I crossed the great divide last week and now view the world from the other side of my 65th birthday. It was a nice, low-key day with friends and family, and I’m happy with that. I feel exactly the same as I did this time last week, yet also have a vague sense of difference that I can’t really put my finger on, as though I’ve entered another room. It’s not that long ago I would have got my State Pension as well, but that won’t now come until next October. I did get offered free Flu and Covid boosters, though, which I’ve had.
In all other respects life goes on as it always does. I enjoyed Kaos on Netflix, featuring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, and I think I’m enjoying Agatha All Alongon Disney, though the latter is very American in its sensibilities and I haven’t quite made up my mind. As for reading, I enjoyed Irmgard Keun’s The Artificial Silk Girl (1932), though the modern translation hit one or two off notes, and I’m enjoying Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper (1936). Philip Kerr’s final novel, Metropolis (2019, posthumous) was decent but read in parts like a near-final draft rather than the finished article, though that’s hardly his fault.
Meantime, I’m going through notes for the next novels and expanding my research – soon to involve several days in the newspaper archives once one or two things in the garden are sorted. My targets are the Scotsman, the Edinburgh Evening News and the Edinburgh Evening Despatch, primarily for 1933, 1936 and 1939.
More rain. I’ve had to take excitement where I can find it, even if that meant going to Sainsbury’s for groceries. While we were there, I took a look at the book section and was struck by the fact that, for all the books there, there were really only a handful of cover designs, the various elements appearing in various permutations. The fonts for author name and book title were limited, the background designs all very similar. I understand the attraction of the familiar, but the end result was that they were interchangeable and none of them stood out.
Back home, I took a look in on the live cams. from the volcano in Iceland, just in time to watch a snow bunting in front of one of them. The last time I saw a snow bunting was in the Cairngorms, I think, or possibly somewhere above Drumochter, so a fun little spot. Not quite as exciting as the red kites of Henley, but you can’t have everything.
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I started watching a programme that’s been around for a while but is new to me, The Blacklist. It’s old school in that it follows what was the standard US network TV format of 22 episodes per season, each of 42 minutes plus ads to make it up to an hour. The premise is ridiculous and it suffers from ‘criminal of the week’ syndrome. There are echoes of lots of other shows revolving around the FBI including, for some reason, The X-Files and Millenium although there is no supernatural element,. The two main leads, played by James Spader and Megan Boone, are engaging, and there is a cast of thousands of solid actors involved.
I doubt I’ll stick it out for all of the 160 episodes made so far, but you never know.
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Back in March 2019 when I retired, I made several posts here musing on what I might do, including this one:
I wrote there: I have no plans to look for a job. That’s not to say I won’t look at work opportunities, just so long as they don’t look like a job. My guiding principle is that I am in no hurry to make any decisions at all; my immediate priority is chilling out.
I also wrote a couple of things that I intended to do but, for one reason or another, I haven’t done. I haven’t reacquainted myself with a fretboard or walked coastal paths. Covid made a big dent in the latter, but I don’t really have any excuse for the former. The work/job thing has been a mantra for me for two years–happy to work, don’t want a job. It grew a bit too: if I did have to find a job, I have no interest in climbing greasy poles or management positions; been there, done that, got the pension.
Anyway, the point I’m meandering towards is that the writing and revision I’ve been doing is definitely work, but doesn’t feel like a job. Long may that continue.
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Music: I haven’t done a random LP from the shelves selection for a while. Maria Muldaur’s first album was released in 1973. I think I first heard it in ’77 and I bought it late in 1979. Midnight At The Oasis was the big hit of the album, but I like all of it. This was originally recorded by Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks.
Moving into month two and perspectives are changing. It is true that, when planing to go away for a couple of days next week, my brain wondered if I could get a couple of days leave, but it is also true that when I woke up this morning it took me a while to decide it was probably Saturday.
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One of my favourite bands is one I never saw live, Tansads. I remember hearing Up The Revolution on the Radio, and Johnny Walker played them a lot. Four of their albums are easy enough to find, although I think I got some via second-hand shops on Amazon.fr because of scalping prices in Amazon UK. However their final album, Reason To Be, released after the original band broke up, is harder to find and is very different. Tansads featured the twin vocal attack of Andrew Kettle and Janet Anderton, and the contrast in their voices delivering no-nonsense lyrics was one of the things I found irresistable. Reason To Be is essentially a vehicle for Janet’s voice only. Indeed, for a while the band went under the name ‘Jane Doe’ before reverting back to Tansads.
Janet Anderton
I’d seen a lot of comment on the album which, if not negative, implied it wasn’t as good as earlier efforts. Nonetheless, in a spirit of completism, I decided to track it down.
I had a search in place on ebay for a long time, and let a copy on Discogs pass because I thought it was too expensive. Finally a copy came up for auction and a last-seconds snipe on my part meant I finally got it (and at a sensible price).
When it arrived I put it on with some trepidation, hoping it wouldn’t discolour my long-time enjoyment of the band. In fact just the opposite happened: I love it.
It is certainly different to the earlier material, but it stands up in its own right. There is a thunderous power rocker called Hello which I often put on repeat in the shed. Unfortunately the band finally split after Reason To Be until a series of reunion gigs that I found out about too late. From the ashes of Tansads came Merry Hell who share some personnel and material with Tansads but are going in their own direction.
And they don’t have Janet Anderton’s voice. I don’t know what Janet is doing now, and as far as I know she is no longer singing. That’s a shame as she was one of the great voices of British indie-pop/rock/folk.
Into my second week as a not-employee and the come down into normality is taking hold. I’ve made bread, watched some DVDs, done a lot of background reading for the next novel, and even had a long meeting from which occasional paying work might come later in the year. I previously said my intention for the first few weeks was to let things wash over me and make no hasty decisions, and I am sticking to that.
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Last November I made a fleeting reference to The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina season one. I’ve now watched season two and enjoyed it a lot more (strictly I think it is part two of season one, which seems contrived). The confirmation of the show’s renewal seems to have added a confidence to how it is produced. Crucially, Kiernan Shipka has found the truth of the character and is much more assured in the title role. Standing that I’m not its target demographic, there were still a couple of things that bugged me about it but they’re not that significant compared to the pleasure of watching Lucy Davis come out of the background.
And there were a lot of ofther things to like, including the sly use of background music (such as Hungry Like The Wolf, Man Eater and Under Your Spell at the dance in the episode Lupercalia).
The one thing that has grated somewhat about the publicity for the show has been the comparisons with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The latter part of the season did seem to flirt a little with the comparison, with its own version of the Hellmouth and the emergence of something perilously close to a Scooby Gang, and I got to wondering why people can’t be content to let it be its own thing. Having said that, there was a brief moment of joy and expectation where I was reminded of Penny Dreadful: more of that please.
By contrast, season two of American Gods continues to be a disappointing mess, although it did redeem itself somewhat with episode five, The Ways of the Dead, directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield whom some of us remember as Doctor Allison Blake in Eureka. By happy coincidence Salli also directed Lupercalia in Sabrina.
One of the things that cable channels often trumpet is their ability to be more ‘adult’ which, in American Gods means so many F-Bombs it’s more like F-Shrapnel. I find this tiresome rather than edgy.
In the meantime, here’s Sabrina with added Joan Jett
My first full day in my new reality comprised a trip to a garden centre, some planting, and some historical research. Coffee was drunk in the morning. I made up some bread dough before I went to bed and left it to rise overnight–it’s in the oven now. A good start.
Still ’round the corner there may wait A new road or secret gate
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