Coming up to the start of a brand new year is always fraught with expectation, and yes, that seems to hold true even for Charles M. Schulz’s wonderful creations in his immortally iconic comic strip Peanuts. Even 21 years after its creator’s death, Peanuts holds a place close to many Continue Reading
Movie review: Don’t Look Up
Humans, as a species, are a happily delusional lot. While we are fiercely intelligent (for the most part: COVID may challenge that notion among certain segments of the population) and capable of successfully tackling anything we put our mind to – we didn’t climb to the top of the evolutionary Continue Reading
I need more popcorn and candy stat! My 25 favourite films of 2021
This year was a highly unusual year. I finally started going back to the movies in something approaching normal fashion, and while the choices were a little limited with a lot of the big tentpoles titles such as No Time to Die, The French Despatch and Ghosterbusters: Afterlife all being Continue Reading
Book review: Fin & Rye & Fireflies by Harry Cook
It will hardly come as a surprise to anyone that we live in an infamously intolerant world (except of course to the intolerant themselves who simply see themselves as upholding all manner of decency, truth etc etc). If you are an outlier of any kind to the scarily homogenous cisgender Continue Reading
Download. Play. Dance. Sing. My 25 favourite songs of 2021
Thank the glitter-splattered moose in the sky (my deity of choice) for music. While I didn’t need an amazing soundtrack to cushion the harshness of a long train commute, it was pivotal to my morning exercise routine which, as the only time I was allowed out during COVID, became incredibly Continue Reading
Movie review: Encanto
There was once a time, not all that long ago, when grief was treated as a linear, open-and-shut case, something that struck you, affected you and then left you alone to rebuild your life. That view of grief was simplistic at best, and as we’ve grown in our understanding of Continue Reading
Lost in a sea of beautiful words: My 25 favourite books of 2021
I have always found books to be the most perfect of escapes. When I was a kid and into my teenage years, they helped me to screen out the bullies, who were damn near omnipresent in life and escape to all kinds of magical, wonderful places, and as an adult Continue Reading
Book review: The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed
As the COVID pandemic sweeps across the world again and again and again, it’s all too easy to feel like this is the end of the world. It isn’t, of course, well not yet anyway (and we can only hope that science and the dedication of an expansive cohort of Continue Reading
Small screen, big stories, much bingeing: My 25 favourite TV shows of 2021
2021 has been a very long year. Now, those of you of a more pedantic bent might casually respond that it had 365 days, just like any other year (except those delightful leap years which the Gregorian calendar throws in every four years just to keep us on our timekeeping Continue Reading
#Christmas movie review: A Boy Called Christmas
As origin stories go, the one that belongs to Santa Claus is a doozy. Drawn from a host of different European traditions, embellished by one Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century and prettied up with fetching red and a convivial air courtesy of a soda maker in the 20th, Santa Continue Reading