Happy New Year from The Glass Walking-Stick

 Wishing all you lovely people in the Blogosphere a happy and healthy 2025! In the words of a certain Mr. J. Ono Lennon, "Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear."

( Okay, he was talking about Christmas, but it still applies. ) Cheers!

Happy New Year from The Glass Walking-Stick

Here's wishing you lovely people in the Blogosphere a 2024 filled with peace, love and light x

Happy New Year from The Glass Walking-Stick

 All the staff here at TGW-S ( er, just me actually ) would like to wish all you lovely people in Blogsville a happy and healthy start to this year that some are already calling "the one before 2024."

To mark the occasion of another solar revolution Sarah, Sophie and I went for a five-mile walk with our friend Caz today and found ourselves up to our proverbial armpits in mud. It was a fun but somewhat challenging way to start the year, but we needed to get out and clear the cobwebs away :-)

Here's Caz ( in the foreground ) and the three strange people who dragged her out into the wilderness. 

( I don't think my hand looks like it's attached to the rest of me in this shot. And why's it so large? Freaky. )

I also don't think Sarah's really enjoying the experience in this photo...

Happy New Year! Peace, love and all that stuff.

Happy New Year from The Glass Walking-Stick

I hope all you lovely people out there in the Blogosphere have a happy and healthy New Year and here's hoping things improve for all of us in 2021. Peace and love.

Things I Didn't Blog About In 2018 Part Two: Doctor Who Catch-up

Sorry, 2018  -  I'm not done with you yet. In a suitably time-warped kind of way I'm still dredging you back up from the temporal vortex to try and atone for my pitiful attempts at blogging during your titular twelve months. And this, er, time I'm looking at the last six episodes of Doctor Who, starting with:

Demons Of The Punjab ( by Vinay Patel )

After the tedious Tsuranga Conundrum had driven me to distraction the previous week I was really hoping for something with some more substance. Well, any substance really. Luckily this story set during the Partition of India delivered that, and how. The Doctor and her friends travel back in time to 1947 so Yaz can meet her beloved grandmother as a young woman. Unfortunately they land right in the middle of a cataclysmic event as India is being partitioned and Pakistan created with dire and violent consequences.
This episode was one of the highlights of the series for me  -  very well scripted and acted, with a sweet love story at its heart and some suitably gorgeous visuals. Although Rosa earlier in the series had also tackled the dangers of messing with history, this story was sufficiently different to get a pass from me for that slight redundancy.

Kerblam! ( by Pete McTighe )

An episode which could very well have been titled "Kerblamazon!", this was Who-style social satire, much in the vein of Seventh Doctor stories like The Happiness Patrol or Paradise Towers. And, like those stories, it was only partly successful. The concept of dodgy goings-on in a space-based delivery company was fine, with its skewering of modern day businesses who exploit their workers and don't pay their taxes, but the execution was mostly toothless. I think it could have been much darker and sharper but it ended up being just about average, demonstrating again that the new regime are more comfortable with Earth-focused stories than with intergalactic escapades.

The Witchfinders ( by Joy Wilkinson )

Another trip into the past, in this case to 17th century Lancashire, and a village in the midst of a witch frenzy. This was a terrific episode, Doctor Who tackling tea-time Folk Horror, with some bleak, wintry vistas and a suitably chilling alien menace. It also featured two of the best guest performances of the series from Siobhan Finneran and Alan Cumming as, respectively, a witch-obsessed landowner and a very camp King James. So far in its short run the Chibnall era has seemed very squeamish in terms of horror in the subject matter but this episode went a long way to redressing the balance.

It Takes You Away ( by Ed Hime )

A very strange episode, this, which may have benefited from being a two-parter, as the story changed narrative gears at least twice in its 50 minutes. ( I hope longer stories do return in future series so we at least see the return of the show's emblematic cliffhangers. ) The Doctor and friends went to the aid of a young, blind girl trapped in a cabin in a Scandinavian forest, surrounded by monsters. Although, that's how it seemed at first. The story turned out to share some ideas with Shyamalan's The Village before developing twists and turns involving a dimensional portal, Kevin Eldon in some very Star Trek-style "bumpy forehead alien" makeup, and a sentient universe in the form of a talking frog. It was that kind of a story. The mad concepts in this episode made it very divisive but I loved the audacity of it, giving us the kind of madness only Doctor Who would dare. And there was a brief return for Sharon D Clarke, in some lovely scenes with Bradley Walsh, which added a very poignant, er, dimension.

The Battle Of Anskoor Av Kolos ( by Chris Chibnall )

The series finale which didn't really feel like a finale. Nu Who fans have become used over the last 13 years or so to epic finales where the "arc plots", be they involving a Bad Wolf or a crack in time or a returning Time Lord / Lady, all come together and hopefully tie up dangling plot threads.
( Although, in Moffatt's case, some of these threads were never tied up. Just how did Rory escape from those Silence-infested tunnels? Huh, Steve? ) This year's was more of a stand-alone with the main "resolution" being that of Ryan and Graham's relationship issues.
But, saying that, this was still an enjoyable story which saw the return of Tim Shaw, some impressive glimpses of an alien planet, complete with spaceship graveyard, and a pleasing debate on the morality of executing ( or not ) genocidal alien monsters.

Resolution ( by Chris Chibnall )

The new Year's Day special gave us a return to Sheffield and a return of the show's quintessential villains, the Daleks. Only, this time it was a single Skarosian mutant which had been entombed on Earth for centuries and, after being awoken by some hapless archaeologists, went on the hunt for a new body. This was a cracking episode, very old-school, with plenty of action, stunts and special effects and some classic confrontation scenes between the Doctor and her oldest foe, this time in armour desperately cobbled together in a scrapyard. Daleks en masse and powerful can often be boring ( which is why Davros was created ) but a lone, vulnerable Dalek is always the scariest and most dangerous. Chibnall wisely realises this and pulled out all the stops for this thrilling story. Although it was disappointing that the 21st century Who tradition of a Christmas Day episode seemed to have come to an end, this New Year's Day special is hopefully the start of a new tradition.
Of course, the biggest disappointment is that we will have to wait until 2020 before we see the next series. Where's that Tardis?

I'll leave the final words to the Doctor herself:
"Keep your faith. Travel hopefully. The universe will surprise you. Constantly."

Soundtrack: Songs In The Key Of Life by Stevie Wonder

Happy New Year's Eve from The Overlook Hotel!

Songs of 2017

Firstly, Happy New Year, people of Starship Blog! I hope you've all had a peaceful seasonal break.
Okay, most people will actually write their "Best Of" lists during the year to which they apply but, you know, where's the fun in that? As ever I'm allowing the best bits of 2017 to spill over into 2018 to bring some joy to this potentially terrifying but also potentially amazing new 365-day trip around the sun. Last year was a great time for new music but not necessarily for "chart" music. I have to admit I paid less attention than ever in my life to Top 40 -type songs during 2017. One or two songs did occasionally grab me but most of the chart fodder just seemed too superficial and manufactured for my tastes. I know that's the nature of pop music and it can be a glorious thing when done well but I found myself digging deeper for the truly good stuff.
Starting with this:


New York's favourite indie-dance hipsters stormed back from their controversial "retirement" with the American Dream album, demonstrating they're still the absolute best at what they do. Cracking songs such as Call The Police, Tonite and Oh Baby were suffused with James Murphy's paradoxically world-weary optimism and the sound of a band almost telepathically in tune with each other. I'm almost genetically predisposed to love this band, with their debts to Bowie and Talking Heads all too obvious, but I can't resist it  -  one listen to those analogue synths in Oh Baby and I'm gone...



And, talking of comebacks, East Kilbride's finest the Jesus & Mary Chain also returned, older and hopefully wiser but still 100 per cent rock 'n' roll. Their age-old formula of Velvets meets Phil Spector meets Punk still holds up and many of their new songs are as good as anything they've done. It was an absolute joy to see them play live back in April, 25 years since I last saw them and, if anything, the new songs sounded even better live  -  Always Sad, Amputation and The Two Of Us being the stand outs.



St Vincent is an artist who's never been properly on my radar. I've been aware of Annie Clark for a while but never really checked out her music until now. It seems she's become a huge pop star without me even noticing  -  I really should pay more attention to things like that. Her recent songs are as much perfect pop songs as they are acerbic comments on modern celebrity "culture", and her videos are amazing! In an age when the music video is more or less redundant St Vincent has brought some artistry back to the form. It's like early Lady Gaga but with a PhD. Check out future electro-pop classics Los Ageless ( which you can do above ), New York and the scarily sexy Masseduction...



I can barely think of any new bands in recent years ( certainly not UK bands ) who can match Everything Everything for sheer quality in songwriting, performance and overall ambition. If anything, they occasionally overcompensate with the ambition and some of their music can be too much of an aural maze, but when all their stars align they are unstoppable. Night Of The Long Knives, Can't Do and Desire again demonstrate how this band can peer into the existential abyss of the 21st century and still pull out some pop gold...



My 2017 Award for Rock 'n' Roll Lunacy goes to The Moonlandingz. As well as being one of the most head-spinningly mental live acts I've seen for years they also somehow tamed some of their electro-psyche-pop outpourings and wrestled them into a recording studio. If you value your sanity, don't watch the following videos: Sweet Saturn Mine, Vesssels, or Black Hanz ( oops! )



Without a doubt my Song Of 2017 is Living In The City by Hurray For The Riff Raff. This is a pleasingly retro-sounding song with echoes of Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Jonathan Richman, and the feel of a sweltering summer's night in a big city. The formidable Alynda Segarra is apparently known for a more acoustic sound but is here branching out in a rockier direction and it sounds great. I still haven't bought her latest album, The Navigator, but songs like the title track, Hungry Ghost and Pa'lante seem like such a perfect blend of the personal and the political that I think I'm going to have to get it soon.

Bands I like but didn't listen to properly last year:
Arcade Fire ( new album still unwrapped ), The War On Drugs, Pond, Courtmey Barnett & Kurt Vile

Honourary mentions:
Weaver by Richard Dawson
When The God Of Love Returns There'll be Hell To Pay by Father John Misty
Kept It All To Myself by The Weather Station
If The Storms Never Came by Joan Shelley ( Tom Wiggins  -  check this one out! )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x8esUNpa5A

Just in case you haven't heard...

Happy New Year from The Glass Walking-Stick

Here's wishing all you lovely people out there in the Blogosphere love, peace and happiness for 2017 and let's hope we can all survive the coming Trumpocalypse ;-)

Happy New Year, people of Spaceship Earth

Here's wishing peace, love and good times to all you wonderful people out there...

Post no. 800: Welcoming a New Year and looking back at the old one...

I don't know... two days into 2015 and I still haven't got my hoverboard yet. It's a disaster!
OK, that's the obligatory Back To The Future / hoverboard reference out of the way. It had to be done. Hopefully the year people are already calling "not 2014" will be memorable for more than failed predictions from a 1980s movie...
So, what's been going down in Groove Town lately? Things have obviously been quiet here recently on the blogging front, due to my complete lack of energy / inspiration / commitment ( delete as applicable ) and the intrusion of a certain holiday season but I hope to put that right and resume more regular blogging. ( I know, Dear Reader, that you've heard all this before... but, it's a new year  -  you can't begrudge a blogger some good intentions can you? Can you...? I recently read a fascinating post on blogging over at Kid Robson's ever-wonderful Crivens! which made me stop and think about what I'm doing here and why. No real conclusions as yet but it certainly got me thinking. Watch this space. ) Where was I? Oh yeah... Christmas...

We had a pretty good Christmas ( thanks for asking ) although Sarah has been ill and that's limited us somewhat, but we made the best of it. Here she is, relaxing in our gracious drawing-room, politely ignoring the fact that the servants have dropped straw all over the carpet yet again. You just can't get the staff. ( I know I posted this photo last time, but I like it... ) Sophie also came home for a couple of days over Christmas, so it was good for us all to be together on Christmas Day. After the usual presents and food shenanigans we all went out for a walk in the afternoon. It was a lovely, cold, bright day and we wandered around Gloucester's beautiful Cathedral...

Here are Sophie and I in the Cathedral's courtyard...

And here are Sophie and James being their usual quiet, reserved selves back at home...

I've still got some unfinished business with 2014 ( blog-wise ) so expect more posts looking back at the year of Ice Bucket Challenges and gun-toting space raccoons...

Happy New Year!

Here's wishing a happy and healthy 2014 for all you lovely people out there in Blogland. I'd just like to thank everyone who's stopped by at The Glass Walking-Stick over the last year, however briefly. I do wonder occasionally if I'm just talking to myself here but I do appreciate everybody who takes the time to leave a comment.

As some of you may remember I had quite a tough time earlier in the year with health issues and blogging has certainly helped distract me from some of the more unpleasant aspects of the last 12 months. ( Even though I didn't post half of the stuff I meant to... ) The support I received from fellow bloggers on here was also much appreciated. The majority of you cool dudes I only know from this 'ere blog ( you could all be axe murderers for all I know ) but I like to think of you as good friends, if only of the virtual kind :-)

 ( Jasper and Hero also say Hi! )

And so does James...
( I worry about that boy sometimes. Where does he get it from? )

Sarah's here too ( with that handsome Hero )...

And here are James and Sophie ( with James' best friend, Matt ) on James' birthday last September...

Happy New Year to all of you from all of us!

Happy New Year!

I hope all of you out there in the Blogworld and beyond are having a fantastic start to the year I'm contractually obliged to refer to as Twenny-thir'een ( that's 2013 in old money )
Above are perennial favourites around these parts, Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes, embarking on another adventure, full of youth and optimism, ready for the future and whatever it holds.

To be frank I'm struggling myself to feel that positive about the future at the moment, veering between optimism and pessimism on a daily basis. I'm waiting for test results at the moment, resulting from the operation I had back in November, and it's casting quite a shadow over the year to come. In the last week I've had a bone marrow sample taken ( ouch! and on Christmas Eve, too... ) and had a full body X-ray, then next week I'm going for an MRI, to be followed at some point by radiotherapy. Although I feel like a mad scientist's plaything at the moment this is all obviously for my benefit and, hopefully, a case of my specialist being over-cautious and covering all bases. That's the best-case scenario, anyway...

But, as I said ( and not wanting to depress you all... too much... ), I hope everyone reading this has a Happy and healthy New Year. And, in that spirit, here are some of the things that make me happy, family and friends: