Pros and cons

Until I moved to Brussels, I'd never really been reliant on public transport - of course I used it on occasion, but this is the first time I've actually lived in a place with a public transport system worthy of the name. And, all things considered, it's jolly marvellous: frequent service, a comprehensive network, safe (at least, I've never felt threatened). At least eleventy-three percent better than driving - because, the drivers in this city? Terrible. Really, stunningly awful.

Things I love about the STIB:

• The price: €44 a month, as opposed to £99.10 just for zones 1 and 2 in London.
• The LED signs that show exactly where all the trains are at any given time. In theory, at least.
• They play music in the metro stations all day, and after about 9.30 p.m. it's always classical. There's something very soothing about sitting waiting for the train after an evening out, listening to Rhapsody in Blue.
• The morning rush hour lasts about half an hour.
• The bus drivers are generally very good about waiting if they notice you running towards them.
• I'm tremendously entertained by the fact that the quest for bilingual equality even extends to alternating between starting announcements in French, and starting them in Dutch.

Things I hate about the STIB:

• The music in the mornings - I invariably get to work in the morning with one irritatingly catchy 90s hit or another stuck in my head for the rest of the day. This morning it was 'Hit me baby one more time', and yesterday it was something by Kylie and Jason. 'Especially for you', I think.
• Whether or not the escalators are working appears to depend entirely on chance.
• And, when they are working, the whole 'stand on the right, walk on the left' thing is generally ignored.
• The way it basically shuts down over the summer - I realise that it's the holiday season, but I'd still like to get to work on time, please.
• The beggars. Especially the ones going up and down the trains. "Juste un petit geste" + captive audience => guilt-trip => aargh.
• Buses and cobblestones do not play well together. Bone-shaking doesn't even begin to cover it.
• The bus is always late. Except when it's early, which is even more irritating.

Priorities

Since moving to Brussels, I have:

• joined an orchestra,
• joined a church and its choir,
• found a pub with live cricket on TV, and
• bought bookshelves and put my books on them in alphabetical order.

I haven't:

• joined a gym,
• bought a sofa,
• signed up with a doctor or dentist,
• found a hairdresser, or
• unpacked all my clothes.

I'm not entirely sure I've got my priorities straight.

In which I take things a bit too seriously

I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the other evening. I could just write a brief post saying that I enjoyed it, that it was a bit different from the book but that's not necessarily a problem (see previous comments on that subject), and that I still think Prisoner of Azkaban was better. Job done. But Harry Potter won't let me do that, so I'm now going to be tl;dr about it.

Here's the thing: the problem with Harry Potter is not in the concept, but in the execution. Harry Potter is the global phenomenon it is because the universe J K Rowling created has captured people's imaginations - you just have to look at the proliferation of fanfic to see that*. The whole idea of a secret wizarding world existing in parallel with our own is an intriguing one, and the books are full of great, original ideas - Platform 9 3/4, Quidditch, Horcruxes (Horcruces?), Pensieves, etc.

*On second thoughts, don't look at the fanfic. It may scar you for life.

The trouble is, Rowling is not a good enough writer to pull it off - she has a tendency to tell rather than show, she keeps slipping out of third-person limited narration at jarring moments, and she seriously needed an editor to take a red pen to the bloated drafts of the last four books. My main criticism of the books, though, is the characterisation. Most of the characters, even the principal ones, are basically cardboard cutout archetypes - black and white, good or evil, with handsome generally meaning good, and ugly evil.

Which is why I liked the character of Snape so much - he was the exception to this simplistic view. He was a good guy, without being a nice guy: I assume that the intention was to keep us guessing about which side he was on, but I never had any doubt. (Actually, that's not entirely true: it was clear to me that he had to be good, but I wasn't 100% confident that it was clear to J K Rowling.) And the more we found out about him as the books came out, the more interesting he became.

And this, I think, is why I was slightly disappointed with the latest film, even though I did enjoy it: to me (though apparently not to Rowling or to David Yates) book 6 belongs to Snape, so it seemed a terrible shame that he was more or less pushed out of the picture in favour of lots of embarrassed teenage fumbling.

And then there's "the unfortunate event", as Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode have been calling it. As previously mentioned, I don't necessarily have a problem with plots being changed in adaptations, but I'm really not sure about this particular case, because it completely changes the thrust of the scene, for no obvious reason. In the book, Harry is invisible under his Invisibility Cloak, and has been cursed so that he can't move, which means that he's completely helpless and unable to act; in the film, on the other hand, he's not physically impeded in any way, so he is choosing not to intervene (and to obey Snape, which he's never shown any previous inclination to do). Which, apart from being rather out of character for the typically recklessly brave Harry, raises interesting issues relating to free will which I will not bore you with right now :)

And that is nearly 600 words that shows I have been thinking about a children's film far more than is entirely appropriate for a grown woman...

RTD, I'd like a word with you.

On Wednesday, I was all set to write a post about how impressed I was with the new mini-series of Torchwood. Unlike the previous two series, which I absolutely adored but were actually pretty rubbish, series 3 was shaping up to be proper good telly. Sure, there were still plotholes that Ianto could drive a JCB through, but it was really exciting, and we got to see Jack's daughter and Ianto's family (who are chavs, and fantastic), and Paul Copley off Hornblower was brilliant, and Peter Capaldi was Not Malcolm Tucker, and Gwen was significantly less annoying than usual, and the children were really creepy, and Ianto kicked arse, and John Barrowman was naked, and, and, and...

And then I watched Day 4.

It all seemed to be going so well: the cabinet meeting where they were talking about how to choose the children was incredibly chilling in its plausibility, and I was really starting to like Lois as a potential new team member. But then it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

How could they kill Ianto?! He was the best thing about this whole stupid-yet-fantastic show. I was desperately hoping for some sort of reset button in the final part - and normally Russell T Davies' penchant for 'ha ha, fooled you all' plots just makes me roll my eyes - but it would appear that he actually is really dead for real. The one consolation is that it was a great death scene - almost as good as Tosh's - and Gareth David-Lloyd totally did it justice.

And, much as it pains me to say it, it's a good thing they didn't resurrect him. The final episode was just... I have no words for how amazing it was, even though it pretty much broke me. And if, after all that - after Frobisher, and his family, and Stephen - it had turned out that Ianto wasn't dead after all, it would have cheapened it. Not that it's necessarily stopped them in the past, mind you.

So, what's next? From what I've heard, they were going to decide whether to make a fourth series depending on the ratings for the third - and they were very, very good at around 5.9 million. But it all felt very final - the hub's gone, most of the team are dead, Jack's run away to the other side of the galaxy - so I don't see where they can go from here.

The tl;dr version? I loved it beyond all reason, but I probably won't be watching the next series if there is one.

Jazz à l'ancienne

Ancienne Belgique is one of Brussels', and possibly Belgium's, best concert venues. It's right in the centre of town, and hosts a wide variety of contemporary music - not just rock and pop bands, but jazz, folk, hip-hop and others as well - and also arranges a number of free open-air gigs during the summer.

Lisa Ekdahl is a Swedish jazz singer/songwriter, who sings mostly in Swedish, but sometimes in English. She has a very delicate, almost child-like voice - very unlike the great jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, but really very evocative, both in her own songs and in the jazz standards.

And on Sunday evening, I went to see the latter in the former, and very much enjoyed it.

As some of you know, I am... let us say not well-disposed towards the Swedes at the moment, and I was unsure about whether to go to this gig - I love Lisa Ekdahl's music, but I didn't know whether I could cope with a whole evening of Swedish. As it turned out, though, that wasn't an issue as her set was entirely in English - which was actually a bit disappointing, because I love some of her Swedish stuff. She mostly sang songs from her albums When Did You Leave Heaven and Back To Earth, and most of them were wonderful - the only one that didn't work for me was Björk's It's Oh So Quiet, because she didn't make a real contrast between the quiet and loud parts, and I don't think the song is anywhere near as effective without it. Her Cry Me A River, though, was beautiful.

Stand up and be counted

So, of all the things I didn't expect to be doing in Brussels, going to an English-language stand-up comedy show with a group of Greeks and Slovenes has to come fairly high up the list...

We saw two comedians:

Kevin Bridges is a relatively new name on the circuit. He's from Glasgow, and some of my companions had a certain amount of trouble understanding him. He was pretty good, but some parts of the act felt a bit flat to me.

Adam Hills is much better known and better established as a comedian - he's been going since 1989, and has been on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Mock the Week. I thought he was really excellent, but I'm glad we weren't sitting near the front, because he really picked on some people in the audience. If you search for his name on YouTube you'll find quite a few videos from his stand-up act - strangely, in some of them he seems a lot flatter and less engaging than he was last night, so maybe he wasn't just being nice when he said he'd really enjoyed the evening.

After the show, we went for a drink at the Crystal Lounge (warning, website plays music automatically, which I find a bit irritating), which is in a very posh hotel in the Avenue Louise area. It's an amazing space, with an absolutely beautiful terrace, and it serves some great cocktails, including one which comes in a round glass with a lightbulb in it so that it glows blue. It's bloody expensive, but definitely worth a visit.

Holy and blessed three

It's Trinity Sunday, which seems an appropriate day to write about my brand-new church home, Holy Trinity Brussels.

Holy Trinity is the pro-cathedral of the diocese in Europe, no less. A pro-cathedral is, apparently, a church temporarily standing in as the cathedral for a diocese; I'm not sure why Holy Trinity is classified as such, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Brussels already has a (Catholic) cathedral. It's quite a big church - room for a couple of hundred people, I'd guess, and several other function rooms (including a bar downstairs, which is an excellent addition to any church!) - but you can't tell from the outside, as it's hidden away in a courtyard behind some other buildings, in the middle of one of Brussels' poshest shopping areas.

It's been there since 1902, though it was called Christ Church back then - it became Holy Trinity in 1958, when the congregation merged with another Anglican church nearby. There are four services every Sunday, all with very different styles, ranging from traditional communion using the Book of Common Prayer to a bilingual French/English service with African music. So far, I've only been to the main morning service, which is a fairly traditional sung communion with a robed choir; and, after only two weeks, I seem to have found myself singing in the said choir! It's amazing what can come from a casual conversation during the after-service coffee... It's a much bigger choir than I'm used to, and quite a few of the members seem to be scarily accomplished musicians, but I think I'm going to enjoy it.

Polyphonic heaven

Last night I went to a fabulous concert by these people, in a beautiful chapel literally 3 minutes walk from my apartment. I think I could get used to this.

It was a concert of Tallis and Byrd - the doyens of English (and in particular English-language) choral music. Especially in a resonant acoustic like an old stone church, you can just shut your eyes and let the music wash over you. Heavenly!

The programme was mostly Latin music - Byrd's five part mass and Tallis's Lamentations of Jeremiah - and they also did four of Tallis's English motets.

And I note from the website that they're back in September. I might not be living round here by then (though you never know), but I'm already putting it in my diary.

The joys of multilingual TV

One of the advantages of living here is the availability of foreign television stations: I currently have French French, Belgian French, Dutch, Flemish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish and English channels. It's great having BBC1 and 2, of course, and, at least in theory, watching the other channels is a great way of getting better at those languages.

Unfortunately, as anyone who has spent time over here can tell you, European TV is rubbish. In practice, I mostly watch the BBC, plus imported US and UK programmes - not only can I still get my NCIS and CSI fix, but now I have a choice of English with Dutch subtitles or French dubbing (obviously, the former is more satisfactory, but the latter has a certain entertainment value all of its own).

Can anyone recommend anything French, Dutch, Belgian or German that might actually be worth watching? I, and my language skills, would be most grateful for suggestions.

Natural, fresh and ready

I've been eating out quite a lot since I arrived in Brussels, but I don't really have the time or inclination to post about all the restaurants and cafés I've tried out so far. The one I do want to mention, though, is one that I've actually only got take-away from so far, but which has already become one of my favourite Brussels places.

Exki is a Belgian chain of cafés/snack bars that sells good quality, healthy 'fast food' - not burgers and chips, but salads, soups, sandwiches... and delicious cakes and cheescakes, all sold by the slice to eat in or take away. One of their specialities is speculoos cheescake - a bargain at €3.45 for a big slice.

Its by-line is 'natural, fresh and ready' (in English, of course, because English is cool. Or something.), and it's only been around since 2001, but already has 16 branches in Brussels alone. I saw a report on TV that their turnover is down due to the economic situation, but it's always been fairly busy when I've gone or looked in so far, so I'm sure they're not in trouble.

They also do breakfast - fresh pastries, yoghurt, fruit salad, freshly squeezed orange juice... As there are two on my route to work, I can see myself succumbing to temptation rather more often than is good for the bank balance.

The exception that proves the rule

It is a well-known "fact" that all odd-numbered Star Trek films are pants. Until now. I just went to see the latest one, number 11, and it is awesome. The way the cast manage to be so recognisable as younger versions of the characters we know, without descending into outright impersonation, is very impressive indeed. Zachary Quinto is particularly good as Spock - he has the voice dead on, as is obvious when he's on screen with Leonard Nimoy (who is, of course, a legend) - but in my opinion they're all great.

Only Star Trek could get away with a prequel in which the essential premise is that the original series is now not going to happen as we saw it. The Spock/Uhura thing is particularly intriguing: I haven't seen enough of Star Trek:TOS to know whether there are any hints of this relationship, but I do know that it's actually Kirk who kisses Uhura in one episode.

Plus, it's funny, it's well-paced, the special effects are good, and the science is suitably silly.

Take note, George Lucas, this is how you do a prequel.

Welcome to Brussels/Bruxelles/Brussel

The capital of Belgium, (one of the) headquarters of the European Union, and home to over one million people. Including, as of Tuesday, me.

The whole point of starting this blog in the first place was to record my adventures in the city. I don't have a huge amount to say so far, except that the food is good, the beer is excellent, the TV is very multilingual and my French is gradually getting better - but watch this space!

Is it just me...

or was Norway's Eurovision song actually not that good? I mean, it wasn't bad (though I'm sure he was singing sharp for a lot of it), but 387 points seems a bit excessive.

Honourable mention for an Honourable Member

In the midst of the outrage over MPs' expenses, I'd just like to draw attention to the Honourable Member for Luton North, Kelvin Hopkins. I've always rather liked Mr Hopkins: I disagree with a lot of his politics, but he has always struck me as having integrity and principles, unlike a lot of his colleagues.

And it would seem, according to the revelations in the Telegraph, that his fellow MPs could learn something from him. He doesn't have a second home, and instead travels down from Luton every day, claiming occasionally for a hotel room - and not expensive hotel rooms, either, judging by the fact that he's claimed only £4513 over four years. All of which sounds entirely reasonable to me: thousands of people commute into London every day on this line; the trains aren't particularly pretty, but there are 4 of them an hour for most of the day, they run until gone 1 a.m., and they even still have first-class carriages, unlike some commuter lines.*

Compare and contrast his parliamentary neighbour in Luton South, Margaret Moran. She lives in the same street as Mr Hopkins, and yet felt it necessary to claim £74904 over the same period. Apparently, what a Luton MP really needs in order to do her job is a house in Southampton. Who knew?

*ETA: However, I'm told by someone who used to travel regularly on the same train as him that he puts his feet on the seats. Which is clearly appalling and scandalous and he should be deselected forthwith!

City living

Went out for drinks with a friend in the City the other night. He's worked in the area for a while now, and knows his way around, which was great, because we ended up in a couple of out of the way places that I would never have found by myself.

We started off in The Samuel Pepys, which was, inevitably, quite busy with people in suits, but we had no trouble finding seats, and it was quiet enough to talk comfortably. It's in a great location, but unfortunately the restaurant section, with views of the river, was all booked up.

Instead, we went to eat at a nearby Turkish restaurant. It's ever so cosy inside, with fancy wooden carvings on the ceiling, and the kitchen is open, so we could see them cooking - which seemed to involve an awful lot of flames, I suspect more for effect than culinary necessity. The food was very tasty: their main speciality is pide, a sort of Turkish pizza, but the dough seems to be a bit lighter. I had the kayisili, which was filled with apricots, peppers, cheese and mint - a pretty unusual combination, but it worked really well.

Mystery music

Brighton Festival. Over three weeks of art, theatre, music, dance, discussion... Marvellous.

Pretty much on a whim, I went with a friend to see the Takàcs Quartet at the Corn Exchange. Because it was just a random impulse, neither of us paid much attention to what the music was going to be, and we couldn't be bothered to buy a programme, so we spent most of the concert 'blind', as it were, with no idea what we were listening to. It was quite an interesting experience. One of the pieces was Bartok's 4th String Quartet, which was written in 1927, but we both thought it was much more modern than that. I hadn't heard the piece before, and I'm not usually a great Bartok fan, but I liked it a lot, especially the slower third movement, which was very atmospheric. The other works were Haydn's last quartet, and Schumann's A minor quartet, so a real mixture of periods. I thought it worked very well as a programme, and they played it all very well - some quartets very much specialise in a particular period, and you can tell when they're out of their comfort zone, but the Takàcs seemed perfectly at home in classical, romantic and modern.

The Corn Exchange was a good venue for a chamber concert. It's quite a big hall, but the acoustic is very good - resonant, but clear, so the sound never got lost. I did think the sound of the viola got slightly lost at times, but I suspect that might just be my bias as a viola player showing.

And afterwards, we went to Terraces, and sat on the terrace looking out over the sea drinking our first Pimms of the summer. What a lovely way to spend a bank holiday Sunday.

Alphabetical Order

The other night I went to see Michael Frayn's early (1975) play Alphabetical Order at the Hampstead Theatre. I'd never heard of it before, though I know and like some of Frayn's other stuff, so I didn't really know what to expect, and I enjoyed it very much.

It's based in the cuttings library of a provincial newspaper, which dates it straight away, because I would imagine such archives are kept digitally these days - and there are also a few political references that place it in the 1970s - but it didn't actually feel dated in terms of the theme, the characters and so on.

I thought the set was effective, particularly the transformation during the interval from chaotic mess to organised sterility. The acting was very good - Imogen Stubbs was the only one of the actors I already knew, and she was great, but I particularly liked Jonathan Guy Lewis as John (and it turns out that I have seen him before, because he was in Soldier, Soldier, which I used to watch religiously, but I don't remember him at all).

I guess the theme of the play is the tension between order and freedom. I got the impression that Frayn is rather coming down on the side of freedom - efficient, organising Lesley is the least sympathetic character, seeming to ride roughshod over the lives and feelings of the others - but he does show that it's not quite as simple as that. Lesley recognises that her organisation is 'compulsion', and the chaos of the first half is not entirely positive - they rather seem to be stuck in a rut. Maybe that's just my instinct for tidiness biasing me, though!

I'd never been to the Hampstead Theatre before, and I was impressed. The current theatre was only built in 2003, and it's very well designed, both in the theatre itself and in the other areas, with a lovely outside area at the back. It's a small space, and we felt very close to the action, but it didn't seem cramped at all. And the staff were very friendly when we arrived with precisely 1 minute to spare, having missed the train from Richmond.

Brighton up your day

Brighton really is a marvellous place for a day trip, isn't it? Especially when the sun is shining, as it was on Sunday. I was there to visit a friend, and we made the most of the glorious weather by going for a boat trip down the coast, from the marina to the remains of the West Pier and back again.

Once the sun had gone down, we had dinner in a vegetarian resaturant in The Lanes called Food For Friends, and I would highly recommend it! The food was really interesting and original, and very, very tasty, despite being terrifyingly healthy. I had tofu pockets to start, which were, according to the menu:

Sweet tofu cases, one filled with asian mushrooms, spring onions and avocado, miso roasted butternut squash, and an oriental mirin and tamari dressing served with a trio of pickled vegetables

followed by sweet potato and coconut curry:

Roasted sweet potato, butternut squash, cashew and coconut curry with herbed spinach brown basmati pilaf, cucumber riata and spicy vegetable crisps

You can almost see the vitamins!

(title shamelessly stolen from the friend I was visiting)

Cry God for Harry, England and...

Saint George, patron saint of England, Portugal, Palestine, Scouts and syphilitics, amongst others. It is, of course, his memorial day today, and also, appropriately enough, the date of death and allegedly birth of William Shakespeare.

There have been increasing calls over recent years for St George's Day to be celebrated on a larger scale, like SS Patrick, David and Andrew are in their respective countries of patronage. In principle, I absolutely agree, but what I've been wondering is: why George?

The thing is, St George has precisely no connection with England, not even a legendary one. He was born in Cappadocia (Turkey), to a Turkish father and a Palestinian mother; he did his dragon slaying in either Libya or Palestine, depending on which source you read; and he died in Palestine. So why him, and not, say, St Alban, St Cuthbert or St Augustine of Canterbury?

The answer would appear to be at least partly to do with precisely this lack of an English connection. Veneration of the various English saints seems to have had a primarily local focus, in the places specifically associated with them: St Cuthbert in Northumbria, St Edmund in Bury St Edmunds, St Alban in... well, I'll give you three guesses. This in effect meant that they were in competition with each other, which militated against one of them coming out 'on top', as it were.

St George, on the other hand, had been known in England since the 8th century, and venerated as patron saint of soldiers since the time of the Crusades, but he really came to prominence in England with the publication, in 1265, of the Legenda Aurea, which included the tale of George and the Dragon. The theory is that this legend took off particularly well in England because of its similarity to an older Anglo-Saxon one: after all, Christianity has a long history of 'piggy-backing' (and I mean that in a good way) on existing customs and traditions. And this, assisted by his popularity among military types (Very Important People in those days), led to him being acknowledged as the patron saint of England by the late 1300s.

There have been calls at various times for George to be replaced by St Alban or St Edmund, but in the meantime, happy St George's Day!

(Information mostly taken from Wikipedia, the Catholic Encylopaedia and here).

Shiny!

I have new toys! I also have significantly less money than I did a couple of weeks ago.

The main new toy is a rather shiny (both literally and à la Firefly) laptop. It's an Acer Aspire 6930G (*nods sagely*), with a 2GHz dual core processor, 4GB of RAM and 250GB hard drive (which seems slightly excessive given that my 6-year-old desktop's 40GB is still about a third full). Sadly, it is infected with Vista (*spit, spit*), but some things can't be helped. I've spent the best part of this week getting it all set up - and using up a fair chunk of my download limit putting Useful Things like Spotify and Firefox on it.

And this is a proper grown-up handbag - some of you will recognise the little dog on the tag (and those of you who don't almost certainly don't care). Isn't it pretty...

This is actually much more of an extravagance than the laptop, because nobody *really* needs to spend that much money on a bag, but I figured it's about time I stopped going around looking like a student, now that I'm 30 and have a proper job. Plus it holds loads of stuff.

Finally, I have a new cooker. No photo because, well, it's a cooker. It'll be nice to be able to bake cakes again, though.

Planet of the slightly disappointing

The Doctor! Lee Evans! Thingy off Eastenders! Finally, it's time for the first of this year's Doctor Who specials!

Things I liked:

• The desert planet (i.e. Dubai) was absolutely gorgeous.
• Lee Evans' mad scientist was actually kind of fun, which was unexpected.
  
• Flying bus = awesome.
• The swarm of metal cuttlefish looked cool.
  

Things I didn't like:

• Michelle Ryan can't act. And her character was really annoying.
  
• The whole 'I'm posh, therefore it's OK to steal' thing. Please.
• The fly aliens being killed off so casually.
• The psychic foreshadowing stuff is getting a bit old now.
  

Elsewhere on the net, I've seen people comment that Lady Christina, or whatever her name was, should have been able to understand the fly aliens' language, because she was with the Doctor. I don't think that's necessarily the case, because it's the Tardis that does the translation magic, and it was stuck back on Earth. That's not to say there weren't plenty of other plot holes, of course, but it's Doctor Who - and not only that, but an RTD episode - so what else can we expect.

In general, it wasn't great, but to be honest I've got a bit bored of Doctor Who over the last couple of series: it's not been that bad, but it just hasn't engaged me the way Torchwood (which, objectively speaking, is significantly more rubbish) has. I am, though, looking forward to the next full series, once Steven Moffat takes over, because he's the one responsible for most of the really outstanding episodes in DW: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Blink in particular.

In praise of the tea room

I spent this afternoon in a particularly fine example of a dying breed: the traditional tea room. I had proper tea (Lapsang Souchong), served in a proper teapot, and a proper freshly baked scone with jam and cream. The company wasn't bad either :-)

I love places like that. When I was a student in a certain northern cathedral city, I spent a good proportion of my time in Vennels, which doesn't appear to have a website but sells excellent tea, even better hot chocolate and the biggest slices of homemade cake you have ever seen. And then there was the place, the name of which I've forgotten, that did Maltesers cake. Mmmm...

So, given that the English are supposedly still a nation of tea drinkers, how come all you can find in most towns these days are the various chains of coffee shops? Coffee shops can't make tea (some of them can't make coffee either, but that's by the by). They insist on using hot water from the coffee machine, when, as everyone knows, tea has to be made with boiling water - and this isn't just pickiness; it doesn't brew properly if the water isn't hot enough. And then they usually serve it to you with both the milk and the tea bag in the mug, which is just wronger than a wrong thing that's mistaken.

Mind you, it'll be even worse when I move to Brussels. There, you get served with a glass of not particularly hot water, with a bag of Lipton Yellow Label (a substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea) on the side. Hmm, it looks like I have two choices: coffee, or beer. I know which one I'll be going for...

ETA: On the plus side, I've recently discovered that there are no Starbucks in Belgium (well, technically there's one, but it's in Brussels airport so can safely be ignored).

Star Trekking

So, one of the trailers before Watchmen was for the new Star Trek film. I'd somehow managed to avoid knowing anything about it (yes, it really is that long since I went to the cinema), so I was intrigued. What's going on? Aren't they taking themselves a bit too seriously for Star Trek? Is that supposed to be a young Kirk? Ooh, isn't that Sylar?

A quick Google reveals that the answers to the last two questions (and apparently to the second as well) is yes. I remain dubious about a Star Trek film featuring an unfamiliar cast, but surely it can't be worse than Nemesis, or indeed the whole of Enterprise.

Can it?

On graphic novels and films thereof

Alan Moore famously hates all film adaptations of his graphic novels, and refuses to have his name in the credits. His argument is, in essence, that it's impossible to adapt them: they were specifically written to exploit the features of the comic-book medium, and therefore another medium cannot possibly do them justice.

To a certain extent, I can see where he's coming from: the film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for example, was a complete travesty. However, I think he's missing the point.

All film adaptations of other media involve compromises and 're-imaginings', as they say in Hollywood. Books, plays, computer games (I'm prepared to admit I quite enjoyed the first Resident Evil film), even television shows - they all inevitably have elements that simply don't translate onto the big screen. As a result, I think you really need to look at an adaptation, of any kind, on its own merits, rather than judging it by comparison with the source material. Admittedly, I can't think of a film that I've preferred over the book it was based on (with the possible exception of Brokeback Mountain - if you haven't read the Annie Proulx short story on which it's based, I'd highly recommend it, but the film had, for me, more emotional impact), but, equally, I've never read a 'book of the movie' that was anything other than utter drivel. V for Vendetta is a great comic and, pace Alan Moore, it's also a good movie - yes, the comic has more depth to it, but Hugo Weaving does a fantastic job acting with just his voice.

Which brings me to Watchmen. I was in two minds about whether to bother going to see it in the cinema (it didn't help that my main source of film information, Mark Kermode, was not impressed). But I was at a loose end and fancied getting out of the house, so off I went, and I have to say I wasn't very impressed either.

It's way too long, for a start - and apparently it's going to be even longer on the DVD version. And it's too violent - yes, yes, I know, it's supposed to be, but some bits really are quite deeply unpleasant (and I had to close my eyes at the bit with the axe in the head). The main problem, though (and I'm far from the first to say this) is that, perhaps ironically given Alan Moore's objections, it's actually far too faithful to the source material. I'm sure the fanboys are delighted at how much of the plot Snyder's managed to shoehorn in, but I'm no fanboy (well, obviously, but I'm not a fangirl either), and I found that his reverence towards the comic rather robbed it of life. There's too much going on, and far too often it felt more like 'and this is the frame on the top left of page 24' than anything else.

It's not all bad, though. It does better than V for Vendetta at capturing the depths and layers of the source material. Jackie Earl Haley does a great job as Rorschach. Some of the cinematography is fantastic - particularly certain shots that really echo the look of Dave Gibbons' illustrations. And the soundtrack, ranging from 99 Luftballons to Mozart's Requiem, is ace.

Overall? I quite enjoyed it, but I'm glad I went to the mid-afternoon showing - it wouldn't have been worth paying the full admission price. And, of course, it further confirmed the truth of the quote by JW Eagan (no, no idea who he is, or if he ever said anything else of interest): 'Never judge a book by its movie'.

Crucifying the Crucifixion

It's that time of year again, folks, when all the big choirs are singing a Bach Passion of one flavour or another, and all the choirs that can't quite cope with that are doing Stainer's Crucifixion. And this year, for the first time, I was in the choir stalls instead of the audience.

Actually, I should apologise for the post title, because we didn't crucify it at all: in fact, apart from a couple of slightly wobbly moments, it went very well. And that's the beauty of the Stainer: it was specifically written to be singable by an ordinary parish choir and accessible to an ordinary parish congregation, and it succeeds admirably in those aims. Yes, it's very much of its time, fairly dripping with syrup in places; yes, the libretto is, umm, not exactly the finest poetry the world has ever seen; and yes, it does drag terribly in places, at least at the speed Richard Hickox takes it in the HMV Classics recording. But God So Loved The World is an incomparably beautiful setting of a verse (John 3:16) that expresses the very essence of the Christian faith; the hymn tunes (particularly Cross of Jesus) have stood the test of time; and the all-male-voice setting of Jesus' final words is remarkably effective.

Tallis it ain't. But it does what it set out to do very well, and I for one am glad that it's still going strong.