What I'm watching....

In the same way that I drink too much coffee, live inside my head too much (and eat too much...well, just about everything) it's a well known fact that I watch too much television.

Sooooo, I just thought I'd quickly update you with a few details about what I'm watching on TV at the moment

(those of you eschew the television and, indeed, like to compete with others over how little TV you actually watch can look away now).

Ashes to Ashes: I loved 'Life and Mars' and feared that this spin off was going to be a heartless cash in. It is a spin off, and it does cash in on the previous series' legacy but (and it's an important but) it stops just short of retreading old ground. In 'Life on Mars' the main character was unsure whether he was in a coma or had actually travelled back in time to the 1970s. This time around the main character Alex Drake is certain that she is either in a coma or moments away from death and refuses to believe she is back in the 1980s. Part of me hopes to have the self-satisfied look wiped on her face while the rest of me wonders whether women really wore so many off-the shoulder jumpers in the 1980s and why I didn't notice at the time.

Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach: I love anything that is self referential and I particularly like meta fiction (i.e. fiction about fiction) so this intrigues me. For those who haven't seen it, it's two shows - the first one is a sitcom about the making of a fictional soap and the following programme is the soap itself. It just about works as a concept and continuity freaks like myself can enjoy spotting props, dialogue and plot lines in the second programme that are merely referred to in passing in the first. The major drawback with the whole premise is that Echo Beach (the soap) is so awful. Don't get me wrong - I realise that it is meant to be awful - just not this awful.

Skins: Now, I realise that as a man in his thirties I'm hardly the target audience for this drama but it really is very good indeed. All the promotional material for the series make it look like a drug-fuelled hedonistic party of a show and those elements certainly are there - but as context rather than subject. What lifts it above this is the fantastic ensemble cast and a rich vein of dark humour. It's also great fun spotting an older generation of comics and comic actors - including Harry Enfield, Bill Bailey and Josie Lawrence - as the parents

Chasing the Dragon

Last weekend Tallulah and I visited the Chinese New Year celebrations.

Now, for those of you unable to to tell the difference between Chinese and English New Year I've supplied the following guide:

Chinese New Year involves an authentic dragon procession while English New Year involves a drunken conga.

Chinese New Year involves firecrackers while English New Year involves damp party poppers.

Chinese New Year involves lighting incense praying to Buddha for good luck while English New Year involves lighting up a cigarette whilst stood in a bus stop praying that your hangover won't be too bad.

(* For Scottish New Year take English New Year and add a) Whiskey and b) Scottish Folk Dancing. If anyone has found a way of preventing Scottish people initiating folk dancing or at least minimising the resulting emotional distress, then please let me know).

Anyway, Tallulah and I had a good time following the procession, eating Chinese food, offering prayers to Buddha and enjoying demonstrations of Kung Fu, Dance and Song (whilst trying not to laugh at a particular Chinese cultural instrument that sounds like a duck farting).

Anyway, here are some pics.

Cotswold stoned

As it has been a while I just thought I'd let you all know what I've been up to.

Tallulah and I visited Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds for a week at the end of January in order to visit my mother (still poorly) and see friends and relatives. Seeing Oxfordshire again - after not having visited the city for a year - I realise how much I love it's obviously not the Oxfordshire I remember growing up in. A bit like recalling a particular summer I suppose - it doesn't matter what actually happened back then, just the fact that you remember it as being a good time.

We went out into the Cotswolds because, much though I like Manchester (still unsure if it likes me), sometimes one needs a little breathing space and some green. Felt a yearning for the honey-coloured stone of my homeland that I had to scratch...

For those of you who have never been to the Cotswolds I offer the following guide:

a) It's all very green except for the people who are, on
b) The Cotswolds still operate on the barter system, so take a chicken.
c) The inhabitants are all very wealthy - so make it an antique chicken (regency for preference)
d) The inhabitants are all country folk who appreciate rural crafts - like running over your pet in a 4 x 4.

I now append a photograph of one of a bustling metropolis in the Cotswolds. Witness the simmering urban tension.














Visited Cheltenham for the first time too. The best way I can describe Cheltenham is 'Bath on a budget'. It has a lot of the same Regency spa town feel - but Cheltenham feels a little contrived in comparison to it's bigger more cousin which probably throws the whole 'Jane Austen' connection in Cheltenham's face at every family gathering.

One thing that Bath does not have is a "Wishing Fish Clock" (at least to my knowledge) . Obviously, when I heard this I had to go and have a look and it certainly the finest example of a piscine-related wish time measuring device of wish fufilment that one could hope for - a photograph is appended below















On the way back home to the North we visited the Bicester Retail Park. This may have been a mistake as Tallulah has now discovered that they have a Jimmy Choo outlet there - which she proceeded to approach with all the reverence of a pilgrim approaching the shrine of Saint Horace (patron saint of forgetting to set the video).