On Monday, I watched a really wonderful documentary: The Real Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. There’s still time to watch it on iPlayer, and I heartily recommend doing so, even if you have no interest in microlights. It was the kind of documentary I love, in which you let people with a passion for something tell their own story.

In this case, the cameras followed several participants in the ‘Round Britain Rally’, a gloriously Wacky Races event, in which the aim is to rack up the most points over three days by flying over designated waypoints dotted around the UK in a microlight aircraft. Some of the microlights looked quite fancy with semi-rigid wings and enclosed cabins, but all of the aircraft piloted by the three teams mentioned were rather more basic in design. Indeed, the vintage model flown by Antony Woodward and his team-mate appeared to feature rather alarming quantities of gaffer tape and string. Antony described a microlight as “essentially a chainsaw attached to a deckchair”. Or in their case, a chainsaw attached to a deckchair with string.

Anthony had suffered a dreadful crash in a microlight some years before while participating in the same race when his machine hit a powerline. I can’t help thinking that he was a bit crazy to want to get back into a microlight and compete in the same rally, but that’s what he did. Anthony and his team mate (whose name I can’t remember) were simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Anthony cheerfully admitted that he has absolutely no aptitude for flying, and demonstrated that rather ably with a series of ‘interesting’ landings and haphazard map-reading skills, much to his team mate’s fury. In the end, they decided not to take the competitive aspects so seriously, and had a wonderful time. Antony even managed a good landing to end the race.

Paul flew his microlight with his teenage son Mikey from their home in Ireland across the Irish Sea to the start point. Mikey was determined to go with his Dad, but was visibly (and quite understandably) terrified by the prospect. Their relationship and the way they bonded during the rally was such a touching thing. Paul tried to take Mikey’s mind off the possibility of plunging to a fiery death by singing some rather excellent bawdy songs at top volume or playing ‘I Spy’, and Mikey was determined not to let his Dad down.

The final competitor was Richard Meredith-Hardy, for whom the rally must have seemed like a stroll in the park. He has flown a microlight from London to Sydney, and even flown over Mount Everest. Richard is brilliant. He’s a quiet, smiling man with an extraordinary pair of eyebrows, who does absolutely insane things in a microlight. At one point, he demonstrated his mid-air refuelling technique. When Air Force pilots do this kind of thing, they have millions of pounds worth of military hardware to help them. Richard had a few jerry cans full of fuel where his co-pilot would have been, and a bit of tubing. In a scene that I watched through my fingers, he undid his seatbelt so that he could twist around and fiddle with the cans and tubing, all while trying to hold the craft steady. Microlights — it hardly needs saying — don’t have autopilot, just a wibbly bar that you have to try to keep steady while the open cockpit in which you sit hangs and sways from the wings. Terrifying.

The views from the microlights were stunning but the pilots seemed so vulnerable. I can see the appeal, though — you really experience flying in a way that’s just not possible in any other kind of powered aircraft, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to actually try it.

It’s not news to regular readers of this blog that I dislike buying clothes. I have no interest in following fashion, and tend to wear clothes until they literally fall apart. Sometimes I continue to wear them after they have fallen apart, if the structural integrity of the garment is sufficient to keep the weather out or to avoid showing too much flesh. My rules for buying clothes are as follows:

1. Do not buy clothes unless it is absolutely necessary.
2. Never buy clothes from a bricks-and-mortar shop unless it is strictly unavoidable (see previous debacles here).
3. When buying clothes from online retailers, try to stick to companies you have bought from before and buy the same items in the same sizes as your current (now worn-out) items. That way you know they will fit.
4. If feeling daredevil, buy the same items in the same sizes, but in different colours.

My jeans are on the verge of falling apart, so I had to think about buying some new ones. Of all the clothes to buy, jeans are some of the worst because the current fashion dictates the shape of them so strongly, making it difficult to get what you want, or to judge what size you need. Still, I thought, fear not! I bought my last couple of pairs online, and it seemed as if the company still stocked the same style. So all I needed to do was order another couple of pairs in the same style and size (see Rule 3) and everything would be fine.

The package duly arrived, and I tried the jeans on. Horror. They had changed the style and the way it fitted, without making it at all clear on the site. The waist was lower¹, and the fit was much tighter on the seat and thighs. I know that the old pairs had shrunk (because the inside leg was 1 inch shorter than when I bought them), but even so, they were a looser fit than the new pair which were ostensibly the same size and style. Grrr.

I’ve returned them and tried another company that I’ve bought jeans from before: another style/size that is apparently the same as a previously purchased pair. I hope that they really are this time, but I have a bit more confidence in this company, which stocks other items they have been making for years. My point is that I wish there were clothing companies that realised there is a market out there for basic, well-made clothes in reliable sizes, which don’t change with the fashions. If a company made exactly the same, classic clothes, year-in, year-out, I would happily keep buying them. The only other alternative is to do a Steve Jobs: when you find an item of clothing that suits you and fits you, buy a supply that will last you a lifetime. However, it’s not easy to justify the expense or the storage space unless you are very rich and have a huge house.

The idea of a company continuing to make the same styles from year to year only sounds crazy because the clothing world is so driven by fashion. Other companies make a good living out of this strategy (and have it as a key selling point). For example, the shelving company Vitsoe (designed by the iconic Dieter Rams), has been making the same modular shelving units since 1960. They are proud of the fact that people who bought the very first units still have those pieces and mix them with their current stock. They add a few new items now and again, but they all work perfectly with the units made since the beginning. This solves the ‘having to stock up’ problem. If you are confident that they will still be making the same shelves in 20 years time, you just buy the bits you want now and add to it as and when you need to expand your shelving (a practice which Vitsoe actively encourages). They are not cheap, but I would happily pay a premium for having this kind of confidence, and would do the same for classic, well-made clothes if I knew I could buy exactly the same pair of jeans in 5 years time.

This may be of some use to anyone else who is thinking of moving comments from ExpressionEngine to Disqus (or to me, if I ever have to do it again!). Over the past few days, I have been moving comments from the Tracks site (which used ExpressionEngine) to Disqus. I had some difficulty trying to get a format exported from ExpressionEngine which I could use to import comments into Disqus, and eventually settled on the code above after looking at Disqus’ own import format and trawling the ExpressionEngine forums to adapt other solutions which exported to Movable Type format.

You need to start off by creating a new template group called ‘export’. Inside that, you make a template called ‘index’ and paste in the following, making sure that you replace the channel name and template group name to those appropriate for your setup. This needs to be the index for the template group.

Next, create another template called ‘comments’ and paste the text below, again, replacing the channel name as appropriate.

Now visit http://yoururl.com/export and you should see the exported entries. Wait for the whole page to load, which may take some time with a lot of entries. Then use your browser’s ‘View source’ command to view the source of the page, copy all the text and paste into a text file with the extension ‘.xml’. Now you should be able to upload to Disqus using their ‘Generic (WXR)’ importer.

You may find that you encounter errors and have to try uploading several times. For example, you need to make sure that the xml declaration is the very first line of the file (the template will insert some whitespace).

I can’t believe that it’s already 4th January — time seems to have flown since Christmas! I was so exhausted when I was finally on holiday that we’ve had a fairly quiet (but wonderful) Christmas. Mr. Bsag and I spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day together (eating and drinking too much, as is pretty much the law at Christmas), then I travelled to my parents for a couple of days while Mr. Bsag took care of the cats. We’ve had some lazy times and some great walks, and I’ve also been listening to the great albums I got among my Christmas presents.

June Tabor and Oysterband - Ragged Kingdom

This was a present from Mr. Bsag, and I love it more each time I listen to it. It’s a mixture of covers of modern songs and versions of old folk ballads, but they all sit alongside one another very comfortably. I like all the tracks, but I think my favourites have to be an incredibly powerful version of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, and ‘The Leaves of Life’, as well as the mournful ‘The Hills of Shiloh’. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is such an iconic song that it must have taken a bit of courage to cover it, but they bring forward the lyrics by making it into a slow and deceptively simple duet between June Tabor and John Jones. There are some superb musicians on this album, and June Tabor’s voice is as pure and deep as ever.

Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the The Harvest

Perhaps it’s a personal failing, but I really like sad, mournful songs. I’m generally a very cheerful optimistic person, so I think I need to season it with a bit of melancholy in musical form just to balance things out and to make life taste sweeter. Maybe that’s why I love Gillian Welch so much. The song ‘Revelator’ (from the album Time (The Revelator)) ranks as one of my all time favourite songs (rubbing shoulders with many of Kate Bush’s), and I think this album is also destined to be a classic.

There is hardly an upbeat, optimistic track on the album, but I find the whole thing completely beautiful. David Rawlings’ guitar playing, and the way that Welch and Rawlings’ voices mingle and harmonise so thrillingly makes this an incredible album. Again, it’s hard to pick out just one or two tracks, but I could listen all day to ‘The Way It Will Be’, ‘Tennessee’ and ‘Hard Times’. This album is really worth a listen, particularly if the current financial and political situation makes you feel like listening to music evoking The Great Depression¹.

Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow (vinyl)

Yes, I know, I already bought this album when it came out as a download. However, I was so bowled over by it that asked my brother if he could get me the vinyl version for Christmas. I’m glad I did, as it gets even more delicate, layered and spacious when you hear it on vinyl. I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised than an MP3 file (even the relatively high bitrate files you get from the iTunes Store) sounds rather compressed when compared to the analogue version, but I was slightly startled. I was also rather pleased that I can still tell the difference so easily.

I’ve already sung the praises (at great length) of the album in my previous review, so I’ll just add that the attention that a double vinyl album forces you to pay to the music (by making you get up three times to turn the disc over) adds even more to the experience. However, Bella dislikes vinyl. You see, when I sit on the sofa downstairs, she almost immediately settles down on my lap, and she was not amused at me turfing her off every 20 minutes or so to attend to the disc.

And finally…

Before I finish, I’ll mention one more thing (which has nothing to do with music). Mr. Bsag and I had a lovely walk in the sunshine on Monday, out to a country pub that we both enjoy. As we walked down a lane, I could see something flapping in a tree by the side of the road.

It made me smile and really piqued my curiosity. There just has to be an interesting story behind the deposition of an item of lingerie in a tree by a quiet country lane, doesn’t there?

I’ve written about how much I love my Tom Bihn Synapse rucksack a couple of times before. I’m probably boring everyone stupid with my adulation, but I really can’t say enough good things about this bag. I’ve had it now for nearly two years, I use it every day, and it still surprises and delights me.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to take two bottles of champagne¹ to work. In case you’re thinking that the life of a biologist is a great deal more glamorous than you had previously suspected, this is certainly not an everyday occurrence. One of the PhD students who I co-supervise with a colleague was having her viva, so I wanted to get some bubbly for a bit of a celebration when she emerged, blinking, after several hours of grilling by the examiners.

Bottles are pretty heavy and I was travelling by train that day, so I wondered if I could carry them in my Synapse on my back, rather than in a bag held in my hand. Given that my Synapse was already filled² with a considerable quantity of stuff that I take to work every day, I seriously doubted that there would be room. I already had my MacBook Air in a neoprene case, an A5 notebook in a leather case, a pencil case, camera, glasses in a hard case, a couple of pouches stuffed with random odds and ends, a packable shopping bag, wallet, keys, a large pair of headphones, and various other bits and pieces in there. Two bottles of wine would be at least another 1.5 L of volume to fit in somehow. However, in the spirit of giving it a go, I unzipped the bag and shifted the contents of the main compartment a bit before trying to slip in one of the bottles. After a bit of jiggling, it slipped in comfortably. I tried the other bottle, wondering if I could pull off this magic trick again. The second bottle was swallowed by the bag. I zipped the bag up, not really believing that it had worked. As usual, the Synapse sat there insouciantly, looking as if it just contained a couple of notebooks and thin jumper. It was pretty heavy as I was hauling it on to my back (as you would expect), but once there, it felt very comfortable.

When I removed the bottles from my bag later on in front of an audience, it was with the smugly mysterious air of a conjurer pulling a brace of rabbits from a hat. I’m pretty sure this bag breaks all sorts of laws of physics, but it’s remarkably handy.

I look very like my my mother, and have done since I was a girl. Whenever people who knew me met my mother for the first time, or met me having only known my mother, they would invariably exclaim (to me), “Don’t you look like your mother! You’re the spitting image of her.” I would then traditionally roll my eyes in exasperation and disbelief. I couldn’t see it at all. I thought people who said we looked alike were loopy. I suppose that I knew both our faces so well that I couldn’t see the resemblance among the small details I knew to be different. Since then, I’ve seen a few photos of Mum in her teens and early twenties, and I have to admit that I can see the likeness, but it didn’t seem that extraordinary.

A few weeks ago, Mum mentioned that Dad had come across an old photo of my Granny (my Mum’s mother) when she was a girl, looking uncannily like me, and she said that Dad would email me a copy. I thought it would be like looking at photos of Mum: somewhat like me, but nothing to write home about. I was wrong. When Mum said it was uncanny, she wasn’t kidding.

I should tell you a bit about Granny. All my other grandparents died before I was born or when I was very young, so she is the only grandparent I actually remember. She also died when I was in my teens, but I really loved her, and have very fond memories of staying at her house overnight on occasion. By today’s standards, she wasn’t that old when she died, but from my perspective as a kid, she was an old lady, and that’s how I remember her.

Opening the photo was a genuine shock. It was as if someone had wrestled me out of my jeans and into a period dress, put a pair of round, wire-framed glasses on me and then taken a photo which they had processed to look like a scratchy black and white period print, all without me having any memory of it happening. Or as if I’m some kind of inadvertent time traveller, and have visited other time periods without knowing about it.

The photo shows a girl (perhaps in her early teens, but it’s hard to tell) sitting in a leather armchair with her legs tucked underneath her. She has a hardback book open in her hands (I wish I could see the title on the spine), and is reading with some concentration. Mum and Dad have a photo of me as a girl in a similar pose (not difficult, since I had my nose in a book most of the time). If you ignore the style of the glasses, her face is my face. The eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth and even the damned chubby cheeks are mine. I’ve even taken to wearing my hair longer in a bob in the past few years, a style very like hers in the photo. I also note that her hair has the same ungovernable waves as mine (thanks for that, genetics!). It’s a perfectly normal photo, but the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.

I think that I’m going to frame a print of my ‘time travel photo’ (as I’m now thinking of it) and hang it somewhere in the house to discombobulate visitors, though I’ll have to stop it freaking me out first.

I was amused to see the following tweet from Merlin Mann the other day:

“When I was a baby, I didn’t like the smell of buses. Now, I really like the smell of motorcycles. It’s so distinctive.” — My Weird Daughter

It’s pretty clear (if you’ve read any of Merlin’s writing) that when he says “My Weird Daughter” he actually (quite rightly) means “My Amazing and Excellent Daughter”. However, it reminded me of an occasion from my own childhood when my mother had good reason to think she had a weird kid. I thought I would tell the story to reassure anyone in a similar position that we Weird Daughters usually turn out more or less OK.

I’ve been obsessed by animals for as long as I can remember, but the obsession was particularly acute when I was a child. I loved anything to do with animals, and would insist on going to any animal-themed films that came around. The only problem was that if there was any death and/or suffering depicted, I would cry and be inconsolable, so my mother would have to watch me like a hawk and be ready to swoop with the tissues. Interestingly, when I was younger, I wasn’t bothered much by the suffering of humans in films — only animals. I only started caring about people too as I got older.

Anyway, one day (when I must have been about 5 or 6 years old), my Mum took me with my brother to see a film called When the North Wind Blows (not the Raymond Briggs animation of the same name). It was set in Siberia¹, and involved a tiger hunter. On one hunt, the tiger attacked his friend’s son, and in trying to shoot the tiger, he accidentally shot and killed the boy². Guilt-stricken, the hunter goes on the run into the forest, assuming that he will be charged with murder. He starts to live off the land and after a series of slightly improbable and highly anthropomorphic scenes involving a tiger saving his life and him reciprocating, he befriends a female tiger. She trusts him enough to allow him near her cubs, and the tigers and the man romp through Siberian woods and meadows together. His friend tracks him down to tell the hunter that he knows the shooting was an accident, but by that time our hero is at one with the wilderness and decides to stay away from civilisation for good.

At some point during the film (I don’t remember exactly when) I started to cry. I cried all the way home, during my tea, and I was still crying when I went to bed. My poor mother, bewildered about why I was so grief-stricken, and by now slightly exasperated by the whole thing, said, “Why are you still crying? It wasn’t even a sad ending!”

Between sobs and sniffling, I eventually managed to wail, “I want to go to Siberia.”

Mum gave me a long look, which communicated pretty clearly (if very affectionately) this thought: “How in the world did we manage to produce such a Weird Daughter?”.

“I want to go to Siberia” was as close as I could get at the time to explaining why I was so moved, but I remember precisely what I felt and can express it a bit better now. It was probably the first time (but certainly not the last) that I had ever been moved to tears by the sheer heartbreaking beauty of the natural world. I saw the dark, still, pine forests, silenced by snow, and watched a man running for joy across a sunlit clearing with a huge tiger at his side. The snow they kicked up sparkled in the sun and the tiger was like a chip of amber held up to the light, the stripes like shadows cast by the trees. I wanted to be there, running with them. I wanted to feel the diamond-cold air in my lungs and reach out and touch the rough, thick fur of the tiger, to feel her warmth and the power of the muscles beneath her skin. I wanted it all so badly that it hurt. I couldn’t express any of this at the time, and the closest I could get was to explain it as a kind of homesickness.

Naturally, this incident became a family legend, and I still get my leg pulled about it every now and again. The animal-mad kid ended up as a biologist, taking a rational, objective approach to explaining the natural world, but also secretly revelling in the “beautiful ramifications”, as Darwin put it. I think I turned out OK, and Merlin — I’m sure your Weird Daughter will too.

I’ve just reviewed this film on the new site Letterboxd, but I thought I’d also copy it here, as not many people are using Letterboxd yet.

Along with Grave of the Fireflies, I think this has to be the most beautiful animated film I’ve seen. I was entranced and stunned by the sheer style of it the whole way through. The story is based around the creation of the Book of Kells — an illuminated Gospel produced around 800 AD, but weaves in elements of Celtic mythology. The hero — a young monk called Brendan — lives in the monastery of Kells, where his Uncle is trying to fortify the walls to withstand the advance of the ‘Northmen’ (Vikings). Brendan becomes fascinated by illumination when Brother Aidan arrives from Iona with the partially completed manuscript that will become the Book of Kells.

Aidan goes on a quest into the forest to find oak galls from which to make green ink, and encounters a wood spirit called Aisling. Aisling appears as a mischievous young girl, but she can also change into a white wolf, and is initially unwelcoming towards the young boy trespassing in her domain. Brendan becomes obsessed with completing the book, and ends up protecting it (together with Aidan) when the Northmen attack the monastery.

The scenes in the forest are among my favourite in the film, though I would be hard-pressed to find a single frame that didn’t astonish me with its beauty. The style is unusual and uses the swirls, spirals and knots from the Book of Kells itself. In some ways the animation has a very ‘flat’ style (again, like the illuminations), but the use of colour and movement gives it an intensely vibrant life. There’s a wonderful scene where Brendan and Aisling are climbing a gigantic oak (which has Celtic spirals and whorls embedded in its bark), that is so full of stylised detail and movement and dizzying, swirling movement that it quite takes your breath away. The dream sequences are also gorgeous and full of imaginative touches, with floating organic shapes which might be snowflakes, diatoms or decorative flourishes from the Book of Kells.

The characterisation is also wonderful. All of the characters have different body shapes and styles of movement, from the towering Abbot who is shaped like a Gothic arch, to Aisling who the embodiment of a wave or the wind. Brother Aidan also has a lovely white cat called Pangur Ban who plays an important role in the film. He is also stylised, but somehow retains the essence of cat in his sweeping, slinking movement. The Northmen are huge, rectangular, intimidating monsters, as the Vikings would probably have seemed to those under attack during their raids.

I don’t think it’s posting a spoiler to say that in the last few scenes of the film, we see pages from the actual Book of Kells. Brendan shows the book to his aging Uncle, and as he does so, the decorative elements move and take on lives of their own. It is utterly stunning and actually brought a lump to my throat because it was so beautiful. Legends say that the Book of Kells can turn darkness into light (real illumination!), and that’s certainly what happens in this film. I’m definitely going to watch this again, if only to wallow in the gorgeous images and take in more of the detail.

Ever since I found out that Kate Bush would be releasing not one but two new albums within a few months of each other, I’ve been waiting impatiently for 50 Words For Snow to be released. As it happened, I was working from home today (the day of release), but I was determined to get my work done before I succumbed to wallowing in the pleasure of listening to the new album. This proved to be very hard, particularly as certain people on Twitter (@HelgeG and @m_s, I’m looking at you!) kept talking about how great it was. Anyway, by exercising inhuman levels of patience and resistance, I managed to hold out until I reached a respectable time to stop work. And then I listened to the whole album. Twice. Then I pulled myself together and started to write this.

Regular readers know how much I love Kate Bush’s work. Anticipating a new album is a curious mixture of pleasure and terror: of course I’m looking forward to hearing her new work, but I’m also terrified that the latest album will reveal that she’s completely lost her touch. So far, this hasn’t happened and 50 Words For Snow has just taken my breath away. Twice. I’m going to be listening to this album a lot.

Where the last album Aerial was all about summer and warmth, lightness and happiness, 50 Words For Snow deals with icy whiteness, cold and longing. It’s not just that it has a winter theme — the whole album has a particular emotional tone which is thrilling and utterly beautiful. I haven’t relistened to Aerial back-to-back with this album, but I think that the two together would be electric, like jumping out of a sauna into an icy lake.

‘Snowflake’ features Kate’s son Bertie, who actually sings the majority of the melody as a snowflake falling to Earth and calling out to Kate. We’ve heard from Bertie before (a few spoken words on Aerial and a vocodered part on Director’s Cut as the voice of the computer), but I think this is the first time we’ve heard his proper singing voice. It could be horribly twee. It could be like an indulgent mother earnestly showing you her child’s latest splodgy finger-painted work and trying to convince you that it shows an advanced appreciation of colour and form. Thankfully it isn’t either of those things. Bertie actually has a rather lovely voice, which is a bit other-worldly, and he has a great sense of restraint and drama. I think he’s going to be a pretty good chip off the old block. It’s also a heart-breaking song. He continually calls out to her to come and find him, and she repeatedly sings:

The world is so loud. Keep falling. I’ll find you.

It might be my over-active imagination, but it seems that this refrain gets more weary and more despairing as time goes on, and the two never actually find one another. I’m not ashamed to say that it reduced me to tears (twice). There are so many beautiful parts of this track, but the part where Bertie delivers the following lines completely undoes me for some reason:

I think I can see you.

And your long, white neck

The title track is — on the face of it — a typically wacky Kate Bush attempt to turn an unlikely subject into a great song: Stephen Fry literally recites 50 words (most of them invented) for snow, while Kate counts them and eggs him on. It is certainly playful, and revels in the beauty and complexity of words, but it’s also rather hypnotic and becomes (if you’ll allow me to put on my Pretentious Hat for a moment) a kind of shamanic chant that is rather transporting.

‘Lake Tahoe’ is extraordinary, with its chorus of tenor and counter-tenor and its rather creepy story about a woman searching for her lost dog. It’s so beautifully constructed: quiet and chilly and using silence (which is then filled with crow calls) really effectively. I also love ‘Among Angels’ which is also pervaded by the same sense of just missing out on the love and comfort which is there but out of your reach.

‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ is a duet with Elton John. I’m not an Elton fan, and so that filled me with the kind of quiet dread that has previously been reserved for the phrase “featuring Rolf Harris”. However, I’m glad to say that he’s pretty good. Obviously, I would have preferred Kate to duet (again) with Peter Gabriel, but I can’t always get what I want. The song is a kind of time-travelling love story, with our hero and heroine constantly slipping out of each others’ arms and missing one another. Are you sensing a theme here? Again, it’s the kind of thing that only Kate can really pull off.

That brings me to the track which has probably elicited the most comment (and sniggering) among the reviewers: ‘Misty’. In this song, Kate has a one-night stand with a snowman. Really. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a songwriter of a lesser talent than Kate Bush, and you’re composing a song about a night-time assignation between a man and a woman. What kind of imagery would you bring in? Well, how about warmth, heat? Yes, ‘hot’ is good, ‘hot’ is sexy. If you are writing the song from the perspective of the woman, you probably also want the man to be strong and — I don’t want to be indelicate here — have a certain firmness about him. Certainly, you don’t want to have him “melting in my hand”, as that is usually considered… undesirable. Kate manages to invert every sensible thing you would put into a song of this kind and make it extraordinarily brilliant and really rather erotic, even though it is all wrong. She describes the snowman’s mouth:

His crooked mouth is full of dead leaves

It instantly makes you think of that smell of wet, dead leaves, full of rich, sweet humus and a touch of decay. You also remember the cold breath of the start of winter on your face, like kissing “ice-cream lips”. That’s a fairly startling image in such a setting, but somehow it works. Retrieving my Pretentious Hat again, I see it almost as a companion song to ‘Song of Solomon’, as you can read it as being about the difficulty of men opening up to women. Perhaps I’m just reading too much into it, but it’s that kind of album, full of allusion and things shifting away from you.

That brings me back to what I see as the theme of this album: the sense of never being able to quite find someone or something, of them being perpetually just out of reach. Whether it is the impossibility of hearing one particular snowflake fall, or of holding on to your one true love as you travel through time, or even of having a relationship with someone with whom you have incompatible thermal requirements, it’s all about longing and loss. Even 50 Words For Snow can be thought of in this way — you can use all the words you like, but you can’t really capture what snow is like, or how it feels.

I am probably reading far too much into this album, but that’s the way it struck me. It’s as chilly and beautiful and beguiling as the pattern of frost on a window, and you can see all sorts of pictures in it. Just remember to put on a jumper or two before you listen to it.

We’ve been meaning to do it for ages. Every time we looked at our ratty windows, we thought, “We really need to replace those windows.” But, for a long time, we didn’t. It was a big hassle, an upheaval, and most of all, it was going to be expensive and we had to save. Then we had to get our soffits and facias replaced before the mouldy, rotten things started to let water into the roof and cause us even more expense. That was also a hassle and upheaval (though confined to the outside of the house). However, when it was finished, the suddenly gleaming facia boards threw our rotten windows into stark relief. I’ve come to think of it as a kind of alternative Right Said Fred process, in which every improvement you make to your house necessitates further improvements because the rest of your house now looks much worse in contrast.

The windows were probably installed when the house was built. They were in fact double glazing units, but very thin and poor insulators by modern standards. What’s more, at some point, the seals on the units failed, so they collected condensation between the panes. They had wooden frames, and while I generally like wood, these were apparently cheap pine doing a bad impersonation of very dark mahogany, and they made the house look even more gloomy than it actually is, inside and out. They had been poorly maintained, and although we tried to patch up the rotten bits, it was a losing battle. They were warped and swollen and you had to put your shoulder to the windows to open them, running the risk of plummeting from an upstairs window every time. The time had come to pay the money and get them replaced with modern, white UPVC units. I’m not really a fan of UPVC, but we certainly didn’t have the money to install eco-friendly windows with nice oak frames, so UPVC it had to be.

We had the windows installed last week, and it has made an amazing difference. It’s incredible how much lighter it seems in the house, just because the frames are white rather than dark brown. The windows open easily and lock securely, and when I approach the house from outside, it actually looks like a nice, well-maintained house rather than a bit of a dump. It’s also a lot warmer (and quieter) in the house, we we’ve been able to turn the heating down. I can’t believe we didn’t do it earlier.

We did have to put the cats into the cattery for a couple of nights. They are house cats with absolutely no road sense, and it would have been really stressful for us trying to confine them in the rooms that still had windows, not to mention the fact that all the drilling would have freaked them out. The cattery is a very nice place, run by a lovely woman, and they don’t seem to mind being there too much. Their initial reactions are always hilarious though. Bianca trots straight out the carrying box, sees the cat activity centre thing and roars straight up it, really excited. Bella, though she acts the alpha cat, is a total chicken at heart, and reluctantly slinks out of the box. When we closed the door of the run and got ready to leave, she looked up at me with enormous eyes and droopy ears (exactly like this), and if you’ll forgive a bit of LOLCAT anthropomorphism for a moment, seemed to be saying “WHY U LEEVE ME HEER IN THIS PLACE WIV NO CARPET?”.

When we got back after the work had been completed, they both were magnificently unimpressed with the new windows, but very pleased to be home. Bella snuggled up on my lap at the earliest opportunity, and when we temporarily misplaced Bianca later, we eventually found her snuggled under the duvet on our bed, with just the top of her head visible as it rested gently on Mr. Bsag’s pillow. They were glad to have their home back, and so are we.