Last Christmas

I think it’s safe to say that my children have now all stopped believing in Santa Claus. The youngest has pretty much worked out what is going on and, even if she can’t quite fathom out how the sleight of hand is done, she does appreciate that the magic is all done by Mum and Dad. It’s inevitable, I suppose, but in a way it’s rather sad that we are now past that point. Having said that, even the eldest (now almost 13) likes to play along with the pretence and have a stocking of goodies to sort through on Christmas morning although this year I forgot to buy the tangerines in.

In fact, it wasn’t just the tangerines. I also forgot to buy in white wine for Christmas dinner as well as milk and margarine. In addition I didn’t get around to doing any of the ironing so I was down to wearing my Doctor Who T-shirt. Never mind, I wasn’t planning on going out anywhere – except to the local convenience store to buy the wine and milk. It’s fortunate that he was open on Christmas Day and he seemed quite pleased to see me – quite bemused, in fact, as I had rather forgotten that I looked like this:

Our other Christmas traditions are all going strong from choosing and decorating the tree, through to eating far too much and collapsing in front of the TV for the Queen’s speech. In true Royle Family style, lying around in front of the telly seems to be a tradition in itself whether this is watching just about the only new Top Of The Pops of the year (which gives me my only excuse to grump about how rubbish modern music is), seeing the animated movie or what has now been a tradition for the last 10 years and watching the festive edition of Doctor Who.

I normally give the Christmas Who a little leeway as, unless they are trying to introduce a new character or write out an old one, the episodes follow the format of a seasonal “romp” and tend to be much better enjoyed when not taken too seriously. Given that Last Christmas was to be The Doctor meeting Santa Claus I wasn’t expecting too much. What we actually got was both far darker than I could have imagined and far more like serious Sci-Fi than I could have hoped for. The basic premise of not being able to determine the difference between dreams and reality was fantastically done with the actual real world not entirely clear until the final scenes . This reminded me a little of the film Inception but I think Doctor Who pulled this off more effectively as the claustrophobic sets allowed for a closer examination of the characters unlike the film which became swamped by its own cinematography.

I’m interested to see where the character of Clara is going to go now. I had expected her to leave as her story arc was seemingly at an end (in fact she has had two arcs already) but I’m pleased that Jenna Coleman is staying as she works well with Capaldi. We’ll have to see where this goes in Series 9. I felt that Matt Smith did one series too few (which rather accounted for last Christmas’s episode feeling like it has a full series worth of plot crammed into 60 minutes) so I’m just hoping that Jenna isn’t making one series too many.

Large Print

Over the last few weeks and months I have come to the conclusion that I am falling to pieces. It seemed to start with my ears and I have since gone through various wax removal therapies but with no long lasting remedy. Then I have had ongoing problems with my back which is getting no better and last week I had an some emergency dental work. The latest was my bi-annual visit to the opticians which will apparently now have to be annual for various reasons.

My prescription hasn’t altered that much but I have now been recommended that as well as single vision lenses for seeing at a distance I would also benefit from varifocals, for working with computers, reading glasses, for books and prescription sunglasses on the basis that I live somewhere sunny. Quite how I am meant to swap between these is a mystery: I can only assume they are to be hung around my neck on a chain like a demented Larry Grayson.

There is an alternative to the reading glasses and that is to make use of our local libraries collection of large print books. They actually have a fair collection but the selection makes me think that large print is aimed at a certain demographic. Over a quarter of the large print books are actually Mills and Boons romantic fiction. Quite a good selection of the mainstream fiction is also largely romantic novels and even the non-fiction section has little that would be regarded as “male interest” (whatever that is). I could really only see Stephen Fry’s America and Ross Kemp talks Blokey Bollocks (or whatever it was) as being well away from the romantic fiction staples.

My new frames (particularly the varifocals) are due to be ready in a week or so. I’ll give them a go and get the reading glasses if they are too much of an effort to use. That’s got to be preferable to delving into Barbara Cartland territory.

When The Wind Blows

Over the last couple of months we have had four wind turbines installed locally. These are visible from the back of our house (at least in Winter – I suspect the trees will hide them in the Summer). I was contacted some years ago, when we lived in the farm steadings, about our opinions on having a wind turbine nearby. I thought this was a very good idea but nothing ever came of the plans. The scheme near Larbert is much larger than the proposed one for the Moss but it has been agreed that the operators will pay £25,000 per year to the local parish council which seems like a good deal for all concerned.

Todhill turbine near Larbert - for an idea of scale see the white van parked at the base.

I took a few photographs of the turbines as they were being constructed. From a distance it is difficult to appreciate the size of wind turbines as they look like they could be a child’s toy. It’s not until you are close to the structures that the sheer scale of them can be appreciated. The tips of the blades reach up to 125m high but a better indication of the size is to see the scale of the white VW Transporter vans at the base. I’ve visited a couple of turbine sites and up close they are quite awe inspiring – very much in the traditional sense of being a little scary. From further back it is possible to appreciate the elegance of them. Like bridges there is a certain beauty in objects that have been engineered to utilise physics to their own end. Compare this to an electric pylon which looks all rather saggy and ungainly as its form arises from having the laws of physics imposed upon it.

Todhill turbine blades being lifted into place.

There have been several news stories recently which has highlighted just how much of our power is being generated from sustainable sources. This is particularly true in Scotland where the sustainable generating sector has now overtaken nuclear energy as the largest single source of electricity. Billy Bragg highlighted changing attitudes to turbines in this Facebook entry. I responded to that which seems to have been popular with some people even if I did receive an abusive message from one person (actually a personal email which seems like pretty determined trolling just to call someone a homosexual).

The reaction of most people I’ve spoken to locally about our new turbines has been largely positive. This ranges from those who are actively enthusiastic about the project, through to those that would rather we didn’t have to have power production but appreciate that the lights have to stay on and that this is far preferable to fracking. I’ve not spoken to anyone who was actively against the development but I have seen a few comments in the local paper criticising it and a few comments on various website forums that either complain that they will affect house prices (which I would personally regard as a bonus) or quoting various “facts” and “research” that proves that alternative energy sources are a futile exercise.

I put “facts” and “research” in quotes because whenever I read anything related to energy or the environment the quoted sources are usually fairly dubious and at best they offer a cherry-picked distortion of genuine peer reviewed papers. To a point, this is always going to happen because peer reviewed journals are by their nature rather dry affairs and assume a level of knowledge that is above even the well-informed layman. I’ve recently discovered a very good beginners guide in the form of David MacKay’s “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air” (which was recommended to me via a personal email from someone who didn’t call me a homosexual). Interestingly, he has made the work available online and, although some of the content will have altered since it was written in 2008, he does write it in a very clear manner which appeals to me as it frames the whole issue of energy use as an engineering problem rather than an political or economic one (although obviously that comes into it).

As for me, I’m still pressing ahead trying to get my energy consumption down although if I am honest it has more to do with reasons of miserliness than any determined effort to save the planet. At least it’s nice to know that some of my electricity will be produced locally – at least it will be when the wind blows.

New Music

I’m not sure whether I am content with what I’ve got or whether I am simply uninspired this year but I seem to have bought surprisingly few new albums. Those that I have bought I have liked, and if I was to pick a  favourite it would probably be Robert Plant’s new album. However, I don’t seem to have bought that much in the way of new music and even though Plant (and also Pink Floyd) have put out new releases he has been around for years. Much of everything else I’ve bought fits into the same mould.

Looking back over my recent purchases there are a good smattering of folk-rock and blues-rock albums, a classical symphony, a solitary jazz album and a couple of heavy rock releases. Most of these are donkey’s years old. The one exception to this is The Last Internationale’s We Will Reign album which I bought on the back of seeing them at the Robert Plant gig. The album is pretty good although sounds far more commercial than I imagined: it comes across as a mainstream rock album rather than the blues-rock sound that they belted out in their live performance.

What appeals to me about The Last Internationale is that they are a full-on protest band, in many ways harking back to the days of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger rather than the more commercial Bonoesque approach, yet still retaining the passion of a full-on rock group. When they are good, they are very, very good and the tracks Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Indian Blood; Killing Fields and Wanted Man as well as the album closer 1968 really capture the essence of their live performance. The other tracks are decent enough but I think the album does suffer from over-production, specifically in terms of dynamic range compression which rather robs the albums quieter tracks of their subtlety. It’s a problem with many modern recordings and something I blame MP3s for.

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for The Last Internationale as I think they could be huge in a couple of years’ time – certainly most people I know who saw them on the Plant tour would love to see them headlining in the UK. As for my other music listening I possibly need to go back over my already vast array of CDs again. I seem to go through fads of music listening and will often come back to things I haven’t listened to for years before branching off on another tangent.