Christmas telly (includes Merlin finale, Homeland finale and Doctor Who Xmas special spoilers)

Oooh its been ages since I did a TV post, anyway……

Merlin

*Sob*, the ending of Merlin, *sob*. Merlin ended at the right time, after 5 series it was getting too predictable, ‘ooh someone’s flying backwards’ again, ‘oooh someone’s gone all evil so of course they’ve had a complete wardrobe change and are now just wearing dark clothing’ again etc etc. However in the last few episodes there has been some wonderful acting from the two main leads; Colin Morgan (Merlin) and Bradley James (Arthur), specially in their scenes when they’re together on their own and in that final episode where Merlin tells Arthur what he really is and Arthur rejects him and then grows to appreciate and finally thank him, *gulp*. This was bromance on full blast and I think it’s unusual, specially in prime time telly, for script writers to give two male actors material to do such really emotional stuff together. I think Merlin reached its natural end and I am now really looking forward to seeing what Colin Morgan and Bradley James do next with their careers.

(I also liked the very ending, a glimpse of Merlin in modern times, that just instantly brings stories into your head, where’s he been? what’s he been doing all this time?)

The Raymond Briggs-athon

Raymond Briggs was very much part of my childhood and I don’t think I appreciated back then exactly how good the art work was, well The Snowman anyway, I think Raymond Briggs Father Christmas is showing its age a bit but what I didn’t quite get as a kid is exactly how depressing his stuff is! They’ve shown The Snowman, Father Christmas and the new The Snowman and the Snowdog over Christmas, at least it’s a good thing I don’t think they’re showing the Raymond Briggs cartoon about nuclear war, now that was one book I very clearly remember from my childhood. But hey I’m all for showing good quality animation on TV in an age where everything can be a bit too slapdash and computer-fied.

Room on a Broom

Just as my childhood was firmly in the grips of Raymond Briggs, my kids are firmly in the grip of Julia Donaldson and I’m happy that they’re in more cheerful hands, with her not completely saccharine messages (after all The Gruffalo proves that bad things do sometimes exist but on the other hand if you’re smart and clever you can defeat them) that are far more positive. I think Room on a Broom was so clearly turned into a cartoon because The Gruffalo was so successful and whereas most of Julia Donaldson’s books are good, The Gruffalo is so in a league of its own, it can be very tempting to compare anything else unfavourably. So trying desperately to forget The Gruffalo, I liked Room on a Broom, I think I liked more the fact that Boy Lacer was sitting next to me reciting the lines from memory for a good part of the cartoon (he’s just done Room on a Broom at school). Now can they do The Smartest Giant in Town next please?

Doctor Who

New assistant and they’re snogging already! The shocker! I guess it gets the will they won’t they? / will it be platonic? over and done with and I guess the Doctor hasn’t had an assistant to snog for a while, considering he’s been hanging out with a married lady and actually hang on, he’s married, ahh the problems with these multi-temporal relationships. But then of course she’s dead, again, I think this is going to be a really interesting season.

As for the actual episode, it was hard to remember that this was a Stephen Moffatt episode, it seemed a little run of the mill compared to his usual edge of the seat stuff but I guess he had to rein himself in a bit considering you could hardly have Weeping Angels level of terror at Christmas teatime. I liked the snowmen though, I thought whoever designed those as monsters did a good job and it was nice to see thingy from Silent Witness get more work.

Homeland

Ahh Homeland, proving again that all the best actors in American dramas are British (not to mention rather good looking). As the current season of Homeland reached its climax we’ve been treated to some really edge of the seat episodes, which made me, of course, expect the final episode to be particularly ‘explosive’ and although yes, it was at the end, yawn, christ it was dull before it got to that bit and I never thought I’d ever associate the word dull with Homeland . . . This episode just felt like one hour long set up for the next series and really didn’t have that much to do with the current series.

All images property of the respective channels / production companies and used for illustrative purposes only.

Educating young eye balls

When Boy Lacer was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder at 3, one of the things that I thought was the saddest was I thought that he would consequently probably always struggle with reading, something that I personally had always gained great pleasure from. So it is with great joy that it turned out to be absolutely not the case, in fact *whisper* he is almost certainly a better reader than Girl Lacer was at his age.

As with every school, they have book levels and when Girl Lacer was in year 1 and for a large part of year 2 to, it was a bit of an effort to get her to progress from level to level, whereas Boy Lacer, all you have to do is blink and he’s gone up another level. He recently progressed to a book level which is now only two levels below the mythical ‘free reader’ level (where you get let loose in the library). So when Boy Lacer announced recently that he’d made this leap up another book level and there was all the subsequent metaphorical high fiving and “Who’s a clever boying”, Girl Lacer piped up “Is he going to get a book? Because you bought me a book every time I went up a level.” Actually, I had forgotten about that, the book buying for Girl Lacer every time she went up a level was a form of bribery to get her to work on her reading and later, especially, on her fluency (as not only do you have to be able to read the book to move up, you have to be able to comprehend it and to read it fluently and she had been struggling a bit with the fluency bit for a while). So, in short, I hadn’t been buying Boy Lacer a book every time he went up a level because the bribery hadn’t been necessary (not that I don’t buy both of them books, one of the great pleasures of mummyhood is buying my kids books).

But, as it happens, one day this week, when me and Boy Lacer had been walking home from school (Girl Lacer still at school in an after school club), Boy Lacer, was, as usual, filling me in with what he’d been doing that day and the particular highlight of that particular day was that his class teacher had been reading them a book called The Magic Faraway tree, which he seemed to really like (he filled me in with great detail on the plot so far). And I was ecstatic, because you know what? The Magic Faraway Tree had been one of my favourite books at that age and it had been a series I had tried to tempt Girl Lacer with, but she hadn’t been remotely interested, so to find out that Boy Lacer liked it, I was a bit pleased. So I had told him anyway that next time I went shopping I would buy him a copy and we could read it at home (at bedtime now, neither kid really opts for picture books any more – although their bedroom still has mountains of them – we did have a sort out a few weeks ago, when I went through each picture book and asked them if they wanted to keep it, about 90% of the books stayed, a lot due to sentimentality from both of them I think, but nothing wrong with that but if you hear of a book avalanche in Kingston, you’ll know why). Boy Lacer’s favourite bedtime books are currently Roald Dahl, Horrid Henry and The Trouble With . . . series, which we read to him, as he’s not quite ready for officially reading chapter books himself but I do know that he sometimes tries to read chapter books himself during quiet time before lights out. (For anyone interested in how we gave Girl Lacer a boost in her reading, I have two things 1) Roald Dahl (I defy any kid not to like his stuff, so a big thank you to her year 2 class teacher Mrs. S for introducing it to her) and 2) turning a blind eye to any unofficial reading at night when they shouldn’t be, as I think it’s at that point when they’re reading because they want to read, not because they have to, do they really start to explore and find pleasure in books). So in the end Boy Lacer did get a book for ‘moving up a level’ but *sssh* I was going to buy it for him anyway

But it seems I can’t go into a bookshop and buy just one book, eek no, that’s impossible and I got very attracted to a big display of Usborne Young Reading Books. They seem to have had a bit of a makeover / have added new titles to their collection and I was particularly attracted to the fact that they’ve adapted some particularly cool adult books for kids, as I do think a lot of kids books (I’m not including YA here) are a bit tame (particularly ‘girls’ books *shudder*) and although I’m not trying to rush my kids into growing up, far from it, I do think they need books with an age appropriate level of danger / naughtiness / excitement, that some kids books are just missing. Which is why I think it feels sometimes that Roald Dahl is all that my kids read because his stuff has definitely got the requisite level of all three (as does JK Rowling, Girl Lacer’s other favourite). I sometimes wonder would books like George’s Marvellous Medicine, for example, be published in today’s too safe world if it were not already a classic? And remember, books are of course competing with far more than they used to when I was a kid sized bookworm, when you have the excitement of computer games, books have to be exciting to (and whilst I’m on the subject, does anyone know of any sci-fi-ish type books for kids? Again, I’m not talking YA. As far as I can see there is none and Boy Lacer would love a good sci-fi book or a book with zombies in (that was suitable for his age), actually I do know one series – Captain Underpants (Girl Lacer loves them) but anything else out there?). So anyway, I also ended up buying the Usborne Young Reading version of Dracula (I am no way trying to influence them with my personal favourite book of all time, no of course not – although actually Girl Lacer is currently in the middle of writing a long story at school (I love how they teach story writing there, they’ve been actually planning their stories, with beginnings, middles and ends and mind maps!) and she’s been telling me what’s going to happen in it and apparently it’s got vampires in it but from what she was telling me I realised she wasn’t completely sure what a vampire does, so you can call me getting her Dracula an educational tool ) and also the Usborne Young Reading version of Cleopatra (as Girl Lacer loves all things Egypt) and for Boy Lacer I got him the Usborne Young Reading Stories of Monsters and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Dracula and Cleopatra, are both level 3 and Stories of Monsters and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are both level 1, both levels probably a bit too easy for both Girl and Boy Lacer respectively but sometimes I think you can’t always be aiming to push their reading ability up a notch and sometimes you have to just buy them books that you know that they will just be able to pick up, get in to and read with less effort, so it’s not so much about the act of reading but it’s all about the story.

And finally, I also popped into HMV today (honestly, probably about the first time in ten years, as I download all my music and before that, when I was still buying CDs, getting them from places like Amazon and (sorry) supermarkets), as Girl Lacer is going to be fashionably late at a movie party and the movie in question is going to be ET. Now I love ET, ET to me is one of those childhood defining movies, so I couldn’t have Girl Lacer’s introduction to ET as being her watching it from about half way through, so I had to go and buy a copy today, I can’t believe I didn’t have a copy already. And also, whilst I was in there, I ended up buying the complete first season of The Muppet Show. Now we already do have a best off Muppets DVD, so I’m sure there will be some sketches we’ve already got, but awww Muppets to me is up there with ET, so you can’t over do it on the Muppets and I know the kids will love it (they love our current DVD, specially of course the mahna, mahna song – who doesn’t?). Both kids (but especially Girl Lacer) have been particularly in to watching Challenge TV recently (?????) and have been enthusiastically watching such gems as The Wheel of Fortune and argh what’s that one where they have to guess what the audience voted for to win a vacuum cleaner? Anyway, going into my living room at the weekend at the moment is liking stepping through a time vortex and into my living room 30 years ago when I was watching that programme where they win a vacuum cleaner and I hated it then, (imagine how I feel about it now?), probably because there were only 3 channels and I was waiting for The Muppets to be on, so anyway I am fighting back, if the kids want to watch TV from my childhood, Muppets has got to be better than Les Dennis, right?

The Rose-less Dragon or WHEN TOOLS LET YOU DOWN

I’ve been eagerly checking the Hoop Up Swap pool over on Flickr, ooh since I finished my last Hoop Up Swap last year, so I was really pleased that sign ups for a new swap opened a few days ago. In Hoop Up you pick a theme and people in your group embroider a piece for you based on that theme (on fabric that you sent out to them), I think I’ve had the next theme I wanted to do in my head since the last swap, accuse me of watching too much Merlin if you will, but I knew my theme was going to be Arthurian Legend.

One of the things I really like about Merlin on TV is the embroidered banners and patches on their clothes, I think I remember a few nice embroidered cushions to. I am obviously not just watching for the embroidery but I always like it and I’ve been itching to stitch a dragon similar to one of the embroidered castle banners for ages. I couldn’t find a picture of one of the banners, but here is the dragons on the knights clothes.

I couldn’t get a good enough close up of the emblem and besides I think the dragon on the castle banners, although in a similar style, was in a different position, so instead I adapted a pattern from Urban Threads. The Urban Threads dragon comes complete with roses, which I didn’t want, so I adapted the pattern to get rid of them. As the roses in the original pattern obscured quite a bit of the dragon, I had to fill in those bits by freehand and I made a couple of mistakes, which I didn’t think would matter because I was using one of my trusted Frixiron pens and the ink from those disappears when you iron it. Oh no, not this time, instead it left bleached white marks I have to admit this was the first time I used the pens on this particular fabric, well I’ve learnt my lesson. I still like the piece and I’m proud of it as a good inspiration piece but for something that only looks half decent in a dim light where you can’t really see the bleach marks, ummmmmm.

Highlights of 2011

And it’s Highlights time of the year again . . .

Family highlight

Probably our first ever proper family holiday in Disneyland Paris in May (which was brilliant), alongside Boy and Girl Lacer continuing to do so brilliantly at school.

Personal highlight

Getting a ‘proper’ job! That was in July but actually this year all round has been good for work because I was very busy with tutoring to but I was never a big fan of my tutoring work and all the time whilst I was doing it this year I was repeating my own personal mantra that all I had to do was do it for two more years (as I had committed to teaching one particular student for two years) and then fingers crossed, by the time the two years was up I had hoped I would have some form of better employment. So I was really pleased that I landed the perfect job for me a year early, I still have to continue to tutor, that student I committed to two years for, but other than him I’m not taking any more students on and I’ll be doing cartwheels down the street when I finish with that student in May (not that that particular student is horrible to work with or anything, he’s actually probably one of the nicest students I’ve ever worked with, it’s just tutoring, not me, at least science tutoring isn’t me, I’d still like to run some embroidery workshops one day). But back to the ‘proper’ job, I’ve been doing it for 5 months now and I still love it, I had been beginning to despair that the ideal part time job for me didn’t actually exist, as so many part time jobs had flexible hours (i.e. working Mondays and Wednesdays one week, Tuesdays and Thursdays the next) making booking childcare a nightmare. And then there was the fact that I was still not completely comfortable putting Boy Lacer into childcare at all . . . So to find a job where my hours of work are controlled by me, so I work during the school day, in the evening and at the weekends has been a dream come true. All that and something I enjoy doing to has been amazing. And even better it’s in an industry where I can happily see myself progressing up a career ladder as the kids get older (it’s also a lovely job in that due to the flexibility and part time nature of the work, so many people I work with do something else to, just as I embroider, I work with artists, musicians and writers, it’s lovely to find such a like minded company where I can control my time so I can earn money doing something I enjoy and in my time off continue to work on my embroidery in a way that if I had a 9 to 5 job, I couldn’t).

Book highlight(s)

Nerdy book stats time again; in 2011 I read (or listened to) 34 books (which is a shocking 8 books down from last year, it would have been even less if I hadn’t managed to get lots of reading in this December). Out of those 34; 25 were adult fiction (+3 from last year), 7 were children / YA fiction (a terrible -9 from last year) and 2 were non-fiction / memoir (-1 from last year) and I note that I didn’t read any short story collections this year either.

My adult fiction favourite

I’ve read some great books this year, highlights for me included Never Let Me Go, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Ours Are The Streets, A Discovery of Witches and City of Ghosts but my absolute favourite has to be Joe Hill’s Horns, which I thought was hauntingly fantastic.

My children’s fiction favourite

It has to be The Fear, may Charlie Higson go hurry up and write more

Cook book highlight

I think it has to be Hugh FWs Veg: Everyday, for being a vegetarian cookbook that isn’t really a vegetarian cookbook (but still definitely has no meat).

Craft book highlight

Only a relatively recent purchase but I’m pretty sure I’m going to use it again and again because the two things I have made from it turned out so well, it has to be Sew La Tea Do.

Film / DVD highlight

Hmmm, I think I managed to watch even less films this year, but off the top of my head I really liked Monsters.

TV highlight(s)

It feels like a lot of my favourite shows have ended over the last few years and there’s been nothing really to replace it, Doctor Who has continued to be good this year whereas Torchwood was awful (a prime example of when you take a British show and try and stretch it to American length). I think my favourite TV shows this year though was the cruelly cancelled Outcasts, may the Beeb continue to make sci-fi like that please.

Music highlights

I think my most listened to albums on my iPod this year were the entire back catalogue of Linkin Park, Eliza Doolittle, the Jack Johnson back catalogue, the Newton Faulkner back catalogue and The Defamation of Strickland Banks (my music tastes are nothing but a bit schizophrenic).

Luther:The Calling

I love Luther when it’s on TV, so I’ve been curious about the book, a prequel written by the same writer, Neil Cross for ages. I read the book as an audiobook, which was, I think, a bit of a mistake for me, as the narrator didn’t make Luther sound a bit like Luther from the TV series, he sounded more like a South London plumber, whereas if I had read it as a book I could have done the voice for myself. The other characters were a bit closer though and I think it wasn’t so much the narrator’s accent but more the book itself or more should I say the book lacking what Idris Elba himself brings to the part of Luther, but as I got into the book I got more into the book’s Luther and tried to forget TV Luther.

Anyway for those that don’t know, Luther is a TV detective series set in London. Luther is a maverick detective with a reputation for being ‘bad’, not corrupt, just bad, with no boundaries on what he’s prepared to do to get a result. In the TV series Luther is a troubled man and The Calling is billed as the case that tipped him over the edge, although to be honest I think he was already teetering over said edge way before this particular case happened.

You actually see the end of The Calling at the beginning of the first episode of the TV series, so it was nice to fill in the gaps and learn more about Luther’s history (like how he studied English at university, I had not imagined that, exactly how much he was in love with his wife, even though the marriage was so troubled and to get into Luther’s head to see how anxious he really is). The Calling is a nasty case, opening with the brutal murder of a family and it doesn’t get much better.

I don’t read books like this that often these days, I used to when I was younger but whereas I can handle fantasy violence I don’t like stories where the violence is in such a real life setting, but still it was worth, because I like the TV series so much, reading this one. I also appreciated the book for showing how a murder case does depend on so many more people than the normal one cop team you normally see in most novels like this.

So in summary, if you’ve watched the TV series, read this as it’s good at filling in some background information, if you haven’t watched the TV series you can still read this, as you’ll be starting the story at the beginning. However if you haven’t watched the TV series I really recommend watching it if you can because no matter how good the book is or is not, you can’t replicate the wonderful photography in the series (I love watching it for it’s gorgeous, dramatic shots of London) or Idris Elba himself.

*Ahem* the scenery not the only good looking thing in the programme

Lavender Felt Hearts (and Kirstie Allsop’s Craft)

I can’t believe it, it’s still November (just) and I’ve completed all the not so immediate relatives Christmas presents, an early deadline definitely helps. The above hearts, made from instructions from Kirstie Allsop’s Craft book that accompanies here current TV series.

I’ve filled mine with lavender, although you don’t have to, buying my lavender again from these people, who I would again thoroughly recommend for smelly lavender and extremely speedy service.

There’s one each for my now extremely elderly granny (who is increasingly difficult to make / buy for and I thought she may like the smell of the lavender) and my two uncles, plus one for me (well there’s got to be some perks for Christmas crafting).

This is the first time I’ve used the Kirstie Allsop Craft book and I’m a little more impressed with it than the book that accompanied the first series, principally because there’s more projects and it’s less rambling. As always with Kirstie Allsop craft TV series and books, they’re not for the ultra serious crafter but for what they lack in depth, they do make up in breadth and Craft has chapters on needle crafts, textile crafts, paper crafts, food crafts, garden crafts and gift crafts, so it’s a good book to dip into if you want to try a craft you may not normally do. The projects include those featured in this current series plus the last Christmas series. Projects I’d like to try from the book include;

• (possibly) the applique cushion, watching Kirstie vainly try to applique a hare onto a cushion a few weeks ago, I kept yelling at the TV “Bondaweb!” but part of me would like to try ‘proper’ applique
• the absolutely brilliant cross stitch cushion of a sardine tin designed by none other than Emily Peacock
• making natural dyes looks a challenge but fun
• paper sculpture bird
• paper bauble
• making handmade paper with Girl Lacer would be fun
• banana cake (no nuts, yay!)
• garden pickles
• elderflower cordial (if I can find elderflower)
• mosaic – one day I will mosaic something, but I don’t think it’s practical for this flat
• scarecrow – could be useful for the allotment
• making perfume looks fun
• lavender bath creamers and lavender bath bombs, well I do have quite a lot of lavender left . . .

Embassytown

China Mieville had been one of those authors I had been planning to read for quite some time, I quite liked the look of, in particular, Kraken, so I’m not sure quite why I chose Embassytown to be my first Mieville read (or should I say audiobook) instead.

Embassytown is sci-fi, Mieville himself is I think a fantasy writer (although his wiki entry says he plans on writing a novel in every genre, which is I think one of those great things about being a fantasy writer, you’ve got steampunk fantasy, western fantasy, sci-fi fantasy, you name it), but maybe then I should have chosen for my first Mieville something not quite so sci-fi, as I have a rather schizophrenic relationship with the sci-fi genre. Now I always think I love sci-fi, it is pretty much my favourite TV genre in everything from Battlestar Galactica, Stephen Spielberg’s Falling Skies to of course Doctor Who (although that’s not really sci-fi) and I tend to love any rare snippet of sci-fi the Beeb puts out from Outcasts, to Pulse, to Defying Gravity, to (and plumbing the depths of time here) Star Cops, even if pretty much everyone else slates it, ach maybe they’re all reading big serious sci-fi books like Embassytown, whereas I’m happy as long as they’ve got day-glo guns and a not too dense plot. It’s not like I’ve not read sci-fi before, I used to read quite a lot of Arthur C. Clarke in my teens and twenties and I like big serious sci-fi movies like Moon, Monsters and ummm other ones I can’t remember their names of (oh I’m so a die hard fan, can’t you tell?).

So with those slightly dubious sci-fi credentials behind me I always seem to forget that I actually don’t like reading most sci-fi, it leaves me cold, all that excess detail and belly button gazing, brrrrhhhh. Sooooo for a good first third of Embassytown, a novel about an outpost city where the Hosts (the inhabitants of the planet the humans have decided to go and build a city on) are these weird insectoid creatures that speak language through two mouths and can only be communicated with by specially bred twin Ambassadors, I was a bit bored. It was ok but I thought there was an excess of detail and not that much actually happening. Mieville goes into great detail on the nature of the language and that is generally the theme of the book, language and how it can be used with a theme side helping of the effect of colonisers on native species (although not stated explicitly there is a direct correlation between the Europeans and the colonisation of America and Australia and the effect on the native peoples). However Mieville does reward those who’ve sat through the first third of Embassytown with an increasingly faster, more plot driven story for the latter two-thirds of the book and I guess the world in which the story happened and the effect of the characters’ actions would not have been so ‘real’ if Mieville hadn’t spent so much time setting up the story to begin with . . .  so after all my whinging about sci-fi that goes on a bit for most of this post, yep you guessed it, I actually quite liked Embassytown. It’s not my favourite book of the year by far but it certainly hasn’t put me off reading more Mieville (maybe I will try Kraken next time). I think most of my criticisms of the book lay with me, in that as much as I proclaim to love sci-fi, I’m a ‘lazy’ sci-fi consumer and I prefer either easier plots or failing that a cinematographer to do all the hard work for me and to convey the alien landscape visually to me via film rather than words (actually I think Embassytown would make a good movie).

PS One final note about the whole audiobook aspect of this book, the aforementioned language that features so prominently in Embassytown spoken by the two mouthed Hosts (at least I think they have two mouths, I’m getting paranoid now that I’m going to get absolutely slaughtered by some die hard sci-fi nut who reads books like Embassytown for breakfast and will of course know the precise ins and out of the entire plot, it’s just the bit where Mieville explains how language works was in the first third of the book and my mind may have been wandering, which is a danger when you don’t have to physically read the thing, just listen), anyway the language gets featured quite neatly in the audiobook as the two mouthed Hosts and the two mouthed (as they’re clones) Ambassadors each say one part of the word or name in the language together, so a name, such as the name of one of the Ambassadors, EzRa, one mouth would say Ez and the other mouth would say Ra, at the same time and obviously with a bit of dubbing in the audiobook, hearing the narrator say it how it would have sounded like, with the Ez and the Ra being spoken at the same time, is at first a bit disturbing but does turn into a really neat device that certainly added to the story.