I recognise that there’s little duller in life than hearing about other people’s Spotify habits, especially at this time of year… but it does make for a very easy blog post when one is trying to post daily.

And so, allow me to present my top five artists of 2024, according to how much time I’ve spent listening to them on Spotify:

1. Stacey Kent
2. Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox
3. Max Richter
4. Blossom Dearie
5. Armin van Buuren
   

This may be the only chart in history where Blossom Dearie, an American jazz singer and pianist born more than a century ago, is nestled between Max Richter, the French-British postminimalist classical composer born in the 1960s, and Armin van Buuren, the pioneering Dutch trance DJ born in the 1970s… though their music could make an incredible mash-up.

Kae Tempest wrote:

If you are moved by a rapper that you listen to on YouTube, it’s really not a big deal. You shouldn’t have to apologise for it in literary environments. The same is true if you love a classical poet. It isn’t the case that you need to approach lauded works on bended knee. The pool of influence you draw from does not have to meet the approval of an academy or an institution, or be bound by the parameters of a genre, sub-genre or ‘movement’. Listen to everything. Read as much as you can. Try to stay present and connected with whatever you’re engaging with when you’re engaging with it.

I think that’s right.

This corn mill was built in the early 1800s of local limestone. It was badly damaged in a storm in 1870, and probably didn’t return to use after that. It was further damaged in the First World War when it was used for target practice—what use a ruined old mill anyway?—but it was patched up by the Council in 1992.

You know how much I like to give you a little bit extra in these posts, often sourced from historical newspapers… but I’m struggling on this one. I can, however, share that the Shields Gazette had a whole feature on the ‘Cleadon Big Cat’ which was apparently spotted near the mill in 1999. An anonymous man’s wife told journalist Iain Smith, “He used to always take the family labrador out for a walk and he knows what a dog looks like but he was certain it was not a dog, it was a big cat. There’s definitely something up there.’

I’m pleased to report that I didn’t spot any big cats on my wander past.

It’s eight years to the month since I read Robert Harris’s novel Conclave, yet it made enough of an impression for me to be interested in seeing the film adaptation. I think I bought a copy of the book for my mum. Anyway, the novel—and therefore the film—concerns the political machinations of the conclave of cardinals as they meet to elect a new pope. Various factions fight for dominance, with the main schism between those who think that the church should return to older traditions and those who believe that it should become more inclusive. Wendy, who came with me, hasn’t read the novel.

We both enjoyed the film: we were impressed by the cinematography, the music, the sound design, and the casting. We were also both impressed by the dialogue, which felt true to life, and Wendy felt that the twists and turns in the plot were well-paced. It was an enjoyable couple of hours, and I felt that it made the most of its source material.

Our main criticism is that the film is a self-contained curiosity. Much like the novel, it doesn’t seem to have much to say about the world outside of the church: it is quite insular. It’s not a film that either of us will still be pondering a week later—but I suspect we’ll still remember it as a good evening out.

There are few things more likely to make my eyes roll than the headline:

Wallace’s response to MasterChef claims was misogynistic, says No 10

The fact that a television presenter has made people feel uncomfortable by acting inappropriately is serious, and ought to be dealt with seriously by his employer and, perhaps, his employer’s commissioner. The fact that early complaints to the BBC appear not to have been adequately acted upon is worthy of investigation. The fact that people face inappropriate behaviour in workplaces across the country and feel powerless to report it is upsetting, and we can only hope that stories like this help to change that narrative.

However… it is slightly absurd that journalists asked for the Prime Minister’s take on an Instagram video made by the television presenter in response to those accusations, and it is truly absurd that the Government responded to them.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales suggests that around 3,000 people became victims of seuxal assualt on the same day that Greg Wallace recorded his unpleasant Instagram rant. Many thousands more will have put up with inappropriate behaviour that they’ve felt powerless to tackle—or, perhaps worse, that they’ve tried to tackle and yet been ignored.

The fact that the No 10 spokesperson didn’t use the opportunity of the question to pivot to talking about the wider issue is a failure of communication.

The fact that the Prime Minister’s attention is evidently distracted by an unpleasant issue outside of his control is a failure of Government.

But… the fact that BBC One has chosen, of all characters, Wallace and Grommit to feature in idents introducing news programmes where another Wallace features heavily is a divine comedic success.

Wendy and I were both struck by the measured tone of this week’s Parliamentary debate on assisted dying.

It’s a complicated topic. To me, the starting point is certainly that assisted death should be legal, but the practicalities are complicated. They are probably best left to people with more expertise than me.

It strikes me that the medicalisation of death complicates the picture. It is not obvious to me that it should be up to doctors to arbitrate on the processes surrounding the universal human experience of death.

It is, of course, appalling to contemplate that representatives of our state religion, in which only a minority of the population express a belief, will get a Parliamentary vote on the issue… but that’s hardly unique to this topic. It is absurd and unjust that bishops continue to sit in the House of Lords, and if this debate forces a re-examination of that issue, then that will be a welcome side effect.

I was particularly interested to read Richard Smith’s thoughts on this week’s debate, as a former editor of the BMJ who has spent much longer thinking about the topic than I have.

As you will no doubt be aware, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is currently mulling over the exact definition of a ‘woman’. As The Economist drily noted this week,

Finally, an answer looms for those who wonder what those 34m people in Britain who are not men might be.

The debate about the exact definitions of gender terms is distressingly toxic, and rarely seems to contain much compassion. It also often feels very current, as though it is a debate which could only exist now—which is, of course, nonsense.

We all know this is nonsense, as we all know that the role of women in society has transformed over the last century, and we all know that change always leads to conflict. Of course, there have been repeated, endless debates about the topic.

I learned this week about the case of Gwyneth Bebb vs The Law Society, heard 111 years ago next month. The similarity between the debate then and the debate now is striking.

Bebb wished to become a solicitor, but found herself prevented from doing so by the tradition that only men entered the legal profession. The Solicitors Act of 1843 referred only to a ‘person’ acting as an attorney or solicitor, setting no specific gender boundaries.

And so Bebb asked the Courts to rule on whether a ‘woman’ was a ‘person’—a very similar question to that being considered by the Supreme Court today.

Bizarrely to modern eyes, the Courts ruled that a ‘woman’ was not a ‘person’—not least because married women were unable to enter legal contracts of their own accord.

In the short term, and to Bebb specifically, this was devastating. She died from complications of childbirth aged 31, just a few years after the ruling. Yet, within a decade of the ruling, women were practising law—just as they had a few hundred years before.

I’ve no idea what the Supreme Court will conclude this time around, but I suspect the impact is likely to rhyme with history: society’s views will continue to change at an unprecedented pace, for better and for worse, and people arguing about the exact definitions of words will have little long-term impact.

I said a few years ago that I think Paris is at its best on crisp, sun-drenched winter days. I reflected this week that Newcastle is pretty good under those same conditions… and unlike during that trip to Paris, the ice on Newcastle’s pavements hasn’t swiped my feet from under me (yet).

In 2012, I visited the Tyne Pedestrian and Cyclist tunnels, about a year before they closed for refurbishment. The refurbishment did not go to plan, and the tunnels were closed for six years. I re-visited in 2020 to see how the almost-finished product looked.

I reflected on that visit that the fancy new lifts were not yet up and running. But this week, the better part of five years on, the lifts have finally opened to the public. The tunnels, which are free to access, have also returned to 24/7 opening.

The Tyne and Wear Metro used to have 90 Metrocars formed into 45 trains. The fleet is now well beyond its intended lifespan, and some of the trains have been harvested for parts to keep it running. A while ago, the service frequency was reduced so that only 28 trains are required at peak times.

Yesterday morning, a quarter of the 28 running trains broke down in service. A few weeks ago, there was an afternoon when only twenty trains were available.

Somehow, none of this feels surprising—it feels like yet another example of a public service that no longer works properly, another asset which once evoked civic pride but now feels like a bit of an embarrassment.

There are plans in place to fix things—new trains are coming, for one thing—but reputations lost are hard to regain. Regardless of how quickly it might happen on paper, I wonder how long it will be until the system feels reliable again?