I left Black Victorians (Manchester Art Gallery to 8 January 2006) and Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery 28 January to 2 April 2006) more than a little suspicious. ‘When I first noticed black faces in Victorian art, I was surprised,’ explains curator Jan Marsh. ‘Like so many people I thought of nineteenth-century culture a wholly “white” in content.’

And so the (rather light) commentary on this exhibition gushes at how black people were depicted as, ‘entertainers, churchmen, sportspeople, artists’ models and politicians’. Yet there are no black artists represented, the politicians are rather tragic and curious figures from foreign lands and many of the others are curiosities. Some pieces were born out of the anti-slavery movement and so it should be no surprise to see positive images of black people here: they’re propaganda.

Tucked in a corner is some popular imagery of the time, such as advertisements for soap that joke about turning black people white and so on. Pinned to this single display case is a large note of apology – lest we’re offended – and an admission that sort of thing has been largely censored. The problem is that Black Victorians has a message that this display case contradicts. The message is that despite indulging the slave trade, the odd genocide et cetera, the Victorians were very often very nice to black people whom they respected. I don’t buy it.

Fortunately, Benjamin Zephaniah’s put together Benjamin’s Britain (Manchester Art Gallery to 8 January 2006), a small collection of photos mostly from the National Portrait Gallery that paint a picture of contemporary Britain. The commentary’s a little light here too, but deliberately and honestly so.

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David Cameron’s Xmas stunt – asking Bob Geldof to join a policy group of global poverty – implies he may have been reading a bit too much of his honeymoon press and believes he can do no wrong.

Geldof’s done right to agree as to refuse would make him look belligerent. Many Conservatives will be quietly spinning, but having given him a two thirds majority, they couldn’t reign Cameron in if they wanted to. But they will want to and the real battles will surface in eighteen months, when the first Tory policy documents will be announced to a by now impatient world. Cameron’s novelty will have worn off and having a frustrated, articulate and popular figure like Geldof walk out on them then (as he surely will) will be disastrous.

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When Marks & Spencer was king of the High Street it didn’t do advertising and it didn’t do sales. Now M&S does both.

The Marks & Spencer sale doesn’t feel as crowded as Next, but the queue to pay for Katharine’s half price boots is still long enough to blog.

This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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I don’t really know what’s possessed us to come into town today. A plague of locust like shoppers has already stripped Next of most of it’s bargains, but at least I can blog as I queue with my half price belt. We should have stuck with Next Directory.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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I’m not into reviews of the year; I find all that filler boring. But then my ‘diary of sorts’ is supposed to help me remember all the ‘stuff I’ve seen, stuff I’ve heard and stuff I’ve read’. This year I’ve failed in that task as missing from the diary is the cultural highlight that was the Library Theatre’s production of Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. I was transfixed by this sentimental and nostalgic portrait of a 1930s Donegal family. They live a gentle way of life assured by a great many certainties and held together by a formidable matriarch whose own strength comes from her unswayable faith in god and tradition. All is about to be destroyed by the late arrival of the industrial revolution and the time we witness on the stage is to turn out to be the most golden of golden ages (even if it is marked by poverty and sacrifice).

We effectively changed horses part way through the year, failing to renew our season tickets for the Royal Exchange, which remains the country’s most interesting theatre space, to make way for the Library Theatre. The Library’s a wonderful venue too and the their production of Arthur Miller’s the Price was faultless. The programme at the Library is just a little more gritty than that of the Royal Exchange and that seems to suit us somehow.

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This year’s war on Christmas (or rather Christ; we all like a good party) is failing to engage me in the way it did last year when I was aching to put the X into Xmas (I obviously didn’t mean Chi). I’ve a sneaking suspicion British Christians have more or less given up. Sure, searching Google news on ‘War on Christmas’ gets more than 1,000 results, but even the wackiest American commentators have had to back down and agree the secular greeting ‘Happy Holidays’ is kosher.

More interesting is that here at home the film Narnia is generally derided for its Christian content, which the Guardian’s Zoë Williams complains is terribly unfair to Christians. Another unlikely defender of those of faith is Mark of K-Punk who takes Williams’ argument further. The assumption that religious non-Christians are so terribly intolerant they’ll be offended by the nativity is racist; it’s not just patronising, it assumes an inferior value system.

While I think Mark goes too far when claiming Christianity’s stock has fallen so far it’s on a par with Nazism, I generally agree. Yet I also wonder whether censorship of the nativity is real or imagined by Christians who feel their special festival has been hijacked. These stories always appear to have been made up by newspapers seeking sales by playing on people’s fears.

The casual dismissal of Christianity is important, but rather than being an outlet for racism I take the positive view that it marks an awakening. Religion is being displaced by a search for reason and when we consider what we used to believe we feel foolish.

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Got home this morning after hitting M&S for Christmas food to find details of the NEXT Directory Sale had landed and an e-mail from Tesco offering huge discounts right now on all sorts of stuff. Goodness!

Tesco’s offering 50 per cent off loads of goodies like wine, DVDs, CDs, Hinari twin paddle breadmakers, books and games. And plenty of electrical bargains. So order your Tesco Sales Bargains today! Meanwhile the Next Directory Sale offers serious reductions right across the board, though you have to wait until 6am on Tuesday 27 December and hit the phones. Fabulous!

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I’m supposed to be all proud that X Factor winner Shayne Ward’s a Mancunian, but one thing he certainly doesn’t have is an x-factor. Listening to him on Chris Moyles was predictably tedious. The breakfast DJ was working really, really, really hard but all poor old Shayne could mange was ‘yeah right… ha, ha, ha… I spose’.

It’s no surprise. As John Robb says: ‘X Factor is more about the judges than the singers’. I didn’t watch a single episode but I knew all about the judges antics; like when Sharon threw water over Louis and he walked out and returned. But I hadn’t heard of any of the acts until the day of the final.

What’s great about X Factor is that it provides good honest Saturday night entertainment for all the family. But it’s got nothing to do with music and that’s why the winners are doomed to disappointment. Success goes to those who capture the spirit of the age; those who are in touch with the zeitgeist and either have something to say or simply express the way things are. Being toughened up by the world beyond television is what gives someone an x-factor.

The middle of the road easy listening nonsense that a show like X Factor must pander to in order to appeal to all, will always struggle to do that. Exceptions like Girls Aloud and Will Young succeed by offering pure kiddie pop or something for the mums and those markets are pretty much sown up. Sadly there’s no room for Shayne… but there’s comfort to be taken in the knowledge that the music moguls haven’t bottled the real x-factor yet and never will.

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It’s well past 11pm and the main route south out of Manchester is busy as can be. Must be Christmas party traffic, some people are driving deliberately slowly. Or so it seems. I’d normally be home from the Cornerhouse Quiz in no time.

A friend of ours is prone to sigh in these situations: ‘It’s because we’re all so affluent.’ I guess that’s true.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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A good idea well executed, The Plot Against America lacks punch and so it took me sometime to read. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to be impressed by Roth’s creation of a parallel history of the United States in which Charles Lindbergh defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt to become president in 1940.

The pioneering aviator whose son was so famously kidnapped, was sympathetic to the Nazis and not without political support. The story of his presidency is revealed through the experience of a very young Philip Roth and his Jewish family, not all of whom accept an increasingly weakened patriarch’s belief that although America is on the verge of fascism, it is still their country.

The Plot Against America is a somewhat scholarly work and I found myself continually consulting the lengthy postscript with its biographies and ‘true history’ of the era; checking against reality. Where the novel finds success (and the postscript enhances this) is in capturing the spirit of the era, its zeitgeist. And young Philip’s story is compelling. But none of the characters we meet are really players. All are buffeted by history and while that’s certainly credible, it’s somehow dissatisfying too. The novel lacks a hero (or anti-hero) we can get close to, follow and truly care about. Helpless young Philip is a protagonist to pity rather than root for.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

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