One door closes

I'm ending the year in the same way I end most years: with a sense of disappointment at chances fumbled and goals unscored, but also a gnawing urgency to push on into a new chapter that must surely come when the calender turns.

Hope is boosted just because of a new day; a day, really, like any other day?

Can't help it though. It gets me every time.

Have to say, as well, that 2009 was a better year for me personally than 2008, and that year, in turn, was better than the previous three.

So, hopes are high that 2010 really will be the year I make contact. Just like in the movies.

Like some damn fool I'm an optimist and a dreamer. Neither of which have rewarded me in any tangible way. Nothing to show for it, but, hey, I'm still here, right?

Had a good Christmas, thanks for asking. A week spent nested on the settee watching the same old films (The Fabulous Baker Boys in particular has become a Christmas afternoon staple for me of late) and gorging.

TV was a let down as it always is, but the showing of The Bridge to Teribithia on BBC1 on Boxing Day more than made up for it. It's a rare thing for a fantasy film, especially one aimed at children, to be as unfussy, un-cloying, and moving as this. That wears its fantasy element lightly, and can turn tragic without being honey-dipped. I'm filing this one next to Let the Right One In and Pan's Labyrinth, it's that good, that affecting and witty. A fantasy that keeps it real.

I long for that day when I can switch on the TV or radio and David Tennant won't appear. He's not one to turn an invitation down. The first part of his final Doctor Who story was an over-egged, overly-rich pudding that stuck to the roof of your mouth and made you feel bilious. Just as all Dr Who Christmas specials passim.
I know he's the housewives-and-gays favourite, but I can say now I never really warmed to him as the Doctor. He's too warm. Too hiya matey. Too yeeeah, oooh, we-e-ell, ye-e-es... Twitch, gurn, googly-eyes, misty-eyes, bottom-lip quiver, Adam's apple bobbing. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry.

Hamlet was good though. Tennant copied Kenny Branagh's take on the Dane, and brought out the humour with the surliness. The RSC players were all over the shop though.

Speaking of Our Ken, the UK Wallander is back for some more episodes (can't really call it a series) in the new year. Looking forward to it. I've caught a few of the Swedish Wallanders on BBC4, which have been wonderfully wieghed down with Nordic gloom, though they are as much about Kurt Wallander as Taggart is about that programme's title character.

The final episode was grim and tragic on its own, but what added to the meloncholy was the knowledge that Johanna Sällström, who played the central character of Linda Wallander, committed suicide a few months after the episode was filmed. She had been suffering from depression ever since she and her daughter were nearly killed in the tsunami in Thailand in 2004.

Day of the Triffids? 28 Days Later of the Triffids Later morelike.

I thought it was okay, the second episode anyway. The only major problem for me was the drag factor caused by Dougray Scott. He appears to have gone to the Douglas Henshall school of none-acting, specialising in responding to what would be Earth-shattering events with a kind of dour indifference.

The second series of Survivors is starting soon on the BBC. Kinda odd they are doing these two remakes of '70s cataclysm sci-fi, which are very similar, back-to-back.

Now it's New Year's Eve, and tonight will be spent in some slant corner of some small pub in Malvern, elbow-ing our way to the bar and bogs. What a pain, but I will be with the friends I've spent New Years with for the past, ooh I dunno, twenty years give or take. Cosy.

Can't wait for this year to end so the next one can begin.