Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Community

Ollie gave me a shout mid morning. "I’ve got someone coming to look at the mini in 10 it would be nice to have some support." I pottered round to add my imposing physical presence to her close protection team. Actually, all joking aside, the purchaser was a very pleasant Asian fella from Wolverhampton who closed the deal, loaded the discombobulated vehicle on his flat back trailer and skedaddled. Before he did so, as I drank coffee in the kitchen, as the paperwork was completed and the funds were transferred, he said that this was the first time in his experience that a neighbour had come round with no other purpose than to lend moral support to a woman conducting a significant transaction with a stranger on her own. He, by the way, was in favour of it.

I think this is a terrible indictment of how we live. By some miracle we are blessed with a community in the 'Wood. I don't know how it happened, but happen it did and I am grateful for it.

It is not just local. Its tentacles extend throughout our island fortress. Ollie's son Jonnie, a close friend of my son since their first day in primary school, is playing football for his university against Cardiff Met on Wednesday and his mum is going to watch. When I was in Cardiff on the weekend, I cooked extravagantly on Saturday night, but when I loaded the dish washer on Sunday morning there were no tablets in the house so I couldn't fire it up. I was on a tight schedule with no time to pop to a supermarket that wouldn't even be open that early in the morning so I had to leave it. Ollie and family have stayed at mum and dad's in the past when attending a rugby game. If my brother hadn't already agreed to do it, I could have given her my keys and asked her to sort it out as she knows her way around 44.

And this gives me a warm feeling.

Monday, January 30, 2023

Either/Or

I drove to Cardiff on Saturday morning to see Mum. Normally I go on Fridays, but my Irish DNA ensured I was in no condition to get behind the wheel of a car after the wake at Hotel du Vin Cannizaro House that followed the funeral.

As ever I popped up Ty-Gwyn Avenue when I was home to see Sean. Who could have guessed that the smartest person I would ever meet (present company - my readers - excepted of course) would turn out to be the snotty brat to my right of my snotty brat when they lined us up in alphabetical order on our first day in primary school? I wish I had known at the time. It would have saved me a lot of time with false prophets and celebrity gurus.

He has set me Either/Or, the first published work of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, as homework for my next visit. No pressure then.

Wikipedia - Historical context

After writing and defending his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841), Kierkegaard left Copenhagen in October 1841 to spend the winter in Berlin. The main purpose of this visit was to attend the lectures by the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, who was an eminent figure at the time. The lectures turned out to be a disappointment for many in Schelling's audience, including Mikhail Bakunin and Friedrich Engels, and Kierkegaard described it as "unbearable nonsense".[5] During his stay, Kierkegaard worked on the manuscript for Either/Or, took daily lessons to perfect his German and attended operas and plays, particularly by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He returned to Copenhagen in March 1842 with a draft of the manuscript, which was completed near the end of 1842 and published in February 1843.

According to a journal entry from 1846, Either/Or was written "lock, stock, and barrel in eleven months" ("Rub og Stub, i 11 Maaneder"), although a page from the "Diapsalmata" section in the 'A' volume was written before that time.

The title Either/Or is an affirmation of Aristotelian logic, particularly as modified by Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Immanuel Kant. Is the question, "Who am I?" a scientific question or one for the single individual to answer for themself?

Kierkegaard argues that Hegel's philosophy dehumanized life by denying personal freedom and choice through the neutralization of the 'either/or'. The dialectic structure of becoming renders existence far too easy, in Hegel's theory, because conflicts are eventually mediated and disappear automatically through a natural process that requires no individual choice other than a submission to the will of the Idea or Geist. Kierkegaard saw this as a denial of true selfhood and instead advocated the importance of personal responsibility and choice-making.

Myself: Those Jena boys eh? Schelling, Goethe and Fichte (Icons passim), they get everywhere.

Prodnose: Vengaboys?

Myself (shrugging shoulders): Yes. Paaarty!

Sunday, January 29, 2023

A 'Norway'

Chewing the fat with my new Norwegian chums after the funeral, I mentioned Cardiff's coastal Norwegian church as a possibly shared point of reference. To my astonishment, they were all quite familiar with the Wales-Norway connection.

During the late 19th century, you see, tens of thousands of Norwegian sailors visited Cardiff aboard merchant ships bringing strong, straight timber from Scandinavia to be used as pit props in coal mines. Then, the empty ships would export Welsh coal across the world.

Jone even told me that he had heard that pit props were called "Norways" in the vernacular of the Welsh miners. Isn't that wonderful? 

During World War II, in which Norway was occupied by Nazi forces from 1940, many more Norwegians also passed through Cardiff as refugees and seamen. The seamen serving with particular distinction in the Atlantic convoys that saved our bacon. Many of them were killed when staying at the Norwegian Seamen's mission in Bute Street when Cardiff was bombed by the Germans.

My new Scandinavian chums had much of this at their fingertips. I was genuinely impressed.

Here's a Wales Online article I found.

Saturday, January 28, 2023

Volume 2

 

In all modesty, I thought we might be the best band in the world when we played at the funeral yesterday. We started "Will the Circle be Unbroken" sounding like the Vienna Boys Choir and finished sounding like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The other song we did was Amazing Grace. I was pleased and proud to discover today that there is an NGDB version of that as well.

Friday, January 27, 2023

Amazing Grace

We rehearsed in the Colour House Theatre last night for Renu's mother's funeral today. It is in the West Chapel at Putney Vale Cemetery and Crematorium at half past ten this morning.

I brought my keyboard along and played on the organ setting. (I had forgotten how big it was. I practically gave myself a hernia getting it out of the house). I am playing the chapel's organ today, after I went to Putney to check it out on Tuesday afternoon.

The rest of line up is two guitars, acoustic bass, banjo, mandolin and violin. All Norwegian except for one guitar and the violin, courtesy of Jone, Renu's Norwegian fiance. All head arrangements rather than reading but I thought it went well. Renu burst into tears when she came in as we were doing "Will the Circle be Unbroken" which I took as a good sign.

All we have to do now is the performance.

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Hive Mind

 The Hive Home app and web interface I use to control my heating was on the blink almost all of yesterday. Oddly almost the only national I could find any reference to this on was The Sun.

Some users are speculating that it's linked to Microsoft Azure – a major internet cloud provider.

Microsoft also suffered a large outage on Wednesday morning.

That last sentence above linked in turn linked to another article, in The Sun and published on the same day, which discusses simultaneous problems across all Microsoft's online platforms.

Confused users began flooding social media platforms trying to find out what was going on at around 7.30am GMT.

"I can't access my work email, it's just loading," one said at the time.

"I wonder if Microsoft laid off the wrong people," another joked, referencing the company's recent announcement that 10,000 people will lose their jobs.

That last sentence above linked in turn linked to another article, in The Sun and published a week ago detailing the massive layoffs.

Do I really need my Telegraph subscription?

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Blended

 

The Donmar Theatre have posted another video about Trouble in Butetown. I am taking the drama school neices on February 21st. An actor called Samuel Adawunmi says that he plays a black American GI in it and it is set in 1943. Dad's family lived in Adamsdown, just north of Butetown but practically on the border opposite the Vulcan pub. He tells a story of looking out of the bedroom windows at America servicemen spilling out of it fighting. That makes perfect sense for a ten year old boy.

There's a legend of Rocky Marciano having a fight in a pub in Grangetown around the same time. Read this and make your own judgement. I choose to believe it.



Next up, YouTube's logarithms threw me the short film above; a lot closer to my time. The Noor El Islam Mosque is at the northern end of Angelina Street, St Mary's is just beyond it and leads in turn to the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas. St Mary's is Anglican. St Joseph's, the Catholic Church is only a mile away to the West on the other side of the river Taff. Multicultural enough for you?

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Telegram Sam

 I installed Telegram yesterday. The reason was pragmatic. I need to coordinate with Vera about a theatre trip while Lee is out in the North Sea on a rig. She sent me an SMS message from a French (+33) number but I couldn't reply to it for some reason. She isn't on WhatsApp so he advised me to try Telegram instead. It is all up and running now. 

I was vaguely aware of Telegram before, having heard references to it in relation to the Russia Ukraine conflict, and by coincidence there was press coverage yesterday saying:

The private messaging app Telegram has for the first time overtaken WhatsApp in traffic volume in Russia, the Vedomosti business daily reported Monday, with experts predicting the Russian-founded messenger will also surpass the user count of its Meta-owned competitor this year.

Telegram accounted for 60-80% of total traffic exchanged in Russia by the start of 2023 and has continued to grow since then, according to an analysis by Russia’s top four telecom operators cited by Vedomosti.

Here is the Wikipedia page which seems thorough for all that it is mostly technical.

Here is something I picked up from ITV News on YouTube.

Monday, January 23, 2023

“Kid, this ain’t your night. We’re going for the price on Wilson.”

I hadn't planned on watching the Eubank Smith fight on Saturday night but I did end up catching it in the end as I was at the Standard anyway. I thought it would be close (certainly too close for me to bet on it) but I was vaguely predicting Eubank to edge it with a stoppage in the eighth.

I was astonished though when he was brutally stopped in the fourth round by nine power punches from Smith and halted for the first time in his 12-year pro career. 

I can't help but wonder if  the very tough weight cut which he made for the aborted fight with Conor Benn was the reason for his physical vulnerability. Had his body not had time to recover from that duress four months ago? Significantly was his father right all along? I admired him for the stand he took then (Icons passim).

Sunday, January 22, 2023

Gendered

 I do my best to be polite to Alberto and Marietta when I am in Canedo at the bottom of the road. They are Portuguese but my starting point is schoolboy Spanish. 

I tried gracias for thank you only to be politely corrected with what I heard as obligado, which I took on board following a connection to, say, much obliged in English.

Done a little research since. The word is actually obrigado and, here's the rub, it is gendered. You say obrigado if you are a man, and obrigada if you are a woman. I have never heard of such a thing before. I am familiar with gendered nouns in Romance languages but I would never have imagined that language might mutate based on the gender of the speaker.

One for J K Rowling to work out I think. Way above my pay grade.

Saturday, January 21, 2023

The Welsh Renaissance

 
 I am absolutely loving the new John Cale album.

Netflix is to broadcast its first Welsh language drama.

The streaming giant said it hoped it could play a role in helping to "promote and preserve the Welsh language".

It has bought the licence for S4C's Dal y Mellt, a gritty crime thriller which will air from April 2023.

Friday, January 20, 2023

Nice Darts, Your Majesty

King Charles redirects £1bn windfarm profits towards ‘public good’

King Charles has asked for profits from a £1bn-a-year crown estate windfarm deal to be used for the “wider public good” rather than as extra funding for the monarchy.
I doff my cap to you sir. I have been moaning about this set up and its lack of publicity for two years. You have not got enough publicity for this public spirited gesture today. To deny that would be crass and disingenuous.

I have even created a label (https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search/label/Wind) that you can use to see what I have written about this before, you lucky people.

Thursday, January 19, 2023

One Who Wants To Cross


A trailer has dropped for Alice's first show since she co-directed "Something in the Air" with Peter (Icons passim).

One Who Wants To Cross is on at the Finborough Theatre from Tuesday, 31 January 2023 until Saturday, 25 February 2023. I am tempted but my dance card is already marked for The King and I at the New Wimbledon Theatre on the fourteenth then Trouble in Butetown at the Donmar Warehouse on the 21st. 

Three trips in three weeks sounds like a lot. I wonder if I could fit a Sunday matinee after Peter's shopping? It is only just over two miles from his place and still outside the congestion zone.

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Renu

 

A Hindu girl singing with Sikh and Muslim musicians in a Christian church. Trust yourself and trust your mother my girl. We people of goodwill will win in the end for all that our torches are unlit and the path is rocky.

I will not let you down when I play at her funeral Friday week.

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Romeo and Julie

A modern Cardiff love story from the team behind Iphigenia in Splott and Killology

Romeo is a single dad hanging on tight. Julie is fighting to follow her dream of studying at Cambridge.

Two Cardiff teens raised a few streets apart – but from entirely different worlds – crash into first love and are knocked off their feet. But at the crossroads to the rest of their lives, Julie’s family fears the worst in a world of unequal opportunity.

Romeo and Julie reunites the Olivier Award-winning partnership of writer Gary Owen and former Sherman Artistic Director Rachel O’Riordan responsible for the modern classics Iphigenia in Splott, Killology and The Cherry Orchard.

Romeo and Julie will be at the Dorfman Theatre, National Theatre from 14 Feb – 1 Apr.

It will be in the NT without me. For all that I am a Cardiff boy I didn't like the play Iphigenia in Splott at all.

Icons passim

As for the work itself, Sophie Melville gives a great performance in a fine production, but if "Gary Owen’s brawling, big-hearted, raging monologue" (UK Theatre Awards Best New Play 2015) is good writing then I am a Dutchman.

Monday, January 16, 2023

TROUBLE IN BUTETOWN

 

TROUBLE IN BUTETOWN opens at the Donmar in February.
In her illegal boarding house in Butetown, Cardiff, Gwyneth Mbanefo (Sarah Parish, Bancroft) toils tirelessly to keep afloat.
It’s a port town during the war; home to souls from every corner of the globe. When Nate (BIFA winner Samuel Adewunmi), an African American GI, escapes his barracks and discovers this new world without segregation, can he find safe harbour in Tiger Bay? And with danger on every corner, who can he trust?
https://booking.donmarwarehouse.com/events/9201AHVHRSJHSLBLCDVNMMJTBCSRGGTMK
10 February 2023 - 25 March 2023

One for the diary?

Sunday, January 15, 2023

Penelope Fitzgerald

 Out of the blue on Friday, Peter WhasApped me to ask, "Who was the famous convert who nearly nabbed  Harold Macmillan for the church  when he was at Oxford?"

In the process of finding out it was Ronald Knox I discovered that Penelope Fitzgerald was his niece.

Herr last novel was The Blue Flower.

Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, The Blue Flower is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’, twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so?

It might be a good companion piece to Magnificent Rebels (Icons passim).

Saturday, January 14, 2023

No More Champagne

Another one for the read or listen list I think. To be consumed with a glass of something fortifying close to hand.

Friday, January 13, 2023

The Red Thread

Simona Giurgea performing Simone Weil’s essay “The Iliad or the Poem of Force”
This is as devastating as it is brilliant. Rebecca's Steve recommended Simone Weil to me (Icons passim) as far back as 2021.

I place her now in a long red thread running through history and culture [the Three Marys at the crucifixion, Mohammed's daughter Fatima, Margery Kempe, the wife of Bath, Edith Stein (Auschwitz) and Inayat Khan (Dachau) etc. etc.]. Women bearing searing witness. Why aren't we seeing more plays and reading more about such people?

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Ozone Layer

 From around the mid 80s to, say, the mid 90s we used to hear constantly about the hole in the depleting ozone layer and the existential threat ultra violet radiation posed to life on earth.

Then one day, suddenly the coverage stopped. I just cynically assumed it was a victim of the attention span engendered by the 24 hour news cycle: Windows 95 released, Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing, Nerve Gas attack Tokyo Subway, Barings Bank collapses, A Car Bomb devastates Oklahoma City Federal Building on 19th April , after a NATO bombing campaign against Serb artillery the Balkans War comes to an end and a cease fire is agreed and Javascript is seen and used for the first time.

Not so it seems. Human action to save the ozone layer has worked as hoped, and it may recover in just decades, the UN says.

My faith in human nature, while not restored may also recover in decades.

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

From Hairbrush to Airbrush

June 2022
January 2023

This one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Hubris doesn't even begin to cover it. 

Remember that thou art pixels, and unto pixels thou shalt return.

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Dead Moon Lizard Kings

It may be that the sight of me walking around with all my possessions in two carrier bags alternately muttering conspiracy theories then screaming about socialism is not too far off, but I have a degree of sympathy with Dr Peterson. Ambulances just can't get up and down the High Street on their way to and from St. George's and that can't be right.

Monday, January 09, 2023

Sunday, January 08, 2023

Saturday, January 07, 2023

It is our differences that make us the same

Myself: I am typing this on my laptop in the house. having finished the rest of my morning correspondence, The WhatsApp portion of this will have been delivered via my phone, https://www.google.com/android/find tells me that I left it in the pub last night but is still there working on my behalf. I shall write a letter to the Daily Telegraph proposing that we get it to run the NHS.

Prodnose: Metaphor and alienation in the information age?

Myself: No. Stupidity and incompetence in the indifference age. Nobody will go and see the play but it will get a wonderful review in the Guardian.

Friday, January 06, 2023

Will the circle be unbroken

 

Apparently I have to play keyboards on this, along with a pick up band of other friends and family none of whom I have ever met, at Renu's mother's funeral. No pressure then. In my heart though, I am honoured and flattered.

Off the top of my head
A///|A///|A///|A///|D///|D///||A///|A///|
A///|A///|A///|E///|F#m///|A/D/|E////|A///|
oughta largely cover it. Not a lot in the way of harmonic development but serious woodshedding needs to be timetabled to get it entirely internalized.



Thursday, January 05, 2023

Hakawatis


I went to see Hakawatis: Women of the Arabian Nights in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe last night, only getting there by the skin of my teeth as I had fallen asleep at home after work. It wasn't the sultry women on the stage I had to worry about, it was the sultry women I was going with as I was the one with the tickets. I also blotted my copybook by hurrying to Waterloo Station, phoning to say I was near, and being coldly informed that the theatre was at London Bridge.

I finished Night 775 of the 1,001 today. That is more than two years' worth at one a day. If we say it takes me 30 minutes each morning to listen, read and precis, it means I will have spent 387.5 hours on it not counting background reading.  Over ten weeks (a term!) full time at a 9-5 job.

When I tell you Hakawatis is good, you can take it to the bank. I know the subject matter inside and out. Hakawatis is very, very good!

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

3 Godfathers

 

David Lynch as John Ford, directed by Stephen Spielberg. My cup overfloweth. I have always loved John Ford's films, and since I read Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride, around six years ago, loved the man as well. 

Avoid anything that implies he was a bigot. Antisemite? Growing up he was a Shabbos goy (a non-Jew who performs certain types of work (melakha) which Jewish religious law (halakha) prohibits a Jew from doing on the Sabbath.) Oh and he could speak Yiddish.  Jane Change tells of him ad-libbing dialogue for her in Mandarin when making Seven Women. An honorary member of the Navajo tribe. Woody Strode, the black actor, loved him so much he moved in to help Ford's wife look after him when he was ill.

More than makes up for being a bit grumpy now and then.

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

Edith Stein

Edith Stein (also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or Saint Edith Stein; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church; she is also one of six patron saints of Europe.

She made her perpetual vows on 21 April 1938. That same year, she and her biological sister Rosa, also a convert, were sent from Cologne in Germany to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands, for their safety. In response to the pastoral letter from the Dutch bishops on July 26, 1942, in which they made the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis a central theme, all baptized Catholics of Jewish origin (according to police reports, 244 people) were arrested by the Gestapo on the following Sunday, 2 August 1942. They were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were murdered in a gas chamber on 9 August 1942.

Should the Dutch bishops have issued their pastoral letter? The terrifying thing about ethics in the raw is that sometimes there are questions that can't be answered.

Monday, January 02, 2023

Meet Ukrainian Singles

 Reflecting morosely on waking this morning on the fact that the Russian conflict with Ukraine has gone into its second year, I remembered Googling last February trying to get some background information.

So many of the adverts and results that came back were for things like Top 5 Ukrainian Dating Sites - Best Ranked Sites that I was genuinely appalled to see what I took for such frivolity.

All these months of remorseless death and destruction later, it is like looking back on a Days of Wine and Roses Golden Age of Innocence.

Sunday, January 01, 2023

2023 is starting philosophically

Popped up the avenue to see Sean when I got back to Cardiff on Friday night. The conversation turned to philosphers and philosophy for some reason. We both fondly remembered Bryan Magee's 70s and 80s BBC 2 series. Noting that they "attracted a steady one million viewers per show", The Daily Telegraph hailed the series, for achieving "the near-impossible feat of presenting to a mass audience recondite issues of philosophy without compromising intellectual integrity or losing ratings." All these years later we both fiondy remembered the faux modesty of the episode that began:
Schopenhauer is first and foremost a system builder whose philosophy can be understood only as a whole. Of the books in print about it in English at the time of making this program i have to confess to you that the longest and most recent is by me, but I can't very well interview myself so I've invited the author of one of the others to come along and discuss Schopenhauer with me. My guest is in any case the most distinguished living historian of philosophy in the English language, Frederick Copleston emeritus professor in the university of London. In addition to his extended treatment of Schopenhauer in his nine volume history of philosophy, he's written a separate book about him called Arthur Schopenhauer; Philosopher of Pessimism.
Unimprovable blowing of his own trumpet.

Kierkegaard has been recommended by Dr Burke. I think I may start with "Fear and Trembling;" the knight of faith, the knight of infinite resignation, and the tragic hero. That sounds like a barrel of laughs.