April so far
Apr. 7th, 2010 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe Danish Natural History Museum decided to replace the Little Mermaid statue, removed to participate in an exhibition in China, with a skeleton - yes, a mermaid skeleton, top half human, bottom half fishy (full report and photo here). Is it an April Fool if the news story isn't invented, it really happened? (At least, I think it did, though I'd be happier if I could find evidence on Flickr).
I used to think I didn't like the violin. I blame the classical music they made us listen to at school, and I still don't like classical violin (the Russian for violin is [skreepka], and that sounds about right to me). There's Dave Swarbrick, of course (69 on Monday, and Still Not Dead), but Swarb is exceptional. Only perhaps not quite as exceptional as I thought: we heard Fiddlers Bid at the Sage on Thursday, and loved it - and if you can enjoy a band whose front row is four fiddlers, then you must like the instrument, mustn't you?
There was a fair amount of fiddle music from the Kathryn Tickell Band (warning: site plays smallpipes on loading), and that was good, too.
There is a crack in everything /That's how the Doctor gets in.
We watched Doctor Who: I grumbled my way through much of the last series, but this was a good start, because I enjoyed it even as I said "Oh, not again!" (Either it was full of knowing winks at past episodes, or it repeated an awful lot of motifs: take your choice). I was fine with the new transformed Doctor, though I found him substantially the same as the old Doctor - presumably this is deliberate, that things like the excitement and delight with which David Tennant greeted the universe are to be seen as part of who the Doctor is. I was less fine with the transformation of the TARDIS: if it functions well enough to change its interior from that rather interesting organic look to a cross between Aladdin's Cave and Harrods Food Hall at Christmas, then surely it can fix its chameleon circuit and stop being a police box (a cynical little voice in my head says 'but think of the merchandising implications...')
I was sorry, but not surprised, when the resourceful small girl grew up into the kissogram. For one thing, as Nancy Banks-Smith says, you probably need a certificate for that sort of thing now. More to the point, it's become perfectly clear that the Doctor / Assistant relationship is going to be played as young romance, will-they-won't-they, for the foreseeable future, and there's no point in hankering for the rich variety of relationships that might have been. Last word to Nancy Banks-Smith, then:
Monday was not only Dave Swarbrick's birthday, it was my father's. He would have been 90. There was a party for his 70th birthday, and I hired cake tins and baked a caked in the shape of the number 70. He looked at it and said "I feel like an impostor, I can't believe I'm really 70." (You're always incredulous at your own great age, and no-one else seems in the least surprised..) I think he would have enjoyed the Kathryn Tickell show.
It seems we are to have an election. The post has been bringing us a deluge of election leaflets for the last month - or rather, of not-election leaflets, because the election had not been called (even though it was well known when it would be) and therefore it wasn't campaign literature and didn't count towards permitted expenditure. Now it will, perhaps it will dry up.
I find the choice ahead of us pretty depressing, and the leaflets have only increased that. Durham has a Labour MP who has been working very hard in the constituency (which she is in serious danger of losing to the Liberals) but has followed the party line too closely for my liking. The Labour Party tell me that a vote for the Liberals is a wasted vote, and will let the Tories in: which is not true in this constituency; the Liberals try to convince me that they are quite conservative really (which is what I'm afraid of); the Tories don't bother. Can we hope for a Green candidate?
I used to think I didn't like the violin. I blame the classical music they made us listen to at school, and I still don't like classical violin (the Russian for violin is [skreepka], and that sounds about right to me). There's Dave Swarbrick, of course (69 on Monday, and Still Not Dead), but Swarb is exceptional. Only perhaps not quite as exceptional as I thought: we heard Fiddlers Bid at the Sage on Thursday, and loved it - and if you can enjoy a band whose front row is four fiddlers, then you must like the instrument, mustn't you?
There was a fair amount of fiddle music from the Kathryn Tickell Band (warning: site plays smallpipes on loading), and that was good, too.
There is a crack in everything /That's how the Doctor gets in.
We watched Doctor Who: I grumbled my way through much of the last series, but this was a good start, because I enjoyed it even as I said "Oh, not again!" (Either it was full of knowing winks at past episodes, or it repeated an awful lot of motifs: take your choice). I was fine with the new transformed Doctor, though I found him substantially the same as the old Doctor - presumably this is deliberate, that things like the excitement and delight with which David Tennant greeted the universe are to be seen as part of who the Doctor is. I was less fine with the transformation of the TARDIS: if it functions well enough to change its interior from that rather interesting organic look to a cross between Aladdin's Cave and Harrods Food Hall at Christmas, then surely it can fix its chameleon circuit and stop being a police box (a cynical little voice in my head says 'but think of the merchandising implications...')
I was sorry, but not surprised, when the resourceful small girl grew up into the kissogram. For one thing, as Nancy Banks-Smith says, you probably need a certificate for that sort of thing now. More to the point, it's become perfectly clear that the Doctor / Assistant relationship is going to be played as young romance, will-they-won't-they, for the foreseeable future, and there's no point in hankering for the rich variety of relationships that might have been. Last word to Nancy Banks-Smith, then:
The show itself gets a big subliminal boost from Easter, what with him coming back from the dead and looking quite different and saving the world and all that. It seems to be the only religious programme on offer all weekend.
Monday was not only Dave Swarbrick's birthday, it was my father's. He would have been 90. There was a party for his 70th birthday, and I hired cake tins and baked a caked in the shape of the number 70. He looked at it and said "I feel like an impostor, I can't believe I'm really 70." (You're always incredulous at your own great age, and no-one else seems in the least surprised..) I think he would have enjoyed the Kathryn Tickell show.
It seems we are to have an election. The post has been bringing us a deluge of election leaflets for the last month - or rather, of not-election leaflets, because the election had not been called (even though it was well known when it would be) and therefore it wasn't campaign literature and didn't count towards permitted expenditure. Now it will, perhaps it will dry up.
I find the choice ahead of us pretty depressing, and the leaflets have only increased that. Durham has a Labour MP who has been working very hard in the constituency (which she is in serious danger of losing to the Liberals) but has followed the party line too closely for my liking. The Labour Party tell me that a vote for the Liberals is a wasted vote, and will let the Tories in: which is not true in this constituency; the Liberals try to convince me that they are quite conservative really (which is what I'm afraid of); the Tories don't bother. Can we hope for a Green candidate?
