Hello and welcome to Jazz Club

 

Louis Balfour: Hello and welcome to Jazz Club. Yolanda Charles' pH Project presents its music with  intricately arranged elements that allow unprepared moments to emerge, with a nod or glance signalling accents or arrangement changes. The  interplay and rhythmic possibilities are numerous, which allows the  musicians to enjoy a highly creative experience.*

Myself: Great.

Louis Balfour: Yolanda  is well-known to music fans and industry professionals worldwide. In  2020, she was awarded an MBE for her services to music. Project pH  features the skills of London-based guitarist Nick Linnik, who provides a  stunning display of highly compelling soloing as the newest member of  the band. The dynamic and versatile Laurie Lowe on drums, is known for  his work as part of the Preston, Glasgow & Lowe trio as well as a  myriad of names in the UK jazz scene. Pianist Hamish Balfour brings a  wide range of experience as a composer and arranger. His training in  both classical & jazz and as a dance music producer, gives him the  perfect mix of skills for the band sound.

Myself: Great.

Louis Balfour: The voices of the band are provided by the superb soulful delivery of vocalists Paris Ruel and Adeola Shyllon.

Myself: Nice!

Oh, get over yourself! It's not like you have to come with me. Breaks down like this, dropping off a birthday card at Jonnie H's last weekend I realised it was an entire year since I went to Ronnie Scott's with Andy and Ian to see Kurt Elling featuring Charlie Hunter  (passim). I'd dropped a 21st birthday present off at the Hendries' (same day last year) on they way to the tube to get to to that you see and synapses fired along the lines of  Proust's madeleine.

I WhatsApped Andy and he replied suggesting we pick something out from the EFG London Jazz Festival in November, so SpiceJazz Soho at the Spice of Life it is on the 11th. A gig every fourteen months is hardly living in each other's pockets.

* This is genuinely what the blurb says ........... Nice!

Over Gardens Out

I'm not in truth much given to staying in and vegging out of an evening. Last night though life caught up with me so I lay on the couch watching "Do Revenge" for no other reason that it was number one on Netflix's streaming chart despite only being released on Friday.

It turns out that neon bright, over-designed high school comedies are my thing after all. Who'da thunk it? 

There may come a day when I can resist a Yankee movie in which a character called Eleanor owns an emotional support pet lizard named Olivia Colman after our national treasure Oscar winner, but that day is yet to dawn.

Further, “The Cis Heteronormative Men Championing Female-Identifying Students League” (slam dunk, you listening Megan?) reminds me of a story I have been told in confidence about a private school with a Boarding Fee of  £13,788 per term. This post will fix it in my mind without breaking Chatham House rules.

What is it like?

Auden on China; BBC 16th January 1939.

What is the Chinese war like? Well, least I know it isn’t like wars in history books. You know, those lucid, tidy maps of battles one used to study at school. The flanks like neat little cubes, the pincer movements working with mathematical precision, the reinforcements never failing to arrive. It isn’t like that at all. War is bombing an already disused arsenal, missing it and killing a few old women. War is lying in a stable with a gangrenous leg. War is drinking hot water in a barn and worrying about one’s wife. War is a handful of lost and terrified men in the mountains, shooting at something moving in the undergrowth. War is waiting for days with nothing to do, shouting down a dead telephone, going without sleep, or sex, or a wash. War is untidy, inefficient, obscure, and largely a matter of chance.

So begins China and World War II - Part 1, episode 234 of The Rest is History podcast. The quote made me think of Ukraine. Indeed several other parallels arise during Tom Holland and  Dominic Sandbrook's conversation with Rana Mitter.

Roll on Part 2. I am listening to more and more podcasts. Since Spotify started supporting them seriously and I realised I could access my Echo speaker "everywhere" group from it I can play them throughout the house using the phone as a remote control while I do this and that, or indeed one thing and another.

Further, I woke up this morning to hear on the Today Programme news that a BBC Podcast Transfer: The Emiliano Sala Story had revealed new details about his fatal plane crash on the way to Cardiff City. This came only a day after a US judge quashed a Baltimore man's murder conviction in a case that spawned hit true crime podcast Serial.

Something is stirring.

The Trip to Echo Spring

Olivia Laing's widely acclaimed account of why some of the best literature has been created by writers in the grip of alcoholism

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. 

All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast. Often, they did their drinking together: Hemingway and Fitzgerald ricocheting through the cafes of Paris in the 1920s; Carver and Cheever speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973. 

Olivia Laing grew up in an alcoholic family herself. One spring, wanting to make sense of this ferocious, entangling disease, she took a journey across America that plunged her into the heart of these overlapping lives. As she travels from Cheever's New York to Williams' New Orleans, and from Hemingway's Key West to Carver's Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery. Beautiful, captivating, and original, The Trip to Echo Spring strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

Well that's this month's Audible book sorted. This one though is free content from the Audible Plus Catalogue that John told me about last year (Icons passim), so September's credit lives to fight another day.

A life of service

I read David McCullough's biography of President Truman last year. On August 25, 1950, in anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, he issued an executive order putting America’s railroads under the control of the U.S. Army, considering the intervention critical as he had just ordered American troops into a war against North Korean communist forces and much of America’s economic and defense infrastructure was dependent upon the smooth functioning of the tracks.

A telling detail is that in the afternoon the day before,  Truman had to go out to the White House South Lawn to host a reception for nearly nine hundred convalescent veterans from nearby military hospitals, among whom there were amputees and others who moved forward in the receiving line on crutches and in wheelchairs attended by nurses in starched white uniforms. Such garden parties for hospitalized veterans had been an annual tradition at the White House since 1919. Along with the First Lady, several of the Cabinet were present with their wives, as were Admiral Nimitz and General Bradley. The Marine Band played, strawberry ice cream and lemon punch were served, and for more than an hour Truman stood warmly greeting his guests, only once glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the Cabinet Room, not that there was any sign he resented interrupting knife-edge negotiations, he considered this symbolic part of his duties as President just as important as the nitty gritty of statecraft.

Why am I telling you all of this on the day of the Queen's funeral? Because it was on reading it that I was finally persuaded that having the head of state (the public persona who officially embodies a country's unity and legitimacy) as a ceremonial figurehead, is a better idea than combining the role with that of the head of government and more (such as the President of the United States, who is also commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces). Also that a constitutional monarchy is likely the best way to do it with a certain amount of glamour and dignity as personified in Her Majesty.

I can't bear this bloody thing': King Charles gets frustrated with leaky pen

Unfortunately, someone so irascible he can lose his rag about a pen (a pen!) in public and in front of television cameras is temperamentally unsuited for life as a ceremonial figurehead. The job will not be about him, it will be about him as a vehicle through which society's honour and respect is bestowed upon others. If Charles III doesn't understand that after seventy two years, he never will.

We should have gone straight to King William V. I don't think I have ever written it here before, but Prince William did his work experience with Andy Tea years and years ago; a very genial and pleasant fella I am told, a dab hand with the photocopier, and a genuine - as opposed to affected - Aston Villa supporter. 

Cork upon a tide

Cardiff (my home town) kicked off their United Rugby Championship season in ideal fashion with a fine 20-13 victory over Munster (my DNA) at the Arms Park yesterday. I didn't see it as I was at the beer Festival in the Sultan, though I could (notes for future reference) have watched it on BBC Wales at home via the iPlayer, or on RTÉ 2 at the all-things-Irish Standard.

A thought has occurred to me as I am writing this. When I asked Ben over pizza earlier this week what he wanted for his birthday at the end of the month, he suggested another weekend away along the lines of our Seville sojourn. What about Cork? We could pay homage to our ancestors at their departure point and then kiss the blarney stone in the rebel county.

Ireland’s largest and second most populous county, Cork is also known for its recalcitrance. While many assume its nickname of ‘the rebel county’ refers to its role in Ireland’s 20th-century War of Independence, Cork actually has a much longer history of challenging claims to authority.

That sounds like us. Fill your boots here.

An Inspector Calls

I went to see "An Inspector Calls" at the Wimbledon Theatre last Wednesday. Knew nothing about it (for all that I could imagine that an inspector might call somewhere in the proceedings) but thoroughly enjoyed the show all the same. (PG had given the thumbs up to Stephen Daldry's thirty year old production.) With a bit of judicious editing, there's probably a good episode of Colombo in it. That J.B. Priestley eh? He was a wag. Uncle Willy gave me his own personal copy of Priestley's "Literature And Western Man," a book he treasured so profoundly he never actually felt worthy of reading it himself.

The play must be set for GCSE or whatever because there were a lot of adolescent kids in school uniform in the audience; what I took for a girls school in tartan skirts up in the gods, and a boys school in the stalls. Badinage ensued. I found it all rather jolly and life affirming for all the tut-tut-tuts I heard from fellow grey beards, mostly women.

Hope for me yet?

Fathers and Sons

Ben sent me a longish message on Wednesday evening that wasn't a reply to one I had sent him. I practically fell off the chair. The message was just a chatty thing saying he'd started watching “Cosmos” by Neil deGrasse Tyson from 2014 and  particularly recommended episode 3 “When Knowledge Conquered Fear.”

Last night we went for a pizza in Corleone. A regular occurrence I will grant you but this time it was his suggestion not mine. A whole hour's scintillating chat about elliptical orbits (don't you wish you'd been there), then he showed me the new car he has bought. The student has become the master.

Which brings me to "Chris Eubank Snr demands ‘our sons must not fight’ as Nigel Benn insists ‘it’s happening.’"

For so long that it seems forever, it has seemed obvious to me that Eubank Senior doesn't like the idea of Junior boxing and is terrified every time he ducks through the ropes into the ring. I've have always thought it was at the heart of the boy's mysterious blind adoption in Las Vegas.

Eubank began his amateur career in 2007. With the winning of his sixth amateur fight, he became the Amateur Golden Gloves Champion for the State of Nevada in his weight division of 165 lbs. With his eighth amateur fight he became the Amateur Golden Glove Champion for the Western States of the United States in his weight division. 

It is almost as if his dad, if he couldn't dissuade him, sent him out to the States to prove he was serious by doing it on his own. (Eubank Snr's own father sent him to New York when he was 16 to keep him our of trouble in London, and that is where he started training.)

As for the specific objections to this upcoming Benn fight, I think he has got a point. In 2013 I read a short book called Making the Weight: Boxing's Lethal Secret.

Barry J Whyte examines the dangers of boxing’s 24-hour weigh-in by looking into the far-reaching consequences of a fight between Joey Gamache and Arturo Gatti in February 2000. He shines a light on a controversial system which allows boxers to ‘boil down’ for the weigh-in the day before the fight then pile the weight back on in the time left before stepping into the ring. He exposes the extreme physiological dangers both boxers are subject to under this flawed system.

Eubank Jnr is a much bigger man than his opponent Benn so the fight has been set at a catch-weight of 157lbs to which Eubank will sweat down while Benn bulks up. Fair enough you might think, Eubank Jr has fought at the middleweight limit of 160 pounds for a lot of his career, so dropping down three pounds should not be a huge issue, but he has revealed that the rehydration clause prevents him from being over 162 pounds on a Saturday check scaling. Consider that lately though he has been fighting at 168 and probably entering the ring at 180.

Why is this so dangerous? Dehydration is common in many sports. Jockeys frequently dehydrate before big races to avoid handicaps; practitioners of judo and karate regularly lose weight to fit into certain weight categories; Greco-Roman wrestling is rife with it. But boxing is the only sport where such widespread dehydration is followed by repeated punches to the head, often for up to half an hour. If the brain is moved fast enough and hard enough, it will bang into the internal walls of the skull causing system-wide trauma. If a fighter is dehydrated his brain will not be cushioned by as much cerebrospinal fluid and the trauma will be worse.

I am with Dad voting with his heart on this. Chris Eubank remembers what he did to Michael Watson, and I am sure that Nigel Benn remembers what he did to Gerald McClellan.

Reverses: Paul is the Burglar

This day last year

Paul had his stoma surgery for suspected bowel cancer on Monday. It took six hours, but he managed to get up for a brief walk yesterday, plus ten minutes on Skype.

The colostomy reversal was originally scheduled for August 31st (passim) but that was cancelled due to some sort of blood test mix up. (Mix up is probably a polite word for it.)

It was rescheduled for last Monday, but when he arrived he tested positive for COVID and was cancelled again.  What sticks in his craw particularly I think is that he had isolated the entire week before, only leaving the house twice, both times visiting the hospital for blood tests. He concludes, and I tend to agree with him, that must have caught it at the NHS' Princess Royal University Hospital because he hadn't been anywhere else and was taking regular lateral flow tests. Again, ironic is a polite word for it.

He muttered darkly about the dangers of "thickening" of the stoma reversal is long delayed. I don't know what that it and I didn't follow up because he sounded quite low over the 'phone. He is actually knocked sideways now by disappointment and genuinely severe COVID symptoms.

Waiting more than a year for a procedure that should have been done in a quarter of that time. Multiply it my millions, and say hello to post-pandemic Britain.

Once more with feeling

 I have finished part one of Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self . I have got it on Audible, and we gave the hardback to Peter on his birthday.

Chapter 6 'Our Splendid Circle' Summer-Winter 1796: The Schlegels arrive closes part one the first. Towards the end it describes August Wilhelm Schlegel working on the translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Jena (the geographical heart of the book). The very translation that Peter directed at the  Schauspielhaus Zürich in 1972. It also implies that polymath party girl Caroline Schelling, née Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel (the narrative heart of the book and his wife at the time) contributed very significantly to his Shakespeare work.

Wheels within wheels.

Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey

 

Europe’s electricity market: the scam of the century? Yanis Varoufakis (been reading him more than five years now) explains. If you have 23 minutes to spare today, invest it above. I have cued it to cut straight to the chase and avoid the introductions. Think of it as a much better version of my Marginal Pricing post.

---

Also, now my paranoia is kicking in, why has everything we are told about the war in Ukraine been reduced to repackaged Ukrainian press releases? Why are all our correspondents addressing us from their hotels far from the frontline? We aren't we seeing the kind of stuff that Jeremy Bowen was posting from the conflict's business-end, coming up for half a year ago, any more?

Got to Hostomel airport NW of Kyiv day after the Russians pushed out. Immense damage. This had been fought over since first day of the war when the Russians landed airborne troops here for the move forward to Kyiv that never was. camera/edit @leedurant @producerkathy pic.twitter.com/OEXsq6agM3

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) April 2, 2022

Exhibit A: Bloomberg

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the nation’s army has recaptured “more than 30 settlements” in the Kharkiv region, with units of the National Police moving in as Russian forces are expelled. The Institute for the Study of War estimates Ukraine has recaptured some 2,500 square kilometers (965 square miles) of territory around Kharkiv. Kyiv’s forces may have liberated Kupyansk and Izyum on Saturday.  

We understand I take it that, for all that 2,500 square kilometers sound like a lot, the square root of 2,500 is 50. 50 km is just over 30 miles. A block 30 miles by 30 miles ain't all that big. The land area of Ukraine is 603,700 km². 2,500 is less than a half of one percent of that. I wouldn't be putting out the bunting yet, for all the cheer-leading in our press today. What if all we have seen is a tactical withdrawal by Russia to the other side of the Oskil river?

---

Express

Working royals will be able to wear military uniforms at ceremonies marking the Queen's death.

Princes Harry and Andrew, who no longer perform senior royal duties, will not wear uniforms in which they have previously been seen at a string of events.

I hold no brief you understand. Neither for Harry nor Andrew, but it does seem a bit odd if the only two in civvies will be the only two who actually engaged in combat (Afghanistan and the Falklands respectively).

Compare and contrast

Took PG our for his weekly grocery shop yesterday morning as usual, then - also as usual - retired to the Plum Cafe in Munster Road for a coffee. It wasn't completely full, but it was crowded so he, being slightly claustrophobic and keen to sit close to the door, moved towards one of the round tables near the entrance. Each of these tables has three comfy chairs around it and his target already had a lady (of a certain age) at one of them. I asked, as close to politely as a Cardiffian can, if she minded if we sat at the other two. She looked at me as if I had just crawled out from under a stone, muttered something under her breath and then stomped off to the other end of the room. ("Stomping's easier in block heel court shoes than it is in stilettos sweetheart!" Don't ask me how I know.)

Fellow Cardiffians and not given to looking a gift horse in the mouth, PG and I sat down at the vacated table and waited for our coffees (ordered at the counter) to arrive. I told him she probably thought he was a skinhead as he was outfitted in blue jeans and a white t-shirt; a triumphant look for an 83 year old to pull off.  Also, there were three square two person tables to our left; wall seats opposite bistro chairs that were entirely occupied by three girls. They were sitting, I s'pose,  around the one in the centre but there was a handbag on the table furthest away from us, and the nearest girl had her glass on the table immediately adjacent to ours. That is four ladies taking up nine places before we two dared to beg to be admitted.

On her way out, the wasp chewing harridan stopped by our table to give me a severe wigging; sanctimonious bint. Would it kill her to be me more like the lovely lady I met calling for PG a fortnight ago (Icons passim).

Toxic masculinity? Me maybe, but Peter? I ain't buyin'.

Seasick Nick: Build and play your own 3 string cigar box guitar

Cigar Box Guitar Build and Play Workshop November 2022

Time & Location

26 Nov, 10:30 – 16:00

The Libertine Pub, 125 Great Suffolk St, London SE1 0BX, UK

Our workshops are a fun way to build your own Cigar Box Guitar.

You need no woodworking skills - if you can draw and cut in a straight (ish) line then you can build your guitar. We are there to help you over the tricky bits and and rescue you from any mistakes that you may make.

We supply all the parts (genuine Havana cigar box, hardwood guitar neck, NewTone  guitar strings - everything you need) and all the tools - we even supply lunch (The Libertine serves great Pizzas) and good company comes as standard.

At the end of the day we string your new instruments, tune them up and spend some time enjoying an introduction on how to play slide cigar box guitar. You'll soon be playing "Foot Stompin" music.

This is where my brother John and I will be on the last Saturday in November. The confirmation email says "if you have a small guitar practice amp please bring it along with you so you can play you very own cigar box guitar." The best way to get there is a twenty odd minute tube journey on the Northern line; the 'Wood to Borough. So we will be constructing these three string guitars in the pub all day, before heading back and coming back up out of the underground opposite the Standard. Three sheets to the wind, carrying guitars we made ourselves along with amplifiers. Liam and his regulars should be very afraid.

Love All

To the Jermyn Street Theatre last night for a preview of Love All, a "rediscovered classic" written by  Dorothy L. Sayers. I had completely forgotten I had a ticket for it until I was reminded and no clue as to what it might be. I absolutely loved it, which often happens when I bowl up with no preconceptions (Zen mind, beginners mind).

PG's "Something in the Air" is the next production there (apart from Sunday night one-offs), and the cast for that was announced in the week as you can see above. As an aside, we gave him a copy of Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self  by Andrea Wulf  for his birthday. 

Magnificent Rebels is a beautiful group biography, celebrating the lives and loves of Germany's most brilliant minds: Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Novalis, Schlegel, Schelling and Hegel. At the centre of their group in the small university town of Jena was a free-spirited, thrice married, single-mother named Caroline Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling.

"I directed Schlegel's German translation of A Midsummers Night's Dream in Zurich in the 1970s," he observed after unwrapping it. "Terrible problems with the Swiss German accents." Perhaps the greatest humblebrag in history.

Alan Cox, from 'Love All' with PG; small world eh?

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore

After the Queen died yesterday, a holding page took the place of the official website, www.royal.uk. Any other pages on the existing site that users might have bookmarked redirected to it as well.  The text below the image said:

The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.

The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.

The official website of the Royal Family is temporarily unavailable while appropriate changes are made.

The idea was to streamline the site as much as possible so it could cope with an enormous traffic surge, plus hiding, even if temporarily, any existing content that might seem inappropriate in the circumstances.

I know this because it was my idea. Other content is gradually coming online today.

I met the Queen three times while we were working with the Household; at the launch of the new web site, at a Reception and at a Garden Party. The funniest encounter was at the launch. I had stayed up all night working, and hadn't eaten since lunchtime the day before. Absolutely starving, I loaded up a plate with buffet fayre, and turned around to find Her Majesty about six inches away chatting to someone. She was maybe three quarters turned from me. I remember the yellow jacket she was wearing very distinctly. She was so close, I could have put the plate of sandwiches in my hand on top of her head. Not that I did you understand.

There's a framed photo of Samantha Cohen presenting me to the Queen at that very event on the staircase wall in mum and dad's, though - from the arrangement - a photographic tribute to Ben - Brean Sands Junior Rugby Festival Top Try Scorer 2009 - seems to take precedent. Thinking of home and hearth, Dad was one of the servicemen who lined the route for the Coronation in 1953 when he was doing his National Service in the RAF.

Marginal Pricing

The energy market consultancy Cornwall Insight calculates more than £40bn of the estimated £100bn of the proposed energy price cap could be swallowed up in excess profits.

The energy companies concerned, mostly renewable and nuclear businesses, have agreed at least in principle to accept new long-term contracts at fixed prices well below current rates.

The energy price cap was only introduced in 2019. It's not like it is ancient history. After taking time off to watch Prime Minister's Questions lunchtime yesterday I am very far from convinced that either Liz Truss or Kier Starmer have got a scooby about the millstone we have tied around our own necks either.

Breaks down like this: Marginal pricing refers to electricity prices being set by the variable cost of the marginal plant, i.e. the most expensive plant that is required to serve demand. This is the way electricity prices are determined on short-term wholesale markets, such as the day-ahead market. All generators receive and all consumers pay the same price. A uniform price.

This is genuinely insane. Think about solar and wind power for example. once the capital costs have been defrayed they are, to all intents and purposes, free. What lemon negotiated a contract in which they get paid the same amount per kilowatt hour as it costs to burn Putin's gas? It wasn't me.

There's a hint of rhetorical exaggeration above, but not much. Not very much at all.

Bring on the Severn Barrage!

Update: I just thought of another way to explain this, using Peter's birthday dinner at Avanti yesterday evening. He walked there from his flat and was content with a bowl of spaghetti served with a simple tomato sauce, along with a jug of tap water and finished  with a coffee. I got a cab there and back and grazed on multiple small plates of exotic tapas guzzling copious quantities of good red wine all the while. The "market clearing price" for the evening would be what it cost me to attend (taxi, grub, booze), so - if the contract had been negotiated by Her Majesty's Government - that is what everyone else who went would have been charged as well. Point of order Mr Chairman: I picked up the tab though, for all that, my lucid economic parable is still valid.

Something in the Air

It is PG's birthday today. A few of us will get together at Avanti in the Fulham Palace Road this evening. With this in the back of my mind I have realised I don't actually know how old he is. 

"Peter Gill (born 7 September 1939) is a Welsh theatre director, playwright, and actor. He was born in Cardiff to George John and Margaret Mary (née Browne) Gill, and educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff." says Wikipedia which makes him 83.

Having a new play open in one's 84th year is very cool indeed: https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/something-in-the-air/

Boris Johnson's Legacy: Leveling Up

Bloomberg

UK Slips Behind India to Become World’s Sixth Biggest Economy

• Loss of status comes as ruling Tory party elects new premier
• Cost of living shock batters UK, while Indian economy surges

The Indian economy is forecast to be a fifth larger than the UK by 2027

[Liz Truss] will take over a nation facing the fastest inflation in four decades and rising risks of a recession that the Bank of England says may last well into 2024.

By contrast, the Indian economy is forecast to grow more than 7% this year. A world-beating rebound in Indian stocks this quarter has just seen their weighting rise to the second spot in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, trailing only China’s. 

I've nothing against the good people of India you understand. More power to the collective Indian elbow, as far as I am concerned. It's just that when Boris Johnson was making speeches about leveling up, I kinda, sorta assumed he was talking about places like Bradford and Doncaster rather than, say, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Let's be honest; the man could ruin a debutante and leave her on the street, a homeless crack whore, all the while claiming he was contributing to social mobility.

Over to you Ms Truss ...... Had we but world enough and time .........

Now Pay Attention 007!

 Rod M might not make it over from Germany to Blighty at the end of the month after all. He has accidentally put his passport through the washing machine and has learned it could take up to ten weeks to get a replacement. I was looking forward to seeing him, but there is something irresistibly funny about this.

It just seems so wonderfully prosaic after he has spent his life dodging bullets and bombs everywhere from a refugee camp on the Afghan/Pakistan border, to D.R. Congo. to Ukraine, to Mali etc. on behalf of the UN, the OSCE etc. (There's a photo of the drowned, disfigured remains of the passport, but I have slapped a D-notice on it.)

I like to think of it as the International Man of Mystery's equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."

If Barbara Broccoli approaches me to pen the next James Bond movie (the 26th I think), the pre-credits sequence will involve 007 in the launderette.

Skip that. It's been done. Nothing new under the sun, I guess.

Three Thousand Years of Longing

 

I put the 643rd of the 1,001 Nights to bed this morning. (To bed this morning? Shurely shome mishtake! Ed.) Any roads it makes the movie above pretty much a must see.

What else? I watched Hail, Caesar! on Netflix yesterday. Practically fell off the couch laughing. Last day to watch - Septemebr 10th. Fill your boots asap.

Hunter is captured by the game

 

PG has finished casting his play. Helen tipped me a whimsical wink about the film above because he had thought at one time that Laurence Fox might have been good in one of the roles.

© Brietbart TV. My Son Hunter trailer. Starring Laurence Fox and Gina Carano. Directed by Robert Davi.

There's a lot to unpick here. First © Brietbart TV. Breitbart News Network, is a syndicated right wing news and opinion website (Wikipedia). It might seem a bit of a stretch for them to be getting into the movie business, but they are not alone. The Daily Wire is an American conservative news website and media company founded in 2015 by Breitbart alumnus Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing. As far as I can tell it started as a vehicle for Boering to direct and produce Shapiro's podcast, but it has grown like topsy since then with a whole movie slate at https://www.dailywire.com/watch/movies

The slate includes Terror on the Prairie:

Gina Carano is back. Disney canceled her. Now, the un-canceling begins. Gina makes her return in this gritty new western and original feature film by The Daily Wire. On the Montana plains, a frontier woman must protect herself against a ruthless gang of outlaws hell-bent on revenge.

Gina Carano, you will have noticed is also in My Son Hunter. She first appeared on the spindrift pages coming up for fifteen years ago, when Ben was training in muay Thai and she was the first real break out female Thai boxer. It was very muich a minority interest back then. Since then she has had a movie and TV career that shuddered to a halt when she became embroiled in the sort of alt-right controversy alluded to above. The details elude me.

Robert Davi, the director, of course is remembered by all right thinking people as the villain in the Timothy Dalton James Bond film Licence to Kill.

One swallow doesn't make a summer, but something is stirring in America's loins. Something very different, I think, from what Joe Biden was referring to in that strange Philadelphia speech earlier this week.

If you want to write an essay.....

 

I watched episode 2 of The Capture with Paapa yesterday, and noticed that Indira Varma, who was the best thing in The Seagull when we saw it recently, was in it.

Good stuff, but not a busman's holiday if you know your protocol stacks. When our heroes identified the spoof Newsnight footage as being from a Chinese IP address, I raised a quizzical eyebrow, surely anyone half competent would have geo-spoofed it with a VPN?

As ever, the shade of the old man intervened. He was a forensic consulting engineer and a small thing I admired about him was his ability to enjoy movies set in his world without nit-picking.

Exhibit A: My Cousin Vinny:

.... just the type of thing he would have said as an "expert witness" though with a different accent and softer intonation.

He also had good things to say about Erin Brockovich, which I thought was gracious. If you want to write an essay, write an essay. If you want to write a screenplay, write a screenplay.

Mistrusting Ms Truss, my mistress

Dear Ms Truss,

I believe you know everything by magic as you have a PPE degree. (Pernicious Political Elite, or Philosophy Politics and Economics? I can never remember.)

1. Yesterday, 61.5% of UK power generation came from gas (combined cycle). Over the past year it averaged 42.3%. What (in a simplified way we serfs can understand) is a  combined-cycle, natural-gas power plant and why has our dependence upon them rocketed just as LNG prices have gone through the roof? The National Grid Live Status (here) is informative. (Hat tip, Kate Rose Morley.)

2. As Foreign Secretary you will be familiar with the strategic concept and sophisticated government strategy 'Carrier Enabled Power Projection.'

HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s £3.5 billion aircraft carrier, looks to be set for a lengthy inspection in a dry dock. The warship remained anchored off the south-east coast of the Isle Wight on Monday, where it broke down on Sunday evening less than 24 hours after setting sail for the United States. 'Power for the projection of" one assumes.

Discuss, paying as much attention to the weakness of your assumptions as the grandeur of any conclusions you may draw.

Worried that I will shortly be your obedient servant,

Nick

(P.S. PG would have fired you as an assistant stage manager never mind a holder of one of the Great Offices of State after such a clusterf*ck.)

Walk the Walk

Really happy to be here and can’t wait to get started, let’s go!!❤️🔥 @bayer04_en pic.twitter.com/4QcFRDTCq7

— Callum Hudson-Odoi (@Calteck10) August 30, 2022

Callum confirmed his one season loan from Chelsea to  Bayer Leverkusen yesterday afternoon. In the early evening Chelsea lost 2-1 to Southampton. QED? Co-owner Todd Boehly is Chelsea's "interim" sporting director. The job should have gone to Joe Reilly.

Let's do the walk of fame (passim) again. Callum's family home is just around the corner from me. Come out of their front door, turn right then left and you will walk past Ego Ella May's. 

Her re-imagining of visionary drummer Chico Hamilton’s “The Morning Side Of Love”, which first appeared on Hamilton’s 1975 Blue Note album Peregrinations is the lead track on "Blue Note Re:imagined II"  which is due out on September 30th. 

“For more than eight decades the artists of Blue Note Records have continually pushed the envelope of contemporary music,” said Blue Note President Don Was. “Blue Note Re:imagined II once again honors that legacy by letting the UK’s most creative young artists reinvent the treasures of the Blue Note catalogue through their own lens.” Quite so.

Past hers, into Park Road,  and you will arrive at Paapa's old flat. He's starring in the BBC's The Capture season 2 at the moment; weekly at 9pm on Sunday and Monday nights.

The 'Wood done good.

tossed off

Myself (knocking): I've got the list for you.

Prodnose: I'm not decent, can you just slide it under the door?

Myself: Ahh! O.. Oh!... Aghh! AAAH! Can't do it sorry.

Prodnose: Why?

Myself: It's in my head.

Ollie H, reminded me in the Standard on Sunday that a bunch of us are going to the Richmond Theatre in November; news to me, it had completely slipped my mind. I had vaguely been planning to get out at see Bart in Les Mis in November and - for all that I like to see the boards being trod - once a month is generally sufficient to my needs. Pulling all the bookings out of my diary I see that, apart from December and January I am committed monthly until next March. The list follows as an aide-mémoire. December and January are probably blank because we are planning to got and see the new Streetcar at the Almeida, but we are waiting on a date from John as he will have to come up from Wales for it. I will probably book Les Misérables for the end of this year or the beginning of next depending on JC's Tennessee Williams constraints.

• September 9: Love All - Jermyn Street Theatre
• September 14: An Inspector Calls  - New Wimbledon Theatre
• October 13: Something in the Air: Jermyn Street Theatre
• November 19: Lavender Hill Mob: Richmond Theatre
• December: Streetcar or Les Mis
• January: Streetcar or Les Mis
• February 14: The King and I: New Wimbledon Theatre
• March: Girl from the North Country: New Wimbledon Theatre (Tue 14 Mar - Sat 18 Mar - not booked yet)

Elders and Betters

I stopped off in Hammersmith on the way back from Cardiff yesterday, for my regular appointment taking PG on his weekly grocery shop, then gossiping over a coffee in the Plum Cafe, COFX or Truth. He owns his flat (ground floor with a garden) and lives independently for all that it is retirement housing.

There was a woman in front of me on the path as I was strolling towards his door. This sort of situation always makes me uncomfortable, because I don't know if I might spook someone by seeming to be following her, or spook her even more by accelerating and overtaking. No need to worry on this occasion. She turned around, flashed me a smile and said hello. "Hello," I replied. "I'm Nick. I've come to visit Peter in number fifty seven." We strolled along talking about the weather until I had to turn left up the path and ring his bell.

We bumped into her again an hour or so later on the way back from coffee after Waitrose. She was putting some stuff into the recycling bin and PG introduced her to me more formally as a fellow resident.

I dunno. Wouldn't life be better if people were just nicer, friendlier and more polite on the street? That said I have zero experience of walking around as a single female. Possibly, on hearing grunting while taking a shortcut through the park, it might not be prudent to introduce yourself with a megawatt grin to whoever is hiding in the foliage.

Well that's me failing to solve the world's problems for another day. Same time tomorrow?

Flanders and Swann: Song Of Patriotic Prejudice

 The English, the English, the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest!

The rottenest bits of these islands of ours

We've left in the hands of three unfriendly powers

Examine the Irishman, Welshman or Scot

You'll find he's a stinker, as likely as not

Och aye, awa' wi' yon Edinburgh Festival!

The Scotsman is mean, as we're all well aware

And bony and blotchy and covered with hair

He eats salted porridge, he works all the day

And he hasn't got bishops to show him the way!

The English, the English, the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest!

Ah hit me old mother over the head with a shillelagh

The Irishman now our contempt is beneath

He sleeps in his boots and he lies in his teeth

He blows up policemen, or so I have heard

And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third!

The English are noble, the English are nice

And worth any other at double the price!

Ah, iechyd da!

The Welshman's dishonest, he cheats when he can

And little and dark, more like monkey than man

He works underground with a lamp in his hat

And he sings far too loud, far too often, and flat!

And crossing the Channel, one cannot say much

For the French or the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch

The Germans are German, the Russians are red

And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed!

The English are moral, the English are good

And clever and modest and misunderstood!

And all the world over, each nation's the same

They've simply no notion of playing the game

They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won

And they practise beforehand, which ruins the fun!

The English, the English, the English are best

So up with the English and down with the rest!

It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad

It's knowing they're foreign that makes them so mad!

For the English are all that a nation should be,

And the flower of the English are Donald, Michael,

Donald, Michael,

And Me!

Back from Cardiff to London this morning. 

The old hometown looks the same....

My brother John stayed at Bronwydd last night, so that we could go and visit mum together this morning. He found a "Golden Wedding" photograph album in the loft  room. A beautiful, pristine thing wrapped in gauze and housed in its own presentation box. Why not take it along to show to the lady the 50th anniversary of whose nuptials it celebrated? John and I both remembered the day itself, and the party, well. (On reflection maybe the party and aftermath not so much.)

Giving the notion no time to lose the name of action, we duly presented it to Her Majesty, who giddily cracked the spine in anticipation ......

Every single page was blank. Mum or Dad must have bought it intending to curate mementos before being overtaken by events. Either that or it was an avant-garde art statement. Very prone to them the old man was as I recall. "Épater Le Bourgeois," the superannuated provocateur was always saying, and he's still doing it from beyond the grave.

Vanished Wales

 I am driving down to Wales this afternoon, I'll meet my brother John this evening and we will visit mum tomorrow morning.

Perhaps this made me pay a little more attention than I usually would to a Facebook post from Newtown and the Irish in Cardiff as I had my daily browse. It said:

ITV : Vanishing Wales Series 2 Newtown

Unlike the series 'Dock of the Bay' which aired only a few weeks after filming, the producers tell us that the new series will not go to air until the new year, alas.

A little research suggests that the series is actually called Vanished Wales. Episode 3 of series 1 (here) "reveals the lost community in the Brecon Beacons, the Cardiff factory that had a future superstar on its payroll, and the much missed stadium where sporting history was made."

Getting even researchier (WalesOnline here and worth a read) I have established that the Cardiff factory was Currans and the superstar was Shirley Bassey. 

Currans, of course is where Dad first worked. So he really would have known a young Dame Shirley. I thought it was a load of old flannel. Speaking of flannel, as I remember he used to play cricket for Currans. "The teeth I knocked out with bouncers," he would recall; sentimental old fool. John and I should catch a basinful of the documentary this evening.

Load of old flannel? Basinful? I start writing in the old man's vocabulary whenever I think of him.

Management by wandering around

 Andy M sent me a link on Monday; Good interview with well known music Journo qhp has a new book out! (Very pleased with qhp in the place of who. It turns out I am not the only person who types one key to the left on occasion.) When I clicked the link to the podcast it turned out to be on Spotify so I let the phone install the app; it is already on my PC.

As a rule I listen to podcasts on Amazon Alexa devices; there's one in each room in the house (including the bathroom) except for the spare bedroom so I can play them on the everywhere group as I am wandering about between chores and bone idle noodling.

I've got a Spotify Free account and I was under the impression that Alexa Spotify skill only worked with Premium. Not so apparently:

Update June 23, 2020: Starting today, Spotify Free users in the U.K., Ireland, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Mexico, will begin to be able to stream Spotify through Amazon Alexa.

That is now done and dusted on my set up. Voice control is up and running but there are two unexpected bonuses. The first is that I can use Spotify on the PC or phone as a remote control to stream whatever I want to hear to whatever speaker or group I choose; very handy as voice control can be a bit hit and miss if you are after a specific version of a song for example.

The second might be a bug, but I have noticed that I don't get any adverts when Spotify music is coming through Echo speakers; switch back to the PC and they come up every few tracks.

Everyone needs a side hustle

Coyote Ugly Camden is open

1. Eerie Spice
2. Weary Spice
3. Beery Spice
4. Kashmiri Spice
5. Bleary Spice

Prodnose: I have literally no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Myself: “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

Prodnose: I am still none the wiser.

Myself: I agree but at least you are a little better informed. Here's a clue - Taylor Swift Wembley Stadium 2018. 
Prodnose: I give up.
Myself: Taylor Lautner’s fiancée, Taylor Dome, will change her name to Taylor Lautner after marrying the actor.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

An unforeseen side-effect of writing one thing a day down on these spindrift pages, is that - as a rule - I can find a glancing reference to anything approaching significance in my life and locate it in the space-time continuum. 

Thus, when the Burglar told me that his colostomy reversal is scheduled for the thirty first of the month, Icons passim told me that the original operation was on September 13th last year so he will have been living with the stoma for all but a fortnight shy of twelve months.

To put it in context, the NHS Guidance says "a colostomy reversal will only be carried out when you're in good health and have fully recovered. This will usually be at least 3 months after the initial colostomy surgery." A year as opposed to a quarter thereof is, I suppose, another indication of the Health Service's struggles. I'm not blaming anyone, I am just pointing it out. (Actually I am blaming people, that was just a prudent blanket disclaimer.)

More breathless front page news; as I link my posts to the same day last year I can see that it was (Icons passim) exactly five years ago that Rod, John and I reconvened in the Half Moon more than thirty years after we shared a flat opposite. Fingers crossed (both of them being continent-hopping International Men of Mystery) we are due to do it again towards the end of next month.

The path of the righteous man

 I have used this month's Audible credit to pre-order Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf which will be released on September the first.

Prodnose: Tagged a couple of cops. You kill anybody?

Myself: A few cops.

Prodnose: No real people?

Myself : Just cops.

In which I address my critics

 Why don't you take a flying f*ck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying f*ck at the mooooooooooooon?

Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

#TheatreDynasty

Now (Icons passim) it can be told. My cousin's boy is in the new Les Mis cast at the Sondheim in Shaftesbury Avenue (first performance 27/9).

Got an actress niece in Central and another in Guildhall.

Oh, and (first cousin once removed) Peter's new play opens in the Jermyn Street Theatre in October.

#TheatreDynasty doesn't begin to cover it. Redgrave Schmedgrave as I used to say before Ancestry DNA cruelly ripped my 2% Jewishness from me.

Scot-free no more

 AncestryDNA have done another of their regular revisions of my sample. I am now 98% Irish, 2% Scottish, and <1% Sardinian. I have been 2% Scottish before as I remember.

Here's the link - https://www.ancestry.co.uk/dna/origins/share/2291dec9-b75e-427d-bf76-0da2e1479c99.

I will put a label DNA on this post, then gradually retrospectively apply it to earlier ones to help me get a better handle on the trends and changes. I seem to remember that initially I was only 79% Irish for example.

Daryl Dimple

Before today I have made 21 references to William Dalrymple on the blog. I've even had a brief correspondence with him about Kerala as well as going to see him live, so you can say I am something of a fan. I was pleased to discover then that he is on a new podcast called Empire (Apple), (Spotify):

How do empires rise? Why do they fall? And how have they shaped the world around us today?

William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the stories, personalities and events of empire over the course of history.

The first series looks at the British in India, covering the East India Company, the Raj, Gandhi, Independence and Partition.

It is from Goalhanger, the same company that brings us The Rest is Politics etc.

Poker face

Andy H didn't manage to solve Wordle on Monday for the first time since I started doing it and we have been comparing results after pasting our "grids" into WhatsApp. Here's my "grid" for today.

Wordle 424 4/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜

⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜

🟨⬜🟩🟨🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I've still got a 100% record. The stats are at the top of this post, but I have no idea how good, bad or indifferent they are compared to the average.

https://mashable.com/article/best-wordle-starting-word

A change is as good as a wrist

Facebook showed me the photograph above yesterday. A muay Thai class exactly fifteen years ago; Kru Johnny Boon presiding. I used to take my Ben (second row right), Callum (front row left), and Jonnie (peeping over Callum's head). Take a look at the the cast on Callum's arm. Now he has grown up to play football for Chelsea and England he still wears an elasticated strap around the wrist. I never notice it without guiltily remembering it was me to took him along to the session at which he broke it

Just because I hate everyone doesn't mean they have to hate me too

pic.twitter.com/QJ4Dbqdx1W

— Jerry Sadowitz (@RealJSadowitz) August 14, 2022

L'affaire Sadowitz continues to rumble on. Here are his tour dates. I can't see anything in London, but I could be tempted by Sunday October 30th at the Glee Club in Cardiff; a venue new to me.

'Please note that I might just do card tricks and say NOTHING for a whole hour or I might just do the usual 'screaming fascist' schtick. Or both. Patrons may wish to drink alcohol pre-show to avoid boredom, embarrassment and guilt.'

Iconoclasts

 I came late to Salman Rushdie, probably because of what I perceived as the malign influence of the Amis-Barnes-McEwan-Rushdie boys' club back in the day, so when I finally did get round to Midnight's Children it was with low expectations, and driven by a self-abnegating sense of duty after it won the "Booker of Bookers" anniversary prize. More fool me. It is an absolutely marvelous book. An all time favourite of mine whose lustre is probably burnished in my eyes by the reluctance with which I first cracked its spine. Very happy to hear that Sir Salman is off the ventilator this morning, after the despicable attack on him.

In other developments, the Pleasance theatre has cancelled Jerry Sadowitz's Edinburgh fringe standup show  saying his material ‘does not align with our values.’ Have you ever heard of anything so pompous? We live in an age of banal, asphyxiating, crushing orthodoxy. Sadowitz and John Lydon remember were the only two public figures with the chutzpah to break the establishment's omertà on Jimmy Savile's crimes.

As for my good self, I rarely look down, but when I did yesterday I noticed that I had put my polo shirt on inside out. Then, this morning, I realised I had left the front door unlocked overnight.

Prodnose: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

Myself: I know! I know! T-shirt the wrong way round. Door unlocked. Crazeee!!

Careering

Leaving the office on Thursday I saw a note tucked under the windscreen wiper. A van driver had scratched my car door (and also I noticed my wing mirror) and left me details of her vehicle and contact details for the company. The company was EnhanceAble; perhaps more accurately a charity providing social care for disabled people. I felt a bit guilty about putting the bite on them for my repairs after that especially after speaking to them on the phone but I console myself that the matter will be handled by our insurance companies as opposed to our own bank accounts.

Anyway it has put me in mind of a story; maybe one we can share with mum over Skype at half past ten. Long enough ago for my youngest brother to be driving but still living at home, he had a minor knock of a morning, exchanged details with the driver of the other car and thought no more about it until got home and met my mother that is. (I like to think of her with her arms folded across her chest, her right foot tapping, and the dreaded Death-Star death-stare laser-beaming from her eyes.)

Apparently she had answered the door in the afternoon to find a tearful pregnant woman with a further child in a push chair on her doorstep. This was the wife of the tradesman whose van had bumped John's car. After a few hard years it seems, they were just getting back on the straight and narrow and the repercussions of this incident were likely to plunge them back into penury and despair.

You might as well have told mum that John had stuck up a post office wielding a chewed off shotgun with once of her old stockings pulled over his head as a mask.

I think it reflects well on her now I come to think of it all these years later. But then again it wasn't me who had to put my hand in my pocket.

Getting ready for the weekend.

When you've finally become an adult and have your priorities straight. pic.twitter.com/fSSIX2I6XT

— The Cultured Ruffian (@CulturedRuffian) October 12, 2020

Shock Jock

Back early in June I wrote:

More and more, I am starting to suspect that I personally know someone who is better informed on any specific hot button issue than any member of the dreary commentariat.

I will start gathering these exemplars together over the months and years into my own new Kitchen Cabinet.

Old school friend, Kevin T is now added as the third member (after Rod and Emma) of the roster. We were out on one of our occasional catch ups on Tuesday evening. After a long and distinguished career, very much of which was spent in telecoms in Asia, he was able gently to correct me and steer me in a more wholesome direction whenever I started ranting, about the OneWeb satellite system or the PRC/Taiwan stand off, by the deceptively simple expedient of knowing far more about, and having spent more time thinking about, the issues than me.

I may have to confront the possibility that I am gradually morphing into Alex Jones, the  swivel-eyed,  alt-right conspiracy theorist. I need my consigliere's, my viziers', and my grey eminences' hand holding. That's Rod, Emma and Kevin so far. God help them. God help me. God help us all.

Oblivion Neutron Bomb

I was saddened to hear that Olivia Newton-John had died. Unlike almost everyone else in the world though I flashed back - not to Grease but to "Coming Home" a documentary exploring  the story of her Welsh ancestry, that begins in her father’s home town of Cardiff. 

It wasn't on the iPlayer yesterday but it is this morning. Available for 29 days at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001bdkz/coming-home-olivia-newton-john. Well worth look.

Facts at random; her maternal grandfather was Max Born, the physics Nobel prize laureate and her father - Brinley Newton-John - was the man who took Rudolf Hess into custody.

Nephews and Nieces

My two youngest nephews were on our birthday Skype chat with mum last week and demanded that I produce my nunchuks. I was rather flattered to be honest as I can only remember demonstrating them once before (again over Skype during the coronavirus lockdown) so I sourced a couple fro Amazon - one red, one black - and had them delivered in Cardiff. Seb, Caroline says, "got all his karate /fighting stuff out and put it on display for bedtime." You can see it, including shuriken and daggers etc. above. Also she heard him get up and go to the bathroom in the night, popped her head in just to to double check he was alright. He had taken his nunchaku with him, in case he was attacked by ninja while he was sitting on the loo I imagine.

Also, I finally got to see the Seagull at the Harold Pinter on Saturday; a rearranged booking after the July performance we had originally lined up was "covid in the cast" cancelled. More style than substance in the direction if you want my opinion, but Indira Varma was excellent as Irina Arkadina which made it interesting to see it sitting next to Mia as that was her role when they did it at Central not so long ago.

Les Mis

Grantaire

Grantaire is a member of Les Amis de l'ABC. He is best known for being the skeptic of Les Amis who believes in nothing, except Enjolras, who is his only reason for joining the society. An art student and skeptic with no interest in revolution. Grantaire is involved with the Friends of the ABC due to his friendship with its members and his admiration, veneration and love for Enjolras, who disdains him for his skepticism and drunkenness. He is noted to be extraordinarily ugly and a heavy drinker, and he sleeps through most of the fighting in the June Rebellion. Despite this, he eventually declares himself to be one of the insurgents and dies alongside Enjolras, hand in hand.

Songs

Monsieur Thénardier

Sacha Baron Cohen in the film.

Songs.

Prodnose: This is one of these secret message things I suppose, intelligible to a select coterie, possibly resonant for you when revisited in some tranquil future, yet opaque to the great unwashed, and breaching no confidentiality agreements?

Myself:  When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The purpose of the rule is to encourage open discussion since anything said is "off the record".

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

 

Regular readers will remember that I wrote about Hughesovka in 2007 (passim). Hughesovska became Stalino in 1924.  It took on its modern title, Donetsk, in 1961.

The city of Donetsk was founded in 1869 by Welsh businessman John Hughes, a Merthyr Tydfil boy.

Wikipedia

The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR or DNR; Russian: Донецкая Народная Республика, tr. Donetskaya Narodnaya Respublika, IPA: [dɐˈnʲetskəjə nɐˈrodnəjə rʲɪˈspublʲɪkə]) is a breakaway puppet quasi-state proclaimed within the territory of Ukraine, which is militarily occupied by Russia and Russian-backed separatists. The DPR claims the entirety of Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast within the Donbas region as its territory. The capital city of the DPR is Donetsk, which is also the de jure capital of the oblast.

The world is a very strange place.

Shavings from the bench of the master

I wanted to preserve this video so I thought I would see what I could do with achieving a sort of  TikTok vertical look and feel. Project working name: DikTuk. 

Now I'm here, I may as well have a go of uploading it to your actual TikTok.

@nickjbrowne

Balloon

♬ original sound Nick Browne597

Radar Love

About Flightradar24

Flightradar24 (https://www.flightradar24.com/53.1,-2.54/6) is a global flight tracking service that provides you with real-time information about thousands of aircraft around the world.

So far, so plane-spottery (shome mishtake shurely? aerovidology Sub-Ed). Anyway, according to the Grauniard, viewers set new records on it earlier this week, as they watched the seven-hour flight of Nancy Pelosi from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei.

Ian Petchenik, the head of communications for Flightradar24, said the site had seen “unprecedented sustained interest” over Pelosi’s flight, and at its peak, a record 708,000 people were simultaneously watching the little red icon representing the House speaker’s Boeing C-40C – callsign SPAR19 – as it looped around the Philippines to bypass Chinese bases in the South China Sea, then soared across the Luzon Strait, reportedly under the watchful cover of a trio of US aircraft carriers, and arced across Taiwan’s mountain ranges before touching down in Taipei.

708,000 people! I like the odd geek out as much as the next man, but I guess I just wasn't made for these times. If anyone launches www.nuclearmissile24.com, please don't tell me.

Myself: See how I did that "launches"? You can launch a website isn't it, but you could also launch a missile! Edgy, alternative, sticking it to the man ......

Prodnose (underwhelmed): You truly are the second coming of Lenny Bruce.

Octogenarians

Mum is 85 today. I won't be able to get to Cardiff for the event, but most of the rest of the family will and have said they will include me over Skype if possible. It was September 6th, 2018 that she fell and fractured her hip (passim). Just a month shy of four years. Nothing has been the same since.

Might as well work out PG's age now I am on this page. Born 1939, he will be 83 on September 7th. Working on his upcoming play is doing him the power of good in my opinion. There is a lesson there about staying stimulated as you get on.

A lesson, the 80 year old John Cale (born 9 March 1942 Garnant, Carmarthenshire, Wales) doesn't need to be taught. Early this week he released the new track 'Night Crawling', accompanied by an official video. The song reminiscence about his friendship with David Bowie. “It’s been a helluva past two years and I’m glad to finally share a glimpse of what’s coming ahead,” Cale said in a statement. “There was this period around mid-late Seventies when David and I would run into each other in New York. There was plenty of talk about getting some work done but of course we’d end up running the streets, sometimes until we couldn’t keep a thought in our heads, let alone actually get a song together!" Cale plays synths, bass, piano and drums on the track assisted by Mars Volta drummer Deantoni Parks and vocalist Dustin Boyer.

Sparky enough that generation of South Walians now in their ninth decade eh? I suppose Mum's accident on September 6th and Peter's birthday on the 7th will be forever linked by my magpie brain now. Probably means I won't forget either date moving forward though.

Old Ruts Kenya

Anyone would think it was the weekend already!

The world is a stage for these children after the confidence and joy @kingsrugbyKE instills in them 🕺😎@maroitoje @borispomroy @victoriahrush pic.twitter.com/wdqYAFtjQr

— The Atlas Foundation (@theatlascharity) July 26, 2022

A quick pint in the Standard straight after work yesterday with the son and heir, followed by a pizza in Corleone. (No booze for Ben who was off to the gym eightish.)

I forgot to tell him that Maro Itoje had been out to visit Old Ruts Kenya. The jerseys are unmistakable; what a wonderful club the Ruts are. I was never happier than when I was watching him playing for them as a boy on Sunday mornings.

Four degrees of vindaloo

 

I am a day late to celebrating the Lionesses' triumph in the Euro 2022 final, but here is the winning goal scoring Chloe Kelly giving us her version of Vindaloo.

"Vindaloo" is a song by British band Fat Les. The music was co-written by Blur bassist Alex James and bassist Guy Pratt. The lyrics were written by comedian Keith Allen. It was released as a single in 1998 and recorded for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The song was originally written as a parody of football chants, but was adopted as one in its own right and became a classic.

I have met Guy Pratt. He is Ollie's cousin. Mia, my niece, met Keith Allen when he was filming The Pembrokeshire Murders. Keith wrote Vindaloo with Guy. I love it when a plan comes together.

The Rise and Rise of Ella Paramor

We've missed the auditions over the weekend, but the saloon is opening on August 18th. Thirty three minutes on the tube to Camden Town from the 'Wood then a five minute walk to Coyote Ugly, The Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, London NW1 8AH. The Night Tube started up again on the Northern Line in July and I have a 60+ Oyster card. What could possibly go wrong? See Icons passim.

Prodnose: This is one of these secret message things I suppose, intelligible to a select coterie, possibly resonant for you when revisited in some tranquil future, yet opaque to the great unwashed, and breaching no confidentiality agreements?

Myself (settling into armchair and lighting pipe): Correct! You know my methods Watson, apply them.

P.S. I wonder how the Moscow and St Petersburg branches are getting on?