Author: carlosfandango

“Slower and noisier than paper towels”

I’ve been thinking about the clocks going forwards/backwards twice a year. At the moment, the mornings are still dark at 7ish. That’ll get better over the next month or two, and then the clocks will change and the mornings will be dark again until late spring.

This bi-annual change routine seems clunky to me. Why the sudden step changes? Presumably because more frequent changes would just have been more too much hassle back when they were thinking about how to deal with time and seasons. Clocks would all have to have been wound manually and getting out of sync was hell for the railways.

Well, the pain of changing clocks is going away. All smartphones automatically adjust to the exact time as do most things with radios. Give it a few years and it’ll be quaint to manually change a clock.

So… isn’t that an opportunity? What if time was adjusted slightly every day rather than twice a year? We could agree that a minute each day was altered such that it was sunrise at, say, 6 am every day of the year. Sure, sunset would vary with day length, so there’d be no monotony, but we’d always wake up to daylight. No-one needs the 4am daylight of June and no-one likes it being dark near 9am in December.

There’s probably something about farmers in Scotland that means it would be unpopular up there, so it can wait until after Independence and then they can do what they like.

I’ve just watched the most recent Richard Curtis movie whilst on a flight back from a work trip. Have you seen it? Stop reading if you haven’t.

I’m a sucker for time travel films (I worship Back to the Future), so despite this being a rom com, I watched it because it’s a time travel rom com.

Oh, it’s ok. Well, actually, it’s saccharine bollocks – but kinda harmless in itself. If Hugh Grant were younger, he’d be playing the lead man. I thought the life-lessons were clunky and the music choices didn’t fit. But it’s a pleasant story of father-son, living your life to the full and how the little things are important etc.

But there were two MASSIVE missings. Firstly, the Uncle Desmond character is an absolute swerve. He’s so interesting. What’s wrong with him? Why is he there?? I wanted him to be some wizard or some terrible time mistake who is the key to what’s going on.

But mainly, there’s a wonderful OMG twist/reveal that the film entirely misses!! There is a small joke made several times at the start where, in his Grantian clumsiness, the main guy keeps reminding his girlfriend-to-be that his mother is also called Mary. This is just small talk until the scene where Mary goes home to meet the family.

And then it dawns on you. Mary the girlfriend IS Mary the mother. The son is about to marry the same woman as his dad did! No, wait, that means the son is the father and they’re coexisting in time and it’s all going to go spectacularly wrong!! Break in the fabric of space and time!!! Imagine the possibilities!!!! It’s such an open goal. The two Marys even look alike.

Except that isn’t what happens. The film just peters out in a Four Weddings, Notting Hill warm bath of folksiness.

It could have been a temporal wonder rather than a temporary distraction. I demand Curtis goes back and changes it.

Earth as seen from a rover on Mars

Loving this word for South London

Transpontine: ‘on the other (i.e. the south) side of the bridges over the Thames; pertaining to or like the lurid melodrama played in theatres there in the 19th century’.

Via

Best white soul voice ever

Flipside of amazing mobile tech is ever-present distraction – it can be the enemy of mindfulness. Resolving for more tech-free moments in 2014

Means soup, fire and this movie

I’m about 100 pages into this apparently zeitgeisty novel. So far two thoughts come to mind:

1. It’s not so much a dystopian future as a dystopian present

2. It feels like a companion piece to Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs from the 90s

UPDATE Dec 27. Finished it. Very readable, but not recommended. It feels very simplistic in its reading of human nature. The portrayed extrapolation of sharing culture to extremes with little objection is unconvincing and there are a couple of ill-fitting sub-stories (eg, the fish tank) that make for poor metaphors. Still – if the purpose of such books is to raise concerns for the direction of ‘progress’ then it has played its part.

Once you learn a new word/phrase, you begin to notice it everywhere

I’ve very much enjoyed Morrissey’s Autobiography. Always quotable, he always seemed to be indirect and evasive during the 80s Smiths heyday – so it’s a treat to read his story in his own words.

There are vague allusions to sexuality, fascinating glimpses into the origins of cherished songs, a lengthy and cathartic account of court case bitterness and an alarming number of premature deaths – all wrapped up in flowery prose and charming wit.

As for being on the Penguin Classics imprint, I’d like to think that’s mischief rather than vanity – but it’s probably both.

In a moment of hippie thrift last year, rather than throw our xmas tree away, we planted it in the garden.

12 months on, it’s back

Along with mince pies in Pret and the opening of Advent calendars, the outside fridge is the first sign of Christmas. This humble Perspex box, guarded carefully by twin Buddhas, will hold overflow seasonal food and drink at wintery temperature until early January.