How Not to Be Old...

As I've mentioned before, I'm planning on making a return to playing proper competitive pool next year and I'm keeping my hand in by playing interleague pool for my local league. This essentially means the best players from a local league form a team and play against a representative team of the best players for other local leagues. 

This involves us playing at the national finals in Great Yarmouth a couple of times every year, where a few thousand players gather at a caravan park and compete over a weekend. I've been playing in these events for about 25 years and it was good to be back again. Our team did pretty well, but one of the highlights of the weekend was an altercation with an old woman who's infamous for her foul mouth and bullying behaviour. 

Playing in a packed room, she came over to our team to demand we move and make extra space for her side. This was impossible and, when a polite explanation of this failed, we either opted to ignore her or argue with her. She eventually left us alone, but she's essentially a bitter woman who seems to get her kicks from spouting bile and insulting anyone she can insult. You get the impression that there's not a lot of joy in her life. 

About an hour later, I was stood in the queue for the on-site chip shop when I heard the tap-tap of her cane behind me. She then spent the next 10 minutes complaining about the length of the queue and how she feared there may not be one of her favourite pies left. 

She tried to engage me in conversation about this, but I decided not to engage. I suspected she only one comment away from criticising the beleaguered server in the chip shop for being from Poland and coming over here and stealing chip shop jobs from local people. And I wasn't going to be racist out of politeness.

I eventually order, then the woman in question eventually gets to the front of the queue.
'That took bloody long enough!' 
'How can I help you, madam?' 
'You got any mince beef and onion pies?' 
'Sorry. We've sold out!' 
'I fucking knew it. What you got left?' 
'Chicken and mushroom...'
'Don't want that muck!'
'Cornish pastie?' 
'You can stick your Cornish pastie up your arse...' 
'We have chips left.'
'I'll better fucking have them then.'

Rude, cantankerous and full of anger... with no good reason that I could see. That's probably not how to grow old.

How to Be Old...

I recently turned 47 and, with work rapidly becoming a constant source of anxiety, I've made a real commitment to train whenever I can to assuage the worst excesses of work-related stress. Sadly, my hapkido class schedule has recently changed, which means I'm struggling to make regular classes at that, so I'm throwing myself into my BJJ training.

BJJ is ridiculously hard and, after four and a bit years, it hasn't really got an awful lot easier. The only way to learn how to eventually win is to constantly lose and to figure out how not to lose quite so badly the next time.

It's also by some considerable way the most physically demanding thing I've ever done, and I genuinely understand why wrestling training is considered one of the most brutal things anyone can do. It's very tough. It's designed to make people quit.

But I'm hanging in there and sometimes that's the real wisdom that age and doing another martial art for a long time brings. You know how to hang on in and ride the difficult times, whether it's work or training or anything else. 

Because bad times do pass. It's a just matter of getting through them.

Brian Fallon...

New wave punksters Gaslight Anthem remain a firm favorite at Brooks Towers. The Missus fell in love with them when they released their second album, The 59 Sound, and we’ve seen them several times. Their musical output is impressive and their front man, Brian Fallon, is a great singer and lyricist. As a live act, I’ve seen few better bands than the New Jersey outfit.

This year, however, Fallon is taking a break from Gaslight Anthem and recording under his own name, and he recently released the album. Painkillers. If Gaslight Anthem are Green Day meets Bruce Springsteen, then Painkillers is Gaslight Anthem meets Hank Williams.

It’s a remarkably assured solo debut and it explores a familiar Fallon lyrical landscape, with songs about love and loss, and romance tinged with nostalgia. It’s much more haunting and tender than Fallon in Gaslight Anthem mode and the country-tinged Honey Magnolia is a truly heartbreaking lament.

It’s a beautiful album.

Back on the Baize...

I'm returning to competitive pool next year. I've missed playing and it's been too frustrating to play a little bit and keep my hand in by playing interleague and not perform well enough. 

So I'm 'negotiating' getting a table at home and sorting out a return to playing county next year. The goal of going back to county is obviously to get back into the A Team and secure another trial for the England team. I'm looking forward to it. 

So I'm starting to factor in one regular session every week to get some form and consistency back. It will be a long road, but one I'm looking forward to travelling again.

Snooker: The Players Championship...

ITV4 is rapidly becoming one of the most regularly watched channels at Brooks Towers. It features several darts tournaments and it also televises three or four snooker events throughout the year, too. 

My favourite bit about the ITV4 snooker coverage is that Clive Everton, the voice of the game and by some considerable degree its most knowledgeable journalist, is in the commentary box. 

Everton worked for the BBC for decades, until he was criminally marginalised then dumped when he was at the height of his powers. Rumours at the time suggested this was a political move because Everton was a vocal critic of the WPSBA.

With Everton gone, the BBC elevated the moronic pairing of John Virgo and Willie Thorne, perhaps the worst 'experts' to ever pass comment or judgement on any professional sportsmen, as its key voices. It was like replacing Shergar with two Blackpool donkeys and expecting either of the donkeys to secure a win at the Derby.

It's great to hear Everton back on TV. It was poor of the BBC to 'lose' its most authoritative voice on one of its flagship sports and replace him with 'colour' commentators.

Tattoo Fixers...

I love Tattoo Fixers on Channel 4. It's car crash TV where a steady stream of ink-on-skin calamities get their disaster designs covered up by a trio of ace artists.

In the latest episode, however, it may have transcended from guilty pleasure into poetic art. This is because when one young woman was asked to describe her favourite tattoo, she came out with the following words.

’It’s two nuns lezzing it up on my arm.’

It may be the best sentence ever spoken on TV anywhere....

Some Thoughts on Daredevil: Series Two...

Daredevil was always the superhero I loved. While every other geek was waxing lyrical about Spider-Man or the X-Men, the blind-lawyer-turned-crimefighter was my entry point into comics and also my introduction to the work of Frank Miller, who first run on the title, beginning in issue 158 and ending in 191, pretty much marked the start of my mature love affair with all things comics.

The awful Ben Affleck film version from 2003 ruined any hope I had that some form of Daredevil screen success would ever happen. Then Netflix produced an absolutely arse-kicking series in 2015, and have followed it up with what looks like an equally awe-inspiring second series in 2016. 

The villain in series one was the Kingpin (the brilliantly controlled and malevolent Vincent D'Onofrio), while series two has so far featured a stonking Punisher (played with grit and grim determination by Walking Dead actor Jon Bernthal), and the introduction of assassin-for-hire Elektra (Élodie Yung).

At five episodes in, I was genuinely wowed. As a writer, I loved the promising story arcs; as a comics fan, I loved the nods to the other characters in the Marvel universe; and, as a viewer, I loved the production values, the fight scenes and some of the beautifully framed shots, which are clearly influenced by the source material. 

I've now watched the entire second series and, even though that initial euphoria has dissipated, there's stiil so much to commend it. But there are some gripes. 

So, SPOILER ALERT, if you're going to read this any further. 

Charlie Cox is great as the title character, but Matt Murdoch/Daredevil spends far too much time struggling with ethical dilemmas about justice, faith and taking a life in series two, and not enough time showing his human side and caring for and relating to the people closest to him. It's out of keeping with the character developed in series one. It's not consistent enough and his actions spend too much time serving the drive of the plot. This is a shame.

Elektra is a fantastic character in the best of the Daredevil Miller comic books and the stand-alone graphic novels. As this series continues, though, she comes across as a bit of a spoilt rich girl who kills for kicks, rather than a ruthless killer-for-hire whose love for Matt Murdoch makes her occasionally conflicted about her profession. I'm also not convinced by Yung in this role.

The whole Elektra, Hand, Stick and Chaste storyline feels a bit too convoluted and chase-find-fight-escape-and-repeat. This element of the plot does hang together, but it has holes. It feels a bit too thrown together and the fight scenes, while very impressive, are a bit over-long. 

The Punisher story arc is one of the two best things in the second series. It takes a damaged character and the story comes out of the character and what has happened to him. As a viewer, I had an emotional investment in The Punisher and the plot is well paced and it never feels over-extended or gratuitous.

The other element I really enjoyed in series two was the disintegrating relationship with Matt Murdoch and his business partner and long-term friend, Foggy Nelson, played by Elden Henson. The friendship becomes compromised as Murdoch spends more time as Daredevil and less time practising law, and Henson is excellent as the funny and vulnerable lawyer. With Berthnal, he delivers one of the show-stealing performances of series two.

The development of Karen Page felt a bit forced, going from a para legal, to the woman prepping the Punisher for his trial, to ace investigative reporter taking over the mantle of Ben Urich and penning a front-page story. It seem career progression in Hell's Kitchen can be fast, particularly if there's a demanding narrative to support. Deborah Ann Woll puts in a strong performance, though. She's eminently watchable.

Those flaws aside, I'm genuinely delighted to be watching this series and I'm already looking forward to series three, and the loosely connected series of Luke Cage, too. It's making me relive my comic geek teenage years, and it's exciting to see a whole new universe unfolding. This time, though, it's on the screen and not on the page.

And, even though series two of Daredevil may lack the coherence of the first series, it's still pretty kick-arse. Enjoy...

Akhnaten...

I have a sort of bucket list of things I’d like to do before I die. Unusually for me, it’s not actually written down or systematically planned out with specific deadlines. That either means I’m not too fussed about my list or it means I still think I have enough time left to not fret about it.

One of the things on that list is seeing all three operas in the Philip Glass trilogy about famous historical figures who’ve changed our perceptions of the world. The trilogy of works is: Einstein on the Beach, about theoretical physicist Albert Einstein; Satyagraha, about Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi; and Akhnaten, about the pharaoh Akhnaten, who introduced a new monotheistic religion into Ancient Egypt.

The tickets for Akhnaten at the Coliseum in London went on sale last year and I snapped up two front row seats in the dress circle. I figured that if I was going to do this, then I may as well do it in style… although my credit card did yelp in pain when the initial payment went through.

Fortunately, the expense was worth it. It was astonishing experience. 

Staged as a co-production between the English National Opera and Improbable Theatre, it was a visually stunning affair. The set constantly changed to create tableaus of hieroglyphic scripts, then switched to a mass coronation scene, a royal palace, an intimate chamber scene and a street riot, before returning to a tableau of the family of Akhnaten, his mother, his wife and his father reunited in death. The costumes were amazing, too.

I was already familiar with the music and the libretto because it’s one of the classical CDs that’s had the most air play at Brooks Towers. Glass remains one of my ways in to not only modern classical music, but pretty much all classical music. But there was something incredibly absorbing and engaging about hearing it live with a full orchestra and seeing it, too. It was sensory overload.

To paraphrase This is Spinal Tap, it turned the volume of the whole experience up to 11.

I’m still unsure where I stand on opera. In the UK, it’s quite an expensive and an elitist art form, even though a trip to the opera is about the same price as a trip to see a Premiership football team. But I think football is way over-priced, too.

I would, however, rather pay money to the ENO than to a multi-millionaire professional footballer. At least the artists involved aspired towards excellence and pleasing the audience, while too many footballers I've seen seem not to really care about the fans or be very good at their jobs. But that’s an internal debate for another time.

I hope to similarly mesmerised by Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha.

Five-word Reviews: The Revenant...

It's grim up north (America). 
Don't watch on date night.
Death, violence, death, more misery...

Old Age...

A good friend of mine recently told me a very sad story.

He explained how he and his wife were getting jiggy and they tried a bit of bedroom acrobatics, but his knee gave way. Then, ten minutes later, they were doing something else a little bit ambitious for a pair of olds and her knee gave way.

He lamented how this has never happened before and how it made him a bit sad. It made him realise that old age was probably starting to arrive in ever-accelerating increments.

My thoughts are with him and he deserves your sympathy, too. In fact, buy him a beer. Or just give him money… 

He would prefer money.

Trapped...

Trapped is a Nordic Noir thriller currently screening on BBC4 and it's pretty bloody good.

Set in Iceland, it tells the story of local police chief Andri (pictured above), played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. Once a high-flying detective in Reykjavic, Andri is now running a small police department in a small port town, which suddenly becomes big news when a ferry pulls into port and a dismembered corpse is recovered from the harbour. The ferry and its passengers are forced to stay in port while the investigation gets under way, then a blizzard traps everyone in the town and more disasters and deaths unfold.

The 10-part thriller is beautifully shot and the narrative moves along quickly enough, even though it feels quite slow-paced. Ólafsson plays the lead role of the sometimes vulnerable and sweet Andri with under-stated charm, while Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir is reserved and compassionate as his right-hand woman, Hinrika.

It's classy stuff. It's not quite series one of The Killing or The Bridge, but it's certainly in that ball-park for quality and intrigue.

The Rack Pack...

Made by the BBC and broadast via iPlayer rather than on any of the Beeb channels, The Rack Pack is an entertaining drama about the rise of snooker in the 1980s and the rivalry between establishment darling Steve Davis and baize wild boy Alex Higgins.

I'm a massive Higgins fans and he still remains one of my sporting heroes, and Olivier Award-winner Luke Treadaway certainly captured the charm and the tempestuous nature of ‘The Hurricane’. The drama did, however, skirt over some of Higgins’ more self-destructive and offensive episodes and essentially portrayed him as a tortured Byronesque figure. That may well have been one side of him, but it wasn’t the entire picture.

Will Merrick is excellent as Steve Davis, the dominant snooker force in the 1980s, who provided the strait-laced and corporate ying to Higgins’ explosive yang. There’s also a notable mention for Kevin Bishop as Davis’ wide boy entrepreneur manager, Barry Hearn.

The comedy-drama may offer slightly rose-tinted view of the era and its stars, particularly where Higgins is concerned, but it’s a tender and highly engaging piece of TV, and it’s well worth a look if you have affection or nostalgia  for the era or its players.

Quote of the Day...

'The problem with the porn industry is that it gives young people a totally unrealistic expectation of how quickly a plumber will arrive at your house...'
George Takei

Intensive Hapkido…

I had a full four hours dedicated to hapkido training this weekend and, for me, it was a chance to reconnect a bit.

For long periods of time recently, forcing myself to train has been a bit of a chore. It’s nothing to do with hapkido or any sort of falling out of love with it either. For the past three years, I’ve simply faced huge additional demands at work and that pressure has squeezed my free time elsewhere, and it’s affected pretty much every aspect of my life, from my family to my writing, and from my pool playing to my fledgling attempts at learning BJJ.

I have, however, managed to retain some type of weekly hapkido training schedule and my progress has maybe not been spectacular but it has steady. 

So this weekend was a time to spend a precious four hours in the dojang with my teacher and my fellow students and it was hugely enjoyable. It involved basic principles such as nailing down the fundamentals of base and balance, some work on retaining hip integrity during roundhouse kicks, and some work on employing one technique to open up others.

On the last point, we took the principle of the standing armbar and hyper-extending a joint and employed it with a thumb lock from a handshake to a kneebar from several takedowns. We even played with a rolling kneebar at one point.

We also did some sensitivity drills. This involved running through a series of wrist locks to defend wrist grabs, then repeating the exercise wearing blindfolds and executing the wristlocks bereft of the visual stimulus.

It was solid training time and a chance to reconnect mentally as well as physically with a lot of hapkido principles and techniques. It was like catching up with an old friend who’s always about but you haven’t properly seen in a while.

It also reminded me that, after about 13 years of training, I should be much better at this by now. But I'm still managing to be an OK black belt and, at 46, I’m still training and learning and, with pressing time demands elsewhere, I’ll settle for that. For now.

In the Reptile House...

I've just finished reading 25 Years in the Reptile House: British Gothic Rock 1976-2001 by Dave Thompson.


As a Goth, of sorts, I love the music and the book is a comprehensive and thoroughly engaging review of the bands and the period. It's nicely written and Thompson has a lovely turn of phrase as well as a real love of the subject.


The layout is a bit hit-and-miss at times, but it's certainly not enough of an issue to detract from a lovingly crafted survey of the music of my teenage years and beyond. It told me lots of things I didn't know, refreshed my memory about lots of music I'd forgotten and it also made me smile.


Though, I'll keep the smiling bit quiet at my next Goths Anonymous meeting. Smiling is frowned upon. As are most things...

Five-word Reviews: The Hateful Eight...

Tarantino's violent, schlock Western swear-fest.

FBTP End of Year Awards: Part I...

Fuck the Oscars, the Brits or Sports Personality of the Year. It's time for the From to Paternity 2015 Awards!


Best Thing Always on Telly 

Emmerdale is a peak-time soap opera set in rural Yorkshire. It screens six 30-minute episodes every week and it's been the best thing on TV by an absolute mile this year. The storylines all hang together and are utterly credible, the ensemble cast is excellent, and it's delivered cracking plot after cracking plot again and again. Its executive producer, Kate Oates, takes over the helm at Coronation Street next year so it will be interesting to see if this loss affects the overall quality of the show. I hope not. It's been excellent this year. 


The runner-up prize goes to Coronation Street. It may not always be brilliant but it never drops below pretty excellent.


Best Thing Not Always on Telly 

I've written about series three of The Bridge recently and it still totally wows me. It has been the best thing on TV this year. By some considerable way.


Honourable mentions go to the last series of Peep Show, which was a real return to form; Game of Thrones, which was enjoyably violent and dirty nonsense; Netflix comic-book action adventure series, Jessica Jones and Daredevil; historical blood and bonk-fest Vikings on Amazon; and Gotham, which is a pretty splendid mix of superhero actioner and police procedural. Endeavour, ITV's Morse prequel, is also worth a look.


Worst Thing Always on Telly 

The paucity of the writing on EastEnders is a huge problem, but the key issue remains the smashing of Albert Square characters into totally unsuitable plotholes. There have been a couple of high points in Walford this year, notably the episodes dealing with Shabnam Masood's stillborn son, and the first meeting of Sharon Mitchell and the back-from-the-dead Kathy Beale. But it's largely been badly developed stories with one eye on grabbing headlines rather than building a long-term story that makes sense and is credible and stays true to the characters. 


If anything, I have massive sympathy for the writers, who are left to make sense and do their best job with the shabby and non-sensical storylines they are presented with. 


Worst Thing Not Always on Telly 

A seven-word review on the appalling sub-Love-Thy-Neighbour comedy that is Citizen Khan, which got its fourth series the year: How the fuck did this get recommissioned?

Best Gig 

The Unthanks, Newcastle's folk music wunderkids, held their own boutique festival, which they also headlined, and it was a wonderful. The venue was the Stevenson Boilerworks in Newcastle and it was a small-scale and intimate affair. The Unthanks' gig at London's Union Chapel was also ace. 


Honourable mentions go to Gaslight Anthem and Arcade Fire, who remain two of the best live acts out there, and former Supergrass singer Gaz Coombes, who produced a charming and utterly astonishing set.


Best Album 

My favourite album of the year may not have actually come out this year because I've been retro-buying as well as purchasing new releases. The two new albums that have wowed me have been: In Dreams by The Editors, which sees Birmingham's finest continue their delve into moody electronica; and Mount the Air by The Unthanks, which may be a more produced and polished album than their previous output but it still has much to treasure. 


Other things I've fallen in love with in 2015 include: One-Eyed Jacks and Outlands by Spear of Destiny; The Idiot by Iggy Pop; The Circus by Erasure; In Your Room by Yazoo; 12 Deadly Cyns by Cyndi Lauper; The Glare by Michael Nyman and David McAlmont. I've probably missed many more.

Favourite Fighter

Polish MMA fighter and UFC Women’s Straw-weight Champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk has utterly wowed me this year. Her striking is off-the-chart, in its volume, its power and its accuracy, and her grappling looks pretty solid, too. In a year dominated by the in-your-face publicity machine that is new UFC Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor, who can walk the walk and talk the talk, and the seemingly unstoppable rise then dramatic fall of the hardly shy and now dethroned UFC Bantamweight Champion, Rhonda Rousey, Jedrzejczyk has quietly gone about her business with under-stated and, at time, under-the-radar efficiency.


Twat of the Year 

I'm lucky. Apart from a couple of run-ins with largely inconsequential cloth-heads at work and a couple of other fuckwits outside of it, it's been a relatively twat-free year in both my professional and personal life.


Hero of the Year

Jeremy Corbyn's surprise elevation to Labour Leader has reminded everyone that politics should be about caring for people, not about kow-towing to multinationals or ensuring the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer. It's a timely victory and it's brought 380,000 back to the Labour Party.


Not Enough Bullets in the World Award 

Pretty much any member of the Tory Party. They are deplorable people and their lack of compassion should be a source of national shame. I genuinely have no idea how any of the fuckers sleep at night.

From Russia with Love...

I have attracted the attention of a new admirer. She has even sent me an email.

'How are you?? Im Aleksandra! I want a man. I enjoy fitness and drawing. I am 31 years old. I am from Russia. Bye bye, Aleksandra...'

It's genuinely heart-warming to know that I haven't lost it! I can only hope that it's not some sort of elaborate scam preying on my vanity and need for sexual validation.

The Bridge: Season Three...

Goodbye Saga Noren. I am a huge fan and I hope we meet again. But, if not, thanks to you and your police colleagues for keeping me entertained, enthralled and thrilled for three seasons. Even better, for a show whose central characters teeter on the brink of personal disaster and terrible tragedy virtually every week, we even had a sort of happy ending. This, of course, could just be a happy ending and that's it... or it could be the springboard for a possible fourth season. Here’s hoping!

The Bridge is Noridc Noir, a generic description for the spate of superb thrillers such as The Killing and Borgen that came out of Denmark and won deserved worldwide acclaim. The Bridge is a Swedish and Danish co-production and, like the excellent The Killing, it's essentially a superior and intelligent police thriller that operates at its own pace and doesn't feel the need to explain every single thing or pander to its audience. 

The opening two series followed the chalk-and-cheese relationship between strait-laced, OCD-suffering and high-functioning autistic Swedish detective Saga Noren, played by the astonishingly brilliant Sofia Helin, and her Danish detective counterpart, the flawed Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia).

The third season sees Saga work alongside a new partner, haunted drug-user Henrik Sabroe, played by Thure Lindhardt, as they hunt a serial killer who's targeting victims connected to a multi-millionaire and using his art collection for inspiration when committing the murders.

We also gradually meet the supporting cast of characters. Many of these, such as Saga's boss, Hans Petterson, and IT expert John Lundqvist, we've met before, but others, such as millionaire Freddie Holst and Saga's mother, Marie-Louise Norén, are new. 

I could wax lyrical about how the complex plot perfectly hangs together, or how the intrigue is consistently and tautly maintained, or how brilliant the scriptwriting is, or how excellent the whole cast are, or how the black humour is pointed and beautiful, or how the third season is every bit as good as the first.. But I’d probably end up boring myself and anyone else who chances on this and reads this.

Instead, give it a whirl. It’s ten one-hour-long episodes and it’s probably the best thing you’ll see on TV this year. I genuinely haven’t seen better. It has no weak points. 

A word of warning, though. The only problem with watching something as good as The Bridge is that it may raise the bar too high for pretty much anything you watch again ever. 

It is that good. 

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman is slightly annoyed. Not that this is new. This is often her default position. Usually followed by sarcasm. And barely-contained-if-at-all aggression. 

We've both recently graded at Hapkido and passed and we are now the same level. Apparently, however, I am the senior belt because I've been at the school longer. 

This has prompted her ire. 
'Essentially you're a slow learner,' is her most recent comment on the matter. 'We're the same level and I've learnt faster, and dealt with a seriously broken arm. But it now looks like you're better than me because you're the martial arts equivalent of a special needs child.'

It's hard not to love her generosity of spirit.