The best time to drink champagne is before lunch.

My brother saw Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in No Man's Land by Harold Pinter, when it was on tour in Cardiff and before it opened in the West End.

I tried to get tickets at the Wyndhams' Theatre based on his review only to find that it was practically sold out, and the few scattered seats still available were eye-wateringly expensive.

The National Theatre Live has come to the rescue though, as it is being broadcast to cinemas on December 15th.

Herewith the skinny, http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/ntlout19-no-man-s-land.

I'll probably try and catch it in the HMV Curzon.

On Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize

Noting how popular "Visions of Johanna" remains among "hardcore Dylanophiles", Andy Gill suggests it is the enigmatic quality of the song that is responsible for its popularity—"forever teetering on the brink of lucidity, yet remaining impervious to strict decipherment". Gill writes the song begins by contrasting two lovers, the carnal Louise, and "the more spiritual but unattainable" Johanna. Ultimately, for Gill, the song seeks to convey how the artist is compelled to keep striving to pursue some elusive vision of perfection.

Myself: But it contains the ludicrous Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze I can’t find my knees”.

Clinton Heylin has described what he construes as the strange circumstances surrounding the song. Written around the time of Dylan's marriage to Sara Lownds, Heylin describes it as "one of the oddest songs ever written by a man who has just tied the knot and is enjoying a brief honeymoon in the city". Noting that the song is an elegy for a past lover, Heylin speculates that "it is awfully tempting to see Johanna as his muse" who, in the song, is "not here". For Heylin, the triumph of the song lies in "the way Dylan manages to write about the most inchoate feelings in such a vivid, immediate way"

Myself: But it contains the ludicrous Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze I can’t find my knees”.

Dylan critic Michael Gray also praises the subtlety of the song. Gray acknowledges that it is difficult to say what this song is "about", since it is at once indefinable and precise. For Gray, its principal achievement lies in the way it confuses categories, using language to be simultaneously serious and flippant, delicate and coarse, and mixing up "abstract neo-philosophy and figurative phraseology".

Myself: But it contains the ludicrous Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze I can’t find my knees”.

Robert Shelton called "Visions of Johanna" one of Dylan's major works. He writes that Dylan's technique of throwing out "skittering images" evokes "a mind floating downstream"; these "non-sequential visions" are the record of a fractured consciousness. Shelton argues that the song explores a hopeless quest to reach an ideal, the visions of Johanna, and yet without this quest life becomes meaningless. He suggests that the same paradox is explored by Keats in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn".

Keats: When old age shall this generation waste,| Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe| Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,| "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all| Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Bob: Jeeze I can’t find my knees

Aquafaba

I ran up some falafel mix last night. It is in the fridge to be furnished forth this evening.  Can I conjure vegan mayo to go with it? Watch this space.

As president, will you sing or veto legislation?

The President of the United States has numerous power ballads, including those explicitly granted by Article II of the United States Constitution, implied power ballads, power ballads granted by Acts of Congress, and the influence and soft power ballads that come from being President of the United States of America.

football is a cruel mistress

Andy H has very kindly offered to take me along, on one of their season tickets, to go and see Swansea visit Arsenal at the Emirates on Saturday.

As I write Cardiff City are in the relegation zone (second to bottom) in the Championship, and AFC Wimbledon are tenth in league one; very respectable just after promotion.

If things stay as they are I can return his favour by taking him to Wimbledon v Cardiff at Kingsmeadow next season. I imagine he will be thrilled. "Quid pro quo, Clarisse."

Fashion trends you need to know this Autumn

There are no fashion trends you need to know this autumn, but the immanence of human finitude — the fact that we’re dying right now and not in some distant future — should create the impetus for philosophical reflection.

On balance, I wish there were autumn fashion trends we needed to know instead.

Wittgenstein is invoked

Pro12: Ospreys 46-24 Cardiff Blues

Clinical Ospreys hammered Cardiff Blues in the first Welsh derby of the season.

Blues started well and led 10-3 after Kristian Dacey's try, but shipped 19 points after full-back Dan Fish was yellow carded for a professional foul.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." („Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.")

The thrill of it all

This morning I reattached a cupboard door hinge and changed light bulbs

Any Fish you wish

In tonight's derby, for the Blues "the astute Dan Fish is preferred to the maverick talent of Matthew Morgan at full-back" while the Ospreys have "opted for Sam Davies, with Wales fly-half Dan Biggar restricted to a spot on the bench."

I am driving back to Cardiff this afternoon. I think dinner is likely to be taken on the lap in front of BBC2 Wales on the telly in the lounge rather than - more formal like - in the dining room.

I went to my 384th yoga class at 6:30 this morning

I believe the best way for us to grow as human beings is to free ourselves from the anxieties and attachments of daily life. If we pursue practices and rituals that lead toward a oneness with existence, if we devote ourselves to mindfulness and meditation, then the cultivation of harmony is available to us all. However, if it is true spiritual enlightenment that you seek, you’re gonna have to get past me first.

For those with the patience and the commitment, a path to nirvana awaits, and I—His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet—am standing right in the middle of it, ready to throw down.

The only way you’ll ever come to experience the metaphysical unity of mind and soul is by tangoing with yours truly, capiche?

It will be a difficult journey, one upon which you must elevate yourself from excess and learn to derive pleasure from simplicity. There will be many obstacles to overcome, and often it will seem as though your greatest adversary lies within yourself. But in fact, your most determined foe is stronger, fiercer, and coming straight out of Dharamsala packing 600 years of reincarnated spiritual wisdom and a blazing left hook. And you’re gonna have to build up some serious inner strength before you take me on, because I bring the pain, and I don’t back down.

Is it the knowledge of the universe you seek? Do you wish to attain a realization of the interconnectedness of all things? Then you must possess kindness, perseverance, compassion, tolerance, and an iron jaw. Because the only way you’ll ever come to experience the metaphysical unity of mind and soul is by tangoing with yours truly, capiche?

You will find there is much to gain from leading a more mindful existence, one that allows you to center your thoughts and channel all your energy into coming at me with everything you’ve got. And you’re gonna need it, because once you step into the ring with me, you definitely won’t want to shift your attention away from the now.
You will know that life is suffering after I’m done with you.

A serene existence free of worry and strife awaits you if you can take down this lean, mean incarnation of the high bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. So come on. Let’s do this thing. You’ll become acquainted with the universal impermanence of being real quick.

I got nowhere else to be, compadre, and I’m ready to impart on you some serious teachings, if you get my drift. Perhaps you wish to learn release from feelings of longing. Then you must abandon your attachment to all material things, except, of course, your first-aid kit. Do you have what it takes to relinquish worldly desires? To abandon the idea of self? To surrender to that which you cannot control? To reach a state of utter tranquility? Okay, then. Nut up and take a swing.

It requires careful discipline to live a mindful life, but you will find there are great rewards in separating yourself from the physical experience of what I’m about to do to you. It’s you and me, buddy. If you want your enlightenment, come and get it. But I’m warning you, if you seek a state of pure transcendence, then the last thing you’re going to see is a flash of crimson robe as you hit the deck. And when you’re gripping your throbbing head trying to figure out what just happened, you can meditate on this: When your ass gets knocked to the ground and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Namaste.

How do you like them apples?

What happens when two talking devices are alone in a house?

Myself: Alexa, how can a people who do not mean to understand death hope to understand love, and who will sound the alarm?

Alexa: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question you asked.

only train on days ending in a Y

Ben quit judo for rugby in 2011, but I remember asking him if there was any crossover in skills.

"Judo helps you to be stubborn in mauls," he said. I thought that was quite pithy.

Eddie Jones agrees it seems.

Monday Morning Feeling

Report: Feeling Bad Right Now Most Reliable Predictor Of Feeling Bad Forever

STANFORD, CA—Saying their findings were consistent across all ages and demographic groups, psychologists at Stanford University released a groundbreaking report this week confirming that feeling bad right now is an extremely accurate predictor of feeling bad forever.

The report, which draws its conclusions from a longitudinal study of 500 participants conducted over the course of 30 years, found a nearly perfect correlation between experiencing sadness, anger, loneliness, and despair at the current moment and then continuing to experience those exact same emotions for the rest of one’s life no matter what.

“Based on our findings, we can state with a high level of certainty that anyone who feels miserable at the present time will, from this moment onward, always feel miserable,” said the report’s co-author Danielle Bowman, adding that researchers observed zero cases in which a subject’s feelings of sorrow or hopelessness ever went away in the short or long term. “For example, if, at the moment, you are desperately lonely and depressed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests you will still feel that way when you wake up tomorrow, the day after that, a month from now, in five years, and indeed, every single waking second until you die.”

“There were, however, several instances in which people’s emotional states did eventually change,” Bowman continued. “In roughly 31 percent of cases, people began to feel much worse over the years.”

You might feel that there is nothing you can do to help, but how difficult is it to bawl "cheer up darlin' it might never happen" at a subdued stranger who is alone on the street?

Ice cold in Alexa

I went to see Peter Frankopan talk about The Silk Roads: A New History of the World at the Wimbledon BookFest yesterday, and great stuff it was.

I had bought all 24 hours of it on Audible as an unabridged book a while back so I could bone up simply by saying "Alexa, read The Silk Roads" to my new Amazon Echo and have it played back as I was noodling about in the kitchen.

Alexa is also in control of my central heating now, but we had our first row this morning when I asked her to boost it only for her to announce that it was warm and turn the boiler off.

Feed the Fish

Vote for your September TRY OF THE MONTH:https://t.co/EFLmoU8G2E@sshingler10 @TomJ_11 @DanFish15 @matthewmorgan23

— Cardiff Blues (@cardiff_blues) 30 September 2016

Please vote for Dan Fish's try against Munster above. He is back from the injury he sustained scoring it today, though starting on the bench.

Fast flies meanwhile the irreparable hour

Ben is sixteen today, and Rayburn's little girl was born last night.

Gosh.

Alexa

The Amazon Echo arrived yesterday. I have set it up at home, told it where it lives and given it access to my diary.

I've got it to play music and podcasts, tell me jokes, read me the news, and time things.

Just skimming the surface so far, but it is an amazing product.

The pedal hits the metal at http://alexa.amazon.co.uk/

the transferred epithet

At the moment, on the reading front, I am yomping through Ben Judah's This is London: Life and Death in the World City.

'Judah grabs hold of London and shakes out its secrets' The Economist

This is London in the eyes of its beggars, bankers, coppers, gangsters, carers, witch-doctors and sex workers.

This is London in the voices of Arabs, Afghans, Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Russians.

This is London as you've never seen it before.

'An eye-opening investigation into the hidden immigrant life of the city' Sunday Times

'Full of nuggets of unexpected information about the lives of others . . . It recalls the journalism of Orwell' Financial Times.

Up to a point Lord Copper. He certainly never met an adjective he didn't like, yon Ben J. If I had got the chance to wield the blue pencil, this book would have been a lot, lot shorter.

What's On?

NEW: Tube staff have been told Northern line night tube will start Friday 18th November. Nothing official yet.

— Tom Edwards (@BBCTomEdwards) September 26, 2016

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Myself: "Cut your monthly TV subscription and enjoy FREE Movies, shows and live entertainment from all over the world including sports." It seems to good to be true.

Prodnose: It is too good strictly to be legal, that is for sure.

Myself: How about http://www.alphr.com/software/1001730/how-to-install-kodi-on-an-amazon-fire-stick-use-the-low-cost-dongle-to-stream-tv?

Prodnose: OK.