May 6th, Coronation
Day
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| Coronation Edition Nyetimber - superb sparkling wine made from champagne grapes grown in West Sussex |
A remarkable day, whether a
Royalist or no. But first, a confession. Some of my best ideas are found in others’
themes and thoughts. It was T.S. Eliot
who said, ‘Good writers borrow, great writers steal’. Or rather, he didn’t, but somewhere along the
line it was attributed to him. John
Julius Norwich (q.v.) made an annual collection of items that he found
thought-provoking, poetic, or even just amusing. He gave these to his friends for Christmas as
a ‘Commonplace Book’. He referred to
them as ‘Christmas Crackers’. The term
commonplace refers to a book kept virtually as a scrapbook of knowledge. In the past, it represented one way in which
women (who were excluded from higher education, or even education generally)
could store fragments of learning. Such
collections have been kept since ancient times.
Software, other pastimes involving televisions, computers, or mobile
phones, and even Mr Google, have made the habit rare. If, reader, you enjoy some of what you read
here, remember that my diary often represents ideas culled from a gastronomic
menu of reading the words of others.
When thinking about this the
other day, the phrase ‘Other Men’s Flowers’ floated into my mind. I could not place it at first, but it is the
title of a famous anthology of favourite poetry, first published in 1944 by A.
P. Wavell, better known as Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st
Earl Wavell, who had the distinction of serving in the Boer War, the First
World War, and the Second World War, until his services were dispensed with by
Winston Churchill, who had never liked him.
Wavell memorised every poem in his anthology, and was obviously widely
read. His attribution of ‘Other Men’s
Flowers’ is prefaced in his quotation from an essay of Montaigne, whom he had
evidently read. It could serve as the
confession of so much of my diary:
‘I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers and nothing but
the thread that binds them is my own.’
‘J’ai seulement fait ici un amas de fleurs étrangères, n’y ayant
fourni du mien que le filet à les lier.’
And so, on to the Coronation.
Forcing myself to stifle
Republican urges, I am a fairly avid listener and watcher of the events. On the radio, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby, states that his aim is to make the occasion serious – ‘the last
thing we want is for it to seem like something from Gilbert & Sullivan’ (my
recollection of his words). This comes
to mind at times during the service, and the various pantomimes with the
regalia, all highly symbolic. The other
thought that intrudes at times is that it is also like something from a Monty
Python sketch, but I try to keep that thought out of my mind. The various symbols of state were solemn, but
I must have glanced away or gone to get some coffee, because when I saw the
King being presented with something that looked like a golden chicken it was
hard not to stifle a guffaw. A letter
writer a few days later commented that at least one thing in this country was
still working and that was the British Military. Much comment about Penny Mordaunt, who in her
role as Lord President of the Privy Council had to carry a heavy sword bolt
upright for some considerable time. A
waggish article subsequently suggested that it was as well that the muscular
Penny had taken over the post from Jacob Rees-Mogg, ‘… who has not been known
to carry anything heavier than a rolled umbrella without outsourcing it to a
member of his domestic staff.’ Poor JRM
– an easy target for toff jokes, with his appearance seemingly gleaned from city
types of the 1930s.
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| I missed the Golden Chicken |
Private Eye’s ‘Souvenir Issue’
cover was white except for the banner headline: ‘Man in Hat Sits on Chair’.
Elsewhere, United States watchers continue to sweat on whether the aged President and aged former President will fight it out at the next Presidential election:
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| Blower Cartoon - Daily Telegraph |
Few will have read my Lockdown
Diaries, but those who have may remember the image of the ‘hardest jigsaw in
the world’, the 1000-piece assembly of Jackson Pollock’s ‘Convergence 1952’. This was one of his most famous ‘drip’
paintings and resides in the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York.
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| Convergence 1952 |
When I bought this at the Pollock-Krasner house in Long Island I was ridiculed, ‘You’ll never do it’, but lockdown proved otherwise. ‘For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…’ An article about a recent book on Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock a key figure) by Dominic Green in the Literary Review, which I found hard to understand, suggests that America claimed it as its own, whereas correctly it was Abstract Surrealism, and therefore a successor of surrealism. Much of this article is suitable for Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner, but I did enjoy the characterisation of Pollock as ‘Jack the Dripper’, apparently a term coined by Time magazine.
And another rather nice but
complete non sequitur, (Literary
Review again) Sara Wheeler, a traveller and author, has written an
autobiography. ‘Glowing Still: A Woman’s
Life on the Road.’ I have read, a long
time ago, her book ‘Cherry’, about Apsley Cherry-Garrard, polar explorer, and
thoroughly enjoyed it. The review by
Caroline Moorehead, picks out a striking phrase, when following what surely
must have been an extended absence from Britain, she found on return that
‘garlic no longer carried a hazard warning’.
But the reason for exhuming this review lies at the end. Freya Stark wrote, ‘Surely, of all the
wonders of the world, the horizon is the greatest.’
The pedant in me was alerted by a
message from the Royal Motor Yacht Club, inviting me to enrol in a ‘Dingy
Instructor Course’ (presumably held in the dark recesses of the boat storage
shed).
1st June, 2023
After a late, cold, Spring, we
now have high pressure over the British Isles, though with the accompanying
strong easterly wind which so often comes with it. Prior to starting radiotherapy for some nodal
spread of my prostate cancer, I have had some enjoyment from trips to Rye and
to Dumfries and Galloway (East Sussex and Scotland respectively). The Rye trip was to join the Scottish Medical
Golfing Society in its weekend stay (almost always held in late April). I became bogged down in my last issue about
the doctors’ pay dispute, so here is an update for later April and May.
Rye is one of the original Cinque
Ports of England, and was important from Roman times. Its peak in importance was in the late 12th
Century, and lasted for only 200 years before violent storms cut it off from
the sea. Silting of the bay which it
commanded resulted in the town now being more than two miles from the sea. It is therefore a treasure trove of 13th
and 14th century streets and buildings, with the famous Mermaid Inn
(dating from 1156) at its heart. A home
for Henry James, E.F. Benson, and the slightly less well known Radclyffe Hall,
author of ‘The Well of Loneliness’, acclaimed as ‘the first lesbian novel’. Many other famous people either lived in or
were captivated by, the town.
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| The Mermaid Inn, Mermaid Street, Rye, East Sussex |
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| Night Scene - Mermaid Street, Rye |
Dumfries and Galloway has long
been somewhere we have planned to visit.
Amusingly, Lindsay accepted the invitation to come and cycle here
believing that it was flat. Compared
with the Highlands, her assertion might be correct, but it would be more
accurate to describe it as ‘lumpy’, and the wind blows hard across or into the
Solway Firth. As a child, I watched the
exciting television adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Redgauntlet’ which begins
with the hero, Darsie Latimer, on the sands of the Solway Firth. A mysterious group of fierce mounted men bear
down on him, warn him that the tide on the Solway comes in faster than a horse
can gallop, and save his life. The
taciturn and commanding figure of Redgauntlet was portrayed by the wonderful
Scottish actor Tom Fleming. Sadly – as
with so many great BBC series of the 50s and 60s – it is lost.
So it was with some nostalgia
that we gazed out across the Firth, having cycled down from Castle Douglas to
Balcary Bay. We had stayed with an
eccentric gentleman in his aunt’s family home, left to him in her will,
somewhat after the manner of Bamber Gascoigne’s inheritance of West Horsley
Place, the medieval Grade I listed building in Surrey. At our Scottish lodging, we sank into
comfortable faded armchairs, admired a family portrait by one of the Glasgow
Boys, and informed the owner (who did not know) that the pretty china figurines
in our bedroom were from Meissen.
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| A very ancient rhododendron - near Castle Douglas, SW Scotland |
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| Azalea hedge - good growing conditions in this part of Scotland |
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| Fine whisky bars with typical decorative taste |
A little like Darsie Latimer, I
had an ulterior motive for exploration in Kirkcudbright, for it was there that
my mother’s family had lived in the 19th century. They had a very unusual surname, which is probably
a corruption of a French surname, and thus, to my musings, seem likely to have
been French Huguenots, having fled the persecution of French protestants in one
of the many emigrations. In the past
Kirkcudbright was one of the most important ports in Scotland. It was probably more accessible from France
than some of the east coast ports, and ‘The Auld Alliance’ shows that France
and Scotland were better allies than France and England. A tradition that might be seen to be true to
this day. I did find that there were
three gravestones of my ancestors in the churchyard in the town.
This was a memorable cycling
holiday. We dined in the Selkirk Arms
Hotel – traditionally the inn where Robert Burns composed the Selkirk Grace:
Some hae meat and canna eat
And some wad eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit!
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| 'Let the Lord be thankit!' A good example of Scottish cuisine - scallops, Hebridean black pudding, celeriac mousse, local ham hock, pea shoots and celeriac crisp |
And
our most memorable ride was over the lumpy hills down the peninsula to the Mull
of Galloway, its lighthouse spectacularly on the largest cliff at the end,
where gannets and fulmars wheel and kittiwakes decorously adorn their
nests. In the sea far below, guillemots
bob, awaiting the fare that the tide race around the headland brings. Huge drifts of thrift contrast their pink
with the grassy covering. The lighthouse
was built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather.
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| Mull of Galloway Lighthouse |
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| A great cycling itinerary - excellent parking by the beach in Ardwell |
Once
in Portpatrick, at the end of our ride, we walk the clifftops rather than
cycle, and admire the prowess of junior golfers in a Saturday morning
tournament, who drive the ball easily down the hill to the 293 yard 13th
hole.
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| 13th Hole, Portpatrick G.C. and view of coast path |
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| 'Thrift, thrift, Horatio!' |
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| Dunskey, a ruined 12th Century castle |
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| Portpatrick Harbour |
In the evening a larger than life
Scotsman on the adjacent table in the Crown Hotel is to quote Robert Burns
again, somewhat ‘fou and unco happy’.
Fortunately he is still in the happy stage. On learning that my name is McLeod he informs
me that he is a MacDonald and the McLeods stole their castle (Dunvegan, in Skye)
off them. Fortunately, rather than
relive internecine clan rivalry, he is more curious about my English accent and
keen to know why I am in Galloway. In
front of him an enormous spread of mussels, a bowl of seafood chowder, a tower
of haggis, neeps and tatties, and a plate of scallops. And of course a pint of the local brew. His partner looks like she is a candidate for
Love Island, but turns out to be very pleasant and is delighted that I notice
her expensive Nike trainers.
We had a lovely time in the
southwest of Scotland, but one has to face the music, and shortly after our
return I am in the dungeons (i.e. floor -2) of Poole Hospital getting ready to
make the acquaintance of the charmingly professional radiotherapy staff.
May 23rd to June 15th
(75% of radiotherapy treatments done):
There is a lot of waiting around
for various reasons (mostly bowel and bladder related) and there is a
noticeable camaraderie among the patients in the waiting area. On my second morning, I am astounded when a
lady walks up to a bell that I had not noticed on the wall and tolls it
vigorously. There is a spontaneous
outburst of applause and shouts of ‘well done’.
Apparently the bell is there for patients who have had their last
radiotherapy session (there are usually 20 administered on a daily basis). The next morning there is a Mr Chatty who
sits next to the relatively young looking woman (?breast cancer) and engages
her and everyone else in the conversation.
‘Course, they saved my life, they
have. I was unconscious in ITU. Now look at me.’ He strides across to the water dispenser,
from which we all have to ingest a lot to hydrate before treatment. I am curious, perhaps it was a brain tumour
and dexamethasone stopped the swelling and now he is following on with
radiotherapy? Could it have been
malignancy related hypercalcaemia? Apart
from a large paunch he certainly seems to look well.
‘Won’t hear no-one diss the NHS’,
he says emphatically, looking challengingly around. I focus on my copy of Private Eye, unwilling
to enter a complex discussion which might keep us here all night.
For want of other reading, I
glance at the magazines. ‘Photo
Competition: Win a holiday for two in Iceland’.
That looks exciting – a copy of National Geographic Traveller magazine. A closer look shows that it is dated March
2012. Only the Wetherspoonnews (English
pub chain) is truly up to date. I found
three dated Classic American (Car) magazines, and a gem, a Realtravel from
March 2006. But how did they survive the
pandemic cull? Surely somebody hasn’t
been so mean as to hoard all these up at home only to deposit them in the
waiting area after the pandemic eased?
There is more to ponder. On the world stage, the deliberate
destruction of a dam across the Dnipro river in Ukraine seems designed to halt
Ukrainian counter-offensives, and is therefore likely to have been a Russian
action. Loss of life, devastation, and
loss of crops is the result. At home,
Boris Johnson, embayed by his own Tory MPs, and criticised again by the
Partygate report, announces his resignation from parliament, declaring a ‘Witch
Hunt’. ‘A Tiger Undone By Minuscule
Nibbling Mice’ declares the Daily Mail comment column. ‘No’ declares Alex Hall Hall; ‘Johnson is an
unprincipled, amoral, narcissistic, irresponsible, pathologically dishonest,
greedy, lazy, blustering, bloviating, over-hyped blonde blob, who should never
have been allowed anywhere near public office…’
I recall Ian Hislop once saying on HIGNFY (Have I Got News For You) –
‘Boris Johnson has been sacked from every job he has ever had.’
A letter from a senior military
figure (retired) states that he has met many such as Johnson who get by on
charm and charisma, but are at bottom lazy and incompetent. Finally, Johnson’s PM resignation honours
list is the grossest example of cronyism one can think of. A video has emerged of one of the Partygate
parties – and even an invitation sent round in Number 10 – ‘Jingle and
Mingle’. Some of the newly ennobled
aides are seen partying… Much criticism
of Rishi Sunak for not blocking some of these honours.
If it is not too trivial (No, it
isn’t!: Ed), the final stage of the Giro d’Italia, ending in a sprint in Rome
in front of the Coliseum, is won in his last ever race appearance in the event
by Mark Cavendish, who with an average lead out train, is given a fantastic
helping hand by his old chum, Geraint Thomas who, despite cycling for a
different team, allows him to tuck in behind at high speed approaching the
final kilometre, and then Cav’s inspired guess to follow the right sprinter
before the ‘Manx Missile’ launches for a final time. A heartwarming change from politics. On reflection, these are true heroes – unlike
many of our politicians.
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| Another great sporting moment - I freely admit to bias - 'Cav' wins the final sprint of his final Giro D'Italia against the backdrop of the Coliseum. Though there was a crash, no blood was spilt on this occasion. |
Saturday 10th June
sees Manchester City beat Inter Milan in a rather tight, ill-tempered match by
1-0 to lift the European Cup, adding to their FA Cup and League Cup.
Approaching the summer solstice,
we have now had several weeks of dry, warm, sunny weather, temperature
approaching 30 degrees, and the sea is warming up. Time to swim.
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| Country lanes near Cranborne, Dorset |
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| ... and the foraged produce - elderflowers - now turned into elderflower cordial |
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| Morning swimming scene |
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| Old Harry Rocks |
And visiting a friend who lives
in a famous modernist house nearby, a visit to the loo allows one to mull over
the literary and artistic figures who were encouraged to sign their names on the door, which dates from the late 1930s.
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| Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Jacquetta Hawkes |
I didn’t add mine.
