Ah, May.
I "celebrated" my birthday during the merry month - bags of fun, considering nowhere was open and we still weren't allowed to go anywhere, other than for one daily bit of exercise.
Hence, my birthday meal was enjoyed at Pizza Shut, also know as our kitchen, where I consumed a £2.99 pizza* from Tesco, received as part of our success at managing to actually bag a slot. Strange times.
Anyhoo, as promised, here's the books, box sets and progression made through my music collection during the (unusually toasty) month.
(* Pepperoni - king of budget pizzas)
Books
Keith A Pearson - Tuned Out (2019): Well, look at me being right-on with using technology! This was the first book I've ever read digitally. As opposed to being a positive step towards keeping up to date tech-wise, this was down to two factors; 1) It was free, as part of Amazon Prime membership. 2) Reading it on a tablet meant I could see it in the dark, as I'm usually awake waaaaay earlier than Mrs G, and nothing compares to the potency of the withering look you get if you turn a lamp on at 6am to read a book.
I really enjoyed this - a time-travelling tale about Toby, a hapless digital marketing manager who, after an unfortunate sexy encounter in a park winds up carrying out community service in an old folks' home. Here he meets a deeply grumpy old guy who claims his radio can send him through time...
Toby winds up in 1969 and, struggling without his iPhone and distinctly unprepared for a world unrecognisable to him, falls in love...
Funny, well-observed regarding what we've gained and lost, improved and made worse, over the last 50 years it's cleverly written and has a surprise at the end which means I'll need to seek out some of Pearson's other books too.
David Thorne - That's Not How You Was A Squirrel (2015): How to describe Thorne's work? A collection of letters, emails, stories and general weirdness; sometimes poignant, acerbic, darkly funny and prone to make me laugh out loud, it fits in nicely with his previous books.
If you like your humour strange, and don't mind wiping away tears of laughter (as well as randomly chuckling out loud hours later and freaking out your family) then this is for you. Thorne has zero regard for what other people think of him and definitely won't let someone who irks him get away with it. For an idea of what to expect, have a look at his website here.
Box sets
Really found my feet with the whole sitting-around-watching-TV thing during May!
Picard (Amazon): Oh, how I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, all the Star Trek series, really. But TNG felt like my version of Stat Trek and the actor (the wonderful Patrick Stewart) playing the new Enterprise's captain was English too. And a bit grumpy. My kind of guy.
I'd presumed that, following a few movie outings, that was it for TNG characters, apart from the occasional cameo is some of the later series.
Gutted that the recent Start Trek: Discovery wasn't being shown on free UK channels (until E4 eventually made my day) the news that Captain Jean Luc Picard was beaming onto Amazon Prime was absolutely fabulous for an old sci-fi-head like me. It didn't disappoint, either. Plenty of old characters from TNG showed-up (mostly older and fatter), the special effects were great, the new characters flawed individuals with redeeming qualities, and a series-long story arc that kept me gripped.
Most startling bit (apart from how old Stewart/Picard is now)? Use of the F-word. Infrequent, but quite a surprise. Like hearing a polite old granny suddenly get potty-mouthed.
Hope there's a second series!
Devs (BBC2/iPlayer): Recommended by my brother, Devs was a genuinely startling and disturbing bit of TV. Set sometime into the near future, a sinister computer genius uber-geek (imagine a mixture of all the heads of Amazon, Apple, Facebook etc. past and present rolled into one, but creepier), has built a supercomputer that can actually perfectly reproduce any moment in history... but also the future.
When Lily's boyfriend seemingly commits suicide, she's convinced it can't be true, but uncovers a terrifying world where people will go to extreme lengths to protect the most powerful invention ever.
Featuring some of the longest non-speaking periods in a show I've ever seen, including use of strange vocal-chant music to embelish the tension, Devs is beautifully shot, sometimes coldly violent, and gripping up until the very end. Even then, my brain was still whirring trying to understand the ending. Fab.
Friday Night Dinner - Series 1 (C4) - Where the dysfunctional family and their end-of-the-working-week get-together began. Seeing it again now, you can see how the characters have changed over the following series. Jim, the annoying neighbour with a dog he's terrified of (played brilliantly by Mark Heap) is notably different here, especially in the way he speaks.
A genuinely great sitcom, all the actors involved play their over the top parts fantastically, as the drama unfolds in increasingly absurd ways. Great to see it again.
Spaced (C4) - Confession: I'd never seen this '90s classic before. Starring Jessica Hyne and Simon Pegg before their later fame, the loser/stoner flat-mates bumble their way through life, hopelessly trying to get a break, whilst dealing with a military-obsessed best mate, bizarre conceptual artist neighbour and their over-sexed landlady.
I loved the little flights of fancy, clever writing and great comedic performances from the whole cast. Why didn't I watch this at the time?!
Cuckoo - Series 1 (BBC2): Greg Davies is amongst the funniest people on the planet, but I missed the first couple of series of this sitcom, so great to catch it's first outing for the first time. Thanks, Covid-9, for killing off new shows and forcing the channels into repeating old ones!
I was surprised to find Brooklyn 99's Andy Samberg as the titular Cuckoo, the hippy-guru-slacker-New Age-nonsense husband of Rachel, the daughter of Davies' character, Ken, who she spontaneously married whilst on a world-tour adventure trip.
Cuckoo couldn't be more different to Ken - a solicitor, with aspirations of becoming a local Councillor and a hugely inflated sense of entitlement and good, old-fashioned, family values. Unfortunately for Ken, his daughter can't see her new husband's faults, his wife thinks Cuckoo is great and wants to support her daughter, and his son just doesn't care anyway, as he's too busy trying to get off with their neighbour's daughter.
Hilarious. As Ken's indignation rises, he manages to create unimaginable problems for himself that he then has to contend with as well as trying to oust Cuckoo. Interesting to see the original Cuckoo (Samberg was only in it for the one series) and to see Rachel played by a different actor than later series.
Music
Following the resurrection of the vinyl collection, and April's romp through the 7" singles, May saw me listen to every last wonderful drop of the 12" singles. Predominantly 80s, the 300-odd collection is jam-packed with extended versions, remixes, bonus non-album tracks and plenty of obscure stuff.
Every Queen extended version? Yup. Three different versions of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes"? Oh yeah. "Ghostbusters" and "99 Red Balloons" is all their extended glory. Darn straight!
God, that was fun.
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