Recklings
There was a very nice gathering on Wednesday night to see Cat, Paul, Liz and Steven’s band Recklings (who I just realised are on Spotify!) sandwiched inbetween two other, rather different acts. The first was a sort-of male Kate Nash whose every song contained the line “young and dumb and [something about fun]” which was swiftly upgraded to a bawdier version by Abbi, greatly enhancing the experience. The last were techno-electronic-something, which I appreciated mostly as a prompt for drunken robot dancing. But Recklings, yes, they were good! And I also saw Jen before she leaves, which was an unexpected bonus.
Dancing to a 56k modem tribute band
Work’s New Year party followed on Friday night, but as I have few photos or stories I’ll move on swiftly to Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom at the Lexi, which I saw with the family and our cousin Nancy. (I’ve been taught that ‘cousin’ is vague enough to cover most complicated family ties.) Agreed with Tash that it tries to pack an awful lot in early on, but improved as it went, and Idris Elba was excellent. It’s hard to know what to say about Nelson Mandela’s life story, given the unusual feeling that mass adoration is basically deserved this time. I mean, turning anyone into a saint is usually a bad idea, but if you’re going to have one you’ll struggle to find a better man than Mandela.
Which just leaves Sherlock – the final episode of which, at least for now, is on tonight. I was reading an interview with Ted Sarando of Netflix recently, who claimed television was all about the ‘managed dissatisfaction’ of waiting for the next instalment, when instead you could get it all in one go. I believe this is popularly known as ‘anticipation’ and, actually, is part of the pleasure 😉
