People local to Edinburgh have been rightly upraised recently about the closure of one of our arthouse cinemas, the Filmhouse. All sorts of dark rumblings abound concerning its future conversion into student flats or a luxury hotel or something of the sort.

However, I feel a bit of a fraud when joining in the protests because, to be honest, I’d not been to see a lot there in recent years. It had an excellent cafe-bar, handy for sheltering whilst waiting for the 24 to turn up, and I’d often read its programme while there to see if there was something we’d want to come to. Too often, the preview would read something like this:

‘Las Ultimas Piernas (The Last Legs: Spanish and Quechua, subtitles). In a fictional South American country, a family of one-legged peach farmers eke out a subsistence-level but peaceful existence in a valley far off from the capital. However, their way of life is threatened when the brutal right-wing dictatorship commandeers all metal for the war against left-wing insurgents – including the farmers’ prosthetic limbs. The only available replacement is the wood from their precious peach trees. Meanwhile, the insurgents, led by charismatic, peach-eating El Bonkero, are marching down from the mountains towards them…

A searing critique of political extremism, the tragic finale of this film will remained burned into your retinas for years afterwards (12 certificate, no funny bits or any sex; gratuitous violence; occasional agricultural references).’

In other words, I’m an intellectual lightweight who thinks he should enjoy that sort of stuff, but has come to realise it’s – well, a bit too intellectual for him. Although I wish the Filmhouse campaigners well. Did I mention the cafe-bar was great? (You can donate to the crowdfunder campaign here, by the way)

Fortunately, other sources of entertainment are also available.

I think I’ve mentioned before the Amnesty International bookshop in Marchmont. In a barrio of South Edinburgh stuffed to the gunnels with University lecturers and their students (the main arts faculty, in particular, being a short amble across the picturesque Meadows) it’s my go to place for books, full stop (the Edinburgh Bookshop in Morningside is great for ordering new ones btw – and it’s indie).

As my obsession with all things to do with rock n’ roll deepens, my first port of call in the Amnesty bookshop is often the music section, and most of my recent reading selections reflect this. I do wonder if this is a bit like a trainee chef reading top restaurateurs’ menus to try and work out how they cook their stuff, but anyway.

Neil Young giving it plenty of thatRecent purchases have included Will Hodgkinson’s Guitar Man, about the rock critic trying to learn guitar in his thirties – not bad, although the self-deprecation begins to grate a bit; and Neil Young’s autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace – a bit dated now, but he makes fairly amusing company for someone who’s never really got into his music. His constant references to his angelic wife Pegi began to get on my tits after a while. Maybe it’s just me.

By some bizarre coincidence, I was reading it on our South Africa trip, and specifically the bit about Hawaii, where he used to have one of his homes, when we ran into a couple who came from Hawaii, lived along the road from Neil Young, and knew his Crazy Horse guitarist, Poncho Sampedro, very well as a near neighbour. I have now met three people in my life from Hawaii.

Some people would interpret this chance encounter as some sort of strange portent meaning I have to listen to Neil Young and Crazy Horse albums for the rest of my life, searching for their inner truth. Patrick Jackson, my next authorial pick, would not be one of them. He may not be either rock critic or musician, but his book, ‘Quantum Paranormal: a 21st century analysis of the paranormal phenomena‘ is the most interesting of these three recent reads.

Self-published, and crying out for a decent sub-editor, if you ignore the typos and grammatical errors (and I recommend you do, even if you’re a bit of a grammar N#zi like me) this is a fascinating analysis of paranormal phenomena by a reverse engineering IT specialist (i.e. someone who, if they don’t have the manual to some software, deconstruct it bit by bit from its outward-facing components).

It’s hard to do this serious-minded, rigorous book justice in a short review without it sounding like a fruit-loop conspiracy theory. However, it really is much better than that: its conclusions are that, firstly, we’re being monitored – and our DNA sampled – in a mainly non-invasive way by some alien race, whose monitoring stations are places like haunted graveyards, wooded areas and sometimes old buildings. Poltergeist type activity is a way of scaring us away from potentially harmful transmitters of information.

Still with me? This particular alien race also monitors – and often intercepts – other aliens, who sometimes get through to carry out rather more invasive ‘samplings’ – all the alien abduction stories you read about. The primary detection and defence system of the first group of aliens is the little metal spheres that have been seen by pilots in the skies since at least World War Two.

As I say, it may all sound a bit tinfoil hat but it actually makes a kind of logical sense. There’s no such thing as ghosts, ghoulies, or other manifestations of an afterlife: these are just AI generated images to scare us naked apes off from getting too curious. What they’ll do with Elon Musk when he blasts off to colonise somewhere else is anyone’s guess. All very fascinating, although I wouldn’t want to go along to a convention of fellow believers. Not just yet.

Which brings me to my film pick: Saltburn. This recent release has apparently divided critics and audiences alike, but I think it’s a hoot. In 2006, Oliver Quick arrives at Oxford University from Liverpool and feels like a fish out of water amongst the privately-educated poshos. Unwilling to ally himself to the resident geeky outcast, he soon strikes up an unlikely friendship with one of the most charismatic (and aristocratic) of the poshos, Felix. Although their friendship has its ups and downs, Felix invites him to his home for the summer – home turning out to be a grand sprawling pile in the English countryside.

And so the games begin… look, it’s hard to go any further without spoiling the plot, but suffice to say if you’re squeamish about weird sex, blood or other bodily fluids, this film isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you like your humour served black without a hint of sugar, and maybe take showers rather than baths, it’s just the thing for you.

If I was being critical I might say the plot twist is all a bit sudden, but it’s stylishly made, has great scene-stealing cameos from the likes of Carey Mulligan and Richard E Grant, and I particularly liked the incubus references (well, I took them to be incubus references anyway – the supernatural creature, not the band).

That’s it for now – back to that online Christmas shopping, unless the Greys come down and cancel Christmas…