Life With the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 upcoming, I thought I'd repost what was on this blog exactly twenty-five years ago this week. warts and all. When these were written, I would have been twenty-six, old enough to know better but not old enough to understand why I should know better. At the time, there was also a "Blog of the Day" feature but I'll remove any which aren't still online to retain the writer's privacy (even if they're on the Wayback Machine). Some links will also be lightly updated with a more contemporary source if necessary.
On this day in 2001, I was wrestling with growing older plus previewing that night's new episode of Coupling and reviewing The Pilgrim Pub in Liverpool.
Time A bit previous with this - but it's September. Already. In the year 2001. I remember as anyone whose left full time education will, what a milestone this month was. Never mind your birthday, as you entered your school or college you were one year older and you felt it. The signs were obvious. Each year you were drifting further backwards in the assembly hall (until, if you went to my school, you were on a balcony, hidden from view). You'd look out across the school yard and see even more people younger than you. Suddenly you found that the subjects you were follow would eventually have some bearing on the rest of your life. At college the work would become progressively harder, and there would be more of it. Then after over a decade and a half - it stopped - and September became just another month. Until this time. This time I realised I'm going to be twenty-seven in two months. I'll officially be old. Or what I thought was an old person when I was eight.
Review! The Brit-com Coupling's second series begins tonight. Unfairly referred to as a rip-off of 'Friends' (mostly by me) the first series went from a shaky start to a must see programme. More likely to take risks than the American show (and at times much funnier), other than the premise of three men & three women talking about sex, the writer Steven Moffat takes the format in another direction. The episode everyone talks about features a mis-understanding regarding the advances or not of a girl who speaks Hebrew. As Mark Lawson writes in The Guardian: "The point about Moffat is that, unusually among television sitcom writers, he works in the genre of farce. Critics have often suggested that farce is impossible to write in a contemporary setting because the plot motor of the form - the need to lie to prevent loss of face or exposure - is implausible in a society which has ever less sense of shame." This was a stumbling block Moffat encountered with the great lost sit-com of the Eighties, 'Joking Apart' - which at one point played out the classic plotline of having three different lovers in different rooms - something Oscar Wilde was a dab hand at. Let's hope this new series gets the airing it deserves... (Update! Just saw the first episode - gives a whole new meaning to 'I'd give an arm and a leg...')
Liverpool life I thought I'd leave you today with something I've always noticed but which is never referred to. One of the great pubs in Liverpool is 'The Pilgrim', close to the Anglican Cathedral. An old style drinking hole, it's only concessions to modern life are adverts for Red Bull all over the walls and a massive new jukebox graced with recent chart hits. Patrons sit in booths at tables covered in mosaics and they cook one of the greatest English breakfasts known to man. The brick walls are broken up by giant mirrors. At some time other other an artist, possibly at the local art college, has been commissioned to draw giant pencil drawing of 'The Beatles' at various moments of their career and these have been glued to the mirrors with clear Fablon. So we have the Lonely Hearts Club Band; John and Yoko; Paul and Linda; and at the centre, the four on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' - only actually, when you take closer look - it's John, Ringo, George and for some unaccountable reason, the Shakepearean actor Derek Jacobi in a Beatles wig. Take a look next time you're in there and wonder if that artist was watching re-runs of 'I Claudius' at the time...
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