Date of posting February - apologies for starting in...
December, 2023 (12th)
We were in the Nativity play season and I have described before how grandson Louis was unimpressed that instead of Harry Potter, or George’s Marvellous Medicine, the school play at Christmas was going to be, in his own words: ‘Jesus again’. An even more extraordinary story, shedding light on modern times, has come from friends whose little girl, aged four, was chosen to play Mary at her infants’ school. She had recently had a little brother added to the family. The teacher was understandably nonplussed, when, after explaining the virgin birth, the little girl in question said, ‘Yes, but is it vaginal or caesarean?’
Sadly it has been a time of funerals recently, some friends taken too young, but some after a rich and full life. I attended the funeral of Donald Longmore, a passionate enthusiast in all things, who first gained notoriety when participating in the first UK heart transplant. Longmore lived to 95.
I met him when I was a junior doctor. A patient I cared for at UCH was having open-heart surgery at the National Heart Hospital. ‘I’m Donald Longmore’, he said. ‘Come and sit with me.’
‘Sit with me’ was in fact just sitting on the theatre (OR) floor, up against the wall, while the operation was performed by John Parker, at that time Senior Registrar, but later a great surgeon and leader of the team at St George’s Hospital. Donald was open, engaging, full of exciting stories of heart units he had visited around the world. ‘Mostly invited there to explain to them why their patients hadn’t woken up’, he said. It was the early days of bypass surgery and the machines were not always reliable. Adequate oxygenation, damage to red blood cells, problems with air embolism, and problems reliably managing anticoagulation were the main issues – as indeed they still can be without meticulous management.
Years later, I looked after his childhood friend Aubrey here in Poole. Donald’s daughter described at the funeral how he and Aubrey had built their first boat together in his mother’s kitchen. When Donald was a house officer at Guy’s, he discovered an empty ward under the one he was working on. He built another boat there. Patients would complain of the noise of sawing and hammering beneath them. When summoned, Donald would sit on their bed, and say, ‘Now, let’s just listen, shall we, and see if there are any noises?’ Of course, there were no noises.
This story was one of those extraordinary ‘laugh out loud’ moments. But also the concept of building a boat in a ward, or even having a ward that was empty, stretches modern credulity!
A tranquil scene at sunset taken from Parkstone Yacht Club, 14th December
A few days earlier, on 7th December, yet another storm hit us. The wind was more or less directly from the south, and the maximum ferocity seemed to hit at the bottom of the tide, for the seas visible from our house over Hook Sands, just to the east of the main Swash Channel which leads from Poole to the open sea, were a confused mass of white wavecrests. The next morning, walking along the beach, hundreds of seagulls were busy eating the cockles, clams, and other shellfish, the residue of the storm. For some reason, they showed no interest in the many scallops which had been cast up, presumably torn from the shallow sands further out to sea. Despite misgivings, we collected twenty of these, carefully cleaned them, discarding the coral (roe) and frying them in butter. They were delicious and there were no adverse effects!
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| Haul of Scallops |
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| Simple is best. Pan fried in butter |
A friend sent me ‘Recent Advances in Cardiology’ by East and Bain. In case you have not heard of these authors, despite avid attention to the most important papers coming from Circulation, the Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine, fear not. The date of imprint is 1929.
Having some time over Christmas, I was interested to delve into this volume, because Terence East was a former consultant at King’s College Hospital. His photograph was still displayed in the Cardiac Department when I started working there in 1976. He must have been known to the then chief of department, Sam Oram, because East did not retire until 1959. East served in the first World War and was wounded three times. Appointed to the staff of King’s in 1924, he was the most junior physician. As such, his responsibilities there included performing all the autopsies done in the hospital, which he did with great technical skill, his post mortem demonstrations being often attended by colleagues. It is hard to contemplate consultants appointed in medicine doing that nowadays.
I was fascinated to read in the chapter on ‘Thrombosis of the Coronary Arteries and Myocardial Infarction (heart attack)’ how emphatic was East’s statement of the link between coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction. Of course, Herrick’s famous paper in 1912 to the American Association of Physicians, and two Russians working in Kiev (Kyiv) two years earlier, had unequivocally demonstrated that this was the case (even though Herrick’s paper was ignored for some years). Credit for describing the pathology of heart attack therefore correctly goes to Obrastzow and Straschesko. East, writing in 1929 states unequivocally, ‘Complete obstruction of a coronary artery, or one of the larger branches, is the cause of the syndrome.’ This point of view, and the term ‘coronary thrombosis’ persisted for about four decades before a number of pathologists, chief among them the extremely famous Bill Roberts at NIH in Washington, claimed that, after performing many autopsies on heart attack patients, the vessel was only occluded by thrombus in 54% of cases. This ‘imprimatur’ of a great man (as Acierno, cardiac historian, called it) was highly influential, and certainly, training in 1970, we were taught to call it ‘myocardial infarction’ and not ‘coronary thrombosis’. The truth emerged later in the 1970s, and in brief, this is the story.
A surgeon whom many deemed crazy, some unscrupulous, and others just plain wrong was working in Spokane, Washington. His strategy was to operate immediately in cases of heart attack and to bypass what he thought was the affected artery. His name was Ralph Berg, Jr. Subtle choruses of disapproval greeted his presentations, as did his claims of remarkable survival results in his series of cases, operated on almost as soon as they reached the hospital. I remember attending one of his lectures in the USA and the tut-tutting that was audible during his talk. Of course, to find the artery at fault, he asked his cardiologists to perform coronary angiograms on the patients as they arrived in the hospital. This in itself was thought to be dangerous, though having performed many myself, it was clear that the dangerous ‘dye’ (X-ray contrast media) which we injected into the coronary artery could cause no harm. Why? Because the artery was blocked!
The most influential paper produced from Berg’s team was by Marcus DeWood, in 1980. DeWood described the results in the New England Journal of Medicine. He found that if angiograms were done within 30 minutes of onset of symptoms, the relevant coronary artery was blocked in almost every case. When the angiograms were done later, the percentage fell. Even later, and the percentage fell further. The explanation for Roberts’ results was spontaneous lysis of the clot in the artery. This important work led directly on to work on thrombolytic drugs, and then the more adventurous (and ultimately more successful) percutaneous approach to physically open the occluded artery. End of story.
Some of East’s treatments are laughable to us nowadays. Without diuretics for treatment of heart failure, relief from congestion and oedema used methods such as venesection and Southey’s tubes (placed into the swollen legs to drain fluid). Here is one gem:
‘When great engorgement of the liver is present, six leeches should be applied along the right costal margin. The effect upon the liver under these circumstances is out of all proportion to the amount of blood removed by the leeches from the superficial vessels. There is no satisfactory explanation for their action, but it is undoubtedly beneficial, and patients who have experienced this relief will ask for it to be repeated.’
In another section he talks about graduated exercises being useful in cases of heart failure – thus anticipating interest in cardiac rehabilitation by nearly 50 years.
East and Bain use a term which had entirely escaped my learning – hyperpiesia – and it seems that in the 1920s this was virtually synonymous with hypertension.
A final gem. For many years, standardising the dose of digoxin, used in heart failure (digitalis in the powdered leaf extract) was difficult. East and Bain describe the approach of the Americans Hatcher and Brody, who were clearly the leaders in the field. They ‘took as their unit the weight in milligrams of the dry drug which was required to kill a cat weighing 1 Kg when the solution of the drug was injected slowly into a vein. This they called the cat unit.’
A fascinating read!
‘The trivial round, the common task/Should furnish all we ought to ask…’ etc.
The hymn by John Keble which we often dutifully sang in school assemblies came to mind. In recent days or weeks it has certainly seemed that in isolation in Crichel Mount Road, we have scarcely performed more than the trivial round or the common task. But we escaped from the monotony which Keble nonetheless felt should bring us ‘daily nearer God’ and forsook Poole for London in the final two days of the old year.
Exiting from Waterloo Station, it seemed we had entered an eldritch madhouse. Hooting, rain, screaming sirens, and a coagulum of cars, taxis, and buses. We managed to catch a bus up to the Strand, where it came to a thrombus of vehicles. We decided to walk until the number 9 (which takes us to the RAF club at Hyde Park Corner) came. We passed the Savoy, we passed Charing Cross, and had not been overtaken by any bus. As we crossed Trafalgar Square, the sirens screamed again. Three very large black police cars, blue lights flashing, screeched around from Northumberland Avenue and headed back down the Strand. Ambulances followed. The traffic was now completely stationary. We skirted a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Pall Mall and continued West. We walked all the way and never saw our bus. London really is a good place to exercise.
London being at a standstill we were forced to take the tube to go to our theatre in Islington (Almeida). Apart from musicals, which non-English speakers delight in, there was very little drama available. The play (Cold War by Conor McPherson, from the film of Pawel Pawlikowski) was excellent, with two actors who are predicted as future stars. Luke Thallon and Anya Chalotra. Charmed (probably a man thing) as I was by Anya who plays Zula, a Polish girl who falls in love with Viktor (Thallon), I announced confidently that she would be a star, only to find that she already has two million plus followers on Instagram because of her role in something called ‘The Witcher’ on Netflix. The stars of the future can not only act, but also dance and sing, something that Chalotra does with great assurance. Prior to the theatre, we treated ourselves to dinner at Ottolenghi’s and apparently my forthcoming birthday present will be a cookbook by him. Not by choice, you understand, more by ex cathedra announcement and executive decision.
The reason for our trip was to attend Tottenham Hotspur vs AFC Bournemouth at the new Tottenham stadium the next day. In the morning I managed to fit in a visit to ‘Impressionists on Paper’ and ‘Marina Abramovic’ at the Royal Academy. The Impressionist exhibition was lovely. The Abramovic was ‘unusual’. The former was largely drawings, pastels, and watercolours by a substantial majority of the better known Impressionists. The latter featured many bizarre objects and examples of Marina Abramovic’s Performance Art. Owing to the fact that she is getting on a bit and not able to be there in person, her staging of herself and her lover Ulay standing naked and virtually blocking the entrance to gallery 4 was courageously performed by a number of volunteer substitutes. Their complete absence of movement was uncanny. It was difficult to know whether they were real. But as I approached to pass between them, the curator said, ‘Excuse me sir, could you roll up your gallery information leaflet please? We get a lot of trouble with paper cuts.’
The only picture I give you is an attractive pen and pastel drawing from one of the Impressionists:
I will mention the artist at the end – this is just a little guessing game**.
Back to northeast London, and a march up Tottenham High Road to watch the game, pausing for excellent counter-repast to our Ottolenghi experience in the KFC. Exciting game, drenched by rain and hail, a Spurs win 3-1, and a beautiful stadium. Then a slow journey back through London to Waterloo, where New Year’s Eve celebrants were gathering as we slipped into an empty train heading for the south coast, an excellent M&S meal our New Year’s Eve treat. A bathetic description to encompass the arrival of 2024.
2024
On a personal note, acknowledging events elsewhere in Gaza, Ukraine, etc. I can’t help feeling that 2024 is going to be better than 2023. The reason? Call me superstitious, but to start my first round of golf with a birdie and to be level par after five holes was encouraging, even elating.
Book club met, and we discussed ‘The Shortest History of Germany’ by James Hawes (not a joke title). A fascinating read. It was interesting to discover, among many facts, that Ludendorf and von Hindenburg, the main drivers of the German battle forces in WW1 were in fact both from Poznan (Poland). Also, that before the gradual increase in militarism in the later part of the 19th century, there was huge Anglophilia in Germany, largely related to the engagement of Victoria and Albert’s daughter (Victoria) to Frederick, second in line to the throne. At that time a relatively unknown Junker lawyer, Otto von Bismarck, wrote privately to a friend expressing his disgust at German ‘Anglomania’, and ‘English sportsmen, Lords, and guineas…’, And despite the rapturous welcome for the Anschluss in 1938, German and Austrian history has been far from a chummy partnership for centuries – they were often at war with one another. Maybe, as Captain von Trapp said, it was ‘Not the Austria I used to know.’
James Hawes has some very good encapsulating phrases, describing Goethe as ‘Germany’s Shakespeare, Dickens, and Keats all rolled into one.’ The book scored remarkably highly for what is after all, just a history book. As Alan Bennett’s character, Rudge, in ‘The History Boys’ said: ‘ Isn’t History just one fucking thing after another, Sir?’
For those students of the new English (or should that be Scottish?), the latest product, no doubt from its PR department, is from Aberdeenshire County Council. ‘A serviceable defect within the public road envelope’ is of course, you guessed it, a pothole (Private Eye).
We used to ski in Switzerland in the early weeks of January. This year, we went again, though irritating issues with continuing therapy means that for me, I just cannot get insurance to ski. Last year the snow was not remarkable, and we enjoyed walking. This year there was stunning snow, and we still enjoyed walking, though there were frequent glances up at the soft white expanses on the ski runs. Arriving in Zürich, in the rain, we were met by a friend with that classic hopeful expression beloved of average British skiers, ‘It is raining here but it will be snowing on the mountain.’ But in view of the fact that Zürich stands at 400m altitude, this time the truism was true.
And so we walked. And it was beautiful.
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| Above Zorten, Albula Valley |
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| Tantalising snow below Rothorn |
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| Near Sanaspans - well away from skiers |
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| Clearing skies after snowfall |
An obituary featuring Bill Hayes rang no bells until I read that his recording of the ‘Ballad of Davy Crockett’ was the most popular of 1955, when I was a 7-year-old, living in Malta. I knew all the words and was even taken to see the film. My parents however declined to purchase a Davy Crockett raccoon skin cap, probably sensibly in view of Malta’s near tropical climate. It is recorded in the Telegraph obituary that Marc Bolan was similarly enamoured of the song, and asked his father to go out and buy the record. His father came back instead with a disc by Bill Haley, not Bill Hayes. Bolan started rocking and the rest is history (as of course is T Rex). It is sobering to wonder whether, if his father had bought the correct record, Marc Bolan might still be alive now.
“I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.” (Tom Stoppard).
In late January, a recent TV series still reverberates. ‘Mr Bates versus the Post Office’. This production, starring Toby Jones, details the Post Office scandal, wherein many (more than 900) sub-postmasters (the equivalent of managers in the U.S. Mail) were accused of fraud because of apparently missing monies from their branches, and lays out in forensic detail the awful nature of this travesty of justice. Extraordinarily, nobody made the leap of lateral thinking to say, ‘If 900 post-people seem to have been stealing money, could there be a fault with the computer system which registers the Post Office transactions?’ It is now known that the Japanese company, Fujitsu, which sold the U.K. its system was aware at an early stage that the Horizon software was not fit for purpose. The whole scandal was exposed by Computer Weekly, and then Private Eye many years ago, and several substantial radio programmes in recent years have tackled the scandal. 236 victims went to prison, many were ruined and four committed suicide. As of now, there are still many waiting for exoneration. Nobody in either the Post Office or Fujitsu has been accused, tried, or jailed. It seems that the government were aware of ‘problems’ but nobody wanted to upset a major trade ally, namely Japan.
Private Eye offers a description of the ancient Japanese Art of Fujitsu:
Nothing here in the current diary seems to be very chronological, perhaps because of some topsy turvy weather, but a farmer friend led us on a walk in North Dorset, starting in the little hamlet of Chettle (home to a beautiful Queen Anne house) and we visited long barrows, while redkites, and curiously a tawny owl, circled overhead. The icy conditions may have been responsible for the daytime hunt of the owl, perhaps? Chettle farm shop provided excellent pasties for us to eat while sitting outside in the sunshine at lunchtime.
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| The elegant Chettle House, North Dorset |
Another walk around the harbour, perhaps again because of the winter conditions, reveals numerous waders (I counted eleven curlews), oystercatchers, an egret and many, many bar-tailed godwits (on holiday from Iceland). Some fine sunsets.
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| Poole Harbour, 27th January 2024 |
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| Poole Harbour: bait diggers at sunset. An echo of J-F Millet's 'The Gleaners' |
Back to London, this time to visit the Olympic Stadium, now the home of West Ham United, and a tense 1-1 draw with Bournemouth. A fine stadium, but spectators have just cause to complain. The action necessarily takes place a long way from even the nearest seats (we were in the front row). The reason is of course that there is a large running track between the stands and the pitch. We pay homage to the great West Ham triumvirate of the 60s: Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters.
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| Anish Kapoor tower, Olympic Park |
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| The Hammers' Heroes |
The other snack on offering in our trip is our theatre visit to ‘The Motive and The Cue’. This new play by Jack Thorne, directed by Sam Mendes, uses sources who wrote about the event at the time. It is about the famous and often conflicting, partnership, which resulted when Sir John Gielgud directed Richard Burton in ‘Hamlet’ in the 1964 production in New York. The title is taken from Hamlet’s speech in Act 2 where he dwells on the actions of The Players in putting on his masque.
I have written before about Hamlet with reference to the Cush Jumbo portrayal in 2021, interested parties can look here:
https://blogdoc-andrewmcleod.blogspot.com/2021/11/
The entry is under ‘October 8th.’
When ‘The Motive and The Cue’ was first played last year, a review in The Guardian by Michael Billington (now aged 85) was informed by the fact that the National Theatre’s archival department allowed him to see the film of the 1964 stage production with Burton as Hamlet. Billington carries the experience and the gravitas of many years in the theatre, and he is not kind to the Burton version. Burton was far too fond of putting in inappropriate pauses – pauses which, according to Billington, outpaused even Pinter. Gielgud’s ambiguous compliment to Burton in the new play, ‘You shout wonderfully’, is borne out. Burton was at the height of his fame and audiences would have flocked to see him anyway, much as audiences came, for example, to see Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) in the main role in ‘Equus’. (I saw this; it was ruined by Harry Potter groupies, often laughing inappropriately in what is a deadly serious play).
The Billington review is worth reading and it is at:
I’m somewhat saddened by learning this. One of my favourite experiences is to put on the Burton version of Under Milk Wood, or any of Dylan Thomas’s poems, and to listen to that wonderful voice in its most rhapsodic style. When he could be persuaded to be gentle, he was magnificent.
Even in the patchy musical indulgence that is Jeff Wayne’s ‘War of the Worlds’, the introductory speech by Burton is a marvel of musicality.
For my favourite Hamlet, please see:
It was said of Gielgud and Olivier that the ideal Shakespearean would be Gielgud from the neck up and Olivier from the neck down (given Olivier’s sense of drama, movement, and athleticism). Gielgud’s beautiful verse speaking was commented on in 1935 when he and Olivier doubled the roles of Mercutio and Romeo in a production at the New Theatre. Despite the generosity of Gielgud, the senior player, in promoting Olivier, the latter’s jealousy of Gielgud was lifelong, so it is a tribute to Sir John that he gave a wonderful elegy at Olivier’s funeral. Curiously, the New Theatre is now the Noel Coward theatre, where The Motive and The Cue is playing.
Of Olivier’s chosen company in the early days of the National Theatre at The Old Vic, Robert Stephens probably conveyed a truth when he wrote: ‘Olivier’s one great fault was a paranoid jealousy of anyone he thought was a rival.’ (The Sunday Times; Roger Lewis in 1995.)
And one final comment on the Burton Hamlet in New York. During its run, Burton tied the knot with the multiply married Elizabeth Taylor. His line in Act III garnered much applause: ‘I say we will have no more marriages!’
Time to leave Hamlet. Every generation has its own ‘Hamlet’.
There is time to visit the ‘Entangled Pasts’ exhibition at the Royal Academy – an exhibition it probably felt it had to put on because of its entanglement with wealth gained from slavery. Curate’s egg would be a good description. Perhaps one of the most savage painted indictments of the slave trade, J M W Turner’s ‘Slave Ship (Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying. Typhoon coming on)’ is not here (presumably the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston would not loan it), so there is a straightforward Turner seascape instead!
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| Something to do with driftwood (in the room which is to do with the sea) |
February 8th, 2024
February is dragging us very gradually into 2024 though a New Year, at least one of outdoors, pleasure, and moment does not yet seem to have arrived. In Ukraine or the Middle East there is little prospect of pleasure.
In this spirit, of reluctant farewell to 2023, I should mention some of Private Eye’s suggestions for Christmas presents:
The Covid enquiry has taken a bit of back seat recently, but the first suggestion – the Hugo Keith KC Horror Mask is a possibility. This suave and frighteningly forensic counsel reduces his victims to jelly, even Dominic Cummings.
And here are some other possibilities:
It has rained almost without interruption for two days, and for those who are not getting out, and might be considering picking up a novel, I offer my thoughts on our latest book club offering – the Pulitzer prize-winning ‘American Pastoral’ (1997). Whether this helps I know not. Spoiler alerts! Please feel free to pass over this section.
American Pastoral – Philip Roth, 1997. Pulitzer Prize winner 1997.
‘Children begin by loving their parents. As they grow older they judge them. Sometimes they forgive them.’ Oscar Wilde
The quotation came to mind, because the book is about children, or at least one child.
Much like the famous ‘Swede’, the protagonist, I started out well with this novel but ended in depression and despair and I would not recommend it as a book to anyone.
I like Philip Roth – he is or was immensely clever, he writes/wrote well. I enjoy his waspish Jewish sense of humour and the satire. At a young age (24) I loved Portnoy’s Complaint*. I was given ‘The Plot Against America’ some time ago and enjoyed it. It was clever and believable. So I looked forward to reading this.
I also felt empathy for Nathan Zuckerman (Roth’s alter ego) – who has had the same prostate ‘issues’ as I. But although Zuckerman starts out as the writer of this book, it eventually becomes an impersonal, omniscient narrator.
I started well. In the first 77 pages I inserted six placemarks to remind me of memorable bits of writing, or something clever. I enjoyed the Americana – the descriptions of household items of the 1940s and 1950s. The depiction of the high school reunion I enjoyed immensely. The wit and the biting comments about classmates after forty-five years were great. ‘A 45th reunion is not the best place to come looking for ass.’ Then came the shock of the meeting with Jerry, brother of Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov, and the real life story of Swede.
When we came to the real, seemingly unending meat of the book, the disaster of Merry (Swede’s daughter), and the Swede’s inability to cut himself off from her madness, I began to find it tedious. The many, many pages of self-absorption, the self-questioning of his relationship with Merry, the endless descriptions of Merry, went on forever. The Rita Cohen episodes, bizarre as they were, were never resolved later in the book. The novel plays on the love and fear that, as a parent, one has for one’s child. One could say that it is clever writing, I found it disturbing and unpleasant.
I found myself thinking that, by 1997, Roth was a famous and very well established author – and what editor would dare to tell him, ‘Hey, Phil, this needs to be 250 pages, not 423!’ Sometimes less is more, as in The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) and Small Things Like These (Keegan).
Just like a member of our club, I found myself thinking, ‘There is not one attractive or likeable character in this book’.
I think of those other examples (mainly stage plays) of the American Dream gone wrong, ‘Death of a Salesman’, ‘My Three Sons’, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, even ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ – much more interesting and enjoyable. And much shorter. The tragic heroes or antiheroes of these works we can relate to – but not poor old cardboard cutout ‘Swede’ Levov.
In the end, although we have heard early on that Merry was dead, we never find out the details. We never figure out the strange character of Rita Cohen. I suppose the ‘denouement’ where the alcoholic wife stabs Old Levov near the eye could be a metaphor for what happens to someone who is endlessly but stupidly kind and patient with an alcoholic (shicker), and thus similarly Swede and Merry. But I found this denouement an unsatisfactory ending. I thought Swede might shoot them all because he had given away to everyone how the authorities could finally pick up Merry – but no such luck. Am I missing something?
Conclusion: I wanted to give this book 8/10 because I like Roth’s wit and mastery of the language, but for lack of readability, overwrought, overwritten, and seemingly unedited, and much else besides I have downgraded this to 4!
(There are some wonderful reviews in the one-star section on Goodreads, e.g. “Overwritten, self-indulgent version of Paradise Lost”.)
* I have just re-read Portnoy – which I see I purchased on August 29th, 1972 – funny in places but the preoccupation with masturbation and sex is overwhelming.
I should add that I am in a minority here – though a very significant minority. Anyone tempted to idolise Roth should perhaps read Claire Bloom’s memoir of their life together; ‘Leaving a Doll’s House’. Any book suggestions please?
February 11th
A milestone on February 3rd – 65 years since ‘The Day The Music Died’ – the plane crash in 1959 which killed Buddy Holly (Also JP Richardson aka ‘The Big Bopper’ and Ritchie Valens, not forgetting the pilot, Roger Peterson). Multiple tribute TV and Radio programmes, with numerous artists, e.g. Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Ray Davies, describing their debt to him.
Nik Cohn (q.v.) is a journalist. Born 1946, he remains an author, a clever self-publicist, and is still a journalist. In his 20s he wrote with an assurance, ego, and ferocity which only the young and preposterously self-assured can do. At 23 he wrote ‘A WopBopALooBop A LopBamBoom’, ‘Pop from the Beginning’. I bought this book. The title is of course, taken from the Little Richard song ‘Tutti Frutti’. Rereading after more than 50 years, it still impresses, with his extraordinary generalisations, often piercingly accurate. ‘Rock ‘n’ roll was very simple music. All that mattered was the noise it made, its drive, its aggression, its newness. All that was taboo was boredom’. He snares quite a few early rock exponents with one line.
But he got Buddy Holly wrong. ‘Buddy Holly was really called Charles Hardin Holley and first came out of Lubbock, Texas, with broken teeth, wire glasses, halitosis, plus every last possible kind of country Southernness. He wasn’t appetizing. In fact, he was an obvious no-hoper.’ Irrespective of the casual cruelty of the halitosis – and who can say about that – Cohn goes on to say: ‘In every detail his career was perfect and in February 1959, just to round it off, he got killed in an air crash. He was then twenty years old.’ (This is also incorrect – he was 22). ‘All you needed was tonsils’ he states in a later paragraph.
Cohn wasn’t hanging around to wait on or even acknowledge the vast number of pop greats who revere Holly. Holly can be fairly stated to have started the guitar group line-up. His drummer, Jerry Allison, dragged from a high-school marching band, was a virtuoso of the instrument. Despite being the lead singer, Buddy was the one with the solo guitar skills as well. His music had words which were perhaps sentimental, but poetic. And he wrote his own songs. Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richard, were all inspired by this. Bruce Springsteen plays Buddy Holly to listen to before he goes on stage… The list of those whom he influenced is a very long one. His major hit, ‘That’ll be the Day’, his only U.S. number 1 (he was, curiously, much more popular in Britain) came about from a recurring line in John Ford’s film ‘The Searchers’. John Wayne’s character, laconic as always, says ‘That’ll be the day’ as a repetitive motif.
Just to round it off (my words this time), I was allowed at the age of 11 to go to my friend Ken’s house (the only TV in the road) for the Christmas 1959 round up of the year’s pop music. A sort of once a year version of ‘Top of the Pops’. In black and white, 405 line TV, permeated by a gentle snowstorm of interference, girls pirouetted in their stiff tulle petticoat tutu skirts, and they played the song released immediately after Buddy’s death. My friend’s sophisticated elder sister watched with us. She explained to Ken and I that Buddy was dead. In December 1959 we didn’t know (news travelled slowly in West Wales). The song? ‘I Guess It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’. ‘In every detail his career was perfect’.
In 1968/9 when Nik Cohn wrote his book, it was fashionable to put down the Beatles, and Cohn does a good job on this, at the same time slating some of their most durable and complex songs. He enjoyed himself when composing a withering put down of the Shadows (Cliff Richard’s backing group):
‘… they made records of their own, almost all of which went straight to number one – neat little instrumentals, entirely unmemorable and played with total lack of any emotion. On stage, they wore evening dress and the three guitarists shuffled forward and back in unison. At moments of great climax, they’d turn quickly at right angles and kick one leg out limply from the knee. Then everyone would scream.’
In among all the bile, he writes approvingly and affectionately of only one disc jockey - Jimmy Savile, whose name he misspells.
And the later career of Mr Cohn? After committing his opinions to paper in ‘A WopBopALooBop A LopBamBoom’ in 1969? He later wrote ‘Saturday Night Fever’. He did, as they say, ‘OK’.
Some interesting discussion on the Sunday morning news and politics review show. President Biden’s evident signs of age: confusing the Presidents of Mexico and Egypt, forgetting the dates he was Vice President, unsteadiness, falls. Sir Simon Schama, guest pundit (and superb historian), although British, is Professor of History at Columbia University, New York. After outlining some of the recent evidence for Biden’s frailty, he went on to say that, despite this, during the current administration, the USA has been doing remarkably well, particularly as regards the economy and low levels of unemployment. Nonetheless, the question, phrased as: ‘Who is going to take the car keys away from Grandpa?’, has been widely discussed in the United States.
To celebrate a friend’s 70th birthday on February 9th, her oldest son invited a group of friends to join him at the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes, Isle of Wight, for lunch in her honour. South Western Railway were probably surprised to see champagne served aboard the morning train, and a very efficient connecting bus service took us to the fast hydrofoil which skims down Southampton Water and then across the Solent to Cowes in 28 minutes. The interior of the club at Cowes Castle (colloquially known as Fraggle Rock) is suitably refined and harks back to a different era. Yacht racing took place for many years here, even before the RYS was founded in 1815 as ‘The Yacht Club’, as this picture shows:
Yacht racing at Cowes in 1776 by Dominic Serres (1722-1793). Serres was originally French, but became a sea captain in Spain and was captured by the British. His training as a painter was in England and he remained there for most of his life, understandably doing very well at painting maritime scenes.
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| Everything at 'The Squadron' is old but immaculate |
Given the gales, it was even more surprising that we returned safe and sound to rejoin our westbound trains.
And finally, King Charles has been very open about his need for recent surgery for an enlarged prostate. On his discharge however, it was announced that he has cancer. It seems inconceivable that he wasn’t very fully investigated before surgery, for example, by MRI scanning. Therefore this must be something picked up during surgery. The two possibilities would seem to be: unexpected cancer tissue found in the prostatic gland at surgery (but this has officially been announced as not the case), or more likely, a small bladder carcinoma, picked up during the cystoscopy (bladder examination) which always precedes prostate surgery. We have been told that he ‘has started treatment’. If the above speculation is correct, then this could be protective chemotherapy administered to reduce the likelihood of malignant spread. I emphasize that this is speculative. The King was widely praised for making public his prostate issues, and it seems likely that he will ultimately be open about the secondary diagnosis. One hopes so. Only good could come of it.
At least he didn’t treat himself with a one in thirty million dilution of rose hips – as far as I know.
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| Matt Cartoon, this is copyright The Telegraph |
February 15th 2024
Last entry for this edition. Yesterday evening I went to hear the BSO (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra). Standout pieces played were the Beethoven violin concerto, and Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2 by Prokoviev. The conductor was the young Finnish woman, Emilia Hoving.
The soloist in the Beethoven was Ning Feng, the Chinese virtuoso...
The impresario Wilfrid Van Wyck (1904-1983) represented many artists. Following some treatment at University College Hospital in the 1960s, he expressed his gratitude by gifting the hospital an annual concert, which took place in the Students’ Union Hall in Huntley Street. On one occasion, the concert was given by the pianist Fou Ts’ong. Obviously given as a favour to Van Wyck. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but Ts’ong made it fairly clear to us that it was something of a chore.
Ning Feng is firmly not in that category. He gave a wonderful performance of the Beethoven, and his demeanour suggested that our modest concert hall could have been the Amsterdam Concertgbouw, Vienna Musikverein, or Boston Symphony Hall for all it mattered.
As an encore, Feng said something to the effect that he would like to show his appreciation to us all – and played the extraordinary Paganini variations on ‘God Save the King*’. If you have read this far – please just put ‘Ning Feng Paganini God Save the King’ into a YouTube search. It is incredible.
Until the next time…
*Paganini died in 1840. I assume that the work in question was written before 1837…
