Memories of a Peculiar Year
It’s that time of year again. Here are a few things that stood out for me in 2015:
The Emperor Claudius Award for unlikely political elevation: Jeremy Corbyn. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Others get elevated to the leadership of a major national party by less than 1% of the electorate.
Ugliest American: Donald Trump – made even uglier by the fact that millions of Americans are gullible enough to believe that he would be able to deliver on his loopy promises.
Most fashionable endangered species: The hedgehog, especially the poor visitors in my garden that had to contend with our large and curious dog this summer.
Most startling harbinger of the End of Days: Daffodils flowering in London at Christmas. If things continue like this, the cricket season in England will start in February.
Most compelling re-read: Diary of a Man in Despair. Was there ever a more withering expression of contempt for a political leadership than Freidrich Reck-Malleczewen’s literary demolition of the Nazis?
Reck-Malleczewen
Most unexpected moment in a TV series: Saga Noren weeping in The Bridge 3. The dam finally broke.
Most predictable moment in a TV Series: Carrie Mathison having a psychotic breakdown in Homeland.
Most valiant theatrical failure: Farinelli and the King. Mark Rylance was tremendous, but no counter-tenor will ever be more than a pale imitation of an operatic castrato.
Farinelli
Most moving concert: Berlioz’s Grand Messe des Morts at the London Barbican – has brass ever been used more effectively?
Cultural desecration: Palmyra and all the other sites destroyed by ISIS. How long before we start erasing inconvenient history in the West?
Statue of the year: That of the late Mayor Rizzo of Philadelphia (which I visited last month), pointing nobly into the distance. He who once said “I’m going to make Attila the Hun look like a faggot”. Roll on the Democrat National Convention, due to be held in the city next year.
Mayor Frank Rizzo
Most overworked social theme: Transgender anything.
Cliché of the year: Safe place – particularly as applied to the expression of opinion on university campuses. In my day we went to university to escape safe places. Clearly not any more.
Comical Ali moment: Caliph Baghdadi sending an upbeat message about the fortunes of ISIS on the day Ramadi was falling.
Most unlikely sporting hero: Loretta Lynch, US Attorney General, for her part in taking down FIFA.
Most intriguing “new” energy source: Molten salt reactor technology, developed in the 1960s, tweaked in the 2010s, potentially able to produce usable energy from nuclear waste.
Apologies if some of these references are a little obscure, but they’re just a reflection of the odd stuff that’s been swirling round my conscious in this funny old year.