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Parliament (or something that works on their behalf) has been busy getting ready to comply with the High Court ruling from 16th May 2008 that it must publish MP’s expenses under the Freedom of Information Act. Seven months of compiling the data, and nearly a million pounds, later and they’ve decided a better route would be to change the Freedom of Information Act to exclude the data. The vote’s on Thursday (you may have missed it around all the Heathrow runway kerfuffle).

This, frankly, is taking the piss.

There’s more information from mySociety, the charity that runs TheyWorkForYou and others. Start with their overview, which includes helpful links to things you can do, including writing to your MP to ask them politely to vote against this rat bastard approach to transparency.

(I wrote to mine, but Nick Raynsford MP is against transparency in government to start off with, so I’m not hopeful he’ll pay attention. Mind you, I’m not hopeful he’ll bother to vote at all, since he generally abstains on transparency issues.)

In school today I came across a GCSE music question which I couldn’t answer. It asked for definitions of homophony, polyphony, monophony and heterophony; the first two are simple enough, the (largely choral) styles of writing based either on chords or on contrapuntal lines. By extension, monophony is the art of writing single notes, so a simpler term to use is “tune”.

But heterophony? I’d never heard the word. On the surface it sounds like it ought to be the opposite of homophony, but that role is already filled by polyphony.

It turns out, as a student had to explain to me, that heterophony is “like, when you have one note and then another note on top of it which is, like, the same note, but there are more of them and they move at a different speed”.

But it does seem odd to me that from starting to learn the recorder at the age of five through to completing the Cambridge music tripos some 17 years of musical education later that I never once came across this undoubtedly useful term. In school today I voiced the theory that it has just been made up in the interim to make GCSE music more interesting.

And then it occurred to me that heterophony sounds like the kind of practise that might, until recently, have been found abhorent by normal homophonic musicians. Maybe it was even illegal until Blair’s government passed an act giving heterophonics the same rights as other people. Could it be that until the mid-90s, heterophony was only really found in the dark shady underground of the music world – in heterophonic bars and clubs, in heterophonic saunas, on Hampstead Heath or in Amsterdam?

It put me in mind of certain other musical deviations which, to date, are still not talked about in GCSE papers, or even mentioned in polite society:

Necrophony – using chords written by dead composers

Bestiophony – using animal noises in music (cf Banchieri’s ‘Contrapunto bestiale alla mente’)

Sodophony – leaving a concert before it’s finished

Masochophony – listening to Philip Glass for pleasure

Transvestophony – singing countertenor

Cacophony – music involving faeces

…I expect there are more where that came from…

James likes to write down the first 10 search results.

James likes to relax by swimming, walking the coastal footpath with Jane or catching up with the TV programmes he’s recorded.

James likes to talk.

James likes to throw curveballs.

James likes to keep it hot.

James likes to carry other divas.

James likes to focus on institutions.

James likes to clean the counters.

James likes to be beside the seaside.

James likes to DJ at Corporate events and cook gourmet meals.

…the funny thing is, five and a half of these of these apply to me, four and a third of them apply to the other James, and only one of them applies to P. D. James – but none of us relax by walking the coastal footpath with Jane.

I’ve been visiting opticians regularly since 1987 and until today I thought I knew all their little tricks. The machinery has gradually got more hi-tec looking and they have over the years added in tests to measure the curvature of your eyes and the like, but basically it’s still about reading letters in the distance.

So there I was at the optician’s this afternoon, going through the usual exercises and thinking I knew exactly what was coming next, when the optician said “just put your chin on the rest a moment, I’m going to turn your eyelids inside out.”

And before I could say “you’re going to WHAT?????” or even think of protesting “you’re doing no such thing, they didn’t need to turn my eyelids inside out in 1987 and you’re not about to start” she had her fingers inside my eyelids and was inserting the eyelid equivalent of a shoehorn to flip them inside out.

So I sat there with inside out eyelids. I haven’t even checked to see if she put them back afterwards. I certainly didn’t have the nerve to ask her why she felt the need to turn my eyelids inside out, and I’m worried that it’s a joke that opticians play on people just because they can.

In the meantime, I think I’m traumatised for life.

Later today we will know who is taking over from David Tennant as the Doctor, but in the meantime bookmakers and journalists are enjoying all sorts of speculation which ranges from the too obvious to the completely barmy. So let’s just have a quick run-down of who’s being pipped for the post and, more importantly, why…

Paterson Joseph

Who?: David Mitchell’s boss in Peep Show.

Why?: because he’s black.

I say that with the greatest respect for his acting skills: even before the Presidential election it was fashionable to have a black candidate for everything, and it’s the reason he’s the favourite to win. But in much the same way as Christopher Eccleston being Northern didn’t massively refresh the character of the Doctor a few years ago, let’s hope Joseph isn’t simply going to be “the black Doctor”; when they ticked the “black assistant” box a few years ago they thought that it was enough that she was black so didn’t bother writing her a character. That was a mistake, that was.

David Morrissey

Who?: the star of Basic Instinct 2.

Why?: because in the Doctor Who Christmas special broadcast just days ago, he played a man who thought he was the Doctor. He wasn’t. Much as I can understand why nobody would put themselves through watching said Christmas special, the fact that he turned out not to be the Doctor suggests he’s going to turn out not to be the Doctor.

Russell Tovey

Who?: the least appealing character in The History Boys.

Why?: because Russell T Davies wants to sleep with him. This much he has admitted in so many words in his new book, in various interviews, and probably to himself every night before bed for the last year. It doesn’t necessarily mean Tovey would be a good person to play the Doctor. In fact I suggest it would be a hideous error of judgement, primarily because Russell T Davies is old enough to be his father.

Catherine Zeta Jones

Who?: that Welsh one.

Why?: because she’s a woman.

It has been virtually obligatory to jokingly suggest a woman for the role since 1981. At least, let’s hope this is a joke. Please please please please let it be a joke…

Billie Piper

Who?: singer of 1998 number one single “Because we want to” and Mrs Chris Evans.

Why?: this, I fear, is completely unanswerable.

I mean, what on earth is going on here? Billie Piper played the Doctor’s companion for two years, cropped up again in 2008 and was last seen snogging a clone of the Doctor on a beach in Norway in a particularly twisted story development where she basically got a fuck-buddy who looked the same as a different man she had lustful desires for; are the production team really going to take this a step further and suggest that the original Doctor, having seen himself playing tonsil tennis with his former companion, is suddenly overcome by a desire to look like her? That if he can’t get his hands on the real thing he’s going to follow her lead and make himself a copy, even if that copy is himself?

I mean, really? Is Billie Piper really a candidate? Has the whole world gone completely mad????

…and the possible final sentences for 2008 are as follows:

As one year of recession gives way to another, my heart is gladdened by the thought that we don’t need money and security when we have love and friendship.

As one year of recession gives way to another, my heart is gladdened by the thought that I have a fixed-term job with a house and fixed salary so maybe I don’t need love and friendship after all.

Boris beat Ken, Alexandra Burke’s “Hallelujah” got to number one instead of Jeff Buckley’s, and “Mamma Mia” became the highest-selling UK DVD of all time – as vintage years go, 2008 was a bit of a Sainsbury’s basics table red.

Spent the night at a party with boring adults taking horse tranquilliser in a room next door and felt superior in every way.

Woke up after midday and watched two “Legally Blonde” films whilst stuffing my face full of pretzels and felt my entire existence was unjustified.

What would it be like to be fat I wonder, fat or a monk, I’d love to know but I don’t think 2009 holds the answer.

This year I made more friends than ever before – but only on facebook.

I can only hope that in 2009 I’ll get a few more nights off pleasure.

Either due to lack of time or lack of discipline, my private journal has become increasingly sporadic over the years, but until 2005 I strove to keep a daily diary and this day of the year always had a feeling of ceremony about it. I suppose I wanted to leave readers either with a satisfying feeling of closure, or in more ambitious years on a bit of a cliffhanger so they’d want to come back for more of my thrilling life story. In the embarressing optimism of my early teens this often took the form of a mawkish summary; in 1997 I went for the ultimate season finale with half a sentence which I finished in the next diary. (A sweet idea which I have just noticed is completely ruined by an elementary grammatical error.)

But whilst I remember often putting a great deal of thought into wrapping up my year, flicking through my old diaries I have discovered that my favourite final sentences are actually masterpieces of anticlimax. A few of the best ones:

1994: Dad let me have 3 glasses of wine, 3% alcohol. (You absolute rebel, you 15-year-old James Lark.)

1998: If. (A pretentious year, then.)

2001: Tsk – I’ve become a stereotype. (A moment of terrible self-realisation.)

2002: Walked home in nasty rain with grumpy sister. (This one is my favourite for its beautifully grim sense of realism.)

2005: 2006 will be better. (A sad one this, especially as I have a feeling it didn’t turn out to be true.)

There will be no sense of ceremony about writing my journal tonight, probably because I will fall asleep before I get around to doing it, but I am pondering what kind of final sentence I might have applied to 2008. In fact, for the lack of a final page to put it on, I might as well blog whatever options I come up with. I’ll get back to you…

It’s no wonder the York Railway Museum shifts so many poster prints…

I’m not a fan of inter-denominational church politics and as a rule am more than happy to take the pure and simple label “Christian” to describe my religious inclinations. But I have never felt closer to nailing my colours to the C of E mast than at the end of a week in which the Archbishop of Canterbury talked complete sense about the credit crisis whilst the Bishop of Rome took a subtle but nasty swipe at sexual minorities.

What he said has, predictably, been exaggerated and misreported; the Pope certainly never mentioned homosexuals and neither did he mention transsexuals; but given the Vatican’s recent attitude towards both (the Vatican has just announced its opposition to a United Nations proposal to protect gays from being criminalised and punished by governments for their orientation) it’s not difficult to see what the Pope meant when he said “the Church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected”.

I actually find it all the more sinister that his Holiness chose to disguise this as an environmental message (“rainforests deserve yes, our protection, but the human being as a creature which contains a message that is not in contradiction with his freedom, but is the condition of his freedom, does not deserve it less”) – he has taken an issue which concerns everyone and tried to wrap his own prejudiced views into it, which is no less than what Norman Tebbit did when he managed to turn a discussion about child obesity into a rant about sodomy.

Firstly, this shows a huge lack of perspective, a problem which is not unfamiliar to the church but which one hoped the Holy Father might not suffer from. Yet he suggests that as plants and animals are forced from their habitats and a million species face possible extinction over the next 50 years, God is equally ticked off when a man takes an expensive holiday to Australia and comes back as a woman. Whatever your beliefs about changing genders and the related issues of sexuality, is the latter really in the same league of awfulness? What the Pope said, in his sneaky Papal way, is that they’re just as bad as each other – and his obsession with “correct sex” (i.e. not bumming) shows just how preoccupied his leadership is with the minor issue (there, I’ve said it, it’s a minor issue) of sex and sexuality. Did his Christmas speech mention human rights abuses, perhaps name-check Mugabe or point out that people are still being tortured – sorry, interrogated – at Guantanamo bay? Nope. It’s just the trannies and, if you take his thoughts to their logical conclusion (most reporters have), queers who get the Papal wrath this year. Frohe Weihnachten.

What I wonder then, is this: has the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church forgotten the true meaning of Christmas?

It is, after all, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, who practiced and preached absolute acceptance of all human beings, who showed love to outcasts and sexual deviants and who did not have divisions of class, race or gender in his ministry. He never actually mentioned homosexuality (maybe he also thought it was a minor issue), but if there had been transsexuals in Judea at the time I can’t help feeling he’d probably have taken the time to chew the fat with them.

The inclusiveness of Jesus’ teaching is beautifully summed up by the apostle Paul, which is ironic because religious conservatives usually count on him being on their side. “There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”

It’s up to you, of course, but that’s the Christmas message I’m paying attention to this year.

Has anybody else noticed the deluge of panettone in England this Christmas? Every shop I go in seems to have top shelves bursting with panettone of different shapes and varieties, be they food shops, clothes shops or shops selling car parts. Indeed, I have gone past WHOLE shops devoted to the stuff – panettone up to the top of every shop window, balanced on top of every counter, being worn as hats by the staff.

I don’t remember this happening last year, and I’m sure than when I was young we managed to get through the whole Christmas season without the slightest hint of dry, tasteless Italian cakey stuff.

Which leads me to two possible conclusions:

1. It’s Bedford.
2. It’s the credit crisis.

The first would make sense as Bedford is full of mafioso, but doesn’t hold true as the panettone invasion has also affected parts of London and Cambridge I have visited in recent weeks.

So what about the second alternative? Dry and tasteless it may be, but panettone is at least cheap, unlike fruitcake topped with marzipan and icing. Is the stuff being marketed to thrifty Christmas shoppers, looking for something to eat after they’ve had their turkey twizzler main course?

Or has Gordon Brown entered into some kind of sinister deal with Silvio Berlusconi? Is Italy currently undergoing a similar deluge of mince pies or some other quintessentially English Christmas dessert (in which case they definitely got the better end of the deal)?

Or it is simply Italy’s way of dealing with the credit crisis? They’re hoping to solve their financial problems by selling the only thing they have left to ship out in their millions?