A run in the park.

The word phenomenon is one that can be overused. Innovation is another word often overused when it really isn’t warranted. However, when it comes to Parkrun, they are most certainly not overused. Put simply, Parkrun is the biggest phenomenon in running today and its biggest innovation for decades, if not of all time.

Parkrun is simple. At 9am, each Saturday, in parks across the country (330 and counting and many more dotted around the globe), runners turn up and run a 5k run with other runners for free. Yes, for free. All they have to do is is register at www.parkrun.org.uk and print off a barcode which they bring with them. This gets scanned, along with a finish token, at the end of the event and later that day they find out what time they did, and what position they came, via a text and email. Simple process really.

The beauty of this event is that it can be whatever the individual running it, wants it to be. From the fast club runner looking to race to the person running their very first 5k, everyone is catered for, and no one is looked down upon for being slow or for walking. Runners run with friends, family, their children or just on their own to clear their head - I once read a lovely story where a man who was dealing with mental health problems sighted Parkrun as a big help for him.

I also once read someone describe Parkrun as the perfect example of socialism and a fairer society, with every runner applauding each other and socialising with friends in this little community that will inevitably grow as each parkrun grows organically. I would go one better and say its an example of a community that carries the best from both the left and the right, as Parkrun also rewards its runners for hard work and loyalty, by issuing T-Shirts to any runner who runs 50, 100, 250 and if you are a junior runner, 10 runs. There are now going to be T-Shirts for those who volunteer 25 times - a reward for helping to put on the event.

I myself attend the Kingsbury Water Parkrun and have done so on a regular basis since it started in July 2013. Well it is only 10 minutes from my house! I have run there often and I also volunteer a fair bit, so my wife can also run it (I have our son). We have made a lot of good friends and look forward to it each and every Saturday.

Of course, as we anything in life, there will be detractors, which in the case of Parkrun are the very rare breed that is the snobby club runner, that feels clubs should be the hub of the running community and paid up races should be the event they come to race. Luckily, most in clubs don’t think like that, and see the bigger picture - thousands more are running who may not have without the accessibility of Parkrun, and these people may go on to look at the local club scene and have the confidence to run longer and harder events thanks to Parkrun.

Not bad for an event started in London, by a runner who was out injured and wanted to keep being involved in a sport he loved, so organised a small time trial that anybody could take part in.

Now, if only my son could hurry up and grow up so we can take him to Parkrun to run it.

My reaction to the UK General Election 2015

The dust has settled, and the fallout has been loud and split. Somehow, the Tories managed to defy seemingly large odds, and get enough seats to win a majority. Social media isn’t the best indicator, but is probably just as good a snapshot of what the voting public are thinking as the traditional polls are, and based on my own Facebook feed and the various re-tweets and tweets from people I follow, the Tories were almost seen as the party of the devil in the lead up to the vote.

As I joked this morning on Facebook, it is clear Tories don’t use social media! This was said in jest as of course its difficult to truly get a snapshot of society via social media - much like in real life I will choose who I am friends with and who I follow on twitter. This will mean they follow the same politic idealism as I do.

However, this isn’t entirely true. I know some of my friends are people I went to school with, a time when our political views haven’t quite been shaped. Others will be, in my case, people I have met in the running and triathlon scene, and again political opinions aren’t important. Add to that people I have worked with and family members and again, political opinions aren’t important. Personally, I have no problem with someone who has different political views - I just draw the line on the extreme left or right, which would have been very blatant when that person first entered my life.

Looking at my friends list and those I follow, its a mixed bag of political opinions and I like that. Yet I can only think of one, maybe two people who were very pro Tory in their posts in recent weeks. So does this mean, the traditional Tory simply stays quiet, or is even slightly ashamed to vote due to the big vocal left representation that may attack them from every angle?

Its very interesting and has felt almost bizarre. At best I felt that whoever gained the most votes would not win enough for a majority and it would be very close. At first I felt another coalition would be the only option. However, it was clear, the Tories had no support from other parties so would struggle to form a coalition this time around, and Ed Miliband would commit career and political suicide if he formed a coalition, especially with the SNP after making it perfectly clear he wouldn’t do so. This meant at best I thought the winning party would attempt to form a government even without the majority.

But this has not been the case at all and somehow the Tories have won with a majority. Now this is where things get interesting. They won the most seats and reached the number of seats needed to get the majority. But the share of the vote was 36.8% - hardly what you call a majority. It means just over a third of those who voted did so for the winning party. 12.1% voted UKIP who somehow got only 1 seat - not a bad thing I might add. 4.7% voted SNP who got 56 seats and understandably UKIP are probably feeling this is unfair. I can not stand their politics and firmly believe they have a far right agenda that they are pushing behind the scenes, but they should have won or lost fairly.

This is our own fault. We had the chance to change the voting system and voted to keep the standard “fast past the post” system. A proportionate representation voting system would have meant 80 plus seats for UKIP, 24 for Greens and the Tories would have won by only a few votes. http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-parliament-proportional-representation/20893 shows this. However I must be quick to add, that page is based on the current votes, some of which would have been the tactical kind often seen in FPTP voting. Its also worth noting that FPTP is not going away - why would the new Tory government change a system that puts them at an advantage?

As people who read my last blog a week ago will know, I changed from being a Tory to a green voter this year. I can say, hand on heart, I am pleased I made that decision. I am proud to have joined the one million plus who voted for them (a 400% increase from 2010) and my conscious feels clear today. I have no regret and will be supporting the Green Party for the foreseeable future.

One thing that has irritated me today are labour voters complaining that the Tories will now privatise and destroy the NHS. This may very well be the truth, however the Tories are only doing what Labour started when they were in power. Labour are basically the Twin Tory Party but in red. They are now as right wing as the Tories and can thank Tony Blair and his legacy. New Labour pandered to the right to get votes from the Tories. For Labour to truly be an alternative they will need to have a change in ideology and become a real alternative to the Tories. Maybe a return to their socialist past? Maybe a very clear centre left agenda?

As for the Lib Dems, well they took a right kicking, and probably paid for forming a coalition government and bending over to take a shafting on issues they were very much against in the build up to the election in 2010. Which is a shame as Nick Clegg in particular is a very likable politician in a world of backstabbers and sharks. As a Green voter the time is right for them to take off where the Lib Dems were and be the liberal voice of the UK.

Whatever happens next, it will be an interesting five years and one I hope will see further rise in support for the Greens, a good strong Labour with good leadership to be a good opposition, one that will push the Tories on everything, and a UKIP that will slowly die off.

Why I'm voting Green

I’ll be honest from the start; I am traditionally a Tory voter. I was brought up a Tory, and remember going to visit the Houses of Parliament as a child and being somewhat disappointed that Maggie Thatcher wasn’t there, leading to a friend of her private secretary arranging for a signed photograph from the PM to be sent to me.

I did go through the “New Labour” phase that so many in my generation did regardless of their usual political opinions (I’m pretty sure Tony Blair utilized the same tactic as The Master, as played by John Simm, in Dr Who).

Yet, I still came back to the Tories and have voted for them in the last two general elections, believing that they were the right party to form a government. I believe in good conservative values of hard work being rewarded. Of people striving to make a go of it, and not relying on others.

Now, I have that out on the table, you are probably wondering why I would go from the right to the left? Why would I vote Green?

Truth be told, I can’t really pinpoint a moment when I started to look at them as a viable option. I can’t really recall when I became, what can only be described, as a disgruntled Tory.

Was it their push for the high speed rail link that will destroy local countryside, including a lovely waterpark I use on a daily basis, and benefit no one but those that will be able to afford the high ticket prices - and in the 21st century, business people need high speed broadband to make conference video calls, not fast travel to get to meetings?

Could it be, the mismanaging of the public spending cuts? As someone vehemently against striking I have found myself supporting the fire service strikes. Cuts to the frontline are not good. Changes in pensions are not good. When a company goes through a cost cutting exercise, it does so using marginal cuts and by stopping wastage. If cuts were needed, then look at the wasteful bureaucracy of middle-management in the various public departments.

Having friends in teaching has meant I've seen first hand what happens to good teachers driven almost crazy by changes in education in the last five years. As a parent of a child who will be school during the next term of government, I want him to be taught but happy teachers, not teachers under constant pressure. I also want him to develop at his own pace - the zero tolerance the Tories are proposing for children not meeting certain levels in maths and English by certain ages is disgraceful.

If there was one certainty on my switch to Green, it is simply because when you become a parent, that what is important to you changes and you start to think in terms of what the world will be like for your child when he or she is your age. Yes, I am better off under the Tories, but will my boy be better off living in a world they want? I think the answer is a big no.

Do I want him growing up in a world where we as a nation we spend billions on a nuclear weapon system that belongs in a time where the nuclear threat came from other nations, but groups with no fixed abode? No, I don’t.

Do I want him growing up in a world, where the divide between rich and poor gets bigger year by year? Where food banks become the norm for more and more people year by year? Where corporations cheat the tax system? Where people who are rich lose sight of their basic humanity?

Do I want him growing up in a world where non-renewable energy sources are not replaced with cleaner, renewable energy sources?

Do I want him growing up in a world where the science and research budget is cut, leading us to slow down development of new technologies that could progress us as a culture?

Do I want him growing up in a world, where humans are treated differently, just because they come from another nation, or because they were plain unlucky to be born in one with extreme poverty and war as norm? A world where we don’t want to help our fellow human being?

No to all the above.

Am I wasting my vote, especially when I live in a constituency that swings from Labour to Tory (Tories won by 50 odd votes last time)? I don’t believe a vote is ever a wasted vote. People throughout history have fought and died for the simple right to vote in elections, so we should all vote in my humble view. However if anybody reading this is considering voting for someone not expected to win, do so. If we all do this, that so called safe seat may not be so safe after all.

So, with all the above, it is clear Green is the party for me. They won’t win. They won’t get enough to help form a coalition, but if they can add to the one seat they have, it will be a massive victory and will help them grow in the coming years.

Society needs to change for the better. We’ve swung between Tory and Labour for decades now, one messing up the country, with the other promising to sort it out, before messing it up again to restart the viscous circle. Russell Brand has his detractors (as well as a very big thesaurus), but he is spot on when he asks for a change in the way our politicians are elected. He is wrong to not vote, but he has that right. Voting green will help that change get implemented.

For my son and for all our sons and daughters futures, I will vote Green. 

Consistent Writing and latest history of SF TV series.

Its safe to say that I have had my most productive week to date, which on Sunday morning saw me write 1400 words to complete the first draft to a short story I had been working on last week.

Most writing manuals will advise writers to write every day and to read every day. Now I have had no issue with the reading every day. I get an hour lunch at work which is always spent reading. Writing though, thats a different ball game. I know this is very wrong of me, especially if I want to be serious about my writing and be taken seriously about my writing. Not making excuses, but fitting in my running, work, family time and writing can be tricky. But when I comes to my writing, I need to treat it like my running. Don’t put myself under pressure to do large amounts every day. Just be consistent.

I read an excellent blog by a guy who simply aimed to write 500 words a day. He may have the odd day where he didn’t make that target or even start it. But he knew there would be days where he would do much more than that target. So I followed suit and have found it works. My average is more than 500 words and I’m enjoying it.

This of course is also helped by the support I get by my wife. We are both spiritualists. Not trying to sell it as a religion/faith - its simply our belief. She went to a medium we go to who told her, my late dad said I need to have a kick up my ass and get writing. I’m good at it but have become lazy! So even the spirits are telling me off! My wife said, she will tell me every day to get writing. This gave me a huge lift.

The draft I completed is basically rubbish. Now to non writers this would seem a very pessimistic comment to make about one’s writing. But every writer creates a rubbish first draft. Its in every writing manual worth its salt. The good writing comes with the countless re-writes and editing that follows. I have a story, it even has some logical structure and I am optimistic there will be a very satisfactory story at the end of the process.

Although, whether it passes my late dad’s critique is another thing!  

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Over the weekend I watched the first part to a brand new BBC TV series called ‘Tomorrows Worlds - The Unearthly History of Science Fiction’.  Its a five part series with each episode a different part of the genre.  Episode one covered space and science fictions relationship with it. 

I was very wary of it, wondering if it would be just the usual popular culture bullshit  that is viewed as SF.  And by starting with Star Wars and Star Trek, my worries were confirmed.  Nothing wrong with either, but to a non SF fan, this is what they believe the genre to be.

However during the episode, it started looking at the high concept of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, the non gender specific aliens of ‘Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin’ and the sociological politics of ‘The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson’. 

This is a series of great promise, that realises the genre is so vast and every fan has their own view of it, that you simply can’t cover it all.  So recognise the popular culture side of it but also pass tribute to the deeper more meaningful commentary of real life found in the genre.

Next week is all about alien invasion in SF.

Interstellar - epic science fiction at its grandest level.

It may just be a coincidence, or planned, but it is interesting that the release of Interstellar came only a few days before the landing of a robot on a comet. Both show humanity's thirst for exploration, to find our position in the Universe, with Interstellar using the medium of film and the ESA using the very real world of science.

I’ll get this out of the way straight away, I loved Interstellar and the only reason I am not calling it my favourite movie of all time, is simply that I want to see it again.

There I said it.

It is the science fiction movie I have been waiting for since I first started reading hard science fiction novels and short stories. This is a high concept movie, full of ideas, themes and very real scientific theories. It is not science fiction for someone who simply wants to be entertained by big fighting robots or huge space battles (nothing wrong with this form of escapism, I hasten to add). You need to be prepared to become emotionally tied to the movie, and think a lot more. Luckily you don’t need to have a degree in physics to understand the theories involved, but equally, you can’t let your mind wonder.

I won’t go over the plot and the premise of the movie, due simply to the assumption you are reading this having watched the movie. Its not a critical review. I love the movie too much to be objective, so its more of a tribute. Any quotes from the movie will be very much a case of paraphrasing.

I first became aware of Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker with Batman Begins. I was blown over by his gritty realistic take on one of my personal favourite comic book characters. The sequels helped create, in my mind, the finest movie trilogy. After Batman Begins, I discovered his skill for creating huge and interesting visuals in Inception - the bending of the city is a shot that will stick in my mind for a very long time.

So, when I read he was going to try his hand at science fiction, I was very pleased. When I heard he was planning to use real theoretical physics (by Kip Thorne), I became very interested. When I heard this involved wormholes and a huge journey across time and space, I became very excited. Add in a black hole and a story using the time dilation effects of interstellar travel and I was completely sold.

Already it was sounding like a film version of a novel by Alastair Reynolds (he uses real physics theories, issues with time dilation and in Revelation Space, a Neutron Star).

It turned out, I wasn’t far wrong in my prediction. It also contains a far more plausible Dystopian future than The Hunger Games, shown both frighteningly, and in an eerily possible way, in the teacher-parent scene, when we discover the children are being taught that the Apollo moon landings were faked for propaganda purposes so as to bankrupt the USSR into a space race they could never afford.

The movie is an emotional journey of sacrifices and survival. As humans we have always looked to expand, from leaving the valley in caveman times, to Christopher Columbus sailing to prove the world was round to sending probes out into the solar system. Whilst other life on Earth evolved due to their surroundings, we have changed those same surroundings to meet out needs. Much like the dinosaurs, we will reach our end one day on this planet, and be but a fossil, a minor memory in the vast history of this planet. Interstellar explores this as we look to other worlds to colonise and stop our inevitable extinction. “Mankind wasn’t meant to die on this planet,” one character muses.

The future, as depicted in the movie, is one of backwards thinking, of returning back to our hunter/gatherer past. We no longer worry about technical leaps, or engineering skill, only basic survival and not running out of food. I’ve never been a huge fan of how a dystopian future is depicted in a lot of movies and books, it always seems too over the top and too out of line with todays society to have a believable and logical link between the two. Hence my earlier comment on The Hunger Games. Last years Elysium did it wonderfully by having the rich and powerful living in a huge Iain M Banks style orbital habitat with the poor living on Earth. Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, examined this style of a future society in both The Long Walk and The Running Man (a far better story than the movie). Interstellar may not have the large rich/poor divide, traditionally found in Dystopian fiction, but it is a bleak future with no optimism. One big reveal admits that the whole plan is to populate another world with fertilised eggs and leave humans on Earth to die out within a couple of generations. Luckily, as with all dystopian futures, there are a few who won’t give up and will find a way to understand the physics needed to save mankind.

This is lead by Murph, the daughter of Cooper, the pilot on board the ship travelling to far away worlds. As a parent myself, the movie does a very good job of dealing with the relationship and bond between a parent and their offspring. I simply couldn’t imagine having to leave my son at home, to go off and explore new worlds, knowing that he will have aged a lot faster than I will have when I hopefully return. But Cooper has to do this for the good of humanity, and for himself, a man born to explore, “born forty years to soon or too late” as his father in law puts it. He has to make that sacrifice.

One criticism I have read on more than one online post, is that Cooper uses love as a mystical force to resolve matters. The reason for the criticism is simply that this is a hippy way to resolve the issues in the movie, and that trying to make out love can be explained in scientific terms is incorrect. It is almost as if these posters have not even seen the movie. Yes, love is a huge theme. Yes, love is the motivating factor to keep Cooper going. But it isn’t love that allows him to move books, or hands on the watch from inside the Tesseract. It is gravity. These posters must have nodded off when Brand was describing how time could appear to a “higher being” - going back in time would be no more different than us climbing down a mountain. They must have also been asleep when we discover that it isn’t some alien civilisation that have been trying to help us, but a future version of us that transcends both time and space, who created the Tesseract as a time portal and a way to move backwards in time, among other things.

Interstellar is on hell of an emotional roller-coaster ride. Due to the time dilation effects of being on a planet too close to a black hole, what feels like a couple of hours for Cooper and his team, is actually twenty three years on Earth. It is very hard to grasp how that must feel for a parent, knowing your children have lived almost a quarter of a century in a blink of an eye. This sequence is shown via videos sent from Earth via the wormhole and we see as Cooper does what any father would in this situation - he breaks down in tears.

Of course the movie allows Cooper to answer the one question, asked of parents with more than one kid, who is your favourite? Cooper blatantly decides who his favourite is! But joking aside, his almost blase approach to his son, is simply that he knows and trusts his son is now a man and that he can let him go to make a life of his own. His daughter though is younger and in need of a fatherly figure. She also doesn’t understand that he is leaving. One moment, via the video, she pleads with him to return due to now being the same age as he was when he left, a promise he gave her. Of course, they do eventually meet again, when at the end of the movie, Cooper returns to find his daughter is an elderly woman on her death bed. When asked how she knew he would return, she simply replies, “my daddy promised me.” Again, as a daddy myself, the promise made to your son or daughter is legally binding. It is also another case of love, keeping both Cooper and Murph alive, feeding the basic survival instinct we all have. As Dr Mann says, “the final thing you see before you die is your children.”

As a movie, Interstellar is as near perfect as possible. It is probably the best chance, we as genre fans have, for a science fiction movie to win best picture at the Oscars. In fact it could quite conceivably clear up with acting awards going to Matthew McConaughey as Cooper & Ann Hathaway as Brand, both exceptional performances.

Finally, nothing is perfect, and my one gripe was the very end. When Cooper launches from the new home of Earth, Nolan missed a great opportunity for a “money shot”. He could have mirrored the ending to Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds, when we realise just how immense the structure the humans are in. But Nolan does like to leave some things to the imagination of the audience, especially at the end of a movie, so I can see why he resisted. This though is minor. The exploration of what makes us human is handled beautifully.

Survival, love and the need to explore and further ourselves are big parts of what makes us human.

Dr Who latest season thoughts

I’ve been pretty busy at present, training for a half marathon this weekend, being a father and husband, writing and working so the blog has kind of been shoved to the back yet again. If it helps I have read some very interesting blogs over the last few weeks.

I have looked in to whether it is a good or bad idea to transfer over to Wordpress. Partly due to the future possibility of having a proper grown up website as well as the blog. But at present I am happy with Blogger due to being linked to my other Google apps.

Completely off track, but my near 14 month old son has just farted. Well I hope thats all it is! (only parents will know the fear that goes through you when you hear an infant fart)

I was very excited by the landing of Philae on to a comet. The technical and engineering skills required to land an object on a lumpy, unstable piece of rock, minute in cosmic terms, travelling at 36000 miles per hour is nothing short of profound brilliance. Forget what we learn now. Its the potential of mining on near Earth comets/asteroids that excites me. The mining of these objects has long been a passion of mine and one that will help us to take the tentative steps into expanding the Human civilisation into outer space. We have an ever increasing population and resources on Earth are not going to be here for ever - we need to look at space to ease both problems.

Of course critics look at the public money being spent, and point out it could be used elsewhere. But look at what technological advances have been made by NASA (funded by US tax payers money). Besides I believe large multinational corporations will finance the future of space exploration.

I’m fairly confident it was just a fart.

Finally some thoughts on the latest season of Dr Who. I’ve spoken in the past about both my love for the show and of my confidence in Peter Capaldi.

Capaldi himself was nothing short of brilliant. Everything I thought he would be. Arrogant, , judgemental, quirky, eccentric, wise and childlike at the same time. However, I had to keep checking I wasn’t watching “The Clara Show”, as yet again the companion becomes the main character. I get that the original premise was that we the audience experienced the show through the eyes of the companion. But when the companion (Clara) starts becoming the moral compass for the Doctor, acting very childish and arrogant herself, it gets too much. I actually enjoyed her “impossible girl” story ark with Matt Smith, and this may be another issue - she suited Matt Smith, but just doesn’t work with Capaldi. She is supposed to be leaving at Christmas, so hopefully they will find a more suitable companion.

They had a good ready made one in Osgood, the UNIT scientist. But she was killed off. It would have made a change to have had a companion who was his intellectual equal. Hopefully it wasn’t a “fixed point in time” so we can have some timey-whiney stuff!

A female Master was certainly a nice surprise (I kind of guessed, but also thought The Rani may be a good option). I can buy this. The Master is always looking to get one over The Doctor, so changing gender would definitely be up there with fooling our hero. Besides, Michelle Gomez was wonderful as the iconic villian, bringing the right mix of over the top campness, insanity (well bananas in her case) and megalomania. Just a shame her “death” was a little underwhelming. We all know she isn’t dead but The Doctor would normally react a lot more than that (see John Simm refusing to regenerate).

The Brigadier was back! And he was saluted by the Doctor. He may have been a zombie cyberman, but it was still very cool.

I would have loved to have had a “Thick of It” reunion between Chris Addison and Capaldi, but at least we got a reference with The Doctors pyscho paper being full of swear words.

We will never mention the Robin Hood episode again.

There is only one Mr Pink.

Hopefully with a new companion and Capaldi fully in the swing of things the next season will be back in track. 

Falling in love with, moving apart, rekindling a love for U2

Although expected to be released this year, it came as quite a surprise that U2 released their latest album “Songs of Innocence” free of charge via ITunes. In fact there was no waiting - the announcement was made, then it appeared in all 500 Million Itunes users’ “Cloud”. There are arguments for and against the almost forcing of users to have an album by a band that separates many music fans and are possibly the most marmite of bands (fans worship them, others hate them for various reasons). But thats for another day. This is more about my love of the band (no I won’t try to sell you into the cult of U2 where we all worship at the feet of our God Bono)

I have been a fan for almost 20 years. They weren’t the band that got me into music. That was Queen and Status Quo (I can’t quote remember whose greatest hits my mum got me as a 10 year old in 1990 first). My first taste of the band was my mum having a rather childish strop when their song “Desire” knocked a song by her then favourite band “The Hollies” from the number one spot. Then in 1992 I watched as they played the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert (albeit live via satellite) but there was still no inkling to discover more about them. But in 1995 I was looking for new and different music to listen to. I’d missed grunge, although I loved my Pearl Jam and Nirvanna cassettes (showing my age somewhat!), and Britpop, although fun, never quite pushed me musically.

In that same summer that brought us the big Blur V Oasis debate, U2 quietly released “Hold me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” a song used for the “Batman Forever” soundtrack. I randomly purchased the single (again, hard copy CDs is showing my age!) and instantly fell in love with the cyber punk/rock n roll/techno fuse of 90s U2. It must be said that I learnt not long after that this isn’t a typical U2 sounding song - but what is? After that, I became an instant fan, obsessing over them like other big fans. Over the coming years I purchased their back catalogue and old concerts on VHS (there I go again!) and was lucky to see them at Wembley on the 1997 PopMart tour. I was even more lucky to see them in Dublin in 2005 (having seen them in Manchester 2 weeks before) and again in Cardiff in 2009. But then I seemed to have lost a little interest in them.

For long periods of my life, U2 were a constant companion. If I was feeling down, they were there musically for me. They represented the single me. Yes, I had relationships during this time, but hindsight being what it is, they were never going to last for one reason or another. And guess who were there to pick the pieces up like the musical mates they were? U2.

In 2009 I met the girl that I went on to marry and start a family with me. I took her to see them in Cardiff, making her a fan in the process - as she says, the haters need to see them live before giving a music opinion on them. And this is the thing. They were no longer needed emotionally. The married me didn’t need to lean on U2 musically. My musical tastes changed somewhat. I’d always been a Metal fan, but now I was actively seeking out Metal acts. Although earlier this year I rediscovered Bruce Spingsteen after a long absence and this should have given me the inkling of a return to the Dublin band I loved for so many years.

And this is a long(ish) way of saying, after a few listens, this album has made me re-fall in love with U2. It wasn’t that I no longer needed them musically because they represented the single me. It was that, like an old married couple we grew apart. But now we have rekindled that love.

The new album itself has also shown that U2 are still a innovative band. They could easily become a Rolling Stones style greatest act (Nothing wrong with that). But they still aim to be relevant both musically and commercially. I mentioned buying CD singles. Well this was back in the days when the usual cycle for a band was create the album, release a single and get plenty of air play on the radio, release the album and one or two more singles and finally go on a big year long tour. Then repeat. But with the onset of Itunes, Napster and Spotify (to name but a few), people get their music differently via downloads or streaming. The humble single and album is no more. Yes bands create albums, but now people decide the single themselves by downloading it (I know some bands still “release a single” digitally). Commercial radio hasn’t quite got the listeners it once had as people stream music from Spotify or Google Play. So bands have to sell their much differently to sell the tickets for tours and remain musically relevant. This is the genius behind U2 giving away the album free for a month via Itunes. Apple get exclusivity, U2 get the album out to people who wouldn’t even think of buying it and then they become fans. In theory of course. But to me its a great way for an established band to bring their music to new fans.

Musically it has hints of the classic U2 sound. If there truly is a classic U2 sound. It is 26 years since they last did a classic 80s U2 sounding album. And even in the 80’s their sound went from naive new wave punks to a more American sound. The 90’s brought them more to an electronic sound - dance fused with rock with more than a subtle hint of Madchester with clear Happy Mondays, Charalatans, Stones Roses and Primal Scream style music in there. The 2000’s brought a more commercially friendly U2. The big anthems were still there, but the flirtation with DJs was over. But even then, they showed hints with a return to that sound in 2005 and 2009. Now this new album seems a more updated version of the 90’s sound with one of the producers being Danger Mouse. Its Zoo TV/Actung Baby if they recorded that album now. And this is the thing, what is the U2 style of music, if not a look at what is current and putting their spin on it. At the most its the driving bass of Adam Clayton, the drumming of Larry Mullen Jr, the effects laden guitar work of The Edge, backing poetic emotion filled lyrics song with passion by Bono. All with the epic feel of a stadium friendly sound that could equally be intimate.