We just saw THE BOY AND THE HERON (a.k.a. HOW DO YOU LIVE?) the new, and possibly final film by Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki. It is simply bloody lovely. Weighty, wistful, cosmic, and every frame from the first to the last is like a painting, backed by a gorgeous script and sound design, and possibly Joe Hishaishi’s finest score to date.

There is a heron who lives near us in Stratford (previously, previously.) I shall not be able to look at them again without hearing a gentle, yet dramatic piano chord.

Other things I have been reading/watching this week:

• SALTBURN (2023 dir. Emerald Fennell) Oh, I tried. It looks very impressive. “Pretty” is the wrong word, even though some shots are. It does have an extremely greasy vibe—exactly how I remember its 2006 setting, although that might’ve been a side effect of me being in secondary school at the time. But the script is puzzling. People don’t talk like that. Even stinking rich people. I couldn’t get more than about 40 minutes in. Points for style and unhinged-ness, though.
• FOR ALL MANKIND season 4 finale. God, this show is so frustrating. There are flashes of brilliance, for instance Dani Poole’s (Krys Marshall’s) reunion with her family and her new grandchild, and pretty much everything Wrenn Schmidt and Coral Peña do. But so much of it plods along with unexciting and transparent MacGuffins, subplots that conveniently resolve themselves concurrently for an ‘epic’ climax, and characters seemingly forgotten about (what on earth happened to Kelly and her son Alex? Where are they?) As much as I appreciate Joel Kinnaman, his character (Ed Baldwin) is dead weight. Dev Ayesa, a billionaire, is characterised as an Elon Musk-a-like, except he’s actually an engineer (as opposed to the scion of a property developer and emerald mine owner.) I’m not sure if it says more about the script or about reality that this seems a little far-fetched.
• WHITE HOLES, by Carlo Rovelli. Think of a book about white holes, a concept in astrophysics, and then picture something thin, concise and yet meandering, which makes extensive quotes from Inferno. I will withhold judgement until I have finished. I’m enjoying myself so far.

Charity shops are awesome. This week’s finds: a pair of Spoke chinos in exactly my size for £25 (usual price £110), a Uniqlo shirt for £10 (usual price £30.) All good as new. This is good news if, like me, you tend to wear things until they fall apart. (The other day I was getting dressed after a swim and realised pretty much every article of clothing had some kind of hole in it.)

Happy New Year! Now is probably as good a time as any to start blogging again on a regular basis.

Scanning and cataloguing my film photos has become a chore. It’s an enjoyable chore, but a chore nonetheless. I now have to manage a backlog. I currently have 1 roll waiting to be developed, 4 waiting to be scanned, and 6 already scanned awaiting cataloguing. Guess it’s time to start working in earnest on Unspool again to smooth that process down. I spent some of my holiday time this week at Rapid Eye making prints, something I’m still a beginner at. Fun, though, and useful for gifts.

Here is a list of media I enjoyed, and didn’t enjoy so much, in 2023:

Hit: HEARTSTOPPER on Netflix

"You've befriended the school lesbians!"

I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed this. Maybe it’s because I didn’t watch it until series 2 was out, where the show’s dark heart becomes more apparent—despite the appearance of a cute teen romance where Nick, a year 11 rugby player, develops feelings for Charlie, a year 10 classics nerd, HEARTSTOPPER largely eschews romcom tropes or diverts slightly left of them, and is more of a psychological drama about the pressure of growing up not-straight. The script by Alice Oseman (who, like me, grew up in the home counties around London—she was in Kent, I was in Surrey) is delivered in a vibrant but un-fussy way by a stunning cast, under the helm of emeritus Doctor Who director Euros Lyn.

Yeah, there are bits that are a bit ropey, or attempts to be didactic or turn things into a teachable moment, but HEARTSTOPPER might be the loveliest show on TV. Episode 3 is one of the best things I’ve ever seen: that euphoric dance party scene set to Clearest Blue by CHVRCHES; the tension being a nerd surrounded at a house party by people you don’t like; the best on-screen kiss (Nick is terrified, Charlie is brave, the kiss itself is tender and magical); the mother of all cliffhangers. Kit Connor and Olivia Colman’s two-hander at the end of series 1? Kit Connor and Joe Locke’s two-hander at the end of series 2? Both are stunning coming-out moments (in different ways) that are easily contenders for TV moment of the century.

There are so many quietly authentic moments that writer Oseman has clearly lifted from the unique experience of growing up queer in the suffocatingly heterosexual British suburbs. My only real complaint about accuracy is that I can’t believe you could use “Char” as a shortened form of Charlie without an immediate barrage of Pokémon jokes. There are parts of myself, and my own experience, I recognise in all of these characters. Tara’s tearful rant in episode 6 about going from barely even being able to say the word lesbian and then having people saying to her, “oh my god, you’re a lesbian”—swap ‘lesbian’ for ‘gay’ and that describes my coming-out experience and the transition from secondary school to sixth form perfectly. Like Nick, I remember trying to hide my queerness even when everyone pretty much knew, finding coming out to be a terrifying prospect. Like Charlie, I got good at bottling up and deflecting my emotions, disappearing to hide from homophobic bullying.

At the same time, I think about how much has changed in 15 years, or even in the 5 years between me leaving secondary school and Oseman publishing HEARTSTOPPER’s forebear, Solitaire, which introduced Nick and Charlie as principal supporting characters. The idea of anyone being openly queer at my secondary school was unthinkable. There was a sportier boy in the year above me who I remember having a crush on, and he was always kind to me in a way that I don’t think many other people were. I obviously can’t know if anything would ever have come of it. If I was going through secondary school today and having a similar experience, maybe I’d be braver and more like Charlie. Maybe HEARTSTOPPER would’ve helped with that.

Season 3 will be coming this year. I’ve read the comics, so I know what’s coming. I hope they can pull it off. It strikes me as quite difficult material to adapt to the screen, but Oseman has done right by her source material so far (and in many cases, by shuffling plot points around, tweaking details, and rewriting dialogue, they’ve improved on it.) I also hope that season 3 is allowed to be angrier at the inciting circumstances (for reasons that will become obvious if you’ve read ahead in the comics) but we shall see.

Miss: FOR ALL MANKIND on Apple TV+

Krys Marshall’s and Wrenn Schmidt’s backs must be sore from carrying this show for four seasons. The bulk of FOR ALL MANKIND runs like a high budget soap opera, with sluggish pacing, technobabble, and melodrama. Many episodes follow the same plot formulation as an episode of Casualty, but don’t have Charlie-from-Casualty there to lighten the mood. If this show were in Spanish or Turkish or Filipino, in the Western world we’d probably be unfairly looking down our noses at it.

There are flashes of brilliance—the heartstopping cliffhanger to season 2’s opening episode, with Molly sprinting to another astronaut’s rescue in a solar storm, is extraordinary. Tracy’s character arc was delightful, although her being killed off with her husband at the end of season 2 was a shame. The odd throwaway gag about Tom Cruise or Al Gore is very funny.

Hit: IN MEMORIAM, by Alice Winn

"This ward is haunted. I’d like to be moved, please."

Add this to books I was not expecting to enjoy—when I first saw the display in the Piccadilly branch of Waterstones, I thought that it was a memoriam to a dead author rather than the title of the novel. IN MEMORIAM is very much in the tradition of ‘sad gay stories,’ this one following two private school boys sent to war in World War I. Yes, this means it’s extremely bourgeois. Yes, the author was inspired to write it because she was reading the ‘in memoriam’ dispatches in the archives of her own private school’s newspaper.

But to my surprise, even if the book isn’t especially interested in anyone other than its two posho protagonists, IN MEMORIAM does have some intelligence about how class and oppression in Britain works. We see the kindlings of doubt in the two protagonists’ minds as they lose faith in the war, and in Britain and the Empire, and with life in general. To the book’s credit, Winn understands that war is shit, and wicked, and evil. The pacing is relentless. Some of the imagery and descriptive passages hits you like a train (it shows that Winn is a screenwriter by trade.) Even with a little too much melodramatic licence, the walls of names of deceased boys (for these truly were boys sent to die, not men) from the school newspaper are positively nightmarish.

I’ve seen it compared to The Song of Achilles, which I didn’t like that much. I connected to IN MEMORIAM much more, possibly because World War I is still something burned into the British national psyche, but likely more because there is no subplot of needing parental approval to be together and happy in the end.

Miss: RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE on Amazon Prime

Oh dear. If we’re going to talk about boujie gay stories… I will confess that after devouring the entirety of Heartstopper, I wondered if I had unfairly dismissed the romance or rom-com genres as a whole. Even if I am unfairly dismissive of these genres, RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE was definitely not for me.

These people’s world is so far detached from my own experience that I cannot comprehend it. True, there are technical issues with the film as well: the script is creaky and not all that funny for a “comedy,” densely packed with gags that left me cringing more than laughing. The soundtrack consists of Windows Movie Maker-bundled orchestral stings. The direction feels naff and does a disservice to the actors. The whole thing feels massively abbreviated and we’ve got no reason to believe the “enemies to lovers” story. But the characters—or, specifically, the versions of the characters we see in the film—are so one-note, such caricatures of rich arseholes, that I couldn’t interest myself in anyone’s emotional journey.

I understand the book is a lot better.

I spent a few days in Zürich in August last year for work, during a heat wave. Much later than planned, here are the photos I took. There's bodies of water (which, yes, I swam in, because that's something you can do in Switzerland, unlike in Tory Shittania.) There's lots of red. There's Swiss Federal Railways appreciation. Enjoy.

It has been too long since I’ve done one of these. Work got in the way. I made a brief sojourn to Switzerland last month. There will be a monthly photo dump in due course, along with some photos on my mum’s old point-and-shoot that I took in Zurich. But they’ll have to wait for now, since I’m off to a conference in the coming week.

We’ve been watching more TV. We’ve been very much enjoying STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS, in fact more than STRANGE NEW WORLDS because it doesn’t suffer from the latter’s tonal whiplash. CENTAURWORLD, which we’ve been putting off the final 2 episodes of for the best part of a year, was ambitious, but I don’t feel like it really stuck the landing.

HEARTSTOPPER is positively delightful (coming from me, a jaded cynic with a heart of stone who typically avoids romance at all costs) and I can’t believe I slept on it last year. I’m sure I’ll write something more about it soon enough, when I can be bothered. But for now: I’m just thrilled that this show exists. I’m thrilled that kids growing up today have these kinds of stories accessible to them. The last half of episode three made me happier than anything I can remember seeing on TV in a very long time.

The autumn crocuses are on their way up already in Hyde Park. No such luck on our balcony. I’ve been scatty with watering.

Well, this is a bit late, isn't it? Two thirds of the way into August and I'm only just getting around to doing a photodump for July. I do have excuses—I've been busy, and it turns out self-scanning film is quite labour intensive!

I've also been taking a break from weeknotes for a while. For now let's say they'll be back in September, but no promises. I've got lots to talk about and much of it probably wouldn't fit neatly into the weeknotes format.

Anyway. As always, previous dumps can be found here, and in no particular order, here are my favourite photos from July (not including the ones from the Dunwich Dynamo, they're all here.) And it's all film this month: colour was, as ever, developed at Rapid Eye, and black-and-white was developed by me in Ilfosol 3.

Yes, I know we're a third of the way into July. Yes, I know this is massively late. Yes, I know I haven't posted a weeknote in over three weeks. Things have been busy, alright?

Anyway, here's June's photodump. A big one with 44 photos this time, including (I think for the first time in one of these photodumps) one of myself. And to my surprise, all of them are on film—black and white developed by me, colour by Rapid Eye in London. As a reminder, you can see May's photodump here, and find all the photo dumps here.

Last weekend I made my second run at the Dunwich Dynamo (my first was four years ago in 2019.) It's been a while, and this time I think I enjoyed it more: the weather was nicer (although bloody cold at night), I was less under the cosh to get to the beach in time for the last coach, and I had a little help from some friends.

I used the same touring bike as last time (albeit with a new, more comfortable set of handlebars, and the troublesome mudguards removed) and wore similar clothes. I relied more on the food stops this time round as well, rather than bringing huge bottles of water and pâté sandwiches with me.

What I did not rely on as much was GPS navigation: this time I used a simple route sheet.  It was occasionally dicey in the dark, and when the measurements began to diverge from my own GPS readings—but generally easy to follow, the analogue experience was overall easier than trying to juggle keeping my phone charged through the night.

The route sheets divide the route into 5 sections. So, divided by section, this is a photo essay with minimal commentary. Enjoy...

I got to London Fields at just around 4:30, and left at 4:50 with a group of people aiming to get to Dunwich for dawn (at about 4:40am the next morning.) It was a warm summer Saturday, so the Fields had its usual relaxed party atmosphere. And even some three hours before the generally-agreed departure time, there were quite a few people outside our group clearly planning destined for Dunwich.

As is inevitable, the first part (on the way out of the city) was easily the slowest: traffic, dodgy road surfaces, and short traffic light phases separating the group, and a bevy of possible routes through Clapton. The new cycle tracks on the Lea Bridge Road were being well-used, although clearly weren't intended for a group of our size (we also indignantly dinged our bells at an errant driver who'd straddled her enormous SUV half in the cycle lane, half in the pavement.) The Waterworks Roundabout remains terrifying thanks to impatient drivers shifting lanes, and unfortunately won't be improved any time soon (there's a dingy and narrow subway and this is apparently enough.) Things sped up as we passed Woodford, but that also meant the terrible Epping New Road 'cycle lane' that sticks you in the cambered and rutted edge of the road—enough to shake anything loose from your bike.

Unsurprisingly, this was the section of the ride when I took the fewest photos.

After a short section of contraflow roadworks through Epping, and heading straight across the Talbot Roundabout and the last A-road for a while, the character of the route changed drastically: the high speed urban racetracks were gone, and everything slowed to an altogether more pastoral feel.

The weather was glorious on our way out of London. The wind at our backs, the sun ambling towards the horizon, and spectacular clouds. And yes, while the stereotypes about Essex drivers might be true (this was my only encounter with a truly stroppy driver on the night, who honked as they overtook our group) we moved quickly and it lifted my mood a lot.

It was the uphill part of a dip between Great Bricett and Ringshall Stocks, where I suddenly needed to stop and pushed my bike off the edge of the road to rest for a bit before proceeding—my legs were struggling with the sudden climbs, and what little breath I had left was being used to call the hills "bastards" under my breath. I stopped for fifteen minutes or so to watch people cycle past, and text my partner and a friend (who gave me some gentle bullying encouragement into getting back on.)

From there, it wasn't that far to Needham Lakes. For context, last time I did the Dynamo in 2019, I reached Needham Lakes in daylight and when it was already deserted: this time I got there in the small hours, just as the first light was starting to emerge from behind the trees, with various riders' disco lights and the pop-up coffee and sausage roll stalls giving a party atmosphere.

I probably stayed here a little too long, actually. It gave me an opportunity to switch to a new roll of CineStill 800T in my film camera, and recharge my phone and my watch (which was an awkward dance trying to get them to retain contact when plugged into my power bank.) By the time I was comfortable proceeding, I was shivering. I should've brought more layers.

Says Southwark Cyclists' page of the Dynamo: "Cycle-tourists can pass like ghosts leaving only cash to keep country pubs open for another year." Gosbeck community village hall was embracing the ghosts with open arms, setting out marquees, tables, and selling sausage rolls and coffee by the morning twilight. One often finds that after a long ride, you become grumpy: the smiling faces certainly helped to lift my spirits, and I doubt I was the only one.

It may not have been at the beach, but the sunrise over the flat Suffolk prairies was delightful.

Up to this point, I'd been humming various cry-dance synthpop anthems and Jim Steinman bangers under my breath, but the winding roads and the sharp lighting meant the only thing going through my head for these few miles was the warthog run theme from Halo.

I had intended to keep slugging on, but by Brandeston I needed another comfort break and to refill my water, so swung into the lay-by for the community centre.

To my surprise, at this point I spotted a man with a yellow bicycle and a grey hoodie who looked familiar—similar enough to someone I've known online for ages that I gave chase on my way out of Brandeston to confirm that it was indeed Paul, who'd started much later than I had but had caught up in the time I'd spent mooching around at the food stops. His company in the closing 30km was much-needed moral support and accountability to keep going (plus it was someone else with whom to compare notes on the route.)

My last stop was at Framlingham where I made a quick stop to use the public toilets—and it was there that we also ran into Josh, who had ridden up from London having come down on the train from Manchester and had a busy day beforehand!

We crossed the A1120 (hilariously called the Hackney Road—presumably not a direct continuation of the A1208 Hackney Road in Bethnal Green and Shoreditch) at Peasenhall. From then, it wasn't far. 20km. 18km. 15km.

I will admit that I was subtracting the number of kilometres I'd done from 180 (having worked out that the route sheet's mileage towards the end was a tad suspect) and comparing it to rides I do on the regular. It's about 15km to the ponds at Highgate from my flat. About 10 was my usual commute pre-corona. Around 7 is my current commute. 2km is a short hop to the other side of Stratford. This made the hills all the more bearable, until we saw the sign for DUNWICH—and then the beach car park—and then…

We got to the beach at around 7:45am—around 3 hours too late for sunrise on my part, but worth the extra time for the breaks, and my sanity, and to avoid any al fresco toilet arrangements, and for the happy accident of meeting Paul and Josh. A short queue to put our bikes on the coach later left plenty of time to relax on the beach.

I didn't get a chance to swim in the sea after my last Dynamo. This time was a more authentic experience, and I can't adequately describe how surreal and yet joyous it is: the water is cold once you get in but the sun beats some warmth into you, the water is mercifully clean, and taking the weight off yourself and the taste of the salt and the light and the sight of the Sizewell B nuclear power plant in the distance and the peace and quiet and the occasional squealing of other people getting into the water—it is a kind of sensory brainfreeze, a really good dessert at the end of a long banquet, and I bloody loved it.

Lesson learned: when doing the Dynamo, always leave in time to have a swim at the beach, even if it means leaving early. People always seem to balk at the idea ("you swam in the sea after cycling 112 miles?") but swimming itself is not hard—I simply did some gentle breaststroke in a circle. Getting into my swimming trunks on the shingle while avoiding (in Paul's words) a Marilyn Monroe moment was more difficult—a German attitude to public nudity would've made it much easier, but alas, we're in Britain, so the awkward dance under a towel it was.

I climbed out of the sea and back up the beach (less Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, more Sandra Bullock crawling out of that lake in her pants at the end of Gravity) to relax on the beach for another hour or so. Enough time to people-watch, to doze for a bit using my pannier as a cushion, and to gobble down the last of my bananas, wine gums, and extra-large chocolate buttons, before it was time to jump on the coach home.

And that was that: my second Dunwich Dynamo, and a much more authentic experience than the first. At some point I might consolidate my notes into a single page with advice for people looking to do the DunRun in subsequent years (Josh mentioned that my previous post had given him reassurance he could pootle to the beach.) But for now, I've marked my calendar for 20-21 July next year.

Now to hope the weather is as good next time…

This is a story that is in some ways about computers, but not enough to justify it going on my blog about computers, so it’s going here.

I am one of those people who wears a smartwatch and likes it, because I am ruthless about turning notifications off. Last week, it started displaying a Service Battery warning. After giving blood on Tuesday, I took it to the local shopfront of its manufacturer (a certain megacorporation named after a kind of fruit, although the brand is immaterial) since I had the extended warranty, and they dutifully booked it in for a free service.

“What’s the usual turnaround?” I asked the gentleman who served me.

“7-10 days,” he replied, “so in that time… you can whack a £10 Casio watch on.”

We jested and made smalltalk as I signed the statement of work. I told him the story I always tell about this: about that boss I had a long time ago with a first-generation Pebble (remember those?) from a faulty Kickstarter batch, who you could annoy by asking him for the time, at which he’d look at his (inert) wrist, and immediately look crestfallen.

I looked at my bare wrist mere seconds after leaving the store. My immediate response was to head down to a well-known catalogue shop (these things still exist) and buy that £10 Casio watch (in fact £10.95-ish.) I immediately reached to my wrist to pay, before realising my error, and priming my phone instead. I got it out of its box and set the time by the clock at the railway station. And then I set about my day.

Something odd happened to my personal energy levels over the following days. I found myself forgetting to stand up from the computer at work. I felt less of an imperative to get up and enjoy the weather—to go for a walk, or a run, or a swim. My energy has always been up-and-down for these kinds of things, but not so much for a while… probably since 2015, when I first got a smartwatch.

Ah yes. This, I guess, is the flip side of those feel good stories you keep seeing about “Apple Watch diagnosed my AFib” or “I lost a huge amount of weight with Strava.” Is it accurate to say “my watch has improved my body image and my fitness and made me feel hotter and smarter”? These are all side effects of exercise, not of wearing the watch. So I worry about exactly how much of my desire to exercise, and as such my physical and mental health and well-being, is dependent on my trying to make a number go up on a computer strapped to my wrist that slaps me if I don’t move enough.

Is this what digital addiction looks like?

For various reasons, since the past two weeks have been frenetic and busy in ways I didn’t expect. So this week note is, in fact, a week late. You’ll get another one in the next day or two once I’ve worked out what I’m going to write.

I had to travel to Newcastle for work this week. It was a perfectly acceptable journey to a place I haven’t been to for the best part of two decades. The LNER Azuma I travelled on was a little rattly, but in considerably better condition than its Great Western siblings which always seem to have something wrong with them and be in a state I’d be embarrassed to leave my own house in (which is saying something.) The bike storage in IEP trains is embarrassingly bad. I’m glad I brought my (light, thin) tourer which I could just about manoeuvre in.

Two young men got on at York for Newcastle. The train manager came through. “This ticket is Transpennine only,” she said, “it’s not valid on this train.” They had bought it online, it turns out. Each was charged a fresh single fare for their trouble. Those men probably won’t get the train again: at least they took it in good grace and didn’t kick up a stink, which would’ve been unpleasant for everyone.

I don’t begrudge the train manager for doing their job, but what was the point of this exercise? No-one is truly being deprived of revenue: both operators are effectively nationalised at this point and fares generally go straight to the Treasury. And it’s not even the worst case in the UK (the worst is easily the Gatwick “Express,” not the fastest way to Gatwick most of the time and charging a premium for a service that is anything but—as far as I’m concerned it’s a legalised scam.) So who benefits from operator-specific fares, from the decades-old wicked problem of arcane and confusing train tickets? It’s certainly not the customers. It’s probably not the taxpayer either. I don’t even think it’s a grand conspiracy, rather a train wreck (pun intended) of defective policy and politicians and policymakers who simply don’t care, combined with a ruthless private sector gravy train that should’ve been abolished long ago.

Meanwhile, in messes of my own making, my desk area is a dusty mess and this makes film scanning hard. I do think getting my own scanner was probably a wise idea though—I can be more selective about resolution if the hit rate isn’t great, and it’s a fun skill. I just need to get better at dusting.

Tyneside was quite grey for most of the time I was there. I took a scenic route back to the station via the Angel of the North—something I hadn’t seen with my own eyes for the best part of 20 years. It remains a puzzlingly quixotic bit of turn-of-the-millenium hubris that, while striking and something I love on its artistic merits, could probably do with better environs than a grassy knoll next to a dual carriageway.

I wish I could say something profound about it, but that's all there is to it. I developed some rolls of Ilford HP5+ for the first time in my life, and I didn’t screw it up and it kinda worked (even if I overdeveloped it a bit and it looks a tad grainy.) I am delighted. Have a gander at some of the photos…

We've had a brief blast of summer, and a cacophonous wisteria season—but now we're in the zone when it's pot luck whether 'partly cloudy' means 'small fluffs of silver in a crystal-blue sky with the sun burning down on your face,' or 'a thick, chilly blanket of stratus clouds.' I've been out a fair bit regardless, and that's given me plenty of material for May's photodump (a few days late, alas.) You can also see April's photodump here, and find all the photo dumps here.

We went to a friend’s wedding in the surrounds of Clevedon in Somerset—which meant a train to Bristol Temple Meads (still unelectrified in the year of our Lord 2023) and then an hour on a bus. One of the very few successful policies of this government has been the £2 bus fare scheme, which made the journey tolerable, even given the amount of time we spent queuing in traffic and turning down twisty streets that were clearly unsuitable for buses of this size.

The weather has been glorious, although my nose has gone very red because I’m very scatty with putting suncream on. On Saturday, before bussing back to Bristol to get the train, we spent a day wandering around Clevedon. The pier was not all that exciting, with some interactives whose description of the local area’s history can charitably be described as ‘selective.’

I took a brief swim in Clevedon Marine Pool, which claims to be the world’s largest seawater infinity pool (which I’m sure is true when it’s fuller than it was.) Something about the experience of walking back to where I’d left my bag on the concrete afterwards awoke a memory in me—it might have been from a family holiday in Wales when I was in primary school—of paddling in the sea, then walking back through a car park, my feet scorched by the asphalt. British seasides are such multi-sensory and evocative places. It felt surreal to momentarily surface something from a quarter of a century ago, when my biggest fear was the inevitable expansion of the Sun in 4.5 billion years time rather than the spectres of recession, climate breakdown, and war.

In any case, I’d sooner be swimming in the marine pool than the few people I saw swimming in the sea, which looked a little choppy. I’m sure it was fine, but the colour of the Bristol Channel was not attractive.

I also saw the infamous ‘wiggly’ Clevedon cycle lane which has enraged the new local Tory councillors. It looks fine, if not especially well-used. The only concern I really had with the design was that people don’t seem to navigate the roundabout at the bottom properly (British drivers seem to have trouble with this anyway.) A conversion to a normal priority junction might be in order, but this should probably go hand-in-hand with a meaningful traffic reduction measure—which arguably would’ve been more effective than a short spur of two-way cycle lane that doesn’t really connect to anything on either end. As one lady on the bus back to Bristol said to us: “integrated public transport, it ain’t.”

In other news, I bought a film scanner. It’s a Plustek 8100, and in hindsight I probably should’ve plumped for the considerably more expensive 8200 version with its infrared dust and scratch removal. Manually daubing out every speck of dust is proving frustrating, but I’m sure I’ll find a way to do it more efficiently. For now I’m just re-scanning things at high resolution that I already have scans for, and trying to nail the colour reproduction and dust removal. I’m quite pleased with the results, but it’ll take a while to really nail this into a proper workflow.

There seems to be some kind of nasty bug going round. I was dosed up on paracetamol for most of last week & stuck in bed on Wednesday evening. It’s not COVID—all my tests have been negative (even if one of them just produced a purple smudge rather than a valid result because of the sheer amount of snot). I’m feeling mostly better now, and mercifully so—I have a wedding to get to.

We were due to meet with family to visit Scotney Castle in Kent on Saturday, but having already put the journey back three times due to strikes and replacement buses, our plans were scuppered on Saturday morning by trespassers on the railway tracks. Not necessarily the operator’s fault this time, but another infuriating instalment in the saga of what should’ve been an easy rail journey. Eventually, we managed to get there on Sunday—and after a lovely time wandering around the historic house and grounds, had a 35-minute wait on the way back at Frant, a station with absolutely no facilities whatsoever, because it was a Sunday and the trains only run every hour. Make no mistake: this is a result of generations of governmental malpractice and profiteering. And Britain wonders why traffic’s so bad—I’ll give you a clue, it’s not LTNs or 15-minute cities, it’s because many people literally have no choice through decades of incompetence.

The postponed Scotney Castle trip gave me an excuse to go for a swim at the ponds. It was just cool enough to be fresh without being unpleasant. But sometimes you wonder what horrors you could encounter while swimming in open water. The Highgate ponds are probably cleaner than most, being fed by the source of the River Fleet (before it gets turned into an underground sewer) but I still managed to pull a McDonald’s ketchup pot from the water to hand to the lifeguards. Maybe there’s a burger carton that’s now part of a bird’s nest.

On the way out, I spotted a small butterfly on the concrete floor of the changing blocks. My current working assumption is that it was a Small Blue, which would mean it’s an early brood. Hopefully it avoided being squashed long enough to escape.

By the way, I got around to posting a tonne of photos from this year’s spring blossom season. I’m interested in doing more of these photo essay-type posts in future, so we’ll see what comes of that—in likelihood I’m going to be restricted to what Ghost allows me to do, because I’m not starting another Web site just for photography, no matter how many Squarespace sponsor segments I have to skip through on YouTube.

The flowers on the fruit trees are fading, so it's time for me to show you a retrospective of some of the many photos I've taken of blossom this spring. The RHS suggested in mid-February that we were due a good year for blossom, and anecdotally that seems to have been true. Just a few weeks ago I got into conversations with 4 strangers in 48 hours about cherry and wisteria blooms—something that maybe I'm amazed I'm doing, since I didn't really start paying attention to plants until a couple of years ago.

I'm going to keep this relatively minimal on commentary, and focus on the pretty pictures, since that's what you're probably here for. There are 92 of them (+1 bonus.)

And with that, spring blossom season draws to a close. It's been a long one, and I know it sounds trite, but it truly is wonderful to pay attention to the world around us hewing itself to be ready for another summer. You can easily see why viewing cherry blossom is practically a national tradition in Japan.

Now, as for what's next...

It’s been Eurovision week, and Sweden’s Loreen took home the trophy at last night’s grand final. Naturally, I have some thoughts. It was an impressive and well-run contest in general, but I have quibbles. Let’s dive in…

The format

The UK did a pretty good job of hosting. I’m not sure four hosts for the final were necessary, although all of them were delightful. It was somewhat surreal to see Graham Norton having to handle the incoming votes from the lectern rather than the commentary booth. The production values were high, the interval acts were strong, the stage was spectacular. Some of the comedy skits in the bits where parts of Europe went to commercial breaks were awkward, but nothing felt especially cringe.

We were promised “innovations” in the format this year. The ‘rest of the world’ vote was one which is probably long overdue. Others were a bit more head-scratching. Hannah Waddingham and Graham Norton can both speak French (Hannah spoke French in the opening spiel about how the voting works, and Graham actually compèred the voting sequence at 2008’s Eurovision Dance Contest) so I can only assume it was an executive decision somewhere in the production team not to have them repeat the jury scores in French. True, this brings it into line with the phone vote, where it’s never been done (save 2016, where Petra Mede obstinately announced the French names of some of the top 10) but it’s a pity that this bit of Eurovision’s international flavour seems to have disappeared. Hopefully douze points hasn’t totally gone the way of the dodo.

The worst innovation, which was thankfully tossed out in rehearsals, was the idea of putting the acts on stage during the semi-final qualifier announcements. It’s hard to see how anyone thought this was a good idea, but it stinks of British TV producer-brain: conventional wisdom since the early 2000s, in the wake of shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Big Brother have been that the public likes to watch strangers suffer on TV. Maybe—but that’s not what the Eurovision Song Contest is for. I had similar reservations about the post-2019 system, where they go up the scoreboard to announce the votes: I’m still not really a fan, and while the directors of the last three shows have generally done a better job of cutting away from disappointed acts quickly, it still wasn’t nice to see that lad from Switzerland looking crestfallen when got 31 from the phone vote.

A side note: Graham Norton’s more cutting remarks during the commentary felt a little bit off given he was handling the final voting sequence, although he did wisely tone things down this year. Mel Giedroyc’s commentary, by comparison, was delightful. She’d be a fantastic replacement if/when Graham steps down.

The songs

Austria and their song about being haunted by the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe was my favourite of the night, but was unfortunately buried by the running order and maybe being outshone by more outlandish staging on the night. Serbia’s Luke Black definitely grew on me. I also liked Australia, Lithuania, Finland, Albania, and Belgium. I didn’t really enjoy Israel’s. France’s confused me. I also didn’t care much for Poland’s song (Australia did the synthwave aesthetic much better.)

The UK’s Mae Muller had a breathy vocal on the night that was much too low in the mix, but I liked the song fine, and Mae Muller is a very charismatic artist. Hopefully she’ll go far and second-from-bottom at Eurovision doesn’t hold her career back.

The winner, the voting, and the juries

I liked Loreen’s song. It was certainly helped by its position in the running order (and the set-up time it took to get her panini press in position) but Loreen has a cracking set of pipes, and is second to none as a performer. The song is catchy and the staging is startlingly intimate, with the crackling sound of her nails against her outfit and the flexible membrane adding a wonderfully earthy bit of texture to the number. If anyone was going to equal Johnny Logan’s record of winning Eurovision twice, it would be Loreen. (I learned today that she is 39, which seems astonishing—she still looks like she’s in her mid-20s.)

It’s disappointing to see the online fandom apparently turning on Loreen for winning the contest with her massive jury vote. One could be forgiven for thinking the public didn’t vote for her song at all (they did, in droves: she placed second in the phone vote, with a very respectable televote score of 243 and votes from every country except Finland.) A typo by a popular Twitter Eurovision commentator last night (who I shan’t name, because it appears to have been a mix-up in the heat of the moment) seems to have spread around the fandom and was at one point reproduced in a BBC News thinkpiece after the event, stating that Finland’s Käärijä had scored 526 in the televote and still lost (impossible: the maximum score from the televote was 12 × 37 = 444.) Finland did indeed win the televote with 376 votes, but this combined with their jury votes wasn’t enough to beat Sweden who were the landslide jury favourites.

In this way, it’s not that different from in 2016, when Russia’s Sergey Lazarev beat Ukraine’s Jamala on the televote—but not by enough to send him over the top. This was a massive point of controversy at the time that has since blown over—I truly hope the same happens this time as the loudest voices online touch grass and move on. The knives truly always will be out for successful women.

I do think there’s a case that the jury vote could be improved—there is a definite style of song that does well with professional musicians, and it’s not always the public’s favourite. Maybe some adjusted weighting would be in order. Maybe there’s a case for working out the televotes in a different way, too. I have thoughts on this but I shan’t go into them for now.

Problematising Eurovision

A video essayist whose work I enjoy, Verity Ritchie, posted a video last week on the [queer] politics of Eurovision. There’s a lot to unpack here. Of particular interest to me is their point about Eurovision being used to brand countries as progressive and modern—particularly their example of Sweden’s contest in 2013, set against the backdrop of the far-right using LGBT people as a stick with which to beat immigrant and Muslim communities, and Israel’s contest in 2019 completely erasing Palestinian identities, including those of LGBT Palestinians. What’s also evident in Ritchie’s point is that while Eurovision is political, the voting is much more about value politics and cultural affinity than state politics (which seems to be mostly the stomping ground of the host nation.)

This feels particularly relevant this year, after last year’s win that was widely considered political (or laced with sympathy votes) with Ukraine and the UK sharing the top two spots. I wasn’t a fan of this take at the time, and I point those still subscribing to it to this year’s results, with a respectable score for Ukraine and a mediocre score for the UK. In this case, the best songs were at the top of the leaderboard. The UK, as this year’s host, has used the show to underline its support of Ukraine—which is fine—and also to advertise itself as a tourist destination and a cultural hotspot. It does feel a bit hollow, at this contest being hosted on behalf of Ukraine and that prominently features Ukrainian refugees, to see the logo for the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport on the backdrop at the press conferences, when the minister in charge has routinely voted to make our already threadbare and cruel asylum system even stricter.