Christina's questions for December 🤔

1. Is there anything from 100 years ago you'd like to see revived today?

In 1925 they had wind-up gramophones. I like the low-tech nature of a gramophone. The sound isn't great, but you've traded that for simplicity. You don't leave it on all day: you play a song or two, then you do something else. Music is more of an event.

At a National Trust house a few years ago I watched a teenager playing 78s on such a gramophone. I asked "Did they give you training on how to use that?" I was joking because how could anyone not know how to use it? She said "Yes."

2. What's the best book you've read so far this year?

I've been reading The Tales of Ise. I thought I was going to get some old Japanese short stories, and it's kind of that, but in the form of very short poetry, mostly with a little framing text. Thank heavens for the commentary provided by the translator because I knew nothing about Japanese nobles in the 800s (unsurprisingly) and the denseness of the language means that there's a lot going on that doesn't make it into the translation, so the commentary fills some of that in. They're mostly about love and mostly gently beautiful. But you have to accept that people blindly accept the value of royalty. You also have to accept that love was surprisingly free in that period - if you felt like sending a saucy ode to a princess who's also a priestess, that was fine, and if you stayed the night with someone then you were expected to be gone before dawn, but to send them a poem in the morning. And husbands and wives lived in separate houses.

3. What's your favourite musical discovery ((sub-)subgenre, artist) this year?

I re-discovered an old favourite: Retro by E-Z Rollers. It was the menu music on a racing game that I used to play a lot. Sometimes I'd just leave the game at the menu so the song would play for longer. It's got a drum & bass style too-fast rhythm track with a laid back sax melody, and samples from a music documentary: "Some of these guys will never make a dime, but in the process they've become the true renegades."

4. Share up to five of your favourite 'foreign language' terms and expressions.

In Italy this year I learned the phrase "Birra alla spina, media" - "Draught beer, medium". Very useful.

I've always liked "l'esprit de l'escalier" (literally, the spirit of the staircase). It's when you realise what you should have said, but only after you've left.

"Togs, togs, undies" is a New Zealand expression: swimwear is acceptable at the beach, but somewhere you cross an invisible line and you've just walking around in your underwear.

5. You can have one person from any time in history call you for advice and follow what you tell them to do. Whom would you like to have call you?

I'm not feeling in need of advice, but I never knew my mother, so a call from her would be interesting.