I forgive them. In the first place I should have done the arithmetic myself and not bought into this stuff about the 1000th episode of NCIS. ‘How did it go so fast?’, I thought to myself. It did, and it didn’t. One thousand episodes within the NCIS world, and I haven’t watched them all. Of NCIS itself, there must be around half that, and I have watched all those.
So, episode 1000. I liked it. I was going to say, surprisingly well written, but I think what I mean is pretty well plotted. Enough encompassing characters from other series, and some looking back over the years – which suggests some of the writers have watched, or caught up with, enough old stuff – leaving this old fan surprisingly satisfied.
The of necessity short season 21 hasn’t been the best. Nor the worst. I’ve just not hurried to watch it immediately, the way I used to. Nothing like when I got out of bed extra early for season three episode one. (Don’t arrange to host dinner parties when something like that is on TV!)
Don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who’s not seen no. 1000 yet. But it’s worth watching. I will happily sit down with the rest of the family for a second viewing. Maybe even a third.
It’s not often that the powers that be give you [back] what you want the most. Take David Tennant as the Doctor. I could easily have told you he was my favourite. But the rules being what they are – or were – we all knew he’d not be returning. And then it seems things got dire enough that David could come back as the Doctor; almost the same, but with a new number.
I imagine 95% of viewers drew a sigh of relief, while never having expected David’s return. Even if his presence was to be short lived, it was welcome. Not that Jodie Whittaker was wrong. I loved her, and her hair. But just as the frog doesn’t notice it’s being boiled, I suspect I had no idea that the quality of Doctor Who went south quite so dramatically. But then I didn’t even watch Jodie’s last season. I blamed it on me. Perhaps it was them?
No. 14 was older than no. 10, and so much better for it. Sometimes people need to gather maturity, as was obvious with David in Good Omens last year.
Although, seeing him again, I felt worse about Ncuti Gatwa. In fact, it had been so long since we were first told about him that I’d begun to wonder if he was really going to happen. Wasn’t too happy during the actual regeneration, but once Ncuti was on his own in the Christmas episode, he was all right. (Could have worn trousers, though.)
Have been informed there is time for me/us to catch up with Jodie’s last season before Ncuti starts for real. So that could be a plan.
The news about David McCallum started coming yesterday just before bedtime here in Europe. I’d felt so happy it was David’s 90th birthday last week. And now this. But 90 is a very good milestone to reach. And he continued being a part time Ducky for most of last year, even if we could see he was getting older.
David was an excellent medical examiner in NCIS. And twenty years of doing that is pretty good going, well after normal retirement age. But as I keep saying, we only started watching the Navy cops because of Illya Kuryakin being in it.
Illya was super important back when your witch was ten. I mean, even television was young, and there wasn’t much on, and then you get someone as deliciously wonderful as David McCallum. I don’t – didn’t – go for blonds. But there he was, and there he still is in our memories.
Roger Whittaker died last week, on September 13th. He was 87.
When the news became public yesterday, I was sad, but in a way not surprised. A couple of weeks ago we were told Roger was in hospital, with the usual soothing comments being made. But there is always a time when someone is just too ill.
I’m so thankful Roger lived this long. For his family first, but also for his many fans. We have had so many songs, so many albums, and a lot of concerts, including – I think – three farewell tours.
Personally I have loved Roger’s singing since I was twelve, a lifetime ago. I always used to say with his voice I’d happily listen to him working his way through the telephone directory. Although, we have obviously enjoyed all those lovely, lovely songs; many written by Roger and many from other songwriters.
I wrote a piece in the Guardian – a long time ago – and then there is the interview in Köln a little later. It’s always good to know that an errant strand of hair irritated my favourite singer.
Did you know that to finely chop one garlic (that’s bulb of, not clove) and a kilo of plums (for chutney) takes exactly as long as it takes to watch an episode of NCIS? It does. And I was glad to have found something to ‘do’ while chopping.
Just as the day before, two kilos of plums for jam got more entertainingly done in the company of Mark Isitt on Swedish Radio, in his Sommar programme about architecture. In fairness, I had time to change the sheets on the bed too.
Catching up big time here, having watched the last Allsång from Skansen just the other day. It was unexpectedly dramatic with one singer being stretchered off, having collapsed (and not for the first time apparently).
Netflix is busy telling me to finish watching The Detectorists, which I have no intention of doing. We simply picked the first thing that turned up when experimenting to see where our streaming difficulties lie. With the Philips TV, it seems. We’ve since managed another episode of Good Omens, but I’m not holding my breath. There needs to be more tech, somewhere, and preferably not yet another new TV.
Daughter and I Barbied a week or so ago. It was her first return to the cinema, and mine too, if you don’t count the smaller one I went to last year. It was surprisingly disappointing. Not the film, but the cinema experience. We can see ourselves watching more television for a bit longer. Although, not if the actual TV keeps playing up. Obviously.
One can read books. Or, if the tech works, watch books on the small screen. We enjoyed Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie, which we’d caught being filmed on holiday in St Andrews. And there’s always Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, which hadn’t been changed too much.
Music? I feel too old for it. Often don’t even fire it up on the laptop when I sit here and write.
But anyway, Culture and I are fifteen today. And I’m almost looking forward to the new season of NCIS.
We’re a little late here, having only just finished the last Good Fight.
It’s been a weird season, where the characters behaved even more strangely than previously. Fun, if you can suspend belief, or whatever. But do we want Diane Lockhart acting as though she’s high every week? Possibly.
Hated the new boss type person who came on the scene, but as with so many such characters, he grew on me. Carmen is fun, but also odd. I liked the way her really bad clients stood up for her against one other bad client. I know I shouldn’t have, but still.
And then we have ‘Mr Lockhart’. Gary Cole was presumably busy with NCIS much of the time, but he made it back occasionally.
The last episode; we didn’t know what was going to happen. For a slightly oddball season, this ending was serious in a good way. Nerves surfaced and hearts beat. Was it going to blow up as some sort of grand finale?
I recently felt rather inadequate when reading about an online friend’s Easter holiday trip to the opera. She was taking her granddaughter, who is about seven. And she did so at the girl’s request, who after listening to so much opera at home during the last year or two, she really, really wanted to go to a live performance. And her favoured opera was one I’d never even heard of. The friend suspected it might be a difficult one to find, but not so.
Hence the recent trip to London for some real opera. It was one of these performances you get nowadays, where you get to meet the cast, and the girl’s day was made.
It made me wish I could have done that (although I treated Offspring at a young age to similar things, albeit plays, and not always in London). But of course I didn’t ever consider the opera, because it was, well, the opera. One ballet was enough for a posh night out.
So I tried to analyse how this young girl acquired her taste for opera. It’s because there was so much of it made available at her grandmother’s house, so it became both well known, and also very attractive.
And I realised that this could have happened to me too, had Mother-of-Witch played the right music when I was a child. But she didn’t really go in for music, and if the radio was on, it was more likely to be the more ‘boring’ talk radio programmes. My own listening came around the age of ten when I caught the pop bug.
Mother-of-Witch wasn’t not into culture. Just not opera, or endless sessions of other kinds of music.
But then I found myself going on – and not in a good way – about people who don’t appreciate good cheese. Or god forbid, people who sell cheese but know next to nothing about what is/makes a good cheese. I don’t mind paying for it, if it is good. I would prefer for tastings to be offered more freely at the cheese counter. After all, people think nothing of tasting wine before committing. But it’s as if cheese matters less, or not at all. And you don’t need very much of it.
Yes, you do. I have had to tie myself in knots at parties where a large group of people have been offered a rather small piece of token cheese. Sometimes a very good cheese, which makes the ‘sharing’ that much harder.
I was going to blame the lack of opera at home on a modest background. That is, until I remembered that Mother-of-Witch knew about cheese, and appreciated it. And so did her even more modest-background father before her. It’s clearly the case that whatever you’ve been subjected to over a period of time makes you knowledgeable and appreciative.
The Magic Flute; now that I know a bit of. Ingmar Bergman offered up his own take of it on television one year. That was very good.
Now, if I could only find a nearby – reliable – source of cheese to take me out of my misery.
Our travel plans for March caused me to be wittier than ever. Or, at least, Daughter appreciated my wittiness more than I had dared to expect.
We wanted to return to Sweden, to see what a property-free existence might be like. We wanted to eat semlor – the Swedish Lent buns we love. And Daughter wanted to see Måns Zelmerlöw in concert. All three things serendipitously coincided mid-March and off to Gottenburg we flew. (Yeah, I know. It’s not spelled that way, but the airline didn’t know any better.)
We had two potential concert venues (close to what we know), and we chose Åhaga in Borås, which I’d heard so much about but never been to. Åhaga is an old steam engine repair shop, more recently made into a lunch restaurant and an events venue. School Friend first accompanied us to lunch on concert day, so we could case the joint. And a very nice joint it is, complete with indoors steam engine and outdoors waterfall. We were able to see the stage being set up for Måns.
After lunch we popped across the car park to buy some food, and more zemlor, at the ICA-Maxi supermarket. Daughter pointed behind me as we were nearly done. ‘It’s him!’ she whispered. And there was Måns, pulling his own midsize shopping basket, no doubt full of whatever makes a concert tour on a touring bus more bearable. We opted for discretion. Måns deserved to be allowed to shop alone. And had we pestered him, no doubt more people would have noticed.
With our haloes intact, we queued to pay just ahead of him, before going home to the airbnb and stashing our semlor in the fridge for some post-concert munching.
I was mostly along for the ride. Måns seems like a ‘nice young man’ and I don’t mind him. But on the other hand, he’s not really set me alight with his singing either.
But you know what? Seeing him live makes a difference. And from what others have said, including the reviewer from the local paper, it appears that his record company has not had his best interests in mind. Måns usually comes across as a very decent person, but a somewhat vanilla singer.
Yes, I know he won Eurovision in 2015. That sort of proves the point.
The concert was good, and I liked his singing. By the look of things, most people in the audience more than liked it, and that’s as it should be. The pared back style suited him. And it is almost criminal that there wasn’t a ‘CD’ to buy. By which I mean, some kind of new concert album with the new Måns. The second encore was Heroes, and I was sure nothing could follow it. But Måns sat down and sang something a lot less rousing to finish off, which was even better. That, and the a capella piece the group did earlier. The small ‘eight-year-old accountant’ he described his younger self as has come a long way. Let’s hope the record company knows what to do now.
‘Lov’ is the Swedish for school holidays. Semlor are the buns. And Måns Zelmerlöw is Måns Zelmerlöw. Together they make for a ‘zemlelov.’ (Did you know it’s possible to eat one every other day?)
Actually, stupid question. I do this once a year to qualify for my pension.
But otherwise? There will probably always be magazines who like to write and print sensational untruths about famous people. I suspect German ones are no worse than many others, although sometimes they do come across as rather bad. I don’t read them.
The only good thing about them lying about Roger Whittaker is that they at least consider him famous enough that he is worthy of their attention. It seems he is ill and possibly not living in France and his children don’t visit. Or something like that.
So this week he provided his German fan club with a short video where he speaks, mentions where he is [France] and how sunny it is, before pointing to the man beside him, who is in fact Roger’s son Guy.
Nice to see them both. But it shouldn’t be necessary.
And as has been pointed out, Roger is 86. He’s allowed to ‘be old.’
CultureWitch 