Teresa’s watching the 2005 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens Bleak House. For the umpteenth time, as is her habit. And why not? It’s very well done, indeed.
There’s an episode where the character Gridley, pursued by Tulkinghorn, expires in the care of Sgt. George. Inspector Bucket tries to rouse Gridley, whilst serving him a peace warrant, but Gridley gives up the ghost. I feel rather like Gridley, ground down by life, to the point of despair.
Ian Hislop’s not wrong.
Tom Baker’s excellent autobiography Who On Earth Is Tom Baker reveals the hilariously self-deprecating thespian to be a major Dickens fan. Like Baker, I’d quite like to read all of Dickens work, if I can, before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
And we do indeed have a complete collection of Dickens’ works. I got it for Teresa, many moons ago. Back to this BBC adaptation, for now. To finish, a fab pic of Matthew Kelly in the tragicomic role of Mr Turveydrop.
I have to confess I took against Anthony McGill. The chief reason being that the first time I saw him he acted in a way, towards debutante Jamie Clarke, that I thought was tantamount to passive-aggressive bullying. The video above collects several incidents from that match into one compilation and asks ‘what went on’?
I think my dislike for McGill, at that juncture, had very valid roots. But, shameful as it is to admit such churlish traits, I think I also disliked his Scottishness, his ginger-ness, his pallor, looks, demeanour, even his choice of a Smiths track as his walk on ‘choon’. And then, later on (in his career, not the above mentioned match!) with baldness encroaching, he shaved his hair.*
[* It’s a pet peeve of mine that we’re living in an era – I call it Toryland – that is, to my mind, undergoing neo-fascist levels of anti-intellectual crassness and dumbing down. To me such things as gambling, tattoos, and the prevalence of the skinhead look are all parts of this.]
McGill in his pre-skinhead phase.
Could it get any worse? Well, yes, it could: he could defeat two of my favourite players, Judd Trump and Jack Lisowski, in this years World Championship! Which he duly did.
But I have to concede that he may not be quite the pantomime villain my initial perceptions had him down as. First of all he’s a tremendously talented snooker player. And as a fan of this particular sport I can’t deny the skill and prowess he’s bringing to his game. Secondly, when I hear him talking – with my Babel-fish in-ear ‘Glaswegian to Sassenach’ switched on – he comes across pretty well. And, most importantly of all, he’s switched his entrance music to Lionel Ritchie’s Dancing On The Ceiling!
Anthony McGill, all is forgiven (like he gives a sh!t what I think!). But seriously, I was probably just being a lowdown fool, writing him off as I was (‘though I do think he acted a bit of a dick in the Jamie Clarke match). And I’m not too proud to admit the error of my ways.
I was glad to see Gary Wilson, another ginger slap-head, albeit one I warm to more than McGill (at least he’s not Scottish!), defeated by Mark Selby. Although in all honesty I’d rather Selby had beaten McGill, and Wilson had triumphed over Lisowski. But that’s obviously just in the realms of fantasy!
Poor young Jack! clearly not enjoying things.
Selby came across, as he pretty much always does, as a very solid and affable chap, in his post match interview. My active dislike for McGill has thawed and mellowed. But I still vastly prefer Selby, both as a player and a human being. Judging from what I see on screen. Besides, I much prefer a Leicester accent to a Glaswegian one!
Both these matches were threatening, at times, to be rather one sided. McGill’s initial dominance over Lisowski was not too far from Higgins’ trouncing of poor old Kyren Wilson! But Jack fought back. And whilst Wilson was never really getting massacred, Selby won comfortably in the end, as did McGill.
Selby gets the win.
A slightly strange evening of Snooker, for my money. Neither match really having that magical pizazz the sport can offer. And yet, for all that it was sometimes plodding and attritional – with more safety play than I generally like – it was still good sporting fun.
In many ways technology, and computers, are enslaving and oppressing us all. But of course there are also positive aspects. It’s amazing that I can be ‘friends’, albeit only via FB, with living legends like the elegant maestro, Ron Carter.
On may 4th this year Ron will be 86. And he’s still gigging and recording!!! Apparently he’s the most recorded jazz bassist ever, playing on over 2,200 album (and with over 30 recordings under his own name).
But for me it’s not the quantity of his prodigious output, so much as the quality. He’s on so many albums that I rank amongst my favourites, from the classic Miles Quintet recordings, to dates with Alice Coltrane and Brazilian maestro Tom Jobim. Although he’s best known as an acoustic bassist, he has on occasion played electric. He’s the cat holding down the low-register grooves on Roy Ayer’s super-slinky We Live In Brooklyn, Baby!
If you love Ron Carter anywhere near as much as I do, do yourself a favour and dig Rick Beato’s terrific interview with this fantastic artist and human being.
For me May 4th is now going to be Ron Carter Day, as long as I live. Bless you, Ron. And may you be hale and hearty for years to come. Thanks for all the great music. A lifetime well spent, and still ongoing. What an incredible inspiration.
I love you, Ron Carter!
PS – It was nice to get a reaction from Ron:
Cool!
PPS – I found another great interview with Ron here. This one is an online ‘print’ style interview (ie not a video, like Beato’s), but is very much worth reading.
I found this collage along with the interview.
PPPS(!) – The observant might notice that at the top left of the above album cover photo-collage is Roy Ayer’s Daddy Bug, but with a cover I’ve never seen before. I’d love to know what the story is there? I far prefer this new to me ladybird on an umbellifer to the usual version. I looked on Discogs, to try and find such a version. No dice!
I’m in the appalling situation of having to look for legal help and representation. Something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Well, other than wealthy crooks, aka Tories. But of course, they’re exactly the folk who’ve been making and shaping our legal system for hundreds of years. And who are best placed financially to exploit it.
The first people I’ve tried are Lawtons, who have a local (Cambridge) branch. For some reason I thought they offered 30 minutes free consultation advice. Very attractive to paupers like me. But they’re not getting back to me with any sense of alacrity.
So I thought I’d try someone else. I called a firm called Draycott Brown. They have a lady specialising in the area I need to address. Goodness me, she was supercilious and self-satisfied. Exactly as people in positions of wealth and power grow accustomed to being.
She charges £500 for a two hour consultation. I couldn’t help but say two things two her: I wish I could charge such grotesquely inflated amounts for my time. And what a world we live in, where justice and access to ‘The Law’ prices out the hoi polloi.
I’m not 100% sure of this, but my investigations so far suggest that we, or I, won’t qualify for Legal Aid. My choice of title for this post is backed up independent research, for more on that, read this. Unsurprisingly the Tories have continually cut Legal Aid funding, whilst at the same time making it ever harder for low income folk to qualify. Now there’s a surprise.
As the above linked article puts it, the Law Society study found that ‘many on low incomes are being deprived of access to justice by the very system that is supposed to support them.’ What? In Toryland!? Who’d have thunk it.
My anger and indignation feel entirely impotent. It’s one thing to read about the injustices perpetrated by our callous Tory rulers. It’s another to feel the full force of it in deeply real, deeply personal, and deeply damaging ways.
Like Mr Gridley (and others) in Dickens’ Bleak House, I want to fight the system. But, again, like Gridley, I feel ground down and defeated before I’ve even begun. ‘They’ve done for me’, quoth Gridley. And most of the time I feel the same.
Precision in speech and language is, I think, a good goal to aim for. With this in mind, I decided it was time I took a good look at my virulent hatred of modern Conservatism, or Toryism.
To do so I had a bit of a read of various online definitions of certain terms, starting with Tory. It appears the term Tory began as an Irish insult:
The above image is a screenshot of an etymological definition. One of the things that fascinates me about history – and etymology is the history of words – is how things evolve; what changes and what remains the same, for example.
I find it incredibly poignant that an Irish term for robbers or highwaymen should have become the standard term for a political philosophy that remains based on thievery. The irony is both colossal, and pitch perfect.
But returning to the longer term history of the ideas of Toryism, as opposed to simply the origin of the term, it is tied in with ideas that can be summarised by the traditional Royalist motto, God, King and Country. And modern Toryism in that line is a product of the ECW (English Civil War). The Tories being the Cavaliers, or supporters of the King, as opposed to the Roundheads, the supporters of Parliament, or ‘The Commons’.
Unpacking all this yet further, one is inexorably lead further back in time, another thing Tories themselves seem hell bent on, politically; they are regressive, not progressive.
First to Henry VIII, whose formation of the Anglican Church – Catholic-lite, in much the same way Tony Blair’s New Labour was Tory-lite – enlarged the fallout of one man’s marital misadventures into nationwide and even international ructions.
And going back yet further, we come to the Ancient or ‘Classical’ Greeks, from whom we get such key concepts, in relation to politics, as aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, and so on. Once again the etymology of these terms is highly informative.
Aristocracy is, in theory/according to the Greek, rule by the best. Democracy the many, and/or mob. And oligarchy – what we have under present Tory rule – the few. This latter term was meant to distinguish between the few who were (supposedly) the best, and the few who were simply those few wielding power… but decidedly not the best.
Yep, we live under an oligarchy.
I probably ought to read this.
I often find myself cogitating on the distinction between Conservatism and conservatism. The former is a political ideology that continues to evolve, in many ways – most notably under/since Thatcher – in forms that are anything but small-c conservative. The latter is a pretty sensible idea; keep alive, indeed, nurture, what is best about tradition. And the irony here is that a great deal of modern Toryism is about as far from that kind of conservatism as it’s possible to be.
Post Thatcherite monetarism has taken a wrecking ball to almost anything and everything about the past, replacing it with a very fascist might-is-right type of Spencerian vision. A post-evolutionary view in which power and privilege are de-facto substitutions for good or best, in the old Greek view of aristocracy. Or, in the Kuper vein, chumocracy.
Steve Bell, nailing it, as ever.
Anyway, that’s it for now. As – just as our overlords wish it to be – I have to get down on my knees and scrabble in the dirt, searching for better mortgage and energy deals. Keep the paups busy and dumb; they’ll never even notice we’re robbing them blind.
This new book looks interesting. They have it at half-price in The Works, as well. The author is doing a talk for Topping Books. But the Bath branch, alas, not Ely.
I’ve been trying to ascertain how pictorial the content is. I suspect it’s weighted more towards text than image, which, given the subject, might be a bit of a shame from my perspective.
If anyone’s read it, let me know what you think. Or I may do a review, should I lay my hands on a copy?
Teresa’s watching Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn for the gazillionth time. I’ve come up and turned in. It’s only 8.30 pm. But I’m shattered! I’m really hoping that our ailing NHS isn’t missing anything really serious, re my health!?
Earlier today Teresa and I did some tidying, down at the far end of our garden, where things are in a right ‘808’! Some areas of the garden are looking very lovely. Mostly on account of the fabulous blossoms…
Our cherry log is fab!
The above cherry tree was a Freecycle freebie, and came in the form of a discarded log. Amazingly it was still alive. I simply stuck it in the soil. And this is what it has become. Amazing!
Table and chairs courtesy of mum. Thanks!
The cherry tree on the centre right of the above picture, unlike our Freecycle marvel, cost us a few bob. But it’s gorgeous, and much larger.
Our Sunday Scrabble board.
Friday and Saturday we were in Londinium, for Salute, ‘23, which happened to be the events 50th year! We stayed at an AirB&B place in (or rather near) Greenwich. And we visited some of the Royal Museums of Greenwich, such as The Maritime Museum and The Queens House. All on a nautical theme.
Refreshments, ‘pon our return.
Once home, I had a couple of cans of lager. I’m trying hard to really cut down on the ol’ sauce. And I’m doing pretty well. This week all I’ve had is the above-mentioned lager, and a single glass of wine, with tonight’s meal (bangers and mash!).
I didn’t buy any wargaming figures or associated guff. But I did get a few more books (pictured above below). All on a Napoleonic uniformology type tip. I’m thinking I really must get back into painting and basing my 6mm and 10mm hordes.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
This poem has a great deal of resonance for me, right now. Having said that, I’d like to straight away apologise to my mum and dad for posting it!
I don’t know much about Larkin, to be honest. But I do feel like I’d like to explore his poetry further. This one reminds me, in its rather grimly jocular way, of Alan Bennett. They seem to share very British qualities of the eloquently curmudgeonly depressive!
It’s sad to hear of the recent passing of Brazilian drummer Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti. I’m not 100% certain of this, but I believe Azymuth – Conti and his musical collaborators Bertrami and Malheiros – were the core backing band on one of my all-time favourite albums, Marcos Valle’s sublime Previsão do Tempo.
A bonkers cover for an amazing album.
I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert on Conti or his career. I only know he and his Azymuth buddies contributed to a wonderfully rich musical tradition, in which samba and other trad’ Brazilian forms were alloyed with pop, jazz, funk, soul (even disco!).
I have a number of albums featuring Mamão’s percussive skills, and my own group, Capricorn, performed an Azymuth track in our set for many years (thanks Rod Norman, for suggesting we do that!), namely Jazz Carnival.
Mamão, thanks for all the fantastic music. May you rest in funky serenity and soulful peace!
