Wynn Wheldon

RUGBY: ENGLAND

2012-02-12T12:49:00.000Z

I won't pretend I wasn't cock-a-hoop when the Italians scored their second try against England in Rome yesterday, or that my heart didn't sink as the ice-cool young Mr Farrell kicked England to victory, but I do feel that England deserve some credit for having won two away matches. That these victories were winkled out against opposition that was not obviously inferior is even further to their credit. It is certainly the case that the fixture list has worked very nicely for them, in playing the two weakest teams in the competition in their first two matches, away, and face their toughest opposition at HQ. Whether this gives them false hope (they are not that good) or useful confidence (they can certainly improve) remains to be seen. There is little to warm to at the moment; it is hard to determine the team's character. Owen Farrell, perhaps, is the man making his name. He is intelligent, brave and talented. An obvious star. Is there a case for him at fly half? I think so.

Harry, Harry, Harry

2012-02-10T19:35:00.001Z

Well, obviously they are going to offer him the job, and obviously he is going to take it. So the question is: who will replace him? there has been a good deal of chatter about Mourinho. i don't want Mourinho. He is overly defensive and can be childish when made to look silly. My son, incredulous, said "What? I suppose you want Ian Holloway?" - and i thought for a nano-second and then I said "YES! That's exactly who I want. i want Ian Holloway..." But there is little chance.

Barbie ' n' Bob

2012-02-09T09:45:00.000Z

Always loved this Milton Glaser poster (er, it's the one on the right).

Casa Blanca

2012-02-09T01:55:00.000Z

Lo Fi Culture Scene as was. Cracking new song, 'Needed to Know', here. For the faint of heart: it contains what a Pinter character would probably call 'language'.

The band playing at 93 Feet East in Brick Lane just before Christmas

George North

2012-02-06T18:28:00.002Z

I can't really get enough of this:

I will however concede that it might not have been so straightforward had that number 13 shirt been worn by its regular keeper.

Moonlit Apples by John Drinkwater

2012-02-04T12:54:00.000Z

At the topof the house the apples are laid in rows,

And theskylight lets the moonlight in, and those

Apples aredeep-sea apples of green. There goes

A cloud onthe moon in the autumn night.

A mouse inthe wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then

There is nosound at the top of the house of men

Or mice;and the cloud is blown, and the moon again

Dapples theapples with deep-sea light.

They arelying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;

On thesagging floor; they gather the silver streams

Out of themoon, those moonlit apples of dreams,

And quietis the steep stair under.

In thecorridors under there is nothing but sleep.

And stillerthan ever on orchard boughs they keep

Tryst withthe moon, and deep is the silence, deep

Onmoon-washed apples of wonder.

I print this lovely poem to express my pleasure at a short story of mine, 'Apples', being accepted - as a Leonard A. Koval Memorial prize winner, no less - for inclusion in a forthcoming anthology, Gem Street (Labello Press) .

SOMETHING BETTER

2012-02-02T15:11:00.002Z

When the proud crowds march

And wave their banners

And bravely lung their chants,

I fear for innocence, and despair

At how easily discontent turns

To bile and anger and deeds done

In the name of Something Better,

That merely blood the young

In battles fought in righteousness

As by old crusaders cleaving

Mohammedans in the Holy Land.

So what I wonder should I tell my sons?

Trust no-one? Trust everyone?

Or simply keep away from crowds,

Those Mobius bands,

That run truth into the gutters.

It is no better to yell than it is to mutter.

So speak evenly and listen,

And stiffen the sinews only

For the hell that dogmas brew.

Wynn Wheldon

NOTE: Recently, I read a debate in the current utterly splendid literary journal Acumen about the relationship between poetry and politics (Yeats, Neruda, Blake, Owen, but no mentions for Pasternak, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva or Mandelstam - Lionel Trilling said that the place where politics and literature meet is "a bloody crossroads", and it certainly was for the latter four great poets). I myself tend to write 'confessional' poetry (in other words it is all about me, me, me) so I thought I'd have a bash at a political poem - and still I end up in there. This is really just a poorly disguised way of saying I don't like crowds. They are very easy to manipulate. Madonna tried to manipulate me once, but I was having none of it... (Note to note: the cleaving of the Mohammedans was inspired by watching James Purefoy - playing a Templar just back from the Holy Land - cleave a mercenary Dane in the extremely cleave-full movie 'Ironclad'. There is sometimes no telling with synchronicity.)

RACHEL by Walter de la Mare

2012-02-01T21:21:00.001Z

Rachel sings sweet—

Oh, yes, at night,

Her pale face bent

In the candle-light,

Her slim hands touch

The answering keys,

And she sings of hope

And of memories:

Sings to the little

Boy that stands

Watching those slim,

Light, heedful hands.

He looks in her face;

Her dark eyes seem

Dark with a beautiful

Distant dream;

And still she plays,

Sings tenderly

To him of hope,

And of memory.

Hockney at the RA: An Experience

2012-01-28T19:30:00.000Z

MarkRothko said: “I paint very large pictures. I realize that historically thefunction of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose andpompous. The reason I paint them, however – I think it applies to otherpainters I know – is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human.”

Thereare several very large pictures in this exhibition (generally made up of lotsof smaller pictures, it is to be admitted) and they are neither pompous norgrandiose. But where Rothko wasconcerned with expressing “tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on” (I love that “andso on”), Hockney is more concerned to express mutability, immutability and thesimple pleasure of looking and seeing.

Lotsof the pictures in this exhibition are of modest landscapes, given a kind ofintegrity by Hockney’s worrying of them. There are three trees he paints ordraws over and over again, sometimes they are nude in winter, sometimes fullyclothed in high summer; there is a tree stump that turns up in the middle, tothe side, in the background of pictures, in a variety of hues.

Instarkest of contrasts there is an enormous horizontal painting of the GrandCanyon, which glows. You can feelthe heat coming off it, relieved by a tiny strip of cool blue sky at the upperedge.

Ifound it hard not to smile at the sheer pleasure some these picturesafford. It is impossible not tofeel the joy Hockney has felt in making them.

Someof the stuff doesn’t work. Therewere rooms I didn’t like, and individual efforts that fell short, but therewas, invariably, something around the next corner to delight. And there is a sneaking suspicion thatwhile the paintings are not great, the art is. Hockney is clearly fascinated by the changes that come overthings that stay the same. Themesmerising films of identical roads in different seasons testify to this; theyalso have a kind of didactic power. “Look!” they are saying, “See!”

Someof my favourite landscapes are those that are painted as with one eye, so thatperspective becomes unimportant, and the flat plane of the picture becomes amore honest place than in purely representative painting.

Thereally great paintings here, though, are those of Woldgate Wood. Whensurroundeded by them you know that the experience is not aesthetic butsensual. You need bring no arthistorical baggage to this. MarkRothko also said: “A painting is not about an experience. It is anexperience.”

The Song of Wandering Aengus

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000Z

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

W.B. Yeats

Joshua Bell Live in the Subway

2012-01-25T14:59:00.001Z

Old story, new to me, brought to my attention by Mr Aaron Wolff by way of my son.

This is merely the boring old soundtrack. The full story, from the Washington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its author is here.

The Joy of Books

2012-01-20T23:15:00.000Z

Hypnotic, charming, fun and, I reckon, rather beautiful.

Etta James

2012-01-20T18:46:00.000Z

Plus ca change

2012-01-20T13:43:00.000Z

Salman Rushdie under threat again (why isn't this on the BBC? - it is now, here.)
'Jesus & Mo' satirical cartoons deemed offensive at college (UCL) founded in part to counter religious intolerance...
Ho hum.

Note to God: Now he knows you exist, can you give us back Christopher Hitchens please.

`
Here's a blog by a young man of whom the Hitch would have been proud.

The Giant that Built Stonehenge

2012-01-18T17:10:00.000Z

Grayson Perry's Head of a Fallen Giant is accompanied by the following text: "There has been much debate about what exactly is Englishness. We struggle to define it. I wanted to make something that looked like an ethnographic artefact that was about England. At once mystical and banal, this is the skull of a decaying maritime superpower..." Mystical and banal - does this not closely resemble what one might make of Jez Butterworth's play 'Jerusalem'? The play premiered in July 2009. The giant's head is from 2008. For me, it is now the giant in Rooster Byron's story (BYRON: I once met a giant that built Stonehenge. GINGER: Oh, really. And where was that? BYRON: Just off the A14 outside Upavon, about half a mile from the Little Chef.)

Wales Six Nations Squad

2012-01-18T16:52:00.000Z

Backs: Mike Phillips (Bayonne), Lloyd Williams (Cardiff Blues), Rhys Webb (Ospreys), Rhys Preistland (Scarlets), James Hook (Perpignan), Jamie Roberts (Cardiff Blues), Jonathan Davies (Scarlets), Scott Williams (Scarlets), Gavin Henson (Cardiff Blues), Ashley Beck (Ospreys), George North (Scarlets), Leigh Halfpenny (Cardiff Blues), Alex Cuthbert (Cardiff Blues), Harry Robinson (Cardiff Blues), Liam Williams (Scarlets), Lee Bryne (Clermont Auvergne)
Forwards: Craig Mitchell (Exeter Chiefs), Adam Jones (Ospreys), Ryan Bevington (Ospreys), Gethin Jenkins (Cardiff Blues), Paul James (Ospreys), Rhys Gill (Saracens), Rhodri Jones (Scarlets), Matthew Rees (Scarlets), Huw Bennett (Ospreys), Ken Owens (Scarlets), Bradley Davies (Cardiff Blues), Ian Evans (Ospreys), Lou Reed (Scarlets), Ryan Jones (Ospreys), Dan Lydiate (Newport Gwent Dragons), Sam Warburton (capt, Cardiff Blues), Justin Tipuric (Ospreys), Toby Faletau (Newport Gwent Dragons), Andy Powell (Sale Sharks)

Dickens, Sherlock & Grayson Perry

2012-01-18T16:41:00.000Z

Dickens, even in the ‘dark’ later novels is funny, as wellas being earnest and moving. Intwo recent TV adaptations, Great Expectations and Edwin Drood, the funny hasbeen filleted out, and it is no coincidence that with the removal of funny hascome the removal of moving and we have been left with earnest. I watched the whole of GE in the hope of being moved, but the truth is Ididn’t give a damn about anyone in it; and I gave up on Drood after EpisodeOne, so dismally unDickensian – indeed, how Gradgrindian – it seemed.

Sherlock, however, was both funny and moving and even everso slightly earnest. How Sherlockmanaged his escape remains to be seen, but Watson (Martin Freeman seems to havean uncanny ability to marry comedy and emotion – remember The Office?)demanding of his friend “don’t be dead” certainly had me going. We have had Sherlock’s Sexuality,Reason and Identity all questioned in this latest series, and yet not for amoment has the earnestness been anything other than worn lightly. How Moffat and co have managed totransform Sherlock Holmes is little short of miraculous – for, however modernhe seems to be there is absolutely never any doubt that this is the sameSherlock Holmes that so many of us know and love. Truly great television, and in its appearing at the sametime as the entertaining movie with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, itdemonstrates how very much intellectually superior TV can be.

Grayson Perry’s show at the British Museum, The Tomb of theUnknown Craftsman, is stupendous. I went because, well, as Perry himself articulates on the first vase weencounter, “there’s just such a buzz”. But I had not expected to be so entertained, so instructed, soengaged. Like Dickens, Perry isfunny and earnest and even ever so slightly moving. He has the authority of an intellectual coherence that isfundamentally undogmatic. Indeedthis show is a kind of celebration of the non-dogmatic. Perry seems to invite the whole worldin, in tiny little increments. Theworks he has chosen from the British Museum collection (and he clearly adoresthe British Museum) are all by unknown hands; they are generally delicate,usually full of detail, even messy. The throwing together of disparate elements excites him. In the enormous tapestry, Map of Truthand Beliefs, the word ‘Flanders’ sits under a picture of Stonehenge, and ‘Venice’beneath a power station.

Grayson Perry’s work ought to be the epitome of kitsch, butactually it is the opposite. MayAlan Measles live another fifty years – at least. And may adapters of Dickens recognize that without the funnythe moving is lost, and one is left merely with earnest, which is dull.

Ken Russell

2012-01-16T14:43:00.000Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019x4fm/Ken_Russell_A_Bit_of_a_Devil/

I don't know how long this will stay on iPlayer, but it is worth a watch. And here is Humphrey Burton's eulogy, delivered at Russell's funeral in December:

Ken Russell – an appreciation for his Funeral

I met Ken in 1959. He joined the Monitor team duringits second season. His first film was with John Betjeman, then unknown to thebig public; it was a visualizationof poems he’d written about Londonand the home counties: I remember I had to find a suitably leggy young lady toen-act Miss J Hunter Dunn playingtennis, “furnished and burnished by Aldershot sun”.

Ken was thirty-two when Huw Wheldon signed him up, onthe strength of a short amateur film of great charm called Amelia and theAngel. He wrote, directedand filmed it himself on aborrowed 16 mil Paillard Bolex. He was born in Southampton and fell in lovewith the movies when still only a small child thanks to weekly cinema visitswith his mother. For his tenth birthday he was given a hand-cranked homeprojector on which he ran rented movies over and over again. His first film goddesswas Shirley Temple. Hesoon graduated to Dorothy Lamour and Betty Grable. Later, his creative mentors were Fritz Lang and CharlieChaplin. Dragons and slapstick!

At thirteen, during the worst days of the Blitz, Kenwas sent to Pangbourne College, graduating after a stormyadolescence to a sea-going posting as a very junior fourth officer on a merchant ship. Under the blazing Pacificsun his eccentric captain ordered him to scan the horizon hour after hour for Japanese midget submarines – this despite the war havingended some weeks earlier. He soonrealized that the sailor’s life was not for him and at 19 he presented himselfat the gates of Ealing Film Studios asking for a tea-boy’s job in order to learn about directing.The commissionaire turned him away. It was thirteen years before he returned.

Insteadhe studied ballet dancing for four years on a scholarshipbut the world of classical balleteventually decided Ken wasphysically the wrong shape to be a dancer and after a brief season touring as a “hoofer” with a touring company in Annie get your Gun - he gave up show dancing,too, though his experience was useful for his Monitor films about Isadora Duncan and Marie Rambert and thefeature films of The Boy Friend and Valentino.

Ken alsohad a brief spell in the RAF, spent very unglamourously - charging batteries for Spitfireengines. He even tried straight acting but to no avail: it was forty years before he got aspeaking role. However a real career opened in his late twenties when hestarted making a name forhimself as a stills photographerworking for the fashion world and Illustrated.

I dwellon these early days because it’s surprising, looking back, how long Ken took to find his métier. Film had remained his passion, however, and atlast, when he joined Monitor, hewas able to get going as a film-maker. He was a lovely person to work with, very demanding,of course, and famous for his tantrums, but full of respect for his colleagues– cameramen such as Ken Westbury and Ken Higgins; the legendary film editors Allan Tyrer and MikeBradsell; his devoted PAs amongthem Anne James, whose productionstills of Elgar are sovaluable. And once he broke into the feature world (in which BBC“documentaries” such as the Deliusfilm, A Song of Summer,must be included he built solid and artistically fruitful friendships withactors as Oliver Reed, Wladek Sheybal, Murray Melvin, Vivan Pickles, GlendaJackson and Christopher Gable.

Ken didn’t treat television work as merely a stepping stone to thefeature world. In eleven years he made thirty-five films for the BBC. Some werequite short, such as the Guitar Craze and Mechanical Instruments, some, like his composer portrait, Prokofiev, SovietArtist, were half an hourlong; after the success ofthe Elgar film, in which actors were first admitted, there was a steady flow of hour-long “specials” such as Pop Goes the Easel and DouanierRousseau. A new recruit to the Monitor team, Melvyn Bragg, stimulated Ken’s imagination with a brilliantscript for The Debussy Film, the first of their many collaborations – the two of them flourished again from the late seventies onwards whenMelvyn planted the Monitor flag on ITV’s South Bank and nourished Ken with filmcommissions year after year.

Ken’s energy, his industry, the fecundity of his ideasand the richness of his imagination combined to make a potent magician’s brew.The long list of his feature films, made over a period of thirty years, defy categorization:science fiction and gothic horror jostle for pride of place with adaptations of D.H.Lawrence (Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and Lady Chatterly’sLover) and vivid biographies(“frenzied carnivals” was his own description) of Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Mahler, not to mention the fictional Tommy. He filmed a Puccini aria for DonBoyd’s Diva and even strayed into opera direction oncein a while.

In his television days he said he was hopeless withwords, preferring to leave commentary-writing forothers to deal with, the film’s story for him being primarily in the images. Yet in his 60sand 70s Ken wrote two hilarious books about his time as an independentspirit in the British cinema, aswell as half a dozen novels and a regular column for The Times. He was never atrest. Lisi tells me that on the day he died he was planning to work on his nextproject, Alice in Wonderland: The Musical. He was at home, by the way, not in hospital as waswidely reported: he died peacefully in his sleep – an afternoon nap.

I realize now that Ken was my first true genius. I’d met composers and poets in my radio days but nobody to comparewith this man’s imagination and creative drive. It really struck home when Isaw what he had done with Elgar and the Malvern Hills. The boy on the white pony, the youngman on the bicycle, the old man in the car - all following the same hillside track to the same glorious music. Orthink how he used Land of Hope and Glory, cutting it toshocking images of gassed and maimed soldiers on the Western Front. For hisclimax Ken filmed row upon row of white crosses in the military cemeteries ofPicardy, panning over them in dizzying camera sweeps, faster and faster, tomatch the rushing finale of Elgar’s pre-war march, now so hideously mis-used as propaganda.

But arguably the most powerful image of all was of the three woodencrosses which Ken arranged to have constructed and erected before dawn at the summit of the Worcestershire Beacon - they were to be the Catholic Elgar’s ecstatic vision ofthe crucifixion, the climax of The Dream of Gerontius. (The crosses werehastily dismantled before an irate park warden could remonstrate; the crew thenwent down to Malvern for breakfast.)

For the last ten years of his life, Ken and I did an occasional double act on thelecture circuit, talking about Monitor and our music films to cinema clubs and arts festivals. We tookloads of film clips to illustrate our points but one day we were told the talkwould have to be cancelled because the cinema staff had gone on strike. “Don’tbe daft!”, cried Ken, “the show must go on : we’ll do the illustrations ourselves.’ And we did. He had anastonishing musical memory: we described the pony charging over the hills andscattering the sheep to thevaulting melody of the Introduction and Allegro (sing). We evoked the courtship scenes which were cut to Salut d’Amour (sing). Then there was the cello concerto (which Kencould sing and I won’t); we used that melancholy music for the poignant moment when the camerapans down from a double row of poplars and steadies at ground level on an emptyroad where earlier in the film we’ve seen Elgar and his future bridedisappearing into small dots as at the end of a Chaplin film. Another exampleof Ken’s unique gift of getting to the heart of the music.

Today it’s as if that camera has once again panned down through the line of wavingpoplars to an empty avenue and found… a gaping hole in our minds and memories where Ken Russell used to be. Our hearts go out to hisdear wife Lisi and to his family in their loss - as we sayfarewell to a “life-force”; I can’t find a better word to describe him.

Ken Russell was a great Englishman. Fearless,independent, original, visionary. He achieved an unmatched body of work as afilm-maker which we must nowensure is accessible to film-lovers the world over to admire and enjoy. Thank-you,Ken. Good-bye.

___________________________________________________________________________________
HumphreyBurton BournemouthCrematorium, December 12th, 2011

See also Making 'Elgar' in Pages

Marlon Roudette

2012-01-16T12:54:00.001Z

Be nice if all rap was as good as this. Lovely song. Great video. Music as it's meant to be...

Tottenham Hotspur

2012-01-13T21:04:00.003Z

OK, a little indulgent autobiography. I have always supported Spurs. This was because when I was a kid Jimmy Greaves was king. This in itself perhaps was not enough to justify my fanaticism; it was when i learned that he had been an apprentice butcher in Dagenham that passion replaced mere hero-worship. When it came to joys of the flesh, there was nothing this seven year old liked more than watching the local butcher treating meat on his slab. It was like watching a Seamus Heaney poem, all gut and flub and bone and rib and rump.

Where was I? Oh yes - so my first Spurs team was that of Greaves and Gilzean, England and Kinnear and Jennings, and a little later Chivers, who I always thought would look more at home on a cavalry charger. I remember getting my Shoot! card (or was it bubblegum?) for little Stevie Perryman. My favourite player of those years (Bill Nicholson years) was Alan Mullery, a tank of player who could run for ever. I liked the shape of his nose.

then came Keith Burkenshaw and Ossie and Ville and the Divine Hoddle. He's not much cop as a pundit and as England manager he should have known not leave Gazza out of his team, given how often he himself was cold shouldered as an international. The fact is, had he been French Platini probably would never have got a cap. The England team should have been built around him.

And now this team! So the Tottenham Team of My Time (1958-2012): Jennings, Kinnear, England, King, Knowles, Bale, Hoddle, Gascoigne, Jones, Greaves, Lineker

No Mackay! No Modric! No Klinsman! No Campbell! No Ossie! No MULLERY!!!!

Danny Blanchflower was just too early for me.

Three Welshman!

Glory Days...

MONTAGE Number One

2012-01-13T20:09:00.000Z

Always carry an emergency kit!
(Home of the Whopper located inside).

Wynn Wheldon

TWO ODD FACTS

2012-01-13T20:01:00.000Z

Two striking pieces of intelligence came my way today:

David Hasselhof's girlfriend Hayley Roberts works in a Greggs in Cardiff
It is possible for bilingual people to experience mental illness in one language and not the other.

Sources: BBC (I think)
New Scientist review of Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners by Michael Erard

JONAH JONES: An Artist's Life by Peter Jones

2012-01-10T12:55:00.000Z

Jonah Jones, who was friend of my mother and father (and me), might with characteristic modesty have described himself as a jack of all trades, but he was in fact a master of all those he plied, which included adminstrator, sculptor and novelist - not forgetting poet, memoirist, essayist, mason, watercolour painter, letter-carver, educationalist, chairman, bread-maker, walker, dog-owner, lake-lover, soldier, pacifist, Catholic, Quaker, father and husband. This book, by his son Peter (a figure I remember from my childhood as a young man of dark complexion, an ever-ready smile and endless enthusiasm) is exemplary in its handling of all these facets of a complicated (and hence fascinating) character. He remains faultlessly objective while at the same time somehow rendering fully the love and respect and tenderness he felt for his father. It is a very good book about a very good man. I had thought to say that 'An Artist's Life', the subtitle, was somehow reductive, but actually, if we think of David Jones - the artist Jonah possibly most revered - and his emphasis on art as a sacrament - in short if we make art what it once was, indissolubly central to how a life is to be lived - then the subtitle becomes not merely descriptive but an act of filial duty. Jonah, for all his emphasis on craft and the need to bring art to the people was, above all, an Artist, and decidedly, as this book emphatically shows, "not negligible".

Thierry Henry

2012-01-10T02:02:00.001Z

It was galling, as a Spurs fan, to see Arsenal in those glory years of Bergkamp and Henry and Viera, but it was equally clear that if you were an Arsenal supporter at that time, then you were immensely privileged. It was a great team. I personally think that Bergkamp and Henry are the finest foreign players this country has seen (and I do not forget Ronaldo or Cantona or Schmeichel, who weren't bad themselves). There was no gall in seeing Thierry Henry come back and score for Arsenal last night, and so damn characteristically - all svelte timing and grace. A really terrific moment in the season. Merci. Hope he's gone back to the States before the North London derby...

OH YES HE IS

2012-01-09T19:14:00.000Z

Mick Jones as Good King Richard in this year's Portobello Panto written, produced and directed by my old friends Piers Thompson and Matt Burton. You can keep your Hoffs and your Vanilla Ices, this is the real deal.

SLEEP FURIOUSLY

2012-01-07T11:23:00.000Z

Gideon Koppel, the director of this remarkable film, has used locked off cameras (ie they don't move) to portray the village of Trefeurig in mid-Wales, east of Aberystwyth. The photography then is something between still and film: moving photographs perhaps. The effect is to seem to remove the photographer from proceedings, making the viewer a witness. The experience of watching the film s therefore more active than is usual, and I think this is why it's so very engaging. It is melancholy, certainly, but not sad. There is, perhaps, the tiniest hint of pretension in the words at the end, and the music by Aphex Twin is occasionally obtrusive. And the title is never explained, which is an unnecessary obfuscation. The connecting image is of a yellow library van, and 'The Library Van' would have done much better as a title. We do not need any of the words thrown onto the screen to understand what we are being shown. Still, this is a mere cavil; this is a beautiful film and highly recommended.

THE GREGYNOG JOURNALS by Jonah Jones

2012-01-06T18:39:00.000Z

This is an immaculately made book culled by his son David from the journal Jonah Jones kept during his year as artist-in-residence at the Gregynog Press 1981-82. It contains not only the words that Jonah wrote, but also watercolours, drawings, lettering, and reproductions of his own beautiful written script. If you are interested in flowers, lakes, hills, stone, calligraphy, Wales, the early 1980s, Eng.Lit, BBC producers, exhibiting, weather, the Falklands, plaques, sculpture, art, friendship or life, this is the book for you. You can find more details here. I must confess an interest: I was greatly honored to be asked to write the introduction, which you will find reproduced among my 'pages'.

BOOKS 2012

2012-01-04T11:33:00.002Z

SIXKILL by Robert B. Parker
JONAH JONES: AN ARTIST'S LIFE by Peter Jones
BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP by S.J. Watson

LONDON AIRPORT

2012-01-04T01:43:00.002Z

Last night in London Airport
I saw a wooden bin
labelled UNWANTED LITERATURE
IS TO BE PLACED HEREIN.
So I wrote a poem
and popped it in.

by Christopher Logue RIP

Less than Great Expectations

2011-12-30T11:03:00.001Z

While it is understandable that screen versions, big orsmall, require books to be filleted, one would have thought it well nighimpossible to rob Dickens' greatest book (certainly in terms of craft) of almostall its humanity. But this,astoundingly, is what the recent BBC adaptation has managed. Here we had a Pip entirely withoutcharacter, a Joe Gargery without warmth (not a lark to be seen or heard), anEstella with feelings, and a Miss Haversham with the curtains open. Jaggers was reduced to hard-bittenefficiency and Wemmick was robbed of his Aged P. Herbert retained some hint of innocence and Bentley Drummondwas perhaps the only character close in his malevolence to that portrayed by hisoriginal creator. Ray Winstone as Magwitch was excellent. This was GreatExpectations as social realism, missing humour and warmth and, most of all,love. Dickens would have loathedthis dull, inanimate thing.

R I P Havel & Hitchens

2011-12-19T11:22:00.001Z

"More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvellous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons."
Robert Whittington on Thomas More (1520)

INTO THE SILENCE by Wade Davis

2011-12-14T17:22:00.000Z

The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest

A slight misnomer: the attempted conquest of Everest, surely? But it is wrong to quibble. This is a book as big as its subject, a truly epic work. The quite extraordinary men involved in the attempt to climb Everest had almost all been involved in World War One (Irvine, who disappeared with Mallory on the last attempt, was too young). All had seen a lot of death. The hell of Everest was chosen in a way in which the hell of war was not. While the latter had to be survived, Everest was to be lived. It is humbling to get to know some of these characters, and it is Davis's greatest triumph to have brought them so vividly to life (and where possible he has done the same with the Sherpas who left no record). None were without fault, but their virtues were greater than their vices. They all wrote terrifically well - letters, journals, notes, reminiscences. It is hard to imagine a present day expedition of such hardship that would bring forth so literate and so evocative a flood of prose. A wonderful book, and terribly sad.

Hitchens v Nietzsche

2011-12-10T14:26:00.001Z

Christopher Hitchens' latest report from the front line of his battle with cancer. As engaging as ever and somehow forbidding mourning. Here.

Jeremy Clarkson: "disgraceful and disgusting"

2011-12-01T16:43:00.001Z

Jeremy Clarkson's remarks about shooting public sector workers are, according to Ed Miliband, "disgraceful and disgusting". Isn't that rather the point of comic exaggeration? Replace with "Jeremy Clarkson should be taken out and shot" (chortle chortle) and I'm sure no-one would bat an eyelid. Seems to me the best piece on this is by Index on Censorship's Padraig Reidy here.

Simply Sublime

2011-11-29T14:58:00.001Z

A really quite beautiful try by the Scarlets against Perpignan, finished off by St Rhys, brought to my attention by my son.

The Umbrella Man

2011-11-23T14:47:00.001Z

Terrific short documentary (with enormous production team) by Errol Morris, brought to my attention by Mr Rupert Walters. Watch it here.

I ought to add that it is only six minutes long, so will not disrupt your day too greatly.

If you can't get to it on the link, try googling "new york times umbrella man"

THE COMING OF SPRING

2011-11-19T13:04:00.001Z

Playing pool at the Prince Bonaparte
Was not always such a genteel pastime.
I'm not saying you were going to be knifed
Or have your gut perforated with a pool stick,
Just that you got looked at. If you've been looked at
You'll know what I mean. The smoke was good
And the stink of beer, and altogether the sense
Of usedness the place had, like an old tool.

These places are gone now
Because renewal is the luxury we have time and money for
And doesn't the year do it anyway?
Isn't it natural? Isn't there a happy bruise or two
Of purple crocuses on the green?
Don't we rejoice?I

I've not drunk in the Prince Bonaparte for years
But if I went I would miss the smoke and the spilled beer
(Though it's more Merlot now than ESB)
And even the being looked at, and I'm afraid
That in the good food and the new decor
And even the svelte young women, I would not rejoice.

Wynn Wheldon

NB I'm delighted to say that the great Hugo Williams has considered this poem fit for publication this week in that august and discriminating journal of fine writing, The Spectator

Further reading: The Moon under Water by George Orwell, to be found here.

A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY by J. L. Carr

2011-11-18T12:30:00.001Z

I read this thirty odd years ago and it was wonderful. It is even more wonderful now. A masterpiece in fact. In a hundred pages all the big themes are touched on - the Great War, religion, sex, friendship, art - but what the book is chiefly about is the power of nostalgia. It takes nostalgia seriously. Written from the point of view of an old man writing about his youth, it reflects on what I'm afraid I want to call the 'tristesse du bonheur' - the sadness of happiness - happiness's preciousness and rarity, which goes some way to explaining the bittersweet nature of nostalgia. It is also a love story, with a McEwan-like 'moment' at the end on which all turns. I'm afraid I have to add this to my books of the year. I'm very much hoping that the next book I read will not be a masterpiece or that I'll take too long to finish it if it is.

CONVOLUTIONS

2011-11-16T18:25:00.003Z

This is an incredible story. A Chinese government Ministry wants to award Putin a 'Confucius Peace Prize' for his treatment of the Chechens and his opposition to the NATO action in Libya. Those in a higher Ministry yet don't want to. Last year the prize was awarded to someone from Taiwan who was never made aware that he had won and an unknown girl accepted it in his stead.

Dissident and recipient - to communist fury - of the Nobel Peace Prize (which of course he was not allowed to collect) LIU XIABO remains in prison.

Personally I think the former KGB man and the current communist regime in China deserve one another and should be encouraged to award each prizes every year. Or perhaps they could combine and award the Occupyers a Mao-Stalin Prize for Direct Action.

Altogther very reminiscent of old communist practice. i thought China was supposed to be the 'coming' nation.

Gordon Nunns

2011-11-15T11:27:00.001Z


Graves of Gordon Nunns, my grandmother's brother, who died on September 1st, 1918.

More information here.

NB Actually this of course is not the grave, but a memorial tablet.

GOOD TELLY

2011-11-15T07:12:00.001Z

After the woeful 'The Jury', last week's great disappointment, a night of first class telly yesterday evening, beginning with University Challenge, followed by Masterchef, then Andrew Graham Dixon on the Art of America, which had a little too much history and not enough art, but still had AGD doing his immensely engaging stuff. After this there was a documentary charting the sad story of the theft of the incomparable Barnes collection of post-impressionist paintings by the Philadelphia establishment, which put one off thoroughly from visiting that city, with its undeniably dodgy-looking Mayor and ethically questionable 'charitable foundations'. This in turn was followed by a documentary telling the extraordinary story of Mark Hoffman, a genius forger but a really crummy murderer (still, to be both these things at the same time is fairly incredible), who attempted to bring down the Mormon church in which he grew up by forging documents calling its founding into question. He also knocked off the odd poem by Emily Dickinson and letters by Melville, Twain, Hawthorne, and even a copy of the earliest printed document in American history. I'd like to have learned more about his techniques but I suppose there wasn't really room for more. Cracking stuff, and the end of a first class evening's viewing.

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

2011-11-10T13:20:00.002Z

After the rather wonderful Edward Thomas biography by Matthew Hollis I wanted to read ‘Into the Silence’, the book about mountaineer George Mallory that has had such rave reviews. I took a look at the price and decided against (I have subsequently ordered it from Amazon at less than half the price). Instead I picked up ‘Goodbye to All That’ by Robert Graves, a book I remember my father urging on me when I was about 17 (he and Graves got on very well during a Monitor). And it turns out that George Mallory was Graves’s Best Man (Graves could not imagine Mallory not reaching the summit of Everest).

Well, it is book of the year so far (I discount Great Expectations on the grounds that I have read it before): astounding book. It is written with a dispassionate artlessness that fails entirely to disguise the fact that Graves cannot help himself simply telling stories. Stories of school, stories of war, and stories of peace. It is, nominally, an autobiography, but a less reflective autobiography it is impossible to imagine. Instead we have a sort of Homeric approach which is all about what happens. What we make of what happens is pretty much up to us. Either the author took for granted what we would make of things or he is uninterested in weighing up or analysing. For example, it is not until the later stages of the book that his objection to the war becomes explicit (it was Graves who made sure that Sassoon was delivered to Rivers at Craiglockhart rather than court-martialled).

Graves wass proud of his regiment (Royal Welch Fusiliers), in particular the first battalion, walked whenever he could on the hills behind Harlech in north Wales, once ran a grocery shop in Islip, was a professor of English in Cairo (where he taught Nasser), was given up for dead three times, saw ghosts, was a virgin until he married, visited Thomas Hardy and knew Lawrence of Arabia.

The number of characters - people – who die may explain the dispassion. Had Graves lingered on each one we would have a had a very long book indeed. Horrifying. Getting children to read this rather than study history from dry text books would give an altogether truer picture of the Great War. A very good book indeed.

Caitlin Line

2011-11-07T18:48:00.004Z

I've no idea what is going on in this picture: It looks like two lions snoozing in the sky above Ally Pally. I may be wrong. I like it very much. Check out Caitlin's Goldsmith's blog here.

Well, it's not Ally Pally - it's Crystal Pally. It is important to know that this is a BIG picture - about nine foot square.

Casablanca debut

2011-11-04T16:35:00.006Z

The band formerly known as Lo Fi Culture Scene, and now to be known as Casablanca, will play their debut gig at the Islington O2 Academy on 27 November. You can buy tickets here.

You can hear a couple of tracks here. More to be added next week.

Now All Roads Lead to France

2011-10-31T00:39:00.005Z

The Last Years of Edward Thomas
by Matthew Hollis

I never took to Edward Thomas. His complicated syntax (‘The great diamonds / Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break’) and that blasted, twee, “cloudlets” in ‘Adlestrop’ kept me at arms length. Then last year my son had to study ‘At the Team’s Head-Brass’, which I thought a seriously good poem.

And now there is this marvellous book about the poet’s last years. Actually what it is about is the poet’s becoming a poet, which happened, pathetically, to happen in the final years of his life. One of this book’s pleasures is the unravelling of the poems by the poet-biographer. He handles them not roughly as a critic would, but tenderly, as a brother; nothing is asserted, but the intimacy between subject and writer gives the readings real power. We are dealing not with ‘text’, as the academics would have us do, but with a person. Which is not to say that Hollis merely uses the poems to explain the life. It would be more accurate to say that he uses the life to explain the poems. Very much as Thomas himself would have wanted, I think.

It is a good story, because there is a series of climaxes which the reader lusts towards: the meeting with Robert Frost, the first poem, joining the army, leaving England, and death. The first half swarms with interesting minor poets: Drinkwater, Abercrombie, Hodgson, Munro, Brooke; and occasional major ones: Yeats, Pound (major-minor perhaps), Eliot. In he second half Thomas becomes a poet, and seems to emerge into himself, while the other characters slip away. We are left with Eleanor Farjeon, an astoundingly beautiful woman (judging from the photograph) called Edna Clarke Hall, Frost, and Thomas's wife Helen.

Poets do not need to be likeable to be good, it should go without saying, and I think Hollis does like his subject, but I don’t much. He reminds me of my own self-obsession. The hero of the book is his wife Helen, who perhaps does not get quite the credit she deserves (that goes to Frost). Thomas spends a great deal of his time running away from her and from his children, on the grounds that he cannot bear the way he treats them; but the fact that Helen is always there must have given the often dithering Thomas some sense of stability. She emerges as steadfast, intelligent, full of loving-kindness.

I suppose it is impossible, when telling a story, not to make the end seem inevitable. Thomas’s death, then, reads like the only way in which this book could finish. A melancholy man, by turns self-pitying and self-recriminating, his becoming a poet brought him happiness. This was followed by his becoming a soldier, which also seemed to bring him some kind of content. His commitment to these jobs seemed enough in itself. The coming war and the war itself pervades the four years the book covers, and it is difficult to avoid the impression that Thomas and the war were on a collision course.

One of the books Thomas read in the days before he died was a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets, sent to him by Helen. My own father quoted Sonnet 129 in his own witnessing of war thirty years after Thomas: “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”.

An enormous sob shook me as I read Frost’s condoling letter to Helen. Edward Thomas was indeed a poet, and I am prepared now to forgive him for those cloudlets, and read him properly. This is a simply terrific book.

from 'In Medias Res' by Christopher Reid

2011-10-24T10:58:00.003+01:00

Splitting an apple,

I find a cache of commas.

Every tomato

wears an asterisk.

A bookworm in the kitchen,

I take note

how you hold your tea-cup

by the question-mark,

and how you smile in quotes.

from Arcadia, OUP 1979

Lowell on Structuralism

2011-10-20T16:24:00.005+01:00

Came upon this line from Robert Lowell:

is structuralism the bridge from Marx to death?
(from 'Levi-Strauss in London')

- wish I'd known it thirty-five years ago when Neil Bartlett was trying to persuade Oxford undergraduates to demand more structuralism from their tutors...

Praise Be

2011-10-17T14:00:00.003+01:00

This is from 'The Breakdown', the Guardian's rugby blog:

When Graham Henry was the Wales coach between the summer of 1998 and the beginning of 2002, he was known as the Great Redeemer, or at least he was at the start. Today's Dominion Post asks whether that has prompted Henry to look to the Bible this tournament for inspiration as he looks to end the All Blacks' World Cup jinx.

He assembled a squad that include an Israel (Dagg), a Zachary (Guildford), a Daniel (Carter), an Adam (Thomson) and a Samuel (Whitelock). When Carter pulled out, an Aaron (Cruden) was called on and a Hosea (Gear) has also been added. A Matthew (Todd) trained with the All Blacks last week.

Which reminds me of John Taylor's kick in the last minute against Scotland at Murrayfield in 1971, following Gerald Davies's try, to secure the Grand Slam (I think): "The greatest conversion since St Paul". (Matched only by St Gav's almost 35 years later - where was he last Saturday?)

Proper Music

2011-10-17T10:32:00.002+01:00

Joss Stone singing 'Don't Start Lying to Me Now'. Good stuff. Unofficial fan videos are usually not up to much, but this will do nicely. I like the way she smiles a lot. Also like that there is no blimmin' choreography.

Bubble on the Seine

2011-10-16T23:17:00.001+01:00

Melvin Sokolsky
Bubble on the Seine, Paris, Bazaar, 1963

Huw Wheldon Lecture: Bettany Hughes

2011-10-16T22:39:00.003+01:00

Also not to be missed, this Tuesday:
TV - Father of Modern History

Winning Words

2011-10-15T17:50:00.004+01:00

I hope everyone is going to visit the simply brilliant 'Winning Words' website. Not to be missed.

http://www.winningwordspoetry.com/

ACORN RAIN (WALKING WITH POETS)

2011-10-15T13:41:00.004+01:00

Slipping from their cups the acorns rain, making

Tiny disturbances in the universe.

Clattering gently through dark boughs, blue beyond,

They pool around stiff trunks, their newness fading

As they fell; they crack now beneath the foot,

Brittle brown, translated from seed to sound.

Here on the Heath on an October afternoon,

The sun destroying vision, the acorns rain

And the shades of ancient poets

Flit between the hedgerows, comfortingly sighing.

Wynn Wheldon

France v Wales

2011-10-15T11:46:00.004+01:00

What if
What if
What if

The sadness is not so much that Wales lost but that we have lost what might have been a classic Final. Speaking of which, that is pretty much going to be decided tomorrow. Can anyone see France beating Australia or NZ (refereeing decisions allowing)?

The truth is Wales should have landed their kicks - 11 points went spare - which is not to say that the French might not have tried harder had those points been scored (alhough one wonders if they are capable). To be honest, I think Wales lost a game they should have won, even with 14 men - they were that much better.

Yes. Brutal.

Land of My Fathers

2011-10-14T14:52:00.001+01:00

Had to post.

NB I have to say that I am particularly moved by the plucky Air Wales aeroplane.

Glenkindie Arms Hotel

2011-10-10T19:30:00.004+01:00

The Glenkindie Arms Hotel in the Cairngorms was where spouse and I spent a memorable weekend at the the end of August. A great restaurant and a hopeless hotel, into which we were (accidentally) locked one night by the chef-proprietor, Ian Simpson, while he laid on a banquet for 200 a few miles up the road (to which we had been invited). And now this:

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/3863097/What-a-cheffin-cheek-he-has.html

- which does not surprise us at all. The hotel required proper investment, which it never received. I had been given to understand that we were the last paying guests. Ridiculously expensive, it was money well spent, if just for the anecdotes it produced, but I can quite easily imagine subsequent guests refusing to pay a penny for the broken saniflow, the Primark bedspreads, the Victorian heating system, the broken stair-rail, the unopening windows, the flaking paintwork, etc etc...

Ian Simpson is a terrific chef. Should you mcome upon an establishment owned or leased by him, certainly eat there, but...

Mozart again

2011-10-10T07:46:00.002+01:00

The most beautiful TV advertisement ever made.

Names to Conjure With...

2011-10-08T13:58:00.004+01:00

Wales 22 Ireland 10

Halfpenny
North
Davies
Roberts
Williams
Priestland
Phillips
Jenkins
Bennett
Jones
Charteris
Wyn-Jones
Lydiate
Warburton
Faletau

Soave sia il vento - Mozart

2011-10-07T15:28:00.005+01:00

Well, Lou Reed and Andrea Corr are one thing, but I heard this on the radio this morning, and I wondered whether perhaps it is the most beautiful thing in the world. This is from Cosi Fan Tutte. I'm not an opera buff in any way, shape or form, but I've heard Puccini and Wagner and Verdi, and they're all wonderful in their own ways, but they ain't Mozart.

Soave sia il vento,

Tranquilla sia l'onda,

Ed ogni elemento

Benigno risponda

Ai nostri {vostri) desir.

Gentle is the wind,

Calm is the wave,

And every one of the elements

Answer warmly

To our (your) desire.

Pale Blue Eyes

2011-10-07T15:06:00.003+01:00

The Lou Reed song as performed by Andrea Corr. I have always loved this song, and this isn't at all a bad stab.

A Few Good Quotations

2011-10-06T15:11:00.003+01:00

culled from my old Commonplace Book. The last is my favourite.

...the kiss of the past is narcotic...
from 'Western Landcsape', Louis MacNeice

The awesome mystery of beauty! God and the Devil are locked in battle over this, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
from 'The Brothers Karamazov', Fyodor Dostoevsky

All the great goods cannot live together.
Immanuel Kant

God, in the whizzing of a pleasant wind,
shall march upon the tops of mulberry trees.
from 'David and Bathsheba', George Peele

Amanda Knox

2011-10-04T07:18:00.004+01:00

Thank god for that. Whatever the truth may be, the Italians haven't done themselves any favours. Justice seems to have played a minor role in the case. The Italian police are hopeless, and the Italian press isn't exactly a by-word for the bold questioning of authority (the Italian Press is ranked 24/25 in Western Europe in the Freedom of the Press rankings published by Freedom House). Which is not to exonerate the British tabloids, the reports in which have been lurid, sensational and downright mendacious, surprise, surprise. I have always thought Knox's confused initial stories indicated innocence rather than guilt, as in The Winslow Boy. Anyway, I'm glad she can leave Italy. I wonder what Sollecito will do?

Ireland v Wales

2011-10-03T18:08:00.003+01:00

6.00 am next Saturday
This should, of course, be the semi, but there we are. The lame ducks of England and France contest the other quarter and Wales and Ireland must fancy themselves getting to the final against either of them. Then again rugby, not unlike football, as it happens, to be honest and other cliches, is a funny old game, and both England and France are perfectly capable of beating anyone if the rhythm is right. Still, Ireland and Wales have been the exciting Northern hem teams, and I am bound to say that it is a very long time since it was so exciting supporting Wales. Even the two recent Slams (2005, 2008) weren't quite like this. (Having said that, I don't think I have ever been so mind-bogglingly, lung-emptyingly astonished as at that Wales -Scotland match last year). The idea that we don't have to play Hook or Shane Williams in order to put out a first team is invigorating. I believe the dark arts of the experienced Irish, the dominance of O'Connell at the line-out and the genius of BOD make them favourites, and judging from the Irish newspapers, some Ireland fans think the thing is done. The Welsh, however, can't see a good thing coming until it has gone. I hope Wales win. If they do it will be because the Irish have finally run out of puff, if not of fight. My prediction: Wales winning in the last quarter.

Disraeli and Gladstone

2011-10-03T17:28:00.003+01:00

On 1 September, 1833, Disraeli (1804-1881) wrote in his diary:

I have passed the whole of this year in uninterrupted lounging and pleasure.

On 29 December, 1833, Gladstone (1809-1898) wrote in his diary:

I have now familiarized myself with maxims sanctioning and encouraging a degree of intercourse with society, perhaps attended with much risk.

Now, who would you rather have lunch with, the Liberal or the Tory?

These entries were brought together by Philip Magus in his biography of Gladstone.

The Shameful Secret of Poetry

2011-10-03T11:57:00.004+01:00

"...the shameful secret of poetry...is...the persona of the poet..."
Czeslaw Milosz

An American in Paris - Trailer

2011-10-03T07:50:00.002+01:00

A trailer in which all the hyperbole is justified. Fairly rare.

The Quizlamic Fundamentalists at the Q Trust Quiz

2011-09-30T12:46:00.007+01:00

Cannily, our leader Mrs O'Bryen played an early joker (round one, in which we doubled our 8 points to 16 - though I was personally disappointed that my Round Britain Quiz - a winning answer - was dismissed so cavalierly). This kept us among the leaders from the start. Storming rounds followed on maths and the moon, Messrs Kean and Tennant revealing hitherto unknown strengths. We scored fairly well on a dubiously entitled 'Culture Vulture' round, which included questions on Downton Abbey and various other TV programmes (more pigeon than vulture, methinks), and romped to 10/10 on straplines and catchphrases. Following the break we began to falter, dropping no less than five points on the final music round (which included no classical whatsoever). We finished fourth, three points behind the winning team - The Week.

This is always a terrific occasion, and this time no less than others. Our spread was particualrly impressive, with a wide range of pork pies on offer. Unlikely, but true. The other spread - of knowledge - was equally wide. Best of all though was the company: cheerful, beautiful (well 50% of us anyway), generous and friendly. A great team. Thanks to Emma for having paid for the table and inviting us.

The Q Trust quiz is in aid of muscular dystrophy. The trust was set up by Mark Reynolds in honour of his friend Quentin Crewe. More information here.

Coriolanus

2011-09-28T09:51:00.001+01:00

Coriolanus is a difficult play; this is a first class movie. Ralph Fiennes directs and stars. His performance is outstanding. He is, I think, a better film actor than theatrical. On stage he can seem inanimate; on film, in close-up, we become aware of his eyes, which are the main tools of his talent. He is perfectly cast as Coriolanus. This is a tragic figure for whom honesty, both emotional and intellectual, is a weakness. He is not particularly sympathetically portrayed here, and yet the “lonely dragon” does garner our pity, as he surely must for the play to work, and this is due to Fiennes’s uncanny combination of fragility and brutality. This same quality I think gave weight to his part in Schindler’s List, in which, although he plays a monstrous character, he is not wholly monstrous, to the extent that we rather chillingly recognise him as human.

The supporting cast is equally good; even Vanessa Redgrave fails to irritate as Volumnia, and indeed the penultimate scene with Fiennes is riveting and bravely long (John Logan, screenwriter, producer and progenitor of the affair, has remained on the whole faithful to Shakespeare, and he and Fiennes have been unafraid to keep in what is central - but this is emphatically a movie, nonetheless). Brian Cox, as usual, is first rate and Gerard Butler looks very much the part as Coriolanus’s rival Aufidius, bravehearting his tattooed crew in his native Scottish accent. At any moment I expected him to declare “This is GLASGOW!”

Actually, the film is set in the recently-contemporary Balkans, and uses mock newsreel footage and Sky Newsflashes. The former works, the latter doesn’t, the sight of Channel 4 Newsreader Jon Snow speaking Shakespeare raising an unhelpful giggle rather than adding any verisimilitude. However, more than making up for this is the visual geography: a scarred, unfamiliar landscape. This is a world in which brute force thrives – in which, sometimes, it is morally necessary – and in which the sight of the warrior “sweating compassion” is therefore all the more telling.

Coriolanus is an undeservedly underperformed play. It is Shakespeare’s most overtly political, and provides perfect counterpoint to Julius Caesar (Caesar, unlike Coriolanus, having no principled scruples when it comes to loving the mob). Is Coriolanus a good man? Yes and no. Is Coriolanus a good film? Assuredly yes. Highly recommended.

John Gray on Religion and Science

2011-09-19T16:58:00.004+01:00

Excellent BBC broadcast by John Gray, brought to my attention by Prof Robin Herbert of this Parish. The words can be heard here and read here.

While I'm about it there's a clip of Michael Donaghy reading hsi poem 'Machine', here. I think it disappears soon. Donaghy's is the second poem in to the programme.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

2011-09-18T21:14:00.004+01:00

Covering some of the same ground as the last M. Amis, this is an altogether superior work, a novella that grows in intensity as it moves towards its final revelation. While constantly insisting on the difference between life and literature, it demonstrates exactly the power of literature to ask Big Questions. The Sense of an Ending is almost Tolstoyan in that respect, although Tolstoy would probably have called it 'Remorse'. Anyhow, a good, thought-provoking book about life and how to lead it. I shan't reveal more because it can be read in a day, and ought to be. This is my favourite Barnes novel since 10 and a half chapters.

Great Great Expectations

2011-09-17T14:01:00.003+01:00

I found myself reading and re-reading this wonderful paragraph towards the end of Great Expectations. Pip has been burned saving Miss Havisham, and further injured in Orlick's preparations for his execution. At last he sleeps soundly.

Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of the window. The winking lights upon the bridges were already pale, the coming sun was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turning coldly grey, with here and there at top a warm touch from the burning in the sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with Church towers and spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and a veil seemed to be drawn from the river, and millions of sparkles burst out upon its waters. From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt strong and well.

Lost Innocence

2011-09-09T14:31:00.003+01:00

In last Sunday's Sunday Telegraph Paul Theroux wrote this:

In time — the feeling ate at me like a sickness — I realised that it was not the Twin Towers, and part of the Pentagon, and the downed plane in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, that had been destroyed, but something much bigger, our national confidence, and that the “lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country” (the words are Nabokov’s), the country that I had known as triumphant since childhood, was overwhelmed, and rattled in a way I had never seen before; our innocence was toast.

That rather flip "toast" suggests the writer didn't really believe what he was writing, but liked the sound (or perhaps the thought) of it nonetheless. A much better version of a similar idea was written by Philip Larkin.

MCMXIV

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

'Here' and 'High Windows'

2011-09-07T13:52:00.000+01:00

Both poems seem to end on a similar note, a kind of divine resignation (this was a phrase Conrad used to describe the Russians) without the divinity, so to speak (no sweating in the dark), and with a delicate yearning - for what? The freedom of wordlessness?

Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

BLACKBIRD

2011-09-07T13:34:00.002+01:00

There’s a blackbird on the fence

Still as stone and somehow straight.

The day is cold, the year is late.

I stand and stare.

How sad the sense

Of something so immaculate.

Wynn Wheldon

Goodbye to the Villa Piranha by Francis Hope

2011-09-06T10:16:00.002+01:00

Prepare the journey North,
Smothering feet in unfamiliar socks,
Sweeping the bathroom free of sand, collecting
Small change of little worth.

Make one last visit to the tip
(Did we drink all those bottles?) and throw out
The unread heavy paperbacks, saving
One thriller for the trip.

Chill in the morning air
Hints like a bad host that we should be going.
Time for a final swim, a walk, a last
Black coffee in the square.

If not exactly kings
We were at least francs bourgeois, with the right
To our own slice of place and time and pleasure,
And someone else’s things.

Leaving the palace and its park
We take our common place along the road,
As summer joins the queue of other summers,
Driving towards the dark.

NOTE: I am most grateful to the Comment added by 'Haimona', correcting several mistakes in my original post of this poem. I have now corrected the layout, added the missing letters and word, and herewith add the following: "Francis Hope was one of the passengers killed in the Paris crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 on Sunday 3 March 1974. This poem was published in the New Statesman of 8 March 1974 at the end of Corinna Adam's obituary, "Francis Hope 1938-74", printed on page 324." It remains true that it was brought originallyo my attention by Mr Rupert Walters. Hope was Rupert's wife Margy's cousin.

A Visit to the Highlands, Part Two

2011-09-02T13:04:00.017+01:00

Sunday morning we were left to our own devices and we went and looked in a local antique shop. I didn’t notice much except the vast number of books on the Royal family and a book called ‘Fun in Bed’, which wasn’t at all what you think - it was subtitled ‘The Convalescent’s Handbook’. Published in 1934, and still with dustcover intact, it was worth probably a good deal more than the £18 being asked, though I wouldn’t have wanted to sell it.

The rain was already fairly fierce, but fiercer still was the wind. We dashed back to the car and returned to the hotel to pick up our packed lunch: 2 apples, 2 bananas, 2 nutty bars, 2 diet cokes, and 4 cheese and ham rolls, all wrapped in foil and placed in a JD sports bag. It was like going on a school trip.

We were going to Corgarff Castle for lunch followed by “a gentle walk across the moors”. “Be prepared for rain”, James had added in his itinerary notes.

Corgarff castle is not a romantic looking castle. From afar it looks like some kind of grain silo. Actually, it is jolly old and distinguished and full of history and so on. The thing was, today, officially, it was closed because of the high winds. HSE of course. But Sir James Forbes, Bart, was not to be stymied and made an arrangement which allowed us access at least to the barracks.

But by god the wind was high, as high as I have ever felt, at land or sea. And it was not simply its velocity but the cold it carried with it. Where on earth did that come from? It was too cold even for snow, so instead we had sleet that felt as though it would rip the skin off our faces.

Through this biting weather a good number of us made it to the castle, including Professors Brian and Catherine Skinner, both in their eighties, both still teaching (at Yale), both still dancing. He edited the Oxford Companion to the Earth, and she is the world’s leading expert on asbestos. Asbestos is a mineral. If you leave it alone it is harmless. The worst thing you can do if you find asbestos is to start ripping it out. That is altogether far more dangerous than leaving it in. This is one of the many things I learned in Scotland.

The daughter of these distinguished bods is the filially conscientious and cheerful 'Weeds' fan Lassa Skinner, the founder of 'Culture'; she and Debby hit it off well and spent a good deal of the next couple of days laughing together.

After eating our packed lunch I decided to find out if anyone wanted to take "the gentle walk over the moors". Several were up for it, mostly Californians (of whom there were no less than 18 non-family members for the celebrations), but after descending to the car park (a couple of hundred yards through the slicing sleet) James looked at me and used the word “brutal” and decided in his quiet way that no-one was going to catch hypothermia or be blown to kingdom come on his watch. Instead we repaired to a local knit-shop where we drank hot chocolate full of marshmallows, and talked of what might have been. (Actually, we talked about the rise of the Napa Valley wineries, with winemaker Penny and her husband Chip, who is interested in Sustainable Energy, and has a magnificent beard, and a gravity of diction that masks a dry humour).

That evening we were supposed to rehearse our flinging and reeling at a bash in the Lonach Hall, open to all. Food was laid on for the out-of-towners, and we took two bottles of wine (one of which I had won in a raffle at the Glenbuchat ceilidh the night before).

I managed one eightsome reel, with the aid and gracious assistance of several Californians who had been diligently practicing all year long. Debby and I tried a Gay Gordon but thankfully we joined too late to make utter fools of ourselves. We were nevertheless soon exhausted and made it back to the hotel in time for Match of the Day 2 to watch North London (Spurs + Arsenal 3) being humiliated by Manchester (Utd + City 13).

The cold of the day had seeped into our hotel room. The radiator had ceased to work (it transpired that Ian had run out of oil for the heater). I slept in two shirts and socks.

And so to Monday. I wanted rather to do the walk we hadn’t done the previous day, but there was a much higher priority. We had to find some shoes that Debby could dance in. She had gone all Imelda Marcos about her shoes and brought four pairs of high heels, along with several floaty frocks, and a vintage ball gown. She had brought neither dancing shoes nor walking boots. She had not packed, in short, for Scotland. She had packed for Park Lane.

It was an altogether brighter, warmer day, and we embarked on a tour that took us to every shoe shop in the region. We went to Ballater (I’m still unclear on pronunciation) where Debby bought me a coat and pair of trews at McCalls of Perth and she couldn’t find shoes; we went to Dinnet and Aboyne and eventually to Banchory. At Banchory there is a huge new Tesco. It was the only shop that had dancing shoes in Debby’s size.

The landscape is wonderful. It is so varied. You pass quickly from arable land to moor, to forest, and past the odd loch. We moved between the parallel rivers of the Don (to the north) and the Dee - sinuous full-flowing rivers comfortable in the landscape, just below flood level. We stopped at Cambus O’May (ah, the names – Tom a’Char, Muir of Fowlis, Tough, Echt) and took photos on the suspension bridge.

At Craigievar Castle Debby wanted to know if it had been painted (it is very pink). It hadn’t. It was the natural colour of the rendering (known I think as ‘harling’). We wandered about the garden. I felt a twinge of gout. This boded ill for the reeling. I stood and stared at the views from the castle and thought that it would turn me into a painter: that variegated landscape, that changed with every scud of a cloud, would fascinate endlessly. I could see why Henry James had time for these hills. It is a remote place, but it is not wild. Very different from North Wales, which is less remote, but stonier altogether.

We got back to the hotel. Our room: the bed had not been made, the dirty cups had not been taken away – the room had not been touched. There was no heat. And the saniflo had not stopped going from the morning’s ablutions – it was on permanent grind. There seemed to be a large number of flies. Nonetheless, despite cutting myself on the ear with a razor, producing more blood than any ear has the right to contain, and a zip problem on Debby’s vintage ball gown, we were ready by ten to eight, which would get us to Lonach Hall by eight or thereabouts. Perfect.

Ian – who was catering for the party at the Hall - had locked the front door.

And the back door.

He had locked his only paying guests into his own hotel.

We were the only people in the place. Debby made phone calls from a list on the wall of the kitchen (Ramsay would have gone ballistic at the state of it), while I looked for a key. Eventually I re-examined the door. It was a double door. There were two locks. The right hand side of the door was bolted top and bottom. I undid them both and kicked. I didn’t think it would open, but it did. We were free.

Driving to the hall we realised that not only had we left the Glenkindie Arms Hotel open to all comers, but that our own computers were in there. It would be necessary for someone to go back and relock the doors.

Turned out I had to. “Could you pick up some corkscrews while you’re there?” added James.

I sank a dram and back I drove, through the darkening glen. I went inside, found a couple of corkscrews, closed the doors and then wondered about the Yale lock. Surely I should lock that too. I sat in the car and pondered. Yep. I got out, relocked, headed back for supper.

Which was, of course, fabulous. Pork, mushroom risotto, spinach, apple. Crackling to die for. I sat in between Professor Mrs Skinner, who told me about the asbestos, and an extremely stately and beautiful woman called Dawnine Dyer, who was a wine-maker.

At 10.00 pm the dancing commenced. Debby gamely joined in the eightsome reel and looked absolutely gorgeous, beaming confusedly. And then we stripped the willow successfully (what a dance that is!) before speeches and then the climb into impossibly complicated Highland reels, all of which seemed to be know to the Californians, who were a joy and a laugh throughout the celebrations.

This was great occasion. The dancing is transfixing. It allows for the joyfulness of music, the physical exertion of dance, the innocence of flirtation, and the happiness of communal experience. I am looking forward to James and Kerry's 50th, because there is no age limit in any of this. the young and the old do exactly the same thing and take exactly the same pleasure.

Well past midnight, perhaps past one, Debby and I were done in. We went to find Ian to get the keys to the hotel. Well, apparently, there was no Yale key and so two of Ian’s henchmen had returned to the hotel to open the back door in order to open the front door from inside and so let us in. When we got there for some reason that had not been achieved. I say “some reason” but it may be because the chief henchman was up to the gills with drink. After we had entered through the back door he tried to inveigle me into having a nightcap with him. “What’s all this red tie?” he asked me (I was wearing a red bow tie), as though in the answer clarity of thought would magically assert itself.

We went to bed.

An hour or so later I awoke. Smelled burning. I went downstairs to the dining room door. Red Tie and the peach-faced boy who accompanied him came out full of apologies. Red Tie was trying to start a fire – in the fireplace, at least. A lot of newspaper had been burned.

I turned to go back upstairs. Nope. Red Tie wanted another word. Between the two of them they explained that Ian’s car – which Red Tie had driven back from the Hall – had had a puncture that couldn’t be fixed till morning; the peach-faced boy (“I’ve been driving for four years”, he told me in a bid to borrow my car) had run out of petrol. Ian and his team were stranded at Lonach Hall. Would I consider…?

I got dressed, and drove, once more, to Lonach Hall. When I got there I found Kerry raging at the state the kitchen had been left in and James storing bottles of champagne. There was no-one else around. Ian and his gang had left.

James and Kerry’s daughter Theodora had also left – with the keys to James’s car. And she was not answering her phone (it was gone 3.00 am by now). Could I possibly give them a lift back to Glenbuchat?

I was more than happy to do this, because James and Kerry have been the cause of one of the best weekends of our married life, and I felt waves of gratitude and sympathy coursing through me. They are exceptionally nice people, and they deserve all the good that will ever come to them, and more.

They were just about to get into the car when James’s mobile rang. It was his daughter. “Tell her to get here AT ONCE”, said Kerry. And I believe she did.

I drove back to the Glenkindie Arms Hotel. It was locked. I went in through the back. We had to be away by 7.30 in order to catch the train home.

At Aberdeen station we bumped into a fellow guest, who had taught me the word “dreich” (not unsurprisingly a term for some of the weather we’d had). We asked her what she did. She was in Sustainable Energy.

Shakespearoes

2011-09-01T13:16:00.001+01:00

For anyone interested in Shakespeare:

http://60-minutes.bloggingshakespeare.com/conference/

(but why does Stephen Fry get five minutes when everyone else only gets one?)

Some Good Lines

2011-09-01T12:07:00.003+01:00

a hard attention
boring through the flesh
to stroke the bone.
from 'Penitence' by John Burnside

We're only ever twenty, we're only ever at the start.
from 'Happy Seventieth Birthday Blues' by Carol Rumens

In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.
from 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens (getting all Lawrentian)

A Visit to the Highlands, Part One

2011-08-31T20:35:00.010+01:00

A year or so ago, at my wife’s 50th birthday party, we were invited to Scotland to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of James and his wife Kerry.

My wife Debby had met James when she was employing him as a location caterer on various shoots (I mean commercial films, not grouse-bagging); he then approached her with a TV idea, This is Your Fridge. (Although we failed to sell it in the UK, it did become Norway’s most popular TV show.) Relations have been maintained, albeit from afar because James and Kerry live in California, and make wine.

Then the invitation turned up, directing us to a website, and we realised that we were not being invited merely to a wedding feast but to an entire civilization.

On Friday August 26 we woke early in order to get the Aberdeen train, leaving from Kings X at 10.00 am. We could not take a later train because in order to hire a car in Aberdeen after 6.00 pm you have to travel to the airport from Aberdeen station. The problem is that if you do get a later train you may not have time to get to the airport before that closes. It is complicated.

Not as complicated, it would seem, as sitting down on a 7 hour train journey. We thought we had reserved seats. We hadn’t. The train was full. I took up a standing position in the centre of a carriage and decided to re-evaluate my attitudes to Zen Buddhism for the next half-day. Debby went to make enquiries in the buffet car. Moving up and down the aisle was slow and hazardous. Ill-tempered people squatted on the floors between the seats, deaf to those approaching from behind because seeking refuge from their misery in their iPods and iPhones and iDontknowwhats. Small children looked miserable as only small children can – with a kind of blank hopelessness which makes you realise that this is indeed a vale of tears etc…

Debby returned eventually with various stories about football matches, the last weekend of the Edinburgh festival, broken-down trains and so forth. We could upgrade to First Class but it would cost us each £136 just one way. And it would mean the ticket inspector having to root out First Class impostors (of whom, apparently – and understandably – there were many).

And now we were smiled upon, because we were standing next to a young, beautiful and fit couple. Pete gave up his seat to Debby. Kate tried to give up her seat for me. We both refused. They were, however, persistent, and finally Debby sat down almost all the way to Leuchars in Pete’s seat. Pete and Kate are in Sustainable Energy. More importantly Pete, an Anglo-Welshman, had spent four years at the University of St Andrews and when we explained that we would be reeling and whatnot at a wedding party, warned us to avoid the 51st Regiment, a reel of grace but diabolical complication (although, as it turned out, as simple as the Twist when compared with the Duke of Perth). They were gallant and charming and Kate had a wonderful laugh and Pete seemed to know many of the facts that I have forgotten (Tay Bridge disaster, curious international status of Berwick-on-Tweed, etc) and they were altogether a very silver lining to what had been a thoroughly grey and heavily rain-laden cloud.

A cheerful young woman was only 15 minutes late with our nippy little Peugeot and we headed off west towards an increasingly impressive sunset and the Cairngorms.

I’d phoned ahead to make sure the hotel was ready for us, and was assured that they were and that they’d hold a table. The voice at the other end of the phone sounded cheerful but hard-pressed. It was the voice of Chef Patron Ian Simpson.

I couldn’t escape a feeling of dismay as we pulled up at the Glenkindie Arms Hotel. I had had a vision of bourgeois luxury and modern hospitality in a setting of traditional blah blah blah, but the old drovers inn hadn’t been painted for years, and there was a general air of untidiness and neglect about the place.

We were shown to our room, which was to be our home for the next four nights. It wasn’t a £100 + room. In the ensuite bathroom there was a Saniflo loo, no bath, a quaint like-in-your-gran's-house switch for turning the hot water on, and the shelf above the lavatory was covered with a towel to hide the badly peeled paint work. The shade was pulled down to save us from a view of the Chef-Patron's caravan and the kitchen wastebins. The linen on the bed was from Primark.

We ate a breathtakingly good meal. I had warm mackerel with something delicious drizzled and draped over it, and Debby had curried scallops. I had ‘barbury’ duck, she had lamb. I had chocolate fondant. Debby had crème brulee. We drank a delicious bottle of Cabernet Merlot, chatted to an elderly American couple from Texas (he was in Unsustainable Energy) who were visiting the Games not for the first time, and retired to bed. All well and good.

Thing was we had to be up at 7.00 in order to get to Bellabeg Park in Strathdon for the Morning Muster of the Clansmen before the commencement of the Lonach Games. We made it, staked our claim just over the bridge from the Spar, and watched as at 8.01 precisely the pipe band and clansmen began their march through the glen. Seven times they would stop for a dram before reappearing in the games arena at 1.00 pm.

I found the whole thing rather moving. A pipe band in full regalia is a magnificent beast and makes a magnificent noise. The clansmen marching behind, long pikes against their shoulders, perhaps did not bristle with the ferocity of their ancient forebears, but they were manly enough to have more than satisfied the founder of the games, Sir Charles Forbes, 1st Baronet of Newe and Edinglassie. He dictated that the Society that administered the games should support “loyal, peaceful and manly conduct; and the promotion of social and benevolent feelings among the inhabitants of the district.” Debby and I followed to the first stop, and then went back to Glenkindie for breakfast (which included the best mushrooms I have ever eaten) and a nap.

We were back in Bellabeg for mid-day and the beginning of the sport. We watched some caber tossing, some hoiking the bloody heavy stone over the bar, some hammer throwing, some individual piping, some highland dancing by very young girls and eventually the return of the band and the clansmen. Debby’s friend James turned out, much to my wife’s surprise, to be Sir James Forbes, 8th Baronet of Newe and Edinglassie and Patron of the Lonach Games. He it was who led in the clansmen, looking grave (perhaps a little dram-grey?) with his sword held before him, and very much the part, his long white sporran swinging before the dark Forbes tartan of his kilt.

We wandered around, bumped into Kerry, James’s wife, and their children, Catherine and Theodora. Kerry is a lovely diminutive matriarch, of good cheer, and her daughters are an utter credit to their parents: beautiful, bright, polite and, it would turn out, sinuous natural reelers.

Debby bought a hat that she afterwards regretted on the grounds that it looked like an old lady’s hat. I liked it on the grounds that it looked practical. I bought a shirt, having brought the wrong sort for my DJ, which I was going to be wearing on Monday night.

We left the crowds and went for tea in a nearby garden centre. Although the hotel restaurant was fully booked for the evening, Ian told us that he could feed us at 5.30. I had Aberdeen steak. Debby had the scallops again.

Now it was time to get up to Glenbuchat Hall for a local ceilidh. The idea had been to make barbecues, but the weather had already begun to turn and by the time we got there (never have I seen so many rabbits, as we drove up) everyone was inside, drinking and dancing. We kept ourselves hidden away at the back of the hall and selfishly tried to monopolize James and Kerry before they pushed off to a Grand Do at the Billy Connollys. (Billy and Pamela’s had been one of the dram stops, and there was a Billy Connolly prize for the best piping at the games – won by a Simon McKerrell of Lenzie).

We left soon after them and made our way back cautiously through a very dark and increasingly cold night. We were to find out what 'cold' really means the following morning.

The McZimmerman Award for Best Sporran goes to:

MY RIOT POEM

2011-08-24T17:43:00.003+01:00

How about a writerly riot -
bespectacled quirks looting Thomas Hood’s
Complete Poetical Works or lurking,
penknifed, in the Humanities stacks
turning up their noses at the paperbacks?
Or perhaps a Thomas Wyatt riot,
lovelorn ruffians torn between conceit
and passion, roughing up the ruff-makers,
daubing sonnets on the walls and wailing
in (and wearing) their melancholy fashion.
Or, best, a quiet riot, the lawless streets
aglow with bowed heads over Bardic tweets,
bookshop windows by greed for wisdom burnished:
conflagrations devoutly to be wished.

Wynn Wheldon

ADLESTROP by Edward Thomas

2011-08-02T00:16:00.000+01:00

Yes. I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Et in Arcadia Ego

2011-08-01T23:46:00.005+01:00

On the Oxfordshire-Warwickshire border - within walking distance of Traitor's Ford, (still a ford and named during the Civil War, though by which side I can't remember), and Hook Norton, home of the famous beer, and Cherington, where so many delicious English days were passed in what now feels a sort of Bridesheady youth, and, of course, not that far from Adlestrop itself - an idyllic weekend. Leaving London on Saturday, sans children, buying damsons and Evesham plums and English prosciutto, eaten with sweet bread from Ronnie's bagel bakery in West Hampstead, snoozing post-prandially in the sunshine, reading a superior thriller, before a little romance, showers and then out, to walk the half mile to the neighbouring village, there to eat barbecued lamb and grilled courgettes sliced thinly, and to drink well around a restoked barbecue in the company of old and good friends. Waking the following morning with the sky blue before us, breakfasting on local eggs, and heading off to a nearby yard sale, where we buy a Burmese oven and a pretty garden bench decorated with fruit. There follows a walk, a good hour above the two villages and through the woodlands, down through meadows fluffy with poppies and cornflower and purple thistle and daisies and meadowsweet and I don't know what, to the pub; two pints of the local brew and half a pint of prawns, and then returning again to the friend's garden, which is half meadow itself, light as summer, where we sit for a while before returning with a dawdle to our own cottage. A siesta, a watering of the plants, and a clear up before we pile into the car with bench and oven and dog and return to London... meanwhile, at Trent Bridge, Broad and Bell are making cricket important again. Summer in England.

BREAKING NEWS FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME (MAYBE)

2011-07-23T09:22:00.003+01:00

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has picked up tantalising fluctuations which might - or might not - be hints of the sought-after Higgs boson particle... Without the Higgs, physicists cannot explain why particles have mass. BBC News, 23/7/11

One inverse femtobarn of data
May have revealed
The Higgs boson particle to be real.
Massive news. More later.

Wynn Wheldon

RUNNING by Richard Wilbur

2011-07-16T10:46:00.004+01:00

1933 (North Caldwell, New Jersey)

What were we playing? Was it prisoner's base?
I ran with whacking keds
Down the cart-road past Rickard's place,
And where it dropped beside the tractor-sheds

Leapt out into the air above a blurred
Terrain, through jolted light,
Took two hard lopes, and at the third
Spanked off a hummock-side exactly right,

And made the turn, and with delighted strain
Sprinted across the flat
By the bull-pen, and up the lane.
Thinking of happiness, I think of that.

Note: "keds" is the brand name for "the original sneaker".

News of the World: A Devil's Advocacy

2011-07-09T15:53:00.008+01:00

I am reminded of Captain Renault in 'Casablanca': "I'm shocked - shocked - that gambling has been allowed on the premises" Claude Rains tells Bogart, before accepting his roulette winnings with a gracious "thank you".
The News of the World is a muck-raking organ. That is its point. In order to muck rake well it is necessary to be a) unscrupulous and b) unsentimental. If we do not want muck-raking, fine, let us let the muck settle. The sanctimonious outpourings of the public (and of course politicians, for whom the death of the News of the World will be most welcome) is symptomatic of that sentimental view of the world which believes that things ought to be perfect. Kill the News of the World and you bury all sorts of nasty stuff that will never see the light of day.

NB I have not personally bought a copy of the News of the World for about 35 years. We liked to buy the Observer for the sport and the NOTW for what had been raked from the muck.

"Keep the world from running backwards"

2011-07-09T14:41:00.003+01:00

I came across the following in an essay by Joseph Epstein in the New Criterion. It is a quotation from a book by F.L. Lucas, called Style (1955). It is a paragraph that could be used as a definition of sanity.

It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered. But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they inherited from their fathers, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons. Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us and to be forgotten when they in their turn have vanished. The destiny of mankind is not governed wholly by its “stars.”

Street Photographs by Nils Jorgensen

2011-07-07T16:30:00.004+01:00

Those who are fond of Cartier-Bresson (that's one of his above) will have an extremely engaging half an hour or so here:
http://nilsjorgensen.com/.

Not Adlestrop by Dannie Abse

2011-07-07T15:58:00.004+01:00

Not Adlestrop, no - besides, the name
hardly matters. Nor did I languish in June heat.
Simply, I stood, too early, on the empty platform,
and the wrong train came in slowly, surprised, stopped.
Directly facing me, from a window,
a very, very pretty girl leaned out.

When I, all instinct,
stared at her, she, all instinct, inclined her head away
as if she'd divined the much married life in me,
or as if she might spot, up platform,
some unlikely familiar.

For my part, under the clock, I continued
my scrutiny with unmitigated pleasure.
And she knew it, she certainly knew it, and would
not glance at me in the silence of not Adlestrop.

Only when the train heaved noisily, only
when it jolted, when it slid away, only then,
daring and secure, she smiled back at my smile,
and I, daring and secure, waved back at her waving.
And so it was, all the way down the hurrying platform
as the train gathered atrocious speed
towards Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire.

from Collected Poems, 1948-1976, Hutchinson, London 1977

Feel Like Going Home

2011-06-29T23:59:00.003+01:00

This song by Charlie Rich really ought to be disgustingly self-pitying, but the defeat is so thorough that the singer, you feel, is not asking for pity at all, simply stating the bald facts of a failed life. It is desperately sad, and Knopfler's yearning guitar perfectly complements the lyric. Beautifully sung, too.

Lord I feel like going home
I tried and I failed and I'm tired and weary
Everything I ever done was wrong
And I feel like going home

Lord I tried to see it through
But it was too much for me
And now I'm coming home to you
And I feel like going home

Cloudy skies are rolling in
And not a friend around to help me
From all the places I have been
And I feel like going home

Lord I feel like going home
I tried and I failed and I'm tired and weary
Everything I ever done was wrong
And I feel like going home

FROM THE CEMETERY: TWO POEMS

2011-06-23T00:37:00.007+01:00

LOVELY SHIRLEY AND MRS QUEENIE JONES

Lovely Shirley and Mrs Queenie Jones
Are neighbours forever, until, sans pity,
Age and weather desecrate their stones
Bestowing final anonymity.

And here is Elsie Flynn who fell asleep
And Harry Baker, who vanished like a dream.
At night the brambles a little further creep
About their stones, and no-one screams.

As for George Edwin Fish and the Tinks
They too will succumb at last, return to dust
And then when the sun’s too large to sink
All will be gone: life and death and love and lust.

BARON LISTER'S BLACKBERRIES

The blackberries sweeten about Baron Lister.
They are swallowing his sarcophagus
And blackening my oesophagus.
There are bones among the roots perhaps
Roots among the bones.

Soon after rain, the sun spangling the brambles
The cemetery’s empty. The light calms the silence
Before a siren wails.

Wynn Wheldon

R.I.P.

2011-06-21T00:11:00.004+01:00

Clarence Clemons, The Boss's clarinet player, responsible for that solo in 'Jungleland' which evokes all the sweaty melancholy and yearning of lives that know only the city. Who the hell gets that job now?

Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose writing has the ability to render what is vicarious experience for the reader damn nearly actual. Where is Volume 3?

Glenn Gould plays Bach Partita 2

2011-06-21T00:09:00.001+01:00

Utterly transfixing

CHEFS

2011-06-20T10:24:00.002+01:00

3 pm and all over Soho
Chefs are sitting on steps, leaning at doors
Smoking or chatting into mobile phones
Slipped from flapped tunics or checkered trousers.
The dull morning has given way to warmth
And pretty girls and boys bloom outside bars
As the restaurants wind down / wind up for night
And a whole new crowd from the further city:
Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, tourists
Native and foreign, noses in the air,
Wondering at that herb and this spice,
Chowing down, then taking in a show.
They’re succeeded by the demi-monde,
The leanest consumers in town,
All salads, cigarettes and metrosex.
And soon it is 3 am in Soho.
Chefs are sitting on steps, leaning at doors,
Smoking; dawn’s not far off, and breakfast.

Wynn Wheldon

Regina Spektor - "Fidelity"

2011-06-19T17:08:00.002+01:00

I'm proud to say that it has only taken me five years to catch up with this. Unfortunately embedding is disabled, so i shall simply have to trust you to go here. Please skip the Pokemon ad as soon as you possibly can.

Ah-ha! I have found a live version that I'm allowed to embed.

Senna

2011-06-16T01:12:00.003+01:00

This is not about motor racing, not about sport, not about celebrity; it is a film about mortality and what it means to be alive. It is beautifully paced and edited, and never lingers; it eschews the sensational (we see Senna's final crash only once), the morbid and the maudlin. It is an engaging portrait of an exceptional life. Outstanding.

KEEP STROLLING

2011-06-15T12:14:00.003+01:00

…beck’s novel Cannery…
Ms Ozick in her dandelion-yellow Piper Cherokee
The Baskerville Q in all its glory
And so at (of course) Baker Street (though this is not a story):
‘ere mate, which way’s London?
Summons the guard, who’s from Sunderland
By way of Tehran.

Disparities spice each hour in the city
Data hangs like fruit on vines of electricity
Hear the bells tolling for memory while
Sodcasting* girls on the back seat smile.

I purchase an old fashioned lolly pop
And simply keep strolling.

Wynn Wheldon

*Verb - The act of playing music through the speaker on a mobile phone, usually on public transport. Commonly practiced by young people wearing polyester, branded sportswear with dubious musical taste. (source: the Urban Dictionary)

Written very quickly. Perhaps even hastily. All comments of whatever stripe most welcome.

The Walks so far

2011-06-14T20:22:00.002+01:00

2005 - Glastonbury Tor
2006 - Dulverton (south Exmoor)
2007 - Golden Cap
2008 - Porlock 1
2009 - Porlock 2
2010 - Great Bedwyn
2011 - Salcombe (South Hams)

The Walk 2011 - Part 2

2011-06-13T22:12:00.006+01:00

Old boys on a boat

Val, proprietor of the B&B in Slapton, the name of which escapes me, was terrific. She was cheerful, straightforward, and when asked about Bruce Forsyth (the paper announced his K) didn't seem to have much time for baubles (she may well be a secret republican) , and had even less for mountain cyclists on the coastal path. "Devils", she called them. The rooms were especially comfortable in the sense that they were not too B&B starchy - rather like Val herself in fact. A very good night.

Morning brought anticipation of seeing TPJM at the end of Slapton sands, by The Tank. He would walk with us to Salcombe. It was indeed a real pleasure to see him. Strange how the familiarity of school friendships endures. Of course he's a terribly easy chap anyway...

RR had been concerned about Group Dynamics. Was there going to be an HR problem? We had never been so large a party before. We have shrunk to six, and we had thought eight was the optimum number, but the extras we took on this year - all west country bods - made nothing but a pleasurable ripple. This walk was perhaps the best yet.

JAH and I took an interesting diversion not far from the coast, and found ourselves in deeply jungular surroundings. Keep following the stream we said to each other, as though we'd been shot down behind enemy lines. We both had sticks, without which passage would have been impossible. It struck me later that night that of all the party JAH was the one I would have chosen to be in that mess with: optimistic, temperate, amused, aware of the world immediately around him, never too earnest, but not childish either. It took me back to days following him down streams turning over rocks to find crayfish. We'd made a mistake, but like a Leonardo blot, something rather special had been made out of it.

JAH and I reached the Pigs Nose in East Prawle just in time to miss lunch, but sandwiches did fine and what was to follow was the most spectacular walk we have had so far, along the coast to Salcombe. Breathtakingly lovely. The light was sharp, defining everything with utter clarity. This was early summer, before the haze sets in; there was a breeze; the silver sea sparkled. JAH wanted to know why it was ever necessary to go to Turkey or anywhere else for that matter. TPJM was of similar mind. SAF was reminded of the Costa Brava. RPH and MDF swam again in a tiny cove we had thought only accessible by water until we spotted a vertiginous little path that health and safety haven't put their ruinous little signposts and barriers into yet.

We walked into Salcombe up and over and around, through the bracken, into the sun, and took the little ferry across to that town and made our way to the third rate hotel with first rate views. Company made it first-rate anyway, so our complaints were amused rather than angry. I finished my evening in the legendary Room 312, sitting out on the balcony until the rains came.

We are lucky people to have such friends, and I think we also deserve each other. Thanks, as ever and always, to RR for laying on a hint of heaven for us all.

Please add comments, chaps.

Asked at Baker Street

2011-06-13T09:32:00.002+01:00

Asked on the platform at Baker Street station, in a broad cockney accent: "'ere, mate, which way's London?"

Coastal Destinations

2011-06-13T08:52:00.004+01:00

A little caesura in my account of The Walk: I note that National Geographic magazine reckons the Pembrokeshire Coast Path to be the second best "coastal destination" on earth. The South Hams don't get a look in! A disgrace, in my view... full list here.

Cymru am byth!