Well, i care about what my favourite dinosaur is, and itâs Diplodocus, that
lumbering old fool. Allow me to be possessed by the spirit of my nine-year-old self for a little
bit.
Reason number one why the diplodocus is the best dinosaur is because it is called a diplodocus. This
is a very fun name to say and does not strike the same terror into the hearts of men as, say, đ¤đ¤đ¤
Tyrannosaurus Rex!!! đ¤đ¤đ¤ or đĽđĽđĽ
Velociraptor!!! đĽđĽđĽ. I like to think this is
because they are, themselves, gentle creatures, being peaceable herbivores and all that. (My
favourite dinosaur could beat up your favourite dinosaur, but chooses not to because it is a
conscientious objector. Iâm sure this taunt would have gone down great on the playground.)
Another reason diplodoci are great is how long they are, getting up to thirty metres from tip of the
snout to top of the tail. Part of me thinks it would be fun to be that long, but the other part
likes being able to turn around corners. Thereâs other dinosaurs that we think were longer, but most
of them donât have a complete skeleton to back them up, which is a skill issue if iâve ever heard
one. If my species was about to be wiped out i would simply do the smart thing and die in an area
that would preserve my fossil better. Suck it, Maraapunisaurus.
That long neck isnât just for show, either. This is the kind of thing that causes massive arguments
among palĂŚontologists, but
a study in the Journal of Vertebrate PalĂŚontology
(yes iâm backing up my dinosaur preferences with a source) suggests that, because their centre of
mass would lie so close to their hip socket, they could assume a bipedal stance without much effort,
lifting them high up into the canopy into the land of only the most gourmet leaves. Then, when a
foodie diplodocus was done with its land-based course, it could dip its neck into the riverbank and
feast on some fine vegan seafood.
One last thing. After PangĂŚa broke up, the land where the diplodoci reigned shifted and drifted
until its reached its present place, in the American southwest. The implication is clear:
Alright, why not? These questions are adapted from
Cidoku and ergo
Burypink. I have told the truth everywhere except
where i have lied.
1. Time and date you started this?
2024, July the sixteenth. Twenty-two hours, seven minutes, two seconds.
2. ASL?
Early twenties/Itâs complicated/Itâs complicated.
3. Opinions on musicals?
Never been a theatre person, but Little Shop of Horrors is a favourite film of mine. đľ
Son, be a dentist! People will pay you to be inhumane⌠đľ
4. Favorite snack?
Squashies.
5. Have you ever been in love?
Not yet.
6. Favourite PokĂŠmon?
Eevee â my favourite evolution of which is Sylveon, obviously.
7. Mario Kart main?
Donkey Kong. Monke always wins.
8. Team Fortress 2 main?
Donât play it.
9. Do you laugh at Youtube Poops?
Well, obviously. That shitâs hilarious.
10. Are you listening to music right now?
Almost always â currently âStarlingsâ, the
opening from Elbowâs The Seldom Seen Kid. Iâll always have a soft spot for them; theyâre my
mumâs favourite band, so theyâre tied in with a lot of emotional moments growing up.
11. Favourite shape?
A trefoil knot:
12. Do you believe in astrology?
I find the pop-culture âOMG, thatâs such a Gemini thing to doâ
thing lacking as much in novelty as it is in substance, but i do, at the very least, think there are
auspicious and inauspicious days. No further comment, since itâs not a particular focus of mine.
13. Do you believe in the occult?
Are you aware of what website this is? ;-)
14. Opinions on vocaloid?
Not my thing, but i can respect the art of forcing computers to make human noises.
15. Would you ever want to be a rock star?
It seems at once liberating and terrifying â a great big audience for your work and to provoke as
you wish, but alsoâŚ
16. Do you easily get stressed?
Welcome to Fluoxetine: The Blog.
17. What is/was your favorite class in high school?
Further Maths, baby! Iâve gussied this place up but in my heart of hearts i am the biggest stemlord
in history. Mathematics, i think, is the highest beauty among the sciences; none of the tangled
messes of diagrams of biology or headaches of physics, just three axioms and the truth.
18. What pokemon type would you be? Dual types are allowed, LOL
Water/Fairy.
19. Rei or Asuka?
Who are you and how did you get into my house?
20. Favorite HTML tag?
<details>.
21. Are you religious?
Pagan, albeit not very good at it.
22. Opinions on nightcore?
I instinctively want to be dismissive, but iâm not going to pretend that i donât regularly load up
songs into Audacity and slow them down for the vibeâŚ
23. Did you go through any major phase? (emo, goth, weeaboo, &c.)
Not really â i had a very cheugy adolescence.
24. Are you good at drawing?
No, but i like to think iâm better than i was a month ago.
25. Do you crack your joints?
No.
26. Do you read visual novels?
No.
27. Can you sew?
No, but now you mention it, that is something to add to the âmaybe some timeâ pileâŚ
28. Can you cook?
I make a mean honey and pork stir fry.
29. Most expensive thing youâve bought?
My new computer tots up to just over a thousand pounds in total and itâs been worth every penny.
30. Opinions on cosplay?
Seems fun, although not my thing.
31. What's your most hated band/musician?
I donât have it in me to haâŚâŚ Maroon 5.
32. Are you a dramatic person?
Cripes, who has the energy for that?
33. What emoticon do you use most?
A winky ;-) face in ascii, a thinky đ¤ď¸ face in emoji.
34. Can a miracle certainly occur?
I donât understand the question.
35. Would you let a vampire suck your blood?
Nah. The vampire life sounds like it sucks. Now, would i let a werewolf bite me, on the other handâŚ
36. Do you have a celebrity crush?
Dev Patel, full name Sexiest Man Alive Dev Patel, is the sexiest man alive (Dev Patel).
37. Do you like snow?
Yes, rare as it comes these days⌠every year winter turns more and more into all the drawbacks
without the benefits.
38. Were you really into Greek mythology as a kid?
You get three guesses.
39. What are some things you could competently deliver a speech on?
Esperanto. My mildly schizophrenic interpretation of Synecdoche, New York. The finer places
on the internet.
40. Are you good at spelling?
I like to think so! English orthography is one of the tongueâs great beauties; every word hides its
origins within itself.
41. which touhou wud u fuk?
Itâs time to log off.
42. Do you think there's going to be a robot takeover?
Nah. The singularity is overhyped, in my view â just because robots think faster than us doesnât
mean theyâre smarter.
43. Has science gone too far??!?!??!?!
Not far enough. Nowhere near far enough.
44. Would you be an angel or devil?
Devil, because then you get cute little hooves and horns. (I am eternally about two bad bonks on the
head from unironically calling myself satyrkin.)
45. Sine, cosine, or tangent?
Tangent.
46. Do you like licorice?
It freaks my English friends out, but absolutely!
47. Whatâs thing you cant stand that everyone else loves?
Star Wars, also known as
The Adventures of Luke Cardboardeater and His Annoying Friends, is complete and utter tripe
and i will never understand the obsession. Every character is either boring or awful, every film is
just ninety minutes of Harrison Ford running around rickety sets, the score is caterwauling
overemotive tripe, and the whole franchise is so utterly uninterested in the star part of the
name that it makes me wonder why they even bothered setting it in space.
48. What books did you like as a kid?
A deep cut here, but thereâs this series of Dutch kidsâ books called
Dolfje Weerwolfje about a little kid who gets turned into a werewolf, and i suspect
it may have turned me into a furry.
49. Can you play any instruments?
Alas, not yet.
50. What song would you want to play at your wedding?
âOne Day Like Thisâ, by Elbow, although that choice may just be because itâs playing right now as i
write.
51. Do you believe in reincarnation?
Itâs the only option that makes sense. An eternity in heaven is stupefying, and blinking out of
existence terrifying; the only thing i can be certain of in life is that there is
something experiencing the state of being me, and that something will keep experiencing
being me after iâm gone â probably being shunted into the body of the next birth in the queue.
52. Finish the sentence: Iâm just a guy who ______
poasts on the internet
53. Have you been to another continent?
No, but itâs arguable! I went to the Anatolian side of Turkey, which most would think of Asia, but i
personally include most of the country (as well as the Caucasus) in Europe.
54. Whatâs your worst habit?
Well iâm not going to tell you, am iâ˝
55. Favourite vegetable?
Carrots.
56. Whatâs something stupid that scared the shit outta you as a kid?
When i was five i accidentally locked myself in the toilet at the
Holle Bolle Boom. This is Deep Xanthe Lore.
57. Whatâs one of your guilty pleasures?
Middling immature pop punk. Every part of me knows itâs not good, but come onâŚ
58. Would you rather be a ghost or a vampire?
A vampire, since in that case i can at least interact with the world twelve hours a day instead of
zero.
59. What do you fear most?
Dementia. Generally, my policy is that i would like to live as long as possible, but if i ever
succumb to that, my family has my full permission to shoot me there and then. I refuse to go through
it, losing my sense of self bit by agonising, confusing, terrifying bit.
60. Do you sleep with any plushies?
I donât sleep with them, but i do keep two plush otters as companions.
61. What hobby do you just not understand?
Thereâs a subreddit for enthusiasts of electric torches and i just⌠guys⌠itâs a torch. Theyâre all
torches. They all do the exact same thing. What are we doing here?
62. Do you like the taste of alcohol?
Itâs an acquired taste1, but i find the fruitier, the better. I love a good liqueur or framboise.
63. Are you a hopeless romantic?
In the artistic sense, at least, i think romanticism was where the fine arts peaked. We had finally
shed the awkward masses of flesh of the baroque times, but not yet gone down the slippery slope of
abstraction that the modern era would lead us to.
64. Which deadly sin best fits you?
Gluttony.
65. Which of your physical features do you like the most?
I have lovely long blonde hair that refracts into golds and browns in the sunlight.
66. Are your ears pierced?
Not yet.
67. Have you ever been in a physical fight?
Thankfully not!
68. Where do you buy your clothes?
Are you an ad tracking script or something?
69. Where would you live if you could live anywhere?
Hold on, let me get the quote outâŚ
A large, secluded home, out in the countryside, but not so far out that it becomes a pain to
visit the big city. Probably England, rather than the Netherlands, if only for the sheer
diversity of scenery.
70. Do you believe in magic? Or is it all a trick?
Magick is real, and without the somewhat provocative terminology for what is, ultimately, prayer
with attitude, i think this statement would be uncontroversial among most religious people.
71. Have you read Umineko When They Cry? You should!
No, and you canât make me, because youâre a line of text in a blog post.
72. What is the worst chore to do?
Itâs nowhere near the hardest or even most inconvenient, but thereâs something distinctly
humiliating about the ritual of walking your dishes down to their automatic dish-washing throne.
Weâve automated the washing part away, but here i still am, taking time out of my life to stick a
dirty plate in between other dirty plates, trying not to get any residue on me.
73. What did your parents almost name you?
Iâve thankfully been told alternate choices for both sexes, so this isnât going to get me to reveal
whatâs in my pants â i could have ended up a Fred or an AmĂŠlie.
74. What would you want your name to be if you were not your current gender?
Xanthe Tynehorne, seeing as itâs not my real name.2
75. What were your first words?
âLionâ. Or âjajaâ, i guess. It all evens out.
76. What do you want your last words to be?
Ideally i wouldnât have any, but if i am going to die, then i can hardly go out on anything other
than âDo not go gentle into that good nightâ.
77. When did you first regularly start going online?
I literally donât remember! The internet has ruined my soul.
78. What year do you miss the most?
2012 was the peak of human civilisation. Maybe itâs just because i was a dumb kid, but man â they
had smartphones, but they hadnât yet completely taken over; social media still seemed like a fun
place to be rather than an endless bath of vitriol, and, of course, âCall Me Maybeâ came out.
79. Are you psychic?
I predict the answer is ânoâ.
80. Would you fuck a clone of yourself? Youâre not allowed to kill yourself.
Yes, obviously! Iâm bisexual, so itâs not like i have any reason not to. I am a bit worried about
what happens to the clone afterwards, though⌠do they just go off into the woods, never to be seen
again?
81. What do you use to listen to music?
Back when i used Windows i was a big fan of MusicBee⌠now, much as it pains me to say, i stick to
streaming and sometimes BBC Sounds. Iâve had a hand-coded music player
on the back-burner for a while now, but thereâs so many fiddly ruddy edge cases to deal with, and
nothing ever imports formatted as nicely as i want it to!
82. Whats the biggest city youâve been to?
London.
83. Favourite animal?
Otters!!!!!!
84. What web browser do you use?
Firefox â iâve found it Just Worksâ˘.
85. Are you allergic to kitty cats???????????
No. My family used to foster them, actually!
86. Do you like energy drinks?
No.
87. Would you ever spend money on TF2 unusuals/CS:GO
skins/gacha pulls/&c.
No, because i may be a shmuck, but iâm not a complete shmuck.
88. When do you usually go to bed?
Too late for comfort.
89. How often do you wash your hair?
Once a day, in the shower.
90. Would you download a car?
Me? Download a car? I would never⌠[looks nervously at my computerâs three-hundred-gigabyte film folder]
91. What was your favorite show as a kid?
I cannot stress enough how much Phineas and Ferb was the absolute shit.
92. Whatâs the silliest hat you own?
I⌠my word, i donât know.
93. What album/song do you listen to when youâre feeling angsty?
âMeâ, by The 1975.
âOh, i was thinking âbout killing myself; donât you mindâŚâ
95. Whatâs the goofiest thing you do when completely alone?
Make random mouth noises to myself.
96. Do you like fireworks?
When i was six i slept through the new yearsâ fireworks and got so sad/angry i demanded my mama and
papa call everyone in Hoorn and make them do it again.
97. Favourite painter?
Maxfield Parrish has such a command of light and colour. Iâm always blown away when i see his work.
98. Favourite numbers?
One-hundred-and-thirty-seven. I think one, three, and seven are all particularly special â one is,
well, one; three has been associated with so much for so long that itâs a waste to sum it up, and
seven is particularly interesting to me because six is the highest number of things we can
instinctively see without counting. Itâs the first number we have to properly think about
to understand â the first number that leaps out of the domain of nature and into that of humans! So
the fact that, when you put them next to each other, they wind up the inexplicable reciprocal of a
fundamental physical constant is incredible.
99. What genre of vidya gaems are you really good at? (FPS,
fightan, danmaku, racing, whatever)
I donât know if i can give an answer, because if thereâs a pattern in my favourite games, itâs that
theyâre ones where you donât have to be good at them. I just love a good wide open sandbox to muck
about in.
100. time and date you finished this?
2024, July the sixteenth. Twenty-three hours, fifteen minutes, fifty seconds.
Man, i bet theyâre living it up in the Al Gore universe right now.
Hyped up to me as one of the best horror films in history, iâm convinced itâs actually an incredible
comedy. There is so much Gremlins energy oozing out of this whole film; every scene, you can
just imagine George Romero sitting back and going ââŚcan i, like, put that in a movie?â and then
putting that in a movie. A zombie gets pied in the face. 8/10.
Mad Max: Fury Road is not the greatest film ever made, but it feels like the
greatest film ever made while youâre watching it. Iâve never seen a film edited like this: a
two-hour-long sugar rush where every shot is overcranked till it breaks and nothing ever stops
moving. 9/10, with one point added solely because of the guy in the post-apocalyptic convoy whose
job it is to play the guitar.
Stepdadâs pick, in honour of Donald Sutherlandâs death. Great stuff, with a fascinating eerie
soundscape, creepily good practical effects, and, hang on, is that Jeff Goldblum? 7/10.
Well, that sure was a Russell T. Davies Doctor Who finale, wasnât it? Part oneâs always
great, and then, as always, he canât write an ending for the life of him.
Now the seasonâs over, itâs clear that it needed more room to breathe. Eight episodes of forty
minutes just isnât enough for a show to do both monster-of-the-week and a longer arc; with two
episodes taken up by the finale, two Doctor-lite episodes, and one where sheâs unconscious for half
of it, weâve barely gotten to know the relationship between Ruby and the Doctor, which is a shame,
because what we do get is brilliant! They play off each other so well, and i wish we could
have seen more of them together.
Seen on a whim. A nice little drama about a motorbike club, starring Elvis and Jodie Comer, whoâs
doing a⌠fascinating⌠Midwestern-type accent. 6/10.
âItâs like Rear Window, but on a lorry.â This scrappy Australian flick delivers just what it
says on the tin, with an early turn by Jamie Lee Curtis as a hitchhiker who gets picked up in the
second half. 6/10.
Iâm out of touch with music these days, but listening to Charli XCXâs
pulse-pounding new hyperpop record, i canât help but think this is what pop music must sound like in
the next universe over. I was sleep-deprived after staying up for election night and that definitely
helped the vibe⌠8/10.
Ushaw Hallâs website plays coy about itself. You can learn that
guide dogs are welcome, theyâll be exhibiting interactive âHumanimalâ sculptures next month, and
that they're very proud of the pun âUshaw inâ, but curiously little about what the place actually is
(or was). I went anyway.
To spoil the fun, itâs an old Roman Catholic seminary that was turned into a museum when people
stopped being religious enough to care. The entrance makes that well clear; walking up from the car
park, the curious visitor is flanked by an ostentatious neo-Gothic chapel on their left and
modernist student housing on their right. (The latter remains unmuseumified, too boring to make much
out of.)
Right from reception thereâs an interesting historical tidbit with a bust of Abraham Lincoln
himself, who a helpful volunteer told me once attended Ushaw before he decided a more secular
political career was right for him. (It was that or boxing, i suppose.) Upstairs is the Presidentsâ
Hall, whither the stairway looked off-limits enough not to chance it â so never mind that, and letâs
instead turn right.1
This takes us down a series of winding hallways with wibbly tiled floor â as of now, an exhibition
has lined them with wedding dresses old and new, including replicas of those worn by the royal
family, creepy mannequin heads and all.2
More importantly and more permanently, these are the chapels of Ushaw Hall.
I neglected to take pictures in this part, so this oneâs
Š Ushaw themselves.
They are beautiful, and have seen better days. The paint peels from a dimly-lit mural in a nook i
presume is for choirists. In others, light dances in vibrant oranges and blues through expository
stained glass. The brightest of them all, seen here to the right, invites its visitors to pray for
Ukraine in a solemn reminder of the times.
These smaller shrines have an intimacy to them that reflects the houseâs hush-hush history. First
exiled from England, the Catholics settled in the small town of Douai, in the north of France â only
to be forced out again by the secular fervour of the French Revolution. Even then, they struggled to
find welcome in a staunchly Protestant Georgian England, until a sympathetic aristocrat sold them
land in Durhamâs secluded hills. The hall itself was built with the façade of an unseeming terrace,
only showing its religious nature to those within.
Onwards, then, into the star of the show â the main chapel. Pews upon pews span the long gap between
the entrance and the colossal tabernacle, behind which the walls are adorned with what first looks
like simple ornament but reveals itself to be tightly-packed black-lettered Latin. You can tell itâs
Catholic by the eagle in the middle, the Vatican having never quite given up its attachment to its
Roman roots.
âŚUpstairs is the Presidentsâ Hall, whither the stairway looked off-limits enough not to chance it â
so never mind that, and letâs instead turn left. Winding at right angles around the central court we
first arrive at the library, or what little you can access of it. Management and the university are
promising big things⌠eventually⌠once they restore everything⌠and catalogue it⌠and⌠oh, sod this,
letâs go to the cafĂŠ.
[One hot chocolate laterâŚ]
This is a wholly unrelated bookstore found elsewhere on church grounds. Behind the camera is a
fireplace. Yes, i am kicking myself for not photographing that instead.
As we were. Further along we find find the mess hall, where aspiring clergy once ate in silence,
with only the wet sopping of a hundred English breakfasts reverberating back and forth across the
walls. These days itâs used for noisier conferences and school trips, fitted with identikit metal
and plastic tables and seats which donât do much to complement the nineteenth-century dĂŠcor.
Some time later, past the temporary exhibition of inkjet printouts of old maps3, our trip comes full circle. As i walk home through the well-kempt garden and around the reedy old
pond, i might not have been convinced by the seminaryâs faith, but i have been convinced of their
taste in interior decoration.
A short website status update, since my ongoing writerâs block on a relatively simple
interesting-place-visit post wasnât enough for the universe: Ithaca12, the beat-up old laptop on which this fine website is hosted, is poorly, and has a
noticeable bulge coming up around the battery.
Everything is backed up and iâm looking into a new, dedicated server machine, but if the site goes
down all of a sudden, youâll know why.
Äryabaášha numeration
turns numbers into compact pronounceable syllables. Kind of genius â we already took our digits
from the Indians; why didnât we lift this as well?
Why ornament went away.
We are so back: âSo it is now possible to buy perfectly proportioned classical ornament, nearly
indistinguishable from stone, that has â if the molds and the factory infrastructure are treated
as a given â taken only minutes of labor to produce.â
Tombstone (1993). I have this pathological aversion to westerns, so i wasnât
expecting much â but once i turned off the part of me that was waiting for Richard Pryor to
show up i realised that this the ââemâ in âthey just donât make âem like they used taâ: just
a solid, well-made flick, regardless of my thoughts on the genre! I cried manly man tears at
the end. 7/10.
The Thirteenth Floor, everyoneâs fourth favourite film about a simulated world from 1999. I found it
surprisingly interesting whenever it didnât remind me too much of The Matrix, and a
bit pathetic whenever it did. (Donât try to do action, simulated world movie from 1999.
Youâll never measure up.) 6/10.
As a bonus, since nobody cares about this movie, you can just
watch it on Youtube if you
want.
Little Shop of Horors (1986). My pick for family movie night. Utterly charming
from leaf to toe â the best example since Gremlins 2 of a film where you can see the
craft that went into making every frame. Incredible effects, wonderful music, magnetic
comedic performances from the whole cast⌠10/10!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the impromptu double feature to the
above. My brain has been completely frazzled by watching this. I went from loving it to
hating it to complete bafflement to examining it like a scientist would a new species of
frog. This film may very well have invented homosexuality. Defies numerical rating/10.
Late Night with the Devil (2023). Always nice to see David Dastmalchian, even
if itâs nothing that hasnât been done before â 6/10.
The Fall Guy (2024). Ryan Goslingâs a brilliant comedic actor, but him and
some great setpieces struggle to save this film from a shoddy script and baffling editing
choices. The jokes arenât funny, the dialogue scenes linger for far too long, half the stuff
from the trailer is gone from the movie⌠the whole thing desperately needs a trimming down
to a tight ninety minutes. 4/10.
Eurovision 2024. Bullet-pointed, as per tradition:
I went in totally blind this year, having missed the semi-finals while building a new
PC. Oops!
Sweden appear to have trapped the Backstreet Boys in the Matrix.
There is no country named the Netherlands and never has been. Doesnât exist. Not real.
We begin bombing in five minutes.
Big fan of Spainâs bizarre campy cougar energy, even if the audience and juries werenât!
Estonia are frankly embarrassing.
Completely maxed out my scorecard for Ireland, who have sent in Xanthe-bait of the
highest order.
Yes⌠hahaha⌠yes!!!
Greeceâs song is the most annoying thing since Crazy Frog and it baffles me how highly
it scored.
I think the UK is just cursed at this point. We send a legitimate star with the worldâs
gayest performance (admittedly more in the âgetting sucked off in a dingy bathroomâ way
than the âcampy drag queenâ way) and not a single point from the audience?
God bless Finland. I usually hate it when acts try deliberately to be funny but i died
laughing at a pantsless man in a censored Windows 95 T-shirt
emerging from an egg while pyrotechnics go off.
Switzerland have taken Sam Ryderâs mantle as this yearâs designated golden retriever⌠a
great performance from someone whoâs clearly happy beyond words to be there. A deserving
winner if there ever was one.
Croatiaâs catchy pirate dance is great but i cannot forgive that abominable stage name.
I donât care how many records you sell; there is no excuse to call yourself Baby
Lasagna. Go back to the drawing board. Now.
T2 Trainspotting (2017). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. I wasnât so hot
on the idea going in⌠and then it was, to my surprise, pretty great! It uses the idea of the
legacy sequel to its advantage â itâs a film about nostalgia, the good and bad of
it all. It really does feel like youâre catching up with these characters twenty years
later, all wondering where their lives have gone. Some beautiful shots, too â a film from
2017 that bothered hiring a gaffer?? What a concept! 8/10.
127 Hours (2010), continuing the Danny Boyle theme. Probably the best film a
film about a guy whose hand is stuck next to a rock could ever be, it convinced me of the
occasional merit of a good biopic over a documentary â this would not and could not work if
you only had access to the original crummy camera footage and talking-head interviews. Also
perhaps the only movie in history to contain an inflatable Scooby-Doo jumpscare. I was going
to give it an 8, but then they played Sigur RĂłs in the triumphant ending scene, so sod it,
itâs a 9/10.
Chris Chibnall is dead and Doctor Who is alive! I thought Ncuti Gatwa was
playing the role too young at first, but the season proper has me totally convinced. His
Doctor, the first Doctor to Fuckâ˘, has this infectious energy and zest for life thatâs
totally new to the character, and a great rapoport with his companion â even when the new
series is bad, itâs unhinged in a fun way, rather than the forgettable doldrums of the
Chibnall era.
Got a new computer! I can run Minecraft with shaders without any lag now. We are
so back.
Hello. Iâve been to Consett. I thought you might like to hear about it. (Gosh, iâve missed writing
that.)
Itâs been
a miserable year
so far weather-wise, so wind-swept, cold-nipped, and rain-soaked that it took until April for me to
look outside and go, ah, not a bad day, letâs go for a jaunt.
The plan was simple: get a bus into Consett and head straight for the nearest hill. A short and
sweet saunter through woods and farmland; short compared to some of my previous odysseys from
Newcastle to the Wansbeck, sweet compared to the scenery in the more populous parts of the
palatinate. (It was not to be.)
Iâm at the bubble tea / Iâm at the tanning salon / Iâm at the combination bubble tea and tanning
salon
We start in the centre of town, a humble lower-middle-class affair whose high street would strike
southerners as horrifyingly dilapidated and northerners as above average â nice enough, at least,
for the areaâs local MP to choose it as his base of operations. Around
the corner from the cinema1, the pedestrianised and sensibly named Middle Street plays host to (in decreasing order of
classiness) a provider of musical instruments, an independent sweet shopâgift shopâpet shop, a
building society, a Greggs, a Superdrug, an animal rescue shelter, a frozen food emporium, a Turkish
barber, Ladbrokes, a vape shop, another vape shop which also sells computer parts and
repairs your phone (my lawyers say i canât call it a mob front), and Barryâs Bargain Superstore.
This dumps us onto a crossing onto Parliament Street, where the Galileanically
inclined can attend the charming parish church (with âmessy churchâ every month for the tots). I
follow it down its procession of historic terraces, in a rather literal sense: Briton Terrace, Saxon
Terrace, Norman Terrace, and then to spite me they finish it off with the pattern-breaking Tudor
Terrace. I suppose it could have been a later addition, going with Stuart Court across the road, as
well as Georgia and Edwardia Courts, two small cul-de-sacs i only noticed on Google Earth after the
fact⌠but that sequence gets thrown off yet again by the road whence those two branch off, Romany
Drive, which unless they meant to write âRomanâ but hired a dyslexic cartographer has sod all to do
with the other streets.
A path bearing at its mouth a welcoming sign (all caps,
âno part of this land is dedicated to the public, any use of this land is entirely at the
userâs own risk, et cetera, et ceteraâ) marks a liberating end to our onomastic confusion, funneling us down a sloping green crescent of
parkland into a reclaimed steelworks. (Itâs always a reclaimed steelworks.)
Finally, we reach the end of the funnel, where the light pours from the sky, the buildings abruptly
stop, and any wayward ramblers are left with only a gorgeous view of Durhamâs rolling hills
stretching out before them. This exact moment, this exact view â this is why i get out. To sit on
the edge of a hill, the dull traces of modernity firmly behind you, and see the country not devoid
of manâs presence, but shaped by it, over hundreds and thousands of years, from hunting-grounds to
cleared forest to farmland to steelworks to grass for grassâs sake, a place where, like the terraces
of Parliament Street, you can hear Englandâs history sing in your veins.
Anyway then thereâs a really steep path downhill where i almost slipped and fell like Super Mario
going down a slide.
Traipsing down steps iâm not 100% sure were public and over a road made of more pothole than asphalt
i wind up following a burn to the River Derwent. This is where our routeâs industrial past makes
itself seen. Every few yards a worn sign pops up warning of a âdrainageditchâ, or a graffiti-blanketed pipe crosses the rain-cleaved dene;
at the very end, a picnic table by a former pump house grants me some respite.
I take stock of myself. My phoneâs battery, always surprising me with innovative ways to run out, is
in danger of crossing the ten-percent mark. Itâs the first nice day of the year, but that also means
iâm out of shape and out of practice: i wonât be able to make it all the way.
Equally, iâd be a fool to clamber back up all that. I keep walking. The rushing burn has become a
tranquil river, its waters still enough to see your reflection. I think to myself that if youâre
going to name a pencil company after a river, this oneâs not a bad choice.2
Civilisation creeps back in with the tell-tale sounds of power tools. This is
Allensford Holiday Park, a modest gathering of caravans proudly advertising itself as ânear the outstanding Northumberland
National Parkâ. (It isnât.) When i get there itâs thronged by teen schoolboys freshly out,
chattering about video games and lining up for ice cream. (Something, something, nature is healing.)
Checking Google Maps with what power i have left reveals my worst fear: thereâs nowhere to go but
up.
The distance is short, but the slope is grueling. I convince my legs to heave themselves up along
the side of pavementless roads, ducking into fallow fields and passing places wherever i
can find them. It gets worse the further i get. By the first field, iâm a little out of it. By the
Catholic boarding school, iâm utterly exhausted. When i climb what i think is the final hill, only
for perspective to cruelly show yet more around the corner, i wonder if this is what hell is like.
But i make it â sweating and breathless, hydrating myself sip by sip, i make it to the bus stop, and
wait. The driver, when he comes, must think iâm a zombie, but iâm glad to be on my way home. Note to
self: donât take that big a break again.
Aniara (2018). I actually watched this one back in February, but forgot to
mention it at the time â a Swedish hard(ish) sci-fi tragedy, where a colony ship on its way
to Mars gets knocked off course with no fuel left to turn
back. This is unrelentingly bleak, sometimes to the point where my brain would shut off and
stopped caring, but thereâs a lot to like.
I love the idea of the Mima as a character/narrative device/whatever: a living
AI that uses peopleâs memories to bring them back visions of
Earth as it was, then gets depressed because too many people
are using it and flooding it with memories of the apocalypse. Giving the holodeck a soul?
Genius.
Unfortunately it doesnât so much end as it just fizzles out â i guess you could make a case
that thatâs on purpose, since thatâs how these situations go in the real world, but i found
the whole dĂŠnouement deeply unsatisfying excepting the veeeery final shots (if you know, you
know). 6/10.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023). Caught this one at the
Tyneside, where it happened to be the next film
on at the time i got in. This spoke to me not just because of the powerhouse performances
from Sandra HĂźller, a dog named Messi (how did they get him to do that?), and the
fifteen-year-old(!!!) Milo Machado-Graner, who i wish nothing but the best in his future,
but because it matches up with events in my life to a frankly concerning autobiographical
extent. This would never, ever be in my wheelhouse were it not for random chance, but i
teared up thrice over. 10/10, and iâm annoyed i couldnât make it my best of last year.
Ten seconds after watching⌠Wait, people online think she killed the husband? Are
they fucking stupid? What? Itâs obviously an accident. Did we watch the same film? Did the
cut they saw not have all those carefully-inserted moments where people almost fall off of
ledges or get hit by cars to hammer home that accidents can, in fact, just happen? What?? I
â am i just projecting my own experiences here and not wanting to believe that my mum would
kill someone? And then if they donât think she killed the husband, theyâre like,
oh, well the husband deserved it, he was so awful in that argument, and like, no!!! The mum
in the film near enough turns to the camera and says âthe worst moments in someoneâs life
are unfairly cherry-picked as evidence for a trail and do not represent them as a wholeâ;
again, did we watch the same bloody film? Are people stupid? Am i stupid? Is Justine Triet
stupid? Am i dying?
Reservoir Dogs (1992). Mamaâs pick for family movie night. Every time i watch
a Tarantino film i really get the sense that heâs jacking off to how clever he is writing
the script and this is that tendency at its worst. I get why it caught on, i really do, but
this is absolutely insufferable from start to finish any time someone whoâs not a cop is on
screen. I do not care about your thoughts on Madonnaâs âLike a Virginâ, Quentin!
3ž/10.
Monkey Man (2024). I have been hyped as shit for this ever since the first
trailer came out. You can tell this is Sexiest Man Alive Dev Patelâs first time in the
directorâs chair (looooots of shaky-cam close-ups), but itâs damn stylish, and he shows a
lot of promise. I can also see why Netflix did not want to touch this with a barge pole
given that the plot is essentially âDev Patel kills the BJPâ.
(It has some, ah, terroristic overtones that would be a little concerning if it
were even 10% less shlocky.)
That aside, i really enjoyed the film, and thought it got better as it went along â early
on, i wasnât super clear on the character motivations at play, but then the most me-bait
thing since The Northman happens: Mr Patelâs character has a near-death-experience
flashback and wakes up having been rescued by a hijra priest at a secret temple to
Ardhanarishvara, a half-male, half-female incarnation of Shiva. Into! my!
fucking! veins! 6½/10.
De dolende god (2018),
as seen previously on The Garden. This is pretty much designed to appeal to me specifically, and yeah, itâs really good.
Itâs sweet, heartfelt, absolutely gorgeous, and of course, extremely European. Itâs the odd
one out in this list, being a comic book rather than a film â a medium i donât have much
experience with, so itâs hard to give it a numerical rating in the absence of comparisonsâŚ
but letâs say 8/10.
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