Folk Club

The Baker Arms, Child Okeford, Dorset

A slightly unusual post this one, but a puff for the 'Come All Ye' which happens on the second Thursday of the month at the above pub in the wilds of Dorset.  Through a curious chain of circumstances I met up with Chas Upton who runs the above get together, only 50 years or so after he ran the Grosvenor Folk Club, on the London Road in Bath, where we had many prestigious and charismatic guests, including Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, The Halyard, Cyril Tawney, Alex Campbell, The Strawberry Hill Boys (before they became The Strawbs), the Yetties, Fred Wedlock, and many more.  The life of the front man, introducer, producer, MC, warm-up singer is not easy, but Chas did it well.  He now has a fine group called Fippeny Piece and fronts the above mentioned Come All Ye.  Having spent some of my first three years at medical school hosting and doing warm up for a folk club at International Students' House in London, I have felt the urge to get back on the road, so this was my first gig for quite a long time.  For those interested I sang Lord Franklin's Expedition (Martin Carthy version) and a song by Ralph McTell called The Maginot Waltz.  Remarkable how many truly talented people crawl out of the woodwork at events like this though - if I remember aright there were two fiddlers, four recorder players, one saxophonist, one autoharp player (last time I saw one of those Peggy Seeger was playing it), several bells, two bodhran, one bagpipes, one gaelic harp, a bass guitar, a tambourine and about four guitar/singer combinations.  The Mummers turned up, and a good time was had by all.  A few photos give you the feel of the occasion and I hope you can hear a typical reel with most of the players joining in:

Happy singing and Happy Christmas!

Ypres and the Menin Gate. Westhoek, Belgium (Flanders Fields)

The Menin Gate

At 8pm precisely every evening, snow, rain or shine, the Last Post is sounded by buglers at the huge gate which leads in an Easterly direction out of the town of Ypres, called in Flemish Ieper (pronounced Ee-purr), and by the British and Allied troops in the First World War ‘Wipers’ (see the 'Wipers Times' below).

Three pages from the famous 'Wipers Times'

Since the beginning of the centenary of WW1 in 2014, increasing numbers of visitors, tourists if you will, have come to this place to remember and to pay homage.  The Menin Gate, the Menenpoort, has become a focus for all those who feel touched by this conflict to come and remember and make what a friend of mine has called ‘An Observance’.  The advantage of this description is that it does away with any religious or pacifist ideals.  It simply describes the pull that those who come feel, without explaining why.  Indeed, it would be foolish to suggest that people come to gain an understanding.  How can one understand the incomprehensible?  And is there any use in coming here while myriad barbarous armies still hold vast numbers of peoples in subjection?  These facts are beyond us.  Neither is there anything one can do about those who are already dead.  But what is it motivates British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and other commonwealth citizens, all at least three generations separated from those who fought here to come and ‘pay their respects’, to lay a wreath perhaps.  For some families there must be a sense of closure – a grandfather lost in a distant land to whom no subsequent member of the family made obeisance and acknowledgement.  This perhaps explains, apart from the notable anniversaries of particular battles why so many Australians were present when I visited on Friday September 18^th, 2015.  For those who only have a vague inkling that the Menin Gate is important; like its counterpart on the Somme at Thiepval, it is a memorial to the missing.  Almost 55,000 names of those who died and were never found are inscribed here.  The names of UK soldiers who were lost up until 15^th August 1917 were carved on the stone.  After that the space for names ran out, and the remainder are commemorated at Tyne Cot, near Passchendaele.  The first ‘Last Post’ was sounded at the inauguration in July 1927.  If you wish, you can listen…

https://youtu.be/g0nnV3f6Vqs

During a tour of the battlefields and memorials of the Ypres Salient, the contrast between the reality of 100 years ago and the here and now constantly intrudes.  Next to the Essex Farm cemetery, which contains the bunkers used as field hospitals by John McCrae, the Canadian army surgeon who wrote the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, cars race by on the Ypres bypass.  McCrae had seen service in the Boer War, but volunteered again for service in 1914.  He even brought his horse, ‘Bonfire’, with him.  He died in the last year of the war from pneumonia and meningitis.  The poppies which he left in his poem as an indelible reminder of the experience grow on poor or disturbed ground, and were everywhere in Flanders.  Nowadays however, at Essex Farm, no trace of a poppy is seen.  The fertile flat farmland, as far as the eye can see, is uniform, cultivated, and carries no visible reminder.  Even at the nearby statue of ‘The Brooding Soldier’, a Canadian memorial, the fields run up to the little road at the side, with not a trace of red except for the enormous agricultural machines which chug along the neat furrows.

The 'Brooding Soldier'

Adjacent to the Brooding Soldier memorial, no poppies, just red machines

Another place of interest, Langemark Cemetery, is a vast and sinister necropolis of German dead.  In later years, owing to the legend which grew up around the many dead of the 22^nd and 27^th Reserve Corps buried here, it became a place of pilgrimage for Adolf Hitler.  The myth of heroic German students, going to their death singing the Deutschlandlied, proved a powerful propaganda tool.  And until the De-Hitlerisation of Germany, there was a Langemarckstrasse in almost every town.  24,917 German soldiers and airmen are buried here.  The expressionist statues of soldiers by Emil Krieger give an otherworldly and alien feel to this cemetery.

Passendale, previously Passchendaele, is a tiny village in the middle of further vast tracts of unremarkable and innocent-seeming farmland.  If it were not for the association with the 3^rd Battle of Ypres in Summer and Autumn 1917 it would be only too easy to pass by here, on the way to somewhere else…  It is of course immortalised as the site of the largest mud and blood bath of the First War.  The largest British Commonwealth cemetery anywhere, at nearby Tyne Cot, is the most popular place to visit in the whole of this region.  11,956 Commonwealth war dead are buried here, and the memorial wall contains the names of 34,957 missing who died after 15^th August 1917.  Here again, the everyday and the ironic seem to intrude.  Perhaps it is the very popularity of the place – there are many visitors every day of the week.  But something jars: parties of schoolchildren roam all over, even climbing the central memorial cross, shouting at one another, playing games, fiddling with iphones and ipods.  Is it right to drag these armies of young people to this place?  Their youth gives them that impenetrable belief in their own immortality.  What would the armies buried under the turf think?  Or should one agree with David Geraint Jones, war poet of the Second World War, who wrote ‘… Your peace is bought with mine, and I am paid in full, and well, if but the echo of your laughter reaches me in Hell’.*

The tour of the Ypres Salient teaches one a few things which had been a puzzle in the past.  Why were Hill 60 and Hill 62 so called?  (They were 60 and 62 metres above sea level respectively).  Why was the mud of Passchendaele, which swallowed entire trains of supplies, horses, men, and armour, so severe?  (The heavy rains of late July 1917 fell on agricultural land whose elaborate drainage system of ditches and channels had been destroyed by the bombardment).  And why was it a ‘salient’?  (The bulge in the battle lines around the town of Ypres created a classic salient, which in warfare is a military position which can be attacked, but can also fire, on three sides).

Returning to Ypres, another oddity.  Sipping a glass of Passchendaele beer in a lovely old bar, it is hard to believe, but true, that this is an enormous theme park, if you will, a recreation, a ‘Disney’.  Many people, including the British, did not want the ruins of Ypres to be razed and rebuilt.  Churchill said; ‘A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world.’  And yet it was, and the Menin Gate, as night falls, gives a glimpse through the arch of the beautiful Cloth Hall, Belfry, and St Martin’s Cathedral, such as it might have looked a hundred years ago.

These are sombre musings, and I can’t help feeling that those carefree children might someday return with their children or grandchildren, and feel differently about the silence that hangs about these places.

But finally, and most upsetting of all.  At Essex Farm Cemetery, amid the neat rows, is the stone to Valentine Joe Strudwick, one of the youngest soldiers to die in the Great War.  Others may have been younger – there is some dispute over the family names and the exact ages, but Joe is known to have been only 15 when he was killed on 14^th January 1916.  Here is a photograph of his memorial.

 

Somehow, most upsetting of all...

Postscript:

John McCrae's poem.  Pacifists prefer to quote only verses one and two...

*David Rhys Geraint Jones is an intriguing and little known figure.  His poetry is scarce and extremely difficult to find.  I first discovered the poem referred to in the post above in an anthology of Second World War poetry edited by Brian Gardner entitled ‘The Terrible Rain’, published by Methuen, London, in 1966.  The poem had been taken from an earlier anthology published in 1950 by Oxford University Press, then entitled, ‘For Your Tomorrow’.  Jones died of wounds received in Normandy on June 28, 1944.  His parents lived at Merlin’s Hill, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.  He had been educated, first, at Haverfordwest Grammar School (as was I), later at Cheltenham and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.  Gardner titled the poem ‘The Light of Day’, which is taken from its first line, but it seems that it may originally have been entitled ‘Your peace is bought with mine’.  The three poems Geraint Jones wrote in early 1944 have also been set to music by a horn player, Anthony Randall.  Perhaps even more famous is another of the three entitled, ‘Let me not see old age’.  Here are both of them:

The Light of Day

The light of day is cold and grey and there is no more peace

By the high white moon-washed walls, where we laughed and where we sung;

And I can’t go back to those days of short unthinking ease,

When I was very foolish and you were very young.

For you the laurel and the rose will bloom, and you will see

The dawn’s delight, firelight on rafters, wind, seas, and thunder,

Children asleep and dreams and hearts at ease, when life will be,

Even at its close, a quiet and an ageless wonder.

For me the poppies soon will dance and sway in Haute Avesnes:

The sunrise of my love slides into dusk, its day untasted:

Yet as I lie, turf-clad, and freed of passion, and of pain,

I find my sacrifice of golden things not wasted;

Your peace is bought with mine, and I am paid in full, and well,

If but the echo of your laughter reaches me in hell.

Let me not see old age

Let me not see old age: Let me not hear

The proffered help, the mumbled sympathy,

The well-meant tactful sophistries that mock

Pathetic husks who once were strong and free

And in youth’s fickle triumph laughed and sang,

Loved, and were foolish; and at the close have seen

The fruits of folly garnered, and that love,

Tamed and encaged, stale into grey routine.

Let me not see old age; I am content

With my few crowded years; laughter and strength

And song have lit the beacon of my life.

Let me not see it fade, but when the long

September shadows steal across the square,

Grant me this wish: they will not find me there.

Edinburgh Festival 2015

To most people the festival is synonymous with the ‘Fringe’.  This is not only because Fringe events outnumber the core festival events by many hundreds, possibly thousands to one, but because of the greater accessibility of the Fringe.  It’s impossible to walk anywhere in the centre of Edinburgh without being assailed by ‘Flyerists’, the often bizarrely costumed actors from the many events taking place who are competing for your attention and for your business.  The Fringe is the nursery of talent, but many more times it is the kindergarten of mediocrity.  Without wanting to sound like an entry to ‘Pseuds Corner’, the infamous column in Private Eye which lampoons pomposity and pretention, here are a few illustrated gems from Edinburgh.  One advantage of going to classical music Fringe concerts is that they are often in Edinburgh’s lovely old churches, where the occasional surprise awaits:

 

The Canongate Kirk - an unexceptional looking facade

Robert Fergusson, poet. Born 1750, died in Edinburgh's Bedlam in 1774.  Influenced Robert Burns
Statue outside the Canongate Kirk

Magnificent bronze of Robert Burns (1759-1796) inside Canongate Kirk

Unesco City of Culture, 2015.  'Books, Words, Ideas'

The other Greyfriars Bobby.  Not many tourists see this one, presented by the USA, just below the Western walls of Edinburgh Castle

Roy Lichtenstein - his take on Monet's Nympheas, Sign writer's enamel on stainless steel (plus indistinct portrait of photographer)

Duane Hanson's wonderful 'Tourists' sculpture, 1970.  Part of permanent collection, Museum of Modern Art 1

Not a sculpture - 'Blowers' reacts with horror at meeting Andrew McLeod

Is this the largest piece of modern art?  Landform at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 1

Wonderful piece by Kwang Young Chun, a Korean artist, Dovecot Gallery.  See below for details...

Second paragraph a possible entrant for Pseuds Corner, but at least it explains how the art/sculpture is done

Glenys McLaren kicks Kwang Young Chun into touch

Another KYC exhibit

The complete collection of tickets!

Bizarrely titled shows are everywhere...

Lucy Formby as Nell Gwyn - you heard about her here first!

A Fringe winner.  'Swallow' by Stef Smith.  Best described as 'challenging' in the wake of disturbing plays such as those by Sarah Kane.  The acting by Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Anita Vetesse, and Emily Wachter is nonetheless remarkable.

And finally, two images from Maurits Escher - the first major exhibition of his work in the UK.  Above: Day and Night

Escher's final wood block print - done in his 70s - mortally ill from cancer, the concentration required to produce this image is remarkable.  All at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2

One of my least 'wordy' blogs - they say a picture is worth a thousand words...

The Royal Bournemouth Hospital CIU Tenth Birthday Rap - As Described By a Grateful Patient

Cautionary Note: this post is unlikely to mean anything to anybody who does not work in Cardiology at Royal Bournemouth Hospital!

Yo dudes hey come on cut da crap
This is yo’ 10^th Birthday rap

Listen what I’m putting down

Yours is the finest place around

Fo’ heart attacks and all that shit

I tell you baby  - you is it.

I gone down Boscombe just las’ week

I met dis guy, gave me some heat

He axed me did I want to score

Some coke so I said ‘Tell me more.’

Now I is used to doin’ weed

But man dat stuff was good indeed.

I sniff, I smoke, thought it’s the best;

Then I got me dis pain ‘n the chest.

Man that sure was powerful crack –

I got myself a heart attack.

Nearly scared myself to death

When I had that darned VF:

‘Crash’; I thought I has been tasered,

Shot, or maybe I was lasered;

The paramedic says to me,’

‘Wake up man: can you see me?’

We shocked you sir; going by the rules,

We gave you several hundred Joules.

Ah said, ‘Yo’ takin’ me to heaven?’

He said, ‘No, man, just Bee Haitch Seven.

We won’t hang round in A and E

You gone and blocked yo’ LAD.

We need to get some blood going trew;

We taking you to C-I-U.

Now wid yo’ ‘lectrics switched back on

We won’t need Richard, Mark, or John.

We need a plumber, what is mo’

We gonna give you Reopro.

We got Peter O’Kane, Manas, Tim;

You really are a Lucky Jim.’

(He says) ‘This will make you smile;

We got a guy dey call de Rotweil.

We get de Asian team come in:

Suneel or new boy Dr Din.’

I said, ‘Dose guys are good at cricket

But I’se kinda on a sticky wicket;

Come on man, just be a pal’

He said ‘We got one gal.

Yeah Rosie is the one for you;

Just let her loose, see what she’ll do.’

So in I go at half past five

I is de luckiest guy alive

Surrounded by some lovely lasses

But I’s lyin’ down, caint make no passes.

These girls mean business, they look tough,

They go and cuts my pants right off.

First thing Rosie says to me

‘We gonna give you stuff IV

Opiates, heparin, drugs like dat;’

I says, ‘Hey, morphine; dat is phat.’

I’ll come and see you guys again

When I gets dis sort a pain.’

So Rosie stuck me; in she went

First a balloon and then a stent.

So now I’m struttin’, back in town

I got the finest care around.

I’ve bid those lines of coke ‘Farewell’ –

Jus’ give me as’prin an’ clopidogrel.

So now I wish you all 3 cheers

An’ here is to yo’ next ten years...

Some post election thoughts...

Here's one for those with a medical bent -

Would Nicola Stugeron be good for restoring a sense of equilibrium in the Labour Party?  Or merely help to combat nausea?

For those who are wondering what unemployed political leaders might be up to -

Walesoncraic is an extraordinary website, but I don't know who runs it.  A fun page on its site is entitled, 'What if famous Welsh people had had mobile phones back in the day' with entertaining texts from such legends as Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, Gareth Edwards, JPR, and Owain Glyndwr...

http://www.walesoncraic.com/if-famous-welsh-people-had-mobile-phones/

But seriously for our friends and relatives across the sea, it has been a fascinating few days with a remarkable end result.  It seems clear that the Labour dogma of class envy just did not appeal to a majority - because the majority of people are working hard to better their own lives.  Ed Milliband's resignation speech indicated clearly that he had not thought this through, whereas Nick Clegg's resignation speech was full of thoughtful introspection.  Even Farage's resignation speech was well thought out, though parenthetically you could here him saying, 'Look, that's enough of this caper, I'm off to the pub for a pint and a fag (that's a cigarette to you Americans).'

I do believe that people were terrified of what Labour would do to the economy, given their previous track record under Gordon Brown, and some if not all would have been aware that both Ed Balls (Shadow Chancellor) and Ed Milliband were key members of Gordon Brown's 'think tank' on economic matters.

Two more items, one poignant, but both of historical interest.  Following a letter to the Daily Telegraph about a fighter pilot who took a teddy bear with him on all his missions in WWII, a plethora of spin off letters and the teddy bear went viral.  But I noticed the following letter a few days later, which said more about life in general, I think:

Valiant Bear
SIR - I was interested to read about the teddy bear that accompanied a Battle of Britain pilot (report, April 21) as I too have a little bear, with my maiden name tape sewn on it, which I gave to my fiance to take with him on his operations over Germany during the Second World War.  He was a Mosquito Night Fighter pilot and flew 50 ops accompanied by my bear, and together they won the DFC.  We were married for 50 years but now, sadly, I just have the bear.
Jean Mellows
Dorking, Surrey

And this too is of historical interest, though perhaps in a different sense.  It appeared in the Daily Telegraph on or about St George's Day (23rd April for those in other countries).  A 'Sketch' from Michael Deacon:

Handy with a lance, that St George, but would he make it through immigration?

UKIP, it might not surprise you to learn, was the only party to hold press conference devoted entirely to the subject of St George's Day.  As journalists entered the room, party officials were handing out red-and-white jester hats hung with tiny St George's crosses.  Patrick O'Flynn and Peter Whittle, Ukip's two spokesmen on St George-related issues, sat at a table decorated with English flags.  Journalists invited them to wear the jester hats, too.  Somewhat unpatriotically they declined.

Ukip has pledged to make St George's Day a bank holiday in England and St David's Day a bank holiday in Wales (just as St Andrew's Day is in Scotland).  St George, of course, was not himself an Englishman: he was born in what would now be Turkey.  I asked whether Ukip would prevent St George from coming to live and work in England, or whether the party would consider him a skilled migrant.

"Well, I guess dragon-slaying is a skill," said Mr O'Flynn.  "But whether it's one that is in short supply for the British economy would be a matter for our migration commission."

Not an unqualified welcome, then.  Mr O'Flynn did add, however, that he wasn't "particularly hung up" about "where St George came from", which I hope Ukip's migration commission will take into account in its deliberations.

Over in Ramsgate, in the South Thanet seat he's contesting, Nigel Farage had arranged a celebratory drink at a working men's club.  The bar was festooned with English flags; the tables had them as tablecloths; even the barmaid's baseball cap had a St George's cross on it.

Mr Farage, a red rose blooming from his buttonhole, sauntered behind the bar for the inevitable photos of him pulling a pint.  Revelation of the day: he doesn't like Foster's.  Odd.  I though he wanted an Australian-style pints system.

He posed with an England flag, then a plastic England hat, then an apron with an England flag on it.  He also complained that England "gets a rotten deal" compared with Scotland.  "Our politicians are ashamed of the English flag, and they've appeased Scottish nationalism.  The history of appeasement is, if you keep giving in, they only come back and ask for more!"

Wasn't the United Kingdom Independence Party in danger of morphing into the England Independence Party?  "We're the only party with elected representation in all four corners of the UK!" he trumpeted.

"But here in Thanet we are certainly not ashamed to be English!"  He then rolled up his jacket sleeve to reveal England flag cufflinks, and announced that he'd had roast beef for lunch and was having fish and chips for dinner.

Did he really mean to quit as Ukip leader if he loses in South Thanet?  "Quit?" he cried.  "I'll be gone in 10 minutes!"  I have a strange suspicion that even the people who hate him would miss him.



As I said, of historical interest only, but great fun.


Finally, to interject a really mundane note, I hope to post some photos soon of our epic trip to Yorkshire last week, a county which is so different from Dorset that one can only wonder if where Nicola leads in Scotland, someone in a flat cap with a sheepdog (or to bring it right up to date - a sheepdog on a quad bike) will surely follow.  Passports to get into the Yorkshire Dales?  Don't whisper it too loudly...

Poole Dream Machines

Poole's tourism division come in for criticism from time to time, but a little while ago they came up with a winner - Bike Night.  Bike nights happen on Poole Quay on a Tuesday evening.  The Quay is closed to all traffic except motor bikes and for a pound a head, any biker can roar down the main drag and park their machine in as prominent a position as possible, hoping to attract the attention of the judging committee who decide on the 'Bike of the Night'.  Tuesday 21st April being a beautiful evening, the event attracted more than a thousand bikes, of every size, shape and description.  Although this is a 'Blog', only a few photos can capture the essence...

A mantra for our times...

Thirsty work riding those machines

Meanwhile all is tranquil in fisherman's dock

Last week's 'Bike of the Night', the NSU Quickly, made between 1953 and 1962

Could this be a lady's model - one careful lady owner?

Owned by The Axeman

Is it a man, is it a plane, is it a Porsche?  No it's a motor cycle (I think)

I'm not sure about this one...

Wow!

A touch of classic class - I don't know it's age but the company finished production in 1955

Another Classic

The Kaskelot, a classic 3 masted barque

That's all folks!

Alphonse Mucha, Bournemouth, & Hamlet starring Maxine Peake, nationwide cinema release

Alphonse Mucha – Russell Cotes Museum, Bournemouth

Hamlet – cinema production – Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre starring Maxine Peake

Alphonse Mucha was a Slavic artist, originally from Moravia, who remained a lifelong supporter of national identity for a Czech, or in his time, Czechoslovakian, homeland.  He is most identified however for his association in the 1890s and early 1900s for Paris and the movement of Art Nouveau, a term which he himself derided.  Nonetheless, his swirling colour lithographs of Sarah Bernhardt and seductive female subjects, advertising everything from plays to cigarette papers, are instantly recognisable.  The Mucha foundation, family descendants who have sought to preserve his art from pastiche and plagiarism, have staged exhibitions all over the world.  Looking at the beautiful images they have brought here to Bournemouth one has the feeling that it can only be a matter of time before the Royal Academy becomes involved.  So if you are on the South coast between now and September this is your chance to see the originals, including some exquisite pen and ink drawings and some photographs of models in his studio which in their realistic poses create the curves which were later applied to the lithographs.  Here is a small sample of imperfect reproductions of what is on show.

The Seasons

Advertisement for Monte Carlo

La Trappistine - an advertisement for a liqueur

A bicycle advert!

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet

This last image, of Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, is appropriate because it illustrates the maxim that there is nothing new under the sun and leads me on to discuss...

Maxine Peake as Hamlet

Sydney Smith stated ‘I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so’.  Despite temptations I haven’t read the critics’ reviews of this production which started life as a Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre play and has now been filmed.  Why no critics?  Well, I have something of a preoccupation with the play, having acted in it, read almost every major book about it, seen the Russian film 5 or 6 times, most of the other films, and several major stage productions (Albert Finney at NT; Jonathan Pryce at Royal Court; Derek Jacobi at Old Vic; others which I can’t remember but were probably less compelling), and a punchy First/Second Quarto version which carries more of the action but less of the poetry.  It’s always interesting to see a new interpretation, and there is usually something novel which the director has come up with.  To read a critic’s view is to focus on what they saw, rather than what you can see for yourself.  About the only teaching I remember from Dr William Gooddy, famous neurologist at UCH, was his remark during a teaching session one morning that ‘To be a critic you have to positively enjoy being second rate’.  Famous neurologist he may have been but his teaching was frustrating in that it was almost never anything to do with neurology.  We learnt more from his brilliant senior registrar Chris Frears...

So let’s deal with the play’s direction first.  It had some interesting quirks!  It’s certainly the first time that the graveyard and earth have been represented by discarded clothes, and poor Yorick’s skull a folded up sweater, but this at least allows the gravediggers to prepare burial space for Ophelia pretty quickly.  Fortunately we didn’t have that Russian pianist’s skull on stage, the one whose final ambition was to play Yorick, which of course he did very well indeed since Yorick doesn’t have any lines to speak.  This is not true in the Russian film of Hamlet in which Yorick is shown in flashback, a sort of amiable Rasputin figure bearing Hamlet on his back, true to the line ‘He hath borne me on his back a thousand times’.  Most of the strategies used in the direction of this play worked, though when the curtain metaphorically went up and we had guards in dayglo jackets with walkie talkies I thought ‘Oh no here we go again’, but the modern setting didn’t detract too much.  It did jar oddly when all of the weapons until the fencing scene were revolvers.  I was beginning to wonder exactly what weapons Hamlet and Laertes would use, especially after Polonia (yes, Polonia, the female alter ego of Polonius) had been shot by Hamlet.  Fortunately she had not been hiding behind the arras so H got a clean shot in and Polonia crumpled instantly.  I remember that when we acted in the school production (King Edward’s, Bath, mid 1960s) we had some childish but enjoyable wordplay with the direction ‘Polonius got stabbed in the arras’.  The revolver jarred most when Hamlet soliloquized that he could end it all ‘with a bare bodkin’.  I resisted the temptation to point out that he/she didn’t have a bare bodkin handy.  The director also made some strange cuts – ‘These are but wild and whirling words, my Lord.’ went; as did Hamlet’s retort to Polonius as he leads the players off, ‘... Use every man after his desert and who should ‘scape whipping.’  Horatio’s wonderful lines, ‘But look, the morn in russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill’ etc. are mysteriously allocated to Marcellus (Marcella in this production).  How do I know this?  Well, Marcellus was the part I played – pretty small you will agree, and it would have been nice to have those extra lines.  In a school production however, being a soldier guaranteed you walk on parts at every other stage of the play.  ‘Where are my Switzers?  Let them guard the door...’ (Yes, I was a Switzer); ‘Go, take up the body...’  Yes, I was a pallbearer.  A role I would have carried off with my other three colleagues with some aplomb, but for Pete Rickard, the overweight one of our soldiers.  Our Director, the incomparable Trevor Elsom Rhymes, had a brother who worked for the RSC.  We were loaned RSC imitation chain mail bodysuits.  But the RSC had not bargained for the bulk of Pete Rickard.  At the dress rehearsal there were sounds of strain as we bent to pick up the lithe form of John Oliver, a majestic Hamlet to my mind.  At the first performance, Pete’s bodysuit ripped from stem to stern, an eerie noise in the solemn silence...  We carried John off with heaving shoulders, our sobs being sobs of laughter and not sorrow.  How did we not drop him?  In the Manchester production the sex changes didn’t matter much; I didn’t find them distracting. When the director has chosen the prettiest boy in the school to play Ophelia, and Gertrude has a mellow alto voice it matters little to the true connoisseur.  At King Edward’s we were Shakespearean to a T.

If you've followed me thus far, please allow one further indulgence, while I deliver a eulogy to John Oliver, our school Hamlet.  John was the late Minister in the difficult and troubled parish of Cape Town; a man so loved and admired in South Africa that Bishop Desmond Tutu gave the eulogy at his funeral.  John was an aesthete; he was immensely gifted.  He played the clarinet exquisitely.  He arranged Sidney Bechet’s ‘Si tu vois ma mère’ from soprano sax to clarinet and played this wonderful piece at a school concert.  His voice was one of pure poetry.  The nearest Hamlet I have heard to his was Derek Jacobi’s poetic interpretation.  In fact, his voice was so wonderful we used to get him to read poetry to us in the Prefect’s room during break.  Not for us the strains of Dylan Thomas or T S Eliot; I’m ashamed to say that we got him to read sections of Lady Chatterley’s Lover or the less salubrious bits from Terry Southern’s ‘Candy’, a novel of the time girded with marvellous sexual obscenities.  I still remember the beautiful way he said “‘Oh gosh’, said Candy”.  These gifts apparently stood him in good stead in the pulpit in the townships of the Cape...  When John took on the role of Hamlet in our school production, Trevor Rhymes wrote in the programme that ‘Only once in a generation is one privileged to find a schoolboy actor who can take on this role’; and in the programme for this film, Sarah Frankcom echoes this and writes, ‘As a director I think you can only begin to think about doing Hamlet if you are absolutely passionate about a particular actor...’  (Not too passionate I hope Sarah).

One other directorial surprise in the Manchester Royal Exchange production.  At the interval, after harrowing scenes in Gertrude’s bedroom, I commented to my long suffering wife that I was surprised that the Director, Sarah Frankcom, had cut the best known speech in the play, ‘To be or not to be...’  But it turned out that she had merely shifted it to a later part of the play.  It did not seem to suffer by its transposition.

And so to the cast.  The reason why I initially became captivated by Hamlet, even before acting in or seeing the play, was an interview on TV with Laurence Olivier, where he was asked about his interpretation, and how he maintained the intensity of his performance.  He replied that he had read the book ‘Hamlet and Oedipus’ by Ernest Jones.  Ernest Jones was a psychiatrist, a disciple of Sigmund Freud’s, and in fact worked at the hospital which I would one day explore as a medical student.  I read the book.  It all seemed to fit perfectly.  Olivier said that for better or worse he believed in that interpretation, right or wrong, and he stuck to it, and it made every scene easy to play.  This is a long winded way of saying that Hamlet is in love with his mother, and it’s important therefore that Gertrude is sexually alluring to him.  I know that almost nobody is going to read this review, which is fortunate, because sadly Barbara Marten is too old.  She looked a million dollars, elegant and refined; but in a post menopausal way, and her diction and acting skills were superb, which one could not say of the entire cast.  If one subscribes to the Olivier/Jones view then she was miscast.  Claudius was played by John Shrapnel.  What a trouper!  When one reads his acting CV, it’s not hard to understand why he was in many ways the best actor in the production.  Training with Olivier, and working with NT and RSC, his acting and diction were a joy.  Excellent support came from Ashley Zhangazha (Laertes) and Thomas Arnold (Horatio).  Ophelia is such a difficult role, I should pass over it, but Katie West in the madness scene, elicited sympathy as she tore off her clothes and sobbed in a semi-catatonic state.  Finally I should mention Gillian Bevan, who was superb as Polonius, sorry, Polonia.  She must have had great fun with this role and as senior politician in the court, more than once a flavour of Margaret Thatcher came out.

Before I move to Maxine Peake, I should mention that in our politically correct times, the Film Censors insist that we should be forewarned about what we are about to see.  I snorted with amusement (I mean the phrase) to see that the pre-show warning stated, ‘Drug taking; mild violence’.  With five murders and a suicide how could it be otherwise?  But the drug taking?  Problem solved.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, punky student pals of Hamlet’s turn up with some white powder in a packet; unsurprisingly our Hamlet turns it down.  She only has to prevaricate for another couple of hours before stabbing Claudius and she doesn’t want her judgement clouded by cocaine.  And why did the censor not mention ‘sexual references’?  Hamlet’s mock masturbation with the book she’s reading when Polonia finds him, sorry, her (the ‘Words, words, words’ speech)?  Appropriately the book is Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’.

So Maxine is a very compelling actress to watch.  She acts superbly.  But in the energy and the vigour, a little of the verse speaking goes.  Compare the pacing of John Shrapnel’s delivery...  The trouble is that she has a lot to get through – the uncut version of Hamlet runs to 4½ hours, so something has to be speeded up.  And Maxine’s enunciation of the letter R and a terminal T at the end of a word are sometimes not as clear as they could be.  But it is a play that begs to be cut.  The Russian film achieved this superbly.  It ran to 140 minutes in a screenplay by Boris Pasternak with music by Shostakovich.  Peter Brook admired it greatly.  The sonorous and beautiful Russian sounds are accompanied by subtitles, so diction is not a problem.

You may think I didn’t like this production.  On the contrary; it had energy and was compulsive viewing.  It was the fastest selling production in the MRE’s history – but this surely has a lot to do with the novelty casting and the fact that Maxine Peake is such a well known figure on television.  I cannot say whether the other recent celebrity Hamlets (David Tennant; Jude Law) were successful.  I try to avoid celebrity productions.  For example, having twice been to see Daniel Radcliffe in the West End I will go out of my way to avoid him and his Harry Potter groupie audience, whatever the play.  One day, heaven forfend (‘Angels and ministers of grace, defend us...’), no doubt he will play Hamlet and I will not be there to see it.

If you have read this to the end, congratulations.  ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, but not here alas!

What to do during the winter months...

How the winter months drag...
Twilight lasts longer at 50 degrees north (Poole) than the continent, the US, Canada, or even Australia.  Not as long of course as Scotland, Iceland, or Svalbard.  But it still can be trying as the cold dry north winds of this week, and even some snow in Dorset, make us focus on what else might be around to entertain us.

Svalbard is on people’s lips these days, thanks to Sky Atlantic’s mega-series Fortitude.  Set in the mythical arctic town of Fortitude, it’s actually filmed in Iceland (complete with extra snow carted in from England in view of the mild Icelandic climate during filming).  So far the outstanding feature is the scenery.  We are asked to believe that the temperature is around minus 30 degrees.  This therefore strains one’s disbelief a bit during some of the obligatory sex scenes.  There is outdoor (well, in a shed with the door open) coupling.  The big black guy who is the local helicopter pilot seems appropriately dressed in a massive down suit (apart from dropping his trousers) but the attractive Spanish barmaid seems to be risking hypothermia or possibly labiovulval frostbite.  Having visited Svalbard I can confirm that residents do carry rifles around with them, but not in downtown Longyearbyen, and I didn’t see any 10 year old girls hefting guns on their shoulders.  The plotlines seem a bit ludicrous (Sophie Grabol who is the Governor is desperate to build an ice hotel in the glacier.  Has nobody told her that glaciers move?).  A little boy has developed a mystery febrile illness which rendered him unconscious.  “Nothing rots here” says one character.  “It’s a perfect forensic laboratory”.  Just as well in view of the grisly murder perpetrated in episode one.  But I think he’s referring to the mystery illness.  It’s a documented fact that the great flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920 killed victims who are buried in the permafrost in Svalbard, but when they exhumed the bodies to try and isolate it the virus irritatingly refused to come to life.  Finally the other item which has emerged from the glacier where Sophie longs to build is a partly preserved mammoth.  Michael Gambon who is a naturalist photographer with a terminal illness is threatened by the Governor with expulsion if he goes around shouting about his discoveries.  “You are not allowed to die here, you know” she tells him.  Not true.  You can die in Svalbard but you get shipped back to the mainland for burial.  Jessica Raine, Christopher Eccleston and others contribute.  We await events...
Meanwhile, in the arctic twilight of Poole Lindsay keeps disappearing to watch Silent Witness, where Emilia Fox wrinkles her nose in that attractive way of hers at another grisly discovery, but having started my Charlotte Brontë novel, Shirley, I have preferred to finish it, even if there is quite a bit of literary excess (it may not surprise you that the heroines get married in the end, one of the few ways of ending a novel written by a woman in the first half of the 19th century).  Digressing about Shirley for a moment, one of the most remarkable and tragic facts about the novel is that during 1848 and 1849 when Charlotte was writing it, she nursed in succession, her brother Branwell, her sister Emily, and her final remaining sibling Anne, who all died from tuberculosis within the space of nine months.  Charlotte survived only another six years.

And we are still in touch with Broadchurch, another mythical town, this time in West Dorset (it is actually West Bay), where David Tennant and Olivia Coleman prove to be the world’s most incompetent detectives.  ‘Whose is this mobile number?’ asks DI Hardy (Tennant).  Instead of using the full analytic capabilities of the police they muse about it for a whole episode.  Like Michael Gambon, David Tennant seems to have a mystery terminal illness which is alluded to but which he never goes for treatment for (come on, I don’t think Dorchester Hospital is that bad).  Other viewers have christened it ‘BoredChurch’.  However, if you watch it in the right frame of mind it is not boring.  One is kept on one’s toes waiting for the next improbable event to occur.  A good example: DI Hardy has a previous incompetent case under his belt – a pair of murders.  The chief suspect, who got off at the trial, is a man who looks just like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry mode (same quiff).  He also looks as though he’s been training for a weighlifting contest and spends most of the episodes doing shift work hammering in fence posts on the Dorset coast.  Despite this, when the rather unfit looking father of the (previously) murdered girl finds him, he ends up on the ground helpless, getting kicked and punched, when DI Hardy races along the cliffs to his rescue.  All characters spend a lot of time on the cliffs or the beach, staring moodily out over Lyme Bay.  Even DI Hardy, one night when he can’t sleep wanders up the coast path to the house where the prosecuting counsel lives arriving at some ungodly hour to ask her to write his will for him.  Has no one told him that a solicitor costs less than a Queen's counsel?

But there is, or was, hope.  Namely, the wonderfully acted series three of Last Tango in Halifax.  Derek Jacobi, Anne Reid, Sarah Lancashire, Nicola Walker in top form, and a script which is pared down Yorkshire and blackly funny.  We’ve just seen the last episode.  Can’t wait for the next series.
Yet more wintertime TV drama is on its way.  Indian Summers will be set in Raj India of the 1930s, in Shimla we believe.  It will star Julie Walters and is rumoured to be good.  J K Rowling’s suburban thriller, The Casual Vacancy, is coming soon.  None of this is helping couch potatoes of course, but the target audience is possibly a little different from the standard Soaps such as Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Holby City, Casualty, etc.

Finally among the recordings waiting in the wings (on the hard disc that is) is the new BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Booker winning sequence about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall.  It stars our current greatest actor Mark Rylance as Cromwell.  Damian Lewis is Henry.  I can’t comment because I am hoping that the twilight lasts long enough to catch up with it.  Chuckle news this week is that the intrigues in and around Clarence House (the London home of Prince Charles and Camilla) are such that it is known to insiders as Wolf Hall.

In Poole we are fortunate to have the home of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (yes of course it is the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra but it is based in Poole).  I went to the BSO on Wednesday.  Very good concert with the programme of: Sibelius Spring tone poem, Grieg piano concerto (by Grieg for those who remember Andre Previn and Morecambe and Wise) played by Alessandro Taverna, 3rd placed in the last Leeds competition.  Bit of a heartthrob.  I feel that younger females would have been impressed with his attack, lyricism, pianism or some similar attribute.  He obligingly played some lovely Chopin as an encore.  Rachmaninov Symphonic dances in the second half.  The conductor like some policemen looked very young (even younger than Kirill Karabits, the BSO’s principal conductor).  His name is Joshua Weilerstein.

So, as Garrison Keillor would say, that’s the news from Poole and I hope you enjoyed this brief Poole Home Companion.  If you are in Australia (Kim), the USA (Tod, Alex) or Canada (Clarkson Family) I expect many of these TV adventures are on their way to you and I hope you feel prepared...

In the meantime, enjoy these pictures of Poole this morning.  Taken at the RSPB boat trip around Poole Harbour (42 species identified including the very rare black guillemot).  See our dramatic snowfall (!) last Tuesday...

Quite a contrast at Poole Quay

The new fast trimaran

Poole Harbour Entrance & Black Guillemot (see below)

Honest!  It's a Black Guillemot

The massive Dorset snowfall of February 3rd 2015

Dorset snow!

Goodbye for now... all downhill from here!