Corona Diary Part 9. Sunday June 7th to Thursday June 25th

Sunday June 7^th 

A generally sunny day in Southern England, including Bournemouth.  Bournemouth: ‘the medicated atmosphere of a town full of doomed bodies and restive minds’.  At least in the 1880s.  Thus Andrew O’Hagan in the London Review of Books, writing of the three years that Robert Louis Stevenson spent living at Skerryvore, the house whose plot I visited recently.  O’Hagan has certainly mined the literature of the age to portray the small town which Stevenson came to in 1884.  We are fortunate he came to Bournemouth and not to Davos, another haven for tubercular patients.  Or perhaps not.  Had Stevenson gone to Davos, he might have spared us the toil of reading ‘The Magic Mountain’; it might not have been written.  But in Bournemouth at least he produced two of his greatest works, ‘Kidnapped’ and ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.  From Bournemouth, in ever fainter quest of health, in 1887 to America, and thence to Samoa, where he died at Vailima, Upolu Island, in 1894.

 

O’Hagan is most interested in RLS’s companions and friends in his stay in Bournemouth, and particularly in Henry James, who became a friend and visited regularly.  But he has unearthed many vivid pictures of the town of invalids.  The London fogs were at their worst in the late 1800s.  Dickens, and later Conan Doyle conjured them memorably.  The ‘health resorts and watering places, with their “curative” sea air and salt baths, became meccas of specialised medical care and splendid accommodation.  People built sanitariums and spa hotels, they planted palm trees and erected iron piers, as if one could promenade from restoration to decline, from cheerfulness to death, without it seeming so dark or sordid a journey.’  O’Hagan writes well.  I am envious.  Google tells me he is Visiting Professor of Writing at King’s College, London.  In 19^th Century Bournemouth, newspapers referred to ‘a metropolis of bath chairs’.  Nowadays, we know that pine trees cause as much disability through allergy as they can ever cure through their gentle shade.  But the local council remains fixated on the majesty of these trees, and woe betide anyone who damages them.

 

Stevenson's house, Skerryvore, pictured in 1898

O’Hagan has discovered ‘Guests and Memories: Annals of a Seaside Villa’, written by Una Taylor, daughter of a man who knew the Lakeland poets.  “The people we have here are divided into visitors and residents”, she wrote.  “The visitors are mostly invalids.  Death is the resident”.

 

Stevenson joins that long list of composers, artists, and other notables who could easily have been spared for many more years of creativity by modern medicine.

 

I nearly wrote, ‘From Gustav Mahler to Billy Fury’.  But the bathos might have been an unhappy one.  Both suffered from rheumatic heart disease and died before their time.

 

Dwelling on sickness and invalidism is of course something we do in the Covid era.  Daily numbers of deaths continue to decline however.  It remains to be seen whether the protest marches and rioting which have spread from the USA to the UK will rekindle a rise in Covid-19 cases.  This weekend, the debate about Edward Colston (1636-1721) was brought into fresh focus as a group of rioters pulled down his statue in Bristol and dumped it into the sea.  Colston made money from the slave trade, but used his fortune in philanthropic acts, founding almshouses, hospitals, and schools.  I went to concerts at ‘The Colston Hall’, and played rugby against ‘Colston’s School’.  There is a diametric opposite of opinion concerning the way in which this happened.  It does not profit a diary to dwell at length on this.  There are some very stupid people involved in the protests, however.  Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square has been daubed ‘Churchill was a Racist.’  Whoever wrote that has clearly not considered the fact that, were it not for Churchill, that person would very likely be under the rule of the worst racist of the 20^th Century, namely Adolf Hitler – and very possibly one of a new generation of slaves.

 

We walked again in North Dorset, starting from Bulbarrow Hill, site of the Iron Age fort, Rawlsbury Camp.  We ate our picnic lunch in the peaceful churchyard of Bingham’s Melcombe.  This manorial estate and gardens have remained virtually unchanged since the reign of Edward VI (mid 16^th Century), though it dates originally to the 14^th Century.  While sitting on the only bench, I contemplated a headstone, which commemorates someone born shortly after me, who has now been lying there for the best part of a decade.  A potent reminder that life is fleeting.

 

Monday June 8^th

 

A pleasant sunny day again.  It is easy to miss important notices of what may happen.  An article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, buried in the business news, relates that the USA has banned Taiwan and South Korea from exporting some key components of high end chip technology to China.  Whereas we know that so many electronic items are made in China, it would appear that the really high end supercomputing material is from Silicon Valley.  Evans-Pritchard states that it is not too fanciful to fix the start of the real Sino-American trade war (Cold War?) from this date.  On researching this further I find that in 2009, The Economist referred to him as a modern day Cassandra – whose prophecies are accurate but not believed.

 

Tuesday June 9^th

 

Not to bore readers, but both of these last days have been taken up with decisions on site in the new house.  This evening we watch the last two acts of Nicholas Nickleby.  If you read about this play (or two plays in fact), you will find it referred to as the ‘Landmark RSC Production.’  I think Lindsay enjoyed it, but good though the filming is, it cannot conjure the atmosphere that I felt when seeing it live in the theatre for the first time.  When it was first announced, I was in the habit of visiting the Aldwych for virtually every RSC production of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  But I held back, being unenthusiastic about the length of each play – over four hours.  A friend who went, lost for words, persuaded me that I was missing something.  With difficulty I gained tickets.  On entering the auditorium, all of the cast members – 40 in number (they were the great days of the RSC) were in costume, chatting, offering Victorian favours, muffins, and the experience was immersive from the start.  At the key scene in the first play, with Smike, Squeers, and Nicholas, the tension was unbearable.  At the resolution, everyone in the audience was either crying or laughing, and often both.  There were spontaneous cheers and applause.  But the production never descended to the level of pantomime – for example, the villainous Ralph Nickleby and Sir Mulberry Hawk were never hissed or booed.  And who, being male, could fail to fall in love with Emily Richard as Kate Nickleby?  At the end of four and a half hours, I could not wait for the following week when I had my ticket for the concluding play.  Then I went to see it again.  One thing one notices again in the RSC recording, is the perfect diction of every single cast member – not ‘received pronunciation’, but beautiful prose and dialogue, perfectly spoken.  In the scene setting before many of the vignettes of Nicholas’ life, David Edgar uses Dickens’ own prose – it can’t be bettered.  This was so unlike the rubbish of NT’s ‘Treasure Island’.

 

Wednesday June 10^th

 

Breezy, somewhat overcast.  Wetter weather forecast.  Scientific theories and reworkings of the epidemiology of Covid-19 rebound around the newspapers like the silver balls in a pinball machine.  All scientists seem to be pinball wizards.  Are their flipper fingers purposive, or just plucking chance from the air?  The incidence rate of Covid-19 is falling, as is the death rate.  The rate of decline however has slowed.  A preprint paper from a London group (see Catherine Houlihan first author) has assessed Covid-19 positivity in hospital staff in serial studies.  There is a high rate of positive swabs in completely asymptomatic subjects.  A fifth of subjects gave at least one positive swab, but only a fifth of these had typical symptoms.  Serological study from the same group shows a rate of Covid-19 seroconversion rate of 45%.  They argue (see my previous arguments in favour of this) for regular testing of at risk health care workers.

 

Prof Neil Ferguson (see above) has stated that if lockdown had been imposed a week earlier we would have saved thousands of lives.  Thanks, Neil.

 

 This evening we make a start in on The West Wing.  Friends have advised us that we will be confused and they were right.  Will we grow to love it?  Don’t know.

 

Thursday June 11^th

 

So much to report.  First, the mundane.  Drove to The Berkshire Golf Club and was a guest of a member, playing on the Blue course.  The fairways are like an elegant carpet and the greens superb.  What a treat.

 

But, the ramifications of George Floyd go on.  Attention has now turned to statues of virtually anyone that minorities don’t like.  Letters in the paper question why demonstrators held back from daubing Gandhi’s statue in Parliament Square.  Apparently his views on black Africans were violently racist.  Gladstone has come in for some defacement.  Cecil Rhodes’ statue in Oxford has long been under debate – the nasty colonialist is a definite target.  Here in Poole, Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement has a statue on Poole Quay which some demand is removed.  It is said he admired Hitler.  Though of course on delving into the truth of the matter, one finds complexity.  He admired Mein Kampf, though he noted that Hitler did not practise the ideals referred to in the book.  His Boy Scout movement was however banned in Germany because it clashed with the doctrines of the Hitler Youth; and he was on the black list of people to be detained after the successful invasion of Britain.  In view of the fact that he died in 1941 he can perhaps be excused for not being able to revise his view of Hitler and of Germany, 1939-1945.  More letters say – (my précis) – ‘If it’s statues now, will it be books next?’  Echoes of Fahrenheit 451, The Fire Raisers by Max Frisch, and even 1984.  Let me challenge you with a quotation which was put out after the recent antics by Konstantin Kissin, the interesting and alternative Russian born comedian:

 

‘A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.  And yet the rage one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.’

 

Do you recognise it?  You have probably read it.  George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.  It seems that we have almost reached it.

 

Friday June 12^th

 

Interesting discussions on site concerning MVHR (mechanical ventilation and heat recovery).  The installer was using a rectangular configuration tubing in the roof void.  He also has cylindrical tubing for the first floor.  He explained that if the void is large enough he prefers to use the cylindrical tubing.  We both agreed on the merits of laminar flow; he in domestic ventilation systems; I in coronary arteries.

 

Rectangular versus Tubular MVHR pipes

Mixed weather, not too cold, but with some heavy showers. 

Delivered newspaper to neighbour and was rhapsodizing about the vast and beautiful area of the Berkshire Golf Club.  Was somewhat taken aback when he asked if I knew that 2% of the area of England was made up of golf courses.  Have had to do serious research on this.  A Financial Times ‘FT Fact Check’ was a useful source.  It seems that this claim was first made by Colin Wiles in 2013, who contrasted it with a much smaller area used by housing.  This was enthusiastically latched onto by the housing charity Shelter.  It would seem that this is only true if one ignores all of the land that goes with houses, such as gardens, drives, paths, and accepts some (probably) non-applicable figures from the United States on average golf course size.  It would also be true to point out (my own thoughts), that golf courses occupy area, but little volume – and the area of a golf course is also, by definition, carbon negative.  The Berkshire is so magisterial in every respect that one wonders why it lost its Royal Berkshire status.  Truth, the first victim in war, is hard to tease out (as in golf course areas for example), but the following is a possible reason:

 

At Swinley Forest Golf Club, rice pudding is a permanent favourite on the lunch menu.  Early in the 1900s, the Prince of Wales had been playing golf with the famous Scottish professional James Braid (1870 – 1950) at the Royal Berkshire Golf Club.  On being refused entry to the clubhouse because of Braid’s ‘professional’ status, the incensed Prince of Wales removed their royal status and drove to Swinley Forest where Braid happily tucked into the rice pudding.

 

Saturday June 13^th

 

My chief memory of this day is of playing golf badly, and getting rather wet due to a heavy rain shower.

 

Sunday June 14^th

 

A day which has varied between overcast and hot humid sunshine.

 

In preparation for a possible Father’s Day get together within reach of the family next Sunday, we do a walk across Twyford Down (Winchester).  Excellent walk of around eight and a half miles.  Starting at St Mary’s, Twyford (and admiring the 1000 year old yew tree), the walk goes up over Twyford Down, skirts the Hockley golf course, and descends to a footbridge over the M3 motorway.  Many will remember the huge furore over the final phase of the Winchester bypass which was driven through the down.  Many years on it is hard to see what the fuss was about.  Crossing over onto the nature reserve of St Catherine’s Hill and descending to the Itchen Navigation waterway, the M3 is blissfully obscured, as indeed it is on the down itself.  Walking up into Winchester, and seeing the famous King Alfred statue and the cathedral, cloister, and close is a delight.  Returning on the other side of the Itchen across water meadows one passes the remarkable St Cross Hospital, if anything, from the outside, more impressive than Winchester Cathedral.  This building, correctly termed ‘The Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty’, was begun in 1135, with much of the building 14^th century, though there are some earlier and later additions.  Much of the almshouse dates to the 14^th century.  It sits in a tranquil and remote spot, in complete contrast to the Cathedral itself which forms the centre of Winchester.  Passing back under the M3 we walk through more meadows, past sluices and abandoned locks back to the church in Twyford, where the sounds of someone practising Bach on a piano come faintly through the windows.  A lovely walk.  I noted that, fortunately, nobody has as yet made any attempt to deface the King Alfred statue.  This is probably because the vigorous opinions of young black and white people, so extensively aired by the wonderful BBC, do not rely on historical research, otherwise they would be aware of the extent of the system of slavery in the Anglo-Saxon world, and of course, before.

The Hospital of St Cross and Almshouse of Noble Poverty

Undefaced King Alfred statue

 

Yesterday was notable in Central London for clashes between a far right ‘Protect the Statues’ group and ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters.  I have marginal sympathy with those who downed the Edward Colston statue, but none at all with those who have defaced other monuments.  A suitable cartoon in the papers has a character with a wrecking ball approaching the Egyptian pyramids, with the caption, ‘They were built by slaves; down with them!’  Enough said.

 

 

Monday June 15^th

 

A beautiful day; surprisingly some showers are forecast.  Back to the building site for discussion with the ‘blind man’.  No jokes please.

 

It seems to me that the pent-up fury of lockdowners has really been a feature of the protests.  On every side.  Irrespective of the wish to ‘get something done’ about black poverty and discrimination, there is process to go through to do it.  I am reminded of Sir Thomas More in ‘A Man for all Seasons’, when challenged by William Roper over his respect for the laws of Man against the laws of God, he says:  ‘This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?’  Surely we should be above mob rule?

 

A final comment on statues and their value.  I sincerely hope that some Scottish nitwit does not go and destroy the famous statue of the Duke of Sutherland which stands atop an enormous pillar on Ben Bhraggie, 100 ft above the skyline, in East Sutherland (there have been attempts in the past).  The Duke and his policies (the Highland Clearances) were probably responsible for cramming my ancestors into poverty in the little fishing port of Helmsdale, a short distance north of the monument.  He stands, ‘His back towards the lands from which he drove his people and his face towards the sea to which he condemned them.’  If we removed the statue we would not remember this.  Cycling past Golspie, slowly, some four years ago, gave us plenty of time to reflect.  But, as ever, there is complexity.  The relatively barren lands of East Sutherland did not provide good sustenance for the inhabitants.  John Prebble, the Canadian communist writer who wrote a much admired trilogy in the 1960s (Glencoe, Culloden, The Highland Clearances) approached the topic from a very biased viewpoint (see The World Socialist Web Site – not very often I quote from that:  https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/03/preb-m21.html).

 

Tuesday June 16^th

 

A lovely sunny day, with mostly mundane activity concerning the house.  But the scientific news has dominated, both recently and today.  One scientist in the recent news is Professor Angus Dalgleish, who together with others has analysed the SARS CoV-2 viral makeup and claimed that it was incompatible with a naturally mutating coronavirus.  In other words, it is laboratory generated.  I remember ‘Gus’ as a hippyish intelligent student a year or so below me at UCH.  He then made his name when he determined the method which HIV virus uses to damage the human immune system.  Whether he will prove correct over this one we really don’t know.

 

The big news today from the UK RECOVERY trial is that, perhaps surprisingly, dexamethasone has proved lifesaving in Covid-19 pneumonitis.  The institution of this trial in the early days of the UK epidemic has meant that because there were so many deaths in the studied patients (what statisticians lovingly refer to as ‘endpoints’), the statistical power of the trial has been high and the drug reduces the risk of death in ventilated patients by around 30% - a huge difference in trial terms.

 

I watched the RSC recording of the ‘Scottish Play’ this evening, and was disappointed.  Yet the critics were impressed.  Christopher Eccleston was the Thane, and Niamh Cusack his wife.  Lines such as ‘This castle hath a pleasant seat, the air nimbly and softly commends itself unto our gentle senses’ (the ironic lines of Duncan arriving chez Macbeth) seemed to be just thrown away.  The device of having three small girls as the witches meant that most of their lines were inaudible.  Guess I’m just a grumpy old theatregoer.

 

Wednesday June 17^th

 

Despite the warnings that showers were imminent anywhere we had a lovely sea breeze and warm sunshine.  Played golf with some improvement and minor financial gain.  In the early evening we were guests of a friend who lives in the remarkable 1938 Oliver Hill house, ‘Landfall’ for drinks on the terrace (see picture).  Later we watched the concluding episode of ‘The Salisbury Poisonings’, a sort of okay drama about the events of 2018 when Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.  I say sort of okay because it seemed very overacted, which I suppose was to lend ‘human interest’ to the drama.

'Landfall' (Oliver Hill, 1938)

 

Thursday June 18^th

 

In further research for a possible family venue for Father’s Day, we got up early and by 1100 had completed a six mile walk in the New Forest, from Fritham.  Sadly of course, the Royal Oak pub is closed.  Light drizzle for much of the way, and very few other people.  Sightings of deer, New Forest ponies, and sounds of cuckoo and skylark, together with other birds which I can’t identify.  Good picnic spot located, but we may be trumped by the weather.  Talking of Trump, his former national security adviser (sacked) has written a book which the Trump administration are trying to ban.  In it he claims that Trump tried to persuade the Chinese government to purchase agricultural products from US states that might be crucial in Trump’s re-election campaign.  In an interview this morning with the former head of MI6, Trump is described as ‘deeply unsuitable and totally unqualified to be President of the United States’.  The news today is very varied.  Premier league football recommenced last night; obituary for Willie Thorne, snooker player (only 66); and Vera Lynn (singer) has died at the age of 103.  ‘We’ll meet again’ is perhaps only appropriate if one espouses the ramifications of the Christian faith…

New Forest foal

 

Friday June 19^th

 

A rainy day.  Little to do apart from a site visit and jigsaw.  Listen to ‘The Last Word’, which is a radio review of the week’s obituaries.  Chief among them Vera Lynn.  Sort of related, today records the visit by Emanuel Macron, no doubt to garner prestige and publicity, to commemorate the 80^th Anniversary of the speech on BBC radio by General De Gaulle in exile, in which he exhorted the French to resist the German occupation.  Fine fly past with red, white and blue smokes from the RAF Red Arrows and the French Patrouille de France.

 

But another obituary caught my ear, and indeed my eye in the newspaper earlier in the week, when it was bizarrely juxtaposed to a 1960s pop singer.  That was of Geoffrey Burnstock, remarkable physiological and pharmacological researcher, and Ricky Valance, known for the ‘one hit wonder’ in 1960 of ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’.  The death song genre, known in the trade as ‘the splatter platters’, reached its apogee with the Shangri La’s recording of ‘Leader of the Pack’, though for British ears, Twinkle and ‘Terry’ probably ran it a close second.  Burnstock had a huge research output and virtually single handedly created the research field of purinergic nerves.  I remember reading his paper in Physiological Reviews in 1972 on purinergic nerve transmission.  I was a medical student in clinical medicine at the time.  I am sure Professor Alan Cuthbert, at Cambridge in 1970 alerted us to the research which was going on in that area.  Burnstock was not believed, and it took many years before his theories were accepted.  Like, no doubt, many others, it is hard to understand how he did not get the Nobel Prize for his work.  The refusal by the establishment to accept his hypothesis probably delayed research which led to the adenosine receptor hypothesis, and the ability to block adenosine stimulated aggregation of platelets by such drugs as clopidogrel.  Without this drug we would probably still be doing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) instead of less invasive angioplasty and stenting.  Sir Peter Medawar’s maxim of ‘…the intensity of the conviction that a (scientific) hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not’ comes to mind.

 

Saturday June 20^th

 

Obituary of Sir Ian Holm, latterly remembered for his parts in the Lord of the Rings films, but who I first remember seeing in the 1960s serialisation of the RSC’s War of the Roses sequence, produced by the BBC as ‘The Hollow Crown’.  Friends said his timing was impeccable to the end, by refusing to upstage Vera Lynn.

 

More golf, improving slightly.

 

Sunday June 21^st

 

Officially the longest day.  We have been keeping a close eye on the weather, with rain in the night, but our Father’s day get together is on – so we head back to the New Forest armed with picnic tables, champagne, and a veritable feast which Lindsay has prepared.  Anna and Graham drive from Reading, Katie and James from Kennington, and we all do our walk and then have a picnic.  Great.  It is hard not to be able to hug my daughters however.  We can only be happy that they are happy, that they have lovely partners, that they remain employed, and we all hope for better things.

 

Fathers' Day, Eyeworth Pond, New Forest

Premiership football is back, and our local team Bournemouth get well beaten by Crystal Palace, and Liverpool and Everton fight a goalless draw.

 

Monday June 22^nd

 

A beautiful day and we are promised a lovely week of sunshine and warm temperatures.  Visit site this morning.  Horrified by the amount of cabling (see picture).  Main item of news this morning is the terror attack by a Libyan illegal immigrant who was given leave to stay some years later…  Several people knifed in a park in Reading with three deaths.  Awful.  The presence of these individuals in our society is a reward for the long-lived tolerance of our nation, unlike many other nations.  ‘Reward’ here is used in an ironic sense, it is truly ‘… the last guerdon of death.’

Cable, ducting, heating pipes

 

Thinking of obituary juxtapositions the other day made me think of the unfortunate endings of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley, which were perhaps less appropriately celebrated than they should have been.  The reason?  They died on 22^nd November 1963, the day JFK was assassinated.

 

Time for less morbid musings.

 

Tuesday June 23^rd

 

We are back to ABD (another beautiful day) and are promised this for most of this week.  Coffee in a friend’s garden to discuss a socially distanced walk tomorrow.  Visit a garden to review the highly spoken of landscaping.  Create a sourdough loaf, though my ‘starter’ lacks oomph, and eventually I admit defeat and re-knead the bread with some commercial yeast, after which it is at least an edible loaf.  Much breast beating this morning after an aeroplane was seen over the Burnley-Manchester City game yesterday towing a banner saying ‘White Lives Matter’.  The witch hunt for white oppressors and slave owners – even at a distance of centuries continues, and nobody has the courage to say that the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has gone too far.  An Oxford don has spoken out to say that the majority of academics are too frightened of the backlash to express any views or ideas which might be contrary to perceived appropriateness.  The Football Association who threatened to fine clubs and players for wearing poppies to mark the end of WWI accepted that all players would wear ‘Black Lives Matter’ without demur.  My own view?  ‘All Lives Matter’.

 

Pimms in the garden with friends this evening, shortly after Boris Johnson announces substantial lockdown easing measures.  The inevitable Laura Kuenssberg pops up to ask the first press question, part of which is ‘Will you accept responsibility?’ i.e. for the end result of lockdown easing.  Boris has not dealt with questions well throughout this period.  Instead of turning the question around and saying, ‘Well, who do you think the Buck stops with if it is not the Prime Minister’ he waffles a bit and then hands the science part of her question to Chris Witty and Patrick Valance.

 

Obituary in the Telegraph today of Charles Webb, writer of the book ‘The Graduate’, more famous as a film launching the career of Dustin Hoffman.  One of the most extraordinary obituaries I have ever read.  I can’t do it justice tonight!

 

So, an extreme non sequitur.  I was searching for a website for baking which I had lost, one in which the loaf is completely failsafe, because it uses a substantial amount of honey, which of course really gets the yeast going.  There are some good blogs around with baking themes.  Their websites have titles such as ‘Bake My Day’; ‘Knead to Relax’; ‘Gimme Some Oven’.  Whether the breads are as good as the catchy soubriquets I know not.

 

Wednesday June 24^th

 

Yesterday the second Zoom lecture in the series from our erstwhile Sicilian travel guide, Damian Croft, owner and founder of the travel company Esplora.  We had a remarkable holiday with him and his team visiting and climbing all of the Sicilian Aeolian islands last year.  Today’s talk was on the Greek temples of Sicily.  Last week was the Greek colonisation of Sicily, and specifically Siracusa.  Fantastic.  Can’t wait to go back there.

 

It’s an ABD day.  Very hot.  Thirty degrees C plus.  A just wonderful day, for several reasons.  A little like Hillaire Belloc’s ‘The Four Men’ (though there were only three of us), we drove a short distance and then embarked on the circular Stour Valley Way loop of 7.4 miles.  Unlike Belloc we were engrossed in conversation but no song, and sadly we could not stay in, or even visit, any pubs.  But we trollied along, with conversations ranging from economics via politics to medicine, including the aforementioned Charles Webb.  Part way round, we were entertained alfresco by a friend who should be non-identifiable, because she regaled us with tales of her father who became a GP at the commencement of the National Health Service.  In one extraordinary story, he was called to see a rich single lady staying in a Bournemouth hotel, who had a painful swollen knee.  On the advice of his Great Aunt, also a doctor, he injected the knee with Dettol, and the patient returned to the Midlands.  Some weeks later he received a letter from her doctor informing him of the ‘miracle cure’ and asking for details of the therapy.  After some thought and taking further advice he threw the letter in the bin.  Maybe President Trump is onto something…

 

After our walk, we were entertained in our friend’s garden with a salad Niçoise, ciabatta, Camembert, and fresh strawberries, accompanied by some ice cold Chateau de Berne Provence rosé, Chateau Duthil 2008 Bordeaux, and a Chateau Doisy Daene (Barsac).  What a treat.  Most of the day after this was an anti-climax.

 

Although perhaps not materialistic, the above could be seen as a paean to the finer things of life, something which Charles Webb would have eschewed.  Evelyn Waugh, in his introduction to Brideshead Revisited says something similar when he reflected that the portrayal of wild excess of Oxford eating, drinking and rowdyism, and the focus on the Epicurean in Brideshead was a subconscious reaction to the austerity of wartime.

 

Let me return to poor Charles Webb, who has died at the age of 81.  The Graduate was his first novel.  It sold well, but the film became stratospheric.  Dustin Hoffman and ‘his lament that “For 21 years I have been shuffling back and forth between libraries and classroom.  Now you tell me what the hell it’s got me” chimed perfectly with young Americans horrified that their affluent society was sending its children to die in Vietnam.’  The stunning soundtrack by Simon & Garfunkel helped too.  Webb sold the novel rights to the film for $20,000, gave the book royalties to the Anti-Defamation league, and disposed of his house, possessions, and paintings by Warhol, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg.  He married a similarly anti-materialistic woman called Eva, who changed her name to ‘Fred’ in sympathy with a Californian society for men who had the misfortune to be called Fred.  Their wealthy parents’ capital and possessions were all similarly disposed of, and they worked in the poorest and lowest paid jobs, ultimately giving away everything including their clothes to become caretakers in a nudist colony.  After a life in motels and trailer parks they finally moved to Newhaven in East Sussex and lived in a flat above a pet shop.  Other novels were written, one of which, ‘New Cardiff’ was highly praised by Nick Hornby, and was made into a film with Colin Firth.  Webb refused to promote it.  Virtually their final brush with the media was when ‘The Graduate’ hit the London stage.  A reporter visited the pet shop and informed Charles and Fred that Jerry Hall as Mrs Robinson was making more money in a week than Webb had made from the novel in his entire life.  Webb said ‘I couldn’t care less.’    The published photograph in the obituary could be titled ‘The Sorrow of Abject Poverty’, but it seems that Charles Webb had no regrets.

 

And with that, on a boiling evening when it is too hot to sit upstairs typing in our little room which serves as an office, I make an end of Wednesday 24^th June.

 

Thursday June 25^th

 

A viciously hot day.  If this is the future then we must be glad that the enormous overhangs on our new house will reduce the ‘solar gain’ within.  A friend who lives in a lovely architect designed house on the harbourside has an enormous wall of glass facing south west, which always causes him problems.  It must be horrendous today.

 

A record high temperature of nearly 33 degrees was recorded at Heathrow yesterday.  Photographs of Bournemouth beach in the paper look like the worst ever Bank Holiday.  Sleeping was difficult last night, reminiscent of nights in North Carolina when I lived there in the 80s.

 

Maybe it is ironic that we are due to meet the heating firm later today to discuss the solar panels.

 

We did not return to ‘The West Wing’ last night.  Premier League football is back, and despite some desultory games and the second failure of Bournemouth, this time against Wolves, I began to watch the game of Liverpool versus Crystal Palace.  Breathtaking football from Liverpool, with great interpassing and despite an initially well organised Crystal Palace defence, they received a 4-0 drubbing.  Occasionally football is the ‘beautiful game’.

Corona Diary Part 8 - Tuesday May 19th to Saturday June 6th

Readers may ask - how long will this go on?

Tuesday May 19^th

ABD.  Did not write this today, but on the 20^th.  Reason – just dilatoriness I suppose.  We had a long site meeting to talk about electric fittings this morning, and the day seemed to escape after that.  A long walk in early afternoon, returning from the beach via Durley Chine, and West Cliff Green, which is another unexplored area for us.  Then I spent a very long time washing Lindsay’s car.  Too tired for Victoria this evening.  (Sorry this paragraph is so unexciting, but then lockdown life is like that.)

Wednesday May 20^th

A very long sleep.  Perhaps due to taking an antihistamine for what I took to be an insect bite on my leg.  It was either a horsefly or (hopefully not) tick bite that I had scratched off.

I had needed something from a supermarket yesterday, and while there I saw a man in what I would take to be classic ‘Zoomwear’.  From the waist up he was immaculate – neat shirt, well tied tie, sports jacket.  Below he was sporting baggy pink shorts and deck shoes.

Incredible news that President Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine.  I suppose that if he believes everything he says then it must be true that it works.

Today I have golf again – hooray!  Tee time is 1250 hours, a little easier than our struggle to get round in the gloaming last Sunday evening.

Rod Liddle writes well in the Sunday Times – an article pointing out that nobody has the strength or will to take China to task for its appalling record on virtually everything.  Just a couple of sentences and you will get the drift:

“Too many excuses are made for China – again, usually by liberals.  Its tyrannical state capitalist government is dismissed as simply being another variant of that vigorous new thing, ‘Asian Democracy’ – that is, what we used to know as ‘fascism’”.

“It is China’s triumph that it has managed to combine the most brutal aspects of communism with the most brutal aspects of capitalism.”

A par three on the tricky 18^th today made me forget some of the golf in-between tee-off and finish; that and the beautiful day.  A lovely supper of fish, fresh English asparagus, and Jersey Royal potatoes rounded off by a return to Victoria.  She and Albert have a lovely time as guests of the Duke of Atholl.  I keep expecting her to nuzzle up to Albert (she does a lot of nuzzling up but then there are quite a few children to get through before his death in 1861), and say ‘Albert, let’s look for a little place in the Highlands of Scotland.’  Albert’s death was allegedly from typhoid fever.  But Helen Rappaport, in ‘Magnificent Obsession’ makes a reasonable case for Albert succumbing to a severe recurrence of Crohn’s Disease.  No post mortem was performed and we will never know.

Thursday May 21^st

ABD.  A lengthy walk today, 8.2 miles, in a loop around Parley and the Stour, once again noting the BA aircraft sitting on the tarmac.  But beautiful summer sights as well – a pair of swans with 8 cygnets, an egret, and roses round the doors of the cottages.  A laburnum tree in full bloom brings a recollection of a friend’s remark of 40+ years ago that they are ‘exam trees’, so called because they are always in full bloom at the usual time of school and university exams.

Catastrophe in the evening when Lindsay knocks her glass of Maçon-Villages over the Jackson Pollock jigsaw.  Now the pieces, when they have dried out, will be even harder to place.  No more wine is served to her until supper, safely sitting in another room…

Friday May 22^nd

An overcast day with a very strong wind.  Cloud clears to sunshine but the wind remains strong, such that driving round the harbour this morning there are any number of kite surfers and windsurfers scudding across the white horses in Whitley Bay.

Victoria last night was deeply involved with Sir Robert Peel and the repeal of the Corn Laws, the import tariffs designed to protect the interests of English landowners and farmers.  The Free Trade which resulted improved the food supply at a lower price for English labourers, but the eventual swamping of the market by American and subsequently Russian grain meant the decline of British agriculture, and a dependence on imported foodstuffs which almost cost us dear in both WWI and WWII.  I labour this point because of the modern day relevance of imported goods from Asia, and particularly China.  Corona virus has resulted in a natural belligerence and antipathy towards most things Chinese.  Indeed, a survey today shows that 40% of Britain believes that China manufactured the virus.  There is an understandable Jingoistic reaction amongst our people, such that many believe we should take care to not become so reliant on imported goods in general, and China in particular.  The installation of Chinese-manufactured Huawei 5G networks is a case in point.

Saturday May 23^rd

Sunny day, but very strong wind.  The weather front has passed by but is assaulting the north west of Scotland and the Hebrides.  Having cycled all the way up the Outer Isles two years ago, I have taken a lively interest in the weather in Stornoway (Isle of Lewis) ever since.  It is rarely pleasant there.  The proprietor of a cycle shop in Stornoway told us that the average windspeed, day in, day out, is 25 miles per hour.

Dominic Cummings, special adviser to the PM, has been criticised in the news today for making a round trip to his family in Durham.  Seems like there was severe family illness, but the facts are yet to come out.  The press really do not like Mr Cummings, and one can see why.  He is usually seen slinking along towards Number 10, looking slightly scruffier even than Jeremy Corbyn, with a rucksack on his back.  He is, I think, regarded as a Rasputin like figure to Mr Johnson, an éminence grise.  He was pilloried recently for sitting in on a SAGE meeting, which is supposed to be restricted to ministers and their special scientific advisers, though we understand it was just as an observer.  In demeanour he is the opposite of the usual Whitehall civil servant mandarin, and he clearly raises antibodies.

My friend Glenys, remarkable seamstress, has sent us two new fetching masks, a bright print for Lindsay and a musical one for me.

This afternoon we finished the Jackson Pollock jigsaw.  It has taken three weeks, with at least some time each day devoted to it.  Now I can get on with ‘Restoration’, the first ten or so chapters being much devoted to bodice ripping.  It reads a bit like Fanny Hill, though the self-deprecating style of the narrator, the 17^th Century Robert Merivel (a fiction), also reads a bit like P.G. Wodehouse at times.  Merivel being the rather dim Bertie Wooster figure, with a rather more shadowy butler or personal servant.  Rose Tremain is obviously buried within the parlance of 17^th Century language, though I am not sure if she is trying to stay completely within period.  The narrator refers to himself as a Renaissance Man at one time, a term not coined until the 20^th Century.

We have been dilatory with exercise for the last two days, but plan a bike ride tomorrow.

Convergence (1952)

Sunday May 24^th

Back to ABD, with some abatement of the wind.  Vigorous bike ride this morning which I termed the Tour de Turlin Moor (a very local reference that I don’t expect overseas readers to catch).  Excellent cycle routes from Poole Bridge into Hamworthy Park and on to Turlin Moor with a return route through Upton Country Park.  The reason for haste this morning is that we are guests (in a public space and distanced) of a friend who has an excellent picnic for us with a very nice Provençal rosé (Ch. Minuty).  In the later afternoon we visit Salterns’ Marina, which is open for socially distanced gatherings on members’ boats, together with a disco from the roof.  Altogether a lovely day.

Canford Cliffs - could be the Cote D'Azur

Monday May 25^th

Bank Holiday.  ABD.  The Prime Minister defended Mr Cummings yesterday in the daily briefing, but the feeding frenzy is in full swing, one Tory MP talking of ‘using up our political capital’.  There are poems, songs and a T-shirt commemorating Cummings’ so-called ‘Lockdown Tour’.  Where will it end?

It ends (or rather it doesn’t; see below) with a press conference in the garden of Number 10.  Having heard Cummings version of events, in what seemed like a reasonable statement of the facts, he was viciously, or should I say, voraciously attacked by the hypocrites of the media.  The plain fact is: they don’t like him and whatever he does will be wrong.  They do not like his disdain and for that he won’t be forgiven.  A press conference and Corona briefing by Boris Johnson and a medical mandarin took place at 7pm, much to my own upset, displacing Paddington 2, the movie which would have brought a distinctly feelgood factor, from our screens.  When again attacked by the newshounds (what an appropriate epithet), the PM fairly justifiably said, ‘Look, you’ve had your chance to question Mr Cummings this afternoon and I haven’t got anything to add!’  Looking at online news and newspapers it would seem that the journos have divided along party political lines over the issue.

I’ve given enough of my own precious column space to this issue.  I can’t believe that Trump, Macron, Moon Jae, Merkel, or Bolsonaro are losing too much sleep over the matter.

We had a pleasant, though warm, walk this evening on Talbot Heath.  Temperatures are set to climb even higher in the next few days.  Lindsay is to return to London.  She is worried about her daughter’s mental state at the moment after her 38 year old husband’s heart attack.  Looking in the guidelines, it is permissible to travel to provide care for a vulnerable person, and this is really what she is doing…

Tuesday May 26^th

The weather (will it continue?) reminds me of the summer of 1976.  This lockdown has made one remarkably reflective.  I wonder if others find that?  The present is so different for me however.  At 28, I had just started work at King’s College Hospital as a Cardiology registrar.  For various reasons, even with only 5 months’ experience in the catheter and pacing labs (they were one and the same in those days), I was already shouldering a large amount of the clinical workload.  Boiling days in a non-air conditioned room in a lead coat and a surgical gown meant that by the evening I was exhausted.  I was living in a flat owned by the late notorious Mr Rodney Ledward, FRCS, FRCOG (qv), naively without a rental agreement (I am sure he wasn’t declaring the income), and this ultimately led to unpleasantness and a frightening dénouement when he and his brother tried to forcibly evict me just before Christmas.  When his cavalier, heartless and unskilled treatment of women in Ashford was eventually exposed in 1996, I mused that I could have told them a long time before that he was a ‘bad egg’.  A bit like James Bond in ‘From Russia With Love’, or at least Donovan Grant, Bond’s would-be assassin, Ledward was very fond of using the ‘Old boy’ preface and suffix to many of his sentences.  Whether he drank red wine with fish I do not know.  But I do know that during that summer, so wonderful for many, I felt tired and lonely much of the time.  No doubt part of the melancholy is due to the content of Rose Tremain’s ‘Restoration’ which I finished this afternoon.  I very much enjoyed this novel, which is essentially a journey through the failings of a man, almost a parable of the seven deadly sins, though I haven’t counted whether she missed any out, with an element of redemption at the end.  It made me reflect on my own mortality and my own shortcomings.  Set in the 1660s with a substantial dose of the Great Plague, and subsequently the Great Fire, so there are certainly echoes that chime with our times.

This afternoon a brisk walk including the beach between Alum Chine and Bournemouth Pier.  Scenes reminiscent of a Bank Holiday in August, temperature 27 degrees.

Wednesday May 27^th

ABD.  It’s hot and it is getting hotter.  Round of golf this morning.  All square on the 18^th so honours even.  Site meeting to discuss landscaping the new house build in the afternoon.  Little else done.  Cummingsgate rumbles on.  Many memes around his decision to try a drive from Durham to Barnard Castle to check if his eyesight was okay for a drive back to London – an eye chart for example, with Barnard Castle written on it line by line with a progressively smaller font.  A picture of Barnard Castle with the ‘Should have gone to Specsavers’ logo on it.  Etcetera etcetera.

The Barnard Castle eye test

Thursday May 28^th

ABD.  How could I have let my diary entry of May 17^th go without mentioning that it was our first hearing of a cuckoo this year?  Numbers apparently declining.  Many chores today, and one feels at a bit of a loose end without the Jackson Pollock jigsaw to do, or indeed ‘Restoration’ to read.  Start in on ‘The Song of Achilles.’  This evening is meant to be the final ‘Clap for Carers’, the woman who started it very wisely saying that it has had its day and should stop after tonight.  Governors’ meeting this afternoon with the use of Microsoft Teams, which gives good reception and fairly clear pictures.  Feel it’s best to leave my camera off and my mike on mute, so allowing the usual suspects to have their say.  Interesting presentations on the Covid situation (improving) and the route back to normality.

'Clap for Carers' cartoon, Telegraph

Yesterday marked the 80^th Anniversary of the Battle of Dunkirk, or at least the evacuation of Dunkirk.  The more detailed investigation of this on TV yesterday evening suggested that the two-day lull which allowed many more to be rescued was due to a power struggle between Hitler and his Panzer commanders.  If the commanders had got their way they would easily have stopped or forestalled the evacuation and many more deaths or POWs would have been the result.

In science news, it does seem that the results with remdesivir now justify its use in attempting at least to ameliorate the disease of Covid-19.  In the UK the official (proven positive) death total is 37,837, with a daily deaths number of 377.  There is something of a tail in the previously steadily falling numbers.  The USA has now recorded over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths.  Although the President is clearly an incompetent loudmouth, the Economist points out that its decentralised decision making has been moderately effective, and its death rate per 100,000 population is no worse than many European countries.

Friday May 29^th

ABD.  May 2020 is on course to be the driest and the sunniest ever in most of Southern Britain.  Brisk breeze.  Site meetings with bathroom designer and kitchen designer.

Having previously been a supporter of Boris Johnson, I am starting to wonder whether my confidence is misplaced.  The Cummings affair suggests bad management and failure to just take control and let him go.  It seems that Cummings came up with the ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan, which has made roughly half the population hate him anyway.  He is thought to be behind the current Government mantras as well.  I feel that the ‘Stay Alert’ one was poor – perhaps ‘Be Responsible’ would have been better chosen.  A golfing friend tells me that there is a new golf shot called the ‘Dominic Cummings’.  It’s a very long drive which goes way out of bounds, but there’s no penalty.

Start in on making some bread.  After boring cleaning of barbecue and high pressure hosing everything, we can do a butterflied leg of lamb outside for our Friday night supper.

Saturday May 28^th

ABD.  Will be playing golf later.  Hooray.  The other day I picked some more elderflowers following a friend’s message that soaking them in gin overnight gives a delightfully different gin and tonic.  Being a better solvent than just water, the gin rapidly takes on a beautiful yellow tinge and the flavour is excellent.  Definitely recommended.

Elderflower gin - wonderful

A friend asks me to get him The Times when newspaper shopping.  Having dipped into some of the writing I am wondering whether to move over to this paper instead of the Telegraph (yes, yes, I know it’s called the Torygraph but I tend to absorb politics, and particularly any left leaning opposition online, and particularly from the BBC).  A little while ago the Times’ 3^rd Leader (the slightly comic leader for those not in the know), led with ‘Romantic Rock Stars’.  I quote:

It is fair to say that the Romantic poets do not have reputation for sporting prowess, even though Lord Byron once swam four miles across the Dardanelles just to prove it could be done.

According to the verdict of popular history, the Romantics were the sort of young men who had notes from their mothers – all, no doubt, in beautiful rhyming couplets – excusing them from games.

Now it seems the verdict of history has been overturned.  A new book suggests that William Wordsworth, John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were pioneers of mountaineering.  Coleridge’s conquest of Scafell Pike in 1802 is thought to be Britain’s first recorded rock climb, and Wordsworth tackled nearby Helvellyn at the age of 70.

If only their verse had reflected this:

“I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er fields of corn

And after that John Keats and I

Made short work of the Matterhorn.”

Good stuff The Times!

Sunday May 31^st

ABD.  Following the gin and elderflower experiment we head to Cranborne in North Dorset.  There are a number of walks one can do up towards Pentridge Hill, and the elderflowers are everywhere.  Brambles are festooned with flowers, suggesting good blackberrying to come.  Wild clematis, and occasionally some honeysuckle covers the hedgerows.  Where once we would see the buzzards circling there is now a solitary red kite, a sign of the times.  It really is a lovely part of Dorset, Cranborne being something of an idyllic country village.  My former colleague’s house, a traditional redbrick manor house of the 19^th century is festooned with roses growing up the walls.  Onwards to the Pentridge bridleway and down through the village of Pentridge, not an easy place to pop around the corner for something from the shop or indeed a pub.  Back via Blagdon Farm, Boveridge, and through the woods to Cranborne, laden with elderflowers which we steep in gin and (separately) in rich milk, for subsequent desserts.

Honeysuckle

Ox-eye daisies

Elderflowers and wild roses

Another culinary experiment this weekend was Paul Hollywood’s rye bread made with beer and a beer batter.  I had been trying to think of a use for some extremely cheap beer which we bought in a French supermarket, namely Kronenbourg.  I certainly didn’t want to drink it, having valiantly consumed a couple of cans.  It has almost no flavour, but the bread is good.

Scientific controversies continue with Covid.  News is leaking out that the test and trace approach was abandoned after PHE (Public Health England) failed to have the capacity to do enough tests.  Another article states that recovered subjects with no antibodies may still be immune because of immune recognition cells in the nose and pharynx (I’ve mentioned that possibility before).  Another couple of scientists suggest that asymptomatic healthcare workers and care home workers are currently the most likely to be a reservoir of infection, and that all such workers should be tested on a once a week basis.  This certainly seems a logical step, and is borne out by the outbreak at Weston-super-Mare hospital, where all staff were tested and 100 (6%) were shown to have the virus.

Over the entire duration of the coronavirus crisis and pandemic, my entries in this diary may have been subtly nuanced, to the extent that readers may feel I am missing being involved in the medical response.  In this they are correct.  Having emphasised at the beginning that one knew it was coming for one’s entire career from entry into clinical medicine in 1970, to not be actively helping in the hospitals at this time is upsetting; as though one had been denied entry into an elite club.  ‘What did you do during Covid, Daddy?’  Well, nothing I’m afraid, son.  It reminds me of a strange novel written by Yukio Mishima, and cult reading during the 1960s, ‘The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea.’  The novel itself is a metaphor for post war Japan, and the concept of Death or Glory looms large.  Mishima, a strange individual, never recovered from being too young to serve in World War II.  Even when he came of age, a doctor misdiagnosed some respiratory signs as evidence of TB and he was rejected.  His preoccupation with this failure underpins his extreme traditionalist right wing views, his espousal of martial arts, his formation of his own private army, and ultimately, in 1970, an attempted palace coup – which failed.  He then committed seppuku.  I hasten to add I am not about to do this because I failed to be taken on at the hospital during the coronavirus crisis.  But it’s frustrating to have missed the call up.  ‘Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour…’, as Rupert Brooke wrote about a different amphitheatre.

The major international news item this weekend has undoubtedly been the killing of a black man in Minneapolis by a police officer who was photographed, and videoed, leaning with all his weight on his knee on the man’s neck and throat.  Riots throughout the USA, some of it possibly inflamed by a tweet from President Trump with the phrase ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’  Large protests even in London and Manchester.  As they say on TV, ‘In other news this weekend…’, Elon Musk’s commercial space rocket took off from Cape Canaveral and has successfully docked with the International Space Station.

Monday June 1^st

ABD.  Ah, the Glorious First of June.  The fourth Battle of Ushant, was claimed as a great naval victory by both the French and English navies, but as ever the truth is somewhere in between, not unlike the daily coronavirus briefings, which I now scarcely watch.  Hard to believe when we hung on every word in the initial press conferences.  Deaths continue to decline; 111 reported yesterday, but if the eased lockdown has an influence it will take weeks for it to become apparent.  Riots continue in the USA.  Little to report at home apart from a golf lesson and several hours of gardening.  We are now in what is promised to be the last two days of the heatwave.

Final episode of ‘Victoria’ this evening.  Ends with the Great Exhibition of 1851, and Albert’s sudden collapse.  Series four is being written at the moment, so it will be a while before I can report further.

Tuesday June 2^nd

ABD, but we are promised that it will be the last for a while.  A walk along the beach reveals very little social distancing.  Two card tables of men playing poker or bridge, numerous tents, and many others.  Is this part of Cummings’ legacy?  A very hot day.  I don’t feel able to sit in the sun until after 3pm, and by 4pm, despite an engrossing book, one feels drowsy and lackadaisical.  6pm drinks in friends’ garden – six of us together, as allowed under the lockdown easing.  Perhaps the first social event since March, albeit ‘distanced’.  Reluctantly break up the pieces of the Jackson Pollock jigsaw for onward passage to friends who want to try their patience with it.

Wednesday June 3^rd

Woken by the sound of rain.  During the refurbishment of the house we are living in, no attention was paid to the gables and overhangs, and the open window has allowed the rain to pour in.  Window closed at 0530 hours.  Gentle drizzle continues.  Round of golf this morning.  Feels quite refreshing to play in this light rain.  Bread making this afternoon.  In the evening I persuade Lindsay to start in on the DVD set of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, from the famed 1980 production by the RSC.  At the time I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen on stage, and I still stand by that, though the other play and performance that stands comparison with it was ‘Jerusalem’ with Mark Rylance.  The opening act is grim and dour, with the awfulness of Dotheboys Hall, and the appalling Wackford Squeers.  Is there anyone nowadays writing novels exposing social injustice?  The only comparison to Dickens I can think of with the same stature is Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  A search of Google reveals a few others, but rarely any consistent oeuvre.

Horse racing has restarted, with wins for Frankie Dettori, but also one of the Queen’s horses.  A cartoon by Blower in the Telegraph encapsulates some of today’s themes, with runners such as ‘Clap the Carer’, ‘Wuhan Avenger’, and ‘Barnard Castle Boy.’

Blower cartoon from the Telegraph

Thursday June 4^th

A bright day, the weather uncertain.  The George Floyd protests continue.  It has emerged that tear gas was used near the White House on Monday simply to clear demonstrators such that President Trump could walk outside to his local church and take a ‘photo-op’ with a Bible in his hand (I almost wrote Bible in His hand).  What an obscenity.

I did want to write about the loveliness of asparagus, and of English strawberries, but realise that this is a sad and bathetic response to the preceding paragraph.  But both will be gone soon.

Friday June 5^th

Discover that the architects have designed the lower staircase window too low for the first six risers, and it will need to be raised up to allow for this.  This is only one of several issues created by design oversight.  At least the underfloor heating pipes are laid, are airtight to 4 Bar, and are now covered irrevocably in screed.

But house worries are not a readable issue for any other than the author, so can only report that a Lowry jigsaw, ‘Market Scene, Northern Town, 1939, has been completed in a day.  Farewell Jackson Pollock.  But the assembling of a jigsaw of a work of art somehow gives one an empathy with the artist, and the creative process.

More Nickleby.  A somewhat lighter mood, with Nicholas and Smike now taken on by the travelling theatre of Mr Vincent Crummles.  Cue for Nicholas’s rewriting of Romeo and Juliet for Mr Crummles’ company, complete with happy ending, which will end the first play of the two.

I have always loved Schubert’s music.  In 1978, the 150^th anniversary year of his death, readers will probably not remember how paltry and parsimonious was the BBC, at least as regards Radio 3 (it might even have still been called the Third Programme at that time).  Broadcasts ended for the evening no later than 11pm.  An inspired producer persuaded them to include a Schubert song every night throughout the year, to extend the broadcasting period.  So, after a hard day of medicine and cardiology at the Brook Hospital (Woolwich), I would lull myself to sleep with this.  Some years ago, at a cello recital, I met the husband of the professional cellist who claimed the distinction of the 1978 Schubert late night feature, against the powers that be (or powers that were) at the BBC.  In its new ‘Armchair Arts’ section, the Telegraph yesterday carried a detailed analysis of the String Quintet in C, with references to a YouTube recording and its timings.  Remarkably, the article details Schubert’s final move, into his brother’s house in Wieden, Vienna, which took place on 1^st September 1828.  By November 19^th Schubert was dead.  Yet in that time, which we might take to sort out a few packing cases, watch some TV, and read a book, Schubert wrote the great last three piano sonatas, Schwanengesang, and the C major Quintet.  All of this while steadily going downhill with tertiary syphilis…

And on such a gloomy note…  Covid-19 deaths now just over 40,000, and yesterday 357 deaths, though the number of new cases is falling much faster, and it would seem that the number of deaths should surely be very much lower within a few weeks.

Saturday June 6^th

A mixed day, with cool temperatures and a colder north wind.  Some rain.  Plant some borage seeds in the hope of decoration for Pimms.  Finish ‘Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller.  Enjoyed it a lot.  Affectedly poetic writing, but somehow it works.  Is the purple prose a striving for effect, or is it a device to carry forward what is after all, a mythic story?

Our salt cellar ran out, and we turned to one from the cupboard – Sal Del Desierto De Atacama.  Strange how little mementos bring back holidays; and we are all suffering from a dearth of these just now.  Despite our enjoyment of Dorset, something about travel still creeps in and brings us both remembrance of happy times past, and encourages us to hope for more in the future.  Like Marcel and his madeleines, these memories are generally positive, though nostalgic. I am sure we can also recall things – snatches of music perhaps, a photograph of a place, or a person, which bring more negative associations.  The most powerful, to my mind, are the olfactory memories.

A friend will visit this evening, and we will have ‘Cheat’s Pimms’, which brings back memories of Jane MacQuitty (see entry of 21^st March).

And at this point, I should commit this monologue to cyberspace, with some photographs.