Well, not quite. The Paralympics have in fact started. But I started this post in the hiatus between the two Games, and I'm not changing the title now. So:
As I sit here between Olympics, and with the godawful ticketing system still not working properly, and not likely to let us get to see any Paralympic competitions up close in the near future, if at all, it seems a good time, as they say on Thought for Today, to pause and reflect.
We always expected the Olympics to be far, far better, and more worthwhile, than the benighted Jubilee - and they didn't disappoint. We were on Dartmoor, on holiday, during the Opening Ceremony, which meant we got to watch it on a huge plasma TV. Which was nice.
As every commentator - well most commentators - have said, it was astonishingly good.
I have to admit, when I first heard about the bucolic idyll that was being planned, a fantasy English countryside, my heart sank. But even that was enlivened by the rippling blue cloth that covered the stands and allowed us to see the idyll as 'sea-girt'.
And then we tore it all up in the Steam-driven Pandemonium of the Industrial Revolution, led by Sir Kenneth Branagh as Caliban (a theme for all four ceremonies it seems) - cum - Brunel. Echoes of Blake and Milton.
Followed by (in random order):-
- NHS nurses (a great invention from 1948)
- Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti.
- Suffragettes
- Voldemort from Harry Potter, Rowling and Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, and Mary Poppins (all representing children's literature? But no Blyton I could see, nor Ahlberg, nor Kerr). And that section did cause our 15-y-o to comment along the lines that the good socialist message of the NHS was undermined by the children in beds having to be saved by the privatised care of Mary Poppins...
- Beckham on a speedboat looking terribly stylish, and fireworks on Tower Bridge as it opened to let his ego through...
- The Swinging Sixties and psychedelia
- The Stunt Queen: so much more approachable than the one we have...
- The noise of the Tardis in the middle of another Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody... (but why?)
- Rowan Atkinson & Simon Rattle in Chariots of Fire
A section on media (ish), introduced by the pips, Radio 4 and the Archers, leading to a house full of film and TV clips - while decades of our pop and rock played...
- Python and Fawlty Towers, (let's ignore Eric Idle in the Closing Ceremony for the moment)
- A Matter of Life and Death
- Kes
- Gregory's Girl
- Bagpuss
- Queen Who Stones Beatles
- Madness
- Mud
- Jetpacks and Tim Berners-Lee
But sadly no Thunderbirds or HHGTTG or Fast Show that I noticed...
All really good fun. But it did make me realise that we here at TANH appear to have been writing about the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony in half of our postings, without really knowing what we were doing... It's like we were revising for it.
So is that it? Do we have to stop writing about all that stuff now?
Showing posts with label Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Today. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 August 2012
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Pi
Wonderful reaction to the (at last!) launch of Raspberry Pi yesterday. Two long mentions on the Today Programme on Radio 4. And then a news item about the launch being so well attended to that both Web sites had crashed.
And then today (Mar 1st) you could read a news item and (thoughtful, conservative), editorial in the Grauniad. We can only assume it will appear in an Arucaria puzzle soon.
We can merely speculate, and I suspect the numbers are still a little low, but is this the new beginning of a backlash against overly commoditised, instrumentalist, mercantilised - just too damn bland - notion of what software is?
And then today (Mar 1st) you could read a news item and (thoughtful, conservative), editorial in the Grauniad. We can only assume it will appear in an Arucaria puzzle soon.
We can merely speculate, and I suspect the numbers are still a little low, but is this the new beginning of a backlash against overly commoditised, instrumentalist, mercantilised - just too damn bland - notion of what software is?
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Subway
...And according to the news this morning, the World's largest fast food chain (by number of stores) is opening 600 new outlets in the UK and Ireland. Lots more Subway...
Monday, 6 June 2011
The Ball of the Century?
And of course yesterday's Poem of the Week, in addition to being a paean of praise to Evan Davis, was also a farewell to Shane Warne, whose first test ball, to Mike Gatting, is memorised in the verse. This is what it looked like..
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Not Just a Hole in Evan Davis's Knowledge...
On the BBC Today programme this morning, in the middle of a discussion about methematics and sport, the uber economics journalist and mathematical whizz Evan Davis revealed that he had never heard of the Duckworth-Lewis Method.
Gasps. He quickly corrected his ignorance during the programme and by the end of the show he had apologised with some chagrin for not knowing of it. He even cited the band named after the formula.
But it got me wondering...
So I wen to Wolfram Alpha and tried an enquiry there. They (/it?) have never heard of it either.
This is all very poor...
Gasps. He quickly corrected his ignorance during the programme and by the end of the show he had apologised with some chagrin for not knowing of it. He even cited the band named after the formula.
But it got me wondering...
So I wen to Wolfram Alpha and tried an enquiry there. They (/it?) have never heard of it either.
This is all very poor...
Saturday, 2 May 2009
A New Laureate
Well, so now we know. Carol-Ann Duffy. The first female (and it says here the first openly gay) poet laureate. Fine. Poor woman.
I would have preferred Wendy Cope (who said she didn't want it ages ago), Roger McGough or Tony Harrison. Still, Duffy will do.
The Today programme quoted Mrs Icarus in its entirety:
I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.
From The world's wife by Carol Ann Duffy
- and then John Humphries went all grumpy about whether she would be allowed to use language like that when writing for royalty.
Allowed?
I started to write - equally grumpily - that he had rather missed the point of poetry (which, particularly for the poets of the last Century or so, was often arguably about challenging the status quo, and provoking a reaction). But then I realised that, intentionally or not, his musing did rather get to the question of what exactly the point of the poet laureate is. A poet in an official, institutionalised state role nowadays seems quite strange - especially when there is some kind of expectation that he or she will write poems explicitly about great events and affairs of state. Andrew Motion notoriously found this difficult, of course.
But looking further back in time, it may not have seemed anything like such an unusual proposition. I can't help but believe that Wyatt, say, Marvell or even Chaucer would have felt somewhat more comfortable in the position - or at least I have this notion that they would have felt less of a lack of integrity. They might not have written exactly the poems we have now, but there is something in their writings that makes me feel that they would have been perhaps more content in the role.
On the other hand, for all three of them it would surely have been a far riskier proposition. They lived in turbulent times, with Kings and leaders who were dangerous and often brutal men. So I suspect it would have been a differently challenging position then - and not one they could easily refuse.
I end up with a vague disquiet nowadays, settled on and around a dislike of the monarchy and a sense of unecessary compromise. At least if Duffy writes something 'they' don't like she is unlikely to be jailed or worse. So that's an improvement.
And we should also note in passing that U. A. Fanthorpe, one of the very few other women who was ever considered for the laureateship (is that a word?) died on Thursday. As with Duffy, her work is much used in the exam syllabus in the UK. I've just been reading 'Not My Best Side' - which is on one of this years' English Lit booklists.
I would have preferred Wendy Cope (who said she didn't want it ages ago), Roger McGough or Tony Harrison. Still, Duffy will do.
The Today programme quoted Mrs Icarus in its entirety:
I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.
From The world's wife by Carol Ann Duffy
- and then John Humphries went all grumpy about whether she would be allowed to use language like that when writing for royalty.
Allowed?
I started to write - equally grumpily - that he had rather missed the point of poetry (which, particularly for the poets of the last Century or so, was often arguably about challenging the status quo, and provoking a reaction). But then I realised that, intentionally or not, his musing did rather get to the question of what exactly the point of the poet laureate is. A poet in an official, institutionalised state role nowadays seems quite strange - especially when there is some kind of expectation that he or she will write poems explicitly about great events and affairs of state. Andrew Motion notoriously found this difficult, of course.
But looking further back in time, it may not have seemed anything like such an unusual proposition. I can't help but believe that Wyatt, say, Marvell or even Chaucer would have felt somewhat more comfortable in the position - or at least I have this notion that they would have felt less of a lack of integrity. They might not have written exactly the poems we have now, but there is something in their writings that makes me feel that they would have been perhaps more content in the role.
On the other hand, for all three of them it would surely have been a far riskier proposition. They lived in turbulent times, with Kings and leaders who were dangerous and often brutal men. So I suspect it would have been a differently challenging position then - and not one they could easily refuse.
I end up with a vague disquiet nowadays, settled on and around a dislike of the monarchy and a sense of unecessary compromise. At least if Duffy writes something 'they' don't like she is unlikely to be jailed or worse. So that's an improvement.
And we should also note in passing that U. A. Fanthorpe, one of the very few other women who was ever considered for the laureateship (is that a word?) died on Thursday. As with Duffy, her work is much used in the exam syllabus in the UK. I've just been reading 'Not My Best Side' - which is on one of this years' English Lit booklists.
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