Category Archives: United Kingdom

The Great War (1964).

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I finally got around to viewing this epic 26-episode series from 1964. It’s an incredible compendium of WWI in all its participants’ hubris and misguided adventurism, and is majestically narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave (this bloke sounds more Laurence Olivier than Laurence Olivier himself).

This is how to do a documentary – with sweeping scope and intricate detail, no half measures. With terrifying archive footage and an expert use of primary sources read by contemporary actors, as well as interviews with those serving on the military and civilian fronts, it set the benchmark for such works, acting as a precursor to The World at War (1973).

The wonders of the Internet ensure it is free to binge-watch.

 

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Turquoise anomaly.

IMG_20181130_102853162_HDRAbbeyhill/Meadowbank is a veritable toilet, by all accounts a shithole. George Best once drank here at the Artisan Bar when he played for Hibs. That’s the legacy of this ghetto. These days it’s a junkie paradise. However, this building is nuts, totally #peacocking. Scenes.

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Edinburgh Christmas Market.

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The Xmas Market is back, Edinburgh’s ‘winter wonderland’. Stalls selling tacky clobber, ‘German’ food and drink at Weimar Republic-level prices, and jingle bells noises.

Personally, I think it’s shite, but it lures in the tourists and scares away the junkies because they get too confused by bright lights and the smell of warm food.

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Saughton Park – refurbished.

 

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Slap-bang in the middle of the Saughton ghetto is this anomaly. All around crime is rampant and social housing derelict, but I believe millions have been spunked on the park’s upgrades; the epicentre must be a beacon of light. It’s always chock-full of chavs, though, creatures who resemble those chortling Toon Patrol weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). But the park looks lovely, doesn’t it?

 

Further reading:

http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/20162/saughton_park_project/924/saughton_park_restoration_project

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Black Friday is approaching.

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It’s almost here again, our contemporary version of Dawn of the Dead (1978) in which hordes of consumer-goods-obsessed zombies storm retail outlets with abandon, many of these creatures camping outside the store overnight so as to snatch a discounted TV come opening time. Some of the scenes are simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. What a time to be alive. Mutants.

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They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) – colourised reality.

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Viewed through the prism of black-and-white, Charlie Chaplin-speed film footage, it’s axiomatic to view actors from the past as otherworldly, alien even, and simply not blessed with the smarts and skills we believe ourselves to possess. We forget they are people of their time using that era’s technology and science and its harnessing of military doctrine.

Then the grainy kaleidoscope of war gets colourised to the max and all hell breaks loose. You’d think this is GoPro stuff sent back to Flanders in a time machine and then propelled back to the future by Marty and Doc, such has been the collective hyperbole over Peter Jackson’s colourised tribute to our great-grandparents.

And that’s the thing – as the red, green and blue is blitzed the more we can relate. Yet war today is some distant thing we flick through on CNN or whatever. Fully realised 3D depictions of car bombs and RPGs ambushing armoured personnel carriers we have decided are too graphic, this in an age when students find clapping traumatic. But the carnage of the Somme is somehow acceptable because it’s a centenary old. Weird.

Perhaps we need a WWIII to make reality (people die, war is hell) more palatable to our viewing tastes.

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/16/they-shall-not-grow-old-review-first-world-war-peter-jackson

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45910189

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/they-shall-not-grow-old-peter-jackson-review-first-world-war-ww1-lord-of-the-rings-hobbit-a8586401.html

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Alcohol in Angus.

 

 

Dundee was briefly passed en route to Montrose; I didn’t like the look of ‘Yes City’ and I am most confused as to why the it has two football teams, their stadiums yards apart. Montrose was alright, though, and it has a Last of the Summer Wine feel to it (aside from the Lidl, Aldi, and Farmfoods). I went for morning runs in fields of wheat à la Theresa May, but mostly sat in a cottage all day drinking spirits and watching movies whilst my travel companions did stuff. How a getaway should be.

We also played cards using candles instead of chips. And it was so cold a fridge wasn’t required for the beers. And that’s Montrose.

 

 

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Sunrise on Gorgie.

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Gorgie, Edinburgh is by all accounts a total toilet, a veritable shithole, a bloated haven of the tracksuit, the smackhead, and the football yob.

Sometimes it’s quiet and the sky looks nice.

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Rose Street – Edinburgh’s Shambles.

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Rose Street is somewhat like the famous York Shambles but with more pubs and less Romans. Princes Street is an adjacent hellhole – chav clobber galore and rickety buses – but Rose Street almost takes the stench away. A lovely street.

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Robin van Persie and the last great Manchester United moment.

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It’s 22 April 2013, and Man United run away with the league by some margin (11 points), Sir Alex Ferguson’s final squad easily his weakest ever to dominate the 38 matches of England’s top tier. It was the meekness of the competition at the time, coupled with a peak van Persie, what done it. Captured from Arsenal in the summer, here was a flying Dutchman – and formerly a ‘sick note’ – hell-bent on a first Premier League title after a near-decade spent languishing with post-Invincibles Arsenal.

Not many saw Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement coming that year, but the omens were there in Groundhog Day gloom in the Champions League. In retrospect it’s as if he knew the outfit couldn’t get any further in Europe, that it was time to release himself from continental heartbreak.

That volley, though. In this simply majestic goal the best of the Fergie years are encapsulated – the pure aesthetic qualities of football, the possibilities beyond 4-4-2 Anglo-Saxon ‘hoofball’. Moyes, van Gaal, and the snores of Mourinho, the Red Devils haven’t had a moment like that volley since. Bring back Fergie.

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