The Crown Estate

 THE MARINE ESTATE

The CEC manage 55% of the foreshore of the UK and almost all the seabed out to the 12 nautical mile territorial limits, and have in addition the vested rights to explore and utilise natural resources of the UK continental shelf areas, which extend to the 200 nautical mile limits. These rights include the sub-soil, minerals, and substrata below the surface of seabed, but exclude the rights to oil, gas and coal. The CEC license the generation of renewable energy on the Continental shelf within the Renewable Energy Zone out to 200 nautical miles under the Energy Act 2004. They lease sites for undersea storage of gas and carbon dioxide under the Energy Act 2008.

That's right, the Queen owns, and can dispose of as she sees fit, all the rights to off shore power generation in UK territorial waters. Tony Blair's government ceded this to the Crown in 2004. 

Offshore Wind Leasing Round 4 anybody?

This is a disgrace.

Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker

It has struck me lately that the first scene (as opposed to the opening sequence) of Apocalypse Now is pretty much my experience of lock-down. Truth be told Willard's workout from it is not unlike what mine has been reduced to as well (https://youtu.be/XJA_dhrd8eY?t=218).

Maybe we should start dubbing or subtitling our own experiences over it like the (never getting old) Hitler Downfall meme (https://youtu.be/Q6IyGAvbOs4)?

Epitaph

 "I'll leave it at that I think, whatever it is." Two months on to the day things don't get any easier.

Audible

 These days I seem to be all about the audio book, and I got two more today.

  

The Second Kind of Impossible: The Extraordinary Quest for a New Form of Matter by Paul J. Steinhardt  after Ben and I played with Penrose tiles on Monday, and What the Qur'an Meant: And Why It Matters by Garry Wills as background to our increasingly diverse and inclusive (Diverse AND Inclusive? Ed.) Arabian Nights project.

You can't get there from here

Ancestry

Born in Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales on 19 Jun 1961 to Robert Elliott and Anthony John Elliott. Anthony John Elliott married Anabel Meana. He passed away on 28 May 2017 in Gijón, Asturias, Asturias, Spain.

I got an email from an old school friend yesterday. Out on a (COVID sanctioned) walk he had bumped into yet another old school friend who told him a further old school friend, Anthony Elliot, was dead. Died with cancer.

This has hit me pretty hard. We hadn't been in contact for years, but the ancestry link I found above when I googled his name must be correct; he had a Spanish mum and a Cardiff dad. I feel wretched about the fact that he died in 2017 and I didn't find out until 2021.

Let's pretend to cheer ourselves up with an "Ell" story. Julius Caesar was the set Shakespeare for our O level English literature and we were all assembled (mob handed) for a performance of it one evening in the Sherman Theatre, I remember it particularly. Tony Booth was Mark Anthony. 

Understand that in the Sherman in those days, you entered from a corridor and then walked down a few stairs into the stalls; the stage was at the same level as the door and we were right at the front. Ell made an unscheduled loo break and then strolled accidentally back onto the stage only to find himself in the middle of the conspirators. The moment he realized where he was is was is the single funniest thing I have seen in my entire life. He lost his nerve and jumped back down with the rest of us. I love him still but it would have been better if he had possessed the sang-froid to stay on the stage and brazen it out. Maybe even stabbed JC a coupla times himself.

Virtue Ethics

Hooray! I have found a PDF of Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958' paper Modern Moral Philosophy.

I am also working through After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Third Edition) by Alasdair MacIntyre.

I can't help but conclude from this turn events, that I am spending too much time alone with my thoughts and that - for me at least - lock-down can't end soon enough.

Finding yourself pondering whether virtue ethics qualifies as a rival approach to deontology and utilitarianism, can't be good can it? It's not like everyone else needs to be rescued from agonizing about how Jeremy Bentham or Immanuel Kant's take on life's little challenges might unfold.

Can you dig it?

The Dig seems to be going down a storm on Netflix, but anyone who can watch it without channeling Ted and Ralph from the Fast Show is a better man that I am.

Munster Soviets

 Wikipedia

The Irish soviets (Irish: Sóivéidí na hÉireann) were a series of self-declared soviets that formed in Ireland during the revolutionary period of the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War (1919 to 1923), mainly in the province of Munster. "Soviet" in this context refers to a council of workers who control their place of work, not a Soviet state.

Well I never. I hadn't previously heard of these convulsions in the land of my ancestors

Language is wine upon the lips

 I was looking at some Proust yesterday. Specifically the C. K. Scott Moncrieff version “Remembrance of Things Past.”  Philistine that I am, it made me weep with laughter:

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning.

The immortal Beachcomber (J.B. Morton) was brought irresistibly to mind. "Ah, Lolotte has just entered. Lolotte, the little dancer from the Brebis Qui Tousse, who used to shoot plums off trees with a rook-rifle - how long ago?"

Any road, I started googling the great man to see if I could find any more Rive Gauche first-person-singular riffing when I came across "Morton was born at Park Lodge, Mitcham Road, Tooting." Further research revealed "the house where he was born, now demolished, was on the site of what is now the Morley’s store on the corner of Franciscan Road." I feel that there is a pilgrimage in my future if a 15 minute walk counts as a pilgrimage.

Morton applied his love of the surreal not just to his writing but to everyday life. Walking through Guildford one day with Gerald Barry, Morton stopped at a pillar box. He talked into its opening: "Are you alright, my little man? Don't worry, we'll soon get you out." Soon, a concerned crowd gathered to see who was trapped inside. Somebody summoned the fire brigade to help, while Morton and Barry made a discreet exit. Events like this were quite frequent: on another occasion he littered Virginia Woolf's front doorstep with dozens of empty, quart-sized brown ale bottles.

I have added littering Morley's front doorstep with empty brown ale bottles to my to-do list.

Half Chat

 

The scene above is from Lenny (a 1974 film about the comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman and directed by Bob Fosse) came up when I was talking to my brother on the phone last night. I find it difficult to believe I found it on YouTube given the sensitivities of 2021, but there it is.

The whole movie can be streamed from Amazon Prime Video - see https://amzn.to/39n80WQ.

Also "half chat" which John remembers as an old Cardiff synonym for mixed race  - and of which I had never previously heard - is real according to https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Half%20chat

"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

Thank you for everything!! Learned a lot from you and appreciate all you did for me. I wish you the best for the future🙏🏾💙 pic.twitter.com/Hfre4oidhk

— Callum Hudson-Odoi (@Calteck10) January 26, 2021

Callum made his first premier league start for Chelsea on April 4, 2019 (Icons passim).  Maurizio Sarri was the manager, but three months later he made way for Frank Lampard. With the appointment of  Thomas Tuchel yesterday, and only just 20 years old he is on his third gaffer. Doesn't exactly scream continuity does it?

Bubble, bubble toil and trouble

As I was putting the rubbish out this morning, I noticed a pair of black trousers in the front garden. They looked like they had probably been there some time; I'm not the most diligent of horticulturalists. I popped them in the bag along with the rest of the week's detritus.

Could they have been mine? I pretty much live in black pants; jeans and moleskin as a rule. I had a drink or two (in my bubble you understand) on Saturday night before I got home but surely not enough to start disrobing before I had got the front door open.

I wonder what the neighbours' overactive imaginations made of it? They've been looking at me in askance lately but I just assumed that was because I use Jack Daniels instead of mouth wash, and like to greet the dawn by cranking out Link Wray's Juke Box Mama through my valve amp.

So shines a good deed in a weary world

I dropped PG's weekly grocery shop off yesterday. He is taking things slowly waiting for his first vaccination to kick in. It had been snowing, and when he opened the door to let me out, we bumped into a neighbour spreading gritting salt to clear any ice off Peter's path. What a gent. He was just doing it as a civic duty. If I hadn't been on my way home at that particular moment no-one else would even have known he had done it. Old school.

I remember in the first lockdown Peter ran out of stock and called next door on the phone to see if they had any spare. They did, so he popped over to collect an OXO cube left out on the door step as everyone followed regulations to the letter. The unintended and undeserved bathos of that image sums up 2020 for me.

Time Out

 I can either write something here or I can watch  Man Utd v Liverpool on BBC 1.

Shabbos goy

Yesterday was one month since Dad's funeral. As I have got older (I'm still getting older, it hasn't stopped) I have begun to realise that whenever he wanted to teach me anything he would do it in one or two pithy sentences, the significance of which would only dawn on me later. When I was a little boy - scarcely more than a toddler - he told me that Jewish people were very warm and generous. So generous in fact that they would volunteer to work on Christmas day in vital industries and and services so that everyone else could have the day off. "Wow," I remember thinking.

My brother John is nine years younger than me. I told him that anecdote after the funeral. Guess what he told me. Yup. When he was a little boy - scarcely more than a toddler - Dad told him that Jewish people were very warm and generous. So generous in fact that they would volunteer to work on Christmas day in vital industries and and services so that everyone else could have the day off.

The same explanation to two little boys all but a decade apart is plainly no coincidence. He wanted to inoculate us against the virus of casual antisemitism (I use the word casual advisedly). 

It isn't theoretical. Our family home is at the bottom of Ty Gwyn Avenue. The  Cardiff United synagogue opened around the corner in Ty Gwyn Road in 1955.  One Saturday morning in September 1981, as Elliot Fine walked to that very synagogue with three of his children, a German ex-pat neighbour - who had already plagued the family - rammed his car into them before getting out and stabbing Elliott to death. I was twenty years old. The same age my son is as I write this.

Up until now, I have always been reluctant to share what I think of as the wisdom of my father's teaching. Could he not be, perhaps, accused by grievance brokers of coming close to insulting or patronizing the people of whom he seemed, to my young ears, to have spoken so warmly? I needn't have worried. I learned yesterday, from reading a biography of Harry Truman, of something or someone called a shabbos goy, 

A Shabbos goy (Yiddish: שבת גוי‎, shabbos goy; Hebrew: גוי של שבת) is a non-Jew who performs certain types of work (melakha) which Jewish religious law (halakha) prohibits a Jew from doing on the Sabbath. Notable examples include Maxim Gorky, Harry S. Truman, Colin Powell, Martin Scorsese, and - my particular favourite - the adolescent Elvis Presley, all of whom assisted their Jewish neighbors in this way.

What was my old man boosting but a mirror image of this? A live and let live world of respect, tolerance, help and interdependence. It is no wonder I miss him so much.

I don't believe it either

I like Ike

I finished The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s by William I Hitchcock yesterday.

It is a terrific book with many lessons for our boorish times. One lesson is that it is so even handed that the author's obvious respect and admiration for his subject makes his criticism of Eisenhower for letting the CIA off the hook on covert operations all the more devastating.

Lesson two (on this day of days) is the civility of the handover of office from Ike to JFK.

Don't tell Peter

Grauniard

Israel’s coronavirus tsar has warned that a single dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be providing less protection than originally hoped, as the country reported a record 10,000 new Covid infections on Monday.

In remarks reported by Army Radio, Nachman Ash said a single dose appeared “less effective than we had thought”, and also lower than Pfizer had suggested.

By contrast, those who had received their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine had a six- to 12-fold increase in antibodies, according to data released by Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer on Monday.

The issue of some vaccines being less effective after a single dose rather than two is well known, as well as the fact that protection is not immediate. While the first dose can take several weeks to promote an effective antibody response, the second dose can trigger different responses, supercharging the protection. Pfizer itself says a single dose of its vaccine is about 52% effective. Some countries such as the UK have delayed administering their second doses to try to maximise the number of people given a first dose.

I'm not surprised. The cockamamie idea of giving as many people as possible an initial dose of a Covid vaccine - rather than preserving stocks so there is enough for second jabs first came to my attention when it was suggested by serial self-deluder Tony Blair on 22 December. As an idea it is based on precisely ..... nothing. It is like me suggesting that we could double the amount of shots we have available by halving the dose https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-oxford-vaccine-clinical-trial-safety-nhs-b1760346.html notwithstanding.

1969

Back in August (Icons passim) I was talking about parallels between 1968 and 2020. I will try and watch this movie on Netflix tonight. Is it too early to start talking about parallels between 1969 and 2021?

Certain Young Men

I'll explain later,

Kate Bingham

I am off to see PG's this morning. I will do his shopping and drop it off, and then ferry him along to his COVID shot and back.

Ages ago he identified  Kate Bingham is the only bright spot in the Government's response to the virus. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bingham

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p093gs4k

How does he do stuff like that? I've never previously given much truck to intuition but I can't really see any other explanation.

Paved with Good Intentions

These pages are my time machine, and tell me that on the equivalent weekend both last year and the year before my brother John was visiting me. He obviously isn't this year. As for the video above, I found out recently that Chris Rea wrote "The Road to Hell" about the M4 after he was stuck on it for hours after flying back into Heathrow. Demonstrating I like to think John's grit in managing to get here in 2019 and 2020.

In 2018, Burt Reynolds died in the same week Dad was admitted to a care home. Reynolds' swan song 'The Last Movie Star,' led John and I to create the 'Ageing Curmudgeon Confronts Mortality' film genre as a tribute to our old fella.

Kodachrome was another film with the same theme. ditto 'The Meyerowitz Stories' (Icons passim).

Today though I watched Lucky, a Harry Dean Stanton led contribution to the field. We had identified it before but never got round to it. Now it is free on Amazon Prime Video there is no excuse.

It is fantastic.

Splendeurs Et Miniseries

 Frankie sent me a message last Sunday morning so I could tell Peter it was Helen's birthday today. Unfortunately I didn't read it until I had left but I remember that he had mentioned that very day that he thought she would like Balzac so I emailed him and he recommended either "Lost Illusions" or "Splendeurs Et Miseres Des Courtisanes" as a gift from the two of us.

"Lost Illusions" has been delivered. The English title of "Splendeurs Et Miseres Des Courtisanes" is "A Harlot High and Low." I can't speak for everyone, but the latter doesn't scream light-hearted, surprise token birthday present to me, though I have been chuckling to myself imagining it dropping unexpectedly through the letter box.

Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture

The conventional view holds that girih (geometric star-and-polygon, or strapwork) patterns in medieval Islamic architecture were conceived by their designers as a network of zigzagging lines, where the lines were drafted directly with a straightedge and a compass. We show that by 1200 C.E. a conceptual breakthrough occurred in which girih patterns were reconceived as tessellations of a special set of equilateral polygons (“girih tiles”) decorated with lines. These tiles enabled the creation of increasingly complex periodic girih patterns, and by the 15th century, the tessellation approach was combined with self-similar transformations to construct nearly perfect quasi-crystalline Penrose patterns, five centuries before their discovery in the West.

Everything is coming together as investigating the possibilities of geometry in art with the son and heir fuses with reading the Arabian Nights with chums.

Girih

Marshall McLuhan (Hat tip Marina Warner)

 Electric circuitry is Orientalizing the West. The contained, the distinct, the separate—our Western legacy—are being replaced by the flowing, the unified, the fused.

Girih (Persian: گره‎, "knot", also written gereh) are decorative Islamic geometric patterns used in architecture and handicraft objects, consisting of angled lines that form an interlaced strapwork pattern. I wonder if there is a connection between them and the Penrose tiling I was burbling on about yesterday?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girih_tiles

Kites and darts

I thought of Ben (Icons passim) when I read this interview with Roger Penrose in the SpectacularlyBoring. 

If you’re doing algebra, you just write down the answer. But for geometric or visual work, you have to translate it into words. That takes time. Often the visual people literally don’t finish the papers. The result is that algebraic people do better in exams, so you find more of them at universities.

Unless I miss my guess, the Bomber and I are going to be all over the golden ratio and local pentagonal symmetry like a cheap suit. Keeping it real, I have ordered a magnet pack "Gee thanks Dad!" so that we can investigate it - drum roll please - by attaching things to the fridge.

Xinjiang's Ying and Yang

After the Decameron, at the rate of one story a day, and then Don Quixote, at the rate of one chapter today, we are now working through the Arabian Nights. I leave it up to you to guess the rate.

The Hunchback's Tale, comes quite early on.

In China a tailor and his wife meet a cheerful, drunk hunchback playing the tambourine. They're entertained and invite the hunchback over for dinner. When the tailor playfully stuffs the hunchback's mouth with fish, the hunchback chokes and dies. The tailor panics.

His wife convinces him to leave the body at the home of a Jewish physician. The physician believes the hunchback fell down his stairs and died; his wife tells him to leave the body with their neighbor, the king's Muslim kitchen steward. 

The steward sees the body on the doorstep and starts beating it, convinced it's the unknown thief who's been stealing his food. Fearing he killed the hunchback by accident, the steward leaves the body at a shop door. 

A Christian tradesman who works as the king's broker wanders by, drunk. The broker worries the hunchback will steal his turban and beats the body. A watchman stops and accuses a Christian of killing a Muslim.

Ultimately his execution is ordered. Before this can happen, however, the steward confesses to the murder. He doesn't want to burden his conscience with the death of a Muslim and a Christian. The steward takes the broker's place until the Jewish physician admits to the crime, fearing he'll cause the death of two Muslims. He takes the steward's place. Then the tailor confesses and takes the physician's place. It is almost funny as the executioner tires of the rapidly changing victims.

What we actually have here is a charming parable about religious tolerance and honour.

I was watching Prof Wen-chin Ouyang's lecture "The Curious Life of Objects in the Arabian Nights" on YouTube last night. About three quarters of an hour in (https://youtu.be/mTtN69oL34E?t=2785) she identifies where in China this story is set. It is Kashgar. Population 85% Uyghur.

Since 2017, a government crackdown in the far-western region of China known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has seen hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim minorities detained in a vast network of purpose-built detention facilities.

Ironic doesn't begin to describe it.

Somthing's fishy

It has struck me that there are Abbey Mills options for sushi to go with Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno (Icons passim) as opposed to more mainstream offerings.

Rock Star Sushi Bar and the intriguing Sugoi. The latter is parked somewhere between beguiling and disturbing:

Inspired in Piss Alley street food market (Tokyo) and Latin American’s (Mexico & Venezuela) street food stalls, we are taking and fusion the best of the Latin and Japanese, traditions, culture and flavors to get a new hardcore street food concept: Noritacos.

Out of my head

I think that this is gonna be part of my life in lock-down sooner rather than later. I have dug out my old trimmer and put it on charge.

What does one do with the clippings though? I can't have them falling all over the floor. May be I need to do it over the sink or in the shower cubicle and then brush them up.

The boy in the bubble

 

The son and heir and I watched Rurouni Kenshin a while back. I was amazed to be reminded (Icons passim) that I first saw it almost seven years ago.

He's expressed an interest in seeing the sequel Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno. I think we should accessorize with grub from Sushi Gourmet as there is one in the big Sainsbury's opposite.

Perhaps we should buckle up for the whole series? Next up is Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends. We can get that on Prime Video.

The two concluding entries in what will now be a five-film saga are due to open in Japan this year. The first of the new installments is the confusingly titled Rurouni Kenshin: The Final, which is due on April 23. The second, Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning, is scheduled for release June 4. Both were originally set to bow last summer but delayed due to COVID. Who is to say they won't be delayed again, or when we might get them in the UK.

1968-69

Wikipedia

The Hong Kong flu, also known as the 1968 flu pandemic,[1] was a flu pandemic whose outbreak in 1968 and 1969 killed an estimated 1–4 million people globally. It is among the deadliest pandemics in history, and was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus, which is descended from H2N2 (caused the Asian flu pandemic in 1957-1958) through antigenic shift—a genetic process in which genes from multiple subtypes are reassorted to form a new virus.

....

Four months into the Hong Kong flu pandemic, American microbiologist Maurice Hilleman and his team had created a vaccine and more than 9 million doses had been manufactured. The same team also played a key role in developing a vaccine during the 1957-58 Asian flu pandemic.

The H3N2 virus returned during the following 1969–70 flu season, which resulted in a second, deadlier wave of deaths in Europe, Japan, and Australia. It remains in circulation today as a strain of seasonal flu.

The more things change the more they stay the same.  As I have remarked before (Icons passim) 1968-69 resonates with 2020-21. Why do we remember the Summer of Love and Woodstock over and above the Hong Kong flu pandemic I wonder?

Also - while we are all patting ourselves on the back about Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca let's revisit a sentence above: "Four months into the Hong Kong flu pandemic, American microbiologist Maurice Hilleman and his team had created a vaccine and more than 9 million doses had been manufactured. "

The Girl from Splott

"It's alright I've got another one in my bag." 

You're not supposed to understand any of this. It has the sole function of reminding me about talking to my brother last night.

Llanwern turning red with dust

 Consett Ale Works

Red Dust, takes its name from the cloud of Iron Oxide, emitted when the Steelworks were in production. In times now long gone, there were red clouds of the dust that would hang over the town, settling on cars and washing hung out to dry! The air in Consett maybe somewhat cleaner now, but the memory remains for many, and lives on in this beer! 

PG's Small Change talks about the red dust from the steelworks when he was growing up. It came up on Sunday when I was telling him about watching On the Waterfront with Ben. I must try and get him a bottle of this Consett Ale.

Chelsea 1-3 Manchester City

 

Callum came off the bench to grab Chelsea's consolation goal at the death.  Why he doesn't start regularly is a mystery to me.

I remembered you the first moment I saw you

I watched On the Waterfront with Ben yesterday. Terry Malloy is a longshoreman from an Irish community in New York, navigating between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Church and the mob. That is the same job as my uncle, my grandfather and my great grandfather in Cardiff (Icons passim).

I think knowing that will be good for his imaginative identity.

Down by the Riverside

To be honest with you (and for all that I say him with my sisters and her friends in a pub in Twickenham before he made it) I am pretty much over Eddie Izzard.

That said, if he is at the Riverside Studios all this month running a dail maramthon on a treadmill and following it up with a stand up set, I have to record it. As much as anything so that I remember to tell G about it tomorrow.

Who made you the Pope?

I watched "While you were sleeping" last night. Previously "The Apartment" has been my official Christmas film. This has now changed. It is my official run up to Christmas film. and WYWS is my official between Christmas and New Year film.

Lucy rescues Peter from the train tracks on Christmas Day, but then - on New Year's Day - and after Lucy has got involved with his quirky Catholic family, Peter wakes up.

I loved this movie so much I remember taking mum and dad to see it. I cannot recall doing that with anything else.

Oh, and there is something of Dad in Peter Boyle's Ox.

https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/2006/12/gone-but-not-forgotten.html is the only other time I have mentioned the movie on these pages, and I am very pleased to see Uncle Joseph on the same post.

Here's looking at you Kidjo

Ever since I listened the the latest episode of Soul Music (Icons passim), I have had the album above on heavy rotation. 

Never mind just "Once In A Lifetime," singer Angelique Kidjo recorded her own version of  the whole of "Remain in Light" in 2018 after coming full circle with the music from her arrival in Paris in 1983 fleeing the dictatorship in her home country of Benin. She heard the record at a student party and recognised the Afrobeats adopted by David Byrne and Brian Eno that made her feel both joyful and homesick at the same time.

Count me among the joyous syncretists. If you ever catch me among the culturally inappropriate parsimonious, finger-waggers; diskard me.

I am the sum total of my ancestors

I carry their DNA

We are representatives of a long line of people

And we cart them around everywhere

This long line of people

That goes back to the beginning of time

And when we meet - they meet other lines of people

And we say: bring together the lines of men

XBOX al-Zaman

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I bought the Bomber an XBOX for his sixth birthday (Icons passim). All these years later he is still an XBOX man. Fourteen years ago I needed to be more involved, so his account was set up with my email address and credit card details. We have never got round to changing this.

Yesterday I got an email saying we had bought "200 Call of Duty®: Black Ops Cold War Points." As I was forwarding it on to him for information I noticed that - for the first time I think - he had overwritten the stored card details and paid with his own. A sentimental rite of passage for me.

Addendum: A while back, when it was still allowed, I was a around at Helen and Mat's in the garden. Their son came out to join us and asked his mother if he could have some thyme. I at least took it for thyme probably because he seemed to me to be heading for the row of potted herbs on the patio. A keen cook myself, I was extremely impressed. But no. He was after XBOX time. It turns out that they ration him via a phone app. Another hour was negotiated and he returned to his pit.

Four Play

I got a heads up yesterday about Bill Gates on a Radio 4 programme called "How to vaccinate the world," so I listened to it on BBC Sounds in the evening. It was a refreshing change to hear something that wasn't glib. The Guardian leader yesterday was glib. Boris Johnson is glib. Left and right are equally guilty. William Gates III's mother obviously brought him up to chew his food thoroughly before swallowing. More power to her elbow.

Soul Music on my beloved Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime is also available.

I love Radio 4.

Lay my burden down

I am getting better. I take great solace from - of all things - something the Boss says in Springsteen on Broadway:

"We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children's lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them, and we haunt them, or we assist them in laying those old burdens down, and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behaviour. And as ancestors, we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way."

My father is walking beside me not haunting me.

Thanks to the Old Boys

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen 🔰🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/G0JZ8iP9b3

— Old Illtydians RFC (@OIRFC1928) December 23, 2020

brought up short

I am thinking of Dad of course, and how he explained things to me simply when I was a little boy. Today in this season I remember (somehow I remember as I was a toddler) him explaining to me that Jews were warm and generous people. So warm and generous in fact that they often volunteered to work over Christmas so that other people could have a few days off. 

Just a hand on my shoulder steering me the right way.

I Won’t Be Wronged, I Won’t Be Insulted, and I Won't Be Layed a Hand On

 

Dad would kneel down at the side of his bed and say his prayers in public in barracks when he was doing his National Service. If anyone took the piss he would sort it out the old fashioned way.

My sister Caroline is 19 years younger than me. When he was putting her to bed, I am told, he would craftily say his prayers then as well to save time later. Love grows.

To see oursels as ithers see us!

BBC Sounds: A Promised Land by Barack Obama Ep 8.

Former President Barack Obama continues reading from the first volume of his presidential memoirs A Promised Land, offering a unique and deeply personal account of some of the landmarks of his first term at the White House.

In today’s episode, Obama confronts one of the key issues of any current world leader - what to do about climate change. Prompted by his own experiences of a Hawaiian childhood and driven by the need to create a safer environmental future for his daughters Malia and Sasha, he refuses to be blown off course. With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012 Obama is determined to negotiate a major international climate agreement. He travels to a summit in Copenhagen but is confronted by stalemate as world leaders refuse to compromise or, in some cases, to even engage with the issue. He decides the only way forward is to engage in a spot of gate crashing with Hillary Clinton.

I listened caught the last five minutes or so of this driving back up the M4 yesterday. I don't think I have ever heard anything so self serving. "That was some real gangster shit back there"??!!

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion:

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,

An' ev'n devotion!

Browne Boots

 

Ben wore Brahn Boots to the funeral yesterday. Dad would have approved. He used to sing it to me when I was little. I have a quick blub up listening to it on Spottily. If I had thought of it in time I would have worn a pair as well.

Our Aunt Hanna's passed away, 

We 'ad her funeral today, 

And it was a posh affair, 

Had to have two p'licemen there! 

The 'earse was luv'ly, all plate glass, 

And wot a corfin!... oak and brass! 

We'd fah-sands weepin', flahers galore, 

But Jim, our cousin... what d'yer fink 'e wore? 

Why, brahn boots! 

I ask yer... brahn boots! 

Fancy coming to a funeral 

In brahn boots!

I will admit 'e 'ad a nice black tie, 

Black fingernails and a nice black eye; 

But yer can't see people orf when they die,

In brahn boots! 

And Aunt 'ad been so very good to 'im, 

Done all that any muvver could for 'im, 

And Jim, her son, to show his clars... 

Rolls up to make it all a farce,

In brahn boots... 

I ask yer... brahn boots! 

While all the rest, 

Wore decent black and mourning suits. 

I'll own he didn't seem so gay, 

In fact he cried most part the way, 

But straight, he reg'lar spoilt our day, 

Wiv 'is brahn boots. 

In the graveyard we left Jim, 

None of us said much to him, 

Yus, we all gave 'im the bird, 

Then by accident we 'eard...

'E'd given 'is black boots to Jim Small, 

A bloke wot 'ad no boots at all, 

So p'raps Aunt Hanna doesn't mind, 

She did like people who was good and kind. 

But brahn boots! 

I ask yer... brahn boots! 

Fancy coming to a funeral, 

In brahn boots!

And we could 'ear the neighbours all remark 

'What, 'im chief mourner? Wot a blooming lark!

'Why 'e looks more like a Bookmaker's clerk... 

In brahn boots!' 

That's why we 'ad to be so rude to 'im, 

That's why we never said 'Ow do!' to 'im, 

We didn't know... he didn't say, 

He'd give 'is other boots away. 

But brahn boots!

I ask yer... brahn boots! 

While all the rest, 

Wore decent black and mourning suits! 

But some day up at Heavens gate, 

Poor Jim, all nerves, will stand and wait, 

'til an angel whispers... 'Come in, Mate, 

'Where's yer brahn boots?'

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

 I am in Cardiff. The requiem for dad will be in St Joe's at 11 and the burial in Thornhill at 11.

Thanks to everyone who has reached out to me.

Good morning

 

My Name Is Inigo Montoya

 

I want my father back, you son of a bitch.

96 Tiers

Fuck Boris Johnson and fuck Mark Drakeford. All I wanna do it bury my father with dignity on Tuesday while supporting my mother. I will never forgive the two of you for this shit.

Marcus

I logged onto Facebook yesterday only to find:

 Marcus Campbell Sinclair (1976-2020)

It is with much sadness that I must let you know that Marcus passed away yesterday. He courageously lived with his cancer for many years. Marcus was a unique and gifted person, who will be sorely missed.

Bad news. Much fun with Marcus over the years.

I learned from the comments on the post that he was Emperor Palpatine in the The Star Wars Exhibition at the County Hall, London back in 2007. I wish I could have told him how unimpressed Ben was with his throne (see Icons Passim). He would have laughed like a drain.

The Forty Thieves

 At one minute to eight on the morning of January 29, 1928, Danny Driscoll walked to the waiting gallows in Cardiff prison.

With just seconds to go before his life ended he looked up at the sky and smiled. "Well," he said, "they've given me a nice day for it."

Outside the prison more than 5,000 men, women and children jammed Adam Street. A teenage girl led the singing of a Catholic hymn but silence when Driscoll's four brothers were led to the front of the barriers where armed police patrolled - Cardiff's underworld was rife with rumours that an attempt would be made to spring the men.

That underworld was ruled by Cardiff's fabled Forty Thieves, thugs who terrorised local race courses running protection rackets, charging bookies for supplies of chalk and sponges, and even buckets of water. You paid up. Or got cut up.

But Dai Lewis, a popular former boxer, refused to pay up. At Monmouth races on September 28, 1927, he defied the Cardiff gang led by Edward and John Rowlands - "Tich" and "Jack Tich".

A detective recalled years later that though Lewis wasn't frightened, "he was worried". So instead of going home to Ethel Street in Canton he stayed at a hotel.

That night Lewis sat in the Blue Anchor at the bottom end of St Mary Street with Driscoll and Tich Rowlands. John Rowlands and Edward "Hong Kong" Price waited in a cafe across the road. At eleven o'clock Dai Lewis walked out of the pub - and into local legend .......  read on

PG told me this story on Sunday. I had never heard of it. The Adam Street outside the prison jammed with 5,000 hymn singing protesters is the same Adam Street where Dad would be born five years later. 'Hong Kong' Price was PG's brother-in-law's grandfather.

http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/Driscoll%20and%20Rowlands.html is worth a look as well.

Free Since 1597

 I stumbled on the Gresham College lectures on YouTube.

An intriguing establishment:

Gresham College is an institution of higher learning located at Barnard's Inn Hall off Holborn in Central London, England. It does not enroll students and does not award any degrees. It was founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, and it hosts over 140 free public lectures every year. Since 2001, all lectures have also been made available online.

La Cucina Futurista

Futurist cooking will be free of the old obsessions with volume and weight and will have as one of its principles the abolition of pastasciutta. Pastasciutta, however agreeable to the palate, is a passéist food because it makes people heavy, brutish, deludes them into thinking it is nutritious, makes them skeptical, slow, pessimistic… Any pastascuittist who honestly examines his conscience at the moment he ingurgitates his biquotidian pyramid of pasta will find within the gloomy satisfaction of stopping up a black hole. This voracious hole is an incurable sadness of his. He may delude himself, but nothing can fill it. Only a Futurist meal can lift his spirits. And pasta is anti-virile because a heavy, bloated stomach does not encourage physical enthusiasm for a woman, nor favour the possibility of possessing her at any time.

And again:

RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a perfect cube of beef. Pass an electric current through it, then marinate it for twenty-four hours in a mixture of rum, cognac and white vermouth. Remove it from the mixture and serve on a bed of red pepper, black pepper and snow. Each mouthful is to be chewed carefully for one minute, and each mouthful is divided from the next by vehement blasts on the trumpet blown by the eater himself.

I can't help but think that this is Nigella Lawson's next series sorted out. Does anyone know her agent's phone number?

Hat tip: https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/when-italian-futurists-declared-war-on-pasta-1930.html

Cold Shower

I didn't have any hot water yesterday because I turned it off a few days ago and neglected to turn it back on.

I am trying to work out a way to blame https://www.hivehome.com/ but so far I have come up short. Sometimes I am astounded that I even manage to get through the day.

Pride

 ‘He was a trailblazer’: Charley Pride, country music’s first Black superstar, dies from Covid complications

Pride, 86, who was the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, died in Dallas, Texas on Saturday, his publicist confirmed.

Dolly Parton and a string of celebrities took to Twitter to pay tribute to the musician.

"It’s even worse to know that he passed away from Covid-19. What a horrible, horrible virus. Charley, we will always love you.

He was lucky to get his career underway before bullshit notions like cultural appropriation got their feet under the table.

Harmony: Faravahar

Faravahar (Persian: فَرَوَهَر‎), also known as Forouhar (Persian: فُروهَر‎) , or Farr-e Kiyâni (فَرِّ کیانی), is one of the most well-known symbols of Iranian peoples, and Zoroastrianism, the primary religion of Iran before the Muslim conquest of Iran, and of Iranian nationalism.

Fifteen years later (see Icons passim) we're back.

Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

 

Deep breath; "Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone" is available to stream on video. I will visit it soon.

Hidden Depths

Here's the Bomber's current work in progress when it comes to reading and his art work.

Dad started off as a draughtsman, and came into his own as a late bloomer.

Maybe the apple didn't fall that far from the tree.

bobochacha

Ben and I went to bobochacha last night, at Helen's recommendation. It is a Pan-Asian place. We shared some dumplings to start and then both had prawn Singapore noodles. Singapore noodles are, for some reason, a sort of gold standard with me. I almost always try them to test a new place out. They didn't disappoint.

Last week (see Icons passim) we went to the Little Taperia and we have penciled in the Brazilian Picanha  Steakhouse next. All just round the corner and within a three minute walk from each other.

Jacinda Ardern

Standard

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has apologised to those affected by the Christchurch terror attacks as a report shed new light on how the gunman eluded detection.

The nearly 800-page Royal Commission of Inquiry report released Tuesday concluded that despite the shortcomings of various agencies, there were no clear signs the attack carried out by Brenton Tarrant was imminent.

But it did detail failings in the police system for vetting gun licenses, and said that New Zealand's intelligence agencies were focused on the threat posed by Islamic extremism rather than white supremacists.

Among 44 recommendations, the report recommended the government establishes a new national intelligence agency.

Following the report’s publication, Ms Ardern said: "The commission made no findings that these issues would have stopped the attack. But these were both failings nonetheless and for that I apologise."

Jacinda Ardern says "I" when talking about things which went wrong and "we" when talking about successes. On the face of it, perhaps, uncharitably a rhetorical gimmick. It impresses me very much though. I can tell because it has started to infuriate me when other people don't put their hands up an take responsibility. That lemon Vaughn Gething on Radio 4 this morning for example.

Through the barricades

Dad, who died at 87, was the youngest in his family with four older brothers and three older sisters.

Auntie Nelly was the oldest. Peter, my Dad's cousin, was born in 1939. He was brought up in Tremorfa. There was an RAF camp that adjoined the house. His older brother Bernard told him that Auntie Nellie used to come round and "court" Bunny Churcher who was stationed there through the barbed wire at the bottom of the garden in the early days of the Second World War. They married but my uncle Bunny was killed in the conflict.

The two hooligans on the right are my youngest nephews. They have a little sister who is only one year old. 

They are eighty years but only two generations away from Nelly. Alys may well have been born a century after her. If we were the Royal Family there would have been maybe a dozen monarchs at the most between 1066 and today.

"Today I settled all Family business"

 

‘The Godfather 4’ could still happen, says Paramount

Love you Dad.

Do not go gentle into that good night

 Dad passed away at the age of 87 at about eight o'clock last night.

A substantial meal

The Bomber and I went along to The Little Taperia, a nearby Spanish tapas bar and restaurant round the corner, last night.

I felt that we had to because Morcilla Scotch eggs, with piquillo peppers were on the menu.

A scotch egg is definitely a substantial meal, Michael Gove has said, as he performed a screeching U-turn on his earlier controversial position that it constituted merely a starter.

We also ate salt cod fritters, prawns with garlic and chilli, plus a potato tortilla. Red wine for me. Lager for him.

I know you might find it difficult believe but we mostly talked about philosophy and mathematics. I didn't notice anyone on an adjoining table inclining an ear so as not to miss any of our musings on Platonic solids.

Why are we waiting?

Bethany's collaboration with Rhys Ifans is supposed to drop on https://www.heartofcardiff.co.uk/ today.

It ain't there yet, but it is what is going on these spindrift pages today so I guess we will just have to wait.

You can catch it now at https://www.heartofcardiff.co.uk/listen-gwrandewch/rodney though you have to sign up.

implications of threat and strong feeling produced through colloquial language, apparent triviality, and long pauses

I was back in Cardiff yesterday with the intention of putting in a shift making sure Dad ate and drank at least something. He was never really awake though I managed to get some thickened Lucozade and yoghurt into him by putting a sweet drop on his tongue which seemed to trigger a swallow reflex and then following up with the rest of a teaspoon's worth.

At about ten to one, a nurse came into the room to do his "obvs" (short for observations). Concerned that his heart rate was very low, she called in Hannah*, a more senior nurse, who then called the Dr. After that they did an ECG. The Dr took me aside and told me that he was a lot worse than the day before, and implied - quite frankly - that this might be it over the next several days. I could have stayed but I was just getting in everyone's way in that single room.

Later, when I got a call to say he was much improved, a mental image formed of him opening one eye as I left and whispering "has he gone yet, Hannah*?"

*V impressed that Hannah's business-like hair bun was secured with tinsel rather than a hair tie.

Going for a Burton

I am down in Cardiff to try and see Dad. Next time I am back I will certainly catch this Museum of Wales show if possible. Ashley has curated it,

Good advice from Dad

It's not enough to land a punch. If its going to be effective you are going to need to have the proper follow-through. This means aiming just beyond your target, so that you maintain momentum after the strike itself.

I remembered this talking to my brother on the phone yesterday. We may find out how practical it is in the next few days if some people who shall remain nameless don't buck up their act.

Gething Way with it

Good way to annoy 3m+ potential customers @British_Airways https://t.co/l8lv4DDYCg

— Vaughan Gething MS (@vaughangething) November 28, 2020

BBC yesterday:

British Airways has apologised after tweeting its support for the England rugby team who are due to play Wales.

'English Airways' began trending after the airline tweeted: "Good luck to the England rugby team against Wales today." The tweet has now been deleted.

Wales' Health Minister Vaughan Gething commented: "Good way to annoy 3m+ potential customers".

BA said it had "unintentionally strayed offside" and was sorry.

One might imagine just at the moment that Wales' Health Minister had items in his in tray more pressing than this unedifying playground squabble. Like what the NHS is doing to my father for example.

Run For Your Money

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ymlrx

Wales are playing England at 4pm this afternoon, and I fear the worst, for all that I have discovered an Ealing comedy about the fixture. I may need a laugh later tonight.

Coming Around Again

I watched "Mr Calzaghe' with the son and heir last night over cod, chips and mushy peas from the Fish Inn; the first time I've been there for over a year. The movie was a good choice as I could tell Ben I was at Calzaghe's first professional fight which was on the under card at the Lennox Lewis/Frank Bruno clash in Cardiff as well as the Kessler fight in 2007. It was strange watching the Roy Jones Jr footage at the end of the movie knowing that he is fighting Mike Tyson this weekend.

I also got the chance to show Ben the photo opposite of Kru Johnny, his old Muay Thai teacher, training Matt Hancock in the House of Commons in January. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, but it certainly gives a new meaning to PPE.

What else? Dad is still in hospital. Three and a half weeks now. God know why they won't let him out. And John took Mum to the dentist this week so her new dentures should be sorted soon.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

President Donald Trump phoned in to lawyer Rudy Giuliani during a Pennsylvania hearing-style event Wednesday in order to claim 'we won this election' and that the election 'has to be turned around.

'This election as rigged and we can’t let that happen,' Trump said, even after Michigan and Pennsylvania certified the vote and his own administration issued a letter allowing the transition to President-elect Joe Biden to begin.

'This was an election that we won easily. We won it by a lot,' Trump claimed, while trailing Biden by about 6 million votes.

Normal Service is Resumed

What a pass that is! 👏

Mason Mount wins the ball and instantly slots Callum Hudson-Odoi through on goal to bag Chelsea's opener!

The winger cooly picks his spot to finish the move 👌 pic.twitter.com/lGeFiu41F9

— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) November 24, 2020

Shut Up and Deal

I am ahead of schedule when it comes to Christmas as I have watched the Apartment already. It was on BBC2 on Sunday afternoon. I have seen it time after time and own it in various formats but it always repays another look. This time I was struck by how wonderful the soundtrack was. For all that the piano player in the restaurant is not only miming, he plainly can't play at all. Mark Billy Wilder down one point. Gosh that hasn't happened before.

Adolph Deutsch (20 October 1897 – 1 January 1980) was British-American composer, conductor and arranger who didn't write songs. Well I didn't know that. It's all gravy. 

PG Tips

PG's Ancestry DNA test result has come through. You can see the regional breakdown of his antecedents on this publicly available page.

According to my DNA matches page on the system, he is the fourth most closely related person to me among those who have done the test. Coming - unsurprisingly - after my son, my nephew, and my niece.

To me the next logical step would seem to be to start work on his family tree. I have done mine to a certain extent, maybe I could repurpose some of that that; my great grandparents on my father's side being his mother's parents?

If you click the DNA tab on the website, select Settings and then go to Sharing Preferences, other users can be given permission to "view and modify test details and message users." I wonder if he sets that up for me if we could work through this together?

I want to break free

Even though my DNA is 98% Irish I can't resent Freddie Mercury for scoring two tries for England against us yesterday. The guy simply doesn't know when to quit.

Lost in Time like Tears in Rain

The last St. Joseph's Parish Newsletter pinned to the cork board in Mum and Dad's is from 25 August to 22 September 2018, 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time - Cycle B.

We don't cry out loud

I have arrived in Cardiff, but you catch me at a low ebb. I had an appointment to see my mother at ten o'clock Saturday morning for the first time since September 5, but I just got a call from the home. Two of their team members have tested positive for COVID-19 so there are no more visits for 28 days. Tomorrow is off and my heart has sunk into my boots.

Body Image 125 Years Ago

Change isn't always necessarily for the better.

Home James

 Ian Botham's grandson James, born in Cardiff, has been called up to the Wales squad for the Georgia game.

I came across the extended Botham family when I was skiing in 2012 (Icons passim)  and was very impressed - if that is the right word - by how normal they were. I imagine a 13 year old James was among the party.

“fit as a butcher’s dog” and “bursting with antibodies”

The notorious track and trace system has instructed the Prime Minister to self-isolate for a fortnight.

Mr Johnson has informed us that he feels as "fit as a butcher's dog" and "bursting with antibodies." Antibodies which, one imagines should protect him against another bout of the virus. He was admitted to intensive care seven months ago, so it is likely he is now immune.

Although it is possible that BoJo could catch it for a second time, the odds are miniscule. Out of 55 million cases globally, there have been just 10 confirmed cases of reinfection.

If Boris has to isolate even though he has recovered from COVID previously, what is the point of the vaccines over which there has been so much excitement?

Remember that these self isolation rules are the law. A peculiarity - to say the least - of this law is that people must remain at home for 14 days even if they test negative. He must stay away from Carrie Symonds and his baby for the full fortnight. 

By way of contrast those who think they have virus symptoms, and isolate while awaiting test results, are allowed out immediately if it turns out they are not infected. 

Those who test positive have to isolate for ten days.

Q.E.D. People who have the virus need to stay inside for less time than people who test and trace thought might have it but turned out not to.

My Anecdote

Years ago I went to Teddington Studios to pitch for some IT work, on Robert Kilroy-Silk's show as I recall.

Des O'Connor had a reserved space in the car park with his name painted on it, so that is where I left my car. I just found it impossible to resist.

I was sad to hear he died yesterday. He seems to have been a lovely fella. I was very much taken by the fact that he, himself, was the author of many of the wisecracks Eric Morecambe used to aim at him.

A day to forget

Things were bad for Dad in the Heath Hospital yesterday. I can't help but feel he has fallen between the cracks. Liaison between care homes and the NHS could be much better.

Six sucks

A year after winning the grand slam and reaching the semi-finals of the World Cup Wales lost lost a sixth consecutive match yesterday to Ireland.

I have nothing else to say.

Rodney and the Shrieking Sisterhood

Bethany - one of my my actress nieces - is doing a lockdown audio thing with Rhys Ifans that will come out on December 3.

Rodney and the Shrieking Sisterhood by Hannah McPake is the gothic tale of a sleuthing, Victorian police dog.

I can't really claim to have any preconceptions about sleuthing, Victorian police dogs so I will come to it with an open mind.

Renowned for his performances in hit films such as Twin Town and Notting Hill, Rhys Ifans will perform alongside Bethany Wooding and Oliver Wood in the thrilling audio drama.

Bethany Wooding, who also portrayed Kirsty in Owen Thomas’ audio drama Peerless in the Heart of Cardiff series, is an emerging actor from Cardiff who has previously trained with the National Youth Theatre and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s Young Actor’s Studio.

A sigh is an amplifier for people who suffer in silence.

Ben came round last night and we shared food from Garfield and a case of Red Stripe. We also played old school reggae through my Peavey Backstage Plus amplifier. I don't think Ben had ever encountered a valve amp before. The coupla second delay when it still throbs after you have turned off the power messed with his mind. Later he introduced me to the music of Bushy One String.

Next week I am planning on rustling up South American food and drink sourced from https://brasileiroonline.co.uk/ at the bottom of the road.

Kamala Parker Bowles

This is where we can see the play reading I wrote about recently from 7:30 tonight. I am spoken for early in the evening so I am not sure when I will be able to catch up with it, 

Transition Integrity Project

The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) was a series of June 2020 political scenario exercises in the United States, involving over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders, academics, journalists, polling experts and former federal and state government officials. The exercises examined potential disruptions to the 2020 presidential election and transition. 

In August 2020, TIP released a report outlining its findings and recommendations. The report stated, ″We […] assess that the [sic] President Trump is likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means, in an attempt to hold onto power. 

You can see the report here.

Once more with feeling:

I am not a Trump supporter. I am not a Biden supporter. I am a disinterested observer from the other side of the pond. I don't think this unholy saga is anywhere near finished yet for all that the BBC thinks it is.

Ah'm jes' sayin' is all

 

It was twenty years ago today
Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play,
They've been going in and out of style,
But they're guaranteed to raise the smile,
So may I introduce to you,
The act you've known for all these years,
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I am not a Trump supporter. I am not a Biden supporter. I am a disinterested observer from the other side of the pond. I don't think this unholy saga is anywhere near finished yet for all that the BBC thinks it is.

The Far Away Plays

C A R D I F F E A S T
by / gan
Peter Gill

Wednesday 11th Nov

7:30pm

🎟 Observer tickets 👇
📧 TheFarAwayPlays@gmail.com pic.twitter.com/60TbGYb9k4

— The Far Away Plays (@TheFarAwayPlays) November 7, 2020

Spare the Rod

 Smacking children is illegal in Scotland from today.

I only ever smacked Ben once, it was in the car park under Virgin Active where I had taken him swimming. He dashed out into the path of an incoming vehicle, so I grabbed him my the wrist and tapped him on the palm. I realized later that I did it because I was afraid, not to teach him anything.

I can't remember my mother or father ever smacking me at all.

Fix Me Up

Garfield at Ting 'n Ting is open for take-aways during lock down so next week Ben and I will be doing Caribbean food. 

His Mega Platter would seem to fit the bill.

Sharing platter of jerk chicken & pork, mutton curry, chicken curry, peppered steak, saltfish fritter, plantain, rice n peas, dumpling and coleslaw.  A popular choice as an intro to Caribbean food.

That back at my place with a Studio One soundtrack and some Red Stripe Jamaican beer is a proposition lacking in flaws.

Do you remember I was talking about Kamala Harris's South Indian roots the day before yesterday? Her father is from Jamaica. Quite frankly Saravanaa Bhavan followed by Ting 'n Ting counts as prudent political research. We should be able to claim it against something.

While you're here, Mindy Kaling (who was making dosas with Kamala - keep up) has a significant ownership stake in Swansea City. (Everything is connected,)

I'm so bored with the USA

We have never needed The Clash as much as we need them today.

Yankee detectives

Are always on the TV

'Cause killers in America work

Seven days a week

I'm so bored with the U.S.A.

I'm so bored with the U.S.A.

But what can I do?

Poori Scrumptious

 Ben and I went out for South Indian Thali at Saravanaa Bhavan in Tooting last night. There is a US election tie-in. Who knew?

When there is no peace in the family, filial piety begins

Dad - who should have been moving between care homes - is in hospital in the Heath and no one can go and see him.

All right, now I have to make arrangements to bring him back here safely cleared of all these false charges. But I'm a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him... if he should be shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning, then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room, and that I do not forgive.

The Hedgehog and the Fox

I was talking to Peter about Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia yesterday. I can't remember how or why it came up. Stoppard's protagonist is Alexander Herzen, the Russian writer and thinker and a real historical figure. I mentioned that I had read Isiah Berlin on Herzen only for PG to tell me he knew him. You could have knocked me down with a feather.

It seems that Peter's 1981 production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country was based on a translation that the National Theatre commissioned from Berlin and PG used to pop around Isiah B's flat in the Albany* to discuss it as a work in progress. "Nice man," apparently.

The Albany! My cup overfloweth.

LockDown is the new LockUp

When I was a boy I used to get the bus back home from primary school. On day after I got off, I noticed the narrow ledge under the automatic exit in the middle of the single-decker, and a vertical handle that passengers could use to steady themselves getting on or off. It struck me that if - once the cantilever door closed - I leaped back on I could cling to the outside of the bus and jump off at the top of the hill thus saving myself two or three minutes walking. 

By the time the bus got to the top of the hill it was moving too quickly for me to dismount without taking my life in my hands, so I had to cling on in terror all the way to the next stop - further away from home than where I had started.

I saw something of that little boy in Boris Johnson at yesterday's press conference; initially full of bravado, now to scared to jump off and walk instead.