No Place Like Rome

It’ll be an early night tonight. Although the new term starts with earnest tomorrow, a need for a good night sleep is a notch or two down my list of priorities. No, tonight is ‘Rome’ on BBC television and my routine dictates that I shall be tucked up and glued to the only programme I need to watch each week. No distractions please. The politics of the era fascinate with Pompey now out of the equation and with an oily Brutus and supremely confident Marcus Antonius currently eyeing Caesar with interest. Away from all this high-powered stuff the ongoing ‘soap opera’ involving two former soldiers Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo remains a treat. Their close friendship is under considerable threat after Pullo killed a slave in cold blood outside Vorenus’s villa last week, was sent packing, sank too much vino and was offered a job by a local racketeer, a sworn enemy of Vorenus. That cliffhanger will, no doubt, be resolved tonight.

I’m not a huge fan of Steve Lamacq on BBC 6Music but after the fellow played both New Face in Hell by The Fall and Ping Pong by Stereolab on tonight’s show, I salute and doff my cap to him. It is easy to take for the granted the high quality of music that wonderful radio station churns out throughout the day. I wonder how I used to cope.