Christmas at the Maginot Line, 1939

Being a sentimental fool, I like to put a up a Christmas song around this time of year for the day that'll be in it tomorrow. But this year is a bit special.

I found footage on You Tube of French soldiers celebrating Christmas in 1939, with a soundtrack of the great contemporary French singer of the time, Tino Rossi, singing Minuit, Chrétiens (O Holy Night) and Trois Anges Sont Venus. The footage of a army chaplain vesting and saying midnight mass in the Maginot Line is extraordinary. How many of those soldiers lived through what came in 1940? Maybe we don't have it so bad after all.

Nollaig shona daoibh go léir, agus go mbeirfimid beo fós ag an am seo arís.

Flaky Narrative Snow Good for Doctor Who Christmas Special

Imagine if you cooked Christmas dinner and remembered everything except the gobbler. You had ham, you had stuffing, you had roast spuds, mashed spuds, carrots, peas, gravy, cranberry sauce, the works - but you forgot the actual turkey himself, the sun around which all else revolves.

This is what happened Steven Moffat in The Snowmen, this year’s Christmas episode of Doctor Who. He had a new title sequence, a new Tardis, a new companion, as fine a scenery-chewer as is known to humanity to play the villain – but what he didn’t have was a story to pull it all together. Doctor Who is a kids’ show – it needs a narrative. Leave the other stuff to Pirandello.

It can’t be easy to write Doctor Who. The show’s fiftieth anniversary looms in eleven months from now and there is a huge population who want to see something spectacular to mark the occasion. They may be the sort of human plankton who have no lives and are in front of their laptops when they should be partaking of festive cheer, but they are people too and are capable of weeping. More to be pitied than censured, really.

Perhaps the pressure of that anniversary is getting to Steven Moffat, the man in charge of Doctor Who (now gloriously titled the “Whopremo”). He will surely want to do better than the twentieth anniversary show, which really wasn’t that good. He is also distracted by Sherlock, which is as good a show as exists on TV currently.

But for whatever reason, Moffat dropped the ball tonight with the Christmas episode. Did anybody really understand it? You correspondent didn’t and, like the Reverend Mother in Midnight’s Children, An Spailpín is not stupid, having read several books.

It’s also worth questioning the point of hiring as fine a scenery-chewer as is known to humanity and not writing lines for him to gorge on. Michael Gambon was eye-rollingly superb in Moffat’s first Christmas episode, a Christmas Carol, but Richard E Grant was wasted in The Snowmen. He got one peach of a line near the start but spent the rest of the show pretty much sucking a lemon and having to pretend he liked it.

As for Clara, the new companion, she was there and then she wasn’t. Jenna Louise-Coleman has now played the new companion as a computer-savant, a barmaid and a governess. The Doctor himself generally waits for a regeneration to make a personality change but Clara/Oswin seems to go through them in the time it takes to hard-boil an egg.

It would be nice if the powers that be were to let her aye be aye and her nay be nay. Miss Coleman is as cute as a button but she may have to keep notes written on the back of one of her dainty little hands to remember if she’s the same person after lunch as she was at elevenses.

Perhaps Moffat is just trying too hard?  The presence of those anonymous bloggers in bedrooms terrorize both young and old, but sometimes maybe you’re better to just have the Doctor let one companion go, grab the next by the hand and run down a corridor somewhere. This is Doctor Who, after all. There’s a formula that’s worked for fifty years. There’s no need to re-write it as six characters in search of an alien.

Happy Christmas Everybody

Another Christmas rolls around. Some of us are still here, holding our ground, some have moved on to what I hope is a better station.

In the meantime, thanks for coming to read the blog over the year, even though circumstances mean that I can't post as often as I used to or would like. I still like to hop a ball when I can, and I appreciate everyone who comes along to watch it bounce.

To celebrate the feast, here's Yo-Yo Ma and wonderful Alison Krauss performing The Wexford Carol. Go mbeirfimid go léir beo ag an am seo arís.

Happy Christmas to All, from An Spailpín Fánach

Another year of horrors, from IMF bailouts to Mayo losing in the Championship to Sligo and Longford. Thank God there's anyone still left here at all. To celebrate the season, here's wonderful Renée Fleming singing Schubert's Ave Maria. Nollaig shona daoibh uilig, agus go mbéirfimid go léir beo ag an am seo arís.

The Doctor Who Christmas Special

An Spailpín Fánach is unlikely to be alone in considering the Doctor Who Christmas Special a Christmas TV highlight. But to really understand the appeal of the long-running TV show, it’s more instructive to look back to the summer, when the Doctor Who Prom was held in the Albert Hall.

The wonderful thing about Doctor Who Prom is that music from the TV series can be used as a way of introducing children to orchestral, actual, music, as opposed to the unspeakable X-Factor and its vile spawn. But this summer, there was an extra twist at the Royal Albert Hall: they brought along monsters from the TV show.

Highlights from the Prom were broadcast in September and it was wonderful to see the reaction of the kids as the monsters suddenly clanked, glided and slithered down the stars, as appropriate.

The ideal audience for Doctor Who are not internet saddos. They are children, from about age seven to eleven, and those lucky souls who remember what it was like to be that age.

The great thing about being aged between seven and eleven is that you’re old enough to tell the difference between a grocer and a goblin, but you’re still innocent enough to believe that there are such things as goblins and spooks and weirdies in the first place.

And even though you know there really aren’t any monsters under the bed and the creaking in the house is just the wind – well, maybe it isn’t. Maybe this time it really is the sound the advance craft of Admiral Zozo and his Martian fleet landing in the garden, and it’s now down to you to save the Earth. Maybe. You never can tell, and there’s no point in taking a chance when the future of the entire planet is in danger.

And that duality, between having being told by your parents that there are no such things as Daleks or Cybermen or Venetian vampires, and then actually those crazy chicks in the white dresses gliding down the stairs in the Royal Albert Hall with those gobs full of pointy teeth – well, I don’t know about you adults, but I’m going to keep my two eyes on them and I advise you against making any sudden movements, or else it could be curtains for the lot of us.

And that’s the joy of Doctor Who. People who should know better have tried to load the show up with a lot of sturm und drang but it’s all my hat. If you want Schopenhauer, read Schopenhauer. Leave fighting the Death Lizards of Megalon 7 to the professionals.

This is something that the current Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat understands absolutely. He’s said that he decides on what goes on the show according to whether or not he thinks it’ll scare the bejabbers out of his kids. Once it does, it stays in the show. How perfect.

The Doctor Who Christmas episodes have been a mixed bag since they were introduced for David Tennant’s debut, with Tennant’s exit and the Kylie one being particularly weak. This year’s seems rather similar to a story by Chas. Dickens in its inspiration, but no matter. It’ll be wonderful for an hour. Christmas is a good time for Doctor Who. Who is Santa after all, but another traveller in time and space? Just like a Time Lord, in fact. Oh hold on ...

Happy Christmas to All, from An Spailpín Fánach

They say that if you have nothing good to say about something you should say nothing at all. As such, we pass no comment about the year of hard times gone by, and give thanks in season for what we have. Here are wonderful Altan singing the traditional Don Oíche Úd i mBeithil - To that Night in Bethlehem. Nollaig shona daoibh uilig, agus go mbéirfimid go léir beo ag an am seo arís.







Technorati Tags: Christmas, Altan, Don Oíche Úd i mBeithil, You Tube

Happy Christmas to All, from An Spailpín Fánach

No matter how much any of us believed that the boom couldn't last and that soft landings were spoken of more in hope than expection, I don't think anybody anticipated that the end would be so sudden, so jarring and severe. And the worst is yet to come, of course.

So in these cheery circumstances, maybe it's best to give thanks for what we do have instead of mourning what's lost and gone forever. Here's wonderful Renée Fleming singing O Holy Night - Nollag shona daoibh uilig, agus go mbéarfaimid go léir beo ag an am seo arís.







Technorati Tags: Christmas, Renée Fleming, O Holy Night, You Tube

Whom Do Podge and Rodge Think They're Kidding?

The picture above was taken in Smyth's toy store in Blanchardstown last night. It was on a display of Podge and Rodge toys, and it reads (for anyone with monitor issues):

"Podge and Rodge Products
Customers please note that due to strong language this item may not be suitable for younger children."

An Spailpín is curious to know at what age exactly are soft toys and strong language both appropriate for children. An Spailpín hopes never to meet such horrors, whoever they are. And I want to meet their parents even less.






Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, shopping, Christmas, Podge, Rodge

Happy Christmas, from Big Lucy and An Spailpín Fánach

There's a second or two of interference on this recording from Montreal in 1975 but, seeing that the Big Man journeyed into Glory this year, I thought him an appropriate nominee to sing the annual Christmas greeting. I'll be in the Palace later, I think; in the meantime, Happy Christmas, agus go rabhamid go léir beo fós ag an am seo arís.







Technorati Tags: Christmas, Pavarotti, Adeste Fideles

Operation Freeflow - The Teeny-Weeny Detail They Overlooked

Few things capture the experience of living in Dublin in the early years of the 21st Century as much as the remarkable paradox of Operation Freeflow, the traffic management system that the city uses to deal with Christmas shoppers. (The only real way of dealing with Christmas shoppers, of course, is to machine gun the wretches, but then you’d have Amnesty International annoying you and it wouldn’t be worth it. Pity). It’s not so much the system itself as the relentless self-congratulation that goes along with it that gets An Spailpín’s gabhar, as it were. I mean, dear Jesus, it even has its own website.


Look at the thing. Look at that little picture there of Dublin in the snow. Does that look much like Dublin to you? Doesn't look much like it to me. Who do they think they're kidding? It’s more like a scene from one of those Budweiser ads – those Budweiser dray horses wouldn’t look half as pretty if they’d been kept in some twelfth floor flat in Ballier all year, I’m thinking.

Look at all this bumph from the Irish Times’ breaking news section:

"Hundreds of gardaí have been drafted into Dublin for the force's annual drive to keep the capital's traffic moving over Christmas. Some 160 officers have been transferred to Dublin Garda stations for Operation Freeflow, which began yesterday and will finish on January 4th. In addition, 48 motorcycle patrols will be put on key routes at peak times, supported by other mobile patrols, mountain bike patrols, the Garda Mounted Unit and the Garda Air Support Unit, according to the Garda Press Office. The operation will be managed from the Garda Traffic Control Centre on Harcourt Square, which will be in contact with Dublin City Council's Traffic Centre."

It sounds like a feature length episode of CSI, with Grissom working out a heuristic on the back of an envelope to see how many 1982 Ford Cortinas can be jammed into the Liffey Valley Centre. And, to be honest, it’s hard to argue with a lot of it; it’s a good thing that there are mobile patrols with mounted and air support to make sure the city can keep the traffic moving.

But here’s what gets me: What about the rest of the bloody year?

Reading from left to right across the foot of that ridiculous Freeflow website, which I'm clearly having a lot of trouble getting over, the Dublin Transport Office, Dublin City Council, the Gardaí, the Department of Transport, the Dublin City Business Association, Bus Éireann, Dublin Bus, Iarnród Éireann and the LUAS are all swelled up like harvest frogs, bursting with pride because they can get the traffic moving in December. Well, what about the other eleven months of the year? You can live and die in the car then, stuck in the timeless parking lot that is the M50, the junction of Berkeley Road and the North Circular Road, the entire village of Dundrum, and a thousand and one other traffic black holes. Where are these jokers then? They’re no-where to be seen, that’s where they are.

It’s like hiring a carpenter to put up shelves and when he only hammers one nail into the damned wall, not only does he think he’s done a great job, he expects to the congratulated on it. He thinks he’s just built Noah’s bloody Ark. Incredible.

An Spailpín Fánach advises all readers who have the ill-luck to have no choice but to shop in Dublin to rise at the crack of dawn to do so, if you can at all. And for God’s sake don’t be fooled by some load of soft chat about taking “public transport.” Public transport is miserable enough when there’s just you and your buke to bring onto the bus, with the driver scowling at you for wrecking his buzz and that whiskery buck on O’Connell Street getting in your way and doing nothing, I mean NOTHING, else, without having to face all that while being loaded down with cashmere ganseys from Arnott’s, scented candles, box set DVDs of TV shows that were very middling when actually broadcast, signed copies of Maeve Binchy’s books and three bottles of whiskey, while also being in charge of the safety and well-being of Adam, 8, Maedhb, 5, and Benjamin, 2. Take the car, for God’s sake. Life’s too short.






Technorati Tags: Ireland, Dublin, Dublin Bus, Operation Freeflow, traffic, Christmas

Happy Christmas, from Bing, Bowie and An Spailpín Fánach

Go rabhamid go leir beo slán ag an am seo arís.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, David Bowie, Bing Crosby, Peace on Earth, Little Drummer Boy