I’ve been watching Heimat over the Christmas break, and finding it even better than I remembered. For those unfamiliar with it, Heimat is an eleven-part fictional account of life in a small German village during the rise of the Nazis and afterwards.

On paper, it must seem very dull. The characters are not in the least flamboyant — it’s very much a story about ‘ordinary’ folk; and nothing much happens — except that the Nazification of life and the annexation of the state for ideological purposes gradually seeps into every crevice of daily living. There are few real villains, and only the quietest of heroes (or, more accurately, heroines — the central women characters come out of it well.) People who were weak and/or nasty before the rise of Hitler become exploiters of, or slaves to, the new ideology; while those who were always strong or balanced tend to retain their judgement and common sense — even if they sometimes have to rein in their tongues.

And it also communicates vividly how convincing prosperity is to the average citizen — especially if s/he has previously experienced economic hardship (as most German citizens did in the 1920s.) It’s as if prosperity dissolves doubt and uncertainty. (We saw a lot of that in booming Ireland a few weeks ago, as people thronged shops in a frantic Christmas spending splurge.) Heimat captures very well the growing public acceptance of the regime as economic conditions improve, shopkeepers’ turnover increases and people are able to buy cars and consumer goods. (One memorable episode is entitled “The Best Christmas Ever”, and chronicles the quiet satisfaction the villagers felt as 1935 turned into 1936.)

The series is a masterful evocation of the steady perversion of a civic culture. It is also an antidote to complacency: I myself come from a rural background, and could imagine many of the same things happening in the communities in which I was reared. So I was very struck by this quote from Richard Evans’s new book, The Third Reich in Power.

‘The further in time we get from Nazi Germany, the more difficult it becomes for historians living in democratic political systems … to make the leap of imagination necessary to understand people’s behaviour in a state such as Nazi Germany.’

The significance of Heimat as a creative work is that it makes that ‘leap of imagination’ possible.

The Observer, the newspaper I’ve written for since 1972, has been published in broadsheet format ever since it was founded in 1791. But today’s is the last broadsheet edition. From next Sunday it will be published in the Berliner format of its sister paper, the Guardian. The change was inevitable, but it’s the end of an era all the same.

A Global utility knife, IMHO the best in the world. It’s Japanese, beautifully made and perfectly balanced. And sooo sharp. I’m the cook in our household, so this is a working tool, not a toy.

A pair of Grado SR-60 open-back headphones. I know, they look like something that Soviet radio operators used to wear, but they’re exceedingly comfortable and provide wonderful, rich audio.

The DVD set of Heimat 1, Edgar Reitz’s stunning saga of life in rural Germany between the First and Second World Wars. I was a TV critic for 13 years, and when I quit in 1995 an interviewer asked me what I would remember most from my stint. I had no hesitation in responding “Two things: Reitz’s Heimat and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective“.

But by far the best presents I got were some mince pies specially baked by my daughter for me on Christmas Day with the letters of “Happy Xmas” cut out in pastry and presented in a hand-made box.

The ludicrous UK ‘gong’ system has given a piddling ‘honour’ to Jonathan Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPod and iMac. He’s become a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours list. Er, what empire is that, exactly?

“Paradoxophile”.

Used by Frank Kermode to describe Adam Phillips, the soi-disant expert on flirtation, Freud and other fashionable topics, in the London Review of Books, 19 June, 2003.

Nice story in the Guardian.

When a middle-aged man swore at airline staff after he was refused a drink on a flight from Manchester to Tenerife, he got a sunshine break he had not bargained for. The pilot diverted the charter plane and dumped the troublesome holidaymaker 300 miles from his destination on a barren volcanic island off the west coast of Africa….

We use budget airlines a lot and I don’t envy the cabin crews. It’s become a horrible job, even when the passengers aren’t obstreperous. It takes about an hour to fly from Stansted to the various airports we use in Ireland, and each time I look on in amazement as the crews rush to get through the same deadly routine — passing through the cabin with a drinks trolley, then coming round trying to sell scratch cards and ‘duty free’ goods. Then tidying up and packing everything away prior to scrambling into their seats in preparation for landing. And then being expected to turn round the plane in 25 minutes. (That’s the RyanAir norm.)

When I was a child in 1950s Ireland, the profession of “air hostess” was regarded as unutterably glamorous. Parents prayed that their daughters might get a job in Aer Lingus, the state airline, thereby enabling them to land some rich businessman as a husband. Mind you, the prospective husbands would have needed to be well-off, because Aer Lingus fired its hostesses the moment they got married. (So, come to think of it, did church/state-run primary schools.) Different world, then.

Hmm… just noticed that the offending passenger is “understood to be an Irish citizen living in Lancashire” who “ignored numerous appeals to calm down when he was refused further alcoholic drinks”. Bet his Ma hadn’t been an Aer Lingus hostess.