So, a catch up.
General Election 2010
It’s in two days. IT IS IN TWO DAYS. This has been the most exciting election of my young life, and whether that’s because it’s geniunely been exciting or just because it’s the first one where I’ve considered myself informed and involved to any degree, I couldn’t say. The way I engage with politics has been completely altered (a sceptic would say “dictated”) by twitter, The Guardian CiF and (to a lesser extent) the enforced 3 hours of commuting time sat in the car listening to Radio 4. *Cough*middle-class-liberal*coughcough*. Anyway, it’s been really exciting. Off the back of the first televised election there was a real sense of potential for change, with the rise of so-called “Cleggmania”, and also a (even more exciting) feeling that people were getting very fed up of spin and wouldn’t let the media (*cough* Rupert Murdoch*cough*) dictate what they were going to do. I have to say, my excitement has worn off now; it’s been replaced by a sense of rising dread now that the election proper is looming and it’s still looking quite likely that we’ll be ushering in David Cameron as our new leader. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!
Now, I have no idea whether the Lib Dems could actually run the country, should they get into power, and I hope that they would be able to, but most importantly the increased significance of the third party shows a movement away from the two-party politics that we’ve been stuck with. Any movement towards people voting for what they actually believe in rather than as a protest or a tactical vote is a good thing as far as I can see.
Presumably, whatever party gets into power next will be so unpopular because of all the cuts they’ll inevitably have to make that they’ll then be absolutely abhorred and drop out of favour for years afterwards. So possibly the tories getting in right now wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
In terms of a hung parliament, I’m for it. I think it would be interesting. And chaotic. (“And I am interested in chaos” – points for quote naming!) At best, it could be fairer; at worst, it would be an awful disaster that would hopefully lead to the political reform that we do desperately need. The best thing about the high probability of a hung parliament is that it’s given us all the chance to make what is literally the most elegant joke ever: “Red and blue and yellow mixed together just makes Brown”. OH MY GOD it is perfect. It’s almost like it was all prearranged.
Cleggmania
At the weekend I met the Cleggmeister in a very lovely little pub in Malvern called The Nags Head. I’m not sure what possessed me; I just heard that he was close-by, I was at a loose end waiting for Doctor Who to come on and there was a possibility of a pint of real ale. NOT EVEN FAKE ALE. So I drove over; it was a beautiful sunny day and the Malverns were looking stunning. The pub was rammed, mostly with Lib Dem supporters, but also some Conservative hecklers. It was all very exciting, standing around with my pint with hundreds of people and waiting. And waiting. And then… the enormous yellow Battle Bus pulling up. A cheer! And then, waiting. The sense of apprehension was palpable. Everyone was silent, staring at the door of the bus. It opened! A cheer. Nothing happened. The door shut again.
It was like waiting for a band to come on at the sort of gig I went to when I was 17. I was half expecting dry ice and for Nick Clegg to ascend out of a hole in the top of a bus with lasers surrounding him. But no; he walked out of the door eventually, small and mousy and unassuming. A small child started jumping up and down next to me yelling “Mummy! Mummy! Nick’s here!”. People waved their “I AGREE WITH NICK” placards. I regretted not wearing more yellow. Or less yellow, perhaps. I began to wonder whether it looked like I’d purposefully dyed my hair orange to show I was a supporter. I glanced surreptitiously at the rest of the crowd to see if anyone was looking at my hair funny. They weren’t. The jumping child knocked a glass over and the entire crowd went “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”. He did a speech (Nick, not the child). I couldn’t hear it. A man heckled him. He handled him firmly but calmly. He greeted people. He shook my hand. I swooned. My little sister sent me a text: “Tell him I’m voting 4 him because he’s a babe”. He went inside. We all crammed inside after him. He handled a pint masterfully. He shook another girl’s hand; she swooned against a wall and whimpered, “Oh my God! He shook my hand! I’m never washing it again!”. A lady forced him to kiss a baby’s face. He cringed.
Doctor Who
We’re five episodes in, so that’s long enough to give my verdict. Matt is fabulous, and Amy is gorgeous, though I haven’t quite got my head around her properly yet. Tonally it’s very different from the wooby-angst of RTD’s era, which it does need to be; much more action and clever plotting than drama and despair and love. On the other hand, whilst I love the general concept of Doctor Who, and the rebel, pacifist, almost anarchist character of the Doctor himself, it was exactly that angst of the RTD-era and of David’s doctor that hooked me, and the intense interpersonal relationships between him and the characters around him. I feel that’s lacking now (though I know that it’s an omission many will be very happy about), and the closeness of the relationships he does have seems sidestepped a little. His and Amy’s relationship, in particular, seems to have a faux-closeness about it, thrown together in the last 10 minutes of The Beast Below. But I suspect this is pretty par for the course with the Moff (who I do adore in all other senses, for his complexity and his knowledge of childhood fears, the eery and the uncanny), who has created close relationships with the Doctor before with no pre-amble or build-up (Madame de Pompadour, River herself). I don’t know if I trust him to write the type of blossoming, close relationship that RTD was so good at. But we shall see! I adore the humour in it, and the horror, and the fairytale element (even if they’re hammering it in a little hard). I’m very excited about the timey-wimey-ness of it, the probable timeline-skewing and the almost-definite Future!Doc in the forest (and elsewhere), which is so beautifully reminiscent of Hermione with the timeturner in Prizoner of Azkaban <33
RTD always used the time travel business as a plot device, simply in order to get the Doctor to where he needed to be in order to occur, rather than something important in its own right, and it’s about time that was altered (What else is going to be altered? We shall find out!)
In VERY EXCITING AND RELATED NEWS, I somehow managed to get my hands on three tickets to the Doctor Who Prom today. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. I thought it had sold out and then it hadn’t and then then there was this whole THING and now there are tickets. I have been on a total spazhigh for half of the day. I’m just hoping that by the time it happens I have more of a connection to Murray Gold’s score; I’ve been enjoying it, of course, but there’s nothing yet that makes me catch my breath like “The Doctor’s Theme” always does, or burst into tears immediately like “The Rueful Fate of Donna Noble” or “Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home”. Still! ERM I WILL SEE MATT SMITH AND KAREN GILLAN ACTUALLY IN FRONT OF ME, ACTUALLY? *SQUEE*
Buffy Season 8/ General Joss Whedon fangirling (POSSIBLE SPOILERZ)
I AM READING BUFFY SEASON 8 AND IT IS AMAZING. And I’m not a comics fan, but I’ve always wanted to be, and I think this just might be my in. I can’t quite accept it as canon – Dawn is a giant?! Buffy is a lesbian?! Basically EVERYONE can fly?! – but it’s still an absolute funtimes ROMP. Like fanfic on crack, but with illustrations. AND THE DOCTOR AND ROSE HAVE A CAMEO <33 And so meta! I mean, everyone seems to be sort of aware that they’re in a comic, and familiar with its forms and layout etc. Somehow. Is this normal for comics? I kind of… suspect that it is, and perhaps that is why people bum them so much. If anyone has any recommendations of where to go next with this, let me know.
Other related Joss points: EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH DR HORRIBLE’S SINGALONG BLOG. It’s sort of dissatisfying and weak-scripted initially, but I found it was a total grower and now I adore it. Especially the soundtrack. And the fact that the commentary is another musical on top of it. I love you Joss! I am glad to be existing in a post-Buffy landscape! I am looking forward to your episode of Glee and also the Avengers Movie!
Home
Some sad news at the weekend. We’ve been bottle-feeding a couple of lambs that had been rejected by their mums at the farm up the road, Bounder and Greg, for a couple of weeks. Greg has a limp, much like his misanthrope of a namesake. While most of the lambs we have stay up in the field with their mums, the bottle-reared ones live down in the garden and wander in out of the kitchen occasionally, thinking that they’re people. Bounder and Greg were always gambolling around the garden or staring at the goat kids through the orchard fence. On Sunday morning I was woken by distressed bleating, which I grumpily presumed was the lambs thirstin’ for a drink. It was only when I got up later that I found out that Bounder had died in the night and the bleating was Greg crying over him 😦 I’m not as hardened to “farm” life as the rest of my family, so it’s made me actually quite upset. I mostly just feel very sorry for Greg, who’s alone now without Bounder to look after him, and is still bleat-crying two days later. The ewes won’t have anything to do with him and nor will the goats so he just wanders around the yard looking lost. Hopefully we’ll get another bottle-fed lamb soon to be his friend, or he’ll manage to make friends with the sheep up the field.
Birmingham
I still can’t abide it. I do not get the place. It is incoherent. Every other city (let alone the second biggest IN THE COUNTRY) has at least made an effort to make the bit of it you see first when alighting from the train look nice. Not so with Birmingham! Add to that that it is completely lacking in scene, ambience or atmosphere, and what is the actual point? Nevertheless, I am trying to engage and get a handle on it, and I’ve found a couple of nights/ promoters that I want to go to/ get involved in, mostly namely Colour, who put on left-field gigs and seem to vaguely be fanboys for Forest in Sound back in Leeds (no bad thing), and Atta Girl, who were – of course – inspired to start up by Suck My Left One. So, there is certainly potential, once you get past all the drudgery and horror. And I do like the tram system.
@unfortunatalie 