My essentials: Celia Borg Cardona’s cultural picks

Book

I think of all the books I’ve read this year Maria Ressa’s How To Stand Up To A Dictator is the one that I will never forget and one that I’ll probably keep dipping into. To have the courage to stand up for what is right in the face of the stark reality of what the Philippines (and a lot of the rest of the world) have become is truly inspiring and, boy, did she deserve her Nobel Prize! If one is still allowed to have role models at my age, she is mine and I wish I had a fraction of her guts in my own Occupy Justice activism.

Film

Last week I watched A Complete Unknown which is a retelling of the start of Bob Dylan’s career. Probably because I am ‘of a certain age’ I loved it. I’ve grown up with Bob Dylan and have been lucky enough to see him perform live a couple of times. But apart from this direct interest, the film itself is so well made and depicts New York in the Sixties so evocatively. I loved it!

Internet and TV

There’s not much I can say here because I’m not into ‘socials’ (ugh, horrible word!) and I very rarely watch live TV except to watch BBC and Sky for news. Like everyone else I watch a lot of series and films on TV, some good, some very good and some not so good. We’ve just watched Criminal Record, a police thriller that turned darker and darker as it went on. And if it’s dark you want, watch the film I’ve just seen, Love Lies Bleeding. It has shades of Tarantino and Kubrick with a 2025 kick.

Music

I know this is going to seem rather macabre but I just love requiems. I have quite a collection of them on CDs. Of course, I now never listen to CDs, they’re obsolete but I still hear them on Spotify. Difficult to decide which one I’d want at my funeral: Verdi’s is a bit too operatic, though awe inspiring, so I think it will be Mozart’s or Faure’s. It’s a difficult choice… but I think the Mozart one wins. Note to whoever does the organising: I want the full mass. 

Place

I recently spent some time living in the Basque region of Spain in Pamplona, near the northern Pyrenees and France. Apart from the 10 days in July when the whole place goes berserk with over a million visitors who come for the running of the bulls for San Fermin, it is a quiet, well run and quite lovely city. The fortifications are very similar to Malta’s, which is no surprise since Martin de Redin was from there. There’s even a Rohan Bastion. Everything works efficiently, including the buses and trains, but the life style is still southern European with extended families dining out together and fiestas being thrown for any excuse.