This summer's lease had all too short a date
Evening Hill Diaries 12 - Summer
June 24th, 2024
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| View from Evening Hill, Poole |
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| MV Barfleur passes Brownsea Castle |
Was it
Flaubert?
I have read
somewhere that Flaubert (it was certainly one of the famous French authors)
would examine every page of his written work to check whether he had ever used
the same word twice (except prepositions, and presumably conjunctions). I used the word ‘explore’ twice during a
short piece as an entry to a memoir competition, and had great difficulty in
finding an accurate substitute.
‘Investigate’ did not fit. A
Thesaurus was of no help. Eventually I
used ‘pursue’.
I am minded
of this because I am reading Patrick Leigh Fermor. ‘Between the Woods and the Water’ is the
second in his travel writings about his 1933-5 walk from the Hook of Holland to
Constantinople. This second volume
begins as he crosses the Maria Valeria bridge over the Danube from what is now
Slovakia into Esztergom, Hungary. Leigh
Fermor, quite apart from his astounding service in WWII, is renowned as the
paragon of travel writers. The writing
is dense, brilliant, and I am frequently driven to the dictionary to look up
the meaning of a word, or even a translation of the several languages in which
he writes. A classical education shines
through; his appreciation and knowledge of arcane architectural terms is
remarkable; and he has an extraordinary grasp of the history, including the
ethnology, of Middle Europe. He is a
disciple of Flaubert (or whichever writer it was). The phrase which drove me to the dictionary
this time and inspired the above paragraph was “Foxes’ Wedding”*. I had never heard of it.
I am
enjoying this book immensely, but it is clear that nobody would write a travel
opus in the same style nowadays. They
would not get away with it. I cannot
hope to emulate Leigh Fermor, and will stick to the direct account, perhaps
with the occasional adjective or metaphor.
The Hemingway style of writing for me! ‘He has never been known to use a word that
might send a reader to the dictionary.’
(William Faulkner).
The old
witticism which says ‘There are travellers who write, and there are writers who
travel’ does not seem to fit Leigh Fermor.
He was uniquely gifted at both.
* A Foxes’ or Fox’s Wedding is the phenomenon
of simultaneous sunshine and rain, often with a rainbow. It appears to be derived from a Japanese folk
myth.
On to the
next Book Club book – The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) by George Orwell. This one is hard going and consists of two
sections. Part 1 is more or less a documentary
in writing of the working conditions of the poor, particularly miners, in the
North of England in the 1930s. Part 2 is
Orwell’s musings on Socialism, which he sees as the solution to the poverty
problem. The discussion is fascinating,
and he skewers delightfully almost all of the poets, novelists, and dramatists
of the early 20th Century. WH
Auden, for example, ‘a sort of gutless Kipling,’ and GK Chesterton, ‘a
sentimental, democratic, Catholic.’
Even T S Eliot does not escape.
Despite his
admiration of Socialism, his opinion of what one might call ‘committed
Socialists’ is withering.
He describes ‘… a prim little man with a white collar job, usually a secret
teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings…’ or delineating a
typical crank in the Socialist and Communist parties: ‘fruit-juice drinker, nudist,
sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist.’ No-one can accuse Orwell of pulling his
punches. ‘The good old Socialist sport
of denouncing the bourgeoisie.’
Jeremy Corbyn came to mind several times. As in 1984 and Animal Farm he is often
prescient. He sees the advent of
machines to do virtually everything as a concern, though he admits that the
genie cannot be put back into the bottle ‘… the inhabitants of Utopia would create
artificial dangers in order to exercise their courage, and do dumbbell
exercises to harden muscles which they would never be obliged to use.’ In
gyms, yoga, and Pilates classes up and down the country, and in extreme sports,
we see his words have come true.
This diary
leapfrogs in time somewhat. On Friday 10th
May, those lucky enough to be outside at nighttime and to be away from light
pollution, including places as far south as the Isle of Wight, were treated to
a spectacular display of the Northern Lights.
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| King's College Chapel, Cambridge (please note this is a copyright photograph) |
In early May
I journeyed to Scotland for a few days of golf in celebration of the 90th
anniversary of the Scottish Medical Golf Society. I will not dwell on the games
themselves. But on the way I wanted to
try to pick up a cashmere sweater in a sale.
I therefore stopped in Hawick, the town in the Borders most associated
with the Scottish woollen industry. I
found a sweater made by William Lockie, apparently one of the last manufacturers
to be located in the town. In the quiet
stockroom and salesroom, a pleasant lady of perhaps sixty or so told me that
when she was a girl, Pringle employed 2000 people in the town. ‘Now the manufacturing is all overseas,’ she
said. I asked her if there was still a
Pringle office and workforce in the town, and if so, how many people did it
employ now? The answer was yes. The Pringle workforce in Hawick now numbers
four people.
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| Muirfield clubhouse. The famous 'island' bunker, 18th hole |
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| Distant view of Arthur's Seat above Edinburgh, across Aberlady bay, from Luffness golf links |
Also that
month, I travelled to Chicago, ostensibly to play golf at Whistling
Straits. Prior to rural Wisconsin
however, I was fortunate to do in whistle-stop fashion, much of the best of
Chicago. The Chicago Art Institute, the
Gehry and Anish Kapoor installations in Millennium Park, the tour of Chicago
architecture seen from the river, and a visit to Chicago Symphony Hall to hear
Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, conducted by the 86-year-old Neeme Järvi. A wonderful
experience. Only one thing jarred. I had diligently researched downtown hotels
and came up with an extremely good deal at the Royal Sonesta, with all rooms
overlooking the Chicago river. One
member of our party complained, and when I saw the view from his room, I felt
sympathetic:
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| Chicago river at night |
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| A great mix of styles from the river |
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| 17th Green, Whistling Straits. Miss this and you are in serious trouble |
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| Just one of the many classics in the Chicago Art Institute. 'Night Hawks'. Edward Hopper |
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| The conclusion of Mahler 2. Chicago Symphony Hall. |
Mixing with
the American cardiology golf team – including old friends from days at Duke –
it was easy to lapse into the U.S. usage of the English language, with simple
synonyms such as elevator, gas, trunk, and sidewalk. Bunkers on golf courses are ‘traps’ to the
Americans. But it reminded me of some
less common words which can lead to misunderstanding. For example, during my first few weeks in
North Carolina, in the middle of the secretaries’ communal office, there was
some discussion about a forthcoming Division of Cardiology party.
‘Dr Mcleod, do you shag?’ asked one of the
secretaries. I cannot remember my
response. Probably struck dumb. Perhaps these functions ended in some sort of
wild orgy? If so, this seemed at
variance with the buttoned-up, tie-wearing, immaculate white coat sporting
dedicated doctors of the Medical Center.
My slack-jawed appearance and blank face rapidly drew forth an
explanation. ‘Carolina Shag’ is a famous
style of dance, a more sedate style of jitterbug perhaps, popular all over the
U.S. as ‘Shag’ but varying slightly depending on location and state. Understandable hilarity when I explained the
UK use of the word.
As Shaw
observed, we are two countries, divided by a common language.
There can be
few who do not observe those hints of mortality at the time that they first put
their hands into a Dyson (or similar) hand-dryer. The rippling skin of the dorsum of one’s
hands due to loss of muscle and skin elasticity have a horrifying fascination. Stand in front of a bathroom mirror: stomach
in, shoulders back. Pleased with
self. Then lean forward for the
toothpaste and that vertical ruff of redundant skin appears below the
supra-sternal notch. Oh dear. Quite apart from observations of stumbling
Joe Biden, with his ‘Parkinsonian mask-like facies,’ one worries when writing,
about loss of vocabulary. Those senior
moments, ‘Whatshisname’, ‘Whatdoyoucallit’, happen at the keyboard, but usually
we are able to find good words, if not ‘le mot juste.’
And in
postscript, as you all know, Biden has stepped down.
An
interesting study, published some time ago, examined the entire works of Iris
Murdoch. It was shown, by computer
analysis, that during her later career as a writer, there were subtle changes
such as less complex sentence structures and simpler vocabulary, which presaged
the onset of her diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by some years. This must have been a difficult exercise to
do since we all have access to a Thesaurus.
I suppose we eschew it most of the time – writing what first comes into
our heads. The unconscious search for
and use of a word is what must have been the clue to Iris’s deterioration.
British
males of a certain age, e.g. me; will have noted with sadness and nostalgia the
passing of the French singer-songwriter and actress, Françoise Hardy, on 11th June aged 80. Her wistful melancholic songs about love,
with an enchanting French accent in a breathy alto register, made the pains of
adolescence understandable and even bearable.
Her clear diction and pronunciation was such that one could even
understand the words. Words which I
sometimes found helpful when hitch-hiking (faire l’auto-stop) around France in
1967, the Summer of Love.
I am not
alone. Malcolm McLaren, The Beatles,
Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, David Bowie, Morrissey, Richard Thompson and Bob
Dylan were all infatuated. Adieu. Dors bien, Françoise.
Fais de beaux rêves.
‘Nostalgia’s
great but it’s not what it was.’
AFGL. Sunday Times, 1960s or
early 1970s.
‘In the White Giant’s Thigh’.
This is the title of a suitably impenetrable poem, though with many
oblique references to sex, by Dylan Thomas (please see most of my back
catalogue of writings). Writing in
Atlantic Monthly in 1951, Dylan stated that it was a part, possibly the first
part, of a long work to be called ‘In Country Heaven.’ I am sure he must have been influenced by the
atomic bombs; also possibly by the encroachment of humans upon the goodness of
the earth. Here is what he says (sounds
like he was practising for the next part of his poem). In view of subsequent works, for example
Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ and the focus on global warming, I quote it in
full because it seems extremely prescient (that word again):
‘…this time,
spreads the heavenly hedgerow rumor, it is the Earth. The Earth has killed
itself. It is black, petrified, wizened, poisoned, burst; insanity has blown it
rotten; and no creatures at all, joyful, despairing, cruel, kind, dumb, afire,
loving, dull, shortly and brutishly hunt their days down like enemies on that
corrupted face. And, one by one, these heavenly hedgerow men who once were of
the Earth, tell one another, through the long night, Light and His tears falling,
what they remember, what they sense in the submerged wilderness and on the
exposed hairbreadth of the mind, of that self-killed place. They remember
places, fears, loves, exultation, misery, animal joy, ignorance and mysteries,
all you and I know and do not know. The poem-to-be is made of these tellings.’
Why do I write about ‘In the White Giant’s Thigh’? Because I have sometimes wondered if Dylan
had been thinking about the Cerne Abbas giant, which is not far from here, on
the hillside above the small village of Cerne Abbas. I have now found some documentary support for
the view that Thomas had the Cerne giant in mind, and particularly a Dorset folk-belief
that women who were impregnated on the White Giant’s thigh would be fertile.
With this in mind, we set out with a friend from Edinburgh who wished to visit the Cerne Abbas giant. Taking in the 200-year-old White Horse above Osmington (George the Third on his charger) on the way, we then climbed laboriously up the steep slope at least to the White Giant’s left foot. At our age, none of the party was in further need of fertility and it seemed superfluous to climb higher.
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| In the White Giant's Left Foot |
While researching this I came across an interview with Andrew
Sinclair, the film director who was responsible for what was primarily Richard
Burton’s project – the film of ‘Under Milk Wood’. Liz Taylor was of course included in the
film, and seemed somehow out of place, at least to my recollection. Sinclair paid tribute to the people of
Fishguard, who in 1971 put up with the film crew entourage, allowed the
addition of a cottage to the last building on the Lower Town quay to house
‘Captain Cat’, and acted as extras in the film.
He and Richard Burton paid tribute to the acting skills of the
townspeople. ‘You know Andrew,’ said
Burton. ‘All the Welsh are actors, but
only the bad ones become professional.’
A Wildean epigram. A note in a
Lower Town pub signed by Burton testifies to the day that the cast drank the
pub dry.
D-Day
Magnificently presented parades and services to commemorate
the 80th Anniversary of D-day.
Evening event at Portsmouth accompanied by drone pictures created in the
sky. A daytime parade at the new British
memorial site at Vers-sur-Mer, just behind Gold beach attended by dignitaries
from Britain, the US, and France.
Withering criticism of Rishi Sunak (our now ex-prime minister), for
leaving before the further ceremony at the US memorial at Omaha beach. A bad decision. This spawned a number of cartoons, for
example, Sunak sitting listening to one 100-year old veteran sitting in a
wheelchair recounting his experience. A
bubble comes out of his head: ‘Sounds grim; sorry, must dash; got a taxi
waiting.’ Poor Sunak; handed the
ultimate in poisoned chalices, or ‘hospital passes’, call it what you will.
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| 'They do it with Drones' |
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| D-Day 80, Portsmouth |
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| British Cemetery, Bayeux |
New cartoon since Sir Keir Starmer’s accession as PM. King Charles greeting him: ‘Have you come
far?’ Starmer, ‘Yes, my father was a
toolmaker.’
For those not in the know, e.g. US or Canada, Starmer was
wont to mention his ‘humble’ origins at every opportunity during the election
campaign. ‘My father was a toolmaker’
verbatim, began almost every speech on almost every public appearance. For the time being, post-election (which was
on July 4th), the Labour cabinet members are utilising the ‘blame
the Tories for the mess they left behind’ mantra. How long this will work is anybody’s guess. Despite a remarkably low share of the vote,
the Conservatives were routed by aggrieved Labour voters, by an increase in
vote share for the Liberal Democrats, and disruption from the right-wing Reform
Party led by Nigel Farage. Labour therefore
achieved a landslide turnover of seats in the House of Commons. The word ‘Starmergeddon’ has entered the
language.
As happens every four years, somehow the Olympics transfixes us and we watch far too much television. Will the impassive South Korean women beat the equally impassive Chinese women at archery? (Yes). Can Great Britain get a gold medal in cliff climbing? (Yes). Do we know what repêchage means? (Yes). Poole turns out to be the ‘winningest’ town in the UK – our trampolining champion and our kite-foiling champion. Many fine moments, though the bizarre opening ceremony will also live long in the memory. Performed in the rain, with catastrophic results for the pianos, which accompanied singers, and the odd appearance of a hooded man who ran through some of the Paris landmarks. Lady Gaga cavorted to little effect on some steps above the Seine. Attracting my attention was a display of a house with multiple windows, with a caricature of Marie Antoinette holding her head in her hands. I thought it odd to celebrate a method of mass execution.
Execution has several meanings. In the hands, or should that be feet (?) of Mark Cavendish, perfect execution turned out to be the exquisite manoeuvres in the chaos of a Tour de France sprint finish which gave him his 35th stage victory in the race, thus becoming the only man to better Eddy Mercx in this event.
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| Cav's 35th |
Champagne:
Madame Bollinger said it best “I drink Champagne when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it -- unless I'm thirsty.”
A non sequitur. Here is another:
A peculiarly British comedy show has been present on the
radio airwaves for some years. There
have been changes in personnel, largely due to demise, but the format remains
similar, and in Jack Dee the BBC have found a great replacement for the
immortal Humphrey Lyttelton, as the quizmaster.
Lyttelton, incidentally, deserves an entire blog to himself. Have a look at his Wikipedia entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Lyttelton
Naturally, the show, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (ISIHAC) has
its own Facebook page. Devotees are
inspired by the moderators to produce their own entries to questions typical of
the ones set for the panel of four during the radio programme.
For example, the Facebook panellists are invited to suggest
new titles for ‘The German Film Club’.
Here are some of their suggestions:
1. Bach to the
Future
2. Audi West
Was Won
3. Herrspray
4. Singin’ in
the Rhein
5. Paint Your
Volkswagen
6. The Hunt
for Red Oktoberfest
7. The
Importance of Being Ernst
8. Cool Hans
Luke
9. Guten Abend
It Like Beckham
10.Carry On
Mein Kampfing
11.Black
Forrest Gump…
I think you get the picture.
I am writing this as Storm Lilian careers in from the
West. It feels very equinoctial, despite
the date being August 22nd.
I have been to Edinburgh again. Somewhat reluctantly this time because I had
nothing booked from the main programme, but the Fringe is always rewarding,
especially when one takes care to avoid the turkeys.
It is never of much interest to readers to enumerate shows or
plays they haven’t seen, and have little chance of seeing. A few stood out. An unusual show ‘A Giant On The Bridge’ was
created with the collaboration of a number of Scottish prisons, and was in
musical story format, dealing with the jailing and subsequent homecoming of a
young man to a sister who has been looking after his daughter. The story unfolds alongside a fairytale of an
imprisoned giant who has lost his heart.
So far, so unpromising, but the musicianship of the performers was
mesmerising. Many of those who
contributed to the writing work within the criminal justice system, or in
charities designed to help prisoners.
I generally avoid musicals.
This is because of ‘Weaver’s Law of Musicals’. So many are dire. But venturing to one called ‘Wallis’, the
acting and ensemble singing was excellent and the main actress/singer who
played Wallis Simpson was stick thin and a fantastic lookalike for the person
whom the Queen Mother called ‘That Woman’.
The songs moved the dialogue along very well and were composed in 1930s
style, which could of course be taken as the high point of the American popular
song.
Two excellent exhibitions.
Sir John Lavery, acclaimed as a ‘Belfast born Glasgow Boy’; and El Anatsui,
the Ghanaian sculptor. Examples of both
below.
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| El Anatsui - close up |
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| The finished sculpture from a distance |
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| Two scenes at Grez sur Loing by Sir John Lavery |
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| The jockeys' room at Ascot, 1920s |
And much music: swing, jazz manouche, Piaf style swing,
blues, harpsichord and piano recitals, guitar recitals. And finally, through the generosity of an
ex-patient, a seat at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
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| Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street |
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| The castle during the Tattoo |
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| Tribute to 200 years of RNLI |
The last event, played by a remarkable Italian, Luca Soattin,
was a recital of classical guitar music dating from the early 19th
century, at which time the predominant exponents, composers, and teachers were
Italian. One of the St Cecilia’s Halls volunteers
introduced me to him before his recital, and he even allowed me to play his guitar,
though he was somewhat horrified that I play ‘with the nails’ as do most modern
guitarists. This is not advisable on
treble strings made of gut. Luca plays with
the finger pads only on what is called a ‘transitional guitar’, the first
instrument to move to the six-string model rather than the previous style of
five strings, which is often called the vihuela. His guitar was made by Paolo Castello in
Genoa in 1804. Included in the works by
Carulli, Sor, and Giuliani, was a Romanza by Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840). Paganini’s remarkable skill and flexibility
in playing the violin has been attributed by some to possible Marfan’s
Syndrome, though he was brought up in a musical family and played many
instruments, including the guitar, from childhood. Allegedly he used the guitar to relax. One of his statements was ‘The violin is my
mistress, but the guitar is my master’. He and the
guitarist and composer Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), and Gioachino Rossini
(1792-1868) were firm friends. On the
rare occasions when they were all in Rome together, Luca told us that the three
were known as the Triunvirato (the Triumvirate).
During Paganini’s travels, he gave a lock of his hair as a
keepsake to an English admirer, Signora Chatterton, the future wife of England’s
greatest harpist of the era, John Chatterton.
The bestowal of a lock of hair to an admirer or lover was very much the
vogue in the 19th century.
Analysis of the hair indicates that Paganini probably died not from
Marfan Syndrome, but from mercury poisoning, a common but ineffective treatment
for syphilis. The interested should read
the journal Arch Kriminol 2012; 229:11-24.
I say 'remarkable' of Luca, because he is not only a virtuoso
recitalist, but his day job is as post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in
cardiac electrophysiology at the University of Copenhagen.
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| 1804 Genoese guitar |
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| Another historic instrument from St Cecilia's Halls |
Summer seems to have passed in a flash – though we were ‘looking
(for it) all the time’. Like the sad
character in Under Milk Wood, putting flowers on the grave of Gomer Owen, who ‘kissed her once by the pigsty when she wasn’t
looking, and never kissed her again, though she was looking all the time’. As indeed were we, for summer if not for kisses…
Sign off date: late August, 2024 (but see below).
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| The most unusual experience in Edinburgh. Live saxophone and live painting on a glass plate, the image being projected onto the East window of St Giles Cathedral. |
Postscript, 1st September 2024
Yesterday I was almost knocked over by a very frail old man
on a mobility scooter trying to make a U-turn on the pavement in Canford
Cliffs. He didn’t recognise me but I
realised that he was once a distinguished surgeon, and that he had performed
surgery on me in the late 1980s.
Slack-jawed, drooling, obviously with very poor vision, a caricature of his former self.
We all have our appointments in Samarra, but so many friends
have been taken too soon that I could not help but remember David Geraint Jones’
poem, “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 may not find me there.
This poem was published in 1944. David Rhys Geraint Jones spent some time at
the Grammar School in Haverfordwest, where some twenty years later, I was
somewhat unhappily cloistered. In 1942,
he was called up before he could finish exams at Trinity College, Cambridge and
commissioned into the Royal Armoured Corps.
Nine days after D-Day he landed at Luc-sur-Mer. He died on 25th June from a sniper’s
bullet near Tourmauville, to the southwest of Caen. His grave is at St Manvieu War Cemetery. The epitaph reads “Your Peace is Bought with
Mine” – a line taken from his poem “The Light of Day”. In my opinion one of the finest poems of the
Second World War.
“Let me not see old age” is not only prescient, given that there
were far fewer very old men or women at the time of writing; it uncannily chimes
with Jones’s own fate.
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