That's right! Down by, over by yer!@scheifferbates Every Welsh person returning to Wales from England #wales #england #welsh ♬ original sound - Scheiffer Bates
Mexico 70 is my first hazy football memory. Dad took my younger brother Vince and I to see a game in a friend's house, as the family had a, deep breath, colour television! I have two abiding memories; the contrast between the vivacious gaudy brightness of the pitch in the sun with the sections towards the touchline in the shadow of the stadium roof. The second is being mortified with embarrassment as I was there in my pajamas. The decision or opportunity to take us must have been a last minute thing.
Truth be told, I can't clearly remember exactly what game we saw, but I imagine it would either have been the final - Brazil beat Italy 4-1 the day before my ninth birthday - or the 1-0 game in the group stages in which Brazil beat defending champions England. Either way Pele would have featured.
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| My Canvas |
This month's Audible credit has gone on In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development by Carol Gilligan.
Prodnose: And it is all Sean's fault for writing The Englishwoman?
Yes. Do your remember that recently, I have been pondering if not positing (Icons passim) a longstanding female moral tradition that we may trace from The Three Marys at the Crucifixion, via the Medieval anchoresses to, say, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, and even Elizabeth Anscombe in the 20th century?
Prodnose: No.
It has struck me of late, that the "ethics of care;" a feminist approach that challenges traditional moral theories as male-centric and problematic to the extent they omit or downplay values and virtues usually culturally associated with women or with roles that are often cast as ‘feminine' may be considered as part of the same stream. Thus Ms Gilligan's book, widely credited as kick starting the movement is relevant.
Prodnose (looking like a fool): Ah yes, of course very much so.
Can we not find analogues in Simone Weil's radical conception of attention, or in Edith Stein’s phenomenology of sensual and emotional empathy?
Prodnose (ungraciosuly): I s'pose.
Myself (lighting pipe and impersonating Tony Hopkins as CS Lewis in Shadowlands): The English term “empathy,” in fact, was coined only in 1908 as a translation of the German Einfühlung, which literally means “in-feeling.” Stein's 1917 dissertation is increasingly discussed and viewed as one the most nuanced phenomenological accounts, on a par with Husserl’s and Scheler’s analyses. Edith Stein? That'll be St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942) to you, young fella me lad.
When I wondered out loud, how such an extraordinary thing could be achieved, Renu - his fiance and a doctor - piped up; they accomplish it by enhanced control of the vagus nerve.
"Never heard of it," was my contribution to the discussion.
"Also known as the tenth cranial nerve, it interfaces with the parasympathetic control of the heart, lungs, and digestive tract."
"Ah, heart and lungs eh?"
"It is a channel by which they can be relaxed by, say, deep slow breathing or even the application of a cold press to the upper area of the sternum."
"Like yoga!"
"I was thinking more of the role of endurance training, central command, reflexes from muscle, and of the carotid-cardiac baroreceptor reflex in changing vagal tone during intense exercise and recovery, but yes, like yoga."
I'm so happy I went down the pub rather than the library opposite. It is more educational.
For years, there has been worldwide fear of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impending takeover of the world… who knew that it would start with the world of art and literature.
Indeed, there are very few differences at a philosophical level between arguments for and against writing and those for and against digital technology and at a practical level many centuries will have elapsed before we will know whether the opportunities afforded by the latter outweigh the dangers.
Here, O king, is a branch of learning that will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories. My discovery provides a recipe for memory and wisdom. But the king answered and said ‘O man full of arts, the god-man Toth, to one it is given to create the things of art, and to another to judge what measure of harm and of profit they have for those that shall employ them.’
And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.
“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.” ― Simone WeilProdnose: I don't understand the connection.
What I think is Simone de Beauvoir's only meeting with Simone Weil, from de Beauvoir's first volume of autobiography "Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter."
While preparing to enter the Normale — the training-college in Paris for professoriates — she was taking the same examinations as myself at the Sorbonne. She intrigued me because of her great reputation for intelligence and her bizarre get-up; she would stroll round the courtyard of the Sorbonne attended by a group of Alain's old pupils; she always carried in the one pocket of her dark-grey overall a copy of Libres Propos and in the other a copy of Humanite. A great famine had broken out in China, and I was told that when she heard the news she had wept: these tears compelled my respect much more than her gifts as a philosopher. I envied her for having a heart that could beat right across the world. I managed to get near her one day. I don't know how the conversation got started; she declared in no uncertain tones that only one thing mattered in the world today: the Revolution which would feed all the starving people of the earth. I retorted, no less peremptorily, that the problem was not to make men happy, but to find the reason for their existence. She looked me up and down: 'It's easy to see you've never gone hungry,' she snapped. Our relationship did not go any further. I realized that she had classified me as 'a high-minded little bour-geois', and this annoyed me, just as I used to be annoyed whenever Mademoiselle Litt attributed certain tastes I had to the fact that I was only a child; I believed that I had freed myself from the bonds of my class: I didn't want to be anyone else but myself.
It fills me with delight that Weil beat de Beauvoir into second place in their general philosophy exams at the Sorbonne. Maybe a trip to her grave in Ashford, Kent ought to be on my list for 2023? She is buried in the dedicated Catholic section in Bybrook Cemetery there.
A random thought; Weil, Sir Richard Francis Burton and Wittgenstein (three of my favourites) are all laid to rest in Catholic soil despite not being, officially, of the faith.
Out for a Christmas dinner with PG last night the subject of agents came up. I am very far from clear exactly what it is they do, but acquisition thereof is a hurdle the drama school nieces will have to overcome at some stage.
His first was Robin Fox, and after that he was with Peggy Ramsay. Follow the links in the last sentence to their Wikipedia pages. They sound like a couple of colourful characters.
Robin Fox, was the scion of the theatrical dynasty comprising Edward, James, Laurence etc. As well as "the grandson of Samson Fox (1838–1903), a British engineer and philanthropist, principal founder of the Royal College of Music and inventor of the corrugated boiler flue." Principal founder of the Royal College of Music and inventor of the corrugated boiler flue, is unimprovable. Let's not even go there.
In Prick Up Your Ears (1987), the Joe Orton film biopic, Peggy Ramsay is portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave, The Letters of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent, a collection of her letters edited by Colin Chambers, was published in 2018. "She would have got my new play on," says Peter. "Probably by blackmailing someone."
We shall not see their like again. Peter is still with Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Limited.
Leafing through the Guardian yesterday, I came across this article about the upcoming Whitney Houston biopic, much of it is an interview with the screenwriter Anthony McCarten. Various neurons fired because I remembered he was a friend of Donna's (a mate of his went out with her sister - Icons passim) when they were growing up in New Plymouth, New Zealand. Based on this, it struck me that I hadn't seen Donna for a while so we arranged to meet up for a glass or two of wine in Canedo after work. Rebecca came along as well in the end.
Jennifer Connelly walked opening night red carpet BEFORE husband Paul Bettany’s debut The Collaboration is canceled due to COVID-19
You have to love America. Still going ahead with the parade even though the show has been cancelled. It will sound familiar to Afghan girls who can't go to school or university now. You can always rely on the USA because it will always let you down.
I listened to episode 23 of the Empire podcast "The Fall of Constantinople" last night. (More accurately I listened to it at about 10:30 in the evening when Virgin Media came back online.)
At the end William Dalrymple says something along the lines of:
Russia now sees itself as the last surviving pillar of Orthodoxy. Rome was the first Rome, Constantinople was the second Rome, Moscow now regards itself as the third Rome. They see themselves as the last true Christians.
Interesting stuff; for all that I've referred before (Icons passim) to an sort of unholy trinity, comprising Putin, Aleksandr Dugin and Patriarch Kirill, marrying Russian irredentism and a Slavic manifest destiny; I may have played down the religious angle.
Deep history can be surprisingly relevant to contemporary events and tensions. There are now two Orthodox churches in Ukraine. The older and larger church is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate; a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, it is under the spiritual authority of Patriarch Kirill (see paragraph above) of Moscow.
By contrast, the second, newer church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, celebrates its independence from Moscow. With the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, a solemn council met in Kyiv as recently as December 2018, created the new church, and elected its leader, Metropolitan Epifaniy. In January 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew formally recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as a separate, independent and equal member of the worldwide communion of Orthodox churches.
I've still got a lot of work to do understanding all this.
I caught up with Jone over the weekend who filled me in a bit more on his adventures driving a firetruck in a convoy that met outside Oslo to donate in Ukraine (Icons passim).
"You understand units of measurements, don't you?" he said and when I confirmed that I did showed me a spec sheet. He has persuaded someone to contribute a generator. It weighs 3,718 kg and puts out 320 kW.
"Bloody hell!" says I, "You could run a hospital with that!"
"Yes, yes you could," he replied, then, as it this was a bagatelle, "All I need now is someone to donate a crane truck, I have got a few irons in the fire."
All that said, the longer this goes on the more pessimistic I get about Ukraine's prospects. I find the gloomy John Mearsheimer and Col Doug MacGregor* more convincing than the boosters. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Russia pushes on all the way to Odessa, leaving Ukraine land-locked, as well establishing the Dnipro river as the new border between the countries.
*I heard MacGregor say the other day that there are 40,000 US troops in Poland. Can that be right? It seems extraordinary.
Y Wladfa (Welsh pronunciation: [ə ˈwladva], "The Colony"), also occasionally Y Wladychfa Gymreig (Welsh pronunciation: [ə wlaˈdəχva ɡəmˈreiɡ], "The Welsh Settlement"), refers to the establishment of settlements by Welsh immigrants in Patagonia, beginning in 1865, mainly along the coast of the lower Chubut Valley. In 1881, the area became part of the Chubut National Territory of Argentina which, in 1955, became Chubut Province.Patagonian Welsh (Welsh: Cymraeg y Wladfa) is a variety of the Welsh language spoken in Y Wladfa, The decimal numeral system used in Modern Welsh originated in Patagonia in the 1870s, and was subsequently adopted in Wales in the 1940s as a simpler counterpart to the traditional vigesimal system, which still survives in Wales.
Rosalía makes other pop stars look like they are not trying hard enough. On the penultimate date of her 2022 Motomami world tour, the 30-year-old electro-flamenco star brought an ice melting blast of Spanish sizzle to a wintery London. In one of the most inventively staged arena productions of recent years, she danced like a dervish, sang like a nightingale, rapped like a gangster, played piano and guitar, and she did it all with such complete commitment to the song and the moment that she seemed constantly either on the verge of tearful disintegration or joyful self-combustion.....Having studied at music school in Barcelona, Rosalía Vila Tobella achieved local fame as a traditional flamenco singer, before rising to become a superestrella by audaciously blending traditional music with electronica, R’n’B and hip hop. While streaming has opened up the global market for more exotic rhythms and non-English language songs, there is a sense that Britain hasn’t quite caught up yet. Rosalía’s wildly adventurous third album, Motomami, has been the most acclaimed album of 2022 according to aggregate website metacritic.com, but didn’t even crack the top 40 in the UK.
I've been talking to Sean about his novel The Englishwoman quite a lot lately.
But why has this white, middle-class Londoner with no political or religious affiliations made this perilous journey in the first place? And why does she turn down the opportunity to escape when death becomes the likely outcome?
Why indeed? It has led me, I think, to uncover - or possibly posit - a longstanding female moral tradition that we may trace from The Three Marys at the Crucifixion, via the Medieval anchorites (in Britain from the 12th to the 16th centuries, anchoresses consistently outnumbered their male counterparts by as many as four to one) to, say, Edith Stein, Simone Weil, and even Elizabeth Anscombe in the 20th century. An heroic, under-celebrated form of resistance that manifests itself, superficially passively, in the bearing of witness. A necessary corrective to the male tendency to "pick sides" as if every dispute was a football, rugby or cricket match.
The trouble with this though, it has struck me lately, is that there is absolutely no way to square Simone de Beauvoir with it. Specifically the way that Le Deuxième Sexe turns the existentialist mantra that existence precedes essence into equally dreary tone-deaf proto-feminist gobbledygookery. On reflection, I will go further, its publication in 1949 represents the moment when the worm turned, when abdication of responsibility was equated with moral superiority. Today's cankers like the sex-gender distinction and granular internally contradicted identity politics followed, it seems in retrospect, slowly but inevitably.
I diskard her uterly.
Prodnose: Eh? Who are you today? Roger Scruton?
Myself: You try writing when you are listening to "Digging Your Scene" by the Blow Monkeys or "Love Changes (Everything)" by Climie Fisher and see how much sense you make.
Prodnose: Show me the 80s white label 12" singles and I will show you the man.
Myself: Tru dat.
Best of Enemies is a triumph. I can't say any more about it at the risk of letting cats out of bags.
I got a message from Mia yesterday, she said she had been chatting to some bloke at the wrap party for the BBC thing she was shooting and had mentioned going to see Paapa Essiedu in "A Number" with us at the Old Vic back in January (passim). He said he and Paapa were old friends having shared a flat when they were at Guildhall and even for a few years after. He turns out to have been Sion Alun Davies who has featured previously (passim) on these pages as an "Antelope Tooting Pub Quiz regular."
When I told Frankie, she mentioned in passing that Jonathan Holloway, who lives a few doors away in my street, has written a newly imagined adaptation of Dickens' popular short story, The Visitor that will go out on Radio 4 on Christmas Day with an all star cast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001ghw9.
It may be a small world, but it certainly seems to revolve around me.
Oh and we are going to see Best of Enemies tonight.
Ain't all roses on the drama front though. Not by any means gravy as Netflix’s Cancels ‘Warrior Nun,’ Its Highest Audience-Scored Series Ever. Boo! Cries of shame.We're thrilled to have taken home BEST PLAY at this year's #EveningStandardTheatreAwards! 🙌 #BestOfEnemiesPlay pic.twitter.com/XBwE0cEPDQ
— Best of Enemies (@BestEnemiesPlay) December 12, 2022
Ah well; England and Wales are both out of the World Cup now, but life goes on.
By life, of course I mean me going to the theatre once a month.
Best of Enemies is booked for Thursday.
"Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights" in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe was lined up last week for January 4th. More in hope than expectation this, but I thought I would give it a go. I polished off Night 750 of the 1,001 this morning, which is more than two years' worth at the rate of one a day.
I can see "The King and I" in my calendar on February the 14th. I have also got an email confirming I bought the tickets, for all that I have no recollection at all of booking them or with whom I am going. This is going to need sensitive handling if noses are not to be put out of joint.
Finally, at least for today I need to get to the touring version of Girl from the North Country at the Wimbledon Theatre between the 14th and 18th of March next year. That'll be more than four years after \I met up with John and Lorraine after they saw, what I think was, the original production (Icons passim).
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| Alright, the adventure has just begun. Man (44), fire truck (33) and about 2000 kilometres to Ukraine. What could possibly go wrong? Btw it’s snowing, and the tyres are really old… 😬😁 |
Two 'tings yesterday.
First off the bat, back in 2019, an American woman called Anne Sacoolas killed a boy called Harry Dunn; she was driving on the wrong side of the road. She was whisked away back to the good old USA, luckily for her, we are told, she had diplomatic immunity as the wife of a US agent working in the UK. She was promptly shipped out of the UK. Yesterday she was sentenced to to eight months in prison, suspended for 12 months, for causing a death by careless driving. The former US spy was sentenced in an "unprecedented" case at the Old Bailey - but did not attend the hearing in person after American officials advised against.
'Nother 'ting on the same day the US and Russia exchanged jailed US basketball star Brittney Griner for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout,
Biden's administration is a disgrace. Imagine if France had done two such cynical simultaneous deals with the UK; you'd never hear the end of it.
You didn't read it hear first, but at the end of the day, the USA - adrift without principle - ultimately will abandon anyone and anything without a backwards glance. Vietnam? Afghanistan? Pay attention the good people of Ukraine.
Let's not extradite Julian Assange.
I have finished Warrior Nun Series 2 on Netflix now, so the plot spoiler ban is lifted. The supernatural entity who lived in the realm on the other side of the Arc, a being called Ria certainly cheered me up enormously whenever she was mentioned; sharing as she did, the name my cousin goes by. I hope there is a series 3, and I hope there is more Ria in it.
Prodnose: You'll be free to watch Harry & Meghan Volume 1 then, when Netflix drops that today then, if it hasn't landed already.
Myself:
You'll be free to watch Harry & Meghan Volume 1 then, when Netflix drops that today then, if it hasn't landed already.Prodnose: What does all that mean; the text with the line through it?
Myself: It means I'm not going to watch it. I am playing with typographical conventions.
Prodnose (looking like a fool): Oh yes, of course you are I see it now.
Nadhim Zahawi, , the Conservative Party chairman, has urged nurses to accept a lower pay rise to send a “very clear message” to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
He told unions it was time to “try and negotiate” and insisted that the soaring costs facing Britons this winter were predominantly because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We have to come together, this is not a time to be divided,” he told Sky’s Sophie Ridge. “I hope to send a very clear message to Mr Putin that he cannot use energy as a weapon in this way."
I am so outraged by the conflation of two, essentially unrelated, issues (nurses' pay and war in Ukraine) that I can't understand why nobody else seems to be. It is as cheap a platitudinous gesture as I have ever had the misfortune to see.
I looked Nadhim up on Wikipedia. He has got a degree in chemical engineering. It makes me wonder f I can send mine back; something along the lines of John Lennon returning his MBE.
All this on the same day as Iran said it had ‘abolished’ the hardline morality police blamed for death of Mahsa Amini. We will wait obviously to see how this plays out, and I can't help but wonder how much the brave and dignified actions of the Iranian football team at the world cup contributed.
A Sunday so absurd that the Tories were spouting gibberish Goebbels would have blushed at, while the "mad mullahs" were following the will of their people?
Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations
§265 Let us imagine a table (something like a dictionary) that exists only in our imagination. A dictionary can be used to justify the translation of a word X by a word Y. But are we also to call it a justification if such a table is to be looked up only in the imagination? -- "Well, yes; then it is a subjective justification." -- But justification consists in appealing to something independent. -- "But surely I can appeal from one memory to another. For example, I don't know if I nave remembered the time of departure of a train right and to check it I call to mind how a page of the time -- table looked. Isn't it the same here?" -- No; for this process has got to produce a memory which is actually correct. If the mental image of the time -- table could not itself be tested for correctness, how could it confirm the correctness of the first memory? (As if someone were to buy several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true.)
Looking up a table in the imagination is no more looking up a table than the image of the result of an imagined experiment is the result of an experiment.
I looked this up yesterday, as I wanted to double check I had As if someone were to buy several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true right before I used it as a joke in a WhatsApp message.
On rereading the whole passage though, it strikes me as generally relevant to the 21st century, skewering as it does the models that underlie what we read about climate change projections and COVID infection forecasts etc.
Songbird was written in half an hour at 3am when she couldn’t sleep. She says: "Fortunately, I had a piano in my room [but] nothing to record it on, but I had to play this song. The whole song [came out] complete: chords, words, everything within half an hour. I couldn’t go to sleep in case I forgot it, so I had to play it all night long."
RIP Christine McVie. It was worth playing all night long.
The burglar is having his pre-op bowel enlargement today. I have to pick him up from the Princess Royal hospital, drive him home, and hang about for a couple of hours to make sure he is OK. With any luck then his colostomy reversal will happen next Wednesday, December 7th.
The stoma surgery it is reversing took place on 15 September 2021, so that will be 450 days between the operation a reversal that usually happens after about one hundred days.
The last time I saw him, come to think about it was when I picked him up from the Princess Royal after his colonoscopy. That was on May 30th 2021; exactly eighteen months ago today!
The observations above come after Unison announced last night that paramedics and other ambulance workers had backed taking industrial action. The Royal College of Nursing has scheduled its own walkouts on December 15 and 20.
If he is released from hospital, as is planed on 12 December, that will be 561 days after the test that revealed the tumors. Merry Christmas.
The author of the play Mia was in this weekend went to Central as well, which squares the circle nicely. I was aware, for some reason that eludes me, that it was first performed in 1952 so I was somewhat surprised by the frankness of the language and the treatment of homosexuality.
Wikipedia explains:
The first staging of his (Rodney Ackland's) large-cast drama, The Pink Room (or The Escapists), in Brighton and then at the Lyric Hammersmith in London on 18 June 1952, was largely financed by Terence Rattigan, who liked the play and believed it deserved a London production. The Pink Room was a tragi-comedy set in the summer of 1945 in a seedy London club (based on the French Club in Soho). It received a severe critical panning and after that, apart from one further play and an adaptation, it led to the playwright's more than 30-year virtual absence. According to its director, Frith Banbury, "When the play failed, Terry never wanted to see Rodney again."
However, following the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain's play licensing in 1968, Ackland was able to rewrite aspects of this play, re-titling it Absolute Hell. It was performed in its new form in 1988 to considerable success at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond-upon-Thames, directed by Sam Walters and John Gardyne, and starring Polly Hemingway and David Rintoul.
All clear?
What a great afternoon I had; wonder after wonder. For all that I knew intellectually that it was a final year production at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, I think that subconsciously I was expecting something like a school or church hall. This naivety stood me in good stead. They have their own theatre, the Embassy (here is its Wikipedia page), formally a professional, commercial operation but owned by Central since 1956. The set and the costumes were beautifully crafted, there was a cafe bar when we could get a drink in the interval etc. etc. In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was and it added to my enjoyment.
Oh, and Mia was very good as Elizabeth. It was also good to see two of her classmates that I have met socially with her, Alex and Saskia, in it as well.
I couldn't help it. In the end I bunked off work for the second half of the Wales Iran game. Let's take it on the chin, they deserved to beat us.
I even found myself warming to them when they hit either post and then had a shot saved within ten seconds. I admired the fortitude of the prone striker who was smiling ruefully to himself. They also endeared themselves to me by smiling whenever they were up to skulduggery that strictly should have had them up before the magistrate in the morning.
I also liked what I saw of their fans in the ground.
It does make me wonder about the effectiveness of sporting and cultural sanctions. Are they not perhaps worse than nothing, perpetuating the myth of the distant inscrutable Other?
Prodnose: The Other?
Myself: In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other identify the other human being, in their differences from the Self, as being a cumulative, constituting factor in the self-image of a person; as acknowledgement of being real; hence, the Other is dissimilar to and the opposite of the Self, of Us, and of the Same.
Prodnose (looking like a fool): Oh yes. I see now.
It is just like Russia at the Euros in 2016 (passim). Why do we keep confusing the people with the regime? When Wales played them at the Euros (and won 3-0) in Toulouse there were no incidents at all between rival fans despite our tabloids droning on and on about the threat of the Kremlin's paramilitary Ultras.
I drew Ghana in the World Cup Sweepstakes run by friends and neighbours, the Hendries, so I decided to watch their first game at Canedo's, my local Portuguese cafe/restaurant (host Alberto, hostess Marietta) over a glass of red or two. What could be a better venue for the Portugal Ghana match, I reasoned than a Portuguese run place with a shirt donated by the Ghana qualified Callum Hudson-Odoi?
I was right. The atmosphere was great. Who knew there were so many Portuguese locals? Also with the game streamed from a Portuguese channel I didn't have to endure Roy Keane on ITV1.
Rod M and partner are back in Blighty this weekend for a family wedding, so we are going to meet up. (She has got a name; I just don't feel authorised to share it with the world.)
He sent me an email yesterday saying he had booked a table at the Norfolk Place, a cafe/restaurant and bar near their hotel. I just accepted, put it in the diary, and checked the route from here to there on Google Maps.
Later he sent me a Wikipedia page link. The Norfolk Place Restaurant is the ground floor dining room at the at the Frontline Club.
The Frontline Club is a media club and registered charity located near Paddington Station in London. With a strong emphasis on conflict reporting, it aims to champion independent journalism, provide an effective platform from which to support diversity and professionalism in the media, promote safe practice, and encourage both freedom of the press and freedom of expression worldwide.
Could there be a better place for me to meet the International Man of Mystery who is the Kitchen Cabinet's Geopolitics correspondent?
Dinner With Groucho - what's it all about?! from Arcola Theatre Marketing on Vimeo.
I saw "Dinner with Groucho" last night at the Arcola theatre, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't think I have been there before. Rebecca took Helen's ticket as she is stuck at home with Covid. Afterwards in the bar, the show was only about 70 minutes long, she told me a story about what social workers, like her, go through. It made me cry. There is now a fifth member of the Kitchen Cabinet.
Kerlin Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of rarely-seen early works by Stephen McKenna. Painted in the 1960s, when the artist was in his 20s and living in London, the works in this exhibition result from a decade of remarkable creative freedom. (Herewith.)
Assembling fragments of shape and colour, McKenna’s early abstract paintings adopt a vivid multi-chromatic palette and a dreamlike elasticity. As the decade progresses, the artist begins to introduce the human figure to these scenarios, using spatial illusion to bend linear time and elicit intense psychological drama. Moving from abstraction to figuration with ease, he layers windows within windows, rooms within rooms; suspending the figure in abstract geometric prisms, or splicing it into composite parts. Seldom seen since they were first exhibited, the paintings in the sixties have a vitality and sense of discovery that reverberates across half a century – and are as captivating now as they were upon completion.
Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern England: “There is nothing for you here, pet,” he said.The coal-miner’s daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink—and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia’s fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.
To The Lavender Hill Mob in Richmond on tour last night. I absolutely loved it despite never having seen the film.
The conceit, for want of a better word, is that the plot is played out in Argentina by a cast of the friends of the main protagonist, who has fled there with his ill gotten gains.
Early on a waitress character serves up two elaborate cocktails, adorned with paper umbrellas plus citrus fruits and olives on sticks etc. One of them, of course, fell on the floor though the cast carried on regardless.
It very much reminded my about what PG told me about the lessons of working in rep all those decades ago; if you take out a box of matches on stage and open it, it will be upside down and they will all fall on the floor. Flowers in vases should be plastic flowers in empty vases, if you have real flowers in vases filled with water the next person who walks past during the performance will knock them over.
Must catch the original film itself one day.
My boiler has taken to staying on for fifteen minutes and then cutting out. I had FIRST Plumbing & Heating GOC Ltd round to look at it twice to no avail. The first time they serviced it and decided there must be a blockage. The second time they cleaned out the F&E tank and flushed through with chemicals. Still no dice and I haven't heard back from then since. Been trying Plan C Today. Running the heating and the hot water manually via the Hive web interface for seven minutes then turning them off for eight. Rinse and repeat.
What I will do I think for the meantime is program the system to follow that schedule automatically. It looks a bit long winded on the UI though. I wonder if there is an API or something I can use to get at it more directly?
Also, not to self, try draining the radiators.
I told you I'd forgotten
Of your fingers in my hair
I told you I'd forgotten
Of your dad's old rocking chair
I told you I'd forgotten
Of the things we used to do
I told you I'd forgotten
Of the days of me and you
I told you I'd forgotten
In the absence, in the night
I told you I'd forgotten
Of the break up and the fight
I told you I'd forgotten
To forget what I forget
I told you I'd forgotten
To regret what I regret
Did the merry-go-round make us dizzy?
Did the candy floss get in my hair?
Was it perfect that night or just busy
With the prizes we won in the fayre?
I'm sitting here remembering
Your fingers in my hair
I'm sitting here remembering
Your dad's old rocking chair
I'm sitting here remembering
The things we used to do
I'm sitting here remembering
The days of me and you
Did the merry-go-round make us dizzy?
Did the candy floss get in my hair?
Was it perfect that night or just busy
With the prizes we won in the fayre?
Prodnose: What on earth is this drivel?
Myself (summoning up some little dignity): Explanations will be provided on a "need to know" basis.
I am lying in bed over a bottle of vin rosé. Ali Asgar, who was cook to a British regiment in the War, is 'baking' a partridge in a pot. The cavalry have collected and horses been paraded. They say it is a two days' ride to Firuzabad, but I hope to do it in one.
Prodnose: What on earth is this?
Myself: It is the last paragraph I read in The Road to Oxiana last night; top of page 164 in my edition.
Prodnose: Of what conceivable interest to anyone is this?
Myself: No conceivable interest.
I did, with an effort; though it was hard on the rest of the party. Opinion at Kavar gave the distance as nine farsakhs, thirty-six miles. I rode eleven hours, excluding one stop for lunch, and as the good going and the bad were about equal, I can hardly have averaged less than four miles an hour. It must have been more than forty miles.
Prodnose: What on earth is this?
Myself: It is the next paragraph I am going to read in The Road to Oxiana when I take it up again; this evening I hope.
Prodnose: Of what conceivable interest to anyone is this?
Myself: No conceivable interest.
John (her father, my brother) can't go and see Mia in Absolute Hell at the Embassy Theatre, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama Friday week:
Please note: Due to announcement of industrial action, the performances on Thursday 24 and Friday 25 November have been cancelled.
Harrumph! I can't go on Wednesday, as I am prebooked for the new Frank McGuinness at the Arcola darling. John and I wouldn't be wise to go on Saturday night as we are on a workshop (passim) building cigar box guitars in a pub from half past ten in the morning and the chances of us still being compos mentis come the evening are slim to nonexistent.
I am amazed how disappointed I am by this turn of events. PG says the play is worthwhile, and speaks highly of the director, having directed him in turn, back when he was an actor. In Original Sin and A Patriot for Me as I recall.
He also gave a thumbs up to a BBC version with Judi Dench. The insanity of the modern world is illustrated by the fact you can watch this on Amazon Prime in the USA (herewith) but not in the UK. Ditto it is nowhere to be seen on the BBC iPlayer. We paid the license fee that got the thing made, yet we can't see it while Appalachian mountain Hillbillies can. Go figure.
Rod M is back on London for his stepsister's wedding in Hertfordshire on the 26th. I will try and meet him and Carolyn early on Sunday morning as they fly back at midday.
This is handy, as I want to bend his ear about Mali. He was out these with the EU as I recall.
UK withdraws troops from Mali early blaming political instability
The UK is withdrawing troops from Mali earlier than planned due to political instability in the country, Defence Minister James Heappey has said.
Since 2020 around 300 British soldiers had been in the country as part of a UN mission to protect the local population from Islamist extremism.
Mr Heappey said two coups in Mali in three years had "undermined" efforts.
He also attacked the current Malian government for working with the Russian mercenary group Wagner.
"The Wagner Group is linked to mass human rights abuses and the Malian government's partnership with the Wagner Group is counterproductive to lasting stability and security in their region," he told MPs.
...
The operation in Mali had been described as "the most dangerous peacekeeping mission in the world" and 288 UN soldiers have lost their lives there since 2013.
The UK is the latest country to pull its troops from Mali, with France formally ending its decade-long presence last week.
French troops had been in Mali at the request of the then-government, however, since seizing power in 2020, Mali's military rulers have fallen out with France and have instead turned to Russia to help in their fight against Islamist insurgents who are wreaking havoc across much of the country.
I just sorta assumed that the Wales Argentina game would be on at least one of the screens in the Standard yesterday for all that it clashed with the Newcastle Chelsea game. No such luck.
I would have turned on my heels and walked out, but Andy H had arrived before me and, gentleman that he is, got me a pint.
Stuck there for at least 20 fluid ounces, I started casting round for an interim solution and wondered about my phone. I was surprised to see that the Prime Video app was already installed so I fired it up, and navigated to the game, all courtesy of the boozer's wi-fi.
I ended up watching the whole game on it there. Joe turned up and it was his birthday, then the rest of the Reillys, from Mass, to take him out for a pizza after Chelsea game etc. etc. I even stayed to watch the Newcastle Arsenal with the Hendries which followed.
Video on the phone is actually a practical proposition. I only spent 25% of my battery on the rugby. A lesson worth learning.
Friday: Yolanda Charles: London Jazz Festival with muso-chums
Sunday: Les Mis in the Sondheim #TheatreDynasty
Saturday 19th: Lavender Hill Mob Richmond Theatre: ColWood works outing
Wednesday 23rd: Dinner with Groucho - Arcola Theatre
Friday 25th: Absolute Hell - Embassy Theatre, Royal Central. More #TheatreDynasty
It can catch up with you this music or theatre once-per-month plan; grows like topsy if you don't weed it regularly.
Gotta stay in tonight; season 2 of Warrior Nun has dropped and still nursing head after Liam the landlord's birthday in the Standard yesterday.
Watach the vidoe above. Ladies and gentlrmen we have a new Welsh Born Icon. Rakie Ayola, born Cardiff 1968. You go girl! I will be all over The Pact."There are some people that will see this and say that it's a woke version of a Welsh family" Extraordinarily phrased question to Rakie Ayola re new show The Pact by @BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/7R5pzcqdUN
— le Monstrous Carbunc (@lowerformofwit) October 24, 2022
Been chatting to Jone, Renu's Norwegian boyfriend lately, and was just as astonished to learn that Russia has a border with Norway as well.
Norway is a long way away from North Korea.
Just bear my naivety in mind the next time I get on my high horse and start lecturing you about the geopolitical implications of something or other.
Rod M has been casting his gaze over last Tuesday's, last Wednesday's and last Thursday's posts. The general conclusion is that I have failed to satisfy the examiners. As the man responsible for geopolitics in the kitchen cabinet, his points must be addressed.
First off the bat I accept his elegant skewering of my comments on the Angola-Tigray truce. Here are my words:
Not a lot of coverage in the UK, of a ceasefire in what has been described as the ‘deadliest war in the world.' A deal brokered by the African Union note, not the increasingly marginalised and irrelevant United Nations.
The great man's withering response:
The AU brokered Ethiopia Tigray deal for example isn't to the detriment of the UN but precisely what the UN is about. Chapter 8 of the Charter is all about regional arrangements for conflict resolution and prevention.
The "old Africa hand" is right. See https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-8. I have no option but to take it on the chin.
As for my comments on Putin and the SCO, I think I may attempt a defense. When I recommend reading and listening to Vladimir's voluminous essays, speeches and Q&A sessions, this should not be taken as me advocating them as edifying. I just think it is prudent to try and understand what he thinks. Ditto the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; it may well be (the Rodster's assessment) a grouping of autocratic regimes whose main aim is to prevent the spread of ideas that are anathematic to them. All that I am saying is that, given that the SCO represents about 40% of the world’s population, it is probably not a bad idea to have it on the radar.
That said, I am always grateful though for criticism as constructive and educational as that I get from the international man of mystery.
Matt Hancock isn’t a ‘celebrity’, he’s the former health secretary who oversaw the UK having one of the highest death tolls in the world from Covid-19 whilst breaking his own lockdown rules.
— Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK (@CovidJusticeUK) November 1, 2022
1/5
The Ethiopian government and northern Tigray rebels agreed to a ceasefire on Wednesday, the African Union’s special envoy said at a press conference in Pretoria. The agreement comes after the warring parties began their first public face-to-face talks in South Africa since the onset of hostilities in November 2020. ‘Today is the beginning of a new dawn for Ethiopia, for the Horn of Africa and indeed for Africa as a whole. Let me hasten to thank God for this new dawn,’ said Olusegun Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president. The truce includes a commitment to a ‘cessation of hostilities as well as to systematic, orderly, smooth and coordinated disarmament, restoration of law and order, restoration of services, unhindered access to humanitarian supplies, protection of civilians, especially women, children and other vulnerable groups,’ he added. Ethiopian civil war: parties agree truce to end hostilities https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/02/ethiopian-civil-war-parties-agree-truce-to-end-hostilities
Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov on 27 September chaired the first meeting of the Organizing Committee in charge of preparing for and holding the 2nd Russia–Africa Summit and other events in the Russia–Africa format in St. Petersburg in summer 2023. The meeting was attended by representatives of key ministries, departments, government agencies, and business associations.The decision to regularly hold Russian-African meetings in this format was taken during the first Russia–Africa Summit in Sochi in 2019. The upcoming summit aims to provide a new constructive impetus to the development of Russia’s multifaceted relations with African countries and bolster the policy of a comprehensive and equal partnership with the African people.
I was a bit puzzled after yesterday's post (herewith) when I couldn't seem to find any reference to September's SCO conference in the spindrift pages at all. It turns out I had written about it, but - as it was held in Samarkand - I had vented in September to the WhatsApp group in which we are digesting the 1,001 Nights, one night at a time; 71% in as of yesterday.
The 23rd meeting in Uzbekistan, of the nine-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was covered in the myopic UK press as if it was a side show to Ukraine's problems for all that - China, India and Pakistan being members of the SCO - the organization represents about 40% of the world’s population; and that,with the addition of Russia, the SCO countries make up 60% of Eurasian territory (the other member states of the organization are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and now Iran).
Leaping from crag to crag like a mountain goat, I now enquire if you have ever heard of BRICS, an acronym coined to associate five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa? Since 2009, the governments of the BRICS states have met annually at formal summits.
