Posts
-
Stanley Ferry - Normanton loop
A large part of this walk is very nice. But an equally large part is not. We start on the canal and potter North along it for a good way. It’s nice. When we leave the canal though, it starts to get less lovely. I’ve nothing against Altofts, but the little alleyways we squeeze down are a bit grimy.
When we finally get out of the town and into the fields, things don’t improve. There are tall metal fences hemming the path in on both sides. It skirts some quarry works, ducks under a pylon and spits us out onto a road that is covered in rubbish. There are no buildings for a good distance in any direction, but half the world has emptied their bins here. It’s grim.
The path next to the railway line is flooded so we take a longer route, into Normantofts. Apparently Queen Victoria stayed here once on a trip to the North. But its mining heyday is long in the past.
We loop back into some woods - where we once met a silent man carrying an axe - and carry on to the edges of the nature reserve. From here, things look up. There are some pretty trees, a high bridge over the river and then we rejoin the canal.
Parking
Public car park by the Stanley Ferry pub.
Walking
Easy. Mostly flat.
-
Newmillerdam loop
A (mostly) bright and sunny day. A nice loop around Newmillerdam, taking in the lake, some woods, crossing the old railway line and wandering through the abandoned buildings in Seckar woods. Nice walk.
Parking
Public car park by Newmillerdamn. It’s not huge and does get very busy.
Walking
Easy. Mostly flat, mostly not too muddy - even after weeks of rain.
-
Albums of the Year 2023
For everything else that 2023 may have been, or not been, there’s been a lot of excellent music. Here we are at the end of the year. Grab your headphones, hide from the world outside. Here are my favourite records of the year.
Shit and Shine - 2222 and Airport
S&S produces a lot of music, and a lot of it has never really connected with me. But this one does. By turns full of good beats, funny stories and weird noises. Excellent stuff.
Squid - O Monolith
I don’t love this quite as much as their first, but its still great. Spiky, post-punk loveliness.
Memorials - Women Against the Bomb
I was surprised by how much this stuck in my head. It’s the soundtrack to a film about the Greenham Common protests and isn’t subtle at all, but I keep finding myself singing little bits of it.
Lankum - False Lankum
This is my kind of folk music. Macabre, dark stories, told over shuddering bass and weird noises. Fabulous.
Hey Colossus - In Blood
Short and sweet, walls of fuzzy guitar noise.
Meatraffle - Superstructure
Cracking post-punk tunes with some wickedly funny lines. As you’d expect from a band called Meatraffle.
The Loving Paupers - Ladders
Gorgeous NY reggae. Their first album is equally good. Get to know.
The Mountain Goats - Jenny From Thebes
It’s the Mountain Goats. It’s a polished one, with horns and all. I love it.
Overmono - Good Lies
This is an absolute gem. Sits alongside Bicep’s Atlas in my mind, and that’s high praise.
Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan - The Nation’s Most Central Location
Understated electronica. This one pulses and bubbles and fizzes. For fans of Pye Corner Audio, Demdike Stare and the like. I love this sort of thing.
Mungo’s Hi-FI - Past and Present
Mungo’s are a reliable source of bangers, but this one is wall to wall greatness. Absolute stomping tunes.
Reverend Kristine - SAVED
OK, this won’t be for everyone. It’s deeply weird and not an easy listen but its fascinating and very memorable. I love it. Very hard to describe. Give ‘All of my friends are going to hell’ a listen.
Belbury Poly - The Path
Sleeper hit for me. It’s very understated. All gentles tunes with a little folksy storytelling. Worth giving some time to. I love all this hauntology business.
Jellyskin - In Brine
Leeds Leeds Leeds. Bringer of Brine was my most listened track of the year, and ‘I was the first Tetrapod’ can’t have been far behind. Stomping techno-tinged wonky pop tunes.
James Ellis Ford - The Hum
I know nothing about this. Don’t know anything about the artist. Can’t remember how I found it. But it’s great.
Goat - Medicine
Everything these folk make is excellent and this one goes hard. Psych-folk? Alt-fusion? Chant-rock? The internet has no idea how to classify them. It doesn’t matter. This is ace.
-
Leeds International Film Festival 2023
And the film festival is done! Unlike some previous years where I’ve tried to review every single film in detail, this year I’ve decided to keep it light. So here are my Tweet-like short reviews of everything I watched. Let’s go!
-
Leeds International Film Festival 2023 Preview: Official Selection
It’s back. It’s nearly November, and that means it’s time to grab a copy of the film festival programme, a pencil and comfy chair. It’s time to start picking out the films to get excited about. It’s time to start working out quite how long it takes to get from the city centre up to the Hyde Park Picture House. It’s time to buy some tickets!
The programme launch, with its compilation trailer reel shown on a big screen in Vue has whetted the appetite, so now I’m diving into the list of films and trying to work out what I can see. The plan here is to do a post on each of the major strands, taking a look at what I’m excited about. In this post, I’ll start with the official selection. Let’s go!
Opening and Closing
The big name pictures that bookend the festival are reliably interesting. I’m definitely excited to see Poor Things, the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos. I’ve loved a lot of his films. Dogtooth and Alps are probably due a rewatch - I remember enjoying them, but not a lot about them. The trio that followed (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite) are all certified bangers. Each very different and bonkers in their own ways but utterly compelling. The trailer for Poor Things looks pretty promising. A good pick for an opener.
All of which leaves closing film, Slow, with rather a hard act to follow. It sounds interesting enough but I’m not wildly excited about it. But I’ve misjudged a lot of small romances in the past. Sometimes the films that look a little bit dull on paper turn out to be memorable worlds that drag you in. We’ll see…
The rest of the selection…
I’m not going to look at every film, so much as pick out a handful that are calling to me loudly. And there’s a trio of films that are shouting the loudest. Anatomy of a Fall, Palme d’Or winner, looks like my kind of thriller. Meanwhile, Monster is the latest film from Hirokazu Kore-eda - I loved both Shoplifters and Broker (both at previous LIFF screenings!) so am very excited for this one. Rounding out my top three is Sultana’s Dream: I din’t know anything about the director or the source material (though a 1905 sci-fi feminist text certainly has me interested!) but the trailer was jaw-droppingly beautiful.
After that, we move into a mix of the enjoyable, the interesting and the downright weird. Both The Queen of My Dreams and The Holdovers look pretty approachable. I don’t think I’m expecting anything particularly new or exciting from either but they look like they could be sa lot of fun.
After that we’ve got All of Us Strangers (Andrew Scott in a relationship with Paul Mescal from Aftersun!), The Breaking Ice (I’m a sucker for a story about small lives in China) and Kiddo (a chaotic law-breaking mother-daughter road-trip). And my picks are rounded out by a couple of seriously weird looking choices: Chronicles of a Wandering Saint (staged miracles in an attempt to be more saintly than the other members of your church) and Sweet Dreams (a Dutch colonial tale set in Indonesia. The trailer looked weird).
In short…
It’s an exciting looking selection. The main strand can occasionally be a little bit earnest and heavy. This year though, there’s a good mix and plenty that’s calling me loudly.
subscribe via RSS