Rob's review of 2017 - let's start with a Good Thing

2017 is coming to an end despite it surely being set in the far future.

And it genuinely is starting to feel like the future. I went to get a burger the other day and was faced, not by a human, but by a massive touchscreen thing, onto which I had to signal all my food choices. Obviously there was a human as well - she had to tell everyone how to work to robot food choicey thing, because we were all totally confused by it - but in principle, it was very much like being in Demolition Man.

Anyway. Another year is wandering to its close, and so I'm compelled to list some of the good and bad things about it, as if I was Time's manager and had to give it an appraisal.


Let's get straight in with something good.

Here's a moment that utterly delighted me this year.

One Sunday, after they'd been showing some tennis thing happening, the BBC cut to a bit of woodland. And through that woodland walked a mysterious figure.

And we knew, because we'd been told in advance, that this figure was going to be the new Doctor Who. What we didn't know was this - who would be playing the best person on television ever?

I was very excited indeed. A new Doctor Who is a thrilling thing to a massive geek like me. And there was a growing feeling that this time the producers were going to take the jump, and cast a woman rather than another bloke.

On my screen, the figure reached out to take the TARDIS key. We saw a hand - female? - and a close up of an eye... yes, it looked like...

She pulled back her hood. Sure enough, there stood the first female Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker.

It's hard to say quite why it excited me so much, but it really, really did. An amazing, bold, audacious decision from a massive organisation that might easily be forgiven for playing things safe.

It chimes wonderfully with one of the overall narratives of this year - a slow recognition that our culture is Masculine at a molecular level. Our language, our conventions and our attitudes all proceed from a base assumption that maleness = normal. Power is male. History is male. The people who make a difference are male, and that includes pretend people who travel through time in blue boxes.

Some rational opinions from people 

who have decided what's normal and what isn't.

It's a narrative that does none of us any favours. Certainly not the 50% of the human race who have been deemed 'non-normal' and have to cope with the inequality that brings. And not people like me, who find common notions of masculinity very uncomfortable indeed, and a poor fit for the complicated nonsense that goes on in my head and my heart.

We saw the narrative at play in the reaction to Whittaker's casting, as a small bunch of tiny minded people screamed their protest at how 'unrealistic' it was to imagine Doctor Who being a lady. Because he's heroic, isn't he, and a scientist, and a genius and all those things that, generally, men get on with while the ladies make tea and/or scream at the monsters.

We saw it again with the new Star Wars film - don't worry, no spoilers - and indeed in any cultural product where the dominance of white men was challenged by alternative ideas. It gets called 'forced equality' or 'agenda setting' or - all together now - 'political correctness gone mad'." Because we're so used to whiteness and maleness being 'normal' that any deviation from it seems unnatural and weird and forced.

Look at this! Women are literally dominating everything!

So this is my moment of the year. A mysterious figure takes down its hood, and there, where once stood a man, stands a woman. A moment that says, at heart, none of our personas are fixed. We have masculine traits and feminine traits. We're different on a Monday to how we are on a Tuesday and we're different with a group of friends to how we are at work or visiting our parents. We were different five years ago and we'll be different again.

The idea that we are fixed, static personalities, is nonsense. We are varied and complicated and contradictory. Most of all, we are free. We don't need be told how to be a man, or a woman. This wonderful, time travelling alien, standing in a wood and looking into our eyes, says that change is possible and wonderful and inevitable.

I love that. It moves me more than I can say. And the fact that my daft old TV series took a stand this year, on something so fundamentally important, makes me want to cry with pride

Great things about 2016 - part three

Felicitations!

2016 is the past now. Even typing the numbers seems weirdly old and peculiar. The past! Who'd live there?

Well, I did. And some nice things happened. And here are some of them. I've talked about music here, and films here. This time - video games!

It's been a good year for games. If you don't play games, or haven't for many years, then you may well be unaware of the massive diversity and brilliance at work in video games today.

Games are really coming of age at the moment. There are still plenty that focus on shooting and killing stuff, yes. But there is an increasing number that explore weird, beautiful and worthwhile concepts.

There are six games here. Two out of the six have female protagonists. Three are male. One is made of string. They deal with love, loss, memory, freedom and transformation. They are all great and they all made my year better.


Oxenfree

 

A bunch of teenagers go to a haunted island to drink beer, fall in love and get possessed by weird alien ghost entities. You are Alex, a teenage girl, trying hard to deal with your own emotional baggage and the politics of friendship as well as all the weird supernatural spooky stuff on the island.

I love the mood and tone of the game. It is supremely creepy. You have a radio which you can tune into ghostly radio stations, picking up music from the past, or mysterious voices phasing in and out of existence. And sometimes reality itself warps and shifts, the entire screen distorting like a 1980s video cassette.

An engaging and scary experience with innovative gameplay and cool, believable dialogue.



Bound

You're a dancer, in a dreamlike world of Escher-like palaces and walkways. You flip and leap and twist around demonic entities that might represent past memories or something. Dancing frees you from the past, and the charge towards this freedom is exhilarating and wonderful.

You're also, sometimes, a pregnant woman on a beach, looking wistfully at childlike doodles in a notebook. Is this who is dreaming the dance? Are they her memories? Her hopes? The game keeps its secrets, right up until the end.

A game which inspires deep emotions while at the same time providing real kinetic joy. Beautiful.




Inside

You are a nameless boy, running though a bleak, monochrome city, pursued by masked men and carnivorous dogs. It's a David Lynch-like dream world, surreal and darkly enchanting.

Gameplay is mostly about solving puzzles thrown up by the environment. How do you get past these obstacles? How can you use these tiny, tweeping chickens to get you up onto that ledge? What do you have to do to get past this strange, murderous, underwater death child?

Inside is at once charmingly simple - the controls are basic and the solutions elegant - and fascinatingly deep. There is a complexity and strangeness to this world, and these events stayed with me long after the game was over.




Unravel

You are a little man made of string. You go on a journey through gardens, fields and beaches - ordinary places to a human but huge, magical cathedrals of wonder to someone your size. As the title suggests, you unravel yourself slowly to make bridges and swings to help you navigate your environment.

A charming, gorgeous game that's partly an ingenious puzzle game and party a moving exploration of memory and loss.




Firewatch

You are Henry. Personal tragedy has driven you into a National Park, where you now live and work alone, high up in a tower, keeping a lookout for fires.

It's a beautiful world to be in, and the focus is less on plot than it is on experiencing the solitude and wonder of the surroundings. There is story here, though, and that unfolds through conversations - via walkie-talkie - with your boss, Delilah. She works on another tower, way over on the horizon. And she knows things about these woods that no-one else knows.

Finishing this game felt like coming back from a holiday romance. Warm, wonderful and slightly sad.




That Dragon, Cancer

Bleakest and saddest of all the games I played this year, That Dragon, Cancer puts you in the shoes of the game's creators,  Ryan and Amy Green. And what shoes. Ryan and Amy's son Joel is the one facing the dragon, cancer, just as he did in real life. And for the most part, all you can do is watch.

It's a game which pushes at the boundaries of what 'playing a game' means. It seems glib to even consider it in game play terms - to engage with this game is to experience real parents' grief. But the fact that it is a game is important, and indeed crucial.

To play a game is to do something. To effect change upon the game world. To win, most of the time. This is a game where you live in a world without very much choice in how things turn out. As a way of sharing the experience of grief and loss, that's pretty powerful.

Despite this, That Dragon, Cancer is not an unremittingly bleak experience. There are moments of joy, and a playfulness in the way the world of the game is created, as if the laws of reality are governed by Joel's childlike perspective. There are surreal and inventive sequences which helped me consider that life, even a life this brief, can contain moments of joy and love and meaning.




A really good year for games. There were also some games where I just shot at mutants with space rifles, and I enjoyed them too. But these are the ones that really engaged with my emotions. I recommend them all, without reservation.

Great things about 2016 - Part Two

Evening. I've had a lovely 2016, when I haven't been looking at the news. In part one of this review, I talked about a couple of lovely bands whose music has made the year better. Now, films.

Movies used to be a much bigger part of my life. It was my job to know about them, so I watched a lot more, read about them more, and generally cared more. For a number of years television has been slowly taking over as my medium of choice, and now my job has changed to teaching about video games, the time I put into film has diminished greatly.

So, this year I have not watched too much, and so I may have missed some wondrous examples of cinema. I certainly saw some real rubbish (Suicide Squad may be one of the worst two hours of my life). But we're not here to complain, we're here to be happy. So here are some of the films that made me glad in 2016.


The Girl With All The Gifts

It's hard to overstate how much I enjoyed this film. I watched it with a constant internal voice chirruping away, saying "This is great. This is great. This, Rob, is great."

What made me so happy? Lots of things. Plot and genre wise, we are in my comfort zone. This is kind of a zombie film, set in a dystopian near future. I like those kinds of films. TGWATG (as surely it must be called) is close in tone and subject matter to 28 Days Later and Children of Men - two films I hold in very high regard. I like to see stories of civilisation collapsing; I think they have a lot to say about the scarily thin threads that bind us all together, and how easily they can snap.

But it's not just a zombie film and it's not just miserable. In fact, my experience of the film can best be described as joyful. I loved the colours. The movement of the camera, hiding and revealing the world of the film with knowing elegance. The music - another atypical, asymmetrical score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who seems to be scoring a lot these days.

I loved the characters, especially the Girl herself - Melanie. Wide eyed, wonderful, unnerving and real. I loved the script, both for its convincing dialogue and its ruthless yet inventive plot logic.

I loved it because it is great cinema. Confident, startling film making that forged a truthful, beautiful, terrible world. At the end, I felt we had been given a message of hope. My viewing partner thought it was a message of despair. We were both right. Now that's a film.


Zootopia

Or Zootropolis, depending on where you live. A clever and funny animated film that works two jobs. On one level its an efficient, funny tale of cartoon animals making their way in a colourful and inventive world. On another level, it's a timely tale of how our world - our less colourful society of humans, where animals never get to wear hats - is becoming less human and less friendly by the day.

A remarkable achievement. Really funny, too.


Arrival

I didn't really want to see Arrival. It looked grey, and slow, and serious. And for the first third of the film I wasn't really having a great time. It was well made, and I had no objective issues with the way it was constructed as a piece of cinema. But I just wasn't feeling it, and it seemed cold and without emotion. And I was hungry. Why wasn't the film giving me a pizza?

Over the course of its running time, however, Arrival... changed. Its themes rose up, subtly and without me really noticing, fading quietly up in the mix and taking their place in the narrative. I realised that I wasn't just looking at Amy Adams' face any more, or wondering what kind of pizza I was going to have. I was being drawn into something quite amazing.

It's the kind of story you don't want spoiling, so I won't. Which isn't to say it hangs on some huge twist. It's to say that the experience of the film needs to grow as you watch it. Appropriately enough, for a film about language, the experience is one of slowly understanding what it is you are seeing and hearing. As the film progresses, you start to make sense of its vocabulary, and the things it's been saying all along become more clear.

It's a beautiful experience. And, like Zootopia, it feels made for our times. We are in a world where we talk to each other more easily than ever before, but rarely do we listen. Rarely do we even try to understand.


So there you go. Three excellent films. And that's me done for blogging this year. But don't worry - I'll be back, to tell you what video games I liked best, in the New Year. That's something to look forward to, isn't it?

Great things about 2016 - part one

2016 approaches its end. And I think we can all agree that it's been an excellent year. Unless you like music, film, people, comedy, laughter, joy, peace, equality or basic human decency. If you like any of those things you probably don't think it was excellent, and in fact hate 2016 and all it stands for. But that's because you're a precious, whiny snowflake. Or something. Get over it! You lost! Everything!

But look, there have been plenty of lovely things this year. I know, I saw them. And lucky you, I'm going to share them with you, in the hope that they bring you happiness.


Music

Let's start with music. I buy a lot of music. Too much, really, and certainly more than I can properly listen to. I like how easily available music is now, and I like that I can afford a lot of it, but I also sort of miss the days when I had to save up for an album, and really gave it my time and attention when I finally had the thing.

Zooropa by U2 is not the greatest album ever made, but I know those songs back to front because I listened to it all Summer in 1993, because it was all I had. And I valued it because I worked all day putting doughnuts in boxes, counting each tedious hour as a percentage of being able to afford that CD at the end of the day.

Now music just kind of flows past. I buy it, I download it, I sort of listen to it, I move on. It joins the sea of songs in my iTunes library, rarely getting that thing that all music really needs: a patient, attentive ear. And so I get older and music seems to mean less.

This year, though, a few things have managed to catch hold of my selfish, distracted ear. One of those things is called Schwa.


Schwa, everyone. Schwa!

I'm not sure what Schwa is. A band, maybe. A project? A one off album? I've certainly got a CD with 'Schwa' written on it. That sounds band-name-like, doesn't it? But there's something going on with this music that suggests people who aren't limited by the form of things. Have a listen to it. I recommend 'Happiness'.

https://schwasters.bandcamp.com/album/now-we-are-schwa

I saw this music played at an arts centre in Leeds, early this year. As always, I was massively resistant to going out in the first place. I love my sofa, and listening to other musicians is fraught with problems. If they're rubbish, I'm bored. If they're good, I resent and hate them. Either way, it's rarely as good as staying in and playing Metal Gear Solid.

This was lovely, though. Playful but not frivolous. Intricately constructed songs that managed to constantly surprise, while sounding like I'd always known them. It was genuinely exciting to witness the music being played and was a standout moment of the year. I bought the album and have played it endlessly since. It's good to know that music can still bring new joy, even when I don't deserve it.

Peculiar Blue

Some people are nice to me to a degree that is quite out of proportion to the effort I put into being nice back. This is good news for me, obviously, but I've no idea why they bother. Maybe someone else is paying them to be nice to me, because they know it will reduce how insufferable I am?

Anyway. Peculiar Blue have always been really nice to me. They're essentially a duo of singer/songwriters who play around Yorkshire, performing lovely folk-ish songs of their own and a seemingly endless repertoire of clever and enjoyable covers. I say they're a duo - they seem to be pretty much a full band these days, but I think Paul and Lynne are at the heart of it.

Like I say, they've always been ridiculously kind to me. When I first started doing open mic nights back in the late 90s they were really encouraging, despite me sounding a bit like Elvis Costello might if you strangled him and hit his guitar with a spoon. When I released my optimistic first album in 2004, they provided an excellent support act, not seeming to mind that they were clearly far better.

This Summer, I came across some of their music in my never-ending iTunes library. It was beautiful stuff and made a peaceful Summer evening even more magical. By chance I ran into them a few weeks later and was delighted to find that there had been loads of new music since then. I bought their latest CD and then, generous fools that they are, they threw in a load of extra EPs.


It's great stuff and you should give it a listen. There's plenty to listen to here:

https://soundcloud.com/peculiar-blue

and I'd recommend 'Don't Speak of Love' from here:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/3265350-Peculiar-Blue


So. Two wonderful things that have made my 2016 really good. Neither of them have stopped the forces of fascism or brought Victoria Wood back from the dead, but both have helped me to enjoy my time here on earth and recognise that people can, when all is said and done, be amazing and beautiful creatures.

Whiplashed

As I write, Peter Jackson's interminable version of The Hobbit is crawling towards its conclusion on the television. You don't need me to tell you that it's an over- long, tedious waste of everyone's time that's nowhere near as fun as the ZX Spectrum game from 1980 or thereabouts. Ah, those happy days, pretending to be friends with Robert Wilson just so I could have a go on his computer and experience Tolkien's world through the medium of text and low-res graphics. Odd that 30 years of technological advancement and millions of dollars should result in something so much less involving.

But the good news is, films aren't always exercises in total tedium. No. This year in particular has been very good and I've enjoyed many things. In the spirit of end-of-the-year retrospection, here are some of my favourites.

It is my intention to be more or less spoiler free. However, I will be giving a flavour of what kind of things happen, and why they matter, so use your own discretion. 

Oh, and Star Wars isn't here. I only just saw it, so it will take some processing. I'm sure I'll let you know what I think later on.

Birdman

A crazy, jazzy trip through art, theatre and madness. Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson - a superhero film actor who has seen better days and is now trying to claw back some credibility by staging a Raymond Carver play. We follow the action in one apparently unbroken take, lurching woozily through rehearsals, arguments and performances with scant regard for the rules of time or space. The fluidity of the camera leaves us trying to hold onto the narrative, just as Riggan tries to keep control of his play and his sanity. His actors are egomaniacs, his critics snobs and all the time, lurking behind him, is the (possibly illusory, possibly demonic) presence of Birdman himself...

A brilliant, audacious piece of film making, bristling with style.

Whiplash

This is the film about all the drumming. You might think it doesn't sound very exciting, but that's because the last thing you saw was Star Wars and you're still giddy. This is the most thrilling film of the year, leaving me utterly blown away as the closing credits rolled.

The plot is simple. A young music student - Andrew Nieman  - wants to be a truly great drummer. He comes up against music tutor and band leader Terence Fletcher, played by JK Simmons in a performance best described as 'awesome'. Nieman is driven beyond reason. Fletcher is a monster. The battle of between them is explosive. Chairs are thrown, fingers bleed, drums are well and truly drummed.

It is amazing. You must see it. I will be testing you.

Mad Max: Fury Road

"Waaa!" Cried whiny, insecure boys at the release of this film. "This movie has strong, empowered women it! In a film called Mad Max! Why are feminists taking away our toys?"

This film does, indeed, feature strong women doing ridiculously confident things like driving cars and ignoring the natural rule of their overlords, men. But, as a whiny insecure boy myself, I found myself surprisingly OK with this. This is a blisteringly powerful piece of film making and its gender politics, though progressive, are not really something to get upset about nor really the focus of the experience.

Men and women alike charge excitedly through a world made of mud, drums and spikes, their characters defined by their actions, which is as it should be. At one point an evil mutant guitarist shoots flames from his guitar while bouncing about on bungee ropes attached to a speeding desert truck! Vehicles and mountains explode! Warriors drop out of the sky on chains! How can anyone care about the sex of the protagonists when it's this exciting?

Answer: men are jerks. 

Sorry.

Inside Out

Hurrah! Pixar are good again. 

This is the film where little colourful people inside your head govern your psychological and emotional responses to the world. It's an ingenious idea, executed with the creativity and verve that characterises Pixar at their best. The visual design is stunning, the script thoughtful and the overall experience uplifting. You know, like Up, but not like Cars 2.

I was moved to tears, but not at a sad bit, like in Up or the end of Toy Story 3. (OK now, pull it together. Don't think of that scene. Come on... We can do this. Stay on target.) There's a beautiful moment where a character relives the bliss of a happy memory... closing her eyes in rapture as innocence and harmony overwhelm her... it's gorgeous, and it's what cinema is for.

Those are the best films. There were lots of other good ones that deserve your attention too, though. Very quickly, because your time is precious, here are some very good also-rans...

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Loads better than the very similar Spectre. Fast, enjoyable and full of great set pieces that crackle with invention and wit. A brilliant cast, given lots to do, and not just Tom Cruise running. Although, obviously, quite a lot of Tom Cruise running.

Trainwreck

What? Another bloody film where women are confident, independent human beings capable of thought and character? What is this emasculating, feminist bullshit?

Oh. I see. It's a thoughtful and touching rom-com that portrays both men and women as flawed yet interesting people, negotiating romance and its pitfalls in a way which is insightful yet enjoyable. Along the way it subverts audience expectations in a delightful and surprising manner, commenting on the very nature of romantic narratives through a series of hilarious set pieces.

Well alright then.

Ant Man

Lighter and funnier that the more cumbersome Age of Ultron, this film skips deftly around the conventions of the superhero movie with elegance and panache. A great cast and some laugh out loud moments. Delightful.

The Martian

Matt Damon gets stuck on Mars, leading to enjoyable adventures in space-peril and botany. Damon is funny, believable and engaging and should get an Oscar nom. The script is thrilling and trips along at a good pace. Ridley Scott makes film making on this level look effortless. Brilliant stuff.

It Follows

Spooky as hell horror flick, borrowing stylistically from best scary movie ever Halloween. Evil demon entity can disguise itself as anyone. It walks slowly towards you, forever, until it catches you and then it kills you to death. Best watched while drumming fingers nervously on your own skull and occasionally shouting "Arg! Arg! Behind you! Arg!"

John Wick

The most exciting action film of the year. And indeed most years.

Keanu Reeves is a retired bad ass.

Bad gangsters kill his dog.

Keanu exacts vengeance, doing a lot of tremendously exciting violence along the way.

You jump up and down, shouting in excitement.

So, there you go. I've probably forgotten loads of stuff. But that will certainly do for now. Please go watch all these films. And prepare me a written report on why I'm right.

Waiting in between

Today is Christmas Eve. Well, it probably isn't for you. You live in the future, stalked by cybernetic robots and/or downloading your personalities from the sky. You look back at Christmas Eve as 'the time before the cockroaches rose up against us' and weep for lost innocence. But for me, this is Christmas Eve and I sit before a sparkling tree, Bailey's in one hand, iPad on my knee, thinking back over the year gone by. 

December 24th is my favourite day of the year. It always has been. It's not always a great day, a day where wonderful things happen, but it is a day of promise and of anticipation. Crackling with maybes and possiibility, like the whispers in the air that mean it's going to snow. Not that it generally does, these days. Snow, that is. Tonight the sky is full of rain, or, as I like to call it, 'lazy snow'.

It snowed in 1984. Or thereabouts. I sat in the front room of my parents' house, alone in the near dark, watching snow billow down through the night sky, loving it. I was very cool then, as you can imagine, so I was spending my day reading the Companion Rulebook for the popular role playing game Dungeons and Dragons. It's among the happiest I've ever been, buried in charts and tables and descriptions of mythical beasts. Which is a good thing, as I wouldn't have anything resembling a girlfriend for quite some time. 

I don't do role playing much any more, but I still think very fondly of that night and, indeed, of the whole 'role playing' thing. In many ways it's still part of my life. This year I've played a number of video games that have been up there with the best artistic experiences I've ever had, and they are rooted in the same place as that Companion Rulebook. Systems and structures that try to create meaning and significance from things that are, essentially, nonsense. Games of pretend that are at once meaningless and profound; wastes of time and works of art. Whatever fascinated me on that Christmas decades ago still ticks inside.

Here are a few of the games I've played this year. I recommend them.

This War of Mine

If you've played The Sims you'll know the pleasures of controlling the lives of a bunch of little pretend people as they go about decorating their homes and pursuing careers. It's like a Rorschach test for the  soul. Do you play the game as intended, living vicariously through their consumerist urges and buying them the best sofa on the planet? Or do you simply trap them in a swimming pool and watch in glee as they wee themselves to death? Or maybe you could make everyone have affairs, so they all end up desperately sad and weeping, until you burn their house down and kill their pets to give them some perspective on what misery really feels like.

This War of Mine is a bit like that, only this time you don't need to do anything terrible to the people under your care - it's already happened. The bunch of characters under your control live in bombed out ruins, eking out a pathetic existence somewhere in the midst of war torn Eastern Europe. Your job is to help them scavenge for food, fortify their crumbling home against violent scavengers and try to keep their spirits up against the grey relentless misery of life in a time of senseless war.

It's a good game, well balanced with strong mechanics and a distinctive aesthetic that draws you into the world. But it would be hard to describe as 'fun'. Your character will starve. Freeze. Weep. If you're not careful they'll attempt suicide. Worst of all are the things you might find yourself doing to survive. Robbing a house for food is fun, until the old couple that live there start following you sadly about, crying as you take their only belongings. Shit, video games, what are you up to? I came here to be a bastard, and now you're making me feel terrible about it.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

A beautiful and clever game. Bright and colourful, this is lots of fun and has a great central mechanic. You control the titular brothers as they venture through a fairytale land in search of a cure for their dying father. So far, so so. The clever bit is that you control them both at once, through the two sticks of the controller. Not an easy proposition, especially for someone like me who can quite easily confused when stirring milk into tea, but one which brings a real sense of connection to the two characters. 

I've become more and more interested in how gameplay techniques can reinforce theme, and here it works very well indeed. You often have to work both characters at once, your two hands working simultaneously on different aspects of a challenge. It binds the brothers together in a very real way - they are separate, yet inextricably connected. It's a clever idea with surprising emotional resonance.

Life is Strange

Probably my game of the year, unless Fallout 4 simply beats me into submission with its relentless, addictive, enthralling beauty.

Life is Strange is the story of a teenage girl - Max - who finds her college life interrupted by a David Lynch-ian series of events which are at once terrifying and compellingly beautiful. You control Max through a simple point-and-click interface, no running and shooting here, and get to choose her conversational and emotional responses to the bizarre events which confront her. 

This is a cine-literate and mature experience. It's about sex, self confidence and murder. It's about art, friendship and what it means to grow up. It's about abuse, both physical and emotional. Sometimes it is uplifting and beautiful beyond measure, but on other occasions it can be quite breathtakingly distressing. 

The central game mechanic allows Max to rewind time - to replay incidents and conversations and choose different approaches each time. At first this just seems to be an admission of what all games do - they give us the chance to try again. But this is more than that. This is about choice and consequence. Making a choice when you don't know the outcome is one thing. If it goes wrong, you can always tell yourself that you didn't know what would happen. But when Max rewinds time and gets to look at all the ways things can play out, she has to take responsibility for the results of those choices. When bad things happen - and they do happen - she has to swallow the guilt.

This is a game which deals in ambivalence and refuses to give easy answers. I felt a whole bunch of emotions while playing, not least guilt at the things I let happen to the people around me. But there's also real pleasure at the intimacy of the relationships that develop and the deep satisfaction of burrowing into a world constructed with such love and passion.

I played other games this year, but these are three which really stand out as artistic experiences which moved and delighted me. They are all fun, even though they have the ability to poke at more serious issues, and they are all worth your time.

Christmas Eve. Sitting by a tree, in the dark. Thinking about the gap between things. Between now and that Christmas in 1984, with all the snow, Between now and the noise of tomorrow, with all the wrapping paper and then noise. Between the pressing of a button on a game controller and the emotions that can result. 

The Closing of the Year

The future year 2015 is stumbling to its end, trying to find its coat and woozily telling everyone it loves them and they should open a pub together. As we wait patiently for it to leave, so we can finally get some sleep, it's time to look back and see what the whole thing was about.

And when I say 'what it was about' I mean, 'What did Rob like best?' There's no point pretending otherwise - I only care about myself and things which give me pleasure. So this probably won't be about explaining the rise of ISIS, unless someone makes an awesome movie about it in the next 8 days.

Let's start somewhere obvious. Television. That's the best thing in the world, isn't it? So that's an ultimate good. Here's some of the TV I've really liked.

I could have just said that to start with, I suppose.

Agent Carter, Daredevil and Jessica Jones

It feels kind of redundant and obvious to say it, but here I go anyway: the Marvel Cinematic Universe is really bloody good. A brilliantly planned, creatively diverse array of stories that has fundamentally changed mainstream cinema and, perhaps more importantly, made excellent, sexy use of Scarlett Johanssen. It hasn't always hit the mark; Incredible Hulk feels a bit of an imposter, Thor: The Dark World is needlessly complicated and Iron Man 2 is made of testicles. But for the most part it's been a series of awesome, exciting and varied wonders.

One of the most enjoyable films of the year has been Ant Man - a playful, zippy movie that made ingenious use of its premise and, in Paul Rudd, gave us yet another example of Marvel's great eye for casting. But far more exciting, for my money, was the arrival of the MCU on the small screen.

Agent Carter is a beautiful period piece, lit up by the luminous Hayley Attwell. She's great - confident, funny and believable - and brings a lightness of touch to a show that could easily become over impressed by its own period detail and (excellent) feminist credentials. The story telling is solid and it looks fantastic.

Daredevil is also powered by a strong performance, but this time it's not really the eponymous hero that thrills. Loki aside, the MCU has struggled to give us a truly great villain. Not any more. Vincent D'Onofrio bristles and thunders at the centre of this show, inhabiting the villainous Wilson Fiske with an astonishing combination of fury, cunning and childlike desperation. There's also some awesome fight choreography, especially in episode 2's already famous corridor battle.

And then there's Jessica Jones. Bloody hell. Just when I was ending the year thinking Agent Carter was going to be the best female action hero and Daredevil had given us the best villain. Along comes this super-confident, amazingly written piece of work. Great performances all round and a strong script give us the most mature and interesting iteration of the MCU yet. The subject matter is dark,
serious stuff yet the show is smart enough to stay witty and human throughout. David Tennant plays Kilgrave as, well, basically an evil version of his Tenth Doctor, and he's quite magnificently creepy - not least because he retains a certain likeability even as he does the most despicable things.

All three series show that the success of the movies is no fluke. This is more than just a canny marketing exercise. Marvel is stepping beyond an (impressive) array of superhero movies and starting to develop genuinely diverse narratives. Free of the need to accommodate the high-stakes plot arcs of the movies, these stories are dealing with more profound and personal issues.

The Infinity Stones may have some huge, universe shattering importance but I find it much harder to care about them than I do about Peggy Carter's struggle to be accepted in a world designed for men, or the emotional consequences of Jessica's abusive relationship with Kilgrave. I'm way more interested in the battle raging within Wilson Fiske than I am in a hundred robots destroying yet another city. This is great television made with heart, passion and real intelligence, and if we're in luck, it's the future.

Review of the year: Excellent (Part Two)

One of the most moving things I ever saw was a child falling off a bike and really hurting himself. Not because it was hilarious to watch... I'm not saying that. I hardly laughed at all. But because of what his friend did. These were two boys, probably about ten years old or therabouts... maybe older. I can't really work out the ages of children between birth and the point where they start paying income tax. But lets say ten. Anyway, the other boy, seeing that his friend had fallen and was in pain, dropped his bike straight away and left it where it fell, running towards his friend to make sure he was alright. No macho posing, no laughter, just concern. I thought it was really nice, and it's stayed with me as an example of something lovely in a world that generally looks like it was designed by evil vampire wasps.

All of which is my way of saying... here are some nice things, to end the year on. Things that pleased me and made me glad to be alive in 2010. Absorb them, seek them out for yourselves, buy them for me as presents.

The Walking Dead

At last somebody has realised that the best way to faithfully adapt a novel - especially a graphic novel like The Walking Dead - is not to attempt to cram it all into 2 hours of blockbuster cinema. Yes, films are big and shiny and have lots of money to spend, but if you're looking at doing justice to the slow burn narratives and complex characterisation of a novel, you need to make a television series.

TV is brilliant these days, and the last ten years or so have seen the art form raise in quality to such an extent that it is no longer the unloved little brother of cinema, good only for hitting and stealing sweets off. Now TV has grown surprisingly tall and strong, and cinema is really wishing it had been nicer to it when it was younger, and is desperately hoping TV doesn't remember the day cinema pulled the head off his Boba Fett and laughed when he cried.

Sorry. Flashback. Anyway, it was with great joy that I welcomed the news that Robert Kirkman's ongoing tale of the zombie apocalypse was to be allowed full reign on television.

It's a slow burn, and the six episodes that have aired so far have not got us very far plotwise. But the point of the show - and indeed all zombie narratives - is to show us how the living respond to the situation they are in, and reveal their true selves once the bonds of civilisation have dissolved. The title explicitly refers not just to the zombies themselves, but also to we the living, for what are we but the dead waiting to happen?

The zombie moments themselves are also terrific: well realised Romero-style shufflers rather than the sprinting ghouls of other films, and blessed with really gross faces. The violence is explicit and necessarily horrifying and the situations really have you going 'Arrg! Aarg! Nooo!' and spilling your wine. Against all the odds, it has done well and been given a second series. I dance a joyful zombie dance.

 

Aha's farewell tour

Upon being told that I went to see Scandanavian pop band Aha in concert this year, most people's responses fell into one of the following categories:

a) Aha? Didn't they split up in 1987? No? Really? I'm sure you're wrong. You're probably thinking of Keane. I like Keane.

b) Aha? Who are they? Being under 20 I have no idea what you are talking about. Now get out of my bedroom or I'll call my dad.

c) I know you went. I went to see them with you. I bought the tickets.

d) I know you went. I'm Morten Harket, lead singer of Aha, and I saw you in the crowd weeping like a child. Now get out of my bedroom or I'll call my dad.

Well, they are still together, except they're not because this was their farewell tour. Aha are absolutely fantastic and have probably done their best work in the last dozen years or so. Here's an example.




The farewell concert was gorgeous, full of amazing songs that were frankly impossible to sing along to due to Harket's still impressive vocal range.They are an incredible pop band with some top melodies, and in a fair world (i.e. one not dominated by radio stations terrified of anything older than last week) they would have continued to be huge.

The really odd emotional highlight was an audience singalong of the chorus to 80s Bond Theme The Living Daylights. In case you can't remember how these incredibly profound lyrics went, it was something like this: 'Whoah, oh oh oh, The Living Daylights.' It was great, and weirdly bonding.

Amusingly, near the end, a middle aged man behind us inadvertently revealed that he'd never ever been to a gig before. The band had said goodnight and left the stage, but hadn't yet played Take On Me - probably their most famous song. Would they come back, do you think, to round off the evening with their most triumphant creation? Probably not, according to this bloke, who got up, put his coat on and complained loudly 'I would have thought they'd play Take on Me!'.

I loved this gig. It awakened in me a renewed love of the band, and of the possibilities of intelligent pop in general. One of the highlights of my year.

Matt Smith as Doctor Who

I remember quite well the day the fourth Doctor Who, played for seven years by Tom 'mad as toast' Baker, fell off a big tower and thunked into the ground, hurting his back and triggering the swirly BBC effects of  regeneration. It was inconceiveable to my ten year old self that anyone could take his place. When Peter Davison's first story rolled around a few months later I was sure of only one thing: I hated this new guy, and it would be really nice if he could fall off something too, preferably onto a spike, and turn back into my curly haired hero.

I imagine Matt Smith set off similar thoughts in a lot of children this year, as he took over the best role in the world from uber-popular David Tennant, who had spent four glorious years being quite, quite brilliant as Doctor Who and winning over the hearts of an entire generation. Heck, forget children - most adults I know went into terminal denial at the idea of anyone else stepping into those battered Converse trainers.

Well, take a bow Matt Smith. You started brilliantly and just got better, becoming a totally new and yet instantly recognisable Doctor. Funny, weird, clever and heroic, you made the Doctor all the things he needs to be - a role model to anyone who watches, who loves all the strangeness of the world and hates injustice with a passion. Great stuff. Please keep doing it.

Toy Story 3

I really, really liked Toy Story 3. If you don't like it, it is because you haven't seen it. Or because you are evil. A glorious, life affirming, brilliantly constructed story that says gorgeous things about life, friendship and change. That is all I have to say.





And finally... 

I do have one more thing to stick on my list, but I've decided to give it its own entry, on the grounds that it's probably my favourite thing of all my favourites. So I'll see you next time for that. In the meantime, enjoy those around you (unless they are Nazis), have a cup of tea and avoid spoilers.

Happy Birthday Mr Jesus

A special Christmas Day message, for those of you who aren't drunk yet, possibly because you've been forced to attend some kind of alcohol-free church event. Suckers.

Christmas day is lovely. A warm, fuzzy, festival of stuffing things in my face, playing with toys and not giving a toss about anything vaguely unpleasant. It's like Sundays would be if we'd thought them through properly and organised an extra day of the week after them to recover. The normal rules of time don't apply and we drift through the day on warm currents of satisfaction and consequence free bliss.
 
I mean, yes, there are a lot of people for whom it is a miserable reminder of their poverty and of the harsh realities of their horrible lives. And there's a lot of depression, and suicide and stuff. But for me, in this lovely warm house with a load of alcohol and nothing to worry about beyond how long it is until Doctor Who starts... it's great. Let's just forget about those other guys. They were probably evil in a past life or something. That's how it works, isn't it? Yeah. Pretty sure.

Anyway, I think Christmas Day is a genius idea. I mean, quite apart from the fact that I got a cool zombie T-shirt and some Lego. And the way everyone drinks so much it makes me look normal for a bit. I think Christmas is really, properly lovely and good.

Naysayers like to protest that the festival isn't very Christian any more, and that it's a shame, and that we've lost the true meaning etc. Well, to some extent, I suppose, but also... no. There's no point saying Christmas isn't very Christian any more. Why? Glad you asked:

Firstly, Christmas was never particularly Christian in the first place.We nicked most of the trappings from the pagans when we nicked everything else off them, including their sweets. Saying it's not very Christian is like going into a building that was originally an Odeon cinema, and was then turned into a Gala Bingo hall, and then converted into a Cineworld cinema, and complaining that you can't play bingo there. It is. It's exactly like that.

Secondly,  it's quite easy for your Christmas to be Christian without someone else telling you how. And by 'Christian' here I mean an all embracing, behavioural concept which is as much about being nice to people as it is about formulating a doctrine of belief. Avoiding basic human decency because it hasn't been state sanctioned is a pretty poor response to a season that is meant to be about indiscriminate goodwill.

Here's a good thing we can do at Christmas, and it's not necessarily to do with belief, or even social justice (although both those things are dead good). We can take the space given to us on Christmas Day and use it to be really lovely to those around us. We can relax and enjoy each other, and really see what we're all like once the shackles are off. Look - I'm not at work! I don't have to bore you about the day to day nonsense that constructs my self image! I can be a simpler, easier me for a bit.

The homeless and the lonely need support and love, and hats off to those who devote their time to that. But perhaps for some of us charity really does begin at home. Maybe the people around us look comfortably off, and have money and warmth and a house and oh so many DVDs, but rarely have a moment to be free of all that and just... exist. Souls need healing too. The Bible calls it sabbath. Time out from the nonsense. Time to be in the present moment, and remember you have a soul.

Merry Christmas, you lovely people. Now get me some Bailey's.

Intermission: Sometimes all you want is a hug

Half way through my four-part dissection of the year's highlights and lowlights, and I've realised I need a fifth category. Sorry for those of you who have already devised a complicated wall chart based on my last couple of posts. I am hereby inserting a new category between my last post, 'meh', and my next one, 'quite good' and I have decided to call it 'reasonably entertaining'.

Things that are reasonably entertaining include films which just sort of passed the time and were fun to watch, but which didn't really inspire me with any lasting joy. They are the digestives of film: perfectly acceptable, and once in a while they might be exactly what you're in the mood for, but not what you'd give to Derren Brown if he came round to your house to help you hypnotise some troublesome ants into not stealing your bloody toast.

Films that were Reasonably Entertaining in 2010

Salt

Angelina Jolie is an agent! But then someone says she's a double agent! And then! Whoah! Maybe she is and maybe she isn't! There is lots of running, many things explode and a lot of people get shot and fall over looking sad. It's an effective post-Bourne thriller with a strangely retro Cold War feel and Jolie makes a good action hero - but we knew that. Once all the twisty turniness is done it's like having watched a series of 24 at several times normal speed and you are left feeling quite happy, until you notice something shiny and forget all about it.

The Town

Ben Affleck's directorial follow up to the brilliant Gone Baby Gone is nearly in the 'very good' category. It is an engaging tale, well told and with some properly thrilling set pieces. The central conceit - bank robber falls in love with hostage who could identify him and his gang - is simple and effective, and played well by the leads. I do like Ben Affleck, and I'm glad he's turning into such an interesting director.

The only real issue is that it feels a lot like Michael Mann's Heat. The basic plot, following the ethical and procedural similarities of opposing groups of cops and robbers, is very similar and there are a number of repeated dramatic beats. Which made me keep coming back to Jeremy's thoughts in Peep Show, when watching a play: 'This is as long as Heat. I could be watching Heat. I'm going to pretend I'm watching Heat!'

The A-Team

Now, I know that by doing this I am risking incurring the wrath of The Expendables, which may well come charging in from the last blog-post, shrieking in rage. "Why do you love her but not me?" it will scream, firing machine guns indiscriminately into the air. "She's an equally stupid throwback to the eighties with no real sense of characterisation or plot!" (Throws hand grenade through a window). "You're a hypocrite and she's a slag and why does no-one ever love the real me?" (Collapses in tears on stairs, eye make-up everywhere).

Well, quite. The A-Team isn't really much smarter than The Expendables, and doesn't have a particularly strong sense of what it is, beyond a nostalgic attempt at launching a franchise. But it's a funnier script, has better actors and, yes, draws heavily from the well of love that lies deep in the hearts of an entire generation. I'd like to see a sequel, please.

The Karate Kid

Another film which almost nudges its way into the higher categories. A surprisingly fresh and fun remake which does enough new things to make it a worthwhile exercise while more or less keeping the ethos of the original. Jaden Smith is a good actor already, and very likeable, and will probably be as big a star as his dad at some point. Jackie Chan is ace.

Red

What's this? A film about an older generation of movie stars geting back into their action groove? Surely not! Like the A-Team, this is a lot of fun and just spending time with the characters is reward enough. The plot is a little more coherent, though only just, and there are some fantastic images - not least being a suited John Malkovich handling the ammunition butler-style, while Helen Mirren operates the biggest machine gun you've ever seen. In a big dress.

Cyrus

Clever, funny comedy in which John C Reilly fancies Marissa Tomei, and tangles with her son Cyrus -  Jonah Hill - over the latter's oedipal tendencies. Small scale, well played and very funny.

Get Him to the Greek

Jonah Hill again, this time trying to stop rock god Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, channeling himself) from smoking/having sex with  everything he meets. Sporadically funny, though uneven, and entirely reliant upon Brand's personality for its effect.

I think that's everything. There's quite possibly other films I've forgotten, but on the whole these are films that, should you come across them on the TV, you should consider showing a bit of love.

Christmas in June

A few months ago brilliant old digital television justified its cybernetic hold on my free time by bringing me, for the first time, the wonders of Gavin and Stacey.

I was vaguely aware of the programme, of course. Everyone had said it was all made of lovely and then all the actors from it kept popping up on chat shows and talking about how brilliant they were in it. And I had even become vaguely aware that the fat bloke and the big girl were not the titular couple after all, but that they did write the show, and that they probably weren't going out with each other, even though that would have made sense in my opinion. Anyway, as with most things, I'd managed to miss the entire three seasons and then it finished and I thought 'Oh well, that's that then.'

You see, there's something about watching a show when it is current that far outstrips the pleasure of binging on the DVD box-sets after the fact. Partly, there is the joy of feeling part of the buzz that surrounds a show that has grabbed the public mood. Being able to join in conversations about it, getting other cultural references to it etc. Plus, of course, you don't have to fear spoilers. I enjoy wandering around the internet in search of TV and film stuff with which to impress my so called friends, but the presence of spoilers renders the whole exercise a terrifying trip through a minefield. A minefield laced with enjoyment-ruining information on who dies, or makes someone else die, or was dead all along but never noticed. Boo to spoilers.

Oh, and also there's the joy of having to wait between episodes, to experience the end-of-episode tensions as God intended. I like that.

So, when a series passes in its entiriey, I tend to think I probably won't get round to watching it at all. Popular culture seems hell bent on throwing out more interesting TV than I could ever get round to watching anyway, lobbing series after series of things I Absolutely Must Watch at my face, while I like whimpering in a corner, still contemplating unwrapping series two of the Sopranos.

Anyhow, obviously I did wach Gavin and Stacey, mostly because it only has a finite and do-able three series to overcome, and I'm very glad I did because it's very, very good. You probably know this, because you're probably not the pathetic late-adopter that I am, and you probably enjoyed it when it was fresh. But look, I'm here now aren't I? Let me be happy for once. And stop eating my chips. You said you weren't hungry.

Evil digital temptress that it is, GOLD showed series one and two and then just gave up, leaving me all a-frezy with no chance of consummation. But now we have borrowed the DVDs, thwarting GOLD and its nefarious schemes, and this week we watched the Christmas special.

Now, I'm a great enjoyer of the seasons of the year. I like my Summer full of sunshine and white wine and blasting pop music. I like Winter to embrace me in a flurry of snow, the glow of Bing Crosby and the gentle haze of Baileys. Christmas is for Christmas, and should stay there. That's what I think. That's usually what I think.

But my goodness, watching the Gavin and Stacey Christmas episode, in the late evening sun in mid June, I did feel really, properly Christmassy. And liked it. There 's something about the seies that I really can't put my finger on, but whatever it is, it makes me glow inside. Gorgeously real and enjoyable characters played with great subtlety by a perfectly cast ensemble who appear to genuinely like each other. Brilliant writing that allows space for lovely, quirky moments. Moments of true genius, like the songs that bubble up naturally and draw you along.

Ahhh. So good. In summary, then. a) Thinks I think are often directly contradicted by other things I think. b) Gavin and Stacey is good.

I'm sure I had something else to say. Ah well. Be good to each other etc.

magpies

One is for... sorrow? I think that's right. It's a David Bowie song. Except I think it's a cover. I don't know who did the original. It's not very good,anyway. Ashes to Ashes is good. The song. And the TV show as well, but I'm talking about the song.

Hello. At least once a week I pretend I'm about to blog, and then I feel the pressing need to wander about the house going 'laa laa laa, my house is nice.' Not my house, technically. But my home. I do have a house, but it's off imits. Geographically and conversationally.

Two is for... mirth. Not joy, as is often reported. Mirth. Which is joy, I suppose, but seems less hateful. Mirth. To rhyme with birth (coming soon).

I have had a variety of obsessions this year. Like Toad, of Toad Hall. I think it was him. I was obsessed with Adrian Mole for a bit, and that was nice. Then Stephen Segal, thanks to Vern's great book. This was quickly followed by a devotion to all things Chris Morris related. I listened to loads of Blue Jam, and On the Hour, all prompted by the great book 'Disgusting Bliss'. Recommended. I like my obsessional phases. I'm currently on A-ha, whom I love because I'm going to see them in November. So I bought lots of their albums and am listening to them a lot.

Three is for death. Yes, death. Not a girl. No. You can't have a girl. You can have death. The magpies bring the end of things. Death.

It is sunny, so there's that and that makes me happy. I'm very lucky to have a number of very good friends who like a) the sun, b) wine and c) drinking wine in the sun. Hard to believe that this time last year I was seriously thinking of moving away from these wonderful people. They keep me alive. And I need keeping alive. In case the magpies come.

Four is for birth. See, I told you that mirth was good for something. It rhymes with birth.

I'm enjoying Doctor Who, and Matt Smith is very, very good. Just watched him in Party Animals and he's a lovely actor. Looking forward to seeing where he takes his Doctor. The series has been zippy and entertaining and has made me glad. If I can keep away from the forums, and the spite and negativity that passes for fandom over there, I should be able to continue to enjoy the series in all its exhuberance. I'm just so happy, every week, that the series I have loved for so many years is on TV again.

Five... that'll do for now. Let's stay at four. Maybe it will encourage me to blog again before the year is out.

Enjoy the sunshine.

If music be the food of love, let's eat it

Hello. Yes, I'm terrible at blogging. Well, so was Jesus. And I don't hear you criticising him.

Or is that Him? Never was sure about he capitalisation thing. Seems odd to me.

Here are some things that pass through my cavernous and all powerful mind.

Asdon't

Today is Easter Sunday. C and I managed to effectively 'do lent' and stay away from supermarkets for the last few weeks. We were going to celebrate our own briliance today by going there to buy Easter eggs, but wouldn't you know it - they're shut. For Easter. Or maybe they've simply gone out of business without my child-like impulse buys to sustain their income streams.

Anyway, it was a good thing to do, and we'll probably more or less stick to it, with the odd trip to stock up on Lapsang Souchong and chorizo. We've spent less, and the local food is loads better. Best of all has been the meat - my goodness, it is beautiful from the local butcher. And the vegetables from the garden centre farm shop place are lovely. And that's not all. There's the sense of interacting more with the area a little - getting to know the people who run the smaller businesses a bit. It has been a good thing, and I recommend it.

Four Lions

In other news, I met Chris Morris. This was tremendously exciting and I think I managed not to be too embarrassing when I shook his hand and screamed 'You are, literally, my God. Please have sex with me!' Or something. It's all a bit of a blur now. But it was very pleasing. His new film - Four Lions - is a very funny and insightful pieice of work which will probably be hard to track down but is certainly worth it. Maybe I'll just buy everyone the DVD for Christmas. That'll make for a cheery boxing day - suicide bomber comedy.

Who Joy

Doctor Who season is upon us once more, and so last night the house was full of people. I love these evenings. People, wine and time to talk. (Not during Who, though, obviously. That would mean certain death.) Matt Smith seems very fine, and I am confident that we are in for the best season yet. I love Doctor Who so much that I sometimes want to cry.

Maybe if someone made a really good, HBO style TV show about Jesus, I'd feel that way about the Gospel too. When I actually get into the bible - usually when it's read out loud and with some passion - I get it, and think it's great and life changing. And that's good. All I'm saying is... maybe it could be broken down into 45 minute episodes and set to a kick ass soundtrack. And have some attractive women in it. And cliffhangers. I like cliffhangers.

I should probably go, before blasphemy overtakes me. Happy Easter, everyone. Send chocolate.

Slanket

I've got a slanket. A great big, red, all covering furry swathe of joy, all the better for watching television under. It may well be the best thing in the world that doesn't come in a bottle or attached to a woman.

For the uninitiated (which included me until very recently), a slanket is a blanket... with sleeves! Hence the name, I suppose. I've only just worked that out. I'm quite dim sometimes. Anyway, it's a great big covery thing to slouch under, but with voluminous sleeves that allow the 21st century couch potato to pour more wine into his glass, eat more toast, or fiddle about with the nightmarish future-powers of the Sky Plus control. It is simple yet elegant in its ergonomic genius, and I have almost instantly decided to spend most evenings living in it. I recommend it vigorously.

It can also be worn backwards, transforming the wearer into a very convincing Time Lord. I have spent much time over the last few days striding up and down the house, declaring "the end of time itself!" To my (majestic) annoyance, Caroline refuses to obey any of my Gallifreyan commands and doesn't even have the basic decency to be vapourised by my 'sleeve of power'.

Girls.

However. It was her who bought me the thing, so I suppose I should be grateful. And she's put up with me sneezing all week. And brought some wine and Jelly Babies home last night. I will let her live. For now. Until they invent a slanket that also makes cups of tea.