As suggested by the title, Burke’s ‘Thoughts on the Present Discontents’ comes to mind,
but the circumstances are somewhat different in 2020 to 1770. Edmund Burke was however concerned by the
undue influence of the Crown on Parliament, and updated to our age one could
possibly substitute ‘EU’ for ‘Crown’. I
have a number of Remainer friends who would object to this but, hey, tough.
‘Tell me one good thing the Coronavirus has done for us?’
Well, that’s easy; where shall I start? The Duke of York perhaps? Brexit?
Megxit? There are quite a few
folk who are delighted to be off the front pages for once.
But first, some advice for friends (they know who they are):
Given H’s recent chest problems you would be well advised to
remain in your remote bolt hole in Great Elm (a tiny village not far from Frome
for those who don’t know) and self-isolate (which is not far removed from
self-immolate, though perhaps a more sensible response until we know if we are
all ‘doomed, doomed, I tell you.’)
Sunday 15th March 2020
At the moment we have lounged around at home all day, though
following the Government’s advice not to cancel ordinary events we attended the
evening quiz night at the Royal Motor Yacht Club on Saturday. Daughter Katie had announced her intention to
visit this weekend and despite a rather dire service from South Western
Railways (3 different trains; a bus replacement service from Southampton) she did make it as far as Bournemouth where I picked her up. There usually has to be a reason for Katie
visiting and the ulterior motive here was discussion of the ‘hen do’ for her
close friend Katrina. Not having a better
offer on Saturday evening, she graciously accompanied us to the dinner and quiz,
and her 90s and 2000s knowledge came in handy occasionally (Spice Girls a
specialist subject), such that we came a respectable third, only one point
behind the joint winners, which we thought not bad with only three on our team,
whereas most other tables had six or more.
Generously, other friends who were on a table of 7 said we should have
won, but that’s because they are fans of the Green Party and Proportional
Representation. Sadly, we knew that the
friends who came first had a ringer, who knows everything about sport,
including the one we failed as to the winner of the Grand National in 1967,
when numerous horses were impeded or brought down, and a 100-1 odds horse won
the race, having been in 22nd place at Becher’s Brook. (I will leave you to look it up – clue:
mountain in the North of Scotland).
At the moment, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert on
Wednesday 18th is scheduled to go ahead. Given the average age of the audience, a
single corona infectee could probably cause as much carnage as that loose horse
in 1967, though in that race only one horse was euthanised and the BSO audience
might well be decimated. (The concert
hall holds 1500 people; you do the math as the Americans say).
Last week we also ventured to the cinema in Poole
Lighthouse, to see the recorded ‘live’ performance of Cyrano de Bergerac,
starring James McAvoy. Now this is a
play I love, having first seen it at the Oxford Playhouse in about 1966 (I
can’t recall the cast – do you have the programme MJW?). Then in 1971 the excellent and rarely revived
1950 black and white Hollywood film with Jose Ferrer (he won an Academy award
for it, and the play benefited from some truncation in the movie), and then a
superb (NT?) production with Anthony Sher in the late 1990s. The Gerard Depardieu movie is also a fine
interpretation. When next I see the film
(I will probably have the time given the current corona situation) I will have
to try hard not to visualise Gerard urinating in the aisle on aeroplanes as he
has been wont to do in recent years). Cyrano
is certainly a sentimental fin de siècle piece, but I suppose I’m a sucker
for that. So it was with some reluctance
that I agreed to go to this ‘new’ punchy version. Punchy it certainly is. I don’t think I have heard so many f and c
words since my summer job in the kitchens of the University Arms Hotel in
Cambridge. It is also somewhat bizarre
to see costumes which smack of the present day, no swords in evidence, and a
broad Glasgow-accented title character.
But the performance by McAvoy is astounding, a true tour de force. To imitate the lisping pathetic estuary
English of Christian and then to revert to original Glaswegian in the same
breath has something of the touch of a great ventriloquist about it. It’s a performance that like the original
Jonathan Pryce Hamlet at the Royal Court I’m glad to say I was there. Hardly unique though – these cinema relays go
to thousands around the world.
With regard to the ‘current difficulties’ as one might refer
to the coronavirus, events are sadly being cancelled right left and centre. Whether this will prove a needless exercise
or not time will prove. Of one thing, I
am now sure. The rational and logical
discussion with the South Korean health minister (Sunday morning) on the Andrew
Marr show indicates that by forgetting pretty much about testing people in the
UK, we are missing a trick. For example,
my daughter has a flatmate, a teacher who returned from a school ski trip to
Italy, became unwell and was tested. She
and my daughter were told to stay at home in their flat. It took a whole week before they gave her the
all clear. What a huge and stupid loss
of productivity. If people who become
unwell are not being tested but just told to stay home, when the majority of
them could be tested and then allowed to go back to work seems crazy.
There has been talk of contacting retired doctors to ask
them to help. Having not received any
approach from the General Medical Council I wrote to them to volunteer. With some ‘hauteur’ they replied to say they
didn’t recognise my e mail address (although I had given them my unique 7
figure registration number) and were not sure if I was genuine, and in any case
they had no plans to do anything unless the Government invoked the
Extraordinary Powers Act. I pointed out
that they might have been more proactive in at least checking with retired
doctors whether they might feel able to help if called upon. No response as yet…
Having rambled on, I return to the main impetus for the above
writing:
‘Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket’ by Stephen
Fay and David Kynaston. A Christmas present,
which I had been reading in desultory fashion, and now the second half finished
in an afternoon when I had otherwise more probably been engrossed in the TPC
Championship from Sawgrass, Florida. A
‘worthy book’, one might say, damning with faint praise. It’s a little bit dry and I suspect it is only
a book which somebody of my age would want to read. You needed to have heard the two title
characters in full flow to get the most out of the book. To imagine those Arlott phrases once again
with that unforgettable Hampshire accent brings back such happy childhood memories. I smiled occasionally, but laughed aloud only
twice. Will I spoil it for you if I
quote the passages? Perhaps, but then
you might not read it anyway.
Patrick Collins (on Arlott):
Although he was a kind
man, he didn’t suffer foolishness. I asked
him about a fellow commentator who once set out to emulate Arlott by injecting
colour into a county match with some absurdly florid language. Unfortunately it was always the same phrase. For instance he’d say: ‘The bowler trudges
back to his mark as the sun sets slowly in the West.’ Later: ‘And that single takes Somerset to
153 for 2, as the field changes, and the sun sets slowly in the West.’ And
later still: ‘The Essex attack continues to struggle, and the sun sets slowly
in the West. Now, over to John
Arlott.’ And Arlott took the microphone
and announced: ‘The sun is still slowly setting in the West. And if it should start to set anywhere else,
I’ll be the first to let you know.’
And Arlott’s cruel rhetorical question (said only in private):
‘Can you imagine what it must be like to write as much as Swanton did over so
many years without leaving one memorable sentence?’ … and some truth also in John Warr’s witty
description of Swanton’s writing style as ‘somewhere between the Ten Commandments
and Enid Blyton.’
Let me know if any of my readers would like the book. I’ve probably done it down a little too much
and given the reversion to reading which we are now all going to do (feels like
back to the 1950s again, doesn’t it?), you may very probably wish to read
it. Were it not for the virus I would
probably be donning shorts and popping out to the library, with my three
tickets clutched firmly in my hand, for whatever the shelves could throw at me. On one memorable occasion – I must have been
about 12, I returned from the library with an Arthur Ransome, Isaac Asimov’s
book on ‘The World of Carbon’, and an autobiographical work by Salvador
Dali. The reason I remember this was my
mother’s horror on turning the pages of the Dali book. There was a section I remember dealing with
certain bodily secretions and his wife Gala…
As a parenthesis, Asimov once said he knew how to
distinguish chemists from non-chemists: ask a person to pronounce the word ‘Unionized’. You can work it out for yourself.
Although I now live in Branksome rather than ‘Lake Wobegon’
I think you get the drift of a diary from someone with not that much else to do…
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