It's 'Not Quite Christmas' from the Evening Hill Diaries

 

Evening Hill Diaries 18

Festive postbox, Parkstone, Dorset

 

Autumn 2025

‘A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.’  Well, the mid-1960s, in the ‘Grosvenor’ folk club, comprising a large cellar of a Georgian house on the London Road in Bath.  At this time, late on a Sunday night in 1964 or 1965, a girl got up to sing.  We had seen her a few times before, though she was not a regular.  She had a wonderful clear angelic soprano voice.  She reminded me of Joan Baez, though without that occasionally alarming vibrato.

‘I would like to sing a song called “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”’, she announced.  ‘It’s a beautiful song.  The only trouble is that it was written by that complete bastard Ewan MacColl.’

We had never heard this song before.  The effect, the beauty of her voice, the remarkable words, all have stayed with me forever.  But the dripping acid and venom in her description of the composer – that has stayed too. ‘What is she, whose grief bears such an emphasis?’

 Occasionally I have wondered how could this personal statement have come about?  The man who ran the club now lives in a little cottage in Child Okeford, Dorset.  I wonder if he knows?  Her grief bore such an emphasis.

Although MacColl composed the song in the late 1950s, it was not recorded until the early sixties.  It has been recorded many times since, with the over-slow Roberta Flack version* becoming a huge popular hit in 1972.  But the girl whose name I can’t remember, who sang unaccompanied, remains my favourite.

* MacColl himself did not like this version – but then he did not like any cover version.  He wrote it for Peggy Seeger, and I believe, sang it to her over the phone.

 

Troilus and Cressida.  The Globe.  Friday 17^th October, 2025

Shakespeare can bear most interpretations, and I have seen many.  This was a modernised, dare one say ‘camped up’ version of Troilus and Cressida.

On arrival, my first visit to ‘Shakespeare’s Globe’, the stage boasted a giant cracked leg (reason unclear), sundry signs to places such as Mycenae, Athens, Delphi, and a giant sign labelled ‘Troy’, a door to a room at the back where Achilles was presumably sulking, but little else.

The nearly in the round feature of the Shakespearean auditorium (and the open air) makes it very difficult to hear actors who speak with their back to you.  In the ‘good old days’, by which I mean the 70s and 80s, RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) productions used to emphasize clarity of diction and projection of voice.  Many actors these days spend much time in TV or film, and either cannot speak well in the theatre, or forget that there is no microphone.

This was a gender bending production, made even less clear in the doubling of roles by many of the actors.  Thersites, for example, was female, the actor also doubling as Helen.  Vigorously charging around the stage to deliver his (her) diatribes on most of the cast, Lucy McCormick was dressed in a sort of mini-skirt and suspenders, and a bra halfway to that made famous by Madonna.  Her eye shadow would have done credit to the patch surrounding the eye of an Egyptian goose.

A final disappointment even before the production got under way.  The actor playing Cressida was injured.  The MC (or possibly Patroclus) came to the front of the stage and stated that the Globe does not have understudies (why not?) and that a cast member would be reading the part with the playscript.  In fact, Cressida made quite a good job of this, but it was a distraction.  She looked and was dressed like the office typist with an afternoon off, and not a Trojan heroine.

Allied to the poor voice production, it was a cool grey afternoon, with a light easterly breeze.  This meant that all the air traffic coming into London City airport made obeisance to the Globe, and drowned out the words every five to ten minutes.  The odd helicopter contributed, and police and ambulance sirens were not to be outdone in their wish to make their presence felt.

There is an early scene where many of the ‘heroes’ walk past.  We were invited by Patroclus (or possibly the MC) to acknowledge this with ‘Applause’, as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Achilles, et al made their way across the stage dressed in ‘muscle suits’ (Think Superman in brown).

Pandarus, played by Samantha Spiro in character as a brothel Madam (not inappropriate), also doubled as Nestor, one of the Greek commanders.  To conceal this subterfuge, he (she) sat in a wheelchair, under a large grey wig, seemingly connected to an intravenous drip.

Another unusual addition, perhaps useful in the context of the play, is that in the original version we never completely know that Patroclus is dead, at least until Nestor announces, ‘Go, bear Patroclus’ body to Achilles/And bid the snail-pac’d Ajax arm, for shame.’  In this staging, the crafty (he is always described as crafty, by Homer as well) Odysseus aka Ulysses, comes upon Patroclus (or possibly the MC) wounded and finishes him off by stabbing him in the chest.  As we know, it is only when his friend/lover the MC (aka Patroclus)* is killed, that Achilles rouses himself from his sulk, which had been occasioned by Menelaus stealing his captive girl, Briseis.

I have become used to the current fashion for patrons to take drinks into performances, though I still seethe inside.  Nobody becomes so dehydrated that they need to regularly sup from a bottle of water during a one-hour concert.  And as to those who slurp at large glasses of wine during the slow movement of Grieg’s piano concerto, I despair as much as anger.  A patron behind me at the Globe presumably had a sausage roll from Gregg’s.  The bag, which he regularly sampled from was one of those part paper, part plasticised, bags that crackle like a bonfire.

Readers will note that I have bowed to the current ‘woke’ paradigm by treating all actors (male or female) as ‘actors’ and have not used the word ‘actress’.  AI or Microsoft Word wanted me to change heroine to hero as well (I clicked ‘ignore’).  Having just seen Eddie Izzard play Hamlet (a remarkable performance may I add, in which he [she] plays all roles) and learning that his (her) preferred personal pronoun is ‘her’, I reluctantly bow to this convention.  Nonetheless, it irks me when watching cricket played by men, to see several hundred years of tradition cast aside.  I still call them ‘batsmen’.

 

Troilus and Cressida is not one of Shakespeare’s best plays, though Jonathan Miller liked it and produced a fine version for television in 1981.  Miller stated "it's ironic, it's farcical, it's satirical: I think it's an entertaining, rather frothily ironic play. It's got a bitter-sweet quality, rather like black chocolate. It has a wonderfully light ironic touch and I think it should be played ironically, not with heavy-handed agonising on the dreadful futility of it all."  (Quoted from John Wilders’ book on the BBC TV Shakespeare project).  I confess I came to see it partly because I was in London on a Friday and there are few Friday matinees; partly because I had never been to the Globe; and partly because I wanted to ‘tick this one off’.  I had vague recollections of seeing an earlier BBC production in the past (it was 1966; Ed).  Will I go to the Globe again?  I doubt it.  Nevertheless, I should acknowledge that, in fine, at the end of the performance, I seemed to be in an unimpressed minority.

*  Patroclus (or possibly the MC) is listed in the programme as ‘Alexander, PA to Helen.’

 

Our London visit was not without compensations.  Grayson Perry’s new works at the Wallace Collection, and the Banksy exhibition in South Kensington.

Perry is not to everyone’s taste, but his skill and wit as a tapestry creator, and as a ceramicist, is beyond doubt.  Here is his double take on the Fragonard ‘Madame de Pompadour’, together with his tapestry.  To those who would doubt his artistic credentials, it is telling that he has spent many hours over the years in Manchester Square, Hertford House, the home of the collection.  His love of the artworks is genuine.

Madame de Pompadour, Fragonard, 1759

Grayson Perry's version

 

Banksy is different.  His closely guarded secret identity has only added to his cachet.  His works are at once ephemeral, perhaps because they are always topical, and simultaneously of lasting significance because his comments are never trivial.  Here are some of his works, which were collected in this exhibition in South Kensington.  They are like a Wildean epigram in art form.  The written word or one-liner accompanying the paintings or stencils are always to the point and worthy of the immortal Oscar.  The exhibition, Banksy Limitless, runs until 31^st January, 2026.

Banksy says it all

Simon Cowell gets in on the judging of Degas' ballet class

Cruel, but apposite

Dorothy and Toto

Finally, we also made time for Crystal Palace vs Bournemouth.  I was able to renew my acquaintance with Holmesdale Road, which runs alongside the ground.  I lived there in a garret in ‘La Bohème’ style, though without the tubercle bacilli, for six months or so in 1977 before I was able to extricate myself, and to save my precious Mini from further football-related vandalism.

Lindsay, a more devoted football fan than I, was able to get a snap with Bournemouth’s star player, Antoine Semenyo (Ghana), who obligingly stopped for a photograph.  We both renewed acquaintance with our former neighbour, Jefferson Lerma (Colombia), who now plays for ‘The Eagles’(Crystal Palace F.C. for those not in the know).  The ground is not the best for visiting fans, but it did achieve fame when used for the stadium scenes in 'Ted Lasso'.

Lindsay and Antoine

And with the lovely 'Jeff'

October weather was mixed, but I happily remember the 9^th as a spectacular day, when a group of cardiologists joined me and some Parkstone members for an enjoyable round of golf on the course, which was in superb condition.  The day before we had played at Isle of Purbeck Golf Club, which is a tough test, and is chiefly known for its wonderful views over Poole Harbour and the bay towards the Isle of Wight.

 

Driving the 5th hole at Isle of Purbeck Golf Club.  Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island left of centre.  Poole Bay to the right.  The green is at the far right of the image.

Remembrance Sunday (9^th November)

A mild, grey, and breezy day, with the threat of rain later.  The Royal Motor Yacht Club, at short notice, decided that it would be appropriate to stage a two-minute silence around the flagpole, marked by firing of the starting gun.  Looking at the grey choppy seas and the high tide in the harbour, it was possible to remember all of those we knew.  Lindsay’s father’s squadron – 225 – motto ‘We guide the Sword’, are all gone now.  I remember my father who survived the Pacific fleet, to enter Hong Kong in 1945.  He supervised the loading of all the Japanese discarded ordnance and retrieved booby traps onto barges, which were then taken out into the South China Sea and blown up.  A friend who has been in Hong Kong recently told me that the Chinese have now succeeded in eradicating all evidence of anything British in the colony.

 

The late summer and early autumn was remarkable for a glut of fruit, particularly apples.  Here is a snapshot of a friend’s orchard.  We had already denuded the plum trees a few weeks before.

Orchard, Bloxworth, Dorset

The river Frome at Wareham, taken from 'The Priory'

 

We have recently spent a few days in West Sussex, babysitting grandchildren and ‘doing the school run.’  My job was mainly to take Coco to her school, Seaford College, a journey of nearly half an hour along tortuous and muddy Sussex lanes.

Some of you may remember the TV programme Steptoe and Son – a comedy involving father and son rag and bone men.  The father, Albert, played disgustingly by Wilfred Brambell, was perpetually interfering with son Harold’s wish to better himself, to find a girlfriend, and to rise up the social scale.  Harold was frequently scheming to extricate himself from life with Albert.  At the start of one episode, Harold and Albert were seen on their horse and cart, stopping in front of a magnificent area of parkland, with a stately home standing on a rise inside.

‘I wonder who lives there?’ says Harold.  ‘Must be a millionaire.  What a beautiful place.’  They drive on and come to the magnificent entrance gate, which states something like, ‘Castleford House, Old People’s Home’.  Albert then realises that Harold is manoeuvring to place him in the home…

This scene comes to mind again as I approach Seaford College, an edifice, set in the lee of the South Downs.  The estate, originally Lavington Park, Elizabethan in origin, is set in 400 acres of grounds.  The original house is surrounded by superb purpose built buildings, rugby pitches, all weather hockey pitches, a magnificent sports pavilion, and even a golf course.  The drive, with its 22 speed humps takes about five minutes by car from the entrance to the junior school at the rear of the estate.  Every other car is a Range Rover, with the odd Porsche or substantial Volvo scattered among them.

On one morning, when I was using Coco’s parents’ car for the journey, an all-black Range Rover came up close behind me and then roared past at high speed on the only short stretch of straight road in West Sussex.  Coco identified it as belonging to one of the parents.  ‘She thought you were Daddy.  She likes to prove that she can drive faster than Daddy’, she said.  Arriving at the school (later than the black car), I noted the standard Yummy Mummy parent wear.  Skin tight leggings, Ugg boots, and an expensive bolero-style fleece jacket.  A smart bob and highlights in the hair completed the picture.  It gave me pause to consider why these women like to dress so smartly.  Surely they cannot be all trying to ensnare an even richer husband – a dangerous strategy, particularly because their present ones can obviously provide them with very expensive cars?  No, it must be a Wag-type competition.  The devil take the scruffiest.  A brief hug, and Coco is off among all the other little darlings, wearing superb full length school issue gaberdines, which look a little like a Dryrobe, and sporting everything Seaford, including standard issue rucksacks, all named, enormous sports bags, hockey stick bags, drinks bottles, etcetera.  Of course it is a sign of weakness to have your parent/grandparent help to carry any of this, and Coco struggles off with all her clobber.  Then I get back in the car, negotiate the 22 speed humps again, and head off in the direction of Petworth.

 

West Sussex is a lightly populated region, though one might not think it when negotiating the narrow streets of Petworth and Midhurst.  In the afternoon, before returning to Seaford, the Wey and Arun canal makes a fine bridle path walk through remarkably remote countryside.  Restoration of the canal began in 1968, though despite its origins in the late 18^th Century, it never carried enough traffic to make it financially viable.  Nonetheless, it is called ‘London’s Lost Route to the Sea’.

Happily back at home in Dorset…

 

Late November

After a week’s holiday doing very little in Oman (a few images will suffice), it is depressing to return, and not just because of the dank chilly weather.  The USA has completely abrogated Europe.  It (for ‘it’ read Donald Trump) is facilitating a ‘deal’ (one of Trump’s preferred phrases) which appears to reward warlike nations who trample on others.  Zelensky would be entitled to quote Mark Knopfler (Romeo & Juliet), “How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals.”  The words keep revolving in my mind…  So long as Americans are still able to visit ‘Paris, France’ as they always call it, Yew-Rop can go hang.  And the pernicious orange jobbie is everywhere.  Whenever we pulled out from our hotel near Muscat, an enormous sign announced that ‘Trump Golf’ would soon be opening down the coast in Aida.  Will the Baltic states be next on Putin’s list of annexation targets?  Drones over Belgium recently are believed to be Russian in origin.  ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’  (Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Rev Charles Aked, depending on the wording you choose to apply).

We know that one of Churchill’s first comments about the United States was ‘Toilet paper too thin; newspapers too fat’.  This is documented.  Less well attested, but probably true, is his statement that ‘Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.’  It is not found in any written statements, but seems characteristic.  Were he still alive, Churchill would have to admit that, sadly, the statement is no longer true.  If only Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were still in charge on opposite sides of the pond…

I have received a most welcome and wonderful Christmas card from an old family friend, who is now 92, and lives in a retirement village near Charleston, South Carolina.  She looks forward to reading my/our news and remains alert but ‘forgetful’ as she puts it.  She says; ‘I won’t even mention the state of our country.  You can imagine how painful that is.’

Betty was married to a distinguished naval veteran of WW2, Lyn Jones, who worked with my father at the beginning of the Polaris project, which followed on the signing of the ‘Nassau Agreement’, dated 21^st December 1962, by John F Kennedy and Harold Macmillan.  Lyn was an employee of Lockheed after the war.  The U.S. Navy commissioned Lockheed in 1956 to research and design a solid fuel propellant for a missile which could be safely launched from submarines.  ‘Safely’ may not be the correct word to use in the context of a nuclear missile.  I do appreciate the irony.  Lyn (Betty’s late husband) came to the UK in the mid-1960s and was given an honorary naval rank in the British navy.  He, Betty, and my parents became close friends.  We all moved up to the remote sea lochs of western Scotland together.  I hope it doesn’t spare Betty’s blushes to say that when she first appeared at our house in Bath, a dazzling American blonde, at the age of around 32 (I was 17), I was smitten.  Her genteel Southern manners and accent were straight out of ‘Gone With The Wind’.  Many, many years later, Lyn and Betty introduced me to the plantation houses where the film was made.  Indeed, Betty was a ‘docent’ (American for well-informed guide and lecturer) at one of the most prestigious Charleston plantation houses, where the drive was overlaid with those famous oaks festooned with Spanish Moss.  Thank you Betty, for sending your card so early, and I will always remember the kindness you both showed me over the years.

I should also pay tribute to Lyn.  He was a laconic, long, tall, Texan, with the inevitable naval regulation crewcut.  A man who had known hardship as a child – or at least the straightened circumstances which came from the Great Depression years.  Growing up on a farm, he spent hour upon hour in the saddle riding the range – for work, not for pleasure.  On finding one of my father’s colleagues who rode horses for recreation, Lyn was perplexed.  He could never imagine anyone riding a horse for pleasure.  Lyn also had the experience as a child, sitting outside the family property, of meeting the infamous Bonnie and Clyde.  They asked him for directions, which he gave them.  ‘They weren’t like the movie,’ he told me.  ‘They were real nasty people.’  During my first trip to the USA, travelling around the continent on a Greyhound bus, Lyn put me up at their home in Cupertino, California.  Betty was out of town (shame), but he gave me her car to get around in.  It was a Chevrolet Camaro (it boasted an in-line 6 cylinder 3.8 litre engine), a slight advance on the Morris Minor I had been driving at home.  During the week we relived his youth in the bars and jazz clubs of San Francisco, particularly ‘Earthquake McGoons’, the most famous club of the 1960s and 70s.

 

To move on from the present status of the United States.  Is it any wonder that we seek some solace in the quotidian?  There is a lovely obituary notice in the Telegraph today about a recently deceased, witty and pugnacious, Scottish sports journalist, Robert Philip.  He certainly had a way with words.  It sounds as though he was no stranger to the booze, and he certainly smoked heavily.  This is probably not unconnected with his demise from some form of cancer at the age of 75.  Of Scottish football he once wrote, “Being asked to become Scotland manager is clearly akin to being offered VIP front-row tickets for a Victoria Beckham concert; it’s a terrific honour, of course, but no one in their right mind would actually accept.”  He covered the 2001 World Athletics Championships in Edmonton, Alberta.  His description of ‘Deadmonton’ inspired hate mail from Canadians.  The incensed mayor of Edmonton invited Philip to take a helicopter ride with him to show off the city’s attractions but he was unrepentant.  He asserted that its top attraction was the airport departure lounge.  This led to additional death threats.

 

 

I managed to catch up with reading while on holiday.  A biography of Lord Byron by Frederic Raphael, well written, makes one think of the Monty Python line, ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.’  Raphael is a wonderful writer.  Referring to Byron’s wife, the spurned and repudiated Annabella, he states that her legal adviser, Sir Samuel Romilly, ‘had small difficulty in converting a bad case into a good cause; nothing so blesses malice with self-righteousness as taking legal advice.’  Once again, I thought of Trump’s potential legal action against the BBC.  It also reminded me of our recent book club meeting (see below).

I also read ‘Love and War in the Apennines’, by Eric Newby, a book I had been meaning to read for many years, not least because I saw Wanda Newby (with her husband), as a patient, during the time they were living in Swanage.  It was probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s, by which time she would have been in her 80s.  It is always a wonder when confronted with history.  How could this unremarkable old lady*, and this craggy red-faced man have displayed the courage, mental and physical endurance in their defiance of fascist informers and bounty hunters, that they did in wartime Italy?  Fontanellato, where she lived, and where they met, remains a tiny village, nowadays perhaps an afterthought adjacent to the Autostrada del Sole travelling southeast from Piacenza to Parma.

*  Word wanted me to use ‘woman’, but she was a lady.

 

 

 

Our book club, which is all male, began sometime before Covid, and continued by Zoom during lockdown.  By unspoken tradition, it seems to take around half of its allotted time to catching up on news and opinion from its eight members.  The remaining time is adjudicated by our leader and allows us each to give our opinions on the current volume, followed by a mark out of 10 for the book under consideration.  I still hold the record low score for my choice of ‘Mrs Dalloway’.  The author of our book under this month’s consideration, Sally Smith, KC, is married to a distinguished cardiologist, Professor Roger Hall.  I chose it in the hope that she would come to our meeting.  I managed to inveigle them into attending, with the promise of some excellent cooking by Lindsay.  It was felt wise to have an earlier meeting for unfettered discussion, and then another, gentler session, with Roger and Sally present.

 

I need not have worried.  Sally’s recent legal whodunit, ‘A Case of Mice and Murder’, was described in a national review as a ‘whiff of Shardlake and a pinch of Rumpole’.  It was well received by our book group, and her marks bore favourable comparison with some of the famous authors we have read previously.  Her thoughts on the book, the editing process, and the setting (The Inner Temple), were stimulating.  One of our members is a barrister too, and there was some cut and thrust about the law of disclosure, but it seems that in the Edwardian era in which the book is set, this was sketchily applied.

 

Sally has worked on some of the most well-known legal cases, including the prosecution of Dr Andrew Wakefield by the GMC, and the Alder Hey children’s organ retention case.  Her biography before her subsequent career of crime writer was well laid out by the legal journalist, Catherine Baksi, and is worth reading (https://legalhackette.com/2016/06/20/legal-hackette-lunches-with-sally-smith-qc/).

 

Time for a court recess.  Here are some images from Oman.  We were lucky enough to be there on Omani National Day.

Hotel pool and Arabian Gulf in the background.  Artistic oryx to the fore

Fortifications in old Muscat.  Portuguese influence

Modern sculpture and tower of mosque.  Seafront, Muttrah

Frankincense store in the souk

Main geographic distribution of the frankincense tree.  Nonetheless the best frankincense (Boswellia sacra) is found in Oman

With Khalid, frankincense sommelier, and some of his frankincense trees

The Royal Opera House, Muscat.  Illuminations for Omani National Day (red, white, green, the national colours)

A relaxed and quiet beach, Shangri La Al-Husn

The bay at night time - Orion above

The dhow, Sohar, built in Sur, Oman, in which Tim Severin replicated the voyage of Sindbad.  The mythic voyage, from the 1001 nights, was the inspiration for the eight month voyage.  The vessel was built entirely by hand and was sponsored by the Sultan of Oman.  Sohar now sits on a roundabout to the east of Old Muscat.

Eastern city gate, Muscat.  National colours.

The recent death of Sir Terence English, renowned cardiac surgeon, brings to mind my meeting with him at a cardiac symposium.  He was an honorary fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge (and subsequent Master), and my uncle was a don at the college, a physiologist with a distinguished history of fetal research.  Unfortunately he was also a heavy smoker.  Inevitably he presented with angina, and underwent coronary artery bypass grafting by Mr English (as he was at the time).  I sought to thank Mr English.  My uncle had an unusual surname, but it was clear when I mentioned his name that the distinguished surgeon was having trouble calling Uncle Robert to mind.  Suddenly, his face changed; ‘Ah, yes’, he said, a smile breaking across his face.  ‘Of course I remember him; he had wonderful distal vessels.’

(For those not aware, the veins used to bypass the narrowings in the coronary arteries must be anastomosed, that is: joined by suturing, to the coronary blood vessels beyond the blocks in the proximal arteries.  A surgeon can ask for no better patient than one in which the operation is easier rather than harder).

English had a fascinating back-story.  A South African by birth, he obtained a degree in mining engineering in Johannesburg, and worked in the mining industry until an unexpected family legacy allowed him to come to England to study Medicine at Guy’s Hospital.  It is also a curious coincidence that the original British heart transplant (a technical success but a rapid rejection failure), was performed by another South African surgeon, Mr Donald Ross.  After failures in 1968 and 1969, the Department of Health let it be known that there would be no funding for British heart transplantation; an informal moratorium that lasted for 10 years.  Sir Terence operated on Keith Castle in 1979, by which time the techniques to combat tissue rejection, and preserve cardiac function had improved.  Mr Castle lived for a further seven years.

 

 

December 2025

A sense of dismay.  In the last two days of our recent holiday we listened in disbelief as England were crushed in the first Ashes Test match in Perth in only two days (just to revise the format of Test Cricket for transatlantic friends, it is meant to last for five days.  And yes, we have breaks for lunch and tea).  Two weeks later, and another heavy defeat in Brisbane, at the ‘GABBA’ cricket ground.  So-called because it is situated in the suburb of Woollongabba.  Often the scene of the first test of an Ashes series, it is commonly known as ‘The Gabbattoir’ for its dread significance for visiting English cricket teams.

 

This is not a great introduction to the Christmas season, in which we try to find some positive thoughts to convey to all our friends.  I hope that some of the above will have given you enjoyment, and that Christmas time for you is a chance to recharge batteries; to be in touch with friends and loved ones; and is a time of peace with perhaps some better news to come for the world in 2026.

December morning.  One cold spell in November, but generally mild here in Dorset