It’s 2011. I think I should join all the People Whose Opinions Matter, even though mine doesn’t, in reflecting on the things which got me through 2010. Because 2010 turned out to be quite a difficult year for me, and certain things really did make it tolerable. But instead of becoming unpleasantly sentimental about this, I’m going to take refuge in sub-headings.
Books of 2010
I think my favourite read of 2010 was towards the start of the year: ‘Skippy Dies’, by Paul Murray. This is a controversial choice: I recommended it to about five people at the time, most of whom hated it. I apologise to these people (again) for wasted time, but not for my own (clearly errant) taste: I found this book by turns moving and laugh-out-loud funny, evocative, thought-provoking and true, as a rites-of-passage story of growing up in Ireland. Whereas some issues seemed to be dragged in for the sake of topicality (systematic child abuse in Ireland…) and some tangents went on for far too long, I nonetheless found myself looking forward, every day at work, to losing myself in the world of the boys and their teachers at the heart of the story. The beauty of the writing in the closing few pages moved me to tears.
Other books to give me great pleasure in 2010 were:
Seamus Heaney: ‘Human Chain’;
Jonathan Coe: ‘The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim’;
Colm Toibin: 'Brooklyn';
Allison Pearson: ‘I Think I Love You’;
Christos Tsiolkas: ‘The Slap’;
Laura Barton: ‘Twenty-One Locks’;
and, rather to my surprise, ‘A Tiny Bit Marvellous’ by Dawn French.
Films of 2010
I hardly ever go to the cinema. This is disappointing, having spent my student and early working years largely in cities, and going to the cinema at least once or twice a week, seeing a lovely mix of mainstream and art-house films. Unluckily, my local cinema, now transformed from flea-pit it quite literally used to be to sleek, modern multiplex with comfortable seats to replace the back-breakers of its formative years, now aims its output securely at a target audience aged roughly 5-15. So you get to choose between the kiddies’ films and the blockbusters aimed at the undiscriminating 15 Certificate demographic, because once they enter the fifth form our local teenagers are firmly established in the Over 18 Niteclubs at weekends. Their parents are either busy giving them lifts or are stretched at home in complete relief and exhaustion, glass of wine in hand. So the cinema doesn’t bother with even the slightly more, um, grown-up of the blockbuster range, and as for the art-house films: don’t be so silly. So almost all the films on my list were viewed on DVD. A shame not to have had the big screen impact, but in these days of flat-screen, wide-screen and the like, a better experience than it used to be. My highlights of the year, in no particular order, were:
‘A Single Man’ (moving and visually beautiful);
‘Stranger Than Fiction’ (clever, witty and thought-provoking);
‘The Private Lives of Pippa Lee’ (well-written and, unusually, even better than the book);
‘Up in the Air’ (almost a documentary on modern life);
and ‘Last Chance Harvey’ (poignant and avoiding cliché in its delicacy of writing and acting). Not all 2010 films. Like I said: sometimes I’m a bit behind the times.
My two greatest disappointments of the year are worthy of mention: ‘It’s Complicated’ because it failed to live up to the reviews and hype of personal and critical recommendation, and ‘Sex and the City 2’, which I watched while ill one winter afternoon, a few weeks ago, and which was just so bad I still half-wonder whether I hallucinated it.
In 2011 I want to watch more films, and less TV, so moving on neatly to:
TV of 2010
I have become lazy about the remote control, turning on to rolling news when there’s nothing I actively want to watch, or worse still, channel-surfing until I find yet another repeat of some old faithful friend like ‘Frasier’ or ‘Father Ted’. Of the programmes I’ve actually set out to watch this year, and there weren’t really that many of those, my favourites remain reasonably predictable. They were:
‘The Apprentice’ (especially The Firing of Stuart Baggs The Brand);
‘Holby City’ (and not just because of the handsome Dr Joseph Byrne);
‘Coronation Street’ (especially the cat-fights and the quiet wit of the older characters);
‘Strictly Come Dancing’ / ‘X Factor’: great Christmas pantomines in the tradition of goodies, baddies and pantomime dames;
The Christmas special of ‘The Royle Family’, sliding neatly from comedy to tragedy and back, making me laugh and cry in turn;
Another Christmas special, ‘Eric and Ernie’, simply because it made me smile;
‘The Late Review’, not every week but in general, almost always has something of interest and mostly either interests or amuses me with its lively debate.
Technology of 2010
2009 was Mac Year, 2011 will, I’m determined, be Back To Radio Year, so 2010 was less innovative. I spent much too long on Facebook, not long enough writing or blogging, but the networking I enjoyed most, by some way, was Twitter. Sometimes I hate it, though: I feel peripheral to all the cliques, but then that’s been me since childhood. At work, I know everyone, talk to everyone, but am not part of any inner circle. On Twitter, I talk to numerous people but don’t get invited to ‘Tweet-ups’, which are meetings of Twitter in-crowds in cafes or bars, where (as far as I know) Tweeters take the quite shocking step of speaking to one another, out loud, as opposed to on a keypad. I’m not cool enough for that, but I do enjoy flitting from one 140-character exchange to another, with a light touch and, most often, a laugh. I don’t spill my difficult moments onto my keypad in 140 character segments: when it’s not going well, I don’t tweet much. I’m also unashamedly addicted to email, which I’m told is almost old-fashioned these days. I quite like texting too, so long as contracted spelling is minimal and adequate punctuation is present, but email gives me so much more scope for a really good ramble. I think, deep down, I miss the letter-writing which characterized spare moments of my later teens and the first half of my twenties. Oh well. At least this way my correspondents don’t have to contend with my handwriting.
Music of 2010
And finally. Last but definitely not least. Music has supported me through this year, like every year of my life, and, as always, I have been glad to receive recommendations from informed friends (usually more accurate than those from well-known websites from which I make rather too many purchases). My tastes remain eclectic and occasionally a bit obscure: in the course of the year it’s ranged from traditional Irish to Vampire Weekend, which strikes me as a convoluted interpretation of a range from A-Z. But I seem to go back to old favourites, such as Thea Gilmore, Sarah McLachlan, Nerina Pallot,Leonard Cohen, Tori Amos (and I was told by a sixth-former of some social credibility that liking Tori Amos was like, so cool…), Mumford and Sons (recommended by another sixth former so probably like, quite cool as well), Belle and Sebastian, Kate Bush, U2 (sometimes… I have to be in the mood for them…), Van Morrison (with whom I have occasional real-life encounters, even though we’ve never spoken... we just keep on coinciding, to the extent that I’m convinced he half-recognises me now, and scowls), Duke Special (despite, or possibly because of, the eyeliner and the hair)... and many others. I find myself listening with renewed understanding to music from when I was young or very, very young: Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, and 80’s reissues like Aha. It’s nostalgia, partly, but possibly a more educated ear. I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just growing old. Finally, my student days love of making mix-tapes for friends has translated itself to iTunes playlists and become even more of an obsession. Friends have told me of listening to my playlists at some quite crucial moments, and I love making these to encapsulate a mood or a season, or to suit a specific friend. How wonderful it is when your musical taste collides with that of a friend: you feel a real connection. Or I do. It makes the friendship seem even better: as though, if you have that song in common, or those songs, or that singer, that you’re somehow closer. You can rely on one another, or something.
Anyway. I’m rambling, and this was meant to be just a sort of list of lists, and I really was going to be better about rambling (or the avoidance of same) this year, and here I go already with the rambling and it’s only 3rd January. 2010, then: an odd year, but a year of some riches when it comes to books and films and screens and keystrokes and music.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
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