New Blog

Hello all. I've decided to try out a new home for my blog. It's over here:

http://mariephillipswriter.tumblr.com/

I hope you like it.

Please adjust your settings. Of course, I may decide that I don't like it after all, and that I'd rather be posting back here, or somewhere completely different, but for now I'm hoping that you'll follow me over there. There's a good story about snot quite early on.

Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife

Apologies: much work to do = short review.

In a word: frustrating. I so badly wanted to love this, and from the looks of all the reviews, you all did love it. The Tardis's soul takes on a human body: what's not to love? And my answer, alas: everything that was not the Tardis taking on a human form.

Which is not to say that I hated it, not at all. But patchwork people, and a talking asteroid, and an Ood, and some running along corridors - although you do need some running along corridors - they are not the Tardis in human form. And every time we were away from the human Tardis, I just wanted to go back to her. Frankly, I would have been delighted with just the Doctor and the Tardis in a room, talking, for an entire episode, but as a wise friend of mine pointed out, that doesn't exactly scream "kids' show". Fair enough. Still, she was magnificent, and we only got her for one episode. I could have done with more. I don't suppose this is anybody's fault, exactly. (I also could have done with this being a David Tennant episode. I just think he would have done it wonderfully. Which is not to say that Matt Smith did it badly. But even so.)

Also, about those Tardis (blue box) scenes. A whole lot of corridors, not a lot of rooms. Not how I'd design a spaceship. And I am beginning to wonder how often Rory can die without it starting to take its toll. Surely it can't just be lazy screenwriting? He dies EVERY WEEK. It had better have some significance, or it is seriously going to dent my "Doctor Who is not rubbish" argument.

Blog playlist: songs about wanking

Just a quickie, as it were. I love this Bowie cover of the Pixies' Cactus - here preformed live in a duet with Moby:



There's no tactful way to say this, even on a blog read by my mother: this is a song about masturbation. Spotify playlist ahoy! I've kicked things off with Turning Japanese and I Touch Myself. Any more for any more?

NB: this is a playlist for songs ABOUT. Not songs CONDUCIVE TO.

Doctor Who: Yawn Ho Ho (may not actually be called Yawn Ho Ho)

Well. That was a bit boring, wasn't it? And for a Doctor Who episode about pirates and supernatural supermodels, it was VERY boring. Boring like an apparently bloodthirsty siren eating away her way through humanity turns out to be a rather nice hologram of a nurse. Boring like half an episode spent in a volatile gunpowder store, with not only no explosions but not even the suggestion of a threat of an explosion. Boring like hiring Lily Cole and then making her only communicate by the sound of ghostly humming. Boring like setting up a massive coincidence whereby the Tardis, a pirate ship and an alien spaceship are all adrift in the exact same bit of space, and nobody so much as mentions that it's a bit odd. Boring like the Doctor not being able to figure out what the hell is going on and therefore having nothing at all of interest to say. Boring like no River Song. Boring like Rory dying AGAIN (is anybody keeping count of how often Rory dies? that's got to be at least three times so far), and Amy giving up on resuscitating him after about two minutes (despite his confidence that she'll "never give up") and then he comes back to life anyway. Boring like a murderous pirate who'd risk the life of his own small, Rada-educated son for a shiny crown not getting any kind of comeuppance and instead getting to spend the rest of his life flying around space with said son in a gigantic spaceship which was previously staffed by aliens but is apparently easily flown by a 17th century human. You know. Boring. And maybe a smidge unconvincing.

I liked Amy swashbuckling, though. It seemed to come naturally to her.

Doctor Who: the Impossible Astronaut, and the other one I haven't had time to look up the title of.

We're now in our second series with Matt Smith as the Doc and Steven Moffat pulling the levers behind the scenes, Wizard of Oz style. I felt quite gratified recently when I read an interview with Moffat saying that he'd began by writing a Tennant-ish Doctor and had only gradually made his way over to writing for the character developed by Matt Smith, as that was absolutely how I'd experienced the last series (she writes, not actually checking her episode reviews to see how that tallies with reality - feel free to check, and to mock me for my inconstancy). This series has started so Smith-esque it now feels impossible to imagine Tennant playing the role, which is exactly as it should be.

As for these opening episodes, I was largely delighted and also fairly largely confused. But then the confusion added to the delight, because since the very first of the rebooted Who series, all I've wanted is a proper series-long arc, not just some blink-and-you'll-miss-them clues which are hastily resolved in the finale as per every other season. So although this was allegedly a two-parter, we're left with some colossal questions: how are the companions going to stop the Doctor from dying? Who was in the space suit? What's River Song's secret? What's going on with Amy's pregnancy? Who is the little girl? Who is the woman with the eye patch? And just when you thought you had plenty to be getting on with, WTF IS THE LITTLE GIRL DOING REGENERATING AT THE END?????

I have theories aplenty. I don't think River is Amy's daughter, because GROSS - does he just wait sixteen years and then pounce? - and also it seems unlikely that Amy and Rory, knowing River Song, would name their daughter River Song just in case. The little girl could be Amy's daughter, though in that case what is she doing regenerating? - just sort of caught it off the Tardis? because she was conceived in the Tardis? Which is also GROSS, because the only nookie that should go on in there is *see paragraph one* or maybe the Doctor and River WHO IS NOT A BABY. The person who kills the Doctor is totally the Doctor. Or River. Or Amy. Or Rory. No, not Rory. Or the little girl, who then sucks up the Doctor energy and regenerates back into him by the bins next to the homeless bloke. Maybe.

Some of the details of the episodes themselves actually pale a bit against this speculation. On the whole I don't think Doctor Who should ever do America, as it's never convincing - bad accents, bad sets, bad comparisons with better, more expensive American Sci Fi shows - and reminds me of those episodes when Eastenders go to the seaside. I also can't help but wonder why, if the Silence (scary, nasty, evil - good stuff) have had control over this planet and everything on it since the dawn of time, all they've done with that power is get themselves a nifty spacesuit. I do wish Amy would stop getting captured, though it was seriously creepy this time, and I desperately, DESPERATELY want Rory to be less wet. At the moment it's like having a heap of algae on the Tardis. (Cute in his disguise specs, though. Costume department take note.)

However, however. Let's not go overboard. It was disorienting and frightening and properly unpleasant at times (the evil orphanage? *shudder*), big points for that, though a few points minused for not considering that your own face is a stupid place to put marks that are meant to remind you of something. It was a great set-up for the series as a whole. And basically the more River Song kicking arse and flirting the better, in my opinion, and not only because I'm closer in age to her than I am to Amy and therefore makes it easier to fantasise about *see paragraph one*. I can't pass judgement on the blafflingness of various baffling bits because they may become less baffling as the series progresses. We'll have to reconvene on that one.

Verdict? All in all an excellent start. I am agog as to how it will resolve.

Firestation Book Swap: Thursday April 21st

Roll up roll up roll up! (Roll up what? Or on the ground? Or fold yourself into a ball and roll towards me? You decide. But anyway - ) It's going to be a stonking book swap on Thursday, featuring as it does the most excellent Stuart Evers - book journalist and writer of Ten Stories About Smoking which will almost certainly probably not make you want to start smoking (again) but will entirely entertain you in every way, and Jake Wallis Simons, who aside from being the author of The English German Girl and The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew (those are two separate books, though the amalgam is intriguing) AND being a superstar journalist, once had the great privilege of working with me at Daunt Books. We both survived.

All details here. Indeed why not join our Facebook group? That way Scott will email and tell you when there's a book swap, rather than you having to rely on me remembering to trail it here.

As ever it's free if you bring cake. Not as ever, it's the day before my birthday. What I'm saying is if you were dithering over cake, bring cake.

(As an aside, did you know that you can listen to the book swap on iTunes? Just do a search for Firestation Book Swap. I am amused to note that there's an 'explicit' warning. YES. THAT IS HOW WE ROLL (UP).)

Spiral: an update

I think I just voted with my feet. Last night I got home just as Spiral was starting and I had the following thoughts in quick succession: "Spiral is starting!" "Oh, god, no."

I think you are going to have to watch this one without me.

Blog Playlist (sort of): songs that make you cry

Everyone's talking about songs that make them cry. And when I say everyone, I mean some people who write for the Guardian and a girl I follow on Twitter. Everyone.

Music doesn't make me cry. It doesn't have long enough. Like someone who needs a lot of foreplay, I just can't reach tearful climax in three minutes or less. On the few occasions I have cried listening to music, it wasn't the music on its own that did it. It was the soon to be ex boyfriend sitting next to me or the recent loss of a beloved friend or - well I don't know why I cried listening to Coldplay play Clocks at Glastonbury, but the weather was really bad and I'd been standing up all day.

There is just one song I shouldn't ever listen to in public and it's Ruby's Arms by Tom Waits. I find it heartbreaking. Just getting the video on YouTube, I had to switch it off after the first few bars. In fact I just tried reading the lyrics to see if I could quote some here, and I only got two thirds of the way through. It's devastating. Listen to it and you'll see what I mean.



The Guardian have their own Spotify playlist of sad songs and you can contribute to it here.

Spiral S3 ep 1 & 2

Well. That was grim, wasn't it? My first mental note was: do not watch this and eat at the same time. In the first two minutes we had WHORES! TITS! BLOW-JOB! EVISCERATED CORPSE IN A BIN BAG WITH HER TITS CUT OFF! The Killing this isn't. God, wasn't The Killing nice? I mean, sure, it didn't end well for Nanna Birk Larssen, but oh to be in a nation so sleepy that mayoral debates are apparently televised every night, where the worst vices the police can muster up are nicotine gum and junk food, and even the murdered takes time out from his killing spree to go shopping for puppies. By the end of two episodes of Spiral, we had another girl in a bin bag (tits yet to be accounted for), a paedophile with a Terry Thomas moustache, several buckets of chicken blood, a small child ripped to pieces by a dog (off camera, thankfully), a corrupt lawyer getting shot three times at point blank range but surviving (the head, people! aim for the head!), a nasty posh lady in a Chanel boucle two-piece and a particularly ugly broach getting done for drunk driving, the judge's bitch-mum having a stroke, the police inspector hating her home life so much she's sleeping in her car, some casual betrayal, a really skanky nightclub, a teenager getting accused of sleeping with her own dad, a shoe-collecting vagrant smoking dope in the park, occurrences of corruption too numerous to mention, one of the most repulsive double chins I have ever seen, plenty of child neglect, did I mention the buckets of chicken blood, entire buildings crammed with illegal immigrants and homeless people, a missing earring, and my own particular favourite moment, an innocent suspect being punched in the stomach by the police until he vomits and then rolled in his own sick. Did I miss anything out?

Being half French, I can help you out with some of the things you might have found confusing. Judges in France, for example, don't wait around for the evidence to be brought to them in court. They take an active role in the investigation, and at the trial they retire with the jury and, unbelievably, direct them on their verdict. They are all-powerful super-crusading mega-judges in other words, and thus favour full hairstyles with silvery highlights. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are similarly up to their necks.

Also, you may have missed the full force of profanity which has been toned down for the subtitles. I can only imagine the meeting at the BBC4 translation unit where they decided how many shits and fucks they were going to allow per episode. But you can bet that when the subtitles say "Get off my back," what the character has actually just said is "Stop riding my arse, you cunt." To their boss. My favourite French swearword has no equivalent in English. It's "bordel", which means "brothel", and can be used in almost any context. "What is this brothel?", "This situation in which I find myself is a brothel," or just plain "Brothel!" when under duress, sometimes supplemented as "bordel de merde!" ie "Brothel of shit!" If we can get the British walking around saying "Brothel of shit!" then Spiral's work will be done.

To be honest with you, I'm not sure I'm going to make it to the end of twelve episodes of this. I'm exhausted already. And we can't even play along with "find the suspect" because there aren't a lot of useful candidates hanging around, wearing knitted beanie hats, being suspiciously good at teaching, or appearing on televised mayoral debates. Plus, no jumpers. I guess it's not that cold in Paris. What did you think?

The Killing: US Trailer

While we're on The Killing, let's take a look at the trailer for the US remake which starts next week (thanks to the Medium Is Not Enough TV blog).



At first, it seems to be an essentially pointless shot by shot remake, with a Sarah Lund impersonator as Sarah Lund, complete with jumpers and ponytail, investigating an identical crime in Seattle, with nicely-chosen Nordic character names as a nod to the original. Even Theis and Pernille's kitchen is EXACTLY the same.

And then you see who they've cast as Morten. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I love America.

The Killing: WTF?

Coming to the end of The Killing is rather like being suddenly and unexpectedly dumped by a hitherto faultless boyfriend. Like: WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ABOUT? WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME? I HAVE QUESTIONS! WHAT ABOUT THAT THING YOU SAID LAST WEEK? AND THAT THING YOU SAID THE WEEK BEFORE AND THE WEEK BEFORE AND THE WEEK BEFORE THAT? WAS IT ALL A FRAIL TISSUE OF LIES? DID NONE OF IT MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU? AND WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THAT WHOLE BUSINESS WITH THE COPENHAGEN MAYORAL ELECTION? (My relationships only, possibly.) THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!

To keep this review spoiler-free, I am continuing my diatribe in the comments. Join me.

Blog Playlist update

OK team, Spotify are being particularly uncooperative, playlist-wise. Apparently their supply of obscure foreign language hits of the 1980s is limited. (They do however have the French Canadian song from the point of view of a disappointed seal, so it's not all bad news.) So we're going to need some more suggestions of great foreign language songs to fill up this playlist. It's very good so far. Aside from the Mylene Farmer (fixes Helen with disapproving gaze).

International Women's Day

Chances are you've already seen this, but loving this video for International Women's Day:



1. You get to look at Daniel Craig.
2. You get to listen to Judi Dench's voice.
3. It's very short.
4. You get to hear why, alas, we still need an International Women's Day, and you don't crawl out the other end feeling patronised or bored.

I've heard a few people asking why there isn't an International Men's Day. There is, it's on November 19th. Perhaps you can get a video of Angelina Jolie in a really nice trouser suit talking about teenage suicide statistics. Or indeed a rerun of this excellent Rachel Stevens public service announcement:

Blog playlist: best songs in other languages

Allegedly here are other things to do on a Sunday afternoon, but I can't quite see why anyone would choose not to spend it lying on the sofa (or outside when the weather is nice), reading and listening to Huey Morgan followed by Jarvis Cocker on 6 Music.

Assuming that's what all of you were doing on Sunday, all of you have already heard the magnificent Les Cactus by Jacques Dutronc (thank you, Jarvis). But have you seen Michael Jackson dancing to it? (Um, sort of?)



I think you need the lyrics translated as well:

The whole world is a cactus
It is impossible to sit down
In life, there all there is is cacti
I know it because I'm pricking myself
Ow, ow ow, ouch, ow ow ow

In their hearts there are cacti
In their wallets there are cacti
In their feet there are cacti
In their jackets there are cacti
ow, ow, ow, ouch, ouch, ouch, ow

To defend myself from their cacti
I've put cacti too
In my bed, I've put cacti
In my underpants, I've put cacti
ow, ow, ow, ouch, ow ow ow

In their smiles there are cacti
In their stomachs there are cacti
In their hellos there are cacti
In their cacti there are cacti
ow, ow, ow, ouch, ow

The whole world is a cactus
It is impossible to sit down
In life, all there is is cacti
I know it because I'm pricking myself
ow, ow, ow, ouch, ow ow ow

Blog playlist time! Great songs in foreign languages please. Translated lyrics optional. It's a huge category so maybe try to restrict yourselves to ones that are undeservedly underplayed.

Are you my ideal man?

I have just found my list of requirements for the perfect man, dated 30th May 1992 (I was 16):

- cooking
- knitting
- Irish accent
- Tall
- Sense of Humour
- Friendly
- Nice smile
- Nice dark hair (not too short)
- Ability to quote Shakespeare

I am, as yet, unmarried. This may explain why. Of course, if this is you, feel free to leave me a note in the comments.

Oh to be in England

Further to my review of Match Point - and it has been interesting to note that the most spirited defense that anybody can muster of it is "I can't remember that I was so appalled" - I watched The Social Network last night, which is a far far far far far far far do re mi far far better film. EXCEPT for five minutes in which the excellent meathead twins row at the Henley regatta, and then attend a reception afterwards. Women are loitering in gigantic frothy hats, a string quartet is playing something blandly Mozartian, so you know you MUST be in England because all we ever do is go to receptions with big hats and string quartets, and an elderly English man claims that his daughter is "majoring in French literature" at Cambridge University. FAIL. DOUBLE FAIL. Seriously, if you're Aaron Sorkin, how difficult is it to get a British person to read one page of your script?

I am going to organise a field trip for notable American screenwriters to take a tour of the UK. I will show them around myself. Who's in?

Match [what is the] Point [?]

Last night I saw something which I just HAD to share with the group.

Now I've seen some bad movies in my time. I have sat through the remake of The Wicker Man, in which Nicolas Cage beats up a cult of lesbian beekeepers whilst dressed as a bear. The scars may never heal from enduring, as an impressionable teen, Heartbreak Hotel, in which a teenage Charlie Schlatter kidnaps Elvis in order to cheer up his mum (Elvis goes on to redecorate his house in the style of Graceland, and propel him to victory in the high school Battle of the Bands.) I have even seen the Mariah Carey vanity flick Glitter, notable for Ms Carey only being filmed from the 'good' side of her face, for the appearance of Max Beasley as a sexy xylophone player, and for both of them being acted off the screen by a cat. Last night, though, I saw the actual worst film I have ever seen in my life, and that film was Match Point.

This Woody Allen-penned and -directed thriller (OK and here we're running into trouble already. Would you rush to see a Michael Bay-penned and -directed romcom?) is set in the kind of London someone who has never been to England might come up with if his only source material was one Nancy Mitford novel and Wimbledon (the tournament, not the movie). All the characters have come straight out of the 1930s, with the exception of Paul Kaye, who briefly plays an estate agent from a 1970s Two Ronnies sketch. It is saying something when a Paul Kaye Two Ronnies cameo is the most up-to-date character in your 2005 movie. Back in the lead roles, Jonathan Rhys Meyers (apparently heavily medicated and struggling to produce even one convincing emotion from his arsenal of two or three) plays a retired tennis ace, allegedly a poor Irish boy but with an accent that could not just cut glass but create an entire crystal sculpture, who falls in love with (or seeks to financially exploit? unclear from JRM's "performance") sweet, dim but rich Emily Mortimer (hiding behind fringe, palpably embarrassed) but can't resist bonking Scarlet Johanssen (and at some point we should really open the debate: despite being sexy beyond previously existing human measurements, can she actually act? Those in favour: evidence please). If I tell you that his chat up line is "What's a beautiful American ping pong player doing mingling with the British upper classes?" you might get some idea, but you might also think that the line is supposed to be funny and IT ISN'T. IT'S A RED HOT SEXY CHAT UP SCENE. (Scarlet Johanssen has just beaten Mark Gatiss at ping pong, and one of the tangential pleasures of this unspeakable movie is seeing the parade of middling-league Brit stars who were SO EXCITED to be working with Woody Allen until they saw the script. So just as you think you might be suffocated into a coma of awfulness, it's Rupert Penry-Jones as a louche tennis pro! It's James Nesbitt as a mysteriously astute police officer!)

Tragic consequences ensue, but not before JRM has screwed ScarJo in a cornfield in the rain - SO English, just like all my summer holidays - and by candlelight, dousing her in baby oil as snow gently falls outside, and in an exciting bondage scenario where she blindfolds him with his tie and rips off all his clothes, pausing only to have a duscussion about the relative merits of cheese versus peanut butter as mousetrap bait with her elderly neighbour. At the time, you will be thinking WTF, little realising that the cheese vs peanut butter debate is of devastating importance later on. Sex with ScarJo begins to wane when she is transformed in the latter part of the film into a bitching, demanding harpy, constantly screeching WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEAVE HER while drinking from an assortment of seltzer bottles that I got freakishly obsessed by. WHO DRINKS THAT MUCH SELTZER? Meanwhile, back home, Emily Mortimer is desperate to get knocked up, pointing out, not unreasonably, that she wants three kids while she's young, but that this should not be a problem for a man with such a powerful serve. Clearly, either the wife or the mistress must go. But which? And how? And what will the consequences be?

Gentle reader, let me tell you. The consequences will be that people will die, and after people have died they will reappear and have a philosophical conversation with JRM who will quote Sophocles at them, and at that point you will be hit by the realisation that OH MY GOD, THIS FILM IS A HOMAGE TO CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. THAT'S WHY JRM WAS READING CRIME AND PUNISHMENT AT THE BEGINNING. BECAUSE WOODY ALLEN THINKS THAT THE TWO ARE LARGELY THE SAME, EXCEPT THAT CRIME AND PUNISHMENT COULD HAVE BEEN IMPROVED BY RASKOLNIKOV BONING SCARLET JOHANSSEN IN A CORNFIELD IN THE RAIN.

In Joe Queenan's excellent odyssey into American pop culture 'America', he coins the term 'scheissenbedauern' to describe "the disappointment one feels when exposed to something that is not nearly as bad as one hoped it would be." Watching this movie is the opposite of that feeling. Match Point is a perfect storm of terrible, the kind of terrible which can only be achieved when a hugely talented writer director assembles a hugely talented cast - well OK, but it does have Penelope Wilton in it - to make a film based on one of the greatest novels ever written and IT IS RAINING SHIT.

Of course, I cannot recommend highly enough that you see it.

Book Swaps a Go Go

There is a veritable embarrassment of book swaps going on this month, all for your entertainment. Are you embarrassed? I know I am.

First up is on Thursday 3rd Feb (ie THIS THURSDAY) at the London Review Bookshop, Bury Place, 7pm. My co-host for the occasion will be Robbie Hudson, as Scott is otherwise engaged, and our guests are Will Fiennes, author of 'The Snow Geese' and 'The Music Room' - books of beauty and elegance - and Nikesh Shukla, author of Coconut Unlimited - a book of laughter and rap music - which is not to say it isn't beautiful and elegant too. Please book your ticket here as it will almost certainly sell out. £6 or free if you bring a home baked cake.

Thursday 10th Feb, at the LSE, 4th Floor Cafe, 6pm. Scott Pack will be back on co-hosting duties, and our guests are Sarah Salway, who as well as being a fantastic author (of 'Something Beginning With' amongst other books) is the LSE's writer in residence, and Matt Beaumont, whose book 'e' is reputed to be excellent, as I would know if the publisher had sent it to me yet - fear not, there is still time. Details here, tickets are FREE, don't bring cake - it's a licensing issue, but not to worry, cake will be available from the cafe - and unswapped books will be collected for Read International, a charity which provides books to schools in Uganda and Tanzania.

Thursday 17th Feb, at the Fire Station in Windsor, 7.45pm. Back on home turf. You will be rewarded by co-host Scott and guests Sara Manning, author of the funny and poignant 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me', Jess Ruston, our very first guest making a triumphant return to promote her new novel 'To Touch The Stars'. Usual Windsor rules - £5 to get in, or free with a home-baked cake.

And indeed I didn't need to tell you ANY of this, as I could have just directed you to our fabulous new website which has been made for us by Michael Harpur, our right-hand and probably left-hand man in Windsor, who does EVERYTHING for us bar sitting on the stage swapping the books himself. He is brilliant. So is the website, which aside from details of all the events has podcasts which you can listen to if you can't make it (if you are lazy, or live in Canada, or trapped under heavy furniture.)

Hope to see you at one of the book swaps this month.

NEWSFLASH

In 'PROPERLY EXCITING NEWS' news I can ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY at the same time as my co-writer Robert Hudson REVEAL that our Napoleonic-era military gay horse romance epistolatory series WAR HORSES OF LETTERS has been commissioned for a four part series, broadcasting on Radio Four later this year. I wasn't joking about this being PROPERLY EXCITING. I am PROPERLY EXCITED.

Blog playlist: first memories

What's the first pop song you remember? Not the first one you remember liking, just the first one you remember. Mine is Video Killed the Radio Star. Released in 1979: I was three. Even if I hadn't just looked that up, I know it must have been a long time ago because I remember being really worried about the radio star being killed, and also finding the video dead scary, even if it wasn't a MURDERER. I hadn't watched the video in years, so I dug it up on YouTube to see precisely how scary it is:



OH NO! WHAT IS THE SPARKLY LADY DOING IN THE PLASTIC TUBE? WHY CAN'T SHE GET OUT? WHY IS EVERYBODY DRESSED AS THE FUTURE? WHY DOES THE WASHING MACHINE KEEP EXPLODING? (Eagle eyes may have spotted that the washing machine is not, in fact, a washing machine but a large radio with a round speaker, which makes a little more sense.)

It isn't very scary.

Remind me one day to do a blog about music lyrics that I took literally when I was very small. (Why are the words of the prophets written on the subway wall? I don't know what prophets are but I'm going to assume they're some kind of graffiti artist.) Meanwhile, please put your own first musical memories in the comments. I am steeling myself to deal with some of you being VERY young and remembering things that I danced to at university.

For UK readers, first memories playlist can be listened to here.