November 9, 2025 – Hello Curns

Weeknotes #146: Luka, universe and ants provide a musical soundtrack

Energetic week of great gigs, sharp humour, and cultural reflections

Week commencing Monday, 3 November 2025

A concert photograph showing a large crowd watching a performance at the Hammersmith Apollo. The stage is bathed in dramatic red and orange lighting with beams cutting through atmospheric haze. Multiple spotlights create geometric patterns across the venue. The band's name "ADAM ANT" is visible on illuminated panels on stage, with silhouettes of performers and their equipment visible through the colourful lighting. Audience members in the foreground are holding up phones to capture the moment. — Adam Ant commands the Hammersmith Apollo stage.

Quantified Self

This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 2/7 and Move 6/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 38,773

Life

The average age of the performers at the excellent gigs I went to this week was 68.
Monday, to the Royal Albert Hall to see the last date in Suzanne Vega’s tour promoting the album Flying with Angels. It was a fantastic gig with a very appreciative audience.
Related, I looked it up and was surprised to discover that Luka only peaked at number twenty-three on the UK charts. It’s so ingrained in my memory that I assumed it charted higher. I wonder if twenty-three would be considered a hit these days?
Friday, Toyah was the support act and was brilliant. I loved the autobiographical stories between songs. Also, she opened with my favourite: Good Morning Universe.
She was supporting Adam Ant in Hammersmith. I can see where Johnny Depp stole the look. All the hits, ending with Stand & Deliver.
October: a month of live theatre, reviewed.
An email from John Lewis, with the subject line, “Watch our new Christmas ad before anyone else.” It links to a web page saying I need to watch it in their app on my phone. So I went to YouTube and there it was on John Lewis’s own channel for everyone to see. The ad’s OK. Great song. But the drive-me-to-the-app nonsense is marketing madness.
Inspires belief in the confidentiality of it all: “To complete your confidential ten-minute survey, please enter your work email address below.”
I feel the boat may have left the port: “Sky, BBC and ITN call on Starmer to ‘stamp out’ Big Tech’s ‘anticompetitive behaviour’.”
Ssshh! I feel the cat may be out of the bag: Apple’s new Siri will secretly use Google Gemini models behind the scenes. No secret — everybody’s reporting it.

Media

Tuesday marked twenty-two years since Channel 4’s Brookside bowed out. Hollyoaks became their main soap. I discovered that, as part of Hollyoaks’ 30th celebrations, Brookside Close was revisited in a couple of episodes. I watched the first crossover episode. I had no idea about the storyline, but it was good to see Sheila, Bobby, Barry, Billy, Sinbad and Tinhead all back on screen — and that little bit of the theme tune. Nicely nostalgic.
I came late to this series of Bake Off, but I enjoyed the final and am reminded that nice people make interesting telly.
They were nice, even though they were Celebrity Traitors. We’d caught up in time to watch the final on the day of transmission. Superb.

Night Off

So, I am not at the gym and I won’t beat myself up about it.

Tonight I am not going out socialising. Ever since Gym Buddy Day a free evening would have meant a trip to the gym but, this evening, I am sat ripping music so that my computer’s jukebox contains a few more of the CDs that I am running out of space to house. It’s a rare, spare, evening but I couldn’t face the thought of the gym tonight. It would have been the third consecutive day I would have gone and I have, so far, been fairly religious about my ‘ever other day’ rule. I tend to find evenings at home with leisure as my only goal are the worst in terms of eating; which is why I am sat ripping music. I have given myself a purpose for tonight. Usually on evenings such as this I would go to the gym but restrict myself with a few lengths of the pool – I have always felt that swimming doesn’t contravene the ‘ever other day’ rule as I find it the hardest of exercises because I don’t do it properly. Therefore, it doesn’t count as exercise. Sure, I stay above water and motor up and down but I have no technique and I always feel that when I am out of breath in the pool it’s because I haven’t been breathing correctly. Anyway, there are two pool-based classes back-to-back on Tuesdays which means those of us who just want to swim are restricted to a small portion of the water and that makes it too hard. So, I am sat here listening to The Hidden Cameras and enjoying every minute of it.

Weather Project

I visited one of my favourite areas of London earlier today, the Thames’ South Bank where I went to see Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at The Tate Modern

I visited one of my favourite areas of London earlier today, the Thames’ South Bank where I went to see Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at The Tate Modern. There’s half circle of the Sun made up of mono-frequency lamps – the kind which provide the orange glow to our streets at night. Running along the ceiling of the vast turbine hall is a mirror which gives the whole image the look of a whole circle, the sun. You can watch yourself in the mirror on the ceiling and many people do, indeed, lie on the floor looking up at themselves and the other ant-sized people. The lamps really restrict the amount of colour that you can see and that makes the whole atmosphere and experience quite eerie indeed. In fact, despite the orange glow it’s very grey.

I am not in a great one for museums and galleries but I really do like the Tate Modern and The Turbine Hall in particular. If you don’t know it, it’s a vast gallery space that once housed the turbines of the bankside power station. It’s huge and always seems to house interesting works – which is what attracts me back on a regular basis to see them.