Your Christmas Viewing or a better title to be decided later

 

 Let's catch up. 

 On Monday I joined friends to catch The Wind in the Willows Wiltons at Wilton's Music Hall, chiefly to see Darrell Brockis as Toad; it's amazing what a really high-waisted pair of trousers can do to a man's shape. The weasels were sort of bankers now, as was the book's original author Kenneth Grahame, who resigned as Secretary of the Bank of England in 1908 after either being nearly shot in the face during an anarchist raid, or – depending on which motive you ascribe to the enforced retirement – accusing the Bank's future Governor of being "no gentleman", so I've no idea whose side he'd be on here.

 

 (I have only my parents word for it that, many Christmases ago, "Toad of Toad Hall" was the first show they ever took me to. It was the biggest room I'd ever been in. They tell me the sheer scale of the room made me whimper, then the lights lowered, and I didn't like that at all, and then old man dressed as a mole stuck his head out of a trap door and shouted "Hang white-washing!" and I howled and we left and that was it.)

 

 Pleasingly concurrent with the fortunes of Toad Hall in this production were that of the baby otter puppet, Portly: It's always nice to see the inclusion of Pan, and "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" made a lot more sense as subplot here rather than just interlude. A lovely, lively, warm evening, and Wilton's Music Hall is an exciting space to explore during an interval. Do these photographs convey that? I don't know. Badphone finally expired on Sunday, alas, but I appear to have found a replacement with just as MySpace-era a camera, which was not my intention. I'll have to start hanging around more light.

 

 On Tuesday I caught up for drinks with an old friend who told me that she can get married in Saint Paul's Cathedral, a thrilling possible future theatre project. I also found the following extraordinary performace on youtube while searching for video essays on "Brimstone and Treacle". I'd never made the connection before between Dennis Potter's fable of Satanic Home Invasion, and Mary Poppins (OR HAD I?) 

 

 

 I just wanted to write a good part for Olivia Colman.

 

 And the TKA Smith Family Conservatory of the Art's family production of Poppins sheds little light on the banned seventies teleplay. But it does throw up a blisteringly confident turn from an uncredited singer in a role I don't remember as a rival nanny with a bun of grey hair fastened inexplicably to the top of her head, which the Conservatory has liked so much they've posted twice. In case you didn't manage to catch a Christmas show yourself this year I share both versions here, not for comparison, but to be played simultaneously to see if the resulting reason-shredding resonances open a portal to anywhere.

 On Wednesday evening we performed the ante-penultimate Love Goddess at the Cockpit Theatre. The weather was milder now. The snow had gone. I didn't walk home directly. Badphone's replacement took what it could.

 

On Thursday, well, I wrote last Sunday's post, but I also learnt that that ante-penultimate show had actually been our penultimate as one of the cast had fallen ill, although testing negative for Covid. We'd planned our cast drinks for that evening however as some people had to rush off on Friday, including myself, who would have to be up early to catch a flight from Gatwick on a day of border control and train strikes. Our producer Laura had booked a table at a pub called the Pereseverance, and I hadn't left the flat all day.

 As with the long walk home on Wednesday I found a refreshing solitude in that place. The barman gave me a Guiness in a weird glass, free nuts and sample of an unnamed Christmas cocktail he'd worked on. A lot was ending. Enjoying the uniterrupted ambience, it occured to me I could just try and go straight to Gatwick after the final show though and not worry about sleeping Friday night.

 

 

 I woke at midday, feeling finally Christmassy. The last night went ahead and everything felt new, which may not be unusual for a last night. As I said from the start, everyone's lovely, and while I may not have tried so much towards the end not to be too weird, it's only because that's what happens when you get to know people.

 

 Then that stops, and there's no getting used to it. The show's over. Almog's on another continent now, and I took the Thameslink to Gatwick however many hours ago it was and found a nice, small copy of "Pinocchio" at the airport bookshop. Its tone is very Vic and Bob. In fact Bob Mortimer would make a brilliant Pinocchio. I woke on the plane surprised to see the land up at the top. 

 

 Mum met me at Montpellier just as I received the message that the cast member had now tested positive for covid after all, but that was okay because Susy's tested positive for Covid too. We made it down. That's the main thing. Dad showed us "Creature Comforts" in the cinema (because it's important to be reminded just how perfect Aardman can be...)

 

 

 Tom put on the "Bottom" Christmas special. I'm about to put the presents out. I was meant to be cacting up on sleep but appear to haev written this instead. I hope you get everything you want this Christmas, ole unatendees. 

 Here, one more time, is Orson Welles. 

 

 Big ball to stick your head in by Arthur Handy.

Some Things That Might Not Be Obvious About the Making of Finnemore's Ninth

 I'd forgotten I'd already written about the production of JFSP Series Nine, back when we first started recording in March, here. The home recording set-up in that first session, however, turned out to be insufficiently broad-bandy, so most of my remaining lines were recorded half an hour's stroll away, in the Nathan-Barley-themed escape room of Bloomsbury's Syncbox studios...

 

 

 

  I would usually have had only two hours' sleep the previous night from the excitement of knowing this was coming. Sometimes I'd be lucky enough to be joined – in the opposite corner of the studio, no hugging – by Carrie taking a break from the ambulances she now drives, also on about two hours' sleep. John, being John, wouldn't have slept since Christmas of 2020. On such little sleep, a crucial advantage of not performing the series live turned out to be the opportunity for retakes, and the chance for our producer Ed Morrish to direct, well, specifically, me. "Try that again, warmer," was a common note, while Carrie got it, and got on with it.

 

 I'd hoped my tiredness might help me stop overthinking "the point" of a scene, but I'm suddenly remembering how she'd still, occasionally, have to give me an additional note to just "do the thing John asked"... Was it really necessary to have so many scenes of Jerry making up poems, I remember thinking, for example, having no idea yet of the revelations in Episode Five... As I said on the tweetalong (and I've enjoyed seeing how many listeners are surprised by this), we all knew John had a big idea for the shape of this series, but none of us – with the possible exception of Ed – knew what that shape was. And John, again being John (one of his best qualities) would still ask open-endedly for feedback or suggestions, but to take him up on this felt like kicking the tyres on the batmobile. 

 

  In fairness to my lack of understanding, quite a lot of Jerry's episode was recorded first and there wasn't that much to piece together back then. (Only tyrants have favourites, but Jerry might have been the character John found least inherently difficult to create.) But even the author didn't have a clearer idea than was needed of the big picture two sessions in. Take the first recording of the scene where Alex asks Russ about his tattoo...

 John on Zoom: "Okay. Simon. Could you read Alex in this?"

 "Okay. Who's Alex?"

 "Yes. I should probably decide that, shouldn't I."

 "Someone Russ is meeting at a party?"

 "No. Maybe Russ's partner, or husband. Let's decide... Okay, yes, his partner or husband."

 "And is this them meeting at a party?"

 "No. This isn't a party."

 "Shall I give Alex an accent?"

 "No." 

 If you haven't listened to the series, Alex ended up being an Australian, played by John. So yes, of course there was a plan, is what I'm saying, a pretty perfect plan as things turned out, but there was also – perhaps the greatest advantage of the costume-less, set-less, on-book medium of radio – a big temporal overlap with that plan's execution.

 Series Nine is still being repeated nightly at 11pm, the tweetalong will be continuing tonight or, if you have any questions, you can post them below, and you can still hear the whole thing any time you like here.

Miracle On Rue De L'Audacieuse

 On Monday night I slept solidly for twelve hours. 

 A lateral flow test taken when I woke with a dry cough on Tuesday afternoon showed, as usual, the strong line against the C... (for "Covid or not Covid, let's see if you have it!")... but also, unusually this time, a faint line as well against the T... (for "Turns out you might actually have it, huh!") Above is a completely unphotoshopped picture of the tent behind the chemist's in the town along the train tracks where, on the longest night of the year, I walked in to get my PCR... (for "Polymerase Chain Reaction")... test, to see whether or not I had indeed brought Omicron into France. Everyone in London seemed to be coming down with the new variant, but to my surprise, twenty minutes after the swabbing, a text came through to tell me that the result was negative. I didn't have it. And now my cough's gone.

 To quote the title song of a childrens' opera written by my Dad: "Christmas is a Time of Miracles!" 

 

 Incidentally, it was only when he came to rewatch "Die Hard" that Dad realised, to his delight, he'd nicked that line from Hans Gruber.

Luxury apartmen

 That's Reuben's and my digs on the right, just eight minutes walks from the Bolton Octagon. The apartment came with a profusive rainforest shower, towels to lay on the floor, and carpeting so thick when I put my laptop on the bedside table, it sank. One of those fancy lamps that's just a big Menlo Park lightbulb came down with it, shattering immediately, all within an hour of my moving in. Here's the room after I moved my bed ninety degrees to the wall so I that could fully open the draws.

 

 I'd emailed Reuben beforehand to ask if he wanted the dandelion print or the Mercator projection, noticing that the latter room seemed to have no window, but it turned out Reuben was taking the hit, as my windowlessness made it a lot easier to get to sleep Friday and Saturday nights (see location of window above – London's not a twenty-four hour city, but Bolton is). Around a week into rehearsals, I received a parcel at the theatre from my parents. Having already broken the lamp I didn't want to damage the room further, so I never got round to pinning it up, but I really appreciated the view...

The Warm Glow

 An early start to a happily busy Wednesday, on little sleep because I stayed up late, because I'm staying up late. Later and later this week, it seems, like I'm waiting for time to stop – or at least do something interesting, which it normally does around two or three. As I've written before, that's when time leaves you alone. Maybe it's the size of the television screen that keeps me from going to bed. Maybe my body's not yet used to a screen this big. Occasionally, I entertain the idea of curling up on the carpet and falling alseep in front of it, rather than being parted by going upstairs. A change of scene maybe, like camping, which I never voluntarily did. Or sleeping on a friend's sofa, which I do. Maybe my body's grown too used to the screen. I still don't know what to eat in front of it though. Maybe I just want a harder mattress.

 Normally I don't remember dreams if I haven't slept that long, but on Tuesday night I dreamt John Finnemore had set up a series of gentle booby traps in a darkened classroom, talking me through them, one by one. Later on, I found myself in that classroom again, initially disturbed at being jabbed in the ribs and having something fall on my head in the dark, but then recalling "Oh yes, that's that damp towel John showed me." My dreams aren't normally that well-structured. Maybe it was a darkened meeting room.

The Light At Night Is More Polite.

 I guess this place makes sharks.

 A walk from afternoon into evening, thirty thousand steps. I've been very good, so far, this week about getting up at a reasonable time but – and I now remember feeling this the last time I kept civilized hours for no reason – I'm not sure I prefer the daylight. It's busier, for one thing. I don't just mean the world's busier, I mean that the light itself is always on the move, changing colour, and throwing shadows that are never where you last saw them, like the hands of a clock. Once night falls however, the light stays still. It just lets you get on with it, and doesn't hurry you along. At this latitude anyway. That said, if I've found I've stayed up until dawn, it does seem a shame to miss the daylight, once it's here. I want to hang around with it. But I only feel this at dawn. And it strikes me, suddenly, that this might be symbolic of something, but I can't think what. Can you get Vitamin D from satsumas?

"It's Just A Show. I should Really Just Relax."

 So went the opening titles of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and this maybe should have been the show's mantra when it returned to Netflix, because the reboot seemed a little overthought. Can anything be more obnoxious, though, than taking a thing made with care and talent, and pointing out the one thing that you think is wrong with it? Let's see! For those of you don't know what MST3K is, the old opening provides one of the most charming eighty seconds of introduction I know (if you're reading this on a phone and see no video, try clicking "web version")...

 

 There you go: Some nasty bullies have shot an employee called Joel into space, and the show's going to be pretty much just us watching terrible films, with him and the robots that he built to keep him company telling jokes over it. However, despite the show's popularity with children – evinced by the drawings and letters Joel would read out at the end of every episode – absolutely no mind seemed to have been paid over who else would get these jokes; if someone in that week's stinker looked like New York theatre director André Gregory, or Frank Zappa's drummer Jimmy Carl Black, they'd get a mention. This might have been one of the things audiences took comfort from the most, though – the idea of being let in on something – because, ultimately, what the old show felt most like was being allowed to stay up late, with a parent or older sibling, and watch whatever was on because you couldn't get to sleep. Joel kept those robots company in the dark. That was the tone, and those were the stakes.

 

 

 

 I've adored the show for decades, and I'm sure it's had an influence. In fact – it's honestly only just occurred to me – yesterday's post was quite an MST3K-y "bit", a little esoteric but comfortable with its own pointlessness (Jesus... maybe all my videos are!) When the show's brilliant creator, Joel "Robinson" Hodgson, was replaced on the Satellite of Love by another softly-spoken Gizmotic employee, Mike, and the robots were recast, and the mad professor's mother took over persecution detail, the show's tone remained beautifully unaffected. That, to quote another science project, was its triumph, and there are possibly hundreds of full episodes on youtube if you fancy more than a sample.

 

 Fast forward twenty years or so, and turn on Netflix, and Mike is now Jonah, the robots and persecutors have again been recast, but the show is still guys telling jokes peppered with obscure references over "cheesy movies", and the material is still strong, and as tonally similar as one should expect given the different century. However. While the tone of the jokes is similar, the tone of the show itself has changed, and nothing illustrates this change more than the new introduction. I'll let it explain...

 

"I should really JUUUUST RELAAAAAAAAAX"

 

 ... Or rather, not explain. Do you see what I meant about overthinking? I loved the reboot, and I'm sorry it got cancelled, but I think this might be why. Not because "cheap-looking" isn't a word in Netflix's vocabulary, but because, honestly, how Jonah eats or sleeps are not the first questions I have after watching this. What did I just watch, for example? Which bit was the "simulation"? The shadows in the window of the moonbase? But there's also that screen. And what's Jonah's job exactly, that has him flying off and rescuing people? And is it related to the woman who's trapped him on the dark side of the moon? Who's she, and why, having trapped him there, does she then pipe him up to the Satellite of Love, which isn't a satellite now anyway, because it's moored to the moon, by a pipe? I mean, none of this matters, I know, but why, therefore, have any of it? Even more confusingly, perhaps because it was realised this introduction itself needed an introduction, every episode sees it preceded by a "cold open" set on the satellite itself, from which Jonah is routinely extracted by the same pipe that then deposits him in the shuttle, making this not in fact an introduction at all, but literally what happens to Jonah narratively at the beginning of every episode. No wonder he looks so confused. This new subject's energy isn't that of a space-bound Moominmamma either, like Mike or Joel, but of a champion doing all he can to live up to the old show's reputation. This is the energy of pretty much everyone involved; they're all so excited the show's back, and they're here for the fans, and this is wonderful, but it's also almost the exact opposite of the care-free energy of the original. 

 

 

The even firstiest incarnation, which I have never seen.

 

 I mentioned the show's material earlier. I'm not sure if the writing on a show should even be called "material" - I'm not sure that metaphor works, garment-wise. The material decides how comfortable an item of clothing feels, so the real material of a show isn't the writing, but the tone. And the tone felt really different. Who should have worn the jump-suit then? Some great young improviser who can still project a strong enough air of not giving a shit to calm down a couple of robots. I can't help thinking of Lauren Lapkus, but maybe she hadn't listened to enough Zappa. Anyway, I'm watching a lot of things in the dark at the moment. That's my point. I have not yet made any robots. Here's your moment of Lao...

The "I Am" Song. As in "I Am Still Thinking About The Film Cats".

 

 A full year now after experiencing the film of Cats, I'm still seeing, and enjoying, video essays on youtube trying to explain exactly what went wrong, and also – far more intriguingly, for me at least – what the original stage show therefore got right. I don't expect anyone else to share my sickness however, nor do I expect anyone who doesn't share it to get through the above video from Sideways which I watched last night while waiting for the results to come in from Georgia. I only share it now because it's introduced me to a musical trope I'd never heard of before: the "I Am" Song. 

 

 Heroes of a musical – or more normally heroines – are supposed to get an "I Want" Song. I knew that. But what I hadn't clocked before, was that for every "Somewhere That's Green" or "Part Of Your World" there was also likely to be a show-stopping "Dentist!" or "Gaston" or  "This is America". It doesn't necessarily have to be the baddie that delivers the "I Want" Song. For example, as Sideways explains, what happens in the original Cats (but not the movie) is a succession of "I Am" songs sung by cats who want to get into whatever the Heavyside Layer is, all passed over in favour of the one cat with an "I Want" Song.

 

 It is normally the villain who gets the "I Am" Song though. And I found that fascinating, even before what happened this morning in Georgia, or what's happening now in Washington DC – this distinction between the hero who sings "I Want", and the villain who sings "I Am". 

 Here's Stacey Abrams.

 

Sometimes this blog will just be the trailer for the Steampunk "Secret Garden"

  Because sometimes you just need to fall back into old habits for a night or two, tear yourself away from reality and surf your landlord's Amazon Prime until five in the morning, watching nothing, merely building up your list from a uniquely mixed bag of shit and riches, bunging on every single adaptation of Bartleby you can find for example, bunging on films you already own on blu-ray so you'll remember to watch them, until unaccountably you are recommended something called "a Steampunk re-imagining of The Secret Garden" and think, wait, isn't that already Victorian? How can you make it more steampunk? What is "steampunk" anyway? - and so you watch the trailer to find out.

 Oh yeah. Extraneous rusty gubbins. I thought it was that. Follow your bliss, people. If you can dream it, you can make it. This exists. There are literally no more excuses.

A Nice Quick Job And Or But Others

 I left the flat comparatively early today to record a series for Definitely Human. All twelve episodes. Imagine that. Three hours in front of a microphone, having fun playing an absolute nightmare, while everyone else does the work. It was hot in there though; I caught myself in a mirror at the end of the recording, and I looked like I'd been pulled out of a cow. It's cooler now at 5:59am. I did sit down to write this at a reasonable hour, but you know how writers like to get comfortable and, well, I ended up trying to reupholster the chair. I couldn't get all the screws out in the end. Or entirely back in again. (I'm surprised to see neither "giving up" nor "quitting" are tags on here yet.) Now it creaks beneath me, still mainly a nice chair, rescued from the Shunt Lounge ten years ago. Oh, if anyone remembers sticking chewing gum on the underside for later, come and get it, guys.

Sometimes this blog will just be a cat I drew in January.

 Because I'm going to try to go to bed at a reasonablish hour now. Wish me luck.

05:51 French Lesson

 These are just random phrases, right?
 I finally got round to downloading the Duolingo app in case I suddenly decide to emigrate. I'm learning French, Spanish, Japanese and Welsh. And I was in fact planning on getting an earlier night tonight, but then I put this on...

... and it made me realise my own balcony could do with a bit of a clean, but when I went to the cupboard under the stairs to look for a tea light to put in the little tea light geenhouse I found the flat had a slinky, which was exciting so -

 OH MY GOD, FINE!

"Show us the hand of God That hath dismissed us from our stewardship!" Okay then...

"Oi!"

 Thanks to Gemma for this portrait of "Charles the Martyr" in which the condemned monarch's consecration looks a lot more like simple astonishment at having his crown snatched by a baby in a cloud. As for Richard II, I have now recorded the first act of its sequel, but with such excitement that my body clock's running amok again so please forgive this place holder.

Nightwalk, August the Twelfth

 The door was open so it seems I could, if I had wanted to, buy flowers at two o'clock in the morning. Back in the flat, Act Five of Richard the Second was slowly uploading - I don't still go for night walks on purpose, I'm just very late getting my steps in. There were quite a few other people out yesterday night, maybe waiting for the city to cool down. Blasts of hot air from the buildings along Gloucester Place, although I think they were simply blasting whatever air was there, and it just happened to be hot. Apart from that there was no wind. It barely felt like going outdoors. It felt like stepping out of the changing rooms. I could smell chlorine all over Mayfair. I think I've only known nights this warm before in Kuwait, when Nigel and I would bob on our backs in the Persian Gulf, a crisp packet clutched to our tummies providing just enough buoyancy to keep us from having to swim. The walls around Buckingham Palace are surprisingly low I noticed. There's an overhanging tree right next to a lampost, right next to a bus shelter on... (goes to look for the name of the road linking Hyde Park Corner to the Royal Mews)... the A302. A guard seemed to be sleeping against an arch. All the windows were closed. My phone always dies before I make it back so I count the remaining steps on my fingers.

Dancing Lessons From Lucy Maud (a note on risk assessment)

For "travel suggestions" read book recommendations, 
and for "dancing lessons" read book recommendations, again,
and for "Bokonon" read Kurt Vonnegut.

 Apologies for the tomorrowness of this post, but I think my body clock's running to a thirty-six hour day now, so look I'm just going to go with it. I walked up Parliament Hill yesterday at 4am, or the hill next to Parliament Hill, and I listened to Ken Campbell's Letter To Bob Anton Wilson. Pretty much all of Campbell's shows have now been released as podcasts now and subjects overlap, but I'd never heard him talk before about Anne Of Green Gables. There's a video of the "Letter" too, and here's a bit of it (or a lot, depending on how long you keep watching):

 A series of "redemptive vignettes" is how Campbell describes Lucy Maud Montgomery's series, capable of reducing the hardest of men to tears and forcing the maestro to finally confront his own "a**holery". Obviously I love a good children's book, the clarity and care and genrelessness, and so by the time I'd got home I considered this a recommendation, and I went to bed. But my body was having nothing of it, so I decided to sit myself down in front of the telly and finally watched Russian Doll on Netflix. I binged all eight episodes. I loved it. But...

 Natasha Lyonne's character Nadia, self-consciously but effortlessly hard-bitten and initially impermeable, turns out to have been anchored to humanity by the children's book "Emily of New Moon". For the second time that morning therefore, a narrative of fractured universes was recommending to me the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery. This actually didn't seem so weird given that in both Campbell's and Lyonne's world "clues fucking abound" to quote Nadia, and yet that thematic aptitude was itself a further coincidence, and probably should have made it feel weirder.

Footage of Ken and Daisy Campbell "astounding their selves into being" at Damanhur

(unavailable on the podcast).

 What I found more interesting, on a zeitgeisty level, was how Russian Doll toyed with an idea I'd seen come up a lot recently - in the Live, Die, Repeat machine from the Vat of Acid episode of Rick and Morty - or in the extraordinary, even more recent, choose-your-own adventure finale of Kimmy Schmidt (again on Netflix). You could call it "risk assessment", although the latter show offers more an opportunity for catharsis, impossible with any previous telly technology.* It seems decisions themselves might be the new monster, the new Atom Bomb. And television's extraordinary at the moment. And it seems a good time to stay in.

* UPDATE: Watching this Nathen Zed video on The Last Of Us 2 I realise I'd probably be less surprised by all these developments if I gamed more.

"And then eventually the whole thing will just end" buh buh buh bum.

 At midnight last night there was a cut of Act One of Titus Andronicus all finished and ready to be uploaded to youtube, but it had no "flourishes" - the trumpets and drums repeatedly referenced in the stage directions. It had no sound design at all in fact, and that was fine, obviously, these were just meant to be readings. But I had really begun to enjoy how much scene-setting, even world-building, could be done with the right effect (as I said here) and ideally I wanted to give something similar to Titus, especially given how different it was to what had come before and how much the play's version of Rome bordered on Fantasy (like all Horror). The thing is, though, I'm very indecisive, and choosing what to add, and whether or not to keep it, takes up at least a third, maybe a half of the total time I'll spend on these videos, and that seems mad. An earlier edit of Act One (about nine in the evening) was plastered in iMovie's "Suspense" cue in place of the flourishes, a simple electronic chord nothing like a flourish, but an abstraction which set a mood and didn't sound too ridiculous, yet ultimately had too little going for it beyond just being tolerable (and even that was questionable given how often I was using it - there's only so many times you can hear a "Suspense" chord before it goes from foreboding to dithering). So I dropped all the cues, uploaded the act without flourishes, went for a night walk, and began to think more and more about the "Vintage News" march that I'd earlier dismissed as too wacky.

Material is limited on a night walk. 

 I did love how un-alien the march had suddenly made Rome, by which I don't mean that it stopped Rome seeming weird, but that it made Rome's weirdness far less easy to write off as alien. It meant I wouldn't be presenting the story as a trip to a faraway, savage time, but as a nightmare just a couple of wrong decisions away, in which duty, tradition, processions, seeking for comfort in precedent, the celebration of war and just the very concept of "victory" were all complicit, and fair targets. And so by the time I'd got back from my walk, sticking an old newsreel march with no inkling of tragedy through a "Cathedral" effect to lose the crackle and then playing that over a human sacrifice felt like getting a lot off my chest, which seemed a valid feeling to have when presenting Titus Andronicus. So I re-edited the act (thre's always tweaks) re-downloaded it in place of the original edit, managed to render only about ten minutes before it crashed my laptop, crashed my laptop trying to fix it, crashed my laptop again, crashed my laptop, went to bed, didn't sleep much, woke, had an idea, thought I'd fixed it, uploaded it onto youtube, found out I'd fixed it but hadn't actually finished the edit before uploading it -  huge thanks to @Christelle_C for the head-sup - took it down again and had another tinker and so that's why it's only going up now. And why it has the tune for Adam and Joe's "Big British Castle" plastered all over it. Sorry. I know I said I'd keep my youtube and blog more separate form now but, guys, really, this is all I have to show right now so Ta - as I say - daaa:

Everything is fire

  A recent timeline of insomniac thoughts, illustrated by "The Mitchell Beazley Joy of Knowledge Library's Book Of Man and Society":

2:05am – "No labels." What’s the difference between “labels” and words? Words themselves can stop communication, because their associations are so much stronger than the work they’re being put to do.

2:09am – Language is like fire.

2:11am – Not just language. Jokes as well. I'm thinking of the reaction to the Gorilla Channel tweet. Of course Trump doesn't spend seventeen hours a day watching a specially constructed compilation of gorillas fighting, broadcast from a secret transmitter on the White House lawn. Of course it's fine to share that joke. Of course this isn't "fake news". And yet, I know people – friends on facebook – genuinely scared of sharing that joke, not because it will give offense, but because it might now be believed.

2:20 am – Everything is fire. Everything that defines us as separate from animals can destroy us, if allowed to run unchecked: jokes, language, money, homes (and therefore property), love. All of it can become too important. Being human demands an attention to the equilibrium. Nothing can run unchecked. The past year has been a real lesson in that. I hope. A lot of people are newly terrified, but the threat's always been there.

2:28am – “Intelligent life” is too rosy a description of what we are. Intelligence is a part of what humans are, sure, but maybe it’s this capacity to create systems which endanger us that should define us, and define what we have in common with whatever we hope to make contact with outside of our own planet, so not “intelligent life” then, but... what? Dependent? Processing? Enhanced? Trapped? Artificious? Harvesting? Is there a word for this most fundamental human quality? What’s the label I’m now looking for?

2:29am – There are definitely people who will have written about this. I should read more.

3:08am – Leia gets nothing to do in "Empire Strikes Back". She’s the driving force of the films either side of it. It is not the best Star Wars Film.

3:10am to 5:25am –

What I saw in "Nothing Sacred"

I watched it last night at the BFI with Tom and Selina - well, most of it. As I've pointed out before there's something about the BFI that's sent me to sleep ever since I worked there. Still, what a picture! Apparently Ben Hecht wrote the whole thing in four days on a train, and William A. Wellman shoots the hell out of it. Here's glimpses of what I nodded in and out of:

The whole glorious thing is here.