Prime Suspect

When we watched "Snowpiercer", I noticed that ITV X now has a load of shows that had previously been reserved for Britbox (a service we had never subscribed to, nor intended to ever try). This was a fairly limited boon, as there's not really a great deal of "classic" TV that I'd really like to revisit, but the one thing I was keen to see was "Prime Suspect".

I missed out on most of "Prime Suspect" first time out as I just wasn't particularly interested. I remembered the end scene, but nothing much leading up to that, and I had no recollection of ever watching any of the sequels (although...). And having missed out, I decided to embark of a watch.

It turns out that ITV X just isn't a good way of watching these things - unless you're willing to pay for the ad-free "premium" service (which isn't worth it), the shows are ruined by multitudes of badly-placed adverts. Still, I persevered.

The original "Prime Suspect" is rightly considered a classic, centred around a towering performance by Helen Mirren. That's probably not news - it's like saying "the Sun's quite big". And it remains as grim and hard-hitting as it ever did. It's basically not something they'd make these days, which in some ways is a shame - in the years since the production values of TV have advanced beyond recognition, but the storytelling has lost something, especially in recent years.

Once past the original, though, there's a marked drop-off. Although the central performance remains strong, it's hampered by the issue that Tennison's colleagues have largely accepted their mistake in the first series - a logical response to being proven wrong, but also a loss of much of the dramatic tension. Plus, it then seemed that they were cycling through the various -isms for their topic: sexism, followed by racism, followed by homophobia (and transphobia).

Oddly, "Prime Suspect 5" is currently missing from the service. Which is a shame, as I think it serves as a conclusion for the 'original' series, with the final two seasons being set much later. Oh well - at this point I'm done with my watch-through, so I don't think I'll seek it out later.

"Prime Suspect 6", then, is interesting in presenting a new side of things, with Tennison coming towards the end of her career and feeling rather overlooked. It's also something of a reset, and regains a lot of the freshness of the early series. It's pretty good; certainly better than two of the standalone episodes in PS4.

But then "Prime Suspect 7" is an odd thing. Here, I found myself remembering various bits of what happened, which is odd - I didn't think I'd seen this previously, but I guess I must have done. But "Prime Suspect 7" suffers a great deal from the issue that Tennison is now no longer presented as a superb detective who has been unjustly held back; by this point she's actually a distinct liability and actually dangerous. Indeed, far from tolerating her various foibles, her colleagues should by rights by arresting and charging her. Which makes for a great performance by Helen Mirren, but a rather sad ending to the series as a whole.

Anyway, that's that. I'm inclined to recommend watching the original, if you missed it at the time (and can bear the adverts), but probably skipping the rest.

Challenge Completed

Some years ago I posted that I'd been having some difficulties teaching Funsize to ride her bike. Well, it hasn't been easy - a few months after that post we'd cracked it, but unfortunately she'd grown out of that bike. The new one, purchased for Christmas, was a little too big for her, which led to a long spell where she absolutely refused to try riding it, after which we were back to square one.

Anyway, over the course of this break from work we've been working hard at it, and the good news is that we had a breakthrough on Saturday which was then consolidated yesterday. So that's that job done - Funsize can now officially ride a bike. Just as long as she doesn't forget again...

Getting Caught Up

I've been off work for the past two weeks, and as a consequence of that I've been able to get caught up on my reading. The most recent novels:

The Labyrinth of the Spirits

The final novel in the "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" cycle is a fairly hefty read, and was the volume that led to me being behind in the first place. It's a twisting novel, part detective story, part thriller, part horror, and part something else. It's hard going, but also very rewarding.

Although completely different in style, tone, and content, the series that this one most puts me in mind is the Musketeer novels by Dumas - in both cases the first novel ("The Three Musketeers" and "Shadow of the Wind") stands as one of the very best novels I have ever read. In both cases, I recommend them wholeheartedly.

After that, though, the stories get somewhat harder to get through - "Twenty Years After" is a bit of a slog, to put it mildly, while I found "The Angel's Game" tough to digest. Then there's something of a respite, in the form of the start of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", or "The Prisoner of Heaven", and then it's the march to the end.

But when that end is finally reached, after thousands of pages of reading, it is triumphant. Indeed, as I came to the end of "The Labyrinth of the Spirits", I found that I genuinely didn't know what one character was going to do... and indeed I genuinely didn't know what I wanted them to do.

All in all, a great read.

A Stroke of the Pen

The lost stories by Terry Pratchett, and the third or fourth "last book" by my late favourite author. This was another collection of twenty short stories culled from his early days writing for newspapers, and it's packed with the usual collection of wit and craziness that is familiar from the other collections. But, alas, it means that I must mourn again that there is nothing more to read.

Hercule Poirot's Silent Night

Speaking of an unexpected read, I had assumed that Sophie Hannah was done with her neo-Christie stories, so it was with some pleasure that I discovered this fifth volume (and, indeed, that there's a sixth coming).

This is the standard Poirot murder-mystery, full of a cast of fairly ghastly characters, a set of clues that eventually come to an unexpected conclusion, with many twists and turns along the way. Good stuff.

#7: "The Labyrinth of the Spirits", by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#8: "A Stroke of the Pen", by Terry Pratchett
#9: "Hercule Poirot's Silent Night", by Sophie Hannah

Day 100: Update on Goals

Time for the second update on goals for the year:

• Books: This is slightly behind - by day 100 I should have completed 8.2 books, so on paper I'm a little behind. However, I have two books well in progress, which combine to cover the shortfall - just. The issue is exactly as I identified last time - I have a good number of very long books to read, which means it's easy to get bogged down.
• Weight: This is progressing, largely due to the effect of Lent. It is now back on track for the year, while at the same time not as advanced as I'd hoped to be in time for the wedding. Which isn't ideal, given the need to be fit for dancing, but there it is.
• Career: No further progress.
• Church Website: No further progress.
• Redecoration: No further progress. LC did approach our preferred glazier about getting a quote for the windows, but they didn't have capacity to provide one at this time. We're now musing on whether to wait for them (likely) or seek another option.
• Blogging: This was not set as a goal, but if I had targeted the normal 120 posts for the year, the expectation would have been to hit 33 by now. I'm somewhat behind that, though not disastrously so. Still, I'd like to be back on track for the next update.
• Home Automation: No further progress. I have identified the final "control" device for the system, but as it is fairly regularly reduced by varying amounts, I'm currently waiting for it to hit the price point I'm happy with before buying. That may mean delaying for Prime Day later in the year.

And that's that. As anticipated last time, most of the goals haven't progressed in the last seven weeks, but that's not a problem. I have slipped a bit behind in some of them, but not too badly - there's nothing that's fallen to unrecoverable levels.

Eureka!

I didn't get much sleep last night. About 3am I suddenly realised the key to a problem I'd been grappling with for a couple of weeks, which in hindsight is now obvious. Now I just need to find a way to explain that to the relevant people, in the hope that they might actually do something about it.

Which on the one hand is really good, since it means I've actually got a solution to something that had been eluding me; on the other hand, it meant I didn't get enough sleep. And it's going to be a long day.

Oh Dear

Much to my disgust, I find myself concluding that I preferred Rishi Sunak's disastrous government to the current lot. Yes, they were absolutely awful, but at least they offered the possibility of hope - that the government would one day change and could potentially be better.

Unfortunately, the current government is pretty much the best that could be put together by the shambles that is our current political class. They're to the right of Thatcher, hampered only by there not being any mines to close down (though Grangemouth might compensate somewhat for that), and seem intent on moving further in that direction.

And there's no hope of improvement - the Tories are as bad as ever and are in utter disarray, and they're looking increasingly likely to be overtaken and replaced by Reform who are (or should be) a joke of a party.

Basically, this is the worst government of my lifetime. And I suspect it may be the best government of the rest of my life.

Wilted

After a hard-fought win against Greece on Thursday, Scotland had left themselves in a really strong position to stay in group A of the Nations League - just avoid a defeat in the return leg and they'd do it.

Naturally, I therefore expected them to collapse in a heap, and naturally, they did.

And so, once again, we have the aftermath of another failure by Scotland, another manager having to reflect on what went wrong, and another batch of players failing to live up to their potential.

And none of it is a surprise. Oh well, on to the next false dawn!

Star Wars Day Party!

Due to a confluence of events I now find myself hosting a gathering on the 4th of May, better known as Star Wars Day. I have, of course, been waiting for this all my life!

Needless to say, I can't let this opportunity go without taking full advantage, and so there is now a need to make suitable arrangements. But what form will these arrangements take? And will the Jedi or the Sith come into the ascendance?

Time will tell, as it always does.

Snowpiercer

Another show we've been watching for a while, and that we've just reached the end of, is "Snowpiercer" - a post-apocalyptic show about a massive train that contains the last remnants of humanity in a frozen world. There are four seasons, the first three of which are on Netflix, and the last is on ITV-X (actually, they're all there now).

Truth is, I almost gave up on "Snowpiercer" in the second episode, when there was almost a scene so horrible I just couldn't continue. Fortunately, they backed off from that one.

But "Snowpiercer" ends up having three great seasons, and then one more season. Season 4 is, unfortunately, rather disjointed and not close to the same standard as the others. But it is an ending, and sometimes that's what matters.

(Incidentally, there's also a movie called "Snowpiercer", which has the same premise but is otherwise significantly different. Both are okay, but I prefer the series.)

Ultimately, I think I recommend watching the first three seasons of this, and then recommend calling it a day - the fourth season just wasn't worth the wait. But then, even knowing what I know now I would have watched that final season, so make of that what you will.

#6: "Nero", by Conn Iggulden

Cobra Kai

When we got Netflix, I was pleasantly surprised to find "Cobra Kai" available on the service. This was a show I'd seen some trailers for and being intrigued by, but never expected to get to watch. I therefore raced through the first two seasons, and was not disappointed.

Unfortunately, as time went on the show became more and more convoluted, always trying to top the last twist, and if I'm honest it was all the weaker for that. By the end of the fifth season, my distinct feeling was that it had gone on too long. (That said, the structure they had meant that it couldn't have stopped - every season except the first and maybe the fifth ended in such a manner that you had to know what happened next.)

I've recently finished the sixth and final season. And I'm afraid in many ways it's like the lackluster final season of "Babylon 5" - they've ended up with not quite enough story stretched across too many episodes.

And yet, and yet...

The final season of "Bablyon 5" has five final episodes that are nothing short of outstanding, providing a great and massively cathartic ending for the season - they wrapped everything up in the neatest of possible bows. It is truly one of the great endings in TV history.

And "Cobra Kai" is another, because it also has a final five episodes that twist and turn, and yet somehow manage to bring everything together into an ending that on one hand seems to come out of nowhere... and on the other is obviously how it had to end. The finale, in particular, manages to sum up everything that the show was about.

So... "Cobra Kai": starts great, loses steam a bit, but the ending is great.

One Week Only

Since the start of the year, my commute to and from work has just been awful - it has seemed that every single road has had roadworks on it, with the inevitably lengthy delays. Though I did find one that didn't just after Storm Eowyn - largely by virtue of the roadwork-infested route I would have usually taken being completely closed.

Anyway, last Friday was a banner day, because finally, finally all the key roads on my main route to work were blessedly free of roadworks. Oh the joy of being able to travel to and from work in a less than hellish manner!

Spin forward to today, a scant four commutes later, and the roadworks are back. Because of course they are.

Free Time

I've recently been finding that free time has been at a serious shortage, and free time with access to a computer even more so. I'm hoping to get caught back up on the blog in the next couple of days, but I guess we'll see - this was probably about the point I started to lose track last year, so it's not impossible that the same is about to happen again.

Cassandra

My latest TV show has been "Cassandra", a six-part German miniseries on Netflix about a murderous AI/smart home.

Unfortunately, it's not great. The title is very clever, but other than that I'm afraid it's basically a standard "AI gone wrong" sequence of cliches one after another. The final episode in particular, and all the twists therein, were things that I'd seen many times before.

Which is a shame. The trailers looked really good, and some aspects of it were genuinely well-made and sometimes quite disturbing. But, alas, the rest of it didn't live up to the promise.

Day 50: Update on Goals

2025 is now well underway, so time for the first update on the goals for the year:

• Books: This is on target - by day 50 I should have completed 4.1 books, and I'm somewhat ahead of that. My only slight concern is that my "to read" list contains a number of doorstop volumes, which may slow me down.
• Weight: There has been some limited progress in this area, but I'm not on target for the year. There's still plenty of time, but this does need to become a focus.
• Career: As I said, this can play out in one of two ways, and for the first half of the year I'm focused on the first of these. There were two windows of opportunity here, but the first of those has recently closed, leaving one other. I can't say any more than that.
• Church Website: I've made a very minor update to the website, clearing out a handful of unused pages. But I need to get some work done on this.
• Redecoration: No progress as yet. By the next update I intend to at least have a quote for getting the windows done.
• Blogging: This was not set as a goal, but if I had targeted the normal 120 posts for the year, the expectation would have been to hit 17 by now. As this is indeed the 17th post of the year, that is therefore on target.
• Home Automation: The other "not a goal" has seen no movement thus far. However, there is now a clear target in place, so I may be able to advance some of it in the next few months.

And that's that. In terms of goals, things are looking okay, but everything is in the early days at this stage. To be honest, I'm not expecting a massive change to anything for the next update, but as long as nothing falls to the "yeah, I can't do this" bucket that's not too bad.

The Next Bond: A Proposal

Every so often the news about casting the next James Bond flares up for a while, and then seems to go cold again. A bunch of names are in the frame, and then gradually they all fall out and it starts again. The latest news is that they're apparently looking for someone to fill the role for the next 5ish movies across 15ish years, so they're looking for a male in his early to mid thirties.

I must admit, though, that I think they're making a mistake.

The thing is, "No Time to Die" represented a fairly definitive end to the adventures of James Bond as-was. Whether you consider the Daniel Craig films to be a continuation of the previous continuity or being their own thing, he pretty clearly died. This gives the producers an opportunity to wipe the board clear, and start over.

What I'd be inclined to do, therefore, is to produce a number of standalone, and more experimental, Bond films. Do something unexpected with the character, and see how the audience takes it.

So, for instance, they could cast Idris Elba as an older Bond - if he's only signed for one film, why would his age be a barrier? Or they could see if Dalton would be willing to come back and do a much older Bond, forced back into action by circumstance but forced to contend with the fact that now there are people who can do it better.

Or maybe they could revert back to the 60's and show Bond in his pomp, or even the 1860s and explore how the situation changes if, instead of being an agent of a fading world power, he's an agent of the dominant world power. Or maybe they do a film about Commander Bond of the Royal Navy in WWII - something to do with the Nazis having stolen nuclear secrets, perhaps?

They could even use this as an opportunity to do the "female James Bond" they've been talking about for 20 years. I think it's a terrible idea (on a par with a "male Jane Eyre"), but maybe they just need to get it out of their system?

Anyway, that's how I think I would approach it at this time. And maybe they find something that has real legs, and can turn it into a whole series. Or maybe they do a few, let a decade pass, and then cast someone we haven't heard of yet and start over.

#4: "The Maps of Middle Earth", by J.R.R. Tolkien (sort of)
#5: "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", by J.K. Rowling (a book for Funsize)

Rebooting Buffy

Every few years there is talk of a reboot, reimagination, or continuation of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and every time until now it comes to nothing. This time, it does look like the project has legs, helped by the fact that Sarah Michelle Gellar is on board to reprise her role.

Unfortunately, my position on any "Buffy" reboot is the same as my position on any "Firefly" reboot (or "Angel", "Dollhouse", or any of the rest): I'm not interested in any such project that doesn't involve Joss Whedon... and I'm not interested in any project that does.

#3: "So You Want to be a Game Master", by Justin Alexander

And Another Thing...

While I'm on the topic of streamers...

Netflix have recently informed me that they're increasing their subscription cost again. But at the same time Netflix are in the unfortunate position that they've already lost many of the shows that I've been watching, cancelled almost all the others that I thought I might want to watch, and now have one of the very few I am waiting for about to drop their final ever episodes.

In other words, I think Netflix may be joining NOW and Paramout+ on the "occasional" subscription list, leaving only Disney+ on the "permanent" list.

Boiling a Frog

I don't generally watch a lot of shows on Amazon Prime - we're mostly subscribed for other things, and most of what I do watch is elsewhere. But as it happens I have recently found myself watching two shows in sequence ("Rings of Power" and then "The Rig" - the latter I recommend, by the way), and the adverts have been bothering me.

For a long time, Amazon Prime didn't have any adverts, and that was good. Then they introduced the adverts, along with a surcharge to get rid of those adverts. But at that time the adverts were few and far between, and often they put the adverts at the start of the show and so once you actually got to watching you could watch without interruption.

And that was fine.

But what has been very obvious while watching these two shows is that things have been getting worse all the time - there are now more adverts, more interruptions, and those interruptions seem to be worse integrated into the show, sometimes even seeming to cut in the middle of a sentence.

I would assume that this is mostly about Amazon really wanting us to pay the surcharge to get rid of the adverts. And I'm quite sure that they do indeed want that money.

Except that I'm reasonably sure that it won't stop there - I fully expect them to start having people sponsor their various shows, meaning they get a dedicated advert before the show starts (or, perhaps, even during the show). And one of the conditions for that sponsorship, and one of the things done with other streamers where you pay to "skip the adverts" is that the sponsorship is not considered an advert, and so can't be skipped.

Basically, they're looking to boil the frog, to gradually turn up the heat to extract the absolute maximum amount of money they can from all sources.

But there comes a point where instead the frog jumps out of the pot. Amazon Prime is one of the weakest of the streamers (as I said, we're subscribed for other reasons), so maybe it's time to let it go.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Sweet and Sour Prawn Stir-fry

This one comes from Tom Kerridge's "Real Life Recipes", which is one of the recipe books I keep thinking I should make more use of and yet never seem to get around to.

Anyway, this one was quick and easy to put together, although I was rather nervous of the shallow fry stage for the prawns (large amounts of hot oil always make me nervous, and having small children in the house exacerbates the situation). In future, therefore, I think we'll probably skip the batter and the shallow fry.

In any case, the result was very nice, providing exactly the sort of sweet and sour combination we were expecting and hoping for. Like the sweet and sour dish (from the first "Hairy Dieters" book), the sauce is the key to the dish, and is really easy to make. And it was a winner - to the extent that I'm sorely tempted to drop sweet and sour chicken from my takeaway rotation.

All in all, this one was a winner. We'll surely have it again.

Something to Thank Trump For

The return of the Trump was always going to be horrible, and in the event it has been even more horrible than was expected. Although in hindsight it's an obvious strategy - change so many things so quickly and create so many outrages that the other side just can't keep up on what their supposed to be responding to now.

But there is one good thing that comes of this.

Trump has launched a number of trade wars, and threatened a number more. He's attacked Canada, the EU, made noises about annexing Greenland, and there's no sign that he's anything other than serious. That is, he's attacking his allies and trade partners.

And what that means is that those allies and trade partners should now be in absolutely no doubt: the US cannot be relied on to act in anything other than its perceived self-interest. That has always been true, but until now we've kidded ourselves on, pretended there's a "special relationship".

And that "special relationship", and the equivalants elsewhere, have been extremely dangerous. The EU is far, far too dependent on the US for its defence against Russia. Greenland hosts US military bases rather than looking to its own defence, Canada's economy and fuel security are intricately tied to the US. And, of course, our Trident system is tied in with US technology and systems.

That really needs to stop. If we cannot rely on the US, we need to look to our own interests and our own defence.

And that's a good thing, because the assumption that the big guy with the stick will only ever use it as we direct is always a faulty one.

Entropy

Our kettle died on us on Sunday. On the one hand, this was a mild inconvenience - kettles aren't exactly either very hard to get or very expensive. On the other hand, it's just annoying adding one more job to the list.

And, of course, it's unfortunate having to run out to get a kettle and spend the money just to end up back where we started. Multiply that by, well, everything and it's a constant annoyance of having to maintain everything, all of which gets in the way of making anything better.

Oh well.

In other news, and especially annoying, my car has developed yet another fault - after the type pressure sensors now finally seem to be fixed, it is time for the parking assist mechanism to fail. Another function that I don't make much actual use of, but which is installed and therefore needs to be working.

Sigh.

Lockerbie: A Search for Truth

This was released just before our NOW subscription expired, allowing us to quickly binge-watch it. Which was nice.

"Lockerbie: A Search for Truth" is a 5-part mini-series around the Lockerbie bombing and the aftermath therefore, based primarily on a book written by Jim Swire. Colin Firth plays Swire.

So... where to start.

(Oh, yes, there are spoilers, I guess. But since it's a historical drama, I'm not sure they count.)

Firstly, it's extremely well made, especially the scenes of the disaster itself in the first episode. The cast are very strong, with Firth giving a standout performance. And, more than anything else, it probably bears the closest comparison with "Chernobyl", which I also watched on NOW a few years ago. So that's all to the good.

But...

Somewhere around the middle of the third episode, Swire becomes absolutely convinced that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is not guilty of the crime for which he is later convicted, and the second half of the mini-series follows on from there. All of which is his prerogative, of course.

Unfortunately, the sequence of events as depicted in the show just doesn't work - as presented, the prosecution case utterly falls apart, with just about every witness shown being extremely unreliable, key details coming to light to show that the conviction cannot be safe, and eventually a climactic moment as Swire attempts to bring the whole thing down.

My key problem being with that being that if things did indeed go down that way, there is absolutely no way the judges who were serving as the jury in the trial could have failed to see the problems. Meaning that the only real explanation is an almighty miscarriage of justice - either rank incompetence by five of our most learned judges or outright corruption. I'm afraid that neither of those sits right with me.

(The other thing is that much is made of the logical contradiction of only Abdelbaset al-Megrahi being convicted for the crime - Swire's argument being that the crime was only possible if both the accused were guilty. There's a key problem there: it just isn't so. Consider this: yes, as described, the Lockerbie bombing could not be the work of Megrahi alone, as he didn't have the required airport access. However, that doesn't mean that it required Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, his co-accused, to provide that access - there were others who could have done so. So the "logical contradiction" is not necessarily anything of the kind - the "jury" could feel that the case against Megrahi was sufficient to convict him while also feeling that Fhimah hadn't been sufficiently identified as the co-conspirator.)

I should make note at this point that I make no criticism of Jim Swire in all this - my strong suspicion is that the relevant scenes were heavily edited for dramatic effect, which worked, but at the cost of losing some of the critical nuance.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that the second half of the drama doesn't work anywhere near as well as the first. Which is a shame. Also, barring an intervention by President Trump, I think it's unlikely that we'll ever know the full and unvarnished truth, which is an even bigger shame.

So, do I recommend the show? Hesitantly, I say yes.

#2: "The Ultimate Discworld Companion", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs

Rings of Power, Season Two

If I had written this post a week ago, I would have said that RoP was a vast improvement over the first season, provided you accept that it's very much not Tolkien - it's what you might come up with if the only exposure you'd had to "The Lord of the Rings" was from watching the Peter Jackson movies.

Unfortunately, the final three episodes represent a spectacular collapse in quality the like of which I don't think I've ever seen. Fundamentally, I think it's trying really hard to be good, but just doesn't know how.

There are two fundamental problems I can see.

The first is that there are too many characters and too much space, and too little time. This means that some key character disappear for several episodes at a time, and many others get only a handful of minutes of screentime. There's an awful lot of "who's that guy again?"... followed by an awful lot of "you know what, I don't care."

The other is specific to the final episode, which is basically made up of recycled material from older, better sources. We have Aragorn being given Anduril, being re-enacted shot by shot and pose by pose. We have Luke Skywalker giving a little smile before jumping to near-certain doom. Not to mention the Rebel Alliance rallying at the end to look forward to a better future. And there's a lot of sound and fury, and a lot of peril... being endured by characters who we know can't die, or even be seriously injured. (Though, actually, we know that elves sometimes return from the Undying Lands, so maybe they actually should have pulled the trigger. Then again, then we'd just get Galadriel the White.)

Long story short, it's just a mess. And, I'm afraid, it's a mess I'm going to watch no longer. If you haven't started, I'd recommend avoiding.

Elon's Salute

I can't believe I'm going to have to defend Elon bloody Musk...

At Trump's inauguration there were, of course, all manner of speeches of various tenors, including one by Elon Musk. Following this, he has been accused of giving a "Nazi salute".

He of course did no such thing.

The thing is, the gesture he made is one that has been duplicated by many, many people over centuries, including the last eighty years. Indeed, ever since this madness blew up social media has been awash with images of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and various other left-leaning politicians (or what passes for the left, anyway) making identical gestures. Which is really not a surprise - there's a reason the Nazis co-opted it. Context really, really matters.

The thing is, there really are genuine, honest horrors coming. Indeed, we saw some hints of them yesterday. Closer to home, there is suddenly a genuine risk that we could be seeing Prime Minister Farage, with all that that entails. (And, for the avoidance of doubt, no, I'm not joking about that.)

The fight back against those horrors is really not going to be helped by the left-leaning voices in the media torching their credibility by pushing this sort of nonsense - clear hyperbole of this sort (assuming it is hyperbole, and not simply outright lies) really doesn't cut through in the way that they seem to do it.

Please, stop.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Sausage and Red Wine Risotto

A second meal from the final Hairy Bikers book, "Our Family Favourites", like the previous risotto I've made was very simple to put together, but also rather time consuming.

The end result was very tasty, and is something we'll no doubt have again. It feels quite seasonal, though - the sunblush tomato risotto feels quite appropriate for Spring and Summer, while this one is much more suited to Autumn and Winter. Which is no bad thing, of course.

All of which makes for a fairly short entry. But it's good that the second foray into that book made for a rather better experience than the first.

Secret Level

Over the Christmas break I managed to get caught up on some of the shows I'd been watching, one of which was "Secret Level". This is an anthology show with each episode based on a video game (or, occasionally, some other game). The show started with ten episodes, but quickly released a further five.

The show is extremely well made, with a variety of animation and storytelling styles. But, like all anthology shows, it's very much a mixed bag - some of the episodes were really enjoyable, some just fell flat. Though none were really bad, as such. (The kicker, of course, is that the ones that I think fell flat may well be the ones that you enjoy, and vice versa.)

For me, the most interesting episodes were of course the ones for "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Warhammer 40,000". The other one that I found really intriguing was "Pac Man" which was... odd.

Anyway, it's on Amazon Prime, and if you have Prime I'd say it's worth a watch. As with just about everything on Prime, though, it's probably not worth the subscription fee all by itself.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Chicken Enchiladas

This one comes from the latest (and last!) Hairy Bikers book, "Our Family Favourites", and was the one that most jumped out at us as something to try.

The meal here was easy enough to make. It wasn't exactly quick - all in, it takes maybe an hour to prepare. But that's fine, as it just means it's a meal for a weekend rather than a weeknight. There are no particularly complex steps nor any outlandish ingredients.

I made two crucial mistakes when preparing this one:

• Although I halved the quantities of most of the ingredients, I did not half the onions or peppers. In theory this wasn't too bad, as extra vegetables is fine, but in practice it meant that the ratios were just wrong.
• There was a gap in the cooking, and I made the mistake of assembling the dish and putting it in the oven on a timer. I should really have stopped with the sauce and chicken prepared, and only assembled immediately before the final cooking step.

Because of those two mistakes, the end result was not terribly inspiring. It was fine but... it was fine.

I do intend to have this again, as I think it's worth another shot, but for now at least this is not our go-to enchiladas recipe.

Gladiators Celebrity Special

Of all the festive entertainments we watched over the break, this was, sadly, the weakest. And, unfortunately, the issue was conceptual: in the normal game the competitors are chosen amongst the best amateur athletes available - they're obviously not at the sometimes-Olympic level of the Gladiators, but at least there's something approaching a contest to be had. In the celebrity version, the competitors are chosen from that subset of famous people willing to take part.

The consequence of all of this was that the Gladiators were very obviously not trying very hard. On the one hand, no surprise there - had they played at full force someone would have been humiliated or hurt. But on the other, it meant that the show really had nothing in it.

Assuming that they do want to have another celebrity special (which I'd tend to advise against), they really need to think about who to invite: perhaps recently-retired athletes, or something like that? Of course, the short-lived Sky reboot had a couple of specials where "the legends return", which were actually quite good. Sadly, I think the time for those has now passed - it's one thing for people to come back after a couple of decades; quite another a couple more decades on.

But all of that's a small niggle - I felt that the festive offerings overall weren't too terrible this year, and the BBC in particular did well. So I'm happy with that.

Rangers Woes 2024/25

I'm starting to wonder what the point is of having a football season where everything is essentially decided by Christmas. Though it should be noted that that's not Celtic's problem - they're doing to job in front of them as well as they can, and it's really not their problem that that means they easily outclass everyone else.

But it remains the case that the league is deadly dull, and largely pointless. And that's just not going to change until Rangers get their act together.

Right now, it would be easy to blame the management for the problems, and indeed it is likely that the current manager is not the right man for the job, at least in the longer term. But it's also the case that Rangers' players have underperformed under several successive managers; they're not up to the job either. And it's further the case that Rangers don't have the requisite money to fix these problems.

So...

My inclination is now that Rangers need to take a long view of this, and build from the foundations out. That means accepting a hard truth: they are very much the second team in Scotland, and will remain so for a very long time. Indeed, they're pretty much a mid-table team.

The strategy, therefore, should probably be to do enough to retain their second-place standing and do as well as possible in Europe, but not to spend money trying to catch or overhaul Celtic. Instead, let the manager and the more expensive players run out their contracts, and gradually replace them with better players - crucially, don't spend loads of money on compensation for getting rid of them for a quick fix - short of investing tens of millions of pounds that they don't have, no quick fix is available.

Fundamentally, I think we may be back to where we were a few years ago: the ultimate goal is to stop ten-in-a-row.

Which is horrible, but I think it may be that stark.

#1: "Machines Like Me", by Ian McEwan

Books of the Year 2024

My target for the year was to read 30 books, but alas that has not happened. Here's the list of books for this year:

1. "Ariadne", by Jennifer Saint
2. "Promise of Blood", by Brian McClellan
3. "Smart Leadership", by Jo Owen
4. "Why Should Anyone be Led by You?", by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
5. "Atalanta", by Jennifer Saint
6. "Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life", by Arnold Schwarzenegger
7. "Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes", by Rob Wilkins
8. "Sharpe's Command", by Bernard Cornwell
9. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", by Ian Fleming *
10. "Making It So", by Sir Patrick Stewart
11. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
12. "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", by Wizards of the Coast
13. "Empire", by Conn Iggulden
14. "A Thousand Splendid Suns", by Khaled Hosseini
15. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
16. "Surrounded by Idiots", by Thomas Erikson
17. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over the Moon", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
18. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", by John Le Carré
19. "Firefly: Coup de Grace", by Una McCormack
20. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", by J.K. Rowling *
21. "The Prisoner of Heaven", by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
22. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", by J.K. Rowling *

Annoyingly there is, once again, my records got messed up during the year - I recorded "Promise of Blood" twice, and failed to record "Sharpe's Command" and "Phandelver and Below". Those problems have, at least, been corrected.

That gives a total of 22 books. This includes two rereads (Harry Potter), and six books for Funsize/Surprise! The only RPG book this year was "Phandelver and Below", which is a disappointing one to end on.

This year's best book was "A Thousand Splendid Suns", but I'm really not sure I recommend it - I found it almost unreadable at times. I'm not going to list a worst book, as none of them seemed particularly bad.

Unfortunately, despite my best intentions I have ended the year with shelves every bit as full of unread books as I began, with some coming to their third year unread. It is very much my intention to start clearing that backlog in the near future.