It’s been a bit of a strange month. My home entertainment consumption has been significantly reduced due to work and family commitments. But days out did increase a little, especially as the weather has finally started to improve in the UK.
Mostly we’ve been walking more around the local area, but there were two motorsport-related events. A long time ago, I was lucky enough to get a BMW M4 Master driving experience as a birthday present, but hadn’t been able to redeem it for various reasons. With the expiry date fast approaching, I quickly got it booked, but couldn’t grab any photos as I had to do the trip to Donington Park on my own. But I can confirm it was an awesome way to spend an evening, and I learned a lot.
But it also included two free tickets to a Category D event at any Motorsport Vision circuit, so before that, my son and I visited Snetterton for the No Limits Racing season opening club race. It’s one of the few UK tracks I’ve never visited for some reason, and I only occasionaly get along to any club races now, but it’s a great way to not only see enthusiastic racing for much less than big series would cost, but you also get to wander through the paddock and chat to everyone, and the queue for the burger van is a lot shorter (although a decent number of people were certainly in attendance).
And because it wasn’t a massive stressful event, and each class raced multiple times, there was no pressure to grab the best viewing spot for a specific race. So we could just wander round and have a nice relaxing day out, which was great.
Books
I’ve really enjoyed the Slow Horses series on Apple TV, so I picked up the first book from a charity shop. And it was surprisingly to see how much appeared to have been directly translated onto the screen, although there are a couple of significant plot differences.
I suspect this is now another series of books I’ll continue to accumulate over time. Even if it’s impossible to read anything regarding Jackson Lamb without picturing Gary Oldman.
And having finished that, I’ve now started Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, which is rooted in 1990s tech and gaming culture, so immediately brought back my own memories of the time.
So far it’s been a really enjoyable story of two people living through the period, and the tech backdrop does remind me a little of the excellent Halt and Catch Fire series fictionalising the computer boom of the 1980s.
TV and Film
A fairly quiet month as I tried to keep up with the new motorsport season in F1, MotoGP and World Superbikes. And while I have an enduring fascination with American professional wrestling, from the athleticism and fandom of pre-determined sports entertainment, to the promo techniques and storyline development, I’ve been finding it harder to make time to keep up with AEW.
I did finally watch The Terminal List, a serious drama series starring Chris Pratt as a Navy SEAL caught up in a conspiracy.
It was decent enough, although the constant dry seriousness did make it harder to connect with the characters. There’s an interesting comparison to be had with the Jack Ryan series on Amazon starring John Krasinski, given that both leads originally ‘broke out’ in hugely popular TV comedies.
Personally, I preferred Jack Ryan and Reacher as the main cast were much more fleshed out, even just in the first series of each show.
And as my son has long been fascinated by Japan, martial arts, and other cultural references, I thought it was finally ready to experience Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch, mixing Japanese samurai philosophy with Italian-American gangsters and featuring a hip-hop soundtrack as a homage to the 1967 French film Le Samourai, it’s one of my favourite films of all time.
I thought it might be obvious to my son, but I still had to point out that there’s a copy of the Hagakure near his bed, and the name of my early-2000s blog, and now my business, is The Way of the Web.
I also started watching Shogun this month, based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, which itself is loosely set around the real history of Will Adams, who was born in Gillingham, part of the Medway Towns where I grew up (like many families in the area, my own ancestry is tied into the dockyard, seafaring and exploration, including local fishermen, a member of Franklin’s lost expedition (HMS Erebus and Terror), and two members of Stanley’s central African expedition).
Music
I haven’t had time to check out much in the way of new music, or to really delve into any back catalogues of note. Which is disapointing, and will hopefully change in April.
Videogames
With limited time, I’ve had to restrict myself to playing existing titles. My main interest has been World War 2 mil-sim light Hell Let Loose, despite a frustrating amount of random game crashes. But I have slowly embraced more regularly taking on the roles of squad leader and commander, leading up to 50 players to victory or defeat.
I have also been spending more time improving my sim racing, and some time before and after my real-life BMW experience highlighted how close iRacing comes in replicating the BMW M4 and Donington Park. While it can’t simulate the physical weight transfer of a real car on a track when braking and cornering unless I spend a lot of motion on a motion rig, everything else was pretty much identical. To the point where it almost felt like I was driving the sim at times.
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