A Classical Christmas

It's three days after boxing day today and the first one of this new blog of mine so I thought I'd mention something I had this year for Christmas.

When I was twelve I remember listening to a radio program that played short pieces of classical music in the early evening which tied in well with when we had a family evening meal when I was home or just after early evening when at boarding school and they played quiet a bit of Boccherini's music.

It wasn't just such staples as the G275 Minuet  but also his cello works and this Christmas I got the complete set of all twelve of his Cello Concertos that the budget cd label Naxos had put out from 1999 include the third volume that came out just two years ago.

Having played them today on my stereo, I have to say I really love these performances which just feel right, lively but not to 'wirey' and are very well recorded.

This disc of four of his Quartets including the infamous Minuet from Op 13/5 G275 is one disc I bought in the early days of compact disc when this labels pioneering use of PCM digital recording was more appreciated and their discs were more widely stocked at places like the local branch of Richer Sounds as well as mainstream record shops with decent classical stocks.

Christmas 2006

Happy Boxing day people.

As is normal for someone like me I still get children's presents and Mummy bought me this years Beano annual.

There's an old fashioned saying that goes "You can't have the one without the other"

So naturally that other staple annual of the comic I had as a child also was in with the presents which included socks, underwear and money for music, sweets and books.

Now doesn't that sound just like Xmas 1974 all over again?

Nausicaa-Of The Valley Of The Wind

This anime was the second animated feature by director Hayao Miyazaki and for it he chose to adapt his own best selling manga whose huge success in Japan help launch Studio Ghibi and this anime bears all the hallmarks that its output over the years  features in its successes, namely magical kingdoms, great characters and stunning animation.

The story is routed in the past, a thousand years ago after a big war where a seaside kingdom known as the Valley of the Wind is one of the few areas that remain populated.
The people of the Valley, lead by the courageous Princess Nausicaa are engaged in a constant battle with the Ohmu, a most powerful group of insects who are guarding a poisonous jungle that is spreading across the Earth.

In the anime, we see Princess Nausicaa  and her brave companions working with the people of the Valley, striving to restore the bond between humanity and the earth.

One of the most important messages in it I feel is that as people we need to work alongside nature  for our own well-being.

Edited 2017 for blu ray pix.

The Beano: Pup Parade

The Beano always was a staple of my boyhood, being read by both boys and girls as it appealed unlike many to both and over the years a good number have either been merged into other comics or just gone completely.

We still have the Beano with us, a little altered from when I was younger with it moving from A5 newsprint exercise book size to a much bigger and glossy form.

Many of the original series run still and that includes Pup Parade which is based on the lives of the dogs of the Bash Street Kids.

This was a recent edition as drawn by Lew Stringer.

Amanda's New School

 This is a paperback I've had from my schooldays that I've always had a soft spot for although it is an update of the 1932 original Nesta's New School story.

The outline of the story is Amanda's wealthy adoptive mother dies, and she goes to live with her birth mother and her sister Alice. After a privileged childhood, she has to adjust to a middle class school as well as a new family.

This sort of theme is one I've always adored being less about midnight escapes and epic escapes than many school stories for girls and rather more on the character of the girls such as Amanda being of more practical import for children of either sex with things we have to overcome and adapting to changed circumstances.