Going All Religious

I decided to take the kids on something of a cultural experience last weekend. The excuse for the visit was that Raymond wanted to see the huge Waterstones on Sauchiehall Street. In fact, he didn’t want to see all 5 floors of it, or even just one floor, but more specifically the one corner that sells all the Manga graphic novels. This is fair enough but I insisted that we went for a visit to St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art first. At the mention of the word “religion” I may as well have dropped Kryptonite in his cornflakes.

Despite his atheistic tendencies I was determined to show him that, whatever one’s beliefs, religions do have the tendency to inspire some of the most exquisite works of art – including possibly my favourite picture, Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross which is in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove museum. There is nothing quite as famous as that in St Mungo’s but the art works that are there are of just as high standard and cover most of the main religions (there is even a weeping angel model from Doctor Who hidden away to placate the little heathen).

Jesus and Mary

Shiva Nataraj

A Skellington!

As we were right next to Glasgow Cathedral I took the children in there as well and, oddly enough, Raymond seemed more impressed than this than he did with the artworks. Maybe he is more into architecture?

Glasgow Cathederal

Inside Glasgow Cathederal

We also popped into the Provand’s Lordship, the oldest surviving house in Glasgow, which seemed to go down quite well; at least until we got to the bookshop so he could spend the best part of an hour browsing through Manga. Maybe I should take him to see Tokyo instead?

Connecting to the 21st Century

My relationship to mobile phones over the years has been a mixture between vague mistrust to outright hostility. Initially, with simple mobiles offering just calls and text I still rather liked the idea of being “out” although I could see the utility of being able to call someone without having to search for a public call box first. Of course, this all relied on the ability of the phone to maintain a charge for the duration of the day and with my first, rather disastrous, venture into the world of the smartphone this certainly wasn’t the case. It was actually after reverting to using a feature phone that I got into the habit of carrying the thing with me and having it switched on. I have also found that I am now in the habit of checking emails, Facebook, the news and sport whilst out and, whilst the feature phone does do this, it doesn’t do it that elegantly. In recent months I have been coming around to the idea of getting an Android phone again.

In part, I was won around to the idea of a new smart phone by the success I had with my work’s Windows phone. As a business phone, these are superb as they integrate seamlessly with all my other workplace systems and offer useful feature like satellite navigation when out and about. Importantly, the battery will last for a week between charges with light use. Unfortunately, the number of third-party apps is limited with most offering a choice between Android or iPhone downloads. Many will still have a web page that can be accessed but it is clumsy through a phone browser. Since I like to keep my work and private phones separate, an Android phone seemed like a good choice.

My basic requirements were that it should be reasonably cheap, supportable, have a good battery life and reasonable camera. I was also coloured in my choice by the fact that my son has had lots of good things to say about his Motorola Moto G phone so I went for the latest iteration of that. In fact they do several versions ranging from the big to the completely unwieldy. I ended up going for the smallest and cheapest in that range, the Moto G4 Play, and so far I’ve been rather taken with it.

Being a glass half full sort of person, I suppose I should start with the downside. It is still quite big and it is a noticeable lump to be carrying around in my pocket compared to my old Nokia feature phone. In fact it is even bigger than my Windows phone although compensating for that with a slightly larger screen. Charging the phone takes up to 4 hours with the supplied charger but the battery life seems reasonable: it isn’t quite up there with the Windows phone (although, in fairness, I have been prodding the thing endlessly since I’ve had it) but it lasted for the whole day even including long periods of use as a sat-nav. Looking at the power usage, by far the largest drain (at around 25%) was for powering the screen so I’ve now enabled the auto-dimming function on that one. So far the bulk and range anxiety have been the only disadvantages so far.

It doesn’t come with too many apps pre-installed (which I am told is a good thing) but I did set up my email accounts as soon as I had it. It’s a bit different from the Windows phone but, as I had set up my contacts in Gmail before buying the phone, the set-up was swift and relatively pain free. I then went for a few news and sport apps from the likes of the BBC and Guardian (although I have yet to find the Telegraph one as I rather like their film reviews). These work much better than the browser based ones. Next was the Sat Nav. It comes with Google Maps built in but I had been warned that this could be fairly disastrous for data use so I went for the Here WeGo application (surprisingly free) which is the Android equivalent of the Here Drive application on Windows. It works surprisingly well.

Having set everything up and purchased a leather case (which is very nice) and car-vent mounting device (which is somewhat less successful), I headed off on a long weekend trip down to Liverpool. I was a bit worried about how the data usage would compare but there are many free wireless points available at service stations, on public transport  and in many pubs and restaurants. Many of these require a sign up to what will presumably be an endless stream of advertising and I do wonder how secure the connections are but then there is no such thing as a free lunch. The sat nav really came into its own in Liverpool city centre as the public transport was chaotic with the underground being off at the moment and the replacement bus services going through some unfamiliar territory. Over the three days I used 83MB worth of data from my mobile provider which is higher than the feature phone although not excessively so.

One of the other big features that I did want on the phone was a decent camera. The man in the shop warned me that the camera was “only” 8 Megapixels but I did point out that this is actually 4 times the amount of the cameras on the Hubble Space telescope. Of course, Megapixels are no match for good optics and NASA would not have spent billions putting that thing into orbit if they should achieve the same with a £130 phone camera. To see what the real-world performance is like I took the phone for a test run at the Wirral Transport Museum (which, incidentally, is well worth a visit if one can deploy the Sat Nav to negotiate the labyrinthine backstreets of Birkenhead). Given that I had a streaming cold and wobbly hands on the day I was quite pleased with the results:

Wirral Transport Museum - Austin 1800 (I remember these being far rustier back in the day)

Wirral Transport Museum - Triumph Dolomite which was made at the nearby (and since defunct) Speke car plant in Liverpool

Wirral Transport Museum - A Lambretta scooter. My dad used to have one like this.

Wirral Transport Museum - trams. They also have working trams which go to the nearby ferry terminal.

So, overall I’m rather sold on the whole smartphone idea. Contrary to what this may sound like I’m not really such a luddite: I like to see any technology behaving in a life-enhancing way rather than becoming yet another burden. No doubt more expensive phones will have bigger and better features and I am sure that some power users (games players, for example) would benefit from a more expensive unit. Phones can get very expensive – a top of the range Apple iPhone will cost 7 or 8 times as much as my humble Motorola and they are, no doubt, an excellent product but for that much I would be expecting some fairly amazing features: time-travel or something. For simply connecting to the 21st Century there are cheaper and perfectly acceptable options available.

Oh no, not again...

In “The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” there is one passage whereby a bowl of petunias is summoned into existence above a planet and only has time to think, “Oh no, not again…” , before crashing to the ground below. This is explained in a later novel as an incarnation of a character called Agrajag who has met many unfortunate and premature demises at the hands of an oblivious Arthur Dent. Given that Adams was also the script editor for Doctor Who at the time I have often wondered if he had the Timelord in mind. After hearing Peter Capaldi’s interview on Radio 2 on Monday night ,in which he announced his pending departure from the show, I think my initial reaction was also “Oh no, not again…”

In fact, Capaldi will have completed three full series of the programme by the time he leaves which is a pretty standard stint for the lead actors with only a couple doing significantly less and two significantly more. I have a hypothesis that the portrayal of the Doctor when one first watches Doctor Who gives the impression of what the Doctor should be like. For me, it was Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker and Peter Capaldi fits strongly between those two which has made him my favourite Doctor since the 1970s although I have enjoyed discovering the older episodes, particularly Patrick Troughton, and have like some of the later ones, notably Matt Smith who often channelled Troughton. However, Capaldi has really been my favourite since the show returned and I will miss him.

This all leads up to the big question of who will take over the title role to become Doctor Number 13 (although that numbering is now somewhat debatable). I suspect that the new showrunner, Chris Chibnall, already has someone in mind – in fact I would be surprised if he hasn’t already got them lined up. The usual names seem to be popular with the bookies, a typical wish-list of fan-boys and fan-girls alike, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he went with an actor that he has worked with previously, possibly from the series Broadchurch. There are a couple of actors that can presumably be discounted as they were regulars on Doctor Who: David Tennant, who has obviously been there and done that; and Arthur Darvill, who was a companion for two and a half series. There are quite a few other actors in Broadchurch that would seem to fit the profile: Andrew Buchan, Matthew Gravelle, Joe Sims, Jonathan Bailey or even Olivia Coleman?

This does seem to raise the question of whether the Doctor could be a woman. Personally, I rather baulk at the suggestion as it would stink of stunt casting although I think that the right actress could be very good: Tilda Swinton has that certain alien other-worldliness that would be ideal for the role. I think the main problem is that it would rather change the dynamics of the show. The stories are nearly always told from the perspective of the Doctor’s companions and this means that the storytelling is usually from a female perspective. If the Doctor was a woman, would the companions usually be men or would there have to be a mix to provide that female perspective? Amongst the whole gender equality arguments it should also be noted that the Doctor has always been white – there is no reason why (s)he should be and there are quite a few black and Asian actors who I think would be superb in the role. However, the role should be cast for purely dramatic reasons and not to fill out some quota.

I expect that the next Doctor will probably not be a household name and will leave most of us saying Who? The only great certainty is that in three years or thereabouts we will all be saying “Oh no, not again...”