Xenon's Seventh Circle

2014. Guess what?! Yep, still drawing a blank. British politicians being horrible, although admittedly that doesn't narrow it down much. Fabulous summer, if you like hot weather (I do). I spent most of it renovating my mother's garden, digging flowerbeds and unearthing very old dead things, back from when round here was still a sea. I rather wish it still was. Not that I'm entirely advocating life in the Jurassic, as I'm pretty sure the music was rubbish, and internet speeds seriously sucked; but on the plus side I'd be living in an ocean paradise. Also, no electricity bill. Although there's probably a good reason for that.

Yes, I am blatantly avoiding the topic of 2014. It was a pretty good year for television. How To Get Away With Murder started. The first season was very watchable, and so far the second season has been pretty much unmissable. I think it's away until February, dagnabbit. Wretched mis-season hiatuses! (Hiati? No, that sounds more like a country). I only started watching because of Baby Ian Chesterton, but it's so much more than that. He's great, incidentally. Deserves to go far.

Also starting this year was Constantine, which I loved, and Forever, which I adored. Neither made it to a second season, and I am still in mourning. Television is a cruel mistress. Or something.

Good year musically. I discovered a new band, although I can't remember how off hand. Probably mucking about on YouTube. Very good debut album, but it remains to be seen if they'll be worth following further. Queen dug an old song out of the archives, which was nice; and the E Street Band continued to galavant about the globe, and wilfully distract me with YouTubery (Kitty's Back! Stayin' Alive! Hurrah)!

A bad year for fandom, though. Alexandra Bastedo, who played Sharron in The Champions, died this year. Those three were always so close, and as the extras on the DVD release showed, they'd remained so, which somehow made it all the sadder (and turned out she'd opened an animal sanctuary after she quit acting, so she was clearly Nice People). James Garner died too. Not so unexpected, that one, but he was Old Hollywood, and we're running out of them. And of course Mike Smith. And there's nothing else I can say about that.

( ... )
*collapses in a heap* If I ever decide to embark on something as long and involved as this again, somebody please hit me. Still, I made it! Not doing 2015, because this is 2015, even if it won't still be tomorrow. I can hardly say "Remember when...?" when we're still here. So instead I shall just say Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (three hundred exclamation marks), and leave you with two songs from a pair of bands who came back unexpectedly in 2015.

( ... )
Have a good 2016!

I moved house in 2012. Theoretically a simple enough procedure, but it turned into a comedy of errors so far as my internet connection was concerned. I can't blame my ISP, which seemed to be doing its best, but BT were a nightmare. I don't think it can actually have been sixteen years before I was reconnected, but it certainly felt like it. I spent the offline time intending to accomplish something useful, but in reality doing some extensive moping, and quite possibly squeaking every time I looked at my computer. Oh, and I rewatched Blake's 7, which seemed like a worthwhile use of my time. And wrote a Torchwood/Rentaghost crossover, which isn't really a worthwhile use of anybody's time, but whatever.

Beyond that, pass. When I started this, I thought that these would be the easy years, but they're not. I know a few things, obviously - Arab Spring, ISIS, David Cameron and Ian Duncan Smith being dicks, etc, but for the most part recent history is a mystery to me. I'm sure something must have happened somewhere in 2012. There was Hurricane Sandy of course, which caused some nasty damage along the Jersey Shore, but I have to confess to mostly knowing about that because of E Street fandom. Staying up until stupid o'clock to watch the benefit concert, because the E Street Band and the Who were playing, along with quite a lot of modern acts that I couldn't pick out of a line up, and frankly wouldn't want to. Otherwise, apparently I was looking the other way.

The Avengers! That happened this year. We had to call it Avengers Assemble here, in case Britain saw Robert Downey Jr in a bright red metal suit, and thought that he was Patrick Macnee. Which presumably makes Mark Ruffalo Diana Rigg? Anyway, it was fab, and everything blew up. On the smaller screen there was Ringer, briefly. On paper it looked wonderful - Richard Alpert, Mr Fantastic and Buffy the Vampire Slayer teaming up. With evil doubles! But it was another of those twenty-two episode shows that didn't get good until halfway in, when everybody else had stopped watching. So it went away again.

Musicwise the year was better. Springsteen brought out Wrecking Ball, and embarked on a two year long world tour with the E Street Band. Two years! Of obsessively stalking them on YouTube, and cheerfully filling my hard drive with music. That was a great tour, and a nice tribute to Clarence and Danny. It's horrible when your fandoms start losing people. Familiar, for those of us who aren't so into the new stuff, but still horrible. Which brings me to the Monkees, I suppose - and also to marine biology. Specifically to Mike deGruy, a hero of mine since I was a teenager. A whirlwind of enthusiasm for sharks and cephalopods, who died this year. No fair, universe. He was on your side.

( ... )

Oh, 2010. That was a year and a half. I always knew, when my grandfather and I started living together, that it was only going to end one way. Obviously. I always assumed I'd take him his cup of tea one afternoon, and find that he'd slipped away in his armchair though. That or that he'd just not come down to breakfast one morning. I didn't expect him to have to take to his bed and slip away by degrees. I imagine that neither did he! The cruel irony of old age is that, if you're strong enough to still enjoy life, you're too strong for your body to give in easily - and just a few weeks before he fell ill, he was still getting up the stairs faster than all three of his sons. I suppose it was stupid of me to expect him to go quickly. The NHS were amazing, though. District nurses are a wonderful thing. (Even if it is always a slight disappointment that they don't ride bicycles nowadays).

As to the rest of it, I think it was a quiet sort of a year. I wasn't paying attention for the first few months, admittedly, but I'm sure I'd have noticed if pirates had raided the Houses of Parliament, or Prince Charles and Prince Andrew had duelled over the succession. Or even something major that didn't involve swords. It was the year when Nip/Tuck ended, my beloved show that was now a shadow of its former self thanks to bad management. It was the year when Lost ended, and 99% of the fandom boggled at the screen in bewilderment, and wondered why we'd bothered. It was also the year when several million childhoods heaved a collective sigh, when both Corey Haim and Gary Coleman died - and Stephen J Cannell, come to that.

On the international stage, there was some brief hilarity when the Eyjafjallajökull volcano became the bane of every newsreader's existence, by spitting out lots of smoke and debris, and buggering up the airlines for a good few weeks. It was also the year when America raided the BBC's store cupboard, and nicked the superb TV miniseries Edge Of Darkness for a Hollywood remake. It seems to have vanished without trace, so clearly sometimes the the gods of the screen are just and true. Not often, I'll grant you, but sometimes. The BBC also raided their own store cupboard, and came up with a sequel to Upstairs Downstairs, annoying pretty much all the fans of the original. I enjoyed it, but admittedly I never got around to bothering with the second series, whenever that was.

And of course this was the year when a-ha called it a day, the year after their final album, Foot Of The Mountain. They released a final single, and then went their separate ways. Until this year, of course! Sometimes you do get a happy ending - albeit a temporary one. Naturally.

( ... )

2008 was a mental year. If you made it through, congratulations! Between air crashes, typhoons, hurricanes, mudslides and earthquakes, it's a wonder that anybody did. One earthquake in Sichuan wiped out upwards of seventy thousand people on its own. That's a lot of people.

My year was certainly better than that. Probably depending on which fandoms you swim in, 2008 was quite eventful. Over in Days Of Our Lives-land, recent madness (cost-cutting caused them to kill off their main star, then do a complete one-eighty due to the backlash) had led to many a disgruntled fan taking refuge in classic storylines, and putting them up on YouTube as they went. So I spent a good chunk of '08 up to my neck in dastardly kidnappings, demonic possessions, jungle escapades and mediaeval torture chambers. Truly Stefano DiMera and John Black are the pinnacle of soap. You can keep your EastEnders and your Coronation Street! I was also revelling in the first E Street Band tour since YouTube happened. Footage from all over the world! And boy do some fans have some good recording equipment. So that was nice.

Didn't all go well on E Street this year though, as 2008 was when we lost Phantom Dan Federici to cancer. They brought in a talented substitute, and the tour turned into a huge party in celebration of Dan's life, but it's never been quite the same since. Also bowing out this year were the great Eartha Kitt; Mitch Mitchell, drummer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience; and jazz band leader/I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again supremo Humphrey Lyttelton; so hopefully they all met each other on the way out, as the jam session would have been extraordinary.

The world trying to drown, crush or shake half the population to death aside, this was quite a quiet year, I think? I was rather buried in fandom, due to it being decidedly better than real life. Well, let's face it - how many of us can boast a real life filled with jungle adventures and dastardly kidnappings? Some stuff happened. It was the year of the American Presidential election, which meant that the rest of us had to put up with wall to wall coverage all bloody year. Do I have to put a spoiler warning before saying who won? (Clue - it was an Islamic illegal immigrant. Maybe).

Not much idea about telly this year. It was all happening on YouTube. The Beeb did bring out The Invisibles though, which I loved. It was a comedy drama about two ageing, sort of ex-thieves (Tony Head and Warren Clarke), but I must have been the only person who did like it, as it disappeared after six episodes, never to return. TV that I like is good at that. *grumble growl*

( ... )

Just as 2005 was the Doctor Who entry, 2006 was always going to be the Torchwood one. I've heard all the arguments about why I shouldn't like the show, mostly centered around the Cyberwoman in high heels and a metal bikini, but I'm sorry, I just don't care. She may have been dressed in ridiculous clothing, but she had a fight with a Pteranodon. Just review that sentence, people. A cyborg in a duel with a Pteranodon. That lives in the roof of a secret underground lair. With an invisible lift. Some time in 2005, somebody poked around inside my head, and found all the things that I most wanted in a TV series, even if I didn't know it. Then they made it. And I know it's mad, and rushed, and sometimes badly put together, but at the same time, everything about it makes my brain squeak with happiness. And so I don't care that the hardcore sci-fi fans are still complaining because it wasn't Nu-Battlestar Galactica set in Wales. I don't care if everybody else thinks that it's silly. 2006 gave me Torchwood. I like 2006.

I probably shouldn't do, all things considered. I was made redundant this year (as it turns out, being made redundant is my great talent in life. We all have one, supposedly, and it's nice to know mine). And I can't say for certain whether it was a great year or not in any other regard, because - guess what! - I don't remember much about it. Except for Myfanwy the Pteranodon in her secret underground headquarters beneath Cardiff. Saving the universe with Captain Jack Harkness. Sorry. It's just so much fun typing some of that stuff. It's whole sentences that you just never get to write at any other time. I do know that Saddam Hussein was executed this year. I can't imagine anybody mourned him, but I'm still not sure if we killed him because he wasn't very nice, or if it's because we fancied his oil. And I wish I was a little more certain that it wasn't just the latter. There were probably some films at the cinema. There were some records, but most of them weren't very good.

Alongside Torchwood (did I mention that that started this year?), the Beeb also debuted Robin Hood and Hotel Babylon. The former... was not good. It could be at times, particularly in series two, but much of series one was dull and colourless nonsense. Whoever was playing Robin (I do know his name, I'm sure of it) was horribly miscast, although Patrick Troughton's grandson Sam was rather good as Much. Richard Armitage was terrific as Guy of Gisburne, and once the writers realised that we all much preferred him over Robin, things picked up nicely, for a while at least. But oh, the missed opportunities. And then Hotel Babylon was hilarious. I watched it largely for Martin Marquez, an actor who once spent the best part of three years stalking me across the UK (almost literally - he was in rep theatre, and when I was going to and from university in the nineties, he always seemed to be appearing in something just down the road). I knew the name from The Bill, so it stood out on the flyers. I've been stupidly fond of him ever since.

Oh, but Torchwood. *brain in happy place* Series two was all polished up and homogenised, but still good. Series three was terrific, but a different show entirely. Series four is best forgotten. But series one! With time-travelling aeroplanes, psychotic faeries, Captain Jack dancing with Captain Jack on a 1941 dancefloor - and, yes, a ridiculous Cyberwoman. Fighting a Pteranodon! That was 2006. Huzzah.

( ... )

I moved house in 2004. This is probably my main memory of the year. Up a hill in the middle of nowhere. Windswept, desolate, silent - if it weren't for the fact that the whole of Gloucestershire seemed to use the local roads as a race track, it would have been damned near perfect. Well - that and if the local landowners hadn't had some kind of psychotic hatred of wildlife. I used to go for long walks with my sister's dog, and spend them disassembling snares and counting illegally shot badgers. It was a nice place to live though. Illegal fox hunts notwithstanding. Got stranded up there every winter, and the power used to go off at the slightest excuse, but the middle of nowhere is definitely the best place to live. Internet speed sucked, mind.

Other than that, 2004 was a quiet sort of year. Sad one too though. It was the year that Christopher Reeve died. Richard Biggs from Babylon 5 too - and he was young and healthy, and had just said good morning to his wife, when he dropped dead. Just goes to show! It was also the year when I rediscovered pop music, by unexpectedly becoming a McFly fan. They brought out their debut album this year, and I've followed them ever since.

Angel came to an end this year, a year after Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It should have lasted longer. Frasier ended too, although that one at least had had a chance to run its course. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet aired its final episode in this year as well. It had come and gone since... 1984? Always worth watching. The Magnificent Seven were two men down by that final episode, and they found a lovely way to end that really did the show and cast proud. And it was the year that Lost began. Hmm. Now there's one that went on much longer than it should have! I think it's the year that The OC and Nip/Tuck both started in the UK too, though they'd probably started earlier than that in the US. The OC was a teen drama that hooked me completely, despite me being a good fifteen years above the target age group! It lost me after a bit, but that first season was bloody good. And I fell hard for Nip/Tuck. That tailed off too when the showrunner bailed, and went off to do Glee instead, but for several years I thought it was the best thing on television. Properly clever stuff.

Cinema! This was the year of Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow. I love that film so much. It was a flop, which was a hell of a shame, as they'd intended it to be a new franchise. I could have had lots and lots of Sky Captains, but clearly nobody else wanted them. No fair. It's a glorious film, full of giant robots, and vintage touches that hark back to the weekly cinema serials from the pre-war days. And I wanted a sequel. I shall go away now and sulk.

( ... )

*flop* I have been putting up my mother's Christmas decorations, delivering my mother's Christmas cards, and madly trying to get most of her wrapping up done, as there's a family get together tomorrow, and it's all got to be done by then. And, predictably, hadn't been started before today. That's enough Christmassing now for me. Can it be the New Year please?!

Oh, 2002. Still old peopling. Getting used to looking after my grandfather, who was actually very little work in actual fact. I never really knew any of my grandparents growing up, as they lived on the other side of the country, and visiting was an issue. I got to know him very well when we lived together though. He knew a hell of a lot. Could have done without getting the same three Naval tales over and over again though! It became something of a family joke after a while.

Excuse me, distracted. Dean Martin is singing. Not actually, obviously. Just on the computer. Why do I remember more of what happened in the 90s than I do in the 00s? I seem to have spent the last fifteen years bored out of my skull, and paying no attention to the world. Except the bits that are shaped like Doctor Who and the E Street Band. Oh! Queen's Jubilee! (The actual queen, not the musical kind). There was the Party In The Park, and Queen played (the musical kind, not the actual one), with the cast of their West End musical We Will Rock You. That was actually pretty fab. Most of the other acts were famous-for-five-minutes types, and I don't remember them, but Queen and co were excellent. And Brian and Roger played God Save The Queen on the roof of Buckingham Palace, because they're Queen, and they do things like that. Springsteen put out his The Rising album, and went out on the road with the E Street Band again. Was YouTube a thing then? I don't think so. I was still on sloooooow dial-up, but I have since caught up with masses of lovely footage. I love the music, obviously, but few things make me as happy as watching Mighty Max play the drums. :)

The Queen Mother died. That was sad. Royalist or Republican, I'd challenge you to think ill of her. Although admittedly it was hardly unexpected, as she was 101 and hadn't been well for some time. Dudley Moore also died, and that really was sad. He'd had some sort of brain condition, poor sod, and hadn't been able to play the piano for several years. He was an amazing pianist. People tend to remember him for the comedy, and fair enough, but he put out some excellent jazz albums too, with his Dudley Moore Trio. John Entwhistle, bass player of the Who, also died. And yes, drink-and-drug related, but what the hell, he was in the Who.

( ... )

Drawing a blank on most of 2000. It was the year I turned vegetarian, I know that much. I started working at an old people's home - those two things aren't related. As far as I know you don't have to vow never to eat a resident before you're allowed in the door - which on the face of it seemed a perfect job. Basically I was supposed to pick people up if they fell out of bed. This meant sitting in a room on my own all night, never having to speak to anybody. Unless they fell out of bed, obviously. Or wandered the corridors stark naked, which happened far more often that you might imagine. Life in a residential home is dull, and you have to make your own entertainment. Poor sods.

As I say, on the face of it an ideal job. It was deadly dull though, and the pay was rubbish. I was also running the office during the day (sleep?! Who needs sleep?!) Old peoples' homes have to operate on the lowest possible budget, because there's no money in old folk. If they can fill two jobs with one person therefore, they will. It used to make me smile sometimes though. Every so often they'd get some local musician in, to play old songs, and make the residents go misty-eyed with recollection. What are they going to do when that's us?! I have visions of young musicians coming in to play Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter to a row of gently nodding oldies.

Elsewhere, this was the year that Almost Famous came out at the cinema, which I know that I loved, but I haven't seen it since, and I don't remember a great deal about it. Kid writes about band for music magazine. There was nearly a plane crash. And lots of rather good music. Also it was the year of The Road To El Dorado, although I didn't see that until some time afterwards. Terrific film. If you haven't seen it, do so. (That's an order). Music-wise I'm totally drawing a blank though. I used to have the radio on in my little night watch room, but clearly not a lot registered! About the only thing I can say for sure is that this was the year Channel 5 showed the last few episodes of Sunset Beach, a mad-as-a-squirrel soap that had won a cult audience amongst those of us with nothing better to do at ten o'clock in the morning. It was replaced by Days Of Our Lives, which proved to be even more mad. America does soap operas so much better than Britain does. In British soaps, people just yell at each other about who they're having affairs with. In American soaps there's evil identical twins, microchips in brains, and demonic possessions.

( ... )

1998 was one of those years that we should just have skipped, and pretended never happened. Sorry if it was a good year for you. If you got married then, or born then or something. But we should just quietly forget about it, and scurry on by to 1999. Or possibly 2015.

1998 began with my sister being diagnosed with acute leukaemia. And not just acute leukaemia; that would have been far too simple. She had to contract a fabulously rare combination of syndromes that had doctors all over the world conferring on her treatment. Which was actually good, in one sense. If you're going to get really sick, you might as well go for something special, and get all the best minds in medicine thinking about you. She was down and out for the whole of the year though, and is still dealing with the consequences now - and whilst it could have been a lot worse (especially for her), it was still pretty rubbish. It was a really weird time though. When a member of your family is ill, people start asking after them in hushed tones. They don't just ask how she is, they sidle up to you, and ask like they're delivering a top secret message from the head of MI6.

The younger of my two grandfathers died this year too. I didn't know him very well, so it wasn't a personal loss, but it was a strange sort of time nonetheless. Mind you, the funeral turned out to be unexpectedly entertaining. Are funerals generally hilarious? I've not been to many, but it does seem that they wind up being a whole lot funnier than they probably ought to be. For this one I somehow got sandwiched between my two more irreverent sisters, with the one inclined to get emotional just up ahead. Every so often she'd sob, and they'd giggle. I didn't dare look at anybody!

Honestly didn't pay much attention to the wider world this year. Government being rubbish, Blair being a smarmy git, etc and so forth. I do remember that General Pinochet visited the UK, and was put under arrest on an international arrest warrant. He was supposed to stand trial for crimes against humanity, but the government twiddled its thumbs for ages, and then Margaret Thatcher said that he was a personal friend, and could they please let him go. So they did. So we very nearly did a good thing, and then didn't. Not that anybody really dared hope that he'd stand trial anyway, but it was a nice idea for a little while.

Babylon 5 ended this year. I was sorry to see it go, although obviously it couldn't have gone on any longer. It was my first proper experience of fandom, with all the obsessive discussions that used to take place on the Channel 4 internet forum. I'd never had fellow fans before! And it was such an amazing series. Cold Feet started. I did quite like that, although it was hardly a suitable replacement. Oh, and The Mask Of Zorro hit cinemas! Now there's a good film. The sword work is excellent, and it's such good fun. Dark City too, although I didn't see that until some time later. Again, though, a terrific film.

Music is a different story. I just looked up the Top #100 for the year, and that's a nightmare! Billie Piper, Aqua, Boyzone, Steps, B*Witched, Cleopatra... blimey. Must have been the International Year Of The Power Ballad too, as the top fifteen includes My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, I Don't Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith, and Angels by Robbie Williams. Bloody hell! What happened between 1997 and 1998?! Did somebody outlaw rock music?

And, of course, 1998 was the year when Frank Sinatra went off to join Dino and Sammy. Robert Young and Roddy McDowall also died this year, and Cozy Powell, British rock drummer extraordinaire. Admittedly that was rather his own fault, but it was still a shame. Scuppered Brian May's touring plans for the year ahead, too!

( ... )

I seemed to spend half of 1996 trapped in an underground train at Liverpool's Lime Street Station, while the police checked out some suspicious object or other. The IRA had decided to start blowing stuff up again, which was nice of them, and this seemed to lead to just about everything being labelled a possible bomb. Not that I blame the authorities for being overly cautious, but it does begin to get boring after a while! Especially when it's an underground station, and there's sod all to look at while you wait.

The rest of that year was spent online (I say "the rest", presumably I did some work at some point). By now the Net was growing and changing so fast that you'd practically notice the difference over a weekend. Probably inevitably, although most of us didn't have anything much faster than a 28.8K dial-up modem, already the video sharing had started. This meant tiny little videos, barely bigger than an LJ icon, and rarely more than a minute long. Mostly, from what I saw, they were Methos soundbites from Highlander, or clips from Late Night With Conan O'Brien; usually Max Weinberg doing something brilliantly ridiculous, or reading one of his fake public service announcements. Happy days. :)

Otherwise it was a year of highs and lows. Take That split, which was a high. The Spice Girls appeared, which was a low. Doctor Who returned for a one off special, with a truly terrific Doctor, and a truly dreadful script. Well, that's being a bit unfair I suppose. Only half dreadful; the bit with the shoes is genius. A sad time for Who fans otherwise though, as Jon Pertwee died shortly before the film aired. Also bowing out this year was TW3 and I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue star Willie Rushton. There's been a Rushton-shaped hole in that show ever since. In American Tellyland, it was also the year that Greg Morris died. He played the great Barney Collier, easily the best thing about Mission: Impossible.

Elsewhere of course, this was the year of Dunblane. Not the best thing to remember a year by. On a distinctly happier note, it was also the year when Jarvis Cocker, slightly the worst for alcohol, gatecrashed Michael Jackson's performance at the BRITs, on the grounds that Jacko was being a tit. In all fairness, he was. I was listening on the radio, and it got a lovely running commentary! Annoyingly though, it was another good year for music, and I have a "short" list of about a hundred songs that I obviously can't fit all of under the cut. It doesn't matter how many times I stare at the list - it refuses to get any shorter!


( Some time later... )