The Little World

• The Little World of Don Camillo

• Don Camillo Series, Book 1
• By: Giovanni Guareschi
• Narrated by: Piers Dudgeon
• Series: Don Camillo, Book 1
• Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 14-05-18
• Language: English
• Publisher: Pilot Productions
•     
   4.3 out of 5 stars4.3 (43 ratings)

Added to my Audible library today in memory of Dad.

DakhaBrakha

 Global music quartet DakhaBrakha perform Ukrainian folk music with an air of theatricality.

Performing an unexpected and riotous clash of roots and rhythms, DakhaBrakha (meaning ‘give/take’ in old Ukrainian) merge their folklore stylings with the transnational sounds of Indian, Arabic and African instrumentation.

Originating as an avant-garde theatre project, the band appear on stage in traditional dress, which combined with their astonishingly powerful and uncompromising vocal range, creates a dramatic spectacle. As they play a multitude of instruments, their eerie, edgy harmonies blend with cello, concertina and percussive rhythms.

That's what I saw in the Barbican last night and it was great.

I had completely forgotten I was even going when I found it in my diary the other week. DakhaBrakha looked like a typo. 

It's a family thing. My brother John once bought eight tickets (8!) for Bratislavan folk dance in Swansea's Brangwyn Hall that he promptly forgot. "It seemed a good idea at the time." We both need PCs that have USB breathalyzers attached or disable e-commerce after 11 pm.

Oh Danny Boy

 'Look in the bars of Cardiff Met' — Eddie Jones tells other clubs where to find new rugby players after unearthing England duo

Eddie Jones has quipped that every rugby team will now be looking at Cardiff Metropolitan University to try to sign players after naming two former students in his England Six Nations squad.

Harlequins duo Alex Dombrandt and new England find Luke Northmore - former Cardiff Met RFC players - were included in Jones' 36-man party on Tuesday.

Quins No. 8 Dombrandt, 24, will be looking to add to his four international caps while 24-year-old centre Northmore is one of six uncapped players in the squad.

Their call-ups have shone a light on the impressive rugby credentials of their university, with both players representing the Archers just a few years ago in the BUCS - the highest level of university rugby in the UK.

Our cousin Danny Milton is the director of rugby at Cardiff Met. From art to sport, the family continues to storm the barricades. Amazing really.

Brian

 Kevin G's father Brian passed away last night peacefully at home listening to jazz.

I wrote before (see Icons passim) about the mad story he told me about seeing Orson Welles' bonkers stage version of Moby Dick in the fifties, and that is how I will remember him. I thought, until he proved otherwise, that he was, in a good way, absolutely barking.

March 31st 2018 was the day I spent the most time with him. We went to see Paapa in his RSC Hamlet at the Hackney Empire; a Sat Mat. Brian and Mrs Brian not being in the first flush of youth we got a cab all the way (all the way!) from the 'Wood to Hackney so as to avoid stairs and escalators.

Plenty time to talk and grow comfy in each others' company. All good.

When we arrived, we went for lunch in the pub around the corner from the theatre. More accurately, the Goddings went for lunch, I just got plumbed in.

This had implications for my bladder once the show began. Luckily, I had seen the production before so I knew its rhythms. I selected a hiatus not long before the interval when I wouldn't disturb anyone and hurried off from my aisle seat to the loo. 

Business conducted, I was leaning at the balcony at the back of the stalls when I chanced to look down to my left. Mimi Ndiweni (Ophelia) was crouching there hiding. (Exeunt Act III?)

"Hello," I murmured. She smiled shyly and gave me a little wave. Most surreal moment for me ever in a theatre.

No really a story about Brian, but it happened on my Brian day.

1922 and All That

It’s your second two part series of the week on The Rest is History, as we look back 100 years to 1922.

Today we kick off with everything from Bolshevism to the significance of Ulysses, so listen below ⬇️ https://t.co/0RXXrHxnvEhttps://t.co/9kOKJDcmMlhttps://t.co/xMvpxGeHwB pic.twitter.com/AGIKkoEH8y

— The Rest Is History (@TheRestHistory) January 13, 2022

Following on from yesterday’s first part, today we take on more aspects from 1922 - the Birth of the Modern World.

From the Irish Civil War to the BBC to Just William, this one’s pretty stacked!https://t.co/0plbD4LMx8https://t.co/ToOHADFrKrhttps://t.co/vpvZgpZay8 pic.twitter.com/HVQu0UV3fm

— The Rest Is History (@TheRestHistory) January 14, 2022

I kinda sorta follow the other Tom Holland since I read his book Dominion. This podcast, The Rest is History, that he does with  Dominic Sandbrook is all over the 1922: Year of Destiny meme as well. Never activated a neuron with me in all of my life before yesterday.

1922: The Birth of Now

Like all right thinking people, Ben and I listen to Radio 4 when we are in the car on a longish road trip (there only being so much Showaddywaddy a man can take).  As we were driving back from West Dean yesterday there was an episode of Open Book about Ulysses, by James Joyce, which was first published in full a hundred years ago.

Apparently there is a school of thought that suggests 1922 was an artistic annus mirabilis; the year that changed everything. After the Joyce show there was a plug for 1922: The Birth of Now: Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

Crikey! Kicks off next Monday and runs five days a week for a fortnight at a quarter to two in the afternoon.

1. The Shabolovka Tower and the Gherkin
2. The Criterion, which published The Waste Land
3. The True Story of Ah Q, by Lu Xun
4. Bertolt Brecht's play Drums in the Night
5. Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago
6. The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, and Egyptomania
7. Nosferatu and Modernist Horror
8. Hōshō, the First Aircraft Carrier, and HMS Queen Elizabeth 11
9. Pirandello's Henry IV and the Idea of Truth
10. Einstein, relativity, time, and indigenous Australian modernism

One cannot help but admire the chutzpah; each episode being a mere quarter of an hour long.

Up the stairs and turn left

Ben and I will be leaving West Dean today when his "Sacred Geometry" short course finishes. We have been staying in room 52.There is a virtual tour of the Front Entry, Oak Hall and Tapestry Corridor at https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=yJS1tQXy6VL. If you follow it up the main stairs, turn left and follow the Tapestry Corridor down to the last door on the right you will be on the route to where we have been put up; not too shabby.

|I took a photo of one of the hangings in the Tapestry Corridor, because it put my in mind of the Arabian Nights which I am still reading at the rate of one story a day.

It depicts a scene form Torquato Tasso's epic poem "Jerusalem delivered (1557), which tells of the First Crusade in 1099 and was produced in 1736 in Rome by Pietro Ferloni. Godfrey of Bouloigne, the figure in the blue cloak with plumed helmet and gold tunic, is depicted in the final duel in which he slew the commander of the Arab army and won Jerusalem for the Christian army.

It's all related

As a birthday present, John my brother has got us a pair of Sat Mat tickets for The Seagull, at the Harold Pinter Theatre on July 9th.

Let's take The Seagull for a walk. I remember seeing Peter Hall's production at the Old Vic in 1997. It starred Felicity Kendall as Madame Arkadina.

My niece Mia, John's daughter, is in her second year at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She played Madame Arkadina for her assessment (my italics as I don't know exactly what that word means in that context). Act 3 with Trigorin as I recall.

The last time I went to the theatre with Mia we caught "Anything Goes" at the Barbican. Peter Gill couldn't make it, so I gave Saskia his ticket.

Adrian Noble directed a translation on The Seagull that the RSC commissioned from Peter in 2000.

Felicity Kendall was in "Anything Goes" coming up for a quarter of a century, after I saw her in The Seagull.

"Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows."

Pit Chat?

A statement from Buckingham Palace regarding The Duke of York: pic.twitter.com/OCeSqzCP38

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) January 13, 2022

I remember us launching the Royal Family's twitter account. The details on it say, 'Joined April 2009.' I would never have guessed it was that long ago. We certainly were't anticipating tweets like the one above in those halcyon days.

When we started it I persuaded them not to follow anyone. Today I see that they are following 459 including https://twitter.com/Oprah and https://twitter.com/pitchatpalace. May I suggest that is a list that needs more active pruning, ma'am?

One a Month in the Bank

 I could be accused of playing fast and loose with booking one gig or show per month well in advance, but them's the breaks. We've got Ava: The Secret Conversations tickets but due to scheduling coordination and conflicts the seats are booked for March 31st rather than April, the month to which I , with BoJo levels of hubris, intend to assign them.

I haven't paid out yet but Harris & Baker's Backstage Pass at the Wimbledon Theatre on Sunday 1st looks like getting the nod for May.

June - as you already know - is To Kill a Mockingbird.

John's going to get a Sat Mat for The Seagull  at the Harold Pinter. My birthday is in June but he is aiming for August, June and July being all but sold out. I imagine that his because Emilia Clarke is in it. It was due to be staged a year or so ago but got Covid cancelled, I guess a lot of early tickets probably went straight out to people who paid for the earlier run.

What will I see in July though? I am haunted by the gaping hole in my schedule. Worrying about it in January though I suggest confirms the worth of the one-a-month discipline.

Show and tell

The details of the photo on the right, charming as it is, are inconsequential in this context. What stands out to me is an Echo Show next to the phone behind Aunt Philo and her first great grandson Ted.

It is coming up for three years (see Icons passim) since I speculated about getting one for my mum. I also noticed on a house visit that my old school friend Sean's mother has got one as well.

Here is what Philo's daughter - my cousin - said when I asked her about it.

It is an Echo Show, well spotted. We got Ma one during lockdown so that we could see as well as speak to her, Kate was in her bubble but the rest of us only had phone contact. This way, Vanny, Georgia and I could at least have daily face time without her having to do anything apart from instruct the echo to answer our calls. She now rings us too and gets weather and news updates and plays all her favourite old timers too.

Lily in Ty Enfys (who I respect enormously) is unconvinced by Alexa and older people and I take that on board but I wonder if Ria's slow burn might work for us. What if I get mum a show that is used initially as nothing more than a rotating photo album? After a month or two we could show her how she could listen to her favourite music on it. Later we could start "dropping in " on her and saying hello.

The jury is still out but it is not impossible.

White Truffle

PG gave me this White Truffle Extra Virgin Olive Oil on Sunday.

I got the impression that perhaps someone had given him a gift pack of posh oil and vinegar bottles for Christmas, and that - while he was comfortable with the others - he couldn't quite work out what to do with this one.

I've had a look in the larder, so I think tonight I am going to drizzle it into a sweetcorn chowder served up with an Italian meatball panini. Tomorrow it will be used to season a mushroom risotto.

After that I should know if I like it or not. Here is a link to its home page for the likely future date when I have finished it and thrown out the empty bottle only to realise I can't live without it and have forgotten the brand.

When The Whip Comes Down (Live)

𝐀𝐧𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐚 🍦?

The whip courtesy of @Calteck10 🧐#EmiratesFACup pic.twitter.com/HmZNbpYThy

— Emirates FA Cup (@EmiratesFACup) January 8, 2022

Here's Callum's FA Cup goal from Saturday. I thought it was worth embedding as the tweet seems to be from the legitimate official Emirates FA Cup account to it is unlikely to disappear.

As I type it has struck me, now the African Cup of Nations is on, that nothing came of the rumours he might give up England for. Ghana.  IF he was going to make the move surely he would have done it for this event. Then again, what do I know?

33 Love Lane

 There is a free advanced search on the 1921 census digital version hosted by Find My Past at 1921 Census of England & Wales | findmypast.co.uk

As I know my great grandparents lived in Love Lane in Cardiff I have been able to search it by surname and street-name.

Here is the 33 Love Lane household.

• Catherine Browne born 1896 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• Ellen Browne born 1862 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• Margaret Mary Browne born 1901 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• Stephen Browne born 1900 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• William Browne born 1917 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• William Ida Browne born 1898 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales

Ellen (née McDonnel) is my great grandmother. Margaret Mary is PG's mother and little visiting three year old William Browne was his godfather.

I remember Dad lived in Adam Street.

• Honora Browne born 1899 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• James Browne born 1890 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales
• Mary Browne 1921 Cardiff, Glamorganshire, Wales

My grandmother, grandfather and aunt; Mary was the only one I ever met, the grandparents having died before I was born.

T EFFLuent

 I was rather surprised to find yesterday when I went through my diary that I am going to a theatre four times in the next four weeks.

It gave me enough of a jolt finally to get round to applying for my 60+ London Oyster photocard so I can get in and out of the West End free of an evening.

The confirmation email says:

Your photo will be checked and approved if it meets our guidelines. Your photocard will be delivered within 5-7 days.

If your photo doesn't meet our guidelines we can't approve it. We'll email and ask you to upload a new photo

I hope the guidelines don't exclude jowly grumpiness

Words and Music

 I got a message from John yesterday saying he will be driving up early in the morning on the 15th with Lorraine, Jasmine, Emily and Sophie. Mia will already be in London as she is coming back to Central this weekend, though I won't be as I am staying at West Dean with Ben.

They are going to see a couple of matinees, Dear Evan Hansen on Saturday and Hamilton on Sunday, before driving back again. I like to get out to a gig or a show at least once a month, and this reminded me that what with Omicrom cancellations and my own self isolation I didn't see anything in December. Looking through my diary though I can see that there is quite a lot in the pipeline, much of which had slipped my mind, so here is a list as an aide-mémoire.

13 Jan Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story at the Jermyn Street Theatre.  (My cousin's boy Bart is in it.)

20 Jan DakhaBrakha at the Barbican ("Ukrainian folk music with an air of theatricality." I had completely forgotten about this. Note to self: travel route will take thought because of closures on the City branch of the Northern Line.)

27 Jan A Number at the Old Vic (Paapa on stage for the first time in a while. Helen may not be able to make it as Mat is due to be away skiing. If that happens I will give Bethany her ticket.

5 Feb  Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical (loads of us going mob-handed)

10 March Ego Ella May at Lafalyette (Ms May was known as small oat cappuccino at Coffee in the Wood)

19 March John is up for a To Kill A Mockingbird matinée (I could get a ticket for something else in Shaftsbury Avenue at the same time and meet them before and afterwards.)

20 June my tickets for To Kill A Mockingbird. What about April and May? I hear you cry. Some sort of combination of Jerusalem, Ava at the Riverside, and The Corn Is Green at the National is my best guess. Maybe try and book Jeruslem first as tickets are likely to be scarce for a limited run and work around that,

Twelfth Night

 When Ben calls in on the way home from work, he generally gets to the 'Wood at about five, so we have taken to meeting in the Standard opposite the tube station rather than having to coordinate whether he should come to the office or the house, or what do do if I am in transit between them. It is also close to both Corleone and the Istanbul Meze Mangal for an early dinner as they both open at five making them handy.

Today is Twelfth Night if you are a Catholic. It was yesterday for Anglicans.  Christmas decorations come down, so I pointed my phone's camera to preserve what we all refer to as the Standard's "Nazi Santas"

Goose Stepping Santas

Heil Hitler Santa

I realise that the resemblance is accidental, and I am displaying poor taste, but I can't help but laugh every time I see them again for a couple of weeks each side of the turn of the year.

Do you have any apples in that basket?

When I was talking to John the evening before last he said he had been out for a drive along the coast. This is very un-Browne like, the cabin fever must really be biting. Like me he listens to Radio 4 a lot in the car, so he recommended two shows her heard on the trip to me: the Food Programme: #FoodTok: Mastering the Art of Cooking in Three Minutes and a Faith in Music episode about Ralph Vaughan Williams.

I haven't listened to either yet, but I did put Williams on Spotify when I was working yesterday: plangent, introspective, numinous stuff. It did me the power of good. Intrigued I looked him up on Wikipedia which told me that when he was at Trinity College Cambridge, he became friendly with the philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell. This struck a chord as I am also working through Frances Wilson's "Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence" and learned in that of Lawrence being invited for dinner at High Table at Trinity College, Cambridge by Bertrand Russell. He sat between Russell and Moore as I recall. (Also, during a visit to the rooms of John Maynard Keynes, Lawrence became aware of the economist’s homosexuality and was horrified.)

The Bloomsbury Group, Freeman Dyson, Ernest Rutherford, Wittgenstein etc. the list of people who went through Trinity between, say, the late 19th and mid 20th century and must in general largely must have been acquainted with each other is astonishing. Someone should write some sort of accessible social and intellectual history of it. (It someone already has and I am just unaware of it I apologise.)

Icons Passim: Beyond the Fringe.

Carry On at your Convenience

 I went out in the car for the for the first time yesterday since my ten days self isolation; first over to PG in Hammersmith, then to deliver Christmas presents to the son and heir in Morden (which shows you how long I have been out of circulation) then briefly to the office, thence to the gym.

Nobody else was in the Apprentice Shop (our office's building) so I finally managed to get a photo of the notice that has been on the door of the Ladies' toilet since the beginning of pandemic precautions. I have been laughing at the image conjured by "PLEASE USE THE DESIGNATED  CUBICLE FOR YOUR OFFICE" for months and months now but I've never managed to get a picture of it before. Not even I could explain away being caught pointing my phone's camera at that door as some poor woman came out, or was walking up behind me to go in.

Talking Rubbish

My Merton rubbish collection is on Tuesday as usual this week, even though it is a Bank Holiday today. I checked it at Find your collection days (merton.gov.uk).

"Fascinating!" I hear you cry.

The story gets worse. Last week, institutionalized by day after day of self isolation, I got up on the morning I imagined the collection would be made and started typing a WhatsApp message to Joe who lives opposite asking him if he knew the Christmas week arrangements. 

Until, that is, I had the brilliant idea of looking out of the window to see if any of the neighbours had put their bins out. The idea just came to me as some sort of mad inspiration; a kind of sixth sense if you like. An atavistic throwback to a gentler more holistic time, at peace with itself and society's natural rhythms.

I suggest a reboot

 I don't have any New Year's Resolutions myself, but I have got some pointers for Sir Keir Starmer. Granted it can't have been easy becoming the Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition in April 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but his response to the virus has been strategically naive.

To my mind, the primary constitutional function of the Opposition is to expose the policies and actions of the Government to scrutiny. I would go further, it is NOT, except in the run up to an election. to propose detailed alternative policies.

Lack of appreciation of this has been Starmer's Achilles heel. He is forever painting himself into a corner, by adopting a rhetorical stance that commits him to saying that Labour would have cracked down harder and faster with regards to COVID always and everywhere. This is not exposing the policies and actions of the Government to scrutiny. This is, to all intents and purposes, giving Johnson and Co. a free hand to impose any gimcrack, back-of-the-envelope load of old cobblers they just dreamed up without any debate.

Concentrate, Keir my old son, on making these crash test dummies justify themselves to us, the public. When they claim to be "following the science," ask "what specific science?" You are dealing with people so monumentally deluded, stupid and incompetent that they think something as flippant as"'Captain Hindsight is rising rapidly up the ranks and has become General Indecision' is a legitimate response in the serious business of the House.

All By Myself (Eric Carmen)

It's New Year and my final day of COVID self-isolation. I hope that the butterfly that will emerge tomorrow from the cocoon in which I have been confined for the last ten days will care more for enjoying the world than scolding it. But that's tomorrow. Today I will scold.

Next week it will be eleven years (Icons passim) since I lambasted David Cameron's Behavioural Insight Team. It is difficult to believe I know, but my warning wasn't heeded.

Cameron's lunatic innovation lives on in the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B).

On 22 March 2020, this shower came up with Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures.

It quite clearly says:

A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened... The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent.

This is advice to bully and intimidate the public. It was plainly taken on board, but it is not a legitimate function of government. They work for us. We don't work for them.

On 13 May 1940, in his first speech since becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill said:

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat". We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

An adult addressing adults.

When the government no longer trusts the people the inevitable result is that the people will lose trust in the government. I still trust the people. Friends and neighbours have delivered, often unbidden though always gratefully received, everything I could possibly need and more while I have been locked up. From national and local government I got exactly nothing.

Don Camillo

 Perhaps because I had been thinking about Dr and Mrs Dreyfuss in The Apartment yesterday, I suddenly remembered Dad, when I was a little boy, weeping with laughter reading a book called 'The Joys of Yiddish" by Leo Rosten and reciting extracts with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. I've ordered a second hand copy from ebay.

Later, when we were tinkering, remote from each other, with Amazon Prime Watch Party (we did get it working)  I mentioned the Rosten memory to my brother John and we started reminiscing about how dad and all his brothers were suffused with the short stories of Damon Runyon, O. Henry, and P.G. Wodehouse and how we had taken this in on behalf of the next generation almost unconsciously by some sort of osmosis. We've both had the experience, reading the three authors above, of coming across a phrase that, through sheer familiarity, we thought was one of Dad's. Indeed, John found my own  regular "you interest me strangely" in Wodehouse ("Thank You, Jeeves" I believe) when I had no idea that was where I picked it up.

Ok, let's have a crack at delineating the old man's favourite short S from each of the triumvirate. My best guesses are:

O. Henry: The Gift of the Magi.

P.G. Wodehouse: Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend

Damon Runyon: Romance in the Roaring Forties

That last choice may be controversial. I am all but sure John would go with "Hold 'em Yale!" because the contexts into which Dad could introduce "I wish to say that old Liverlips' noggin is a very dangerous weapon at all times" really was a wonder to behold. I'm going with "Romance in the Roaring Forties" though on the basis of "Dave walks over and starts to give Waldo Winchester the leather, which is considered customary in such cases" I really thought "giving him the leather" was a phrase of Dad's until I read that.

While we are on this page, the stories, beloved by the old man, about good natured feuds between a Catholic priest and a Communist mayor post WWII in a small Italian town in the Po Valley are collected in the Don Camillo books. I couldn't remember the name yesterday. John couldn't remember them at all. This month's Audible credit will go on The Little World of Don Camillo with a following wind.

Finally, back to Jews and Catholics and coming in a complete circle.

Worth a watch. Wiser days in many ways. Less tightly wound than now.

Watch Party

 I've been peripherally aware of an option called Amazon Prime Watch Party for a while. Apparently it is a facility you can use to chat with up to 100 friends while you watch movies and TV shows online together. I've noticed it on the Prime Video website but had never come across it on the Fire TV Stick until recently. The explanation appears to be that it is available via the Fire TV Prime Video App, but doesn't appear in the general Fire TV interface. I think I must have come across it when Fire TV took me into the app when I was watching Amazon coverage of a Premiership football game.

Herewith the skinny (I believe that is the technical term). Follow this link.

John and I have agreed to try and give it a test drive with The Apartment today. It seems desperately unlikely but wouldn't it be wonderful if we could use to watch movies with mum? Is it that impossibly more advanced than combining the Skype chat we have every Saturday morning with watching a video streaming from St Brigid's? We've done both of them in the last couple of weeks.

While we were laying our plans last night J.C. told me that Jack Kruschen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dr. Dreyfuss in the The Apartment. For all that I am uncomfortable with another human being, never mind my little brother knowing more about The Apartment than me, I was pleased for Jack Kruschen (Icons passim). It was richly deserved. (How Naomi Stevens was overlooked as Mrs Dreyfuss, I will never know. " A girl like you, for the rest of your life you want to cry in your noodle soup?")

Rita Tushingham

 

It has struck me this morning, that this must be the first time I haven't seen PG for more than a week since the start of the pandemic. Have some random recollections of his from the swinging sixties on me. First, he decided to concentrate on writing and directing as opposed to acting when  Ray Brooks got the lead in The Knack ...and How to Get It. Second, there is also a story about him helping Tony Richardson out with the auditions for A Taste of Honey but I can't remember the details.

I needz my choonz

Rebecca sent me new music (above) yesterday, and Frankie sent me a message giving me a task and saying "can you have a try as you’re there doing nothing?" 

Both bucked me up immensely. Many others, though I now they mean well, are dealing with me as if I am as helpless as Steve Martin's  Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - https://youtu.be/SKDX-qJaJ08

Burning Man

What with my COVID powered coughing and wheezing I am finding the consumptive DH Lawrence a much more sympathetic figure as I am working through Frances Wilson's "Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence"  than I did when I was hale and hearty.

For Those Who Can't Be Here

 

I like to think of myself as a cynical and poisonous individual. I wouldn't have the slightest hesitation putting the boot in if I thought otherwise, but I must say I think that the Duchess of Cambridge nails this. 

I am frankly unconcerned about how technically easy or difficult the piece is, what impresses me is her time keeping. It is absolutely nailed on. There's not a drummer, a click track or a conductor and she starts solo. Take it from me - someone who failed at this for years - when you practice alone steady tempo is your Achilles heel playing with others. 

Belles, belles, belles

I was so wiped out by COVID yesterday that I went to bed around six. I spoke to John my brother on the phone for a while but I reckon I was asleep by seven. When I woke up this morning I just lay there sweating and festering under the bed clothes, until I remembered getting a message from the - always reliable - Andy M a couple of days ago which said:

There is some marvelous new music around and and I need to catch up stuff. Radio 6 music is also a good source of new listening with a number of great shows, particularly on the weekend (Iggy Pop, Cerys Matthews, Guy Garvey, Craig Charles and Huey Morgan). So much music (so little time)!

"Alexa, play BBC Radio six," I said. Amy Lamé was hosting the show that was on and introduced Claude Francois' Belle Belle Belle as well as giving a quick pen portrait of the video. As soon as the song ended I was all over YouTube looking for it.  I defy anyone to watch these two and a quarter  minutes of of Gallic fun in the snow without cheering up. It has certainly put a smile on my face.

More genius is that it is a cover of Made to Love by the Everly Brothers with new French lyrics by Claude Francois.  Claude Francois also wrote the French lyrics to Comme d'habitude. When Paul Anka wrote English lyrics for it, the song became My Way. How wonderful is that?

Quos Deus vult perdere

 It looks like I was tempting fate with my rant about lock-down yesterday as I cam up positive on a lateral flow test early yesterday evening and the COVID diagnosis was confirmed at a drive-in PCR this morning, so I could be stuck inside these four walls until January 2nd. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year eh? It is I suppose possible I could be released after seven days if I pass lateral flow tests 24 hours apart on days six and seven. According to the letter of the law I could go to New Year's part if I arrived exactly at midnight.

A bright spot is that I have got good friends and neighbours (the Hendries and the Butlers for example). Every now and then I hear a knock on the door and open it to find a carrier bag of goodies has been deposited by a benefactor. Helen and Mat left me a take-away curry and four Stellas. That's the Christmas spirit for you.

More hair with that shirt, sir?

 BBC

No more than six people will be allowed to meet in pubs, cinemas and restaurants in Wales from 26 December.

Two-metre social distancing rules will also return in public places.

Licensed premises will have to offer table service only, face masks will have to be worn and contact tracing details collected.

Outdoor events will be limited to 50, with 30 indoors, but no restrictions were brought in for smaller meetings in private homes.

First Minister Mark Drakeford called for people to limit the amount of socialising they do and take a lateral flow tests before they go to meet other people.

"Outdoor events will be limited to 50, with 30 indoors, but no restrictions were brought in for smaller meetings in private homes." Let's be clear about what this means. It means that our family get together earlier this week after my aunt's funeral wouldn't be allowed next week, a whole year after no such thing was allowed at my father's funeral. I am incandescent with rage.

BBC

Fines will be handed out to employees in Wales who go to work when they could work from home.

From Monday, workers will receive a £60 fixed penalty notice and companies hit with fines of £1,000 every time they break the rule.

Until now there has just been guidance encouraging home working.

The union GMB said it would affect "the poorest, most vulnerable workers" while the TUC said it was "at best naïve" to think responsibility is shared.

That dickhead Vaughan Gething (Icons passim) was on Breakfast TV this morning. The expression of disbelief on Naga Munchetty's face when he was explaining that the nonsense above wasn't a problem because no-one had been fined for it and it was a way of exerting pressure on companies as opposed to poor working stiffs spoke louder than any words.

Requiem for a Dream

 It is a year today since Dad's Requiem, and Auntie Rona's was yesterday.  Both of them were mass in the parish at 11 followed by Thornhill Cemetery. At least yesterday we could meet the family at the Manor Parc hotel afterwards. That to our distress was outlawed last year.

Mum watching the service streamed live to her care home, went better than I dared hope. We could even give her communion, which was a great comfort to her.

Acceptable in the 80s

 I am in Cardiff for Mum's older sister, Auntie Rona's funeral. Mum's not well or sparky enough to attend so I will watch a stream of the services with he on https://www.3churches.org/streamed-masses/ and then go along to the reception (wake?) in the hotel afterwards to pay my respects. (We couldn't meet socially after last year's funerals like Dad's because of COVID restrictions. After the Welsh Government announced yesterday that fans will be unable to attend sporting fixtures in the country from Boxing Day I can't help but fear therapeutic family gatherings may be banned again.)

I have noticed a rather heartwarming trend of people keeping up with relatives in their 80s this weekend. When I knocked on PG's door to take him on his weekly grocery shop, his nephew and his nephew's son were there paying a visit. I called on Sean, and old school friend, early yesterday evening to find him and his sister caring for their elderly mother, and when I met another friend Kevin in the Borough Arms last night he brought his eighty year old uncle Win Taylor along.

not to yield

Myself: “Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Prodnose: Tennyson right? Is this the Dan Fish thing again? Three days in a row.

Myself: I suppose it is really, but - in this week of weeks after last year's week of weeks - it's about mum and dad as well. Peter said a striking thing to me yesterday. I think he made it up on the spot. It didn't sound like he was quoting himself or anyone else. "If we were aristocrats our stories would be called history, the fact we aren't doesn't make them gossip."

The gift that keeps on giving

World Cup winner pleads with Dan Fish to put retirement on hold after 'absolute class' performance against Quins

For all that my daily coverage of life the universe and everything has been a touch "one-note" lately I am going to keep sharing this heart warming story. Surely Mr Spielberg there is a Christmas movie for the ages in here somewhere,

Feed the FIsh

So proud of the guys in these photo.

32 players and 16 staff stuck in quarantine, more injured but this group stepped up.

The effort, spirit and endeavour shown in the face of adversity has put more pride in the jersey than any victory. Thank you.

Is it dusty in here? 🥺 pic.twitter.com/YQotff72Hr

— Cardiff Rugby (@Cardiff_Rugby) December 18, 2021

My brothers and I talk with my mother over Skype every Saturday morning. Vince told me today that Dan still can't retire. Wales online put it best "Harlequins v Cardiff team news as cult hero Dan Fish to go against England star Marcus Smith" - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/harlequins-v-cardiff-team-news-22494594.

Dan, the great grandson that is a result my Auntie Nellie's courting of Bunny Churcher through the barbed wire at the bottom of the garden of the house PG grew up in. The other side of the fence was an Air Force base. A base that was referred to in PG's play "Small Change." We saw a revival of it recently. Do I have a family or an almanac of the twentieth century?

Going postal

 If it hadn't been for Radio 4, and specifically the healing balm of Jack Thorne, screenwriter, on Desert Island  Discs with Lauren Laverne at nine followed by episode 5 of On Seamus Heaney which took us to ten this morning while I was stuck in traffic trying to get to the midlands I think I might have turned into Michael Douglas in "Falling Down."

The Iron Lady

 

My brother John was up yesterday with the actress nieces plus a school friend called Carter, so we went along to Corleone for a pizza before they drove back to Wales.

Mia was talking about an exercise she has to do at Central delivering a politician's speech. I suggested Margaret Thatcher's above (transcription here). Looking at the video this morning, there is a lot that she could work with there.

Two other random ideas were Condi Rice and Dr Rosena Allin-Khan's emotional speech at Prime Minister's Questions after a video was leaked showing Downing Street aides laughing about a lockdown-breaking party in Number 10 - herewith.

authorihews

1985

Sean Burke
Doesn't do any work,
But if badgered he
Claims to study theories of tragedy.

2021

Sean Burke
Continues to shirk.
What on earth are we s'posed to be citing
In the years since The Ethics of Writing?

Charles Moore: Torygraph

A clerihew is a well-known form of light verse, invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. It is just four lines long, and comprises two rhyming but non-metrical couplets. (His very first one went: “Sir Humphry Davy/Abominated gravy./He lived in the odium/Of having discovered sodium.”)

During Covid, the distinguished historian Sir Noel Malcolm, former political columnist of this paper, went for many long walks. As he walked, he developed a refinement of the clerihew which makes the form stricter. The first couplet must find a rhyme for the name of an author. The second couplet must conclude with the title of one of that author’s works.

Here is an example: “WB Yeats/Liked all the excitement an uprising creates./Yet he was nowhere to be seen/In Easter, 1916.”

Sir Noel calls his new genre “authorihews” (and has just published a little collection of them for Christmas, under that name). I prefer to call them “malcolmicals”.

Part of the fun is the absurdity created by these rhyming rules: “The contribution of Benito Mussolini/ To political theory was teeny./Only his desire to make a splash is some/Explanation of The Doctrine of Fascism.”

I particularly like the second rhyme in this one: “To the eyes of Bram Stoker/ Everything appeared blood-coloured or ochre:/Apparently he was suffering from macular/ Degeneration when he wrote Dracula.”

Paranoid Delusions of Adequacy

#Tooting’s Pearl Chemist Group aim to give a Covid vaccination to everyone who turns up at 159 Mitcham Road – whether they’ve booked or are using their walk-in service – but they ask everyone to please be patient. pic.twitter.com/uQSSHhevEH

— Tooting Newsie (@tootingnewsie) December 13, 2021

Tooting's Pearl Chemist is where I got my two COVID jabs.

This is the queue yesterday (Monday). On Sunday night, the Prime Minister urged adults to “get boosted now”, promising that all over-18s could get their jabs by the end of the year.

Within moments of his ill-advised broadcast, the NHS booking site crashed for many users as it was repeatedly overwhelmed by demand from millions of people.

Long queues were seen outside vaccination sites on Monday - not just mine - as Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said the Government would “throw everything at” the Covid booster programme to tackle the omicron variant.

I would throw everything at the Government if I could get near enough to one of them.

I am glad to see that the Speaker of the House of Commons shares my disdain for Boris Johnson's megalomaniac confusion of his role with that of a President as opposed to a  primus inter pares (first among equals) minister. PM's have been abrogating executive powers for years but this is getting ridiculous.

When Sajid Javid arrived to deliver his statement on the Government’s COVID plans yesterday he  copped a proper earful from the Speaker before he even got to his feet. Like me, Sir Lindsay Hoyle wasn’t happy about Boris’s Sunday night address to the nation about turbocharging the booster programme. Once again, he complained, Parliament had become ‘a second runner-up to television news’.

(Also glad to note that the Bomber has finally booked his vaccinations.)

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

 Dan Fish turned out for the Cardiff Blues for what should be the final time yesterday. Playing against Toulouse, the reigning European champions whose side featured World Rugby’s player of the year Antoine Dupont, must be a good way of closing your account.

Wales Online:

Dan Fish is the popular Welsh rugby player who's been trying to retire for weeks but can't

See https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search?q=%22Dan+Fish%22 for our coverage over the years.

Disinvited

 Herb: I was a fool to ever leave your side

Me minus you is such a lonely ride

The breakup we had has made me lonesome and sad

I realize I love you 'cause I want you bad, hey, hey

Peaches: I spent the evening with the radio

Regret the moment that I let you go

Our quarrel was such a way of learnin' so much

I know now that I love you 'cause I need your touch, hey, hey

Myself: Disinvited, and it feels so good

Disinvited 'cause we understood

There's one perfect fit

And, sugar, this one is it

We both are so excited 'cause we're disinvited, hey, hey

Prodnose: What on earth are you on about now?

Myself: (Summoning some little dignity) In this life old boy, there are those who scoff and those who understand. All together now.... One two three four .....

The entire cast:  Disinvited, and it feels so good .......

The finest people in the world

 

I would rather be with the people of this town than with the finest people in the world.

I stood and raised my my glass in the boozer last night as I delivered Mayor Deebs' wonderful line from Roxanne, 

It's a kind of unofficial sign that Christmas has begun. I am sure I will be knocking this masterfully back-handed compliment out again and again to ever diminishing returns over the next fortnight.

(We miss you Fred Willard.)

Lab 22

Above Greggs on Caroline Street

The World’s 50 Best Bars awards ceremony took place on 7th December in London and included the inaugural Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu award. After assessing hundreds of entries from across the world, a shortlist of five bars had been announced.

• Bar Trigona, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Herb Garden in Your Glass
• Bövem, Pessac, France: Functionalism
• Himkok, Oslo, Norway: NFT & Blockchain 2021
• Lab 22, Cardiff, UK: Theories + Frontiers
• Little Red Door, Paris, France: Grounded

..... and the winner was Lab 22, Cardiff!

Let's just savour this impossibly, romantically, aromatically unfeasible development; it is above Gregg's in Caroline Street! Sometimes I love Cardiff so much I think my heart might burst.

<sings>

No!

I'm going down 2 Caroline Street

I'm gonna crown the first girl that I meet

I'm gonna talk so sexy that

She'll want me from my head 2 my feet

Yeah, yeah, yeah

</sings>

Football Focus

 To the Standard early doors last night as Callum was starting on the wing for Chelsea away at Zenit St Petersburg with a 5:45 kick off. He ended up with a yellow card for kicking an opponent during the 3-3 draw. Perhaps, on reflection, it was a mistake for me to have shown him that Shaolin Soccer (Icons passim) DVD all those years ago.

Having a pint to finish, I also stayed long enough to catch some of the Manchester United game. They were up against a Swiss side called Young Boys at Old Trafford. When Andy Tea told me that the Young Boys played their home games at the Wankdorf Stadium I spat out much of my remaining lager laughing.

That's right:

Young Boys
Wankdorf

I offered to get him a Hoodie with that printed on it for Christmas, but he seemed curiously reluctant to confirm his size.

"footage emerged"

 

The Metropolitan Police is reviewing footage in which senior Downing Street officials joked about holding a Christmas party during lockdown, four days after the alleged event took place.

Downing Street has repeatedly insisted there was no party on Friday, December 18 last year, amid a row over whether lockdown rules were breached. 

It has been reported that the alleged event involved party games, as well as food and drinks being served until past midnight, at a time when Tier 3 rules explicitly banned work Christmas lunches and parties where it was "a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted".

Let's see 18 plus 4 is 22, so this lamentable display was filmed on December 22nd last year, the day of my father's funeral. The day when we were allowed to admit so few people to the service in St Joe's that the readings echoed round the all but deserted church, while good friends who had turned up just to pay their respects waited outside. The day that there was nowhere to go and console each other after the burial, when in saner times we would have gone to the Old Illts rugby club for a wake. Wakes are a celebration of life - one last party to honour the deceased. And what a wake we would have had in a place where there is a plaque on the wall to remind is that he was the club captain sixty five years ago.

NSFW but I still agree with what I posted on December 19th last year.

Phoning it in

I am now on a Google Pixel 4a after 30 months on a £49.95 Alba 4.

Don't worry, the 4a is already discontinued. 

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Extraordinary How Potent Dross' Music Is.

Guess what came on the radio as I arrived at PG's yesterday. Only Luther Vandross'  "Dance With My Father." Exactly what I didn't need given this day last year. I've watched the video this morning. Dear me it is moving.

When I was leaving, after taking PG on his weekly shop and for a coffee, guess was on the radio. More Luther Vandross, reminding me that we lost him as well in 2005.

It is if the universe is conspiring against my mental equilibrium.

Pay It Forward

The night before last Andy Tea came across a confused older man on the floor in the gents in the Royal Standard. He had fallen, or perhaps more accurately gone down with his collapsible walking trolley when it collapsed (always read the label).

We got him up, and settled then when he was recovered enough for us to understand his attempts to tell us his address, took him home in a cab. It was sheltered accommodation, called Dolliffe Close in Mitcham. I googled it this morning so I could put its address, plus his name and flat number in my contacts in case the need arises again. If you follow the  Dolliffe Close link you will see that I am already old enough to be looked after there!

Poignant that I write this on the anniversary of noting that Dad was gone.

You am what you is

 

Let's have something unprovocative on this day of days; Spotify's list of the top songs I listened to this year. I don't use Spotify a lot, but there it is warts and all.

Glad to see "My Culture" on it.

This is what my Daddy told me

I wished he would hold me

A little more

Than he did

But he taught me my culture

And how to live positive

I never wanna shame

The blood in my veins and bring pain

To my sweet grandfathers face

In his resting place

I made haste to learn and not waste

Everything my forefathers earned in tears

For my culture

Rona and Dad

Auntie Rona has died. When I told Jane and Ben, Jane said that years ago Rona had told her that the first phrase I ever uttered was "God bless the Pope!" I can't remember it myself but I will take it.

Her passing leaves only mum left out of all her siblings. Dad was the last of his to go. He passed a year ago tomorrow at 8 pm.

I'm taking my own son out for rodizio at the Picanha Steakhouse tonight. Tomorrow, as usual, we will be off to hot yoga, an 8:30 am start. 

Mens sana in corpore sano. Passing the torch. I like to think that the old man will look down and approve.

Hands off Cox, on socks

Like my brother John, I often turn to an Audible book if I wake up restless in the middle of the night or early in the morning and need the gentle distraction of a voice whispering in my ear. Today it was the autobiography of Brian Cox, the actor, and the chapter covered his work at the Royal Court. I was a bit surprised that PG wasn't name checked as he would have been there at the time.

I googled Peter Gill Brian Cox when I came down this morning and discovered the video above about their time working together at Riverside. (Can't say I have actually listened to it all yet, but no doubt I will.)

Actors John Price + Brian Cox assist Riverside's overwhelmed Box Office during their hit run of The Changeling in 79 pic.twitter.com/eghSc9Jx0o

— Riverside Studios (@RiversideLondon) June 10, 2016

The Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon

 1:1. Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy, a brother: to Philemon, our beloved and fellow labourer,

1:2. And to Appia, our dearest sister, and to Archippus, our fellow soldier, and to the church which is in thy house.

1:3. Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

1:4. I give thanks to my God, always making a remembrance of thee in my prayers.

1:5. Hearing of thy charity and faith, which thou hast in the Lord Jesus and towards all the saints:

1:6. That the communication of thy faith may be made evident in the acknowledgment of every good work that is in you in Christ Jesus.

1:7. For I have had great joy and consolation in thy charity, because the bowels of the saints have been refreshed by thee, brother.

1:8. Wherefore, though I have much confidence in Christ Jesus to command thee that which is to the purpose:

1:9. For charity sake I rather beseech, whereas thou art such a one, as Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ.

1:10. I beseech thee for my son, whom I have begotten in my bands, Onesimus,

1:11. Who hath been heretofore unprofitable to thee but now is profitable both to me and thee:

1:12. Whom I have sent back to thee. And do thou receive him as my own bowels.

1:13. Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered to me in the bands of the gospel.

1:14. But without thy counsel I would do nothing: that thy good deed might not be as it were of necessity, but voluntary.

1:15. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season from thee that thou mightest receive him again for ever:

1:16. Not now as a servant, but instead of a servant, a most dear brother, especially to me. But how much more to thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord?

1:17. If therefore thou count me a partner, receive him as myself.

1:18. And if he hath wronged thee in any thing or is in thy debt, put that to my account.

1:19. I Paul have written it with my own hand: I will repay it: not to say to thee that thou owest me thy own self also.

1:20. Yea, brother. May I enjoy thee in the Lord! Refresh my bowels in the Lord.

1:21. Trusting in thy obedience, I have written to thee: knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say.

1:22. But withal prepare me also a lodging. For I hope that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.

1:23. There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus:

1:24. Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke, my fellow labourers.

1:25. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

For all that we went to church every Sunday, I can't remember that I had ever even heard of the Epistle of St. Paul to Philemon until recently. Onesimus ain't a servant, he's a runaway slave. This is where Christianity started letting the air out of that particular tyre, for all that it is unacknowledged in the 21st century. 

Chalk another one up for the old man three days off his anniversary. Crafty bugger was a lot more profound a Pauline scholar than he let on. Tent-maker anyone?

"If a man will not work, he shall not eat." We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat."

That sound familiar?

That's what my daddy told me

What with everything going to hell in a handbasket, yesterday morning I reached into my memory for lines I made up for my own guidance years ago,

be as careless with your own heart

as you are careful of everyone else's

love and lose and learn

tread lightly on the earth

but try and put more into the pot

than you take out

I've never written them down before. I think perhaps I was never happy with the careless/careful contrast in the first two lines; by careless I mean generous and by careful I mean mindful.

I keep getting it in the ear from well-meaning people who complain that B and J and I won't give up on and abandon N. Guess what, my father wouldn't have either. Less than a week from the anniversary of his passing I puff my chest out when I think of him.

Wham! The Final?

 Scotland will host Ukraine in the play-off semi-final for the 2022 World Cup, while Wales have been drawn at home to Austria. Both these games are on Thursday 24 March 2022, 

If Scotland and Wales win their matches, they will face each other in Cardiff in a final for a spot in Qatar on Tuesday 29 March.

Andy Tea being a Jock, I have made an executive decision that if Wales and Scotland do meet we will drive down together from London for the game. 

Much to my surprise, when I suggested it to him he agreed with alacrity. (The back up plan in which I would spike his drink and Andy H would help me stow him in the car boot won't be needed. Best to be prepared though.)

The Test Card

 

This was better than 90% of the BBC's current output, and remains my visual mantra.

The Secret Conversation

A fading star of Hollywood's golden age, now living a quiet life in 1980s London, hires a journalist to write her biography in order to bring in much needed income. The journalist can’t believe his luck. From poor Southern farm girl to a powerful Hollywood goddess her story is pure celluloid. A devastating beauty whose hard drinking, hard loving lifestyle kept the gossip columnists busy as her movies thrilled the punters. The ultimate femme fatale - Ava Gardner.

I think I'll go and see Ava: The Secret Conversations at the Riverside next year, Ava Gardner and I being practically joined at the hip. Forty odd years ago when I went for my interview in Imperial College, Mum and Dad came with me on the day trip. As we were killing time in one of the garden squares around it, ma's chin hit the ground. Ava Gardner was there as well! At the time I didn't know Ava Gardner from a hole in the ground, but it is still a precious memory and the play is about this time in her life. (Don't tell Elizabeth McGovern, who adapted it from the book and stars, that Once Upon a Time in America, in which she stars is the only film I have ever walked out of.

Ducks in a row

 I have finally managed to get our group trip to Get Up Stand Up, the Bob Marley musical sorted though it is quite different from the original plan (Icons passim).

The tickets are for the evening of February 5th. "What?" I hear you cry. "That is the first weekend of the Six Nations!" (Shorely shome mishtake; Ed.)

Breaks down like this:

Ireland Wales kicks off the tournament at quarter past two in the afternoon in Dublin. All of us (plus Gareth the rugby gnome, my daffodil head dress, my half Wales half Ireland rugby jersey, and my DNA results) can watch the game in the Standard (180 High Street Colliers Wood, London SW19 2BN).

Corleone (186A High Street Colliers Wood London SW19 2BN) is open from noon on Saturday. We can eat pizza there after the game, which will stop me from getting off my head as history proves that once I have had a meal I can't booze any more.

It is only 25 minutes from Colliers Wood to Leicester Square on the Northern Line.

If we get on the tube a little after six, we will get to the Lyric Theatre (Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 7ES) in plenty of time for a 7:30 show.

I lovers rock it when a plan comes together.

And if you're hungry, girl, I got filets (woo-woo)

Granted, the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, but the Silk Sonic album came out less than a fortnight ago. We can all just stay at home listening to it instead.

(John, if as you say Mark the butcher is having problems sourcing them Anderson .Paak has got filets.)

Normal service will not be resumed (fingers crossed)

I went to the Standard last night for a quick drink with people who were assembling there before walking up to the Wimbledon game, but ended up staying to watch Chelsea Juventus when I saw that Callum was starting and was rewarded by a goal from him in a 4-0 thrashing. (Wimbledon won as well 3-2.)

Look What You Made Me Do

As of today, "Look What You Made Me Do" has become "Niamh's Theme." Taylor Swift is a genius. Right Said Fred get a co-writing credit; Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower

• Italy 17-10 Uruguay
• Scotland 29-20 Japan
• England 27-26 South Africa
• Wales 29-28 Australia
• France 40-25 New Zealand
• Ireland 53-7 Argentina

Has there ever been a weekend in the Autumn Internationals before when all the Northern hemisphere sides beat their Southern hemisphere opponents, I wonder?

Don’t just do something, stand there.

 Putting the Rabbit in the Hat is this month's Audble credit purchase.  Actor Brian Cox narrates his own autobiography. 

I was drawn to checking it out originally when PG told me that he had heard that there was an entry for him in the index. Obviously I can't confirm or deny that from an audio book, but the clincher was that reviews suggested it is quite spectacularly waspish and indiscreet.

Also, John my brother who uses Audible as well told me that Paapa Essiedu is on it. His performance of  The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is available here; free if you are a member.

The day today

 8:30 Yoga

10:30 Weekly Skype chat with mum

12:30 Leicester v Chelsea in the Standard (Callum playing fingers crossed.)

17:30 Wales v Australia rugby (Amazon Prime)

Books Do Furnish a Room

I finished reading A Stinging Delight, David Storey's posthumous memoir; PG gave it to me as a hardback for my birthday. I went slowly, stowing it in my gym bag and pulling it out a couple of times a week to read when I did half an hour on the recline bike.

I couldn't get through it any more quickly because I found it so desperately moving; Storey being almost an exact contemporary of my own father, the anniversary of whose passing is bearing down on us.

Next up for reading on the bike, another hardback due to be delivered today. The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics. I am such a tart for best sellers.

for the both of us

The new single from small oat cappuccino (aka Ego Ella Mae), came out yesterday. Available on all formats at https://ditto.fm/forthebothofus

With any luck we will get to see her on March 10th next year at Lafayette, as "one-a-month" extends its tentacles through the first quarter of 2022. (Lafayette will be new to me, but I see that - like all forward thinking venues, it is only a five minute walk from the Northern Line.)

Elisha and the Two Bears

 2 Kings 2:23-25

23 From there he went up to Bethel, and while he was on the road, some small boys came out of the town and jeered at him. 'Hurry up, baldy!' they shouted. 'Come on up, baldy!'

24 He turned round and looked at them; and he cursed them in the name of Yahweh. And two bears came out of the forest and savaged forty-two of the boys.

Steve told me about this at Donna's birthday yesterday. I think it is about the funniest thing I have ever read. Perhaps I should have done theology rather than chemical engineering in university?

Well I never!

 Mysterious 3,000-foot-long interstellar object 'Oumuamua is NOT an iceberg made out of pure nitrogen because there's not enough in the known universe to make an object that big, scientists say

Whatever would we do without the Daily Mail?

You can't get there from here

 In the middle of a family Skype chat (two brothers and a sister) yesterday, John said "Alexa, tell Hive boost heating," and turned on the radiators in my house.

Oh, how we laughed.

This morning I have taken a step back. Not so very long ago my home's AI firing up the central heating because it was eavesdropping on a video call would have been the stuff of fantasy and science fiction. In 2021 it is unexceptional, workaday white-bread.

Some enchanted evening

 I got a message from Kevin G yesterday morning to say that Soul Music is back on the radio. Yesterday's episode was about Ain't no mountain high enough. Next Saturday's will be Some enchanted evening and the limited series goes on until December 4th.

I got a message from Frankie (Mrs Kevin G) later telling me that one of CITW's "loveliest customers, small oat cappuccino aka Ego Ella Mae," was warbling on Jazz Voice, a show from the EFG London Jazz Festival that was on BBC 4 on Friday night. Herewith https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011f50/jazz-voice-2021-from-the-efg-london-jazz-festival

While we are on the general subject of to-do/to-watch/to-listen lists, I have remembered that Peter Ackroyd's version of the Canterbury Tales is in my Audible library, so I should be able to catch up with the Wife of Bath on that to improve my understanding of the Wife of Willesden. Audible's just labeling it with chapter numbers ain't a great help though*. (I have also discovered that the Wife of W doesn't actually open until the 17th though, so we went to a preview last week.)

While I am here, I have stumbled on a podcast called The Central Club. I may take a look, but I may not. I am not sure how much more down and dirty Cardiff I can take.

(*I think it starts about half an hour into chapter 9.)

My identity is fluid

 I was Irish (like my DNA) in the Standard this afternoon as my boys beat the All Blacks 29-20 in Dublin.

I am now transitioning back to being Welsh for the football against Belarus tonight.

I imagine that all my Polish friends will find room in their hearts for Wales as well this evening.