The Tepid Take

In the UK, the county of Surrey has a special reputation. High streets paved with gold, land rovers stalking the tarmac hills, McMansions poking out of perfect little glades.       Surrey is everything that's wrong with England. At least, that was my expectation.      I thought, I'll go to the old Top Gear test track, it'll mean going through Surrey, but that's fine, necessary evils. The site of many a Reasonably Priced Car journey and innumerable drag races (not the fun kind), the test track is found on the site of the former Dunsfold Aerodrome, located close to Surrey's southern border with Sussex, before the downs clear the way to the sea. So to get to Dunsfold, I had to track along the length of most of Surrey. A HuffPost style line would assert here that "what I found will shock you" - but what I found wasn't shocking, it was just a touch surprising.      When I got off at Guildford, I found the town to be more varied than expected. Like many mark

Hey there,      If you're the sort of folk to still buy a newspaper, you've likely got the big quiz of the year in the back pages right now. Or, you're ready to watch Jimmy Carr and some celebs slamming directly into something approaching "comedy" between Christmas and the New Year. Or you read quizzes online. Or you attend them, physically! Wow. GOSH .      In any case, allow me to add to your pile: a quiz, here on my blog. You can do what you like with it. Play it with friends, play it on your own, play it with your dog (do not expect the dog to answer questions). BEGIN . ROUND 1: MUSIC The creators of Fortnite purchased which music streaming service this year? Which artist was streamed the most on Spotify by Mexicans  this year? Which artist took home the BRIT Award for Best New Artist this year, even though they've been active in the hip hop scene for nearly ten years? Kanye West is insane and 2022 was the year when everyone actually noticed. West's h

Another year, another list. Chuck the Spotify Wrapped paper in the bin; make your own present instead! I've selected the seven albums that meant the most to me this year - whether they're ones that were objectively sound, emotionally resonant, or both. This year more of these albums are actually coming in on time, seeing as they were released in 2022. They mostly sit astride the indie / post-punk dictum that has characterised my musical taste for the past ten years (Christ!) But they remain, nonetheless, the best encapsulation of the year I had.  So read along if you like that genre too - else, I'm sure Fantano has you covered. Shuffle along then! 1. Small World by Metronomy     This number came out early on in the year and made me decide, actually, yes, I do like Metronomy a lot thank you. I later saw them at Glastonbury and had a full rock roll of a time. Including (but not opening on) a track like It's good to be back  very much carries the fact that this band had be

Neither new nor a river, they say of the New River. They say it’s a 400-year-old culvert, but it’s also a dividing line, an incredibly long and incredibly shallow reservoir, aquatically neurotic and geographically unreliable. It fragments neighbourhoods on the one hand – its embankments steep and impassable – and links them on the other – its vertical path an alignment from Canonbury to Ware. But it does so only every so often. Sometimes it is behind a steep fence. Sometimes it is underground. So while it’s true that the New River is neither new nor a river, it’s also not really a geographical feature of any kind, and its age is indeterminate, being as it is so varied and manipulated by the needs of the suburbs it surrounds.      Things start in Zone 3, Old Middlesex, Hornsey and Wood Green. The New River ran entirely above ground until urban development brought its tunnelling under. There’s one such tunnel in Wood Green; the land is for the most part landscaped gardens. When the rive

For the past couple of years, I've kept a record of the best albums that I've listened to throughout the year. In a time where we appear more at odds than before with our various "wrapped" playlists as composed by the streaming sector, it's more important than ever to redefine this behaviour and develop our own relationships between music and events. I pick out 7 albums that I can tie back to time; performing echolocations against the street. Only a couple of these are 2021 natives, sat apologetically among the melodies of lighter years, coded by the presence and absence of their music alike. But each and every one is my choice, a declaration of independence against someone else's view of my year, against favouritism, against bad graphic design and against the morbid generalisation of everything, for everyone. 1. Plans by Death Cab for Cutie      I start in the coldest place, a good album for January. Wintery walks in the lead-up to my return to London, going

In one episode of Taskmaster, where the contestants are invited to bring in the "most spectacular picture of themselves", Hugh Dennis wears a picture of his face, on his face. He says he wears it because Hugh Dennis would never wear a mask of himself - so people assume that it must be someone else behind the mask. Hugh Dennis's admittedly banal picture of himself turns out to be an effective demonstration of the difference between comedians and people: the Hugh Dennis out doing his shopping, wearing the mask of Hugh Dennis, actually isn't the same person as the person he's wearing a mask of. He's wearing a mask of Stage Dennis; he's wearing the mask of character comedy. Hugh Dennis came last in the round for most spectacular picture. But his mask is a perfect demonstration of the wider context. Character comedy is very popular in the UK. The gist of the idea is that the comedian is playing a character that the comedian has created. Some of the most famous