It's been a busy year work-wise, but I've managed to keep my department under control and operating reasonably smoothly. I've enjoyed going to work and dealing with the day-to-day aspects of the job. There have been no major dramas and all of the minor ones have been easily handled.
In terms of my leisure time, this year has seen me reading far less than last year, which comprised mainly of espionage fiction;
Books Read in 2023
Trinity Six by Charles Cumming
- Journalist chasing a story about spies recruited in the 1930s. Has a le Carré vibe to it. Pretty good.
The Catch (novella) by Mick Herron
- The completist in me begins reading as much of Herron's work as possible.
All The Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer
- American spy author. Very well written and plotted.
The Afghan by Fredrick Forsyth
- Forsyth's research skills are as sharp as ever. Book was okay, maybe a 6/10.
Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood (didn't finish it)
- About the Double-O Section's other operatives. Bond is missing. So was my interest in this book, which took too many liberties with the world of OO7.
Standing By The Wall (novella) by Mick Herron
- The completist continues...
The List (novella) by Mick Herron
- and on...
The Drop (novella) by Mick Herron
- ...and on. I did like these little novellas, as they provided some insight about the characters in Herron's other novels.
Spook Street by Mick Herron
- A Slough House* novel. Great
London Rules by Mick Herron
- Another Slough House novel. Excellent.
Nobody Walks by Mick Herron
- A stand-alone book, about an ex-spy now living in France, who returns to London after the death of his son. Some Slough House characters show up. Great book.
Reconstruction by Mick Herron
- Another stand-alone story, again with some Slough House cameos. And again, a great story. Herron writes good characters.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré
- Read it back in the late '80s. Figured it was due for a re-read. A bleak anti-Bond story.
Winter Work by Dan Fesperman - Set just after The Wall came down. Interesting premise, well-written, but it doesn't seem like a great deal happens. I think I'll have to read it again before I make a definite judgement on it.
A Spy By Nature by Charles Cumming - First in a subsequent series of books about Alec Milius, freshly recruited into British Intelligence. Don't recall much about it, but I did like the writing. Another one that will require a re-read.
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett - Another book that I first read back in the '80s. Thought I could use a break from all the spy stuff.
Damascus Station by David McCloskey - Debut book by McCloskey and it was great.
*Slough House
Herron's first book, Slow Horses, concerned a bunch of f*ck-ups from British Intelligence who have been relegated to a quiet division in Slough House, led by one Jackson Lamb, a burn-out who's best work may be behind him. This crew, nick-named the slow horses by the rest of MI5, spend their days doing extremely menial and nonsensical tasks, in the hope that they'll get so bored and/or disillusioned that they'll resign, thus sparing any Human Resources headaches for Head Office.
One of the slow horses left a secret file on a train, another is a coke-fiend, another is a problem gambler. It's for reasons like these that they have been swept under the mat into Slough House.
Jackson Lamb drinks, smokes...and farts too much. He despises his crew (hoping that they'll quit), but he despises MI5 Head Office even more, and his one major ace up his sleeve is his razor-sharp mind. Whatever he's become that has led him to Slough House, he's still a master-spy.
Mick Herron has created a credible world, filled with a variety of characters in a shady corner of the already shady intelligence universe.
Since signing up for Amazon Prime and Disney + this year, I've been watching a little more TV. One show that I'd been meaning to watch was The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.This show centres around Miriam 'Midge' Maisel, a young housewife living on the Upper West Side. Her husband Joel works as an executive in the city and he has ambitions of becoming a stand-up comedian.
Problem is, he's not very funny. Midge gives him a lot of encouragement, proof-reads his routines, and generally supports his dream. One night, after a dismal performance on stage at The Gaslight Café, Joel accuses her of not being supportive of his comic ambitions and tells her he is leaving, after admitting that he's been having an affair with his secretary.
Joel leaves, and in a drunken rage, Midge ends up on the stage at The Gaslight Café, and delivers an observational rant that has the audience laughing, and the club manager Susie Myerson quickly realises that she may have a major talent on her hands.
Midge is soon arrested by police for some lewd remarks during her impromptu performance and hauled off to the station. Groundbreaking '60s comedian Lenny Bruce, performing a set at the Gaslight also, is arrested as well. He becomes a recurring character in the show.
There's a lot going on in this show throughout its five seasons. Midge establishes her own set of rules and conditions in her attempt to become a stand-up comedian in an era when women weren't encouraged to pursue this kind of career. Susie Myerson attempts to set herself up as a talent manager for Midge and other acts. Midge's parents have their own struggle in trying to understand and accept their daughter's new-found chosen vocation, while her ex-husband Joel attempts to find his own path in life.
The acting is top-notch throughout, as evidenced by the numerous Emmy awards the show's creators and cast have garnered in recent years.
Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, who was responsible for Gilmour Girls (2000-2007), this show is extremely well done in almost every respect. The casting is wonderful, with particular mentions to Rachel Brosnahan as Midge, and Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson. Together, these two actresses carry the bulk of the show.
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| Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam 'Midge' Maisel (left) and Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson. Two wonderful actresses, showcasing exemplary performances of two strong female characters with a wonderful friendship, which is the back-bone of the show, IMHO. Whenever Midge is about to go on stage, Susie's catch-phrase is a short and sweet break-a-leg statement; "Tits up". Only two words, but the meaning is profound, in my view - You're a woman, working in the predominantly male world (of stand-up comedy), so rope the audience in initially with your feminine charms, be proud, and then slay them with your comedic prowess. You are woman, let them hear you roar. Then they'll roar with laughter. |
Extra-special mention goes to Tony Shalhoub as Abe Weissman, Midge's father, a Mathematics Professor at Columbia University, and Kevin Pollack as Moshe Maisel, Joel's father, who runs a garment business.
In saying that, though, I can't fault anybody in the cast. Marin Hinkle and Caroline Aaron do a great job as Rose Weissman, Midge's mother, and Shirley Maisel, Joel's mother, respectively, each imbuing their characters with recognisable traits and mannerisms.
And then there's the camera-work and cinematography! Outstanding. Beautifully lit and staged, with a cinematic quality to it all.
There's a scene where Midge is about to entertain some troops and it starts with a Rockettes-style opening dance number on stage. Watching it, I couldn't help feeling that the way it was staged and shot, it wouldn't look out of place in a Spielberg movie. The production values and camera work were movie-quality.
If I have one beef about the show, it would be the dialogue at times. Portions of it contained phrases that didn't exist in late '50s/early '60s America.
When Midge recounts her first arrest to a subsequent audience at the Gaslight Café, she says; "And there I was, being perp-walked into the station."
When she tells of an incident where her young son was being indolent, she says; "I could take him."
These are modern terms and phrases, that appeared to take me out of the Mid-Century world of the show. I suppose I can understand why they might have been included.
Modern parlance would appeal to a modern audience.
It's just that, given the attention to detail utilised in re-creating a 1950s diner, a street filled with big fat Buicks, Plymouths and Chryslers, and Midge's wonderful Audrey Hepburn-esque wardrobe, the modern lingo seems a little out of place.
In saying that, though, it is used pretty sparingly throughout the series, so it doesn't jar too much.
Maybe I'm just being finicky.
The attention to detail and homages to Old Hollywood are evident throughout the show.
There's a scene in Season 4 where Midge is working as emcee at a seedy strip club which is soon raided by police
and everybody scrambles out of every possible exit to avoid getting
arrested. If you had sat me down in front of a tv without me knowing
what or where this scene was from, I'd almost have believed it was an out-take or deleted scent out
of Billy Wilder's The Apartment or Irma La Douce. You'd almost expect to see a young Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine in it.
And the Steadicam work is wonderful.
I can't fault this show, to be honest. Just about every character has a major arc in their individual stories, the performances are superb, the writing and plotting are on-point, and it's all very pretty to look at.
Worth catching this show, if you haven't seen it.
Baltic was started back in 2016 by Étienne Malec. He soon launched a campaign on Kickstarter, with the aim of getting enough backers to fund the production of a three-hand watch and a vintage-styled chronograph with a bi-compax dial. These watches would be vintage-inspired designs made using modern materials.
His Kickstarter goal was to raise €65,000.oo.
He ended up getting pledges for €514,806.oo over the 35-day period of his campaign.
Here are the two watches that were funded by his Kickstarter campaign;
Some of them are derivative of existing or classic designs and don't really bring anything new to the table and end up looking like direct copies, with just a small tweak here and there to keep the lawyers away.
And some of them are not very nice at all, lifting numerous aesthetic cues from other brands, to produce a watch that has already been done better by somebody else. Very often, these kinds of micro-brands cut a few corners during the production phase and this becomes evident when one takes a good close look at the final product.
Baltic produces watches with a vintage vibe. While they don't mimic any exact watch from the past, their designs evoke the look of watches from the late 1940s through to the early 1970s.
Anyway, you can always check out their website;
Meanwhile, back to my Baltic watch. I've always liked the simplicity of a basic time-only wristwatch with a clearly laid-out dial. Often referred to as an "Expedition watch", this type of watch was perhaps first made popular by the Rolex Explorer, from back in the early/mid 1950s. Other brands made watches of a similar style. Two that immediately come to mind are the 1957 Omega Railmaster;
Pic borrowed from blommanwatchreport.com
This watch did okay for Omega, but never reached the same heights as their Speedmaster chronograph and Seamaster dive watch, both released that same year. The Railmaster was discontinued in 1963 and a new edition was released in 2003, in three different case sizes. A 60th anniversary model was produced in 2017, a virtual copy - based on Omega's archival blueprints - and this was followed by a new modern iteration the year after.
For my money, though, the early Noughties edition is the stand-out. I got the 36mm model in 2012 and have never looked back. For those who may not know, my review is to be found on this blog via the 'Watch Reviews' tab up above.
You can see the simplicity of the dial layout on a watch like this. Very easy at-a-glance readability.
Another watch that was touted as suitable for expeditions was the Nivada Grenchen Antarctic. As seen in this magazine advertisement, lifted from...
...this watch was marketed as being worn and used during Operation DeepFreeze, a US-led expedition to the Antarctic by Admiral Richard Byrd in the 1950s.
As you can see, these watches looked like most other day-to-day men's watches of the era, but they were quite hardy and, if much of the advertising is to be believed, these watches stood up to quite a bit of punishment.
A lot of basic men's watches were put through the ringer during these expeditions. There's the well-known (among Tudor watch nerds, anyway) letter that was written in 1956 to Rolex - Tudor's parent company - about how well an Oyster-Prince model fared throughout the British North Greenland Expedition;
Dig that letterhead!
As is pretty much well-known among us watch nerds, Edmund Hilary wore a British-made Smiths De Luxe mechanical watch during his ascent up Mount Everest in 1953.
These simple watches, worn during these endeavours, could take a beating. Their dials were clear and easy to read, their water-resistance was sufficient for the job at hand, and they were powered by a self-winding automatic movement. As the examples I've mentioned all took place in sub-zero climates, it might be fair to say that the watches would have been covered by jacket sleeves to protect them a little. Then again, if needing to check the time quickly was a necessity, a jacket sleeve may have been pulled back a little to expose the watch for easy viewing.
All conjecture on my part.
So, with all of this rugged history attached to this type of wristwatch, I spent a few months looking at this Baltic watch, read a few reviews, etc, before I visited the only seller in Australia who carries this brand. I had contemplated purchasing direct from Baltic's website, but when I got serious about the watch and did the sums, it pretty much worked out to be a difference of about $80.oo less if I bought from the website. The benefit, in my view, of purchasing from a bricks-and-mortar store is that, should anything go wrong with the watch, dealing with any warranty-related issues is more straightforward when doing so face-to-face rather than via back-and-forth emails and shipping.
And so I bought the watch. I opted for the chocolate brown dial with matching Tropic rubber strap. My collection contains enough black, blue, and silver dials, so I thought I'd change things up a bit and go totally left field. Other colour options were blue, green, or a nice shade of beige.
Yeah, brown was the right one to go for. It looks edible. Case diameter is a wonderful 37mm, which sits so Goldilocksy on my 6.5 inch wrist. The dial. Ahh, the dial. Chocolate brown, with the hour markers and numerals made from C3 SuperLuminova and applied onto the dial like whipped cream piped onto its surface. And it has a slightly 'stepped' area on its outer edge, which sits lower than the rest of the dial. Hard to see in the photos.
The movement inside it is a Miyota 9039, self-winding automatic with a 42 hour power reserve. Miyota is a subsidiary of Citizen watches, of Japan. Many micro-brands use Miyota movements. This is one major way to keep production costs and selling prices down, as this brand's movements are quite robust, with a decent daily accuracy for the price.
Perhaps the one drawback with the watch is the crown. Hermetic watches are so called because the crown sits pretty much flush with the case when its pushed in. Hermetically sealed and all that. This makes for a nice symmetry of the case. This also makes winding the watch by hand a tad difficult. It's not a huge issue, really. I give it five to ten winds by hand to get it going, by running my index finger along the crown's edge, then a few flicks of the wrist to top it up a little. As long as I'm wearing it, it'll continue to wind itself. I figure it's a very small price to pay when the rest of the watch more than makes up for this minor hassle.
The case sits quite flat on the wrist and the watch has a 100m water-resistance, making it a fairly everyday go-anywhere, do-anything (GADA, is what collectors call it) wristwatch. While it looks good on its rubber strap, I knew I'd want the bracelet optional also, so I placed an order a couple of weeks later and it arrived not long after.
The beads-of-rice bracelet design gained popularity in the 1960s and appeared on a number of watches across various brands. A pleasant change from the usual three-link bracelet style found on watches of that era, a major plus with this type of bracelet is the fit. As the links are so small, it makes for a very comfortable fit on the wrist, and it also allows the bracelet to breathe a little, due to the numerous gaps between the links.
The sapphire crystal on this watch is domed, which allows for some interesting play of light, reflection, and distortion from certain angles, and it very perfectly suits the vintage vibe of the watch. Baltic spent a lot of time and effort on this Hermétique Tourer range (as with their other product families), to produce a distinctive watch with old-school charm coupled with modern technology.
There was a time when there were quite a few watch manufacturers in France, given that the country borders Switzerland. Many of these brands went under during The Quartz Crisis of the 1970s. A few of them, such as Lip, survived that storm. Other brands, like Yema and Airain, were resurrected in recent years, to be re-introduced to a new generation of watch fans.
Baltic is part of the new wave of micro brands to come out of France in recent years. Serica and Meraud are two other French brands that immediately come to mind. Some of them use Japanese movements, some of them use Swiss. Either way, the attention to detail is commendable and the build quality rivals that of well established Swiss brands of similar pricing.
It's a beautifully-made wristwatch, in an age where there are a myriad number of well-established brands with long histories, and a vast number of newly-created micro-brands all vying for your hard-earned dollars. You could do nicely with a Baltic watch. Not a sales pitch. I'm not affiliated with the brand in any way.
I just think it's a watch that punches well above its weight.
Anyway, another post down. At the time of writing, I'm slightly laid out with a cold. Been a while since I was last sick with anything. Work is busy these days and I worked from home today. No doubt, there'll be a few spot-fires to put out tomorrow, such is the nature of customer service.
Still, when you have to rely on numerous external partners to help you do your job, you can only do what you can only do.
Thanks for reading, and take care.
