Anything But Socks…

Christmas presents are always a contentious subject (particularly given that so many of my friends and family read this blog) apart from this year 🙂

Came away with (amongst other things) a voucher for a session in a flotation tank (always wanted to do this – best present ever!), the Alice Sebold book, the brilliant Little Book Of Bunny Suicides and the smallest (and possible my favourite) a TARDIS keyring 🙂


Yes, saw the episode, no, far too tired to talk about it now but will later…

Also got the slightly pedestrianly named but brilliant Dublin Cinemas – A Pictorial Selection by Jim Keenan. I’m a huge old cinema building anorak (even though I’m unfortunately too young to have been in the vast majority of them) and this has names, locations, details, stories and vivid, beautiful black and white photos. The saddest thing I got from reading it was that of the 40-odd cinemas featured in it (of the 50-odd that used to operate in Dublin and surrounds) only 1 is left running – The Savoy in O’Connell Street.

Beautiful to see though in the book that when the Savoy was one screen instead of the five it is today it sat 2,900 people (!) and featured a fresco of the rialto bridge in Venice around the main screen. Yes, I know… Sad… But I love it… Was thinking of doing a photo project of the buildings in Dublin that used to be cinemas and what they’re used for now…

Got a few vouchers too and ended up with Lynne Truss’s Talk To The Hand and Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar The Clown as well as a stash of cds which are a fairly representative cross- section of my taste.

Got Abba’s first album Ring Ring, Erin McKeown’s most recent one We Will Become Like Birds, the soundtrack to Singin’ In The Rain, Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey (stocking up the blank spaces I have in his back catalogue), Portishead’s Dummy which to my eternal shame I didn’t own, The Best Of The Goodies (songs), Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life (another unfortunate blackspot) and a compilation of 60s and 70s songs connected to Dr Who (including Roberta Tovey’s “Who’s Who?” which we played as Cheesy Listening on the breakfast show earlier in the year)

My little boy did quite well too…


R