WATCHED - Titanic Sinks Tonight

We might believe we know all we need to know about the sinking of the Titanic, through all the repeated films that have been made of this disaster at sea. A large luxury liner hits an iceberg, sinks to the bottom of the ocean with a huge loss of life, end of story. This BBC series of four programmes, Titanic Sinks Tonight, takes you through the two hours plus of its sinking. In 'real time' showing you minute by minute how the disaster developed and it's aftermath. What gives this programme its power to grip you, even though you know what the outcome is, is the vividness with which it portrays what is happening through its dramatic reconstruction, and the verbatim accounts  from the surviving passengers and crews testimony.

It also makes great use of  historians, disaster, migrant and trauma survival experts, and most significantly here the writer Jeanette Winterson. Who is amazingly good at conveying the often curious logic behind human behaviour, when its put in the pressure cooker of a highly stressful situation. How we think and respond when we are in heightened panic mode. She is just so down to earth and humane, touchingly reminding you not to jump to moral judgements here. For no one knows how they would really respond in the midst of such a crisis. How we believe we would react, is just wishful thinking. When it comes to self preservation, to survival, something much more instinctual kicks in, and that might be far more selfish and ignoble than we'd like to imagine we would be.

As it takes you through the agonising process of sinking, the number of missed opportunities, and individual failings or mistakes start to pile up. You get a vivid picture of why this turned out so badly. How much the 'unsinkable' claim, made everyone complacent and slow in their responses. Early warnings about icebergs that were ignored because it wasn't flagged up via the correct terminology. The complete lack of a ship wide communication system, to convey information from the ships boiler room, eg - to the captain, or to inform passengers. The Captain who decided that in order to avoid panic,  he told hardly anyone, even in his own crew, that the ship was in the process of sinking. No one knew what to do. People had to decide for themselves what was happening and how best to respond. One officer misinterpreted the 'women and children first' ethos, as women and children only. Which made married couples reluctant to get on the boats, the boats that were inadequate in number anyway. The assumption that there would be a ship near by to come to the rescue, which there wasn't. The list goes painfully on.

Its a very tense and distressing watch, because you really feel for the wide range of people whose testimonies are being brilliantly portrayed here by actors,  The chilling fact that those who got in a boat could hear the screams and pleas of the hundreds of passengers floating in the ice cold water, and could also hear the slow descent of an eerie quiet as hypothermia silenced those sounds of distress. There is also a sense of the real injustice that the engineers who'd heroically and doggedly fought on to the last moment trying to keep the ship afloat, were the last to reach the upper boat deck, only to find there were no boats left to take them.

If you were a first class passenger you were far more likely to survive. If you were a woman or a child you were far more likely to survive. If you were a man, or a member of the crew, you'd be forced into a pose of stoicism and stiff upper lip about your prospects of surviving, which were incredibly small. The men who did survive, had to face public disapproval that their survival was a dispicable dishonourable stain upon their moral integrity. Of the nearly 1500 passengers who died, nearly 1100 of them were crew or third class passengers. There was a hierarchy of survival at work here based upon the implied greater value in being wealthier. Which is quite shocking when laid so factually bare like that.

I highly recommend watching, its quite compellingly told, one episode and you're hooked

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8  

Available to stream on BBC IPlayer.

FINISHED READING - Domination by Alice Roberts

 

One of the pivotal moments in the history of Western Civilisation was when the Roman Empire crumbled. They'd ruled Britain for nearly four hundred years. After their departure there is a period where documentation, and archeological information becomes sparse. What was really happening in this period, has been subject to a constant flow of theory and conjecture. What does clearly happen is the remarkable rise to dominance of Christianity. In Domination, Alice Roberts gives her riposte to Tom Holland's much more Christian friendly book Dominion. In the process she gives St Paul a slanderous makeover and the Christian approach to charity fundraising gets a good drubbing. Christianity as portrayed here, is not really a religion, but a scam intent on expanding it's property portfolio, and pressurising the middle classes to cough up more dough. A faith not primarily concerned with capturing hearts and minds, but with greedily grasping for charitable donations and acquisitions.

.
Modern historians have to beware of allowing the contemporary hermeneutics of suspicion becoming their default mode. I am not a Christian, nor an apologist for it, but I did find Alice Roberts snarky asides and very 21st century infused cynicism, somewhat irritating. Reducing everything to the machinations of power, wealth and a duplicitous desire for status, to the exclusion of anything else. No one is without mixed motives, and early medieval Christians were undoubtedly as prone to that too. But you can feel through out Domination that she is unwilling to give one jot of credence to the Christian faith itself, and the strength of its religious message in forming and transforming human actions. Its presented as so inherently and allpervadingly craven, corrupt or darkly manipulative. And yet, at the same time it is worth acknowledging that the economic dimension of ecclesiastical history is often quite conveniently overlooked or overlayed with the glittery distracting gloss of faith. In it's desire to highlight the economic underpinnings funding Christianity's rise, this book inverts that and buries spirituality under several truck loads of avarice and baser self serving motivations.

From the moment the apostles left Jerusalem on their mission to convert the gentiles, how this was to be financed became an issue. Many of Jesus's disciples appeared to be humble men of working class origin, who had not the personal resources to fund the proselytising of their faith. The nascent religious movement needed to have wealthy patrons. Paul, along with Matthew, had a profession, he was educated. He came from a well off family, and was notably the only apostle who had Roman citizenship. He could talk the language of trade and money, and find converts through that. Paul's repeated urgings in his letter's for followers to put their money where their faith was, was not him being disingenuous about his own pecuniary needs. Christian outreach work elsewhere, not necessarily by him, needed support.  All this travelling back and forth visiting the major ports of the Eastern Mediterranean was not cheap.

From this practical necessity Christianity gradually embedded itself, and found great profit in the Roman way of doing things. So much so, that by the time of Constantine's conversion, he was attempting to direct control of it. If you take Jesus's approach as portrayed in the Bible as your moral guide, then there was huge amount of rank hypocrisy involved in this getting into bed with the Empire. Jesus healed and taught the poor and needy. Christianity constantly refered back to the humble poverty of those original converts with pride, as if this remained true. The poor are hard to see or hear at all in Roman accounts, what the number of converts amongst the poor was remains conjecture., But the middle class, nobility and soldiers are well documented because they were literate and hence eminently more noticeable. The concept of the wealthy being favoured by god, was a Roman one that Romanised Christianity adopted and promoted,  because it fed their coffers.

There is a lot in this book to recommend it, pulling together disparate information that proves quite fascinating. It also challenges the traditionally held viewpoints of Christian history. She describes vividly the period after the Romans depart, how the remaining nobles who led tribes, did not immediately fully abandon the Roman traditions and ways of administration that were left behind. Their adoption of the Christian faith had been part and parcel of becoming Roman. The elite families in charge, she alleges, remained largely the same, continuing to be in control of secular and religious hierarchies. 

Roberts tends towards quickly dismissing the genuineness of their faith or asceticism, by implying that being Christian to them was like a fashion accessory, an entirely self serving pretense. One that was solely about preserving status, or conferring sainthood upon you upon your death, regardless of a lack of evident spiritual qualities. I don't believe popular veneration of local saints would work, if the latter were truly the case. Local people would surely remember whether someone was saintly or not, they'd probaly met them in person. Leaders of noble families sent their sons and daughters into the monastic life for a variety of reasons, sometimes to provide them with a diverting vocation. One that took them away from secular power and temptation to partake in internecine power struggles for succession within their own family. It wasn't always a strategic extension of a noble families influence, but a way of dispersing and neutralising elements that might become problematic if kept within it. Sure, this was not primarily about depth of faith or devotion, but these cannot have been totally lacking.

Whenever a religion becomes too comfortable a bed fellow with those who exercised political power, both sides are corrupted by the incestuous nature of it. That Christianity was, in the last decades of the Empire a small percentage of the Roman citizenry, but a much more substantial presence within its ruling elites, tells you a lot about how cults can quickly proliferate within small self-contained groups and contexts. Where an Emperor's charisma and exercise of power alone, can create a culture where his advisors all profess to be of a particular faith. Currently how many Republican senators in the US are pretending to be ardently Christian Nationalists, purely for the purposes of career advancement?  Christianity certainly became more prone to extreme authoritarian behaviour through its easier access to power and influence. Intolerant prejudice, oppression and corruption assumed its default mode. And this tendency was present from quite early on, and only grew more hardline as they became the biggest religion in Europe, ruthlessly suppressing and exterminating any religious competition or heresy.

She expends a huge amount of time exploring conflicting evidence for how devout a Christian Emporor Constantine was or wasn't. Its all highly conjectural, and, yes, you couldn't base either a defense nor prosecution on the history Eusebius wrote. The dominant Christian reinterpretation of the Chi-rho symbol undoubtedly happens at sometime subsequent to Constantine's conversion. Though it is far from unusual in the history of Christianity for it to adopt existing symbols and practices if they provided a useful cultural bridge. In fact they became rather adept at that.  It is unclear what reason made Constantine chose the Chi-rho. It's perfectly plausible that he adopted this because it possessed a useful ambiguity.That this was a symbol that appealed to a broad range of people and beliefs. It neither alienated Roman traditionalists nor the Christians, it worked for both.

It is undoubtedly correct to question whether Eusebius created the modern view we hold of Constantine, and the high significance placed upon his conversion experience. How much did we just assume that was how it was, even though it arose out of a Christian hagiographical puff piece. But the interesting thing about hagiography is not necessarily how far it manufactures the truth, but what beliefs and behaviours they are trying to reflect and inculcate via the narrative they're constructing. This book, for me, was outlining a purely economic interpretation to explain Christianity's rise in this period. It appeared to be attempting to construct it's own myth making hagiography, mining its themes with an almost religious fervour. This left me distinctly wary of fully taking on these ideas, wondering what was being left out of the picture she was presenting us with. What contemporary prejudices was this serving, and how much this was objective history or subjective interpolation?  Domination is a useful corrective, but frequently the supercilious self righteous tone of it, annoyed the hell out of me.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

MY OWN WALKING - Winterval Journal 2025/26

' No one, after your death is going to say why weren't you more like this or that,?  

You should ask yourself, why weren't you more your self?'  
Koshin Paley Ellison 

Once you start to pull at the threads and implications of this statement, all the pretenses and social conformities of modern life begin to unveil themselves before your eyes. Are we ever truly ourselves, what is that anyway, how would we know, how would we recognise what our true self even looks or feels like? Being more your self, doesn't mean nestling into you and your opinions and to hell with everyone else, quite the opposite actually. But this inevitably is our starting place. We retreat into recollecting our past life.

I try to locate a sense of myself somewhere in this self composed narrative I call my life story. If I reflect on that story as I habitually relate it, this has quite often been in pursuit of some ideal I had, for who I might become. And that thought required me to be a particular person, that thinks and behaves in a particular way. You could say that from ones childhood through your teenage years, you are trying on qualities or personas to see if they fit you. You experiment with, and reimagine your future self, what is not yet fully formed in your sense of your self, what you might turn out to be. The 'your' becomes inextricably entwined with 'the self 'into the compound word 'yourself', revolving through our imaginative teenage cos play.

So much of our teenage angst revolves around perceptions and expectations of ourselves as a particular gender. What you imagine as a man or woman you should be like. Now, quite often I'd think I ought to be this supremely confident man, sure of who he was, clear about what I wanted, was ambitious, took risks, and had a go for it attitude, to make things happen by sheer assertive force of personality or will. A man was physically and mentally strong, extraordinarily capable and forthright about what they believe. This form of masculinity was a stance we were supposed to adopt. The problem for me was, I wasn't at all sure I had these qualities, nor whether I wanted some of them.

Once I realised I was gay, this began a process of decoupling myself from making comparisons with who I was against the mirror of this masculine stereotype. One I'd been finding myself perpetually falling short of. There are, however, numerous ways of being a man, the majority of them chronically under explored and under used. Mainly because the cultural constraints placed on what masculinity is and isn't, are very tightly drawn. The current controversy over gender, is founded upon a clash of quite extreme viewpoints on what a man or a woman is. That its either a fixed binary or a broad flexible spectrum, entirely biologically or fully culturally determined, in a traditional versus a progressive view of manhood. And the clash of these polarities, these two, actually quite flawed certainties, has produced not one resolution, but one hell of a mess on the floor. 

Gender has many aspects that condition and fix it, whilst also being a cultural performance, a mode of outward self expression of an inner sense of identity. I recognise that this is currently a contentious issue, because gender and sexual orientation are vital constituent parts of who we are. Yet, this is not the bee all and end all of life, not the complete package, particularly when you ask why weren't you more yourself? And your answer becomes - this is what I was allowed to be.

Whether a traditional man, a gay man or non-binary, these are just ideas, conceptions about who you are that we lay over ourselves, they are ultimately not who you are really. If we fix too much of our identity and value onto these notions, they can become cages too, which we never allow ourselves to step outside of. No longer permitting ourselves to be contradictory, contrary or inconsistent individuals. We actively curate and contain who we believe we are. Making ourselves fit the stereotype,whether inherited or self created.

One of my spiritual teachers once said, 'There's only one thing worse than not getting what you want, and that's getting what you want' . Once you achieve your aim and fully arrive at 'yourself', this no doubt much longed for destination, after the euphoria has died down, there is a moment of anti-climax, a realisation that this is not quite the end of the journey you thought it was. You may have resolved one inner conflict, only to find others rising up to start clamoring for their resolution too. Never ever allow yourself to become the maid servant of your dissatisfaction, you'll be run ragged.

When I first encountered Buddhism, I was being run ragged by my dissatisfaction. Not a happy bunny at all. Buddhist meditation and teachings landed in an extremely needy, but receptive lap. I had for a while, what is commonly called Beginners Mind, a naturally open and eager receptivity to whatever I was presented with, this went in deeper and I had a clearer sense of the potential Buddhism was pointing me towards. And then it suddenly became quite ordinary, as though the beacon of light got dimmed. It was an activity I did devotedly every morning, because consistency in practice is extolled, commitment considered a quality to be cultivated. Binding ourselves tightly without a rope, to things we have found some value in, or are reputedly still beneficial. 

Once we start being a practicing Buddhist, a Christian or Moslem, we define ourselves by these names. And what we truly are becomes lost in the accretion of centuries old metaphysics and doctrinal frameworks. Any faith can be an expedient means, a necessary road upon which we travel in order to get ourselves to a place where we no longer need it. To a place where we can be free of any terms, designations and strategies, where the search for meaning and self importance retire themselves. However, we are more likely to find ourselves getting stuck, trapped in thinking we need to be a particular spiritual person in a particular spiritual way. It's not necessarily the religions fault, this is just what humans tend to do, we conform ourselves to our misconceptions.

In the Buddhist Heart Sutra it recounts all the things that the state of Enlightenment is not. Its not a thing that our senses can name, grasp or define, its not a thing our desires can obtain, its not even a thing really. At the conclusion comes a mantra that urges you to be gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond That appears to remove Enlightenment so far from our actual lived experience, to be comparable to an unbelievable fantasy. As Dogen put it - in order to be yourself, you need to forget yourself.

Though it does have its predictive oracles every time we meditate. As you let go of associative thought patterns, current mental obsessions, the concerns and fetishes surrounding your self definition, your sense of purpose or analysing the meaning of your meditation experience. Somewhere in the fleetingly brief disappearance of mental chitter chatter, the moments where you let go of stridently insisting on 'yourself' being you, who you really are, a freedom from all concepts, naming, definitions and expectations, tentatively emerges, blinks, pops like a bubble and is gone. For one liberated moment  the 'your' becomes decoupled from the 'self'' leaving it denuded and free to fly.

 

POETRY - The Unwritten - by W.S.Merwin

The Unwritten

Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they're hiding

they're awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won't come out
not for love not for time not for fire

even when the dark has worn away
they'll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser

what script can it be
that they won't unroll
in what language
would I recognise it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything

maybe there aren't
many
it could be that there's only one word
and it's all we need
it's here in this pencil

every pencil in the world
is like this

Written by W.S. Merwin
from Writings To An Unfinished Accompaniment
published in 1973, and Migration 2005

FINISHED READING - W.S.Merwin - Migration

'I have been a poor man living in a rich man's house'
*

W.S Merwin compiled this selection of his poetry in 2004, fifteen years before he died. I'm not sure, when it comes to assessing the quality of their work, its best to leave that in the hands of the poet. Authors tend towards including too much, as is evidenced by this tombe, all 529 pages of it. Not that what is contained within this compendium is without merit, far from it. Similar to a blockbusting exhibition of a painter's entire oeuvre, the comprehensive scale can so easily swamp or diminish the value of an individual piece. There is then, an element in this volume of the unwieldy retrospective, that doesn't encourage the poems to speak freely of themselves. When they enter, they walk into a very cacophonous crowded room. And as I reached near the end of it,I found myself growing tired of the tumbling ramble of his words, that out of my weariness I wished to quickly skip. To find they have nothing to recommend them other than the convulsive propulsion of their nature.  

'The stones were skies with skies inside them

and when he had worked long enough

he saw that a day was a stone and the past was a stone

with more darkness always inside it'
**

Migration, is an apt title. It is a characteristic of his writing that he would wander off piste to explore a new approach, a fresh way of structuring a poem, a new subject matter, a new way of composing the struggles and contingencies of his life. He ended up quietly covering a lot of territory. Writing initially in the heroic shadow of Robert Graves, his earliest work has the sense of being written in awe, as a reverent homage. But gradually Merwin does break free to discover his own voice, protesting and passionate. Undoubtedly an extraordinarily fine poet, it is in the diversity of poetic forms present in his output, where you'll locate the particularities of his aesthetic muse and authorial voice. Just occasionally he returns to lay a poetic wreath, in memoriam, at the grave of Graves.

'Sitting over words

very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing

not far

like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark

the echo of everything that has ever

been spoken

still spinning its one syllable

between the earth and silence'
***

His writing does not possess an overtly masculine muscularity or the bold imprint of an intention to make this an important utterance. As one might find with contemporaries such as Thomas or Hughes. Merwin was not interested in the place or branding of his poetry, or for forging a myth of himself as a writer. By contrast he is hard to locate, because his expressiveness is often written in a small vocal scale. When he did compose poetry larger in ambition and size, one poem here is over fifty pages in length, it gains nothing through its verbosity. He wrote mostly about the minutiae of the moment that it was an outpouring of. His affinity with Buddhism becomes increasingly apparent. Interested in capturing the butterfly fleetingness of experience, thoughtful reflections composed in a loose chain of words. Poetry for him, like human existence, reluctantly had an affinity with ephemerality.

'At night the veins of sleepers remember trees

countless sleepers the hours of trees

the uncounted hours the leaves in the dark'
****

There are times when experimentation with structure in a poem, was in danger of completely dominating, to the detriment of comprehension. These are short lived shifts of emphasis, lasting barely the length of one quite slim poetry volume. Merwin aimed to capture the paradigm of each moment, the colours and textures of its patterning, whether that was in the urban cityscape of New York or a rural setting. These poems paint a very personal event or recollection that are on occasions opaque for the reader to place in their own experience, as beautifully expressed as they are. Reaching out towards some profundity, but falling short. He was consistently a good poet, who occasionally became truly great when he happened to stumble upon a mode of expression that opened up something far vaster and more universal in scale.

'Inside this pencil

crouch words that have never been written

never been spoken

never been taught

they're hiding'
*****

One repeated theme in Merwin's poetry is at the point where prosaic language fails us, the ecology of our language, where words easily lose their meaning, the names of places, plants and tribes, whose origins fast disappear from folk memory. Those things that we no longer remember the detail of, the what or who they were, what something was made for, what job did this once do. We are a species that continues to be fired by its migrations, perpetually emigres leaving home, moving on, forgetting, forging a new vision for ourselves in a new place. One of the purposes of Merwin's poetry was as a reminder to us, to keep the ecology of language alive, to preserve what has become unspoken, the no longer heard cadences. Ideas and ways of being on the verge of being forgotten or erased by blind adherence to the notion of progress.

'Finally the old man is telling

the forgotten names

and the names of the stones they came from

for a long time I asked him the names

and when he says them at last

I hear no meaning

and cannot remember the sounds' 
******

Lines taken from the poems
* Piere Vidal - 1996
** Romanesque - 1996
*** Utterance - 1988
**** The Counting Houses - 1977
***** The Unwritten - 1973
****** Hearing The Names Of The Valleys - 1988

All extracts from
W.S. Merwin - Migration - New & Selected Poems 2005

FAVE RAVE - Rutger Bregman - The 2025 Reith Lectures

"Immorality and unseriousness 

are the two defining traits of today's leaders.
They are not accidental flaws,
but the logical outcomes of what I call
the survival of the shameless"*

This years Reith Lectures by historian  Rutger Bregman focused on how the reemergence of a moral revolution can happen. He gives examples from history when this sort of moral resurgence has happened, and how it has usually arisen out of a small group of ernest and committed campaigning individuals. If this needs to happen if we are to remotely stand a chance of avoiding democracy being totally subsumed by the corruption of techno-fascism - in our present situation where does it start? 

In his talks he made reference to how news media and cultural institutions are already being cowed into uncritical tugging of the forelock to Trump's authoritarianism. In the talk as originally broadcast by the BBC in the UK, he stated how Trump was 'the most openly corrupt president in US history'. This has since been edited out of the talk before being posted on the internet. As if to demonstrate one of his points with even greater transparency. 

These four twenty five minute lectures, neatly encapsulate our current situation, what needs to happen right now, and where we might be heading if we do nothing to arrest our current state of moral and political decline.

First Reith Lecture - Are we Living Through The Fall Of Civilisation?

Second Reith Lecture - The Collapse of Trust

Third Reith Lecture - How Utopian Dreams Became Reality

Fourth Reith Lecture - Can Humanism Survive the Age of AI?

* Taken from the First Reith Lecture

WATCHED - The War Between The Land And The Sea

Enthusiastic as Russell T Davis is, as a fan for the whole Whoniverse franchise, I've ceased thinking of him as the show runner who can salvage it from ultimate retirement. I see him as part of the problem. It needs someone with less reverence for its history, to break the mold that he once re-made, and is now stuck in. A whole mess of accrued 'tymy wymy' nonsense needs binning, and starting afresh as though sixty years of existence never happened. So in some respects The War Between The Land And the Sea as an offshoot, does end up exhibiting some of the same flaws as the last Dr Who iteration, the one that Disney pulled the plug on. 

The drama centres around an ancient sea people, referred to by humans as Homo Aqua, who emerge from the depths because of the ravages of the sea by human industry and economic activity. They throw back everything that's been dumped into the sea, in a rain of plastic refuse on human cities. Their leader Salt ( Gugu Mbatha Raw ) demands that Barclay ( Russel Tovey) a lowly civil servant, becomes the chief negotiator with her. Their growing respect for each other blossoms first into a rebellious partnership, and later into a love affair. War breaking out between the peoples of the land and the sea becomes increasingly inevitable.

One thing that this drama largely gets right is its casting. Russell Tovey's abilities as a leading actor are frequently under valued, but here he has a part where he can fully exhibit his acting talent and his torso, and does both superlatively. I was, on occasions, deeply moved by his performance as the archetypal everyman who often feels like he is floundering, as he reluctantly gets drawn into being a heroic leader. Without the solidity of his presence, this drama would sag far more than it does. The other actor also worthy of praise is Jemma Redgrave, as the devoted head of UNIT, who here gradually falls to pieces through over commitment to her work and personal bereavement. Combined, these two actors are the emotional core of this series. They bring to it the sort of gravitas, the script frequently struggles to realistically grasp.

Russel T Davis at his best, can be an adventurous writer, effortlessly summoning all sorts of moods and responses, whilst also making a drama that has salient political points to make or social commentary, without them feeling laboured. Just re-watch Years an Years, and Its a Sin, if you need reminding. The difficulty here, with The War Between The Land And The Sea, is that its environmental messages are decidedly unsubtly performed. An evil manipulative businessman all but cackles and twists a moustache archly. Politicians venal and only concerned with their public optics or salvaging their reputations. It offers you a series of lazily written cliches, not perceptively presented or revealing of new insights. The right wing press might complain that Davis makes the Whoniverse too woke for its own good, but actually its that it delivers its messages so feebly and stereotypically that's irritating. 

Whilst the series is structured to stretch over five episodes, its pacing feels all over the shot. Spending the first three episodes as though they were literally treading water. Everything develops so incredibly slowly, single scenes are given far too much air time. So it was the end of episode four before it began to propulsively come to life. Its almost as if they'd decided on the scheduling first, and had to stretch out the script to fit into it. I have an issue with the soundtrack, which happens with Dr Who too. It is so loud, too dominant a presence, constantly imposing what you are meant to feel about a scene, upon you. This incessant emotional signaling, becomes a substitute for a poorly conceived dramatic scene. A lot of ramped up aural telling, often unsupported by what you are actually being shown. And that creates an ongoing dissonance to our engagement throughout the series.

Now having said all that, the final episode was really moving, and revealed more fully that this series has really been built around love affairs. I have enjoyed watching the series, whilst all the time being aware that it fell short of being compulsive viewing.  I could have bailed at any moment and felt I'd not missed much. So what kept me there? Russel Tovey mainly. Plus the joke Salt makes about his ears making wonderful gills. That sort of wry wit was sadly far too rare here.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

FAVE RAVES OF 2025 - The Places We Go To Eat Cake

Whilst I don't normally compose these lists in order of price, quality or preference. I think in all of these cafes, a coffee and cake for two people will be around £14-16. I'll make no secret on this occasion which one's of these are currently the best all round for quality coffee and cake.

No 1- Salthouse Stores - Salthouse
Over 2025 we've made countless visits to Blakeney, taking stock we've made for Seagull's Gallery, to check what we've sold, or do our twice monthly voluntary manning of the shop. Nine times out of ten we'll go early in order to stop off in Salthouse to have coffee and cake in the Stores there. Because it is by a long way the best made coffee in our bit of North Norfolk, and its never 'barista dependent' either. The coffee is always made to a reliable standard. They also have a consistent range of sweet and savoury bakes. People literally fight over their Cinnamon Buns, because they are simply the best when they have them in, ditto their Cruffin. Plus they do an excellent Banana Loaf and Vegan Roll too. Their interior seating is limited. This becomes crucial in the Winter months. Also the local Ladies Morning Walking group has been known to take over the entire spaces available, should your timing be a fraction out. The local store and giftware sections are very well stocked and contain a nice interesting range of items. But for us, these are generally on the far too pricey end of retailing.

No 2 -Folks - Holt & Blakeney
If we don't go to Salthouse Stores on our way to Blakeney, then we pop into Holt instead to frequent Folks. Folks is the best coffee shop in Holt, the coffee there is also consistently good, and they generally have a fine range of cake bakes to choose from. The Orange and Carrot Bake being worthy of note. It's also light and spacious with loads of tables to choose from. Its minimalist aesthetic is beautifully executed, with a thoughtfully chosen range of wooden seating and tables. However, if you should have an adult with a loud or penetrating voice or a screeching complaining child, the acoustic can be quite unforgivingly harsh and echoey. There is nothing there to act as a sound absorber.

They used to do what I describe as a knotted fist of a Cinnamon Bun, which I rather liked, but it only very infrequently appeared. Recently Folks announced they were now stocking Cinnamon Buns by a company called Swirl, and I got prematurely excited. These turned out to be doughy and too sickly sweet for my liking, and I had acid reflux and an upset stomach after. So you can't win them all. Folks in Blakeney is petite by comparison, but is also good. though its cake range can be minimal and its opening times in Winter can become a bit erratic.

No 3 - Stiffkey Stores - Stiffkey
Like Salthouse, Stiffkey Stores is a mixture of local store, and a posh interiors, card and gift shop for the well off middle classes. Whenever we are heading Walsingham or Wells Next The Sea way, we will definitely stop over here. One, because, once again, the quality of the coffee is consistently excellent, and two, because they make a Peanut Blondie that is simply the best ever. So we never try anything else, unless they've sold out, which is a very rare occurrence. They only have outdoor sheds, tables and benches, so when the easterly winter wind is blowing hard, you are unlikely to visit, or stay for long. In the summer its worth getting there early, before every rambler, twitcher, second home owner and hurray henry hipster yummy mummy family quickly fill the place to the brim. 

No 4 - Cornish Bakery - Southwold, Norwich & Bury St Edmunds.
On one of our twice yearly jaunts to Southwold, we first tried out Cornish Bakery, and experienced the taste of their sublime Cornish Pudding. The latter is a mash-up of yesterday's danish pastries with chocolate and raspberries, this is so delicious it almost touches on divinity. Since then if we see a Cornish Bakery anywhere we'll have 'The Pudding'. East Anglia now has two more branches, one in Norwich, the other in Bury St Edmunds. The coffee is consistent, but not particularly superlative. Their newer branches are noticeably more spacious and very baby buggy friendly. They are rapidly becoming a national chain. PS. Friends of ours thought it essential for me to add, that Cornish Bakery sell off their pastries at a reduced price just before they close, so it can be worthwhile working out the timing and popping back later

No 5 - Bread Source - Norwich Cathedral & Alysham
Bread Source are very much a Norfolk phenomena at present, installing pop up cafes in stately homes all over the county. They took over the Norwich Cathedral Cafe and have made it the best place to rendezvous in the city for lunch. Not too noisy, quite spacious, with plenty of tables, a good range of bakes, savoury options and superb bread range. Coffee, is again consistent, but not that notable. Their Cinnamon Buns can be variable in size and quality, but if you get to pick the properly risen ones, they are lovingly slathered in cinnamon dust and are gently sweetened. They also have a pre-prepared vegan salad in a box that can be quite a wonderful taste sensation. The branch in Aylsham, has all the above, though it has the same problem as Folks in Holt, with a harsh echoey acoustic, which at its worst you can hardly hear yourself think in.

No 6 - Grey Seal Cafe -Sheringham & Cromer
Grey Seal once had ambitions to be a chain across North Norfolk, but has now concentrated on it's two sites in Sheringham and Cromer. They do a rather fine Cinnamon Bun, which I've only ever encountered in the Sheringham branch, where they will warm it up if you wish, and this is just spot on. Second only to Salthouse Store's. Inside seating is a bit at a premium, particularly in the Winter months. They could do with having more adaptable two person smaller tables. Instead they have a pair of rather substantial four seaters, that tend to get half used. The general ambiance in Sheringham is really relaxed and friendly.

The Cromer branch can be a rather more inconsistent experience. Their opening time can be a moveable feast. the cake range can often be sparse. Its quite a large cafe with plenty of seating both inside and out. The coffee quality has been known to be 'barista dependent'. I drink Oat Latte's generally these days, and it seems, these are the ultimate test for how good a barista is or isn't. In the well trained hands of a good barista an Oat Latte turns out creamy with a rich depth of flavour. In a badly trained one, they'll invariably burn the coffee, or the oat milk, or both, and you'll wonder quite what it is that is delaminating the roof of your mouth lining. 

WORDS WRITTEN AT THE POINT OF GRATITUDE - Reflections on 2025

• I am grateful to still be alive. Last years HA! made a slow, but perceptible, shift in my views on life and what its for. As 2025 has progressed, I've felt encouraged to make the most of life, certainly, but that doesn't mean becoming excessively busy, I've found a particular peace in allowing the quality of what I do, and how I choose to execute it, motivate me, rather than a list of achievements, and tasks completed. Yes, I still have my creative projects, but they are not quite the central most important thing I do, they are just one thing I enjoy doing. I've come to realise that we all leave unfinished projects behind when we die, that's how it is. So, no need to hurry.
  
  
• I could have survived the HA! but with my mind and body impaired in some way, making life difficult not just for me. but also for my husband. I feel gratitude every day that I can go out for a walk, breath the air, feel more deeply connected to nature and the world. I still have my awareness, a fully functioning consciousness, that can find pleasure and enjoyment in even the most simple of sensations. That I still have my independence, my ability to reflect on my experience, it's a tremendous gift. For if you're unable to express your appreciation of your life, where can the gratefulness, where can the love come from? 
  
  
• To love and to be loved in return is a precious commodity to be savoured. And I've realised with greater cogency this year that the ability to love, lies at the core of feeling grateful. I lived a good deal of my early adulthood, craving to be loved and not finding it. And this had an ungrateful corroding effect upon my world view, there was an underlying bitterness, a consequent souring in any potential for gratitude. This changed in mid life when I first met my husband. Our life living together now, can feel such an easy going one, it can also be easy to forget that this has taken effort to get to, and still takes effort for love to be expressed and not to take anything for granted. I love my husband more now than I ever have. Such a clever, creative, loving, caring and considerate man, that I'm so grateful to have this one opportunity to share a life with him.
  
  
• I was sipping a breakfast cup of rose tea, a favourite morning drink. For just one fleeting moment I had this rush of pleasure, of feeling so grateful for this drink I was imbibing. The warmth, the aroma, its flavour, the sensation of comfort and reassurance. So often I am eating and drinking on automatic, I'm feeding my hunger, but not really fully present to the sensations and pleasures of it.  Much of what can feel vital in being alive, comes down to these small fine details of life. What I am unaware of, I cannot appreciate, what I fail to appreciate I cannot feel grateful for, and hence cannot value or love.

• In the West we take so much for granted. Recent years have shown just how subject to abrupt change, how vulnerable to the unexpected we all are. And it is in moments like these, when we can see more clearly the things that we treasure, to feel gratitude for what we already have. This is still a favourable time we are currently living within, and I'm grateful for that. If you are gay in this country you have been given more rights now than we've ever had previously, We are all broadly still able to live our life however we wish, without state oppression or harassment or violence.
  
  This zeitgeist is of course subject to change, their are premonitions of that already emerging, the potential for a reversal of our current tolerant progressive approach. Whatever has been given can be taken away. Tolerance, unfortunately, is conditional. Express your gratitude for what you already have, and one way of expressing the depth of that gratitude, our love for it, is by being prepared to defend it. Gratitude is an appreciative proactive love. 
  
  

FAVE RAVES OF 2025 - Film, TV & Streaming

Streaming & TV Series

Andor Series 1-2 (Disney +)
This brilliantly written drama, highlights the fear, conflicts and fragilities present when organising and financing a rebellion within a highly militarised authoritarian state.It was a tense, perceptive and tragic drama from start to finish. Why this has not won all the awards hands down is completely beyond my understanding. It was the best thing I've watched all year.

Leonard & Hungry Paul (BBC)
Based on the bestselling book by Ronan Hession, this is a simple hearted, genial drama about two thirty something men who both realise they need to breakout of living at home, to launch a hopefully more fulfilling life. It's utterly ordinary, but holds huge amounts of charm and is beautifully played by all its cast.

Alien Earth (Disney + )
The first series of the Alien franchise, transposes the threat to earth. Though this is really a study in what defines a human being as human, and if you are a synthetic body containing a human consciousness, what does that make you? 

Shogun (Disney +)
An English ship lands in Japan intent on breaking the trading monopoly of the Portuguese. Its Captain John Blackthorne rapidly gets drawn into the bafflingly formalised conflicts going on within the Shogunate. Power struggles, love and intrigue, this series had it all

Virdee (BBC)
I'm always a sucker for a good detective crime procedural. This one was a cut above most in an admittedly crowded genre. Virdee, is your classic slightly dodgy police officer, whose own dysfunctional family tensions spill over into his professional life and corrupt his moral judgement.

Films 

Sinners (2025)
A mythic ode to the inspirations and the people that made the blues. This film has atmosphere by the truck load, and one central musical dream sequence that was one of my highlights of the year. Fabulous

A Real Pain (2024)
Two cousins take a road trip to Auschwitz and along the way discover just how chalk and cheese they are. It has wonderfully funny moments mixed with deeply affecting ones. Kieran Culkin is a bloody marvel in this film and deserves all the acclaim.

Past Lives (2023)
It might seem like a great idea to reconnect with someone, twenty years later, who was your childhood sweetheart. This film imagines just such a scenario and is simply the most touchingly gentle but ultimately heartbreaking mistake. 

Perfect Days (2023)
A philosophically minded cleaner of the most avant garde lavatories in Tokyo, has a highly organised life that is disrupted by the arrival of his rebellious niece. Their friendship causes him to realise just what he's missed by becoming this sage like semi-recluse. A Wim Wenders film that has such a simple hearted joy.

Drive Angry (2011)
Ever find a film so bad, but it knows its bad, that it almost celebrates and luxuriates in its crassness? Well, Drive Angry is that film. The dialogue is so so knowing. Nicholas Cage is brilliant. But the real star here is William Fichtner as The Accountant, literally from hell

Documentary

No Other Land (2024)
Two documentary makers, one Israeli and one Palestinian, start documenting the build up and constant aggression on a Palestinian village by Israeli forces, aiming to rob them of their birthright to provide land for further expansion of Israeli illegal occupation. Shocking and deeply upsetting at times, this shows you the strain and very human cost of constantly being harassed by your nearest neighbour.

FAVE RAVES OF 2025 - Novels, Non-Fiction & Music

Books - Novels

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
By far my favourite novel of 2025. hilarious, poignant, bitchy and just so exquisitely written. This recounting of an affair that was inevitably going to end badly, does indeed not spare us the consequences to an almost Greek level of tragedy. 

The Factory -Hiroko Oyamada
A short novella, that is so carefully and succinctly written. It's a book about alienation from meaningful work. Recounting how one person gets drawn into employment in the ubiquitous Factory. But quickly discovers no one appears to know what the companies economic mission is, nor what it is they are making.

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong
A debut novel that has only grown in my admiration since reading it. A man is writing home to his mother to tell her about his life, telling her who he truly is. Fully knowing his Mother will never be able to read or understand his words. The second half is so gorgeously written, as though Vuong suddenly found his authorial voice.

Trust - Hernan Diaz
A classic book about unreliable narrators, what makes them unreliable, the prejudices and assumptions we all make when reading an account of someone's life. What makes us believe a story, what is it that makes us place our trust in one account, but not the other?

Butter- Asako Yuzuki
A female journalist decides she needs to make a name for herself, and chooses to write an article about an infamous female serial killer who is obsessed with butter, allegedly murdering her victims by feeding them extremely rich food. Part investigative thriller, part psychological study of manipulation and discovering who you really are.

Books -Non  Fiction

Fractured - Jon Yates
Accessible whilst simultaneously a gently challenging book, this is actually much more optimistic about how we can rebuild a sense of agency and community in our divided world. How actively engaging with People Who Are Not Like Us is good for us and society more broadly.

The Roots of Goodness - Dogen / Uchiyama Roshi
I studied this originally as part of an online three month retreat programme. As ever the combination of Dogen, with Uchiyama's clear, pithy and at times pokey exposition, is a priceless combination. 

Heresy - Catherine Nixey
A fascinating run through of how the religiously unorthodox were systematically erased by Christianity. It also dispels a few assertions about the supposed uniqueness of the Christian story. Sons of God being an extremely common phenomena, apparently.

One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This - Omar El Akkad
A blisteringly passionate condemnation of Western moral attitudes and ways of forgetting its own duplicity in world atrocities. Obviously with the genocide in Gaza very much in mind, as just another example. Both a sobering and deliberately confronting book to read.

Trading Game - Gary Stevenson
Nowadays, he is a bit of a podcast sensation and pioneer in calling for a wealth tax. This autobiography focuses on his working class origins and time as an extraordinarily successful city trader. His descriptions of the various misfits and ethically dubious characters occupying a trading floor, is alternately hilarious and slightly concerning.

Music - Albums

Lux - Rosalia
From the first time I heard this album, I've become a man obsessed. You want to intravenously imbibe it constantly, but simultaneously treat it as though it were this rare precious object forged out of four carat gold, that needs to be paused and savoured. It is by turns so ravishingly sung and full of beauty, but then profoundly startles you with how shocking it can also be. Probably the most adventurous album of recent years, this is going to be a hard thing to follow up. 

Iconoclasts - Anna Von Hausswolff
A strangely daunting yet impactful album, Iconoclasts has this febrile gargantuan feel to it, the sheer size of its soundscape hits you like huge slabs of concrete. You have to be in the right mood for this I find, but when you are it is utterly magnificently dark baroque. 

Tarkus - Emerson Lake & Palmer
Seventies progressive 'supergroups' like ELP fast became highly pretentious behemoths. But in the early days of 1971 the opening twenty minutes plus of Tarkus is the most powerful piece of driven tour de force music Progressive Rock ever produced. Lyrics, however, were never their strongpoint.

Mad! & Madder! - Sparks
The album Mad! for me was unfortunately a patchy affair, some top notch brillant Sparks spoiled by rather weak sentimental whimsy. Madder! their first EP, is a more cohesive quartet of songs, Fantasise and They in particular are classic deceptively edgy Sparks and I love them to bits.  

To Each - A Certain Ratio
Albums find their moment with me. I never quite got into To Each in the 80's. But I rediscovered the album this year, and its rarely off my playlist. Recorded in 1981, it has this soured atmospheric mood, a mixture of oppressive foreboding and darkly echoing underground tunnels of industrial funk. A soundscape that ACR were the pioneers of.