duvet. Luckily I rallied mid-morning enough to cook lunch and, more importantly, eat it. But as the afternoon wore on I relapsed, ending up shivering on the settee distinctly lacking in Christmas cheer.

By the evening the crowd had thinned, to the point where by the time Doctor Who was on there was just the two of us – me huddled on the settee wishing I could regenerate; and bruv, who I presume had spent the afternoon identifying the optimum seating position where he could be as near the TV but as far away from me as possible.

When I woke on Boxing Day, as is often the case after a good night’s sleep I felt much better – certainly much more lucid. My recollection of the night before was of frozen ladies, flying sharks, and marrying Marilyn Monroe. In the days of Morecambe & Wise or Only Fools I would have known at once those were solely the invention of a fever – with Doctor Who, more of a 50/50 chance. What else could a boy do? I watched the Christmas special for a second time over breakfast.

Just to be sure.