Out of the Dark
25 January

Hurrah for the sense of the days lengthening.

On Friday, I drove home without switching on even my side lights. Even mornings are feeling a little lighter as I drive to work. Not long now before we are out of the dark again for another year.

The pattern of work is being split up at present by some commercial training work which has come my way. For the first time in nearly eight years, we all had a day out of the office. In a hire car, I drove Ian and Steve down to Walsall so that Steve and I could watch Ian give a workshop.

Steve then gave the same workshop in Walsall this last week and I shall give another four of the same in Leytonstone next week.

A trip to Walsall may not seem like great shakes but the stimulus of doing something other than training unemployed folk has had a rejuvenating effect on all of us.

In the world of politics, Israel pulled out of Gaza on the day before President Obama was inaugurated. Jury's out on that one. Economic auguries continue to show doom and gloom except that I get very little sense of any real bite so far on Merseyside. Maybe, it's a fool's paradise.

I've been to another Phil concert. Last week, the concert which was conducted by 83-year-old, Charles Mackerras. This week's conductor was Robin Ticciati and he is 26. Of the two, I would say that Charlie Mac's concert had the more energy. Wagner's Prelude to the first act of Parsifal was leaden and Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3 Scottish firmly resisted any attempt to dance; it was hard-driven and completely without charm. The whole concert was distinctly underwhelming.

In Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, the soloist was Christine Brewer who I last heard at English National Opera in 1998 in Richard Strauss's Ariadne on Naxos. I liked her singing then and was anticipating something good but felt really let down by the occasional shrill tone and the lack of amplitude.

The last time that I heard this piece at the Phil it was sung (moderately well) by Jane Eaglen. I have to make the caveat of the piece being sung at the Phil because I've heard it more recently performed by the Crosby Symphony Orchestra. None of these three performances really did it for me. Maybe I need to stick with my CDs on this one.

Putting that disappointment aside, I think that I've encountered my first hit CD of the year. Who said that the BBC doesn't advertise? First on the Breakfast show and then on CD Review, I heard tracks from Teatro d'amore - a compendium of pieces by Monteverdi by the ensemble, L'arpeggiata. And it's fabulous.

The winter season on TV has brightened up considerably.

For example, on BBC 2, we are in the middle of a three part series entitled The City Uncovered. This is fronted by Evan Davis, who as one of the BBC's political editors. And it's very good. So far we've looked at the origins of banks back in the Venice of the Middles Ages and this week we looked at derivatives and hedge funds.

The message that's coming through seems to be clear and goes right back to the reason why Christians did not involve themselves in usury but Jews did. Christians held back because they taught that human beings cannot make something out of nothing (and interest gained from capital lent was seen as doing just that) whilst Jews avoided the problem of not lending to brothers by lending to Christians who were not considered to be brothers.

So, if you can't make something from nothing, then you must make the money at the expense of someone else. And the ideas of greed, gambling and profiting at someone else's expense are all hovering around the edges of this programme. It's engaging to watch how the financiers all try to justify their activities and deny these possibilities.

I did like one old hand who set out one of the basic principles of risk management as being "Never allow the perfume of the dividend to overwhelm the odour of the risk".

So, it's been very good so far.

The one thing that no-one has yet mentioned are the pension funds. Presumably behind the people speculating on derivatives and the hedge fund managers are the pension funds. And, as we know, there are an increasing number of people living longer and expecting a high standard of living. And in fact, parts of the economy are floated on large numbers of retired people engaging in leisure activities.

Look at it this way. You could argue that hedge fund managers are driven into more and more reckless acts in order that Darby and Joan can go on their second and third Mediterranean cruise each year.

Meanwhile on Channel Four we have just finished with programme three of an eight part series called Christianity: A History and, so far, it is fascinating. The idea is that each week a separate and appropriate presenter looks at the next important phase of Christian history. Thus far, was have had...

Howard Jacobson on Jesus the Jew which asserted that all of Jesus's actions only make sense from within the Rabinical tradition, that Jesus didn't intend to start a new religion and that, for Jesus's family, the new movement should have remained within Judaism - is it was Paul that messed things up.

Michael Portillo on Rome which asserted that the legacy of the Roman Emperor Constantine, after his fourth century conversion, was to move the Christian church into the centre of the political arena thus allowing it to become a world religion but, at the same time, forever extinguishing the Christ's teaching about peace and the simple life.

Robert Beckford on Dark Ages which asserted that they were anything but dark and took us through six hundred years of ecclesiastical history which included the rise of the Celtic church under folk like St Alban, St Patrick and St Columba, the arrival of the Roman church with the Pope's emissary Augustine converting the Kentish king at Canterbury, the coming together of the two traditions at Whitby, the flowering of Jarrow, Durham and Lindisfarne with Bede and Cuthbert, the mission of Alcuin to the court of Charlemagne and the leadership of Alfred against the Danes which leads to the creation of an inclusive English Christian state.

You can agree with or disagree with these points of view but the format adds a certain spice to the linear historical journey. Once again, it's been very good so far.

Just to note - the umpteenth series of Time Team has started up on Sunday afternoons on Channel Four. Whereas it used to be required downtime viewing, we've not watched a single episode so far this year.

We've already seen that a couple of new series feature hot totty - Christian Cooke in Demons and Matt di Angelo in Hussle. Now Skins is back for a third series. Unlike North American series such as Dawson's Creek, which featured the world's oldest teenagers clinging onto declining ratings in the face of reality, Skins has decided to ditch pretty much all of its first cast and start with a new generation.

First impressions were good. There was much slapstick hilarity at the expense of the grown-ups ie my generation. All the kids were smarter and savvier than the sad bastards in control. In other words, it is a middle aged person's fantasy of how a young person perceives the world and the adults within it. Still, it is a very slick entertainment. I'm just surprised that so many young people seem to like it.