St. Mary's

A nice afternoon wandering round Nottingham in the rain with the girls getting into the festive spirit, despite the fact that there were no lights on in St. Mary's and the gates were locked. (Those alleyways through the Lace Market are a bit Jack-the-Ripper - Katie reckoned it was "a bit more Halloween than Christmas!") Unfortunately this afternoon's showing of 'It's a Wonderful Life' at the Broadway was sold out so we had to go and see 'Life Of Pi' instead. That said, I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going too though I still think it's probably a bit overrated. I'd have preferred it without the bearded, writer feller and if it had ended just before the meerkats...

#7: 'Life Is People' by Bill Fay

The whole Bill Fay thing is pretty much too good to be true: he records two zero-impact albums for Deram at the fag-end of the sixties, the second of which, 'Time Of The Last Persecution', is a frazzled and fabulous humanist meditation on faith and the parlous state of the world (or "brilliantly self-defeatist" as Jim O'Rourke would have it...) Forty one years later he finally comes out of seclusion to record what might effectively be the perfect third for the trilogy. Perhaps it's less a case of a reclusive existence and a steady growth in cult kudos making a comeback inevitable and more that he just needed time to mature the vision so that 'Life Is People' would have the necessary weight of wisdom to round out the oeuvre. It's still an often bleak record but it's weighted with experience and , ultimately, uplifting. "A stunning, profound , moving and soulful record", as the BBC would have it - it just needed forty years working in a park in London, or whatever, before it was time to get it out...