Tolkien to tapes - just a normal day in Vole Towers

Despite having a massive headache, today has been an excellent one.

I've seen two of my dissertation students who are sorted, thoughtful, interesting and organised. One is doing a Tolkien thesis, which would normally send me running to the loos for a spot of retching (I write as a teenage Tolkien fan and – the shame – member of the Tolkien Society) but her plan is to examine the nature and cultural origins of the various models of heroism in Lord of the Rings. We talked about narrative strategies and commentary, sex, race, theories of degeneration and a host of other things. I've sent her away to read The Decline of the West (with asbestos gloves) to give her a sense of the conservative intellectual climate of the time. I just hope she doesn't turn up for our next consultation planning to liquidate me as an untermensch!

The other dissertation consultation was about a project based on the nostalgic revival of music formats, particularly the recent cult of the cassette tape. Like me, he collects vinyl, and plans to talk to record label owners about the motivation of producers and consumers of obsolete formats.



Neither of us think vinyl is obsolete, but cassettes definitely are: they were poor-quality back in the day and have no redeeming characteristics other than wilful obscurantism. We're thinking that he can start with a Frankfurt School take, then look at theories of subcultures and material objects in popular culture.

If the pair of them write as well as they talk, it's going to be a fascinating few months.

I remember tapes - they were how I first encountered recorded music. They were rubbish. My parents owned a Best of Vaughan Williams together, and Dad had a Best of U2 and Best of The Dubliners. As you can see, 'Best Of…' was a theme, and one which to me meant 'these people don't really like music', which was only partially fair. Completists they were not. They also possessed hundreds of C120 tapes, previously used to dictate letters and medical notes for transcription. If you think C60s were rubbish, C120s are a revelation. The sound quality is utterly appalling and the tape is really, really thin, so any music sounds like it was recorded in a gale, you could often hear the tracks on the other side as well, and they'd snap or foul frequently. Oh, and each play wore out the tape: permanent, they were not. Much time was spent gently coaxing fragile magnetic ribbon out of my £12.99 white Woolworths dual-tape player with a pencil, soon replaced by a £15 Sanyo one.

And yet for a kid without pocket money, this was a lifeline: recording John Peel and Evening Session programmes onto one tape, then editing it down to just the interesting bits on the other deck. After that, one was free to listen in bed using my dad's 1970's Aiwa pre-Walkman, and to make compilation tapes, which demanded considerable dexterity to hold multiple buttons down, and maths skills (to fit the right number of songs per side without cutting them off or leaving long gaps), let alone the artistic and creative requirements for producing a coherent sequence of tracks communicating exactly the sentiment required. Though I say so myself, I think I was quite good at that: every song a pleasurable gem, while making the recipient understand exactly how highbrow and musically adventurous I was. Ahem. I was very upset when whoever nicked my friend Vicky's car stole all her tapes except for the one I'd done her. Philistines.


I've just finished writing my union branch report on the REF process (wailing and gnashing of teeth) and now I'm off to a colleague's house to watch loads of old Dr Who. For the purposes of research, I'll have you know: we've a couple of papers cooking but I can't tell you what they're about because you'll all just nick our ideas. Or laugh at them anyway.

Soundtrack to the day has been Oliver Knussen. Have a cantata:

Pros and Cons of dying, aged 98, on Saturday 14th May

As I mentioned, my beloved maternal grandmother passed away a couple of days ago (it's OK, I've got another one, and she's only 90).

So what did she miss?

Stoke City in its first ever FA Cup Final.
Stoke City losing in its first ever FA Cup Final.

The Eurovision Song Contest
One of the best Doctor Who episodes ever, written by Neil Gaiman.

Some good rain.

On balance, it was an OK day to depart.

I have joined the nerds

I'm so proud. I've just taken delivery of the nerdiest t-shirts ever: one popular culture, and one literary.

'It Came Out Of Nowhere': uniting popular culture across the Atlantic.

Poe's 'The Raven', in the shape of… a raven.

All from shirt.woot

Mandatory Doctor Who post

I'm a blogger. One of the rules of blogging is that no blog may continue to exist without at least one discussion of Doctor Who. Having just watched the 2010 Christmas Special (if you aren't in the UK, search for tips on how to fool the iPlayer that you are), I'm happy to oblige.

OK. Here we go.
Jolly good this year, though slightly lacking in scariness. And very lacking in Amy Pond (I know, I'll get e-mail). I enjoyed it a lot, except for the Katherine Jenkins element. She's a popular singer in the field of light classical. Fine - a storyline requiring a singer who saves the spaceship is Christmassy enough, but choosing a famous one with a lot of product to move risks turning the show into a celebrity vehicle, and the BBC should have a little more self-respect.

As to the new series - the trailer makes it all look rather wonderful. Though the shot of some Nazis makes we wonder how far in time and space we have to go before the British will stop going on about the war. Can TV be subject to Godwin's Law?

This all sounds a little curmudgeonly considering that I enjoyed this episode and think the upcoming ones will be wonderful, but we have to keep an eye on it. To the BBC, it's just another product to be sold, merchandised, cross-marketed and exploited. To us, it's a perfect little world which should be untainted by the need to sell Dalek figurines and Katherine Jenkins CDs. Naive, I know.

Right. If I can't get to sleep, I've always got the cricket. England seem to be coping with Australia adequately.

Dr Who… and more to the point, WHY?

I make no further comment, except that surely Dr. Who should be allowed to remain innocent. I wonder what the BBC's lawyers would make of this: Dr Who Burlesque.

Geeks are going to love this

I fully expect some of my friends to die of sheer crossover pleasure when they watch this: a mashup of Dr Who and classic 1980s comedy science fiction drama, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


It's done with astonishing fidelity, and love.

Intellectuals…

I'm not in the pub watching the football, though I'd quite like a Slovenia win because I like small unpretentious countries.

I'm in the office with my departing colleague. She, with breathtaking demonstration of her highbrow cultural status, has just announced that 'Daniel Defoe' has scored.

Update: so England beat 2 million population Slovenia 1-0. Well done. The US go through too. And I've watched the latest Dr Who open-mouthed in admiration. Top quality drama.