Audible in full pursuit of the Laudable

This month's Audible credit is in. Let's see what I have added to the wish list over the last four weeks or so.

1. There Is Nothing For You Here, Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century By: Fiona Hill
2. The Return of Holy Russia, Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World By: Gary Lachman
3. The Brothers Karamazov By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4. Taste, My Life Through Food By: Stanley Tucci
5. Born to Run By: Bruce Springsteen

The first three would seem to be inspired (if that is the right word) by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Number one, Fiona Hill, not obviously I will grant you, but she was formerly the senior director for European and Russian affairs on President Trump's National Security Council.

Four and five are recommendations from my brother John. And the winner is......... Bruce Spingsteen!

Herewith, the "for why." Bruce's narration of  'Born to Run' is 18 hours and 12 minutes of meaty goodness. John and Lorraine listened to it driving up here from Cardiff last Friday and on the way back to Wales on Saturday, but there is still plenty left. Apparently it is so compelling she has forbidden him from finishing it unless they are in the car together. This is despite apparently never having exhibited any interest in The Boss whatsoever before. Could there be any higher praise?

I am reminded of the deafening silence that descends if you are ever out socially with a couple and one of them inadvertently reveals that they have independently watched a few more episodes of a shared Netflix series than the other.

The slippery slope

On Saturday, Facebook reminded me I was skiing eight years ago, then yesterday Google Photos showed me pictures of Ben on the slopes four years before that. I guess the whole Whitton team used to go in the same week each year. I have never realised that before, I just used to sign up for whatever Dave arranged. 

The picture on the right reminds me that I never felt the slightest remorse about getting permission to take him out of primary school for a week to hit the slopes. He is at the top of a mountain in it with half of his body in Italy and half in Switzerland. We don't understand borders in the UK because we live on an island and this confuses our relationship with, and understanding of, the Continent. How it can be that Putin, for example, doesn't understand the boundary between Russia and Ukraine as something immutable, but rather a regrettable constraint on the narod*. I don't think it is in our domestic curriculum for four to 11 year olds so the visceral geographical sense of it Ben would get passing from one county to another as he made his way down a mountain counts as education.

*Thanks Rod.

Your memories on Facebook

Nick, we care about you and your Facebook memories. We thought that you'd like to look back on this post from 8 years ago.

Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now.

It Pays to Increase your Word Power

Myself: An irredentist is a person advocating the restoration to their country of any territory formerly belonging to it.

Prodnose: Eh? Not like a dentist or even an orthodontist then?

Myself: Nope. I only learned it this morning, but I am going to start dropping it into the conversation whenever Putin comes up in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Prodnose: But nobody will know what you mean.

Myself: Precisely, that's the joy of it really.

Prodnose: An egomaniacal affectation of entirely unearned effortless superiority with no redeeming features whatsoever?

Myself: Guilty as charged.

Prodnose: Recidivist.

Myself: Eh?

The morning after St. Patrick's Day

IRISH BLESSINGS FOR RETURNING TO THE OFFICE

May the standing desk rise to meet you.

May the ergonomic pillow be at your back.

May the fluorescent office lights shine warm upon your face,

The consistent coughing from your coworker fall soft upon your ears,

And until you’re able to work from home on Friday,

May that guy learn to cough into a tissue or his elbow

And not the goddamn palm of his hand.

- - -

May you make an Irish goodbye from the office’s Thirsty Thursday mandatory drinks a half an hour before your boss knows you’re gone.

- - -

May your social anxiety be as fleeting as rain.

May you not get any coworkers’ names wrong.

May there be leftover pizza in the breakroom,

That keeps you full all day long,

Because in your morning rush to get out the door you forgot your lunch

And there’s no time to run out and grab something.

- - -

For each petal on the shamrock,

May it bring a wish your way—

Free donuts, few distractions, and a desk near your office crush,

For today and every day.

- - -

May some of your work clothes from 2019 still fit,

Enough for at least three days a week in the office.

And even though you wear the same black pants every day,

May ne’er a coworker notice or care.

- - -

May you never take work home with you,

Except on Wednesdays and Fridays

When you’re allowed to work from home.

- - -

May the meeting rooms you reserve always be free.

May they comfortably accommodate everyone on the team.

And when you realize that no one else from the meeting is in the office,

And you made the thirty-five-minute commute just to take it on Zoom,

May the frosted glass walls of the conference room

Muffle your banshee-like scream.

- - -

May your presence in the office be like a rainbow —

Very visible, but no one can reach you.

- - -

May you escape to the bathroom and remain

To your needy coworkers unseen.

And while you’re away,

May you remember to lock your computer,

So no one spots your updated resumé on your screen.

St. Patrick's Day

I'll grant you that the photo on the right isn't the most artfully contrived thing you will ever see in your life. In my defence it was a snapshot I took on impulse as I left the pub last night after watching the football.

Apply your minds though to the terrifying implications of "GUINNESS & JAMESONS PROMOTIONS till 4pm" for today at the Standard. Happy hour doesn't begin at four in the afternoon, it ends.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Such are the auguries for my first St Paddy's since Ancestry DNA (passim) reclassified my "sample" as 100% Irish. It will also be a sentimental occasion as we ruefully recall that this night of nights in this venue of venues (passim) was the last time (two long years ago) that we had a proper evening out before the government locked us all up.

A further anecdote ratchets me up to (by my calculations) more than 100% Irish. My brother John, the other day, was recalling a game at the Penarth Sevens years ago in which he played alongside our cousin Mike Murphy, and the Illts beat the hitherto undefeated Cardiff so bad that the Blue and Blacks didn't even get on the scoreboard.

John mentioned in passing something I didn't know. Mike was once called up for Ireland rugby at senior level, but had to pull out due to a recurring shoulder injury. 

If he had been a bit luckier I could be dining out on that still.

Rebel Dread

Off to the British Film Institute last night to see Rebel Dread, a documentary about Don Letts that pushed all my nostalgia buttons as, indeed, did the BFI itself.

They still have wall mounted leaflet holders from which you can pick up an A4 sheet telling you what to think about the film. I am old enough to remember when these sheets were mimeographed. (A mimeograph was a duplicating machine that produced copies from a stencil, it was superseded by the photocopier before the photocopier was superseded by the laser printer.)

When I first came to London I was a graduate trainee working for Fluor in Euston, spending a lot of time as I recall with telex messages as they were considered to be legally valid documents. (Telex has since gone the way of the mimeograph.)

On my way home I would get the tube down to Waterloo and then a train back to West London. Very often, if nothing much was happening of an evening I would interrupt my journey to cool my heels a stone's throw from Waterloo at the South Bank which is why I have got so much history at the National Theatre, the BFI and the Festival Hall etc around the mid 80s.

The last time I was at the BFI to see something was a little over ten years ago. The movie was Annie Hall and I can remember the odd film scratch from the old print flashing on the screen. I imagine 35mm cinema projectors have gone the way of the telex and the mimeograph now, and it is all digital 4K.

Beware the Ides of March

I woke this morning with an opinion to share with the world, only to realise a few lines in that I had already tugged at your sleeves about it on January 2nd this year.

God knows there is more than a hint of the yellow-jowelled, thinning-haired pub bore about me at the best of times, but I am not sure I want my subconscious pointing it out over an empty stomach of a morning.

I prescribe twenty four hours of quiet reflection. See you tomorrow.

“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.” - Virginia Woolf

“When you quiet yourself, open your heart, and really listen, you can find enlightenment anywhere, including in the trite garbage I just rattle off the top of my head in order to sell you books.” - Deepak Chopra (attrib.) The Onion.

Bridgerton

I have been linking the titles of these posts to whatever I addressed the nation about on the same day last year for a while now. Actually the trail goes back to 2018 and has informed me that four years ago yesterday (Icons passim) I went to see Peter Gill's The York Realist at the Donmar. I had never even met him then. I only introduced myself when I had aspirant actress nieces knocking on the doors of drama schools. That seems a long time ago. We went for a coffee after Sainsburys, at Cafe Plum yesterday. (Munster Road; how could my 100% Irish DNA resist?)

Anyway, and I hope this goes some way towards explaining the video above, Jonathan Bailey the star of season 2 of Bridgerton, Netflix's global smash, was in the York Realist though - to be honest - I don't think I would recognise him if I saw him walking down the street. Now he is a hot property it seems, and apparently not short of a bob or two, he has bought the screen rights to Peter's play. Wouldn't it be cool if the movie happened?

Living well is the best revenge

 Yet another good Skype chat - my brothers, my mother and I - yesterday morning. Vince steered the conversation to the flats that mum and dad rented after they were married and before we moved to Rhiwbina. One was in Hamilton Street and one in Pitman Street. I record them here because although I sorta remembered I had also sorta forgotten. In one of them, friends called the Triggs lived upstairs. Mum remembers snorting with derision when daddy Trigg told her that a new band called "The Beatles" were going to be a success. "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah? You have got to be kidding!" Oops. Chalk that one up to experience.

Just around the corner from Hamilton Street, my siblings tell me, there is a place called the Purple Poppadom that won Best in Wales last year at the British Curry Awards. I must add that, and specifically its seven course  Chef’s Tasting Menu, to my back-in-the-bosom-to-do list. It joins Lab 22 (passim) and Home by James Sommerin (passim).

While we are on the subject of my Port Out, Starboard Home life, there are a couple of theatre gigs recently booked that I don't think have stained these spindrift pages to date.

"When We Dead Awaken" The Coronet Theatre & The Norwegian Ibsen Company, Tuesday week. "That sounds like a barrel of laughs," I hear you cry as you grind your teeth in envy.

Jerusalem, Apollo Theatre, June 14th. I am pleased with this one. It was sold out when I first set my hat at it, but more tickets were released last week.

The Cretan Awakes

Nobody, surely, can dispute that I am a raging right wing nut job who thinks that life was better when the newsreels were in back and white, but the High Court judgement yesterday that the Met breached the rights of vigil organisers after Sarah Everard's murder gets two thumbs up from me. Herewith the Grauniard's coverage.

Initially, and briefly, I imagined this was criticism of the heavy handed break up of the "unofficial" vigil itself but no such luck. I remember, when it happened, being ashamed to be living in a country where the police were brutalizing women (what was the pretext, COVID?) in public in a park twenty odd minutes from my house.

It seems to me that we have sleep walked into a situation where the state arrogates* all sorts of arbitrary powers to itself without even a fig leaf of due process or appeal.

Take, for example, the fall out for Chelsea FC from the Government's sanctioning of Abramovich. The government's "special license" has set a limit of £20,000 per team per game for travel to and from matches. Where on earth has this figure come from? One can't but suspect it has simply been pulled out of the air. How is it to be challenged or justified. Government by diktat? 

I have dug up the Law Society Guidance on the UK sanctions regime, but I haven't read it yet. The Cretan needs feeding and I have to dash out of the door for my yoga class.

* an earlier version of this post said "abrogates," but I am blessed with pedants as readers. Well one in particular.

Check your Ego at the Door

 

As trailed (Icons Passim), we went to see Ego Ella May at Lafayette last night. I thought she would be good, but she and her band were great. So was the new-to-me venue. The video above is her engagingly modest and almost shy acceptance speech after winning the Best Jazz Act at the 2020 MOBO Awards.

Around that time you could come out of my front door in Marlborough Road, turn right, then turn right again into Park Road and carry on past Paapa's flat. Paapa being Paapa Essiedu, who we saw starring at the Old Vic at the end of January (Icons passim). After that, if you turned right onto Robinson Road you would walk past Ego's. Taking the next right into Birdhurst Rd you would pass Callum's mum and dad's house. Yep, Callum Hudson-Odoi who won the World Club Championship with Chelsea in February.  All three of them in a three or four hundred yard stretch! Block be throbbing with talent.

Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got

I'm still, I'm still Nicky from the hood

Used to have a little now I have a lot

No matter where I go I know where I came from (from the Wood)

https://youtu.be/dly6p4Fu5TE?t=50

Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World

 I saw the son and heir for a beer and a curry last night and noticed he had two fingers strapped together.

"What happened?"

"I had to punch someone outside a night club."

"Ah, that would explain it then." I suppose he must have won as he didn't seem to be marked anywhere else.

He also told me that he is going to come back to yoga when he returns from visiting Rayburn (and new baby son) in Florida. Also, inspired by West Dean, he is going to start "working with wood," in addition to his drawing and sketching. I have always thought it healthy to have other interests outside, and in addition to, violence.

When I got in I put my feet up and turned on the TV. Nothing live being of much interest, I fired up YouTube and found a video Putin's Religious Mission, Gary Lachman had been recommended for me.

What are the deeper religious and philosophical currents informing Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine? 

Gary Lachman is the author of the recent book 'The Return of Holy Russia: Apocalyptic History, Mystical Awakening, and the Struggle for the Soul of the World'.

In this conversation he argues that we have to understand the deep well of Russian philosophy and understand how Putin sees himself and Russia's historic mission.

How does YouTube know so much about me? Surely this tip must be related to me reading and writing about Vladimir Putin's ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“ and having Lachman's The Quest For Hermes Trismegistus: From Ancient Egypt to the Modern World in my Kindle library, but I am not sure that I am entirely comfortable with Google going through my garbage, as if I was Bob Dylan, just to bring it to my attention.

Interesting fella Gary L: In a previous career, he was a founding member of Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I was intrigued by what he had to say though as I thought it threw a lot of light on Putin's confusing religious and philosophical musings. He also confirmed a lot of what I remember about internal Russian conflict between its Slavic and Western leanings. An idea I first encountered in Franco Venturi's "Roots of Revolution" all those years ago. (I wonder where my copy went?)

Holy Russia is on Audible. Maybe I will get it with this month's credit.

Du sublime au ridicule, il n'y a qu'un pas.

The Ukrainian crisis has finally had a direct impact on my Lotus-Eater's life. Scotland's World Cup play-off semi-final against Ukraine, scheduled for March 24, has been postponed (and here comes one of the great understatements of our time) 'due to Russian invasion.' The other semi-final, Wales v Austria, will go ahead. If Wales and Scotland both won, Andy Tea (a Scot) and I were going to go to Cardiff on the 29th to watch the final. Deuced inconvenient I call it.

Though Rod M, as he pointedly reminded me yesterday, is still my official tutor on Russia-Ukraine relations; I am still allowed to do some background reading of my own.

• Article by Vladimir Putin ”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“ July 12, 2021 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
• "The Long Telegram" George F. Kennan 22/2/1947.  https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm

Accessing the Putin article is a bit hit and miss this morning. I do hope that neither our masters nor "white-hat" hackers are disrupting it as that rather defeats the free speech ideals we are supposed to be upholding.

my father, there on the sad height

 

Dad's birthday today. I can't remember off the top of my head exactly how old he would have been though I think about him every day. Poignant doesn't even begin to cover it.

Mum, at least, is very much still with us.

Update: Google Photos just pinged me with a couple of snapshots taken twelve years ago today. 

My son, my father's grandson with a Golden Boot best rugby player award and a selection of judo and athletics medals. That would have been the old man's best birthday present ever.

Disasters Emergency Committee

 

Twelve years ago (Icons passim) I worked with DEC on their Haiti Appeal. I thoroughly recommend them if you have got a couple of quid spare to throw the way of Ukrainian refugees.

The DEC brings together 15 leading aid charities to raise funds quickly and efficiently at times of crisis overseas. In these times of crisis, people in life-and-death situations need our help and our mission is to save, protect and rebuild lives through effective humanitarian response.

ActionAid, Action Against Hunger, British Red Cross, CAFOD, CARE International, Christian Aid, Concern, Age UK, International Rescue Committee, Islamic Relief, Oxfam, Plan UK, Save the Children, Tearfund, World Vision.

What particularly impressed me in practice was its distributed, collegiate structure which enabled resources to be directed to sectors that might be overlooked by an overreaching, overweening, blunderbuss, top-down approach. I distinctly remember Save the Children focussing on, ahem, Haitian children, Age UK concentrating on Haitian pensioners etc. and already having contacts, on the ground, with equivalent local organizations.

Creepy Old Man Has Book Filled With The Home Phone Numbers Of Everyone In Town

@theonion 😱 #creepy #wtf ♬ original sound - theonion

Yes, I really am old enough to have asked Harjinder how the phone book worked in Amritsar if everyone was called Singh. He wasn't impressed.

Get it on

 I was very surprised this morning, using the search button top left, that not one single reference to Marc Bolan has appeared on these pages before today. I mean, I even attended when a plaque honouring him was unveiled in Tooting last year. It is on the wall of the Tesco Express on Garratt Lane. Something else very exciting must have happened for me not to have recorded that red letter day in deathless prose. Also, when I lived in Mortlake, and then Putney I would often drive or walk over the bridge on which he was killed in a car crash and notice poignant tributes left on, or at the foot of, a tree.

He was on my mind because Andy Tea mentioned Rick Wakeman at the pub yesterday, spurring me to pass on a heartwarming story I heard Wakeman tell Danny Baker on the radio once.

One day in 1971 the recently married Wakeman found himself £8 short on his rent. Desperate for work, he took the tube to Tottenham Court Road and walked to Denmark Street looking for a session in a Southern Music recording studios in Tin Pan Ally, and then onto the studios of Regal Zonophone on Oxford Street, where he could always earn a couple of quid playing a demo session, but nothing was happening.

He was in a Wimpy Bar on the corner of  Oxford Street nursing his cares with a coke when  producer Tony Visconti walked in. “Rick, session tonight in Trident Studios, midnight, for Marc Bolan’s new single. He wants you to play piano.”

Wakeman asked how much. “Nine quid.” 

Later that night he went to Soho’s Trident Studios with Marc Bolan and T. Rex plus King Crimson’s Ian MacDonald on saxophone.

“All I want you to do is this,” said Bolan and he ran his hand down the piano keys in a glissando.

 “But you could do that.” 

“Do you want your nine quid or not? I could give you it, or loan it to you, but you wouldn’t take it would you? So you can earn it."

That is the story behind the sub-second piano part six seconds in the track below. If you are not moved you don't have a heart.

Emotional Weather Report

Finally, the all clear to visit mum again. It is too late for me to organise getting down there tonight or tomorrow morning. Ben flies out to Florida the next weekend, then John and Lorraine are visiting me the weekend after which puts the kibosh on that, so it looks like Saturday 26th is my best bet.

Fingers crossed this will give me a boost as well as my mother. To be honest, I have been in a rut for two years now ever since the Prime Minister ordered us to stay home in March 2020. Can't get restarted on anything. Tried to get out somewhere last night but had forgotten about the tube strike. Retreated from the chained-shut station to the Standard, drank Stella and ate crisps reading philosophy on my phone's Kindle app. Highlight of the evening: a barmaid took pity on me and gave me a McVitie's Penguin bar. 

Late night and early morning low clouds

Chance of showers into the afternoon

With variable high cloudiness

And gusty winds, gusty winds

With a chance of fog

At times around the corner of

Sunset and Alvorado

Things are tough all over

When the thunder storms start

Increasing over the southeast

And south central portions

Of my apartment, I get upset

And a line of thunderstorms was

Developing in the early morning

Ahead of a slow moving coldfront

Cold blooded

With tornado watches issued shortly

Before noon Sunday, for the areas

Including, the western region

Of my mental health

And the northern portions of my

Ability to deal rationally with my

Disconcerted precarious emotional

Situation, it's cold out there

Colder than a ticket taker's smile

At the Ivar Theatre, on a Saturday night

Flash flood watches covered the

Southern portion of my disposition

There was no severe weather well

Into the afternoon, except for a lone gust of

Wind in the bedroom

In a high pressure zone, covering the eastern

Portion of a small suburban community

With a 103 and millibar high pressure zone

And a weak pressure ridge extending from

My eyes down to my cheeks cause since

You left me baby

And put the vice grips on my mental health

Well the extended outlook for an

Indefinite period of time until you

Come back to me baby is high tonight

Low tomorrow, and precipitation is

Expected

A moiety of that mass of moan to come.

 I hope that none of the twelve million quid the Duke of York is reportedly paying his accuser is coming from an oligarch. If so, a rethink may be in order. Could the Queen's Sovereign Grant contribute I wonder? I wrote last year (Icons passim) that it was £85.9 million in 2020-21 but has now been boosted by £220m per year. A modest 256% increase. It never ceases to amaze me how this sort of thing gets nodded through, then forgotten by everyone except me and the recipients.

While I'm in Cassandra mode, what about OneWeb? Russia holds OneWeb rocket launch hostage, issues conditional demands.

I said that the Government pumping about half a billion quid of ours into OneWeb was madness on:

• TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2020
• SUNDAY, JULY 05, 2020
• SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020

Kherson

 For all that I was pulling Rod M's leg yesterday, he really is my geopolitical go-to-guy (Icons passim).

As Russia claims it has taken over the  Ukrainian city of Kherson, he has sent me photos from his 2016 posting there.

The one on the right is of a tribute to the fathers and sons the oblast lost in 2014.

The memorial below, their helmets and dog-tags.

Almost inexpressibly moving.

Yesterday, Joe Biden fluffed a key line in his State of the Union address, saying “Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people, ” as Vice President Kamala Harris mouthed “Ukrainian” and shuffled uncomfortably in her seat behind him. Rod M would be a better leader of the free world in 2022. This is a statement of fact not a rhetorical trope.

Three Wise Guys

I am writing yesterday about a story "The Gift of the Magi" by a party named O Henry, when who do I hear from but Rod M. Now this Rod M gets it in his head that what I really mean is "The Three Wise Guys" a tale that a newspaper scribe, who goes by the moniker 'Damon Runyon,' uses to extract the folding stuff from the editors and readers of Colliers Magazine back in 1933, what with there being an ever-loving Mrs Runyon and several little Runyons in need of food and also lodgings, plus this and that, none of which comes for free in this man's town.

Now while Rod's take is nothing but great foolishness (the Magi being published in 1905), and as a rule I am likely to give anyone who questions my literary credentials the chance to reconsider as they plummet twenty or thirty stories down an empty lift shaft, it also strikes me that Rod M is Rod M.

Rod M being someone that acronyms (EU, FCO, OSCE, UN) are given to inviting to see what he can do to help in venues such as DR Congo, Afghan refugee camps, Ukraine, Mali and the Sahel; and that while I do not know exactly what he does do there it is probably not sorting out the candy floss concessions. Further, if I contradict him he is apt to think me lacking in the social graces, and that I do not want a guy who can likely field strip and clean a Kalshnikov rifle quicker than I can, to think of me as lacking thereof in any way, shape or form.

Thus I throw him out a very large thank you indeed and on Christmas Day this year, "The Three Wise Guys" being seasonal, I am willing to lay a little 6 to 5, we have the first Yule Yarn since 2016:

One cold winter afternoon I am standing at the bar in Good Time Charley’s little drum on West 49th Street, partaking of a mixture of rock candy and rye whiskey … I am feeling as if maybe I have a touch of grippe coming on, and Good Time Charley tells me that there is nothing in this world as good for a touch of grippe as rock candy and rye whiskey, as it assassinates the germs at once ..........
Read on

The Gift of the Magi

 Very often on my Sunday-morning way round to Hammersmith to take Peter on his weekly grocery shop, I have to call at Helen's around the corner to pick up some nicknack or other for him. I didn't think I would have to yesterday, because she had visited him on Friday, but when I messaged to double check she told me she had some daffodils that needed delivering "for St David's Day."

He was already outside waiting for me when I turned up so I didn't get a chance to give them to him as he jumped straight in the car. When we were in Waitrose, he bought three bunches of yellow flowers whose labels read "narcissi," and when we got back he told me one was for him, one was for a neighbour and one was for Helen.

In the pub later watching the Carabao Cup final, Ollie told me that narcissus is another name for daffodil; news to me.

Strictly in terms of time and motion studies and in the cause of efficiency, and what with supply chains being under stress, they could have kept their own flowers rather than have me take one bunch of daffodils out and bring a very similar one back.

But as I am all over the stories of O Henry (Icons passim) at the moment:

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children ....... But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

http://webhome.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html

quite cured of seeking pleasure in society

 My niece, who is at Central, took me to see Wuthering Heights in the National Theatre last night and mentioned is passing that Katy Owen who was in the cast had taught her at Royal Welsh. I googled her this morning and IMDB told me that she is also in the Dinklage Cyrano movie (passim), that I want to see this week.

I got a message from Lee early in the afternoon saying there was a spare ticket for AFC Wimbledon if I fancied it. I told him I was grateful but couldn't make it as I was committed to seeing as much of the England Wales six nations match as I could before striking out for the South Bank. He asked me what I was going to see at the NT, as he had been there the night before at Small Island.

Small Island? Small world.

Johnny Fontane will never get that movie!

 Two movies I want to catch are out. The 50th anniversary edition of the Godfather (passim) and Peter Dinklage in Cyrano (passim).

Clapham Common on the Northern line is only seven minutes from Colliers Wood and the Clapham Picturehouse is only a two minute walk from the station. In terms of the journey's elapsed time that may be nearer than the Curzon or Odeon. The trip will be free as well of course with my travel card.

I took a look at https://www.picturehouses.com/cinema/clapham-picturehouse.

The Godfather isn't playing there.

Transnistria

 According to Radio 4 this morning, Poland is preparing for "up to a million" refugees from Ukraine. I don't know where they get these numbers (plucked from the air I imagine to be honest) but the issue seems real enough.

A long time ago, maybe as early as 1984, I was working with a young Australian guy called Geoff Cooper for Wimpey in Flyover  House. He was taking a break from seeing the world but would still disappear for long weekends Once he went to Poland and told me he had seen the preparations for a parade celebrating the "friendship" of the Poles and the Soviet Union. A street was lined with crossed flags symbolising the relationship, but before the event could start the Polish kids had run up and down the road plucking out the Soviet flags and throwing them away. An image that has stayed with me ever since.

In other developments, Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is an unrecognised breakaway state located in the narrow strip of land between the river Dniester and the Moldovan–Ukrainian border that is internationally recognised as part of Moldova. There are Russian troops stationed there. I had never heard of it before reports (yet to be confirmed I believe) of forces landing in Odessa.

Night 464

 I woke as usual to Tweet of the Day on Radio 4 at 5:58 am. It was about Eiders, northern sea-ducks perhaps most famous for the soft breast feathers with which they line their nests. 

It was therefore, as you can imagine, quite a juxtaposition when the Today programme started immediately afterwards at six with Ukraine-Russia crisis: Vladimir Putin launches full-scale invasion with explosions heard near Kyiv.

It felt odd after that to go on to my next regular morning appointment, reading the latest story from Malcolm Lyons' translation of The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights and posting a precis to the WhatsApp group where we are working through them.

 The angel of death takes a powerful Israelite king to hell despite his protestations.

Alexander the Great passes by a people so poor they own no worldly goods at all. He summons their king, but his call is refused so Alexander visits the king himself. Impressed by the his modesty and wisdom Alexander offers to  share his empire with the king if he serves as his vizier. ‘Never, never!’ exclaimed the king. ‘I have no desire for this.’ ‘Why is that?’ asked Alexander. ‘Because all mankind are your enemies, thanks to the wealth and the kingdom that you have been given,’ replied the king, ‘whereas for me they are all true friends because I am content with my poverty. I have no kingdom; there is nothing that I want or seek in the world. I have no ambition here and set store by nothing except contentment.’

Finally, the wise King Anushirwan feigns illness, but only as a ruse to double check is realm is well governed.

Three parables about variously wicked, amitious, modest and wise kings and their fates. Actually Night 464 could have been written specifically for today.

All Seven

 The seven Welsh restaurants awarded Michelin stars for the 2022 Guide was a Wales Online headline that took me by surprise yesterday.

Let's dig out the runners and riders, maybe scare up a website or two and see which might be in range next time I am back in Cardiff visiting mum. (That said I haven't seen her in the flesh since before Christmas as assorted COVID regulations, alarms and infections have conspired to exclude me from the home. This can't go on for much longer though, surely.)

Ynyshir - Machynlleth, Powys - two Michelin stars but too far away

Home by James Sommerin - Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan - one Michelin star https://homeatpenarth.co.uk/ is very possible.

SY23 - Aberystwyth, Ceredigion - one Michelin star too far

Walnut Tree - Llanddewi Skirrid, Monmouthshire - one Michelin star I remember going there once with the family years ago.

Sosban and the Old Butchers - Menai Bridge, Anglesey - one Michelin star too far

Beach House - Oxwich Bay, Swansea - one Michelin star possible if we used Margam as a base I guess.

The Whitebrook - Monmouthshire - one Michelin star possible I guess, but a bit of a trek.

The winner then is Home by James Sommerin. It would be good to combine their surprise tasting menu with a visit to mum once Ty Enfys decide to let me in again.

The Handbook of Hymen (Phnarr)

 This month's Audible voucher has gone on the O. Henry: Complete Short Stories Collection in memory of the old man, just as last month's The Little World of Don Camillo (passim) did.

"Homer K. M" from The Handbook of Hymen, was a not infrequent quote of his, but I am buggered if I can work out how to get to a particular story in the online collection. The lack of any sort of content or index system in spoken word audio is a recurring bugbear, though we never have the same problem with songs.

Damon Runyon is now the gaping hole in my collection of stories I imagine JPB smiling at in heaven. There's plenty of Damon Runyon Theatre content and I might dip my toe in these old radio shows but I really want the unmistakable vim of original text's narrator.

Winter On Fire

I watched this movie on Netflix yesterday. (Fill your boots at https://www.netflix.com/title/80031666.) It is undeniably moving though I find its goodies versus baddies premise naive. See it yourself though and make up your own mind.

I've written before (passim) of Rod telling me about Luhansk being twinned with Cardiff. 'Panic, Total Panic': People Fleeing Occupied Luhansk Describe Growing Fear, Confusion Radio Free Europe yesterday.

There's a word bathos defined as "an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous." Anyway, according to Wales Online, and you have to be from Cardiff truly to understand this, Frank Hennessey performed in Luhansk in 1986. I sincerely take my hat off to him, but it is quite a juxtaposition with the news this morning.

‘I’m Luhansk born and Luhansk bred, and when I dies, I’ll be Luhansk dead’.

Quite.

Nice to see you, to see Bernice

I mentioned to mum on Skype yesterday morning that  Shauna Guinn was going to be on Saturday Kitchen and found to my delight that she did remember meeting her in Penylan Pantry all that time ago (see Icons passim).

That was before my brothers joined the call. When they came on they had both seen an article on our cousin Danny (mum's brother Nigel's son) on the BBC Sports website. Here it is Cardiff Met University: Inside the 'rugby breeding ground' producing stars for England and Wales. Danny is the director of rugby there, England's Six Nations squad features three Cardiff Met graduates - Alex Dombrandt, Luke Northmore and Tom Pearson - while another, Aaron Wainwright, is in the Wales set-up.

This is all good for mum, and helps to keep her engaged. Memories of Uncle Nigel winning the victor ludorum at De La Salle and Daniel playing at outside half for Cardiff schools followed.

I checked Saturday Kitchen after our chat. Excitement about San and Shauna cooking for Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters frontman, turned out to be premature as he was forced to cancel  after getting stuck in Hollywood following Storm Eunice.

Idly channel hopping, I came across Simply Raymond Blanc on ITV and found myself diverted by roast butternut squash with chorizo, chickpeas and tahini dressing.

We can watch it on the link I have put on the show name above, but what I recall is:

• Ingredients: Butternut squash (peeled! Feck off), olive oil, salt, black pepper, paprika, chickpeas and Chorizo.
• Sauce: Tahini paste, yoghurt , pinch of salt, honey, lemon juice, water, fresh parsley and fresh coriander.
• To serve: chopped fresh parsley, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds.

That should be on the menu chez moi this week.

Nice to see you, to see Eunice

 I lost a couple of fence panels to Storm Eunice yesterday. I will ask Alex D if he can repair them. The fence with concrete supports that he put up on the other side of the garden this time last year sailed through the storm with flying colours.

Small potatoes. The great storm of 1987; now that was a  was a violent extratropical cyclone for you. I remember staring it down in Wainwright Grove before dressing for dinner as the family's winning combination of insouciance and tradition demanded.

"Languid, thoroughbred, nonchalant with a certain innate recklessness under the impassive calm of habit." Baroness Orczy (from memory). A quote I remember from the stack of Readers Digests in the upstairs loo at 57 Heol Lewis growing up. Dear old dad still casts a long shadow over my extravagant turns of phrase.

Struttin' with some barbecue

I am always pleased to see Hang Fire getting on in the world, so I will catch it on Saturday though if the live segment clashes with our weekly family Skype call it will have to be on the iPlayer.

I wonder if mum can be prompted into remembering the time (Icons passim) that we met Shauna Guinn at the Penylan Pantry even though it was nearly seven years ago?

For me, the memory of that day is bitter-sweet because it was the first time I noticed that dad had no interest at all in what was going on around him. I can remember mum being engaged as Shauna responded to, genuinely interested, questions from me and John with examples and anecdotes from their BBQ pilgrimage around the USA, while he was utterly inert. Anhedonia is the posh word for it; a word I wish we didn't need.

While we are on the subject of food, I had chickpea pancaked with pomegranate molasses for breakfast yesterday. Normally it is a meal I skip but I had to stay home for the morning as the guys were coming round to install the new heating pump, for all that I hadn't realised they were when I wrote here. Sorry 'bout that. Nice to be cosy, nice to be nice, this morning.

When you've been in the business as long as I have, Mr. Spiggott

round up the usual suspects

My heating has been on the blink since Sunday, though I didn't notice until Monday because - despite the Arctic conditions - I am well hard and my life is a giddy social whirl.

I couldn't get anyone round to look at it on Tuesday as I had to go to Brian's funeral so I booked up an engineer from British Gas's Local Heroes to come yesterday morning.

Thee are no words to express how proud I was when he confirmed my own deduction that the problem lay with the Grundfos Alpha2 domestic circulator pump. I hugged myself in my mind as I marveled at my perspicacity.

Unfortunately this morning there are still no words; but today it is  to express how frustrated I am not to have received a quote and timetable for replacing the bleedin' thing.

So shines a good deed in a weary world.

 I was out yesterday afternoon and evening at Brian's funeral. The service was at Putney Vale Cemetery and there was a reception afterwards at Warren House.

Towards the end of the reception, I could see - out of the corner of my eye - that his wife of 63 years  appeared a little tired and distracted. A couple of minutes later I noticed that she had moved on but left a wine glass on a table, and wondered if she had abandoned it deliberately or forgotten it.

The next time I turned round though, I realised I wasn't the only tracker in the room. Spike, her grandson, had materialised and was sitting next to her chatting in front of a screen showing old family photos. She visibly bloomed in his company. Simultaneously and independently Sophie, her granddaughter, picked up the forgotten glass and brought it over. Moments later they were all smiling together.

If I ever need a Close Protection Team, I am going to get those two some weapons and martial arts training and employ them. Their peripheral awareness, plus ability to perceive and defuse risks are already off the charts.

Pay attention, 007

 It seems that I was wrong yesterday (Icons passim), and the Ukrainian ambassador was running off at the mouth when he said his country might be willing to sacrifice its aspirations to join NATO.

Protesters fighting government forces on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv on 18 February 2014.

With all the loose talk and grandstanding, not least from our government, I sometimes feel as if I am the only person who remembers what happened in Ukraine 8 years ago this month. It was the moment I became a premature Brexiteer. The Maidan revolution took place in Ukraine in February 2014 when a series of violent events involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv culminated in the ousting of elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.

It was a coup, essentially, after Yanukovych's refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union at a meeting of the Eastern Partnership in Vilnius, Lithuania, and I remain convinced that the EU, plus various American useful idiots, were complicit in it.

Well, you can Crimea river, Crimea river

🗣️"We are trying to find the best way out."

Ukraine's ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko has told @StephenNolan his country might agree not to join @NATO if it would avert war with Russia.

It would mean the country abandoning a goal written into its constitution.

🎧⬇️

— BBC Radio 5 Live (@bbc5live) February 13, 2022

Ukraine's UK ambassador has told the BBC that his government may commit itself to spurn NATO, and it is NOT all over the news today. What is going on that I don't understand? Surely this is an extraordinary development. It is difficult to imagine a senior diplomat just saying this off the cuff without it being cleared right from the top. Isn't it?

There Is Nothing For You Here

 The magical elves that Google keep in cages studying my history and recommending YouTube videos came up with Intelligence Squared's Standoff in Ukraine: How we reached crisis with Fiona Hill yesterday.

Interesting person Fiona Hill (here's her Wikipedia page). I am somewhat surprised that I had never even heard of her before. Here's part of the blurb from her latest book on Amazon.

A celebrated foreign-policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia - and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, and her unique perspectives as a historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.

Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of Northern England: “There is nothing for you here, pet,” he said.  

The coal-miner’s daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three US presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink - and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia’s fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.

She reads it on Audible. That may well be where my next credit is spent when it turns up a week from today.

I know this much is true

Got a message from Rod today, asking me why I hadn't posted my regular, granular daily blog post. I told him I was waiting to see if Callum Hudson-Odoi would win the World Club Championship with Chelsea. He did. They did. 'Nuff said.

A Welsh Born Icon: Search results for callum (coraider.com)

Ziggy played for "time gentlemen please, ain't you got no 'omes to go to?'

time & leisure

10 February marks the 50th anniversary of a musical milestone when David Bowie introduced the world to his Ziggy Stardust persona at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth.

Let's just take five minutes out of our busy lives to wonder at that marvelous sentence (written no doubt next door, time and leisure being in the office adjacent to mine).

The juxtaposition of Ziggy Stardust and Tolworth fifty years ago last night is particularly satisfying. Tolworth is about six miles from here, down the A3. When Ben was playing junior rugby every away game seemed to be down the A3.

The Toby Jug gives me a mental image of a pre-fame Bowie turning up out of the blue in full Ziggy rig to play the Standard in the 'Wood. What I wouldn't give to see Trevor's reaction to that.

Belfast and Cardiff

Kenneth Branagh's Belfast has received seven nominations for this year's Oscars. When he founded the Renaissance Theatre Company in 1987, their first production was his own play Public Enemy. Like his film, this was set during the troubles. I am surprised that I haven't read any references to it in reviews of the movie. It played at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith so I popped around after work one day to check it out. I can see that I wrote about it in the blog years later in 2005 (Icons passim).

The next thing Renaissance did was John Sessions’ The Life of Napoleon, a one man show directed by Branagh as I recall. I saw that as well as it was also in Hammersmith at the Riverside Studios. I have a vague memory of talking to Sessions with a glass in my hand after the show. I wonder how that happened, maybe it was the first night? My memories of 35 years ago are hazier than they might be.

Also a Cardiff-based couple have picked up an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Short Film category. Fingers crossed for the big night.

Metaphysical Animals

Yet another book about Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Philippa Foot was reviewed in the Grauniard yesterday. I only recently finished Benjamin Lipscomb's The Women Are Up to Something (Icons passim). "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come" eh?

If you decide to read the review (over by here), you can wonder - as I do - that the sentence "If you want to know what colour of silk cushions and bedspread Foot had in her rooms near Somerville College, then this is the book to read." has been published in the Guardian in 2022! God knows I will pass for a knuckle-dragging misogynist until a real one comes along, but that is a bit rich even for my blood.

Further (and I agree with the comment that says "Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch were not principally targeting the views of A.J.Ayer, who by the way was a Fellow of Wadham at the end of WW2, and held a chair in Oxford from 1959 to 1978. Their main targets were Austin, Hare, and Ryle.") though I cannot abide AJ Ayer, our heroines' supposed bete noir, I would have loved to have gone out for a drink with "Freddie" Ayer the friendly charming bonvivant who lived in the same body.

Stop sniggering at the back! This is actually interesting Blenkinsop, and the essay I have set you - Wittgenstein and Sheffield Wednesday - is still due tomorrow.

Comparative illusion

 Wikipedia

In linguistics, comparative illusions (CIs) or Escher sentences are certain comparative sentences which initially seem to be acceptable but upon closer reflection have no well-formed meaning. The typical example sentence used to typify this phenomenon is More people have been to Russia than I have.

c.f. Frank Sullivan's wolf sentences:

• This is the best salad I ever put in my whole mouth.
• It was a heck of a party, everyone in the room was there.
• I've got more money than I can afford.

As I consider them whole new vistas are opening up behind me*.

* My first attempt at one of my own.

just simple lines intertwining

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

Those are lines of mine above. Much to my astonishment, my yoga teacher quoted the first two during Saturday's class.

We must not be frightened nor cajoled

into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.

We must go on struggling to be human,

though monsters of abstraction

police and threaten us.

More good stuff, from an American poet called Robert Hayden with whom I was unfamiliar until yesterday. I got it, of all places, from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, when Dua Lipa asked him how his faith and his comedy overlapped.

https://youtu.be/pUaWDqDOWPk?t=176

I'm Wales' rugby gnome and you can't cwtch me

 

Less said about yesterday's loss to Ireland the better. Gareth the rugby gnome (Icons passim) was back on the roll-ups after swearing off them.

We went along to Get Up Stand Up in the evening. A fact I am recording so that there is a reference under the Bunburying tag that records my theatre trips.

Not doing things by half

 It will be busy today. I am off to yoga at half past eight. The weekly Skype call with mum is booked for half past ten. I will get the Standard early in the afternoon to make sure we have got a good table for the Six Nations; Ireland v Wales kicks off at quarter past two. Thence to Corleone to eat. From there via tube to the West End to see Get Up, Stand Up.

Art imitating life

The lobster telephone is part of West Dean's collection (Icons passim) and the trolley problem really arises from a 1967 philosophy paper by Phillipa Foot (Icons passim),

It is almost as if I had a plan.

Bona PPE

For  my sins, I was watching Boris Johnson on PMQs at lunchtime and I was particularly intrigued when the passive aggressive narcissist said - as if it was some sort of definitive put down - he had found a letter from the shadow chancellor from April 2020 suggesting that PPE could be "secured from a theatrical costumier" as if this was a ridiculous idea. I wish I could see the letter because it is not a ridiculous idea, it is a good idea.

PG spent his life in the theatre, and I distinctly remember him telling me early in this national calamity that there was a world class industry in this country that could potentially make an enormous contribution to supplying PPE. Guess what it was? The men and women, the talent, the skill, the infrastructure and the experience of supplying what actors and actresses "wear" in films, on television and in the theatre (an industry worth billions remember). At first I thought he was off his head, but gradually he convinced me. "How many medical grade masks a day do you think the Star Wars crew at Pinewood could pump out", he said "if they can dress hundreds of stormtroopers in full body armour."

I think Rachel Reeves' letter, very far from deserving BoJo's scorn, might have been prescient and practical. Though obviously responding to the Prime Minister's cheap shot shouldn't be a priority I hope the opposition won't let it lie. In general, who would you rather have run something Dido Harding or Cameron Mackintosh? Who would be most likely to deliver when the chips are down?

Counseluh, you are the engine that drives this foim

Thoity-six objections sustained, tree overruled; fawteen summary judgements sought, toiteen ranite, eighteen movments to voice fuh Respondent's prejudice, eighteen ranite which is a hunnut pissent, Twelve cawt days on the Rexrawt case alone; tree hunut'n twenty billable hours paralegal soivicies; four hunnut'n two billable associate counsel and consultative; six hunnut'n eighty billable at full attorney rate and eighty five lunches charged. Counseluh, you are the engine that drives this foim.

Though I adopted Miles Massey's fixed grin as my brother was talking to me about work last night, the scene above is what was playing through my mind. Sophie love, there's more to life than paralegal soivicies you can still think again!

Man says him a ting, then him a ting

I sat down over a lemonade with Megan and her mum and dad on Friday or Saturday.  She is back from college for a week. Much to my delight she started reminiscing over the burritos I used to make and bring along to their family barbecues, wrapped in foil and asked me to bring one along on Saturday. She is not driving back until after the Ireland Wales game.

I have promised to make a batch so she can make take some with her and stick them in the fridge or freezer at her digs as well. 

Luckily I have found the recipe on these spindrift pages at https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/2015/04/the-flying-burrito-brothers.html. If is from 2005. 2005!

I remember when her brother Jonnie was 16 (he is 21 now) and told his mum that want he wanted for his birthday party was the paella I had cooked when we were away on a camping trip. I was thrilled from the soles of my feet to the top of my head and turned up about an hour early, with a new pan as his present, and got cooking in it over a low-cranked grill in the garden, happy as the clams I was to add as a last few minutes' finishing touch.

My niece Bethany stayed with me for week in October 2019 when she was doing something with the National Youth Theatre. When my brother John picked her up to take her back to Wales I fed the both of them chicken tinga. "Nobody's perfect," said Beth to JC in the car, "but Uncle Nick can cook. I will say that for him."

"But enough about me, let's talk about you.... what do you think of me?"

International Man of Mystery

 It struck me in the week, that my old friend Rod worked as an OSCE monitor in Eastern Ukraine (Icons Passim) back in 2014 so I dropped him an email to get his take on the current Russian stand off and we talked for an hour on Skype yesterday. To my astonishment he was in Jordan with his lady friend. You just can't keep that boy down.

In a typically generous though ambiguous gesture he invited me to visit his house on a Greek island even though (because?) he isn't there! Passive aggressive doesn't even begin to cover his range of tactics for pulling my leg. He once invited me to Luhansk for Christmas "because it is twinned with Cardiff" (Icons passim).

Looking back through these pages, in 2018 he was in Mali (Icons passim) with the EU.

2010: Political Advisor to the Force Commander for the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Icons passim), also - same year - bought my son a Christmas present (Sighs passim).

I will never forget being in the theatre (Icons passim) with Melvyn Bragg on my left and Rod on my right. I had to pull the hairs at the top of my thigh through my trouser pocket to stop from corpsing with laughter as Rod's sotto voce Melvyn impersonation delivered a running commentary on the play.

Did I mention he also worked in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan?

I also remember hair rasing stories from his stints in Georgia and Serbia, though they don't appear on these pages all those above do which makes me glad I write here every day.

Chris Howell and I first met Rod and our other future friend John Ashton in Bilbao. We were all on our way to run the bulls in Pamplona. John and Rod asked us to watch over their bags while they argued with the police .........

"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," as Rick said in Casablanca.

“He looked like my uncle Louie,”

I googled Corleone yesterday as I wanted to book a table at this local restaurant so we could eat after the Six Nations game next weekend and came across the striking images of Marlon Brando's transformation into Don Corleone in the Godfather above. I always knew Brando was younger than the character but I had never realised quite how much.

It made me think again of Keisha Banya, the Hair, Wigs and Makeup Supervisor on 'A Number,' also being teacher of Mia's at Central. New respect from me for her job now. I never gave it a thought before. 

I will definitely be going to the restored 50th anniversary version of The Godfather in a well equipped cinema when it is released next month.

Offies

I was a bit surprised yesterday when I was posting about "A Number" and using my Bunburying label to check up on my theatre going as the pandemic fades, to find that I hadn't officially recorded going to see Bart in Thrill Me. It was good to introduce Bethany to him. We went on January 13th. Let's address that now by noting the production's OFFIES nominations.

Prodnose: What a relief!

A Number

 

Off to the Old Vic, last night to see Paapa in "A Number." Let's run the COVIDITRON over this. (The conviditron is an imaginary scientific instrument that measures the impact of the virus on our lives.) The last time I saw Paapa on the stage was in Pass Over at the Kiln in February 2020.  We bought last night's tickets in May last year. The last time I was in the Old Vic was to see Lungs in October 2019. Blimey, the coviditron's needle is in the the red zone. "She cannae take any more, Cap'n! She's gonna blow!"

As for the play, production and performances; I thought they were all brilliant. Proving once again the advantages of being a misanthrope. I am thrilled and amazed, when anything actually turns out to be good.

Frankie had to drop out on the day, so Mia came along straight from Central along with Saskia her flatmate who is on the same course. She said that when her phone vibrated as the message from me inviting her arrived she was in a class being conducted by Keisha Banya, who actually worked on the show. Synchronicity! I looked her up in the programme.

Also mad props to the guy running the door and queue. He suggested we message the ticket graphics to M&S rather than wait outside. Good call we were cozy in the warm over G&Ts when they arrived rather than resentfully shivering in the street. Ditto the young lady on the Old Vic staff who gave me a mask on the way out after I had lost mine. It meant I could just walk onto the tube rather than trying to find some where to buy a new one. Shout out also to OSEYO – Korean Food and Culture Hub which we passed on the way back to Waterloo. Kimchi is in the gaff again and life is good.

Ethiopia

I watched An Online Pilgrimage through Ethiopia last night. 

Christianity in Ethiopia is a fascinating topic of which I know nothing.

Nothing that is to say, apart from what an Ethiopian lady Uber drive told me as she was ferrying me back from Whitton to Colliers Wood pre-lockdown.

Much to learn. Much to learn.

Koshka Duff

BBC

The Metropolitan Police has apologised to a woman for the "sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language used" while she was being strip-searched.

Dr Koshka Duff was detained in 2013 after offering a legal advice card to a black teenager during his stop-and-search.

On CCTV footage, officers can be heard laughing about her hair, clothes and talking about her underwear.

The force said it had settled her claim and "sincerely apologised".

Dr Duff, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham, was trying to give the "know your rights" card to a 15-year-old boy in London.

The officers accused her of obstruction and arrested her.

She told the BBC she decided to act in the spirit of "passive resistance", and went limp rather than walking to the police van willingly.

Wikipedia

On the evening of 3 March 2021, Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was kidnapped in South London, England, as she was walking home to the Brixton Hill area from a friend's house near Clapham Common. Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens falsely arrested her under the pretence of having breached COVID-19 regulations and drove her to near Dover where he raped and strangled her, before burning her body and disposing of her remains in a nearby pond.

QED

It seems to me indisputable that if Koshka Duff was walking past when Wayne Couzens was falsely arresting Sarah Everard, and attempted to give her a "know you rights" card then Sarah Everard would be alive today. A thumbs up to Ms Duff from the Welsh jury.

P.S.

Dr Koshka Duff was detained in 2013. The BBC reported the police apology yesterday; nine years later. There is no reference to the apology on the Met Police website. Thumbs down from the Welsh jury.

Party All The Time

Daily Mail

Is Boris's birthday the 'killer blow'? MPs expect MORE party revelations as calls grow for PM to quit now - saying the latest bash with 30 guests, Union Jack cake, M&S nibbles and a BBQ 'changes things a lot' and could mean a LOST confidence vote.

Boris Johnson's  birthday part on June 19 2020; 30 guests in the Cabinet Room chimed with me because on June 22nd 12 of us sat socially distanced in Wandle Park to celebrate mine. The pubs didn't even re-open until July 4th https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pubs-restaurants-and-hairdressers-to-reopen-from-4-july

Here is (are?) the one thing I wrote every day in these spindrift pages in June 2020 - https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/2020/06/

It has also reminded me of a BBC article from June 28th "Two illegal street parties in London closed down by police." 

Dispersal zones were put in place in Clapham Common and Tooting Bec Common to clear crowds causing "significant disruptions" on Saturday night. (Tooting Bec is two stops away from me at Colliers Wood on the Northern Line and Clapham Common is only five.)

Home Secretary Priti Patel has called on people not to attend street parties, protests or mass celebrations.

Speaking on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show, she said: "As much as people do want to be out right now - the weather is amazing - stick to the rules, follow the guidance."

'Simply unacceptable'

She said the rise of mass gatherings held in recent days was "unacceptable" and that it risked a second wave of Covid-19 which would devastate the UK economy.

Quite. Saturday June 27th was 8 days after the party in the Cabinet Room.

7 Changes in 11 Days

 The Welsh Government's Coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance is on https://gov.wales/coronavirus

I have posted the link above so I can find it easily in future. I don't think it should change. Unlike the guidance itself. Living in London with family in Wales.

The English guidance is on https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus. It looks like I won't need a COVID pass at the theatre on Thursday, though I had better check as January 27th is the actual day the regulations change. It is such a pain in the neck keeping up with all of this.

I still can't visit Mum though as far as I can tell, as the home is only allowing Essential Visitors and my sister has got the nomination for that. That at least was the situation on the nineteenth.

650

 I went to my 650th yoga class yesterday up. No Ben as he wanted to lie in and catch up on his shut eye after a long week's work followed our West Dean trip last weekend. Come to think of it I have also seen off Donna and Kevin over the years, which is a pity as I am incapable of getting up and out for a 6:30 am weekday class unless I am picking someone up in the car or they are collecting me.

Kevin quit when the bulk of the Bikram classes were reduced to an hour down from 90 minutes. I agree with him. It was a retrograde step but I still think an hour is better than nothing.

Here's the history - https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search/label/Yoga