'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

Yesterday was the first Who this season that I didn't see live, because I was off having a lovely pub crawl country walk in Kent. Not the bleak Kent, or the bits that are basically London's dregs, but the Garden of England bit which inspired HE Bates (whose cottage we went past). And it was lovely. London is the place for me, now and for years yet, but one day I shall have a cottage somewhere with an old graveyard and cricketers on the green, where nothing of importance ever changes. Speaking of which, 'The Curse of the Black Spot' was thoroughly predictable, wasn't it? Every plot beat could be foretold at least a minute before it happened, in part because the set-up was the classic Who base-under-siege, and the resolution was a tribute to early Moffat. But I find something oddly comforting in these middling, everyday episodes, and Amy looked great as a pirate (even if her differences with the siren could surely have been resolved more sexily), and it made no sense but somehow I even forgave the virus/bacteria line, because if Who was always as full-on and smart as those first two episodes, and as I suspect next week's Gaiman story will be, then it would just get a bit too much.

Last weekend's big news stories left me mostly unmoved; our mediocre future monarch was wed to a passably symmetrical young woman, and we eventually killed a bastard who had it coming, but who was only ever first among equals. But then the last combat veteran of the First World War died and...that's huge. A moment, an era, could last week be described as 'in living memory', and now it can't. And then on top of that, the AV vote, in which 85% of my countrymen made clear that in spite of the last 30 years, they're quite content with how politics is done here, thank you very much. Which disgusts me. But at least, of the 11 areas nationwide which voted otherwise, Finsbury Park is at the intersection of three - and next to a fourth. The others include Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. The smart places, basically. It's only a crumb of hope, but it's something.

The Dodgem Logic jamboree on Wednesday has been well-covered elsewhere (and there's even a photo of my back at that link, just to prove my presence). Savage Pencil's loud, unhelpful contributions aside, it was a brilliant evening - but then when you have Alan Moore, Stewart Lee and Robin Ince on the same bill, that's inevitable, isn't it? Kevin O'Neill, Melinda Gebbie and Steve Aylett also turn out to be just as interesting off the page as on. For a moment I even thought I might be able to get a poster of O'Neill's 'four seasons' image from the last issue (so far), but no, it was just one promo piece. Which he talked about, saying that it was inspired by the idea of a perfect England for which the English, even as far back as Chaucer, had always been nostalgic. And then Alan Moore was talking about how Dodgem Logic had been inspired by the old underground mags but, rereading them and seeing how they actually were rather than how he remembered them, he had in fact, if he said so himself, made something better. Which reminded me of someone characterising the new Doctor Who - and this was even before Moffat took over - as the programme which actually was as good as Doctor Who fans remember Doctor Who being. People can be dismissive of nostalgia but, in the right hands, it's a profoundly creative urge.

Yes, I should be out enjoying the sun, and everyone else will be so this will go unread, but I'm waiting for the washing machine and I have a week to get down before it slips my mind. A week spent mostly in Devon, where some newly-revealed clay from about 150 million years ago had its first encounter with the mammalian age when I plunged in up to the knees while looking for ammonites, and I went to Jasper Hazelnut's cafe, and saw someone with a hare lip outside ads for Third World children for the first time I can remember, and couldn't really blog on account of a deranged cursor. The train to Devon is lovely, following a stream much of the way and passing fields with cows, and llamas, and in one case horses and chickens grazing contentedly together.

And when the nights drew in, what did I watch?
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle: good, but perhaps not as good as we all expected after his long absence from our screens. An out comics fan has no place attacking adults for reading Harry Potter, but beyond that, simply filming stand-up feels weird, like watching a straight filming of a stage play.
Given Mad Men's scrupulous sixties style, what the blazes were they doing soundtracking the opening of last week's episode with the Decemberists? Yes, they sound timeless, and it wasn't as if Don Draper was getting into MIA, but it still threw me.
I only watched the first episode of Party Animals, but my mum's a fan and had missed the final episode, so I watched along - an unusual experience for me, who is never normally a casual viewer. The main interest, of course, being to see what the Eleventh Doctor's performance was like. I'm still mainly repeating 'Trust Moffat. Trust Moffat' to myself. Andrea Riseborough and Excelsor from No Heroics were good, though, if basically playing the same characters (the devious slapper and the smug git).
The Tomb of Ligeia is the last and not the best of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe films, in part because one of the major roles is the possibly-possessed cat, and as anyone who's seen Breakfast at Tiffany's will know, cats can't act - they can at best be thrown onto the set by the AD. Typically, the film owes as much to Poe's 'M.Valdemar' as 'Ligeia', but more than anything else Vincent Price seems to be playing James Robinson's Shade, right down to the hat and the glasses. No bad thing, obviously.

"The Pope also warned of a threat to the Catholic Church...from the "growing influence of superstitious forms of religion". Next week; why racism threatens Nazism. Sidious' deranged ramblings about condoms in Africa are, of course, a despicable attempt to take advantage of the vulnerable, but closer to home, last night on Stroud Green Road there was a team, dressed like bouncers, of 'Street Pastors', strolling around at closing time looking for the lost and lonely like so many spiritual date-rapists.
(And with perfect timing, as I finished writing this some more of the scoundrels came to my door. Given I'd discharged my bile here, I didn't even have enough fire left for more than a curt 'No Thank You' and a slammed door)