My daughter's top ten films and books, aged 14

TOP TEN FILMS
1. Howl's Moving Castle (Miyazaki, 2004)
2. Ocean's 8 (Ross, 2018)
3. Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)
4. My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
5. Moana (Clements, Musker, 2016)
6. Spider-Man: Far From Home (Watts, 2019)
7. Ponyo (Miyazaki, 2008)
8. Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
9. The Truman Show (Weir, 1998)
10. Tomorrowland (Bird, 2015)

TOP TEN BOOKS
1. The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
2. Divergent by Veronica Roth
3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
4. To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
5. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
6. More Than This by Patrick Ness
7. 5 Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott
8. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
9. Ingo by Helen Dunmore
10. After the Fire by Will Hill

Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten Studio Ghibli films
My daughter's top ten films, aged 13
My daughter's top ten books, aged 12½ 
My daughter's top ten films (aged 12) 
My daughter's top ten films (aged 11)
My daughter's top ten films (aged 10)

My daughter's top ten films (aged 8)
My daughter's top ten films (aged 7) 
My daughter's top twenty films (aged 5)
My daughter's top ten films (aged 3)

Top ten songs about films

1. Song: The Seventh Seal by Scott Walker
Film: The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957)
"Anybody seen a knight pass this way?
I saw him playing chess with Death, yesterday"

2. Song: Debaser by The Pixies
Film: Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel/Dali, 1929)
"Got me a movie
I want you to know
Slicing up eyeballs
I want you to know" 

3. Song: Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen*
Film: Badlands (Malick, 1973)
"I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died"

4. Song: 2HB by Roxy Music
Film: Casablanca (Curtiz, 1943)
"Oh I was moved by your screen dream
Celluloid pictures of living
Your death could not kill our love for you
Take two people, romantic
Smoky nightclub situation
Your cigarette traces a ladder
Here's looking at you kid"

5. Song: Brownsville Girl by Bob Dylan** 
Film: The Gunfighter (King, 1950)
"Well, there was this movie I seen one time
About a man riding 'cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck
He was shot down by a hungry kid trying to make a name for himself

The townspeople wanted to crush that kid down and string him up by the neck" 

6. Song: E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite 

Films: Performance, Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, the Man Who Fell to Earth and Insignificance, all directed by Nic Roeg.

"Man dies first reel, people ask, "What's the deal?

This ain't how it's supposed to be; Don't like no Aborigine" [Walkabout]

"Took a trip in Powis Square, pop star dyed his hair" [Performance]
"Met a dwarf that was no good, dressed like little Red Riding Hood
Bad habit taking life, her calling card a six-inch knife" [Don't Look Now]
"Space guy fell from the sky, scratched my head and wondered why" [The Man Who Fell to Earth]
"The King of brains, Queen of the sack; executives have heart attack
It's assault course celluloid the money makers would avoid
Sometimes notions get reversed – centre of the universe" [Insignificance]

7. Song: Like Dylan in the Movies by Belle and Sebastian 
Film: Dont Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
"Don't look back
Like Dylan in the Movies"

8. Song: Lyla by Coco Rosie 
Film: Lilya 4-ever (Moodysson, 2002)
"It reminded me
Of a movie I just saw

About a little girl
From Yugoslavia
She got sent away
They made her prostitute
She ate McDonald's all day
And never had a chance to play
Lyla" 

9. Song: The Union Forever by The White Stripes 

Film: Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
"Sure I'm C.F.K.

But you gotta love me
The cost no man can say
But you gotta love me" 

10. Song: Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Deep Blue Something

Films: Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953); Breakfast at Tiffany's (Edwards, 1961)
And I said "What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?"
She said, "I think I remember that film
And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it."

*Springsteen also wrote a song called Badlands which has nothing to do with the classic Malick flick of the same name.
**Film references and dialogue litter the songs of Bob Dylan, most frequently on his 1985 effort, Empire Burlesque. One keen Bobcat has found references to 61 films in Dylan songs..

Top ten British seaside films

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside... especially when it involves Teddy Boy gangs, radioactive children, prostitutes, murder, drugs, desolation and hopelessness. Things sure have changed since Carol Reed's Bank Holiday (1938).

1. Brighton Rock (Boulting, 1948) BRIGHTON
2. The Damned (Losey, 1962) WEYMOUTH
3. Bait (Jenkins, 2019) CHARLESTOWN
4. Quadrophenia (Roddam, 1979) BRIGHTON 
5. The Birthday Party (Friedkin, 1968) WORTHING
6. Wish You Were Here (Leland, 1987) BRIGHTON, WORTHING & BOGNOR REGIS
7. Archipelago (Hogg, 2010) ISLES OF SCILLY
8. Last Resort (Pawlikowski, 2000) MARGATE
9. London to Brighton (Williams, 2006) BRIGHTON
10. Bhaji on the Beach (Chadha, 1993) BLACKPOOL

Elsewhere on the web
Films on the Strange British Coastline at Celluloid Wicker Man

Previously on Barnflakes
Fisherman's Friends vs Bait
Art of the seaside 

Shakespeare in the time of coronavirus, a top ten

"Now is the spring of our discontent"
– Richard III, Act I, Sc I

"We have seen better days"
– Timon of Athens Act 4, Sc 2

‘A hearse! a hearse! my kingdom for a hearse!"
– Richard III Act 5, Sc 4

1. A Detergent of Venice
2. ASDA You Like It
3. The Taming of the Barbeque
4. Bronchitis Andronicus
5. Two Gentlemen of Corona
6. A Tragedy of Carers
7. Henry IV, Part Achoo
8. Leisure for Leisure
9. Not Too Much About Nothing
10. Coronalanus

Thanks to Ray and Nind!

Previously on Barnflakes
Kill Bill(ions)
It's a Shame about Ray – the book
50 Shades of Ray / Catching some Rays
Top ten Prince food songs
Lionel Richie tea

Recent random cinematic top tens

For your lockdown viewing pleasure.

TOP TEN FILMS ABOUT CULTS
1. Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968)
2. Kill List (Wheatley, 2011)
3. The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973)
4. Race with the Devil (Starrett, 1975)
5. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin, 2011)
6. Midsommar (Aster, 2019)
7. Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
8. The Endless (Benson & Moorhead, 2017)
9. Children of the Corn (Kiersch, 1984)
10. Holy Smoke! (Campion, 1999)

(NB: Quentin Tarantino chose to rewrite the history of the Manson Family in last year's Once Upon A Time... in Hollywood.)

TOP TEN BLACK & WHITE CULT FILMS
It doesn’t have to be low-budget, weird, sleazy and violent, but it helps.

1. Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)
2. Carnival of Souls (Harvey, 1962)
3. Freaks (Browning, 1932)
4. Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel, 1929)
5. The Honeymoon Killers (Kastle, 1970)
6. Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
7. Onibaba (Shindo, 1964)
8. Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
9. Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! (Meyer, 1965)
10. Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1978)

TOP TEN RABBITS IN FILMS
1. Watership Down (Rosen, 1978)
2. Harvey (Koster, 1950)
3. Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001)
4. Fatal Attraction (Lyne, 1987)
5. Alice (Švankmajer, 1988)
6. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Box & Park, 2005)
7. Us (Peele, 2019)
8. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988)
9. Inland Empire (Lynch, 2006)
10. Night of the Lepus (Claxton, 1972)

TOP TEN FRENCH THRILLERS
1. Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
2. Le Boucher (Chabrol. 1970)
3. Les Diaboliques (Cluzot, 1955)
4. Le Samouraï (Melville, 1967)
5. L'Appartement (Mimouni, 1996)
6. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard, 2005)
7. Tell No One (Canet, 2006)
8. A Prophet (Audiard, 2009)
9. Cache (Haneke, 2005)
10. La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) 

TOP TEN FILMS FEATURING DEER HUNTING
A little while ago, it felt like every other film we watched started with a deer hunt, usually as an ironic metaphor for the movie to come: the hunter will soon become the hunted.

1. Bambi (Hand, 1942)
2. The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978)
3. The Hunt (Vinterberg, 2012)
4. Hanna (Wright, 2011)
5. Captain Fantastic (Ross, 2016)
6. The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012)
7. Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013)
8. Straw Dogs (Lurie, 2011)
9. Last of the Mohicans (Mann, 1992)
10. Big Game (Helander, 2015)

(NB: Yorgos Lanthimos' excellent Killing of a Sacred Deer does not feature any deer at all; come to think of it, his 2015 film The Lobster contains no lobsters.)

TOP TEN WOMEN IN WESTERNS
1. Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)
2. Julie Christie in McCabe and Mrs Miller (Altman 1971)
3. Millie Perkins in The Shooting (Hellman, 1966)
4. Shirley MacLaine in Two Mules for Sister Sara (Siegel, 1970)
5. Natalie Wood in The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
6. Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon A Time in the West
(Leone, 1968)
7. Jane Russell in The Outlaw (Hughes, 1943)
8. Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again (Marshall, 1939)
9. Jane Fonda in Cat Ballou (Silverstein, 1965)
10. Doris Day in Calamity Jane (Butler, 1953)

Top ten things to be positive about during the Coronavirus pandemic

With millions of people around the globe entering isolation, losing their jobs and getting into debt, as well as thousands dying, it’s understandably hard to remain upbeat at the moment. Here’s ten ways to look on the bright side.

1. Air pollution in the UK halved during the first day of the lockdown; similar results have been recorded in Europe and Asia.
2. When I’ve been out for my daily walk, I’ve heard the sound of children playing and birds singing, instead of cars.*
3. Nature is loving it. Birds and animals are everywhere. Nature is able to breathe.*
4. People are generally being friendlier, and it’s mostly bringing out the best in them.
5. Spending more time with family doing things – creative projects or games.
6. Doing proper cooking and baking at home (my daughter, aged 13, has made olive bread and naan bread, and cooked a curry, so far)
7. Everyone has instantly been cured of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), an anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere. Don’t worry, it’s not.
8. You’re not in an office.
9. There are loads of free stuff online, from concerts and plays to films and apps, including two cool synthesiser apps from Moog and Korg.
10. It's a great time to be an introvert – extroverts have had their day (if only social media didn't exist)!

*On our brief country walk today, we encountered a woodpecker, horses, swans, squirrels, crows, dogs, cats, a partridge, water rats, a rare North American black fox, goats, two emus and a reindeer (I'm cheating slightly here – the last four were seen whilst walking through Feadon Farm, though we were lucky the fox was being taken for a walk as we wandered past).

We had a brief chat (from a distance, obvs) with a couple who pointed out to us two water rats in the lake at Tehidy Woods.
Enjoying your walk? They asked us.
I said it's a beautiful world without cars or people.
The man agreed, though said he was ready to get back to reality.
Reality?
This is reality. Nature. What an artificial bubble we created with offices, cars, shops, roads. A false reality. Nature was here before us and will be here after.

Previously on Barnflakes
Staying at home: a guide to enjoying isolation
Armchair atlases

Top ten Studio Ghibli films

I have a confession to make – I’ve only watched ten (of 22), so here they are, in order. Luckily, Netflix are releasing all of Studio Ghibli’s films (with the exception of Grave of the Fireflies) in batches of seven over the next three months. The first batch has just been released. This is literally the best thing to happen in the world this decade. Though I've criticised Netflix in the past, I can only thank them for releasing The Other Side of the Wind, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, a new(ish) David Lynch black and white short film, What Did Jack Do?,  as well as the excellent Uncut Gems and now the Studio Ghibli output.

10. Porco Rosso (1992)
9. Arrietty (2010)
8. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
7. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
6. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
5. Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
4. Ponyo (2008)
3. My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
2. Spirited Away (2001)
1. Princess Mononoke (1997)

How to compile a Robert Pattinson top ten films without mentioning Twilight or Harry Potter

Salty stuff: Pattinson masturbates furiously in a two hour black and white film about two 19th century lighthouse keepers in what The Guardian describe as 'Steptoe and Son at sea' – The Lighthouse, released in the UK in the new year, is at No.5.

10. Water for Elephants (Francis Lawrence, 2011)
9. Damsel (Zellner brothers, 2018) 
8. The Rover (David Michôd, 2014)
7. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, 2012)
6. The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016)
5. The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019)
4. Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg, 2014)
3. The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet, 2015)
2. High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)
1. Good Time (Safdie brothers, 2017)

Top ten vinyl wants

There's really no logical explanation why I want certain albums on vinyl (though desire doesn't need an explanation) but it's partly to do with that warm, analogue sound, the album sleeve... and being pretentious.

In truth, sound quality has little to do with it – my most passionate and profound musical experiences were probably in the 1980s on my hissy Sony Walkman listening to albums taped from scratched records borrowed from my local library.

I've wanted all of the following for years, and could go and buy them all on eBay or Discogs today, but that would be cheating. Obviously I want to come across them randomly in charity shops for £1.

1. Popol Vuh – Aquirre (film soundtrack)
2. Moondog – Moondog
3. Meredith Monk – Key
4. Sleep – Dopesmoker
5. Moe Tucker – I Feel So Far Away: Anthology 1974-1998
6. Sons of Kemet – Your Queen Is A Reptile
7. La Planete Sauvage (film soundtrack)
8. Incredible String band – U
9. Dawn of the Dead (film soundtrack) 
10. Lô Borges/Milton Nascimento – Clube da Esquina

Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten missed vinyl barngains
The month's musical barngains

Top ten popular websites I’ve never understood and/or even looked at or even heard of

Yes, I’m obsolete, middle-aged and lovin’ it.

1. Reddit
Most of the internet seems to be run by kids for kids.
2. TwitchTV
Want to watch a busty, hot Canadian woman playing video games? Of course you do. Apparently this is now the most logged in website ever (someone told me; don't know if it's true). I literally hadn't heard of it until yesterday.
3. imdb
I've yet to find a decent film website.
4. Pinterest
Random, pointless.
5. TripAdvisor
Every month, 456 million people visit Trip Advisor – but not me. I sort of knew what it was, but have probably only visited it once before (to research writing a previous post). I would never read a review and go or not go somewhere based on it. Like with Amazon, if there's a thousand reviews saying how amazing something is (which I'd always be sceptical about anyway), they'll also be lots saying how rubbish the same thing is (which I'd be more likely to believe). So how to decide? Go there and make up your own mind.
6. Rotten Tomatoes
I think it's a film site run by teenagers.
7. LADbible
Just the name makes me want to puke.
8. Live
Anything Microsoft related isn't worth visiting.
9. Live Jasmin
Popular porn I think.
10. Office
See 8.

Most of the above feature in the top 20 most visited websites in the UK.

Top ten Cornish place names

1. Greensplat

2. London Apprentice
3. Sticker
4. No Man's Land
5. Come to Good
6. Indian Queens
7. Gweek
8. Minions
9. Praze-an-Beeble
10. Ventongimps 

(If I was being really immature, I could just about manage a top five of Cornish cheeky body part places. Oh, okay then:
1. Brown Willy
2. Booby's Bay
3. Cocks
4. Jolly's Bottom
5. Green Bottom) 

Previously on Barnflakes:
Cornwall Loves and Hates
Cock, Fany, Shag

My daughter's top ten films, aged 13

1. Ocean's 8* (Gary Ross**, 2018)
2. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki & Kirk Wise, 2003)
3. The Hunger Games (Gary Ross**, 2012)
4. A Dog's Purpose (Lasse Hallström***, 2017)
5. Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2005)
6. Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)
7. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, 2013)
8. My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
9. Instant Family (Sean Anders, 2018)
10. Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki, 2010)

*Hmm, Ocean's 8 was going to be in a list I never posted for Worst 10 films of 2018. It would have looked like this:

1. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

2. Ocean's 8

3. Black Panther

4. Bohemian Rhapsody

5. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Two forms of punctuation in a three word title can only be bad)

6. Avengers: Infinity War (I agree with director László Nemes (Son of Saul and Sunset) about superhero movies)

7. Pacific Rim: Uprising

8. You Were Never Really Here (As much as I admire Lyne Ramsey, this didn't work for me)

9. Fifty Shades Freed

10. The Darkest Minds

**Mr Ross, now in his sixties, is hopefully best well known for directing the brilliant Pleasantville. And writing Big.

***Surprising he wasn't asked to direct Mamma Mia – Hallström directed most of ABBA's videos in the 1970s and 1980s as well as ABBA: the Movie in 1977. He's made a few decent films – My Life As A Dog (1985), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Chocolat (2000) among them but sentimentality was always his weakness.

Anyway, I'm glad she still loves Studio Ghibli films (numbers 2, 5, 8 and 10), I think they're brilliant too.

Previously on Barnflakes:
My daughter's top ten films (aged 12) 
My daughter's top ten films (aged 11)
My daughter's top ten films (aged 10)

My daughter's top ten films (aged 8)
My daughter's top ten films (aged 7) 
My daughter's top twenty films (aged 5)
My daughter's top ten films (aged 3)

The top 100 films

Top ten Keanu Reeves films

1. Point Break (Bigelow, 1991)
2. My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991)
3. The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999)
4. Speed (de Bont, 1994)
5. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Herek, 1989)
6. A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006)
7. River's Edge (Hunter, 1986)
8. Thumbsucker (Mills, 2005)
9. Dangerous Liasons (Frears, 1988)
10. Parenthood (Howard, 1989)

We recently had trouble watching the whole of Siberia, a 2018 Netflix film starring a wooden Reeves as a dodgy diamond trader ("Fatally, the script requires Reeves to do some serious acting", quipped the Guardian). You'd think after thirty years of doing the same job, he'd get the hang of it by now.

On paper, Reeves seems more interesting than he is on screen: born in Beirut with a mother from Essex and a Hawaiian father, Reeves is actually Canadian. I read once he didn't own anything and lived out of hotels. His wife gave birth to a stillborn baby in 1999 then died just over a year later in a car accident. It's thought he's Buddhist (though he's not). Then there was that sad meme which went viral a few years ago. No one's entirely sure if he's deep or dumb or both, but everyone likes him. Adam Driver looks like a long lost cousin of Keanu's – but at least he can act.

I’m torn about writing top tens for actors – do you rate the film or the performance or a combination of both? I'm going for both. Hence I'm leaving out the "critical approved" John Wick films, The Devil's Advocate, Constantine and the two other Matrix films – all of which are terrible. Recently he seems to be doing a Liam Neeson and typecasting himself as an action hero in his later years (Neeson was 56 when he did the first Taken movie; Reeves is in his mid-50s now.)

To misquote a line about Orson Welles and Citizen Kane: Point Break is the best action film ever, and it's not even Bigelow's best (that would be Near Dark, surely?).

Top ten Canadian musicians

1. Leonard Cohen
2. Glenn Gould
3. Joni Mitchell
4. Neil Young
5. The Band
6. Godspeed You! Black Emperor
7. Jane Siberry
8. Arcade Fire 
9. Peaches
10. k.d. lang

Do say: Where's The Weeknd, Feist, Owen Pallett, Daniel Lanois, Ron Sexsmith and Barenaked Ladies?
Don't say: Where's Rush, Justin Bieber, Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, Drake, Michael Buble and Alanis Morissette?

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top 10 Australian bands

Top ten breakfasts

1. Full English
2. Eggs Benedict
3. Pancakes with bacon and maple syrup
4. Continental breakfast
5. Scrambled eggs on toast
6. Porridge
7. Toast (with marmalade and Marmite)
8. Shakshuka (Tunisian; eggs in tomato sauce)
9. Boiled egg with soldiers
10. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes

Seeing as Barnflakes is a pun on a breakfast cereal, and my unofficial motto is 'Barnflakes: Breakfast for the soul', it’s hard to believe it’s taken me so long to write a top ten. Especially because I like breakfast so much I could have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And sometimes do (for as W. Somerset Maugham famously said, “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.”)

Breakfast was always said to the the most important meal of the day*, but with a third of Britons skipping the meal altogether (despite evidence of a link between obesity and not eating it) and one academic labelling it "dangerous", breakfast's dominance may be waning.

But not for me; I wouldn't be able to leave the house without it. Usually just tea and toast but sometimes – usually at the weekend – pancakes, porridge, scrambled eggs, a boiled egg or a fry up. There's nothing like the morning smell of coffee brewing and bacon and eggs frying.

But breakfast is probably best when you're out – in a cafe or restaurant, in a hotel, preferably in a foreign country. When abroad, a good breakfast is an essential start to the day, a great way to ingratiate yourself in local customs and culture and see how and what the locals eat. Eating is as much a ritual as any religious activity, and breakfast is, I think, the most ceremonial of meals**.

Take the humble yet iconic and versatile egg. Cracking it open encompasses birth, rebirth and death. It's a vital part of a breakfast and a great source of protein. The egg can be scrambled, boiled, fried and poached, as well as being integral to French toast (a.k.a. eggy bread), pancakes, omelettes and eggs Benedict.

On holiday, tea and toast is not acceptable for breakfast. Coffee is preferred over tea. For a start, coffee feels more sophisticated and cosmopolitan (well, it did, honest, at least before Costa and Starbucks came along and the masses started guzzling down buckets of hot milk with a splash of coffee) though also it tastes better abroad but mainly because tea tastes so bad everywhere except in the UK.

A hotel buffet is okay but it's nicer to go out to a local's cafe. The hotel buffet has its advantages, of course. Mainly, it's free. Also, it's easy to find – it's usually, you know, downstairs, unlike trying to locate a cafe or restaurant in a new, foreign city (I tend to follow my misleading nose, rather than use guidebooks or apps).

It's no doubt a lot to do with the feeling of waking up in a foreign country, but there's something about the simplicity and freshness of a French or Italian or Slovenian breakfast that's so delicious, even if it's just the taste of the orange juice or the bread.

I can remember breakfasts abroad from fifteen years ago whereas most lunches and dinners are instantly forgettable (partly, perhaps, because lunch abroad is mostly a rushed baguette on the way to another gallery or church or ruin; dinner is trying not to get overcharged, which usually translates as pizza or pasta). Lovely pasteis de nata, otherwise known as Portuguese custard tarts, with coffee and orange juice, in a cafe in Lisbon. Or a terrible breakfast of a brick-hard pastry in Barcelona along Las Ramblas; the horrible German-themed buffet in Sousse, Tunisia (I never said all breakfast memories had to be good ones). But whether good or bad, breakfasts are more memorable.

I had some of my best-ever breakfasts in the United States, where I was introduced to the concept of mixing sweet and savoury, something the British have never really done. Pancakes with bacon and maple syrup is a classic example.

Whilst in New Orleans, I remember trying grits, biscuits and gravy ('soft dough biscuits covered in either sawmill or meat gravy, made from the drippings of cooked pork sausage, white flour, milk, and often bits of sausage, bacon, ground beef, or other meat'), mainly because I'd heard about the classic southern dish from American films and novels (probably the likes of Steinbeck, Kerouac and Bukowski). Coffee in the States is just like in the movies: waitresses come by and fill it up for free.

It's worth remembering that most of the planet probably eats rice for breakfast; and after six months in South East Asia I never got used to eating rice three times a day.

Of course in recent years breakfasts have gone healthy and hipster. And while fruit, nuts, granola, chia seeds, yogurts and smoothies are okay if you're at the buffet waiting for your full English to be cooked, I generally don’t approve of really healthy stuff for breakfast, though I'm better than I was: my breakfast used to consist of four cigarettes and a mug of tea (food came later).
________

*Like the myth that Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus or the big con with mineral water companies telling us we need to drink two litres of water a day (I would literally drown if I drank that much), there's a possibility that breakfast cereal makers conjured up the maxim of breakfast being the most important meal of the day.

**An exception to this was when I was in Morocco, eating in the evening after Ramadam and it involved, yup, the cracking of a hard-boiled egg (mentioned here). Egg, bread, soup: tasted incredible after a day of not being able to eat.

Previously on Barnflakes:  
Not for all the tea in China

The world's top ten biggest environmental problems (and how to solve them)

Even though I hardly ever blog about the environment I'm probably more passionate about the planet and its wildlife than anything else. And it's pretty hard to ignore nowadays, with much of the news on a daily basis – if it's not about Brexit* – being about climate change, freak weather (whether it be flash floods, wildfires or a hot February – which the BBC bizarrely chose to celebrate with photos of daffodils and ice creams, somewhat missing the point that it's climate change in action. Enjoy it – but please do feel guilty about enjoying it), loss of wildlife populations, plastic waste and air pollution. So here's a top ten with pretty obvious solutions. Unfortunately humans are so selfish and stuck in their ways, nothing will ever change. Until it's too late.

These ten all link to each other – 'everything connects' – so apologies for any repetitions.

1. Climate Change
This is the big one, vying with Brexit on the front page of the Guardian on a daily basis. It's an emergency (one we have known about for decades and done nothing) which is happening right now... and still no one is doing anything. Yes, there's some peaceful protests and petitions being signed, and reports and articles telling us it's an emergency and we have to do something, like, now, and a 15-year-old schoolgirl climate change warrior and films and documentaries and there's government targets of too little too late and energy corporations saying they'll cut 20% of this or that by 2050... yet still nothing is really happening to prevent it.

So what is it? Climate change is the increase of global average weather temperatures and their effects on the planet's weather patterns. Temperatures have been going up steadily for the last fifty years, mainly due to man's reliance on fossil fuels and the resulting build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Chopping down the world's rainforests hasn't helped things either.

(Global warming refers only to the rising average global temperatures, whereas climate change refers to global warming as well as changes in weather patterns such as heat waves, droughts, melting glaciers, etc.)

The effects of this human-caused increase in temperatures can be seen in changing seasons, more frequent, severe weather such as droughts and snowstorms in temperate regions, and warmer, drier weather in other regions, which has caused wildfires. Glaciers – which store 75% of the world's fresh water – are melting at an alarming rate, which causes sea levels to rise. Warming oceans are affecting coral reef bleaching and ocean life. Any more increase in temperature – the now-familiar "well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels" of the Paris Agreement, which doesn't even come into effect until 2020 – will see potential cataclysmic problems.

Solution: Using more clean, sustainable energy like wind, wave, tidal and solar power. Use public transport. Stop using cars. Stop chopping down forests.

2. Wildlife Decline
Mankind has wiped out 60% of wildlife since 1970; that is, mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. This is mainly due to the destruction of their natural habitat to make way for farmland*. The UK has lost much of its wildlife, ranking 189th for biodiversity loss out of 218 countries in 2016. Bees – essential for a healthy environment – are in severe decline, in part due to neonicotinoid, an insecticide resembling nicotine.

Solution: Nothing, really. 

3. Overpopulation
The optimum world population is about 2 billion; we're currently at over 7bn – more than double the amount it was fifty years ago. We probably need a good old-fashioned war or virus to wipe out half the population (luckily war and viruses can be a result of overpopulation).

Solution: Stop having babies; natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.

4. Air Pollution
Vehicle exhausts are the major cause of air pollution, now said to cause 800,000 deaths in Europe alone and 8.8m worldwide, per year, which is more deaths than smoking (cars also account for 1.25 million deaths from road traffic accidents, making the total amount of deaths from cars over 10 million per year). Cars, planes, trains, factories, power plants, insecticides and pesticides from agriculture-related activities all contribute to air pollution, which is also a major contributor to global warming.

Cars, the largest cause of air pollution and one of the top ten causes of deaths in the world, consume much energy before they're even on the road: car production – whether an electric car or traditionally fuelled one – leaves a huge carbon footprint.

Unfortunately electric cars aren't the answer: they run on electricity produced by burning fossils fuels, and use precious metals. The extraction of nickel, a metal used to produce the battery to power the cars, comes at an environmental and health cost.

I've never got used to cars, and never owned one. I've never thought it right to have cars on roads with people on pavements walking beside them. I've never thought it energy-efficient to take a ton of metal to transport (usually) a single human being around. Cars are ugly and noisy. Roads are horrible and clogged up with cars. Roads destroy communities. And wildlife. I hate it that I've seen hundreds of dead badgers on road sides and never one alive (the UK Government's much-opposed badger cull – deemed 'ineffective' and 'inhumane' in 2013 but continuing to this day – is indeed ineffective when compared to badgers killed by cars: 50,000 a year in the UK, as compared to 20,000 killed by culling in 2017).

Solution: What can I say? Ban cars. Cycle, get the bus, the train.

5. Eating Meat
Aside from the cruelty aspect, meat production is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions. It contributes to the loss of animal diversity and is a major source of water pollution and deforestation (animals need a lot of land to graze). Meat eating isn't sustainable.

Solution: Become vegetarian.

6. Capitalism / Economic Growth
Capitalism's relentless pursuit of profit creates a disregard for planetary resources with no account for environmental impact. 'Growth for the sake of growth' is the mantra of all governments, companies and corporations. Economic growth is always presented as a great thing that can solve the world's problems. Unfortunately, growth actually increases both inequality and unemployment, and is disastrous for the environment: it leads to deforestation, loss of natural habitat and biodiversity of wildlife, increase in material and energy use and immense waste. Oxfam believes 'extreme capitalism' is to blame for poverty, with 82% of the world's money going to just 1% of its population.

Economic growth as we know it, measuring GDP, the capitalist-consumerist ideal; these concepts are barely 300 years old – since the start of the Industrial Revolution, yet they have already reached their peak. No one said growth was infinite. It's not. But capitalism without growth is apparently a sustainable possibility.

Solution: Socialism! Or something like it.

7. Consumerism / Waste
This is the by-product of capitalism and economic growth, of course. Crap gets made. Crap gets bought and consumed. Lots of crap is wasted and dumped. Hardly any of it is recycled.

We in the west had it so good for so long – houses, TVs, cars, debt, bad diets, unhappiness, pointless objects of desire in a disposable and throwaway society – but now the rest of the world, in particular the vast populations of China and India, want it too, and who are we to blame them or stop them and tell them it's all a lie (and disastrous for the environment)?

Solution: Stop producing and buying crap. Use less.

8. Plastic Waste
It's suddenly all over the news. Of course I've been moaning about it for years (like here and here; yes I wrote that a decade ago); I haven't accepted a plastic bag from a shop for years (despite every cashier asking me if I want one, every time I buy anything, even if it's just one item); haven't bought a bottle of water for years (been using the same old bottle for years); can't understand what's wrong with tap water. Recycling isn't the answer – it's to stop using plastic. Banning straws seems like a joke (like a tear in the ocean; a tip of the iceberg).

I always tell people I go days without drinking a drop of water (any drink, such as tea, does the same job water does), and then I might bore them with the story of when I walked 20 miles in the Sahara desert in Morocco with no water and a heavy backpack, chain smoking all the way. When I did eventually find a village with a cafe, I ordered a (glass) bottle of Coke. Tasted great. Nowadays people can't seem to go a ten minute train journey without glugging from their precious bottle of Evian.

Anyway, plastic waste is found everywhere, in our cities, countryside, seas and rivers, even embedded in Arctic ice. The waste harms the environment, pollutes our waterways and threatens wildlife. There's an island of plastic waste (now twice) the size of Texas in the Atlantic Ocean. The production of plastic also contributes to climate change.

Solution: Ban plastic bottles and reduce packaging in general; replace with glass and cardboard. Bring back water fountains. Ban coffee cups that can't be recycled. Friends of the Earth are calling for a ban on all non-essential single-use plastics by 2025.

9. The Cult of Personality
By which I mean people. CEOs, Jeremy Clarkson, Donald Trump (still denying climate change), Boris Johnson, professional footballers, celebrities, politicians – can't we just do away with them all? People are swayed by personalities rather than policies. I read some time ago about a theory to vote via the internet on policies without politicians or political parties to sway us one way or another.

The Green Party has the right idea – the environment is more important than any political allegiance. If you remember Green Party candidate Natalie Bennett's interview on Radio 4 a few years ago, it's probably only for what was called in the press 'a car crash interview' where, according to the Telegraph, 'she fails to recognise her own party's manifesto policies'. When I listened to it, I heard nothing of the sort, only things I agreed with: the Citizen's Income, legalising the sex trade and drugs industry, dismantling the armed forces, using weapons factories to build wind turbines... all sheer lunacy, according to Telegraph and Radio 4 readers and listeners, I'm sure.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is the environment should be above politicians and personalities. It's still not top of the agenda for any political party (except the Green Party), or still even barely mentioned. Brexit has consumed British politics for the past two years, to the detriment of more important issues like the environment, education, the NHS, and poverty.

The environment shouldn't be political – the recent climate change protests by school children held outside council buildings, people working for the council weren't allowed to show any support for the protest (and the UK Government was more concerned about children missing a day of school than saving the planet). Unfortunately the media still needs personalities to sell climate change: see the '15-year-old Swedish schoolgirl climate change warrior', Greta Thunberg. She's great. Unfortunately peaceful protest has a record of achieving nothing (remember a million protesting against Blair's invasion of Iraq?) but the children are the future. Thunberg managed to stop her mum from flying and persuade her dad to become vegetarian, so let's hope other children are stopping their parents from driving their SUVs, for example.

Organisations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Extinction Rebellion (formed in 2018) are taking positive action to avert climate breakdown. If only it wasn't an uphill battle against governments and corporations (sometimes to an alarming extent: in 2017, more than 200 peaceful protesters and activists were murdered, mainly in South America). 

10. Doing Stuff
I often get asked what am I doing to help save the planet. Nothing, I reply. Absolutely nothing. I'm not driving a car. I've been on a plane once in two years. I'm not using plastic bags. I'm not buying plastic bottles. I'm not eating meat. I'm not buying new clothes, books or anything at all really (regular readers will know I'm all about the barngains in charity shops).

The problem is the world is full of people doing things. Some good things, sure, but mainly bad, selfish, pointless stuff: driving to places, having holidays, having babies, working, consuming: everything you thought was your birthright is harmful to the planet. There are too many people doing too many things. No matter what you do or eat or consume or watch or desire, somewhere, somehow, it's either exploiting someone, the environment, or both. The best thing is to try to do nothing at all.

I say – semi-seriously – we partially go back to pre-industrial times; that is, work locally, produce food locally, with an immediate ban of fossil fuels (and embrace renewable energy) and traffic (all this government crap of we’ll do this or that by 2025 or 2065 is pathetic; we need to make the changes now, and sort out the repercussions later). Obviously, the internet is a great tool for working remotely and keeping in touch with family and friends. Our current way of life is obviously wrong in many respects. It's time to try something different.

__________ 

*One of the few benefits of Brexit, believes George Monbiot writing in the Guardian, is leaving the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, a farm subsidy system causing widespread destruction of wildlife habitats by paying farmers and landowners for empty ground that's in 'agricultural condition'. This can be land that's unsuitable for farming but as long as it's empty it's eligible for public money (to the tune of £44bn a year). The payments have led to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of magnificent wild places all across Europe. It's a policy that benefits, surprise surprise, the rich the most: landowning billionaires and aristocrats receive the most money just for owning land, not for actually having to do anything with it. 

Previously on Barnflakes:

Notes on dog poop bags

Don't blame us

Aspire to be average
In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead
Busy bein' busy
Blight of the plastic bag
Water as it Oughta

My daughter's top ten books, aged 12½

1. The Darkest Minds—Alexandra Bracken
2. Inkheart—Cornelia Funke
3. In the Afterlight—Alexandra Bracken
4. The Hunger Games—Suzanne Collins
5. Catching Fire—Suzanne Collins
6. Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard—Rick Riordan
7. Never Fade—Alexandra Bracken
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—J. K. Rowling
9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children—Ransom Riggs
10. Listen to the Moon—Michael Morpurgo

What about all the classics? I asked. Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, Great Expectations, Franny and Zooey, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Bible? Nope, she said.

Previously on Barnflakes:
My daughter's top ten films, aged 12 
Notes on Harry Potter

Top 10 Cornish towns for charity shops

When I was moving down to Cornwall, people would say to me oh everything’s so much cheaper down there. I’d look at them and say, oh is it? Is Tesco cheaper? Is public transport cheaper? They’d double back a bit and say, well, you know, property is. Ah. Of course. Aside – and I know it’s a big aside – from property, everything is actually more expensive than London (and wages are far lower), from the dentist and doctor to public transport and restaurants. I’ve never believed the myth that the country is cheaper, having lived in it before. You need a car to get anywhere. Restaurants, being few and far between, are over-priced and terrible. There’s no NHS dentists. There’s no subsidies for public transport so it costs £8 to get two miles down the road on the bus.

Worst of all, as everyone’s poor and there’s no jobs, the charity shops are like rubbish dumps. You may have noticed a distinct lack of barngains in the last six months. There are none (though to be fair H still seems to pick up some great clothes for a song).

1. Penznace
2. Falmouth
3. Truro
4. Newquay
5. St Austell
6. Bodmin
7. St Ives
8. Redruth
9. Camborne
10. Helston

Top ten records I would have bought in Totnes if I had any money

I probably looked through more vinyl in Totnes, Devon, than I have in any market town, ever (it was like the Hay-on-Wye for records). For a start there was a record fair on, so I perused through that. Then charity shops, of course, with prices more ridiculous than the record fair (£20 for the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, anyone?). Then various vintage shops with some racks of records, and finally a lovely cafe and overpriced record shop called Drift, which sold mainly new records and CDs. Nothing was cheap and I didn't buy a thing.

1. Holger Czukay Movies

2. Crazy Horse Crazy Horse

3. Kurt Vile Bottle It In

4. Jóhann Jóhannsson Mandy (Film Soundtrack)

5. Propaganda A Secret Wish

6. John Coltrane Both Directions At Once

7. Thom Yorke Suspiria (Film Soundtrack)

8. Ty Segall Freedom's Goblin

9. Bob Dylan More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14

10. Furniture The Wrong People

In the evening we went to an art gallery hosting four DJ sets, a mix of psychedelic, post punk and dub. It was good music and fun. The films Pink Flamingos and The Warriors were projected on the wall. I was afraid of being the oldest person there, but was in fact one of the youngest. The evening started a little tense, like being at an AA party (and I've been to one), but people got limbered up as the night went on, even if it did feel a bit like an ironic comedy sketch of a Fun Night Out In Totnes. A man in dreadlocks wearing a Sun of Albion leather vest asked me if I wanted to buy a magic poem from his red top hat. There was a man wearing a rainbow-coloured beanie hat holding a wooden staff. There was a man wearing black gloves, Michael Jackson style. In other words, people had character and danced like it was 1991. Which is no bad thing.

Previously on Barnflakes:
One Totnes Pound

Top ten worst inventions

On a daily basis, I’m amazed any of these took off.

1. Cars
2. Microsoft 
3. Football 
4. TV
5. Offices
6. Social media
7. Rucksacks 
8. The Daily Mail
9.  Single-use plastics
10. Mobile phones

Blimey, it's just occurred to me... that's most people's lives right there.

NB: This is top ten #100

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten dislikes