View from the Boundary

Our campaign to have ourselves a merry little Christmas hit with Walter the Worm got us to no.13 in the Humourous chart and no.14 in the Poetry chart on Amazon's Free Kindle Download listings, as far as I could see, which isn't bad.
It doesn't compare with Benny Hill's Ernie but it provided some diversion over the holiday period, following its fortunes, and it's not a bad result for something that some might say isn't humourous and I'm sure others would say isn't poetry.
-
And so we can put that down as a qualified success even if I have to admit defeat this year with the Saturday Nap selections. We are left with The New One going to the Champion Hurdle as joint favourite but even winning that won't quite balance the Nap's books for 2013.
However, I'm not ready to resign as a pundit yet. The Ashes series might have prematurely ended the test careers of Graeme Swann and Jonathan Trott but the one figure who failed more spectacularly than any, having predicted 5-0 to England, is Ian Botham.
2013 remains a gambling Annus Mirabilis for me having shown a healthy profit (the first ever in a calendar year) even if that profit is below what it was in March.
How different things already are, though, with Sprinter Sacre and Simonsig suddenly no longer looking like banker bets for Nicky Henderson. I like Nicky Henderson a lot and wish him well. I just don't wish him any compensation via My Tent or Yours in the Champion Hurdle next year.
--
I read most of Donna Tartt's The Secret History over the last few days- and it is as good as it is reputed to be, I think- mainly because I thought I ought to know about that before moving on to The Goldfinch.
It is funny in parts, beautifully done and at times easily does enough to qualify for that category of novel that exists specifically to remind me never to try to write one myself, however much I'd like to write even an awful one- just so that I can say that I have.
In between times I had a last look at Fairford Church, and by far my most thorough look. Best known for its fine stained glass windows, it also has some choice graves surrounding it and is one of the best churches for providing that feeling of a piece of history, a corner of England and all those lives that have been and gone through it.
--
And I caught up with some recent CD purchases which included the excellent L'Enfance du Christ of Berlioz in the recording by Philippe Herreweghe. Apart from being a marvellous account, the booklet includes the text in French, English and German. A line sung by Joseph, 'I am a carpenter', translates as
Moi, je suis charpentier

and

Ich bin Zimmermann

which appealed to me as a tremendous ambiguity in which he lays claim to having responsibility for Goodbye to Love, some gorgeous baroque music and If Not for You all at once.
--
And just in case that wasn't entertainment enough. I was impressed by John Milton's partisan thoughts on whether poetry should rhyme or not. This is, of course, a perennial subject for debate among poets of all sorts.
Explaining why Paradise Lost doesn't rhyme, he says,
that rhyme 'is the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre'.

The lack of rhyme may be seen as a defect by 'vulgar readers'  and rhyme is a 'troublesome and modern bondage'.
So, there you are. I don't mind either way. It is just that I would never have wanted to be on the wrong side of an argument with John Milton.

A Happy New Year to you all.

We can but hope.

Times Crossword Solution

Walter the Worm now Free to download

Walter the Worm is now free to download from Amazon. Via Author Page as above.

So here we go up the charts, one hopes.

Thx & HC.

John Milton, Life, Work and Thought

Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John Milton, Life, Work and Thought (Oxford)

Campbell and Corns are two leading Milton specialists and the title of the book says that Milton's work and thought are going to be equal parts of its subject and so one can't complain if it becomes scholarly at times.
Their account of Milton is based much on his thinking in the very long-windedly titled treatises through which he argued his way to controversial stardom. Doctrine and Principles of Divorce was one such of his books but one which might have been motivated as much by his own first marriage than high-minded piety. And its full title did continue for 46 more words. The discussion concerns whether marriage is really about procreation or companionship. Milton is ahead of his time in many ways but a little way behind ours if he thought that surely if it was about companionship then men would prefer the company of other men.
But he is good at arguing his case, famed for it, and especially good on the Republican case in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and he reasons that it is tyranny that has a king rule over his people rather than their peers in turn because, well, they could easily be 'fools'.
Any reader of the book would do well to be well appraised of the religious movements of the time from Presbyterians to Laudists, Smectymnuans to Quakers as well as Puritans because it is a complicated situation and the finer points might be lost on those who thought it was just about Protestantism.
Campbell and Corns, or at least one of them, write with a donnish propensity for le mot juste and from time to time drop in a choice selection from their extensive vocabulary- not only, among many others, 'otiose' for speculation that is pointless, 'euphonious' for writing that sounds nice but 'unmysterious' for something that isn't difficult to deduce. Hardy and Larkin would have appreciated that negative but one begins to relish their verbal showmanship however naturally it might come to them.
But, more than that, another treat are the picturesque names that minor figures in the narrative had. Emery Bigot was a French humanist, 'wholly aware of (Milton's) blindness', who asked him to check certain readings; Brabazon Aylmer bought the rights to Paradise Lost; Praisegod Barbon and Sir Baptist Hicks were presumably named by god-fearing parents while Livewell Chapman was given a bit more leeway in the spiritual guidance offered by his christening.
And, so, what could have been a forbidding subject- and I have no intention of returning to Milton Studies any time soon- provided much entetainment along the way and I am the wiser for having added this volume to my collection of biographies of the English poets.  

James MacMillan - Alpha and Omega

James MacMillan, Alpha & Omega/ Cappella Nova, Alan Tavener, Madeleine Mitchell  (Linn)

I am prone to a sort of brand loyalty in some areas. I am the owner of 35 or so LP's by Gregory Isaacs even though by no means all of them are worth having but I always hoped the next would be as good as the best rather than be the routine item of contract fulfilment that many later ones turned out to be.
In a similar way, I have several CD's of James MacMillan's music, all of which are fine but few of them repeat the first thrill I had when hearing his Seven Last Words from the Cross.
Much of MacMillan is more apocalyptic and portentous than I would usually like and with a title like Alpha & Omega, one might expect this new release to be more of the same. But I was taken by the credit of a solo violinist, the solo violin part of the Seven Last Words being one of the best things about it.
Missa Dunelmi begins in quiet, monastic fashion before the Gloria rises to a great shining forth; St. Patrick's Magnificat has more of a recognisable melody as if subliminally from a folk tune and the same could be said of I am your Mother. But it is Domine non secundum peccata nostrum that the violin, played by Madeleine Mitchell, features in. At first it is as a shimmering embellishment but it becomes a soaring line, perhaps more involved than involving, before finally taking up a central position and delivering all that was expected of it ('a response of pure, ethereal emotion'), reminiscent of the earlier masterpiece and almost as good.
One hopes that MacMillan would do it more often but finds in the interview in the booklet that it is a difficult thing for him to do, mixing solo violin with choral textures and so we must be grateful for a rare treat. But this is one of the better recent releases of MacMillan's music and I am glad to have bought it.

The Christmas Nap

I'll take The New One to beat My Tent or Yours in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton and double up with Dynaste in the King George.
And that will be that until I'm back with a Cheltenham Festival Preview in March.

And a Happy Christmas to you.

The Saturday Nap

I missed Easter Day (Ascot 1.15) when he won a couple of weeks ago and so will be hoping to make up for lost opportunities with him.
And although the Ladbroke is exactly not the sort of race I like to get involved in it might be worth taking a chance with City Slicker (Ascot 3.35) who looks the type and receives weight from some other major players and he can be done each way at 8/1 with Paddy paying 5 places.

Walter the Worm kindle edition

For no other reason but to try to have a big Christmas hit in the Amazon Free Poetry Download chart,
we are releasing Walter the Worm as a kindle on Amazon on or about December 23rd so that it will be free to download for five days
over Christmas.

It is an inane classic that would be too patronizing to children to say is a 'children's book'. It first appeared in a very limited, private edition in 1990 and bears no relation to any other worm character in books you might find on the internet.

So, please, if you own a kindle or the app, could you take a couple of minutes to download this free Christmas present not only as a gift from here but also to support this self-serving attempt on the charts.

Thanks.

A Crossword for Christmas

It is traditional for some publications to feature puzzles or entertainments to amuse their audience over the Christmas holiday. So, here is a crossword, the first gift to you from David Green (Books).

And, yes, there will be another along shortly.

I have tried to make the clues more elegant than they were to begin with but apologies if they seem sometimes a bit more contrived than the usual level of contrivance allows.


---

Across 

1. Len’s suit swapped for tools (8)

6. Fish backed away from the wind (3)

8. Loud music with fast food followed Fools and Horses (4, 3,5)

9. What’s the point in being awestruck (4)

10. Old lady confused about song in the fields (8)

12. For example including badly bred tennis player (6)

14, and 17 down, Carol’s period of abstinence nearby. It’s different outside. (6, 5)

16. So, grain’s for ladies in Spain (8)

18. Erica kept Christmas treat inside (4)

20. Oregon acting, acting like people in church (12)

22. It’s encountered in some towns (3)

23. He’s got nothing on (8)

Down 

2, and 19, They came from the Orient, they said (5,5)

3. Present you have to get knotted (7)

4. Unhappily am nearing where baby was born (2,1,6)

5. He is onside with no one around (3)

6. Composer in trouble, hardly (5)

7. Make clear previous stretch of land (7)

11. Fend off insect that is obdurate (9)

13. I formed into a god-like shape (7)

15. More fortunate to be braver without beginning (7)

17. see 14 Across

19. see 2

21. An age in France once (3)

 

The First Teenagers

The First Teenagers 

It seemed a good time to have a good time,

adventures on the brink of a new world

like sputniks in orbit or angels blessed 

in coffee bars on Saturday nights.

Everything’s American, it’s nearly

always summer and it’s hard to resist 

someone who looks like someone in a film.

And this is just the start of it, the long

suburban jitterbug and twist 

for those who found themselves on the jukebox

or in the back seats of cars at the drive-in,

the first people ever to have been kissed.

The Saturday Nap

By far the most important thing that is going to happen this weekend is seeing The New One run at Cheltenham.. I'm afraid he will be at prohibitive odds with only Zarkandar to beat, which he should do over this course and distance, one would hope.
And so although he is the nap to clear up the loose change of this feature's deficit this year, it is also recommended that one takes the 4/1 still available in a number of places for the Champion Hurdle to get back the other 4 points we are down to a level 1 point stake which means we might not know if we ended up in profit or not until the middle of March.
But that is a serious suggestion, the best bet to have on a day like this, because once he has won, he won't be 4/1 any more, I believe he is a considerably better horse than My Tent or Yours and Ladbrokes, who sometimes know better than anyone, have him 3/1 favourite already.

Best Poem and Best Collection 2013

It is decision time.

I kept reading all the new books of poems I bought this year and some gained in stature while others stayed roughly where they had been from the start.
Sue Hubbard's book was always one to return to as it impressed more and more. Michael Symmons Roberts already has the Forward Prize to his name for a book that surely extended his achievement so far and then after I had picked shortlists for Best Poem and Best Collection, Helen Mort came late into the reckoning and was added to the Best Collection list.
Any of the Best Poem shortlist would be a worthy winner and one of Helen's could be added in there but I won't go to those lengths and I'm glad I don't nominate a runner-up in these awards because that would be too difficult but a clear winner is Roddy Lumsden's Women in Paintings, http://edinburgh-review.com/extracts/poetry-women-in-paintings-roddy-lumsden/
I have already made special mention of it here in the summer. It does all I want a poem to do and perhaps that bit more and makes one look forward to a new volume from Roddy whenever that might be.

One can see why Symmons Roberts is already a prize-winner in 2013. Drysalter is a sustained technical achievement and continues to lure one into its meditations. I've been looking at Helen Mort's book ever since I recently got it and, as I said only a few days ago here, it is a debut collection. I'm not sure how many years it is since a first book made quite such an impression. One might have expected some experimental initial efforts before a poet produced anything quite so assured.
For a while I wondered if it ranked alongside my long established favourite, August Kleinzahler,'s book and thought about making it a shared Best Collection this year but the whole point is that I'm supposed to make decisions here and must do so if I can.
And so my Best Collection of 2013 was August Kleinzahler's Hotel Oneira, for its tender machismo, sense of loss and transience done in a way that I think is all his own.

Helen Mort - Division Street

Helen Mort, Division Street (Chatto & Windus)

Hold the front page. Re-open the shortlists.

I had seen some poems by Helen Mort and thought this would be a book to get when it came out. Then I saw some others that suggested she might not be quite so much my sort of thing as I had thought. And then The Observer gave their monthly poetry book review to it and convinced me it was one to order. I'm glad it did.
The Complete Works of Anonymous looks to me a poem that could be in most of any forthcoming anthologies of contemporary poetry from hereon in. Any number of poets will be wishing they had thought of it first. It has an immediacy, a sort of 'instant classic' feel to it that some newly heard music makes you think you knew it already and that it had always been there. The poem has, of course, always been there waiting to be written in some theories of aesthetics but Helen was the one who found it.
It is ostensibly an unrhymed sonnet but it has rhyme to be discovered in it and the sort of music that happens when metre and a sensitivity to the sound of words are put together in considered ways.
And that is what happens in many poems throughout the book. The poems stay with you after you've put it down, and, I have found, through the next day, until you go back to look at them again. Some books of poems can congeal into a general idea of what they were like without any of them remaining vivid in one's memory. And rather than performing my own creative writing exercise in a review, like 'the poems seek the otherness in various elsewheres', of which there is far too much to be found in other places, that is all I ever want poems to do to prove their worth, rather like in Larkin's Pleasure Principle or any other common sense approach to the enjoyment of poems for their own sake.
And so I've been thinking of how we are similar to dogs, of fingerprints, of things turning in on themselves and of loose, sub-conscious associations. Not that I don't think of such things already, but grateful for the way these poems have put them.
The divisions indicated in the title are more than the political ones suggested by the photograph on the cover from Arthur Scargill's pet project, the miners' strike of the 80's. There are other social divisions, the ends of relationships and the division between things and their names.
I think it was poems from Scab that I had my doubts about. This set of poems is autobiographical but, beginning at Orgreave, which was before Helen was born, I wasn't convinced of their authenticity until one realizes that it is really about a later dramatic reconstruction of the picket line confrontations. And so we get any number of divisions between her background and her university life, and between the actual events of the miners' strike and the reconstruction of it.
But, as so often happens for me, thematically loaded poems aren't as good as a more abstract idea brought convincingly to life and explained both clearly and slightly waywardly as in the best poems here which are, at their best, very much the sort of thing that makes me think that poetry is second only to music and only tied to words by necessity and somewhat reluctantly.
The fingerprints are in George, Afraid of Fingerprints, a brilliant list of where George might have left his as evidence of where he'd been, either innocently, with later regret or shame.
In The Dogs, Helen has to remind herself that she's 'not a dog' because

I'll not know love like theirs, observed in mute proximity

and if I sometimes sit bolt upright after dark, sensing
a movement in the yard, it's only that I've learned
a little of their vigilance.

It's hard to pick a favourite so soon. This book won't be put on a shelf for quite a while yet. But the way that the idea of fire runs through the 12 lines of Fagan's, with a pub quiz and a relationship's fracture, makes it a miniature masterpiece, ending,

What links the fire of London and the colour blue?
I'm wondering if a match would be enough
or if there's really no smoke without you.

And if the answer to the question did happen to be 'Chelsea' then it is almost too clever and even better than I thought.
But Helen Mort is 28 years old and this is her first book. That isn't particularly relevant except to think that most poets probably produce a better third book than their first was and so anything might be possible.
No pressure, then.

The Saturday Nap

Join Together came with a great late run in the Becher Chase last year and very nearly landed the nap and a bit of a punt and became my Grand National horse all at the same time. However, having been impeded and effectively taken out in his next race, his form since doesn't read very well. There is every chance that he has been aimed specifically back at this race, particularly on account of his sound jumping, and I'd love to land a 12/1 winner but I need to be taking more confidence out of the form book than I can.
I note Across the Bay from the McCain yard and a plunge in his price but then see that his wins almost always come on heavy ground, not good to soft, and so suspect the Irish raiders might be the ones to look at but there is not a stand out prospect given such a big field and endless possibilities. But I'll kick myself so hard it will hurt if Join Together returns to form and I'm not on him.
We might be better off at Sandown where it is also competitive but it means good horses at good prices. I don't mind taking on Grandouet with Balder Succes (1.50) because I have been impressed with him so far but whether I want to weigh in heavily with Taquin du Seuil and Hinterland also in opposition is another matter.
I would give Sire de Grucy (3.00) another chance but he seems to be drifting a little bit alarmingly in the market at this early stage.
I can't make a good enough case for any of these to myself never mind recommend a bet to the whole of the internet.
On Sunday morning at 6 a.m. our time The Fugue continues her international career in the Hong Kong Vase at Sha Tin. She has proved durable so far and is becoming something like the Triptych of her generation.  I much prefer Aintree, Sandown and Wetherby to Sha Tin but on this occasion the nap is going overseas in search of something to believe in.

View from the Boundary

It took some finding but I found it in the end in the relevant diary. I was in the Clutha Vaults, Glasgow on March 28, 2000. It looked forbidding from the outside and I wasn't sure if I was going to like it and so I said to my mate that I'd look round the door first to see what it was like and if I didn't fancy it, we were going somewhere else, notwithstanding his high recommendation.
It was fine and as the evening progressed it got finer. Ian had a wide knowledge of pubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh and so I should never have doubted him. Which only makes the tragedy that missed me by 13 and a half years all the worse. It was an excellent place and I've remembered it ever since, partly by having picked up this small momento there. The news thus came with added shock value to me which only goes to show what these news events are like for those who are genuinely close to them.
But it also shows what memory is like. Deeply unreliable. I met an acquaintance at Fratton Park yesterday at the Portsmouth Ladies-Tottenham match (great game, it was never offside, ref). His 40th birthday party was 8 and a half years ago, he said. And whereas it seemed that could have been no more than 5 or 6, I had estimated my visit to the Clutha Vaults at circa 1997, and had even ventured back to my diary of 1994 before being surprised to eventually find it in 2000.
Notes made in a diary at the time are so much more trustworthy than memories. That visit to Glasgow included a visit to Hampden Park to see World Champions France casually play Scotland off their own park 2-0 (Sylvain Wiltord and Thierry Henri) as well as art galleries like the Burrell Collection.
--
I need to post something here on Monday nights to obscure the latest debacle of the Saturday Nap. It is not going well and is now 32.32 points down to a level 10 point stake. We have only had three winners and those were not at very worthwhile odds.
But, nil desperandum. We have 4 or 5 selections left to retrieve the situation and so could still end up in profit. It could be a nervy Boxing Day, though.
--
But, with Christmas almost upon us, David Green (Books) will be launching an audacious assault on the Amazon Free Download charts with a new kindle release. And you can download a free kindle edition with a clear conscience because nobody has to walk around the Amazon warehouse to pick it off a shelf and neither will they make any profit out of it.
The technical department are preparing Walter the Worm, an old masterpiece of inanity from 1990 that only appeared in a very limited edition at the time. And here is Walter in one of the original drawings.
And so, in the hope of a Christmas hit, or even a number one, I'd be grateful of all your help and any other help you can muster to download a copy during the 5 days from around about December 22nd via the Amazon author page as above. Thanks.

The Saturday Nap

Wonderful Charm won 'readily' today to stop a recent slide in my fortunes. The 8 out of 9 sequence of a few weeks ago was suddenly seeming a long time ago. This horse has become a big favourite of mine, as any would if they had won the four times you've backed them, and if there is further improvement to come when he moves up to three miles over fences then he is surely a contender for the RSA Chase in March.
So that's 5 winners in the last two days for Paul Nicholls and, yes, why don't I just sleep with him and get it all out of my system but, rather than that, I'm sure he'd prefer it if I just continued to scrutinize his runners.
I kept on the right side of Rocky Creek last season in novice chases but I'm not convinced he can go straight into a Hennessey and win it even if there probably isn't a Bobsworth or Denman in it this year. And so there, I'm interested in Ruby riding Prince de Beauchene (Newbury 3.00).
At Fisher's Cross (2.25) makes a slightly belated seasonal reappearance having suffered a cut just before being due to carry the nap four weeks ago when Rebecca said he might not be quite fully fit. So maybe he will be by now and he ought to see off Reve de Sivola, who will be no pushover, if he is to justify our hopes for The World Hurdle although he is already 8/11 tomorrow and McCoy chooses to go to Newcastle for My Tent or Yours, which is a tip in itself.
A.P. believes in this Champion Hurdle prospect - a bit more than I do, to be honest, but how you take that will depend on which of us you think is the better judge of a horse. Me never having sat on one. But I won't be taking on Melodic Rendezvous at the prices because I've got hurt doing that once already.
But back with Nicholls, I'll want to be on Black River (Newbury 12.50) but oppose him by giving Gibb River another chance at 1.50.
There's a yankee in italics there to play with some small change and if we come out of it in reasonably good order then Jezki (Fairyhouse 2.15) will be expected to enhance our position on Sunday.
I'll make Prince de Beauchene the nap but, since we can have 12/1, go for a bit of insurance and do it each way even if I think each way is a bit cowardly.

Amazon

Following the Panorama programme on Amazon this week, I thought I'd have a look at Waterstones for books. I don't know if they treat their staff any better but it's unlikely to be wose.
So I looked at Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, a book I'm likely to buy soon. Amazon have it at £9.99 whereas at Waterstones it is £14.29.
What do you do?

Cavalier

There is an interview with Thom Gunn where he explained how once he had finished a book he couldn't start writing again and so he put a finished book in a drawer and continued writing and then published the book. Without wanting to suggest any further comparison between my writing, my frugal output and the methods of such a fine poet, I do know what he meant.
The Perfect Murder was more or less finished about six months before it appeared but in the mean time I only wrote one poem and since it appeared I had lost the very slightest inclination to even think of a poem I might write. That isn't much below my usual state of affairs but, as it sometimes does, it almost felt terminal.
But I have just started reading a biography of Milton, with plenty of illustrations of eminent figures of his time, and it was a matter of course that I glanced at two of these on facing pages and thought, 'cavaliers' and immediately a new poem was in progress. In fact it was begun at 4.30 a.m. today and finished with some thesaurus and Google Images checking not very many minutes ago. This is not the famous Laughing Cavalier I'm talking about. He seems to be an aberration. I have in mind this sort of cavalier and if anybody ever thinks there is no political edge to any of my poems then if you bear in mind Cameron, Osborne and their friends then you may think otherwise. 

Cavalier 

They took care to preserve themselves in oils

and now look past you with macabre disdain

for it’s clear that you are not invited 

to their custom of license and excess.

At this distance you can only admire

their coiffure, debonair sang froid and scorn. 

But this, then, was the last word in fashion,

expensive only for expensive’s sake.

You understand what it tacitly means 

-it’s you that looks at them, not them at you-

the least part of their delinquent manner

and as loyal as loyalty requires 

with menace in the grimace they disguise

as merely highfalutin, fine good taste.

Such rigid dignity is libertine 

and lost upon us now who, less impressed,

could have been their offspring for all we know,

and there, but for the grace of God, we go.

The Saturday Nap

As soon as Paddy Power went 'non-runner no bet' on the Betfair Chase I took his kind offer of 5/2 about Silviniaco Conti (Haydock 3.00). The fact that he has now gone 11/4 isn't too distressing.
There are plenty of other races of interest tomorrow but none that appeal as big betting opportunities so I'm happy to go all in on this early rehearsal for the Gold Cup. It is sometimes said that one shouldn't be afraid of one horse but here one could legitimately worry about at least three of them. The form of the Pipe stable advertises Dynaste's claims; one would never oppose Bobsworth lightly; there seems no end to Tidal Bay's enduring charm and Cue Card could be the biggest danger of all. I would be happy to oppose Long Run in this class of race from now on, though.
But Silviniaco was my Gold Cup selection last season and remains so for this year despite last year's fall. If he's going to beat Bobsworth then now would be the time to start doing it in a race apparently now close to Paul Nicholls' heart.
I've read the cases for the opposition and against my selection but this is one to go for and a bet that will have a big influence on whether I can finish my best ever calendar year by reaching a new level of profit or if I have to settle for something less.

A New Chess Champion....bar the shouting

and there won't be much shouting, really.

Two very quick, tame draws were followed by two draws in which I, for my very minor worth, thought that Anand was asking more of the questions.

But then it all went a little bit inevitable and Carlsen looked like good value for a 1/3 bet except by then I don't suppose any odds were on offer. Those stone-throwing yobbos on the internet were calling him Grindsen on Saturday and, yes, I thought it looked a draw. But it wasn't. And in a week that Hurricane Fly won a record 17th Grade One race, the car driver Vettel won an eighth consecutive Formula One race and Sachin Tendulkar retired in possession of a record that won't be broken in my lifetime, just after A.P. McCoy recorded his 4000th winner to set an unbreakable standard, Carlsen puts his rating at a brand new high that only he is in a position to improve upon.

Have we been lucky enough to witness quite so much wonder or will the excitement be continued in a different way.

I'm sorry that the chess wasn't a bit more competitive but it just wasn't to be, was it. But it would be nice if Carlsen could look as if he enjoyed it a bit more. There can be something a bit depressing about 'cool' being made to look so boring for them.

John Eliot Gardiner - Music in the Castle of Heaven

John Eliot Gardiner, Music in the Castle of Heaven (Allen Lane)

It is not only the depth of John Eliot Gardiner's specialist knowledge and appreciation of Bach that impresses so much but the breadth of his reading in so many other areas like history, economics, astronomy, geography and other composers like Monteverdi, Beethoven, Mozart, Berlioz and, of course, Bach's contemporaries. In most people one might take such polymath expertise as showing off but Gardiner seems to wear it so well that it doesn't look like it.
This is a heavy book not to be undertaken lightly and I was wary not to get involved in long technical analysis of music that is for performers and academics only but the opening chapters are absolutely fine. Gardiner is keen not to make the mistake so often made with Shakespeare that because we admire the work so much we would thus be equally enamoured of the personality. There is no correlation between the two but he pieces together the early bereavements, the truant schoolboy, the Lutheran culture and family circumstances to find the formative influences on an industrious, truculent, devout and demanding professional. The concept of artist or even genius would have meant little to Bach, or at least not in the terms we understand them. Bach's gift, which is in excess of any contempoary musician and arguably any other at all, was much more a result of training and study than innate talent. For him the idea of 'invention'
was the discovery of something that was already there, rather than something truly original - hence his view that anyone could do as well, provided they were as industrious. (* and since I am now so accustomed to footnotes, let's have one here)
Gardiner's consideration of the 'Class of '85', those musicians born in 1685 and just previously, doesn't have Bach foremost among them at the time. They were Domenico Scarlatti, Rameau and Handel, plus Mattheson and Telemann. Bach was not the only one of them to come from a musical family and some of the others were to make their names primarily in opera but while Gardiner is keen to find as human and accurate a portrait of Bach in the evidence, he is rarely prepared to pay anything but the utmost homage to the music.
But this is Gardiner's Bach. Very little space is given to the instrumental music - the violin sonatas, the orchestral suites, The Well-Tempered Klavier or the cello suites, for instance- whereas eventually I had to abandon the lengthy analysis of the cantatas and the choral music. That is, of course, Gardiner's over-riding area of interest and as a 'Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach' as it claims on the cover, it does become a personal one. In these chapters - and I did get to page 368 before deciding to jump forwards- there is more than a general reader might want of the analysis of key changes, appogiatura, bariolage, cori spezzati and suchlike that I had been dreading. Which will no doubt be of great use to future generations of interpreters but it does make one wonder who the book was written for and Eliot Gardiner, wise man that he is, no doubt did what anybody would do in his position and wrote the book that pleased him.
On broader themes, it is fascinating to see Bach more than once being compared to Beethoven in temperament,
Bach was a natural dissident- almost a proto-Beethovenian rebel avant la lettre
and in the later chapters Gardiner adds to his forensic scrutiny of the portraits some insight into how circumstances made Bach the composer that he became for us, noting how if he had taken posts in Hamburg, Cothen or Dresden rather than Leipzig, he might not have emerged the same due to different prevailing cultural climates.
No, it had to be in that provincial and rather mean-spirited city, inordinately proud of its pure Lutheran Orthodoxy, its distinguished succession of cantors and its sporadic moments of cosmopolitan glory.
And so, if we get a Bach we can identify with, a driven, self-disciplined perfectionist at odds with employers and frustrated at the facilities his employers provide, the sub-standard musicians he has not enough time to rehearse, we possibly even yet don't get the full picture because however wide and impressive Gardiner's learning is, he eventually overdoses us on cantatas and where at first one thought one was going to rush to play them all again and then buy some more, I'm not.
There is just about enough credit given to Mendelssohn for his rediscovery of Bach and there is a superb painting by him that suggests he had talents enough to succeed in whatever discipline he had chosen but in the end one is overwhelmed by Gardiner, and by Bach, but I suspect we might be overwhelmed in a slanted direction when this portrait could have been balanced around a different centre.
I don't think I've listened to any Bach unless it turned up on the radio since I went past about page 250 but when I do it will be The Well-Tempered Klavier.   

footnote
* Anti-Stratfordians don't believe that 'Shakespeare' was written by the actor from Stratford because, for one reason at least, he didn't have enough education. That seems to me a bleak view that denies the possibility of innate 'genius'.  Bach here argues against 'genius' himself but not that a natural talent cannot be brought to great artistic achievement with tremendous application. And Shakespeare's education would have included a solid basis of Classical literature to which he applied his assiduous interest in the theatre. I had worried that there might be a contradiction between the two but I don't think there is.
     

Signed Poetry Books - Robert Wells

I recently entered the bidding for a signed Philip Larkin on e-Bay. Not expecting to win it but giving it a go for form's sake. I haven't yet tired of telling the tale that it went for £645.
But there was a Carcanet get together a while back and Mr. Turner who attended returned with a pleasant surprise for me in the shape of this signed Robert Wells which has some fine things in it and so that provided compensation at nowhere near the cost. No cost at all, in fact. So thank you very much to Robert for that.

The Saturday Nap

The importance of getting on early is emphasized by the fact that, having rather daringly added in Cue Card as a Tuesday Bonus the other week to no advantage, the naps are currently running at two pounds and change down to a level ten pound stake at starting price but would be very marginally in front if backed at the prices I took the night before.
Thus one comes in late tonight to find that Paddy had first offered 11/8 about Royal Irish Hussar in the first at Cheltenham tomorrow but we can only have 11/10 now while William Hill seem singularly worried about him and don't appear to want your business at 5/6. No doubt that will sort itself out in the morning. I have backed the Henderson horse but just wonder if something else in the race is even less exposed and might turn him over.
One would love to take Paddy on in his own race at 2.30 but you can't seriously bet against so many other possibilities even if it will be worth 6/1 or more if you find the winner. No, it is time to change sides. I was glad to oppose African Gold (Cheltenham 1.15) last season when he was up against At Fisher's Cross over hurdles but chasing was presumably his longer term objective and at 13/8, or 7/4 if you can get it, he is expected to be better than the opposition in his fences debut here. I was grateful to Shutthefrontdoor for retrieving the day at Aintree recently but it was a battle. I feel unfaithful deserting him after his efforts there but you would expect to see African Gold back at Cheltenham in March for the RSA Chase and so he ought to be winning this early reconnaissance mission.
I will be looking at Southfield Theatre in the 3.00 to either play up some winnings or retrieve a parlous position.

More Tav

BBC Music Magazine December 2013

It is a bit unfortunate that the BBC Music magazine's cover story is a 70th Birthday Interview with John Tavener. I have never quite understood why a magazine dated for next month should be available quite so early but when Tavener's birthday wasn't going to be until the end of January then they were getting ahead of themselves. However, the CD is a live performance of The Protecting Veil by Steven Isserlis from 1994 and so I could hardly leave this collector's item on Sainsbury's shelf.
The disc is actually well presented for such a budget purchase and has 70 minutes of music. In her note, Joanne Talbot says that,
...Tavener.. sidestepped modernism. As such, he sharply divided opinions, ranging from outright hostility, with charges of sentimental extremism and being interminably sanctimonious...
and, indeed, not everyone I spoke to about him today was an unconditional admirer. I suppose I had my own doubts about anybody quite so engrossed in the spiritual but you can take from it what you will and don't have to go the whole way with him. Even if sincerity is not the essential quality we look for in art these days it isn't either something to be disregarded. The opening of this disc is immensely powerful and the sound quality is superb.
It will be worth checking what they put on these from month to month as I've never bought it before but there is clearly an unthinkably vast catalogue of BBC concert recordings that could be put on disc. I can't see any other broadcasting organization compiling quite such a back catalogue if the Murdochs and media free marketeers ever succeed in abolishing such a fine institution.
The magazine itself is a sort of Gramophone-lite and doesn't want to upset anybody too much. If one is going to get a publication like this, I'd rather have the real thing and risk some of it being beyond me rather than suspect all the time that these short reviews have stretched a few small points as far as they can go in order to make a magazine of glossy adverts and pictures of big name musicians look serious. I'm being a bit unfair perhaps but I don't mind feeling out of my depth as long as I think I'm reading the right thing. And Richard Morrison is given a column in here and we are not his biggest admirers. When asked by a telephone canvasser why I didn't read The Sunday Times I recently said because Jeremy Clarkson is in it and that was pretty much Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
But with Tavener, I've never understood the admiration that some music fans, or fans of any other genre, have for complexity. By all means, I'm sure it can be very satisfying but the lack of it doesn't automatically equate to 'easy' or something less worthy. This is highly impressive music, scintillating at times. To take Larkin's 'pleasure principle' point, I know I'm enjoying listening to it and will want to listen to it again and that is really all I need to know.

John Tavener

It added considerably to an already great occasion when John Tavener appeared from a seat to take a bow at the end of Natalie Clein's performance of his Popule Meus in the Cadogan Hall Prom in September 2011.
Although a prematurely frail figure by then it still comes as a bit of a shock that Britain's pre-eminent composer has died at the age of 69. In the 1990's he was one of a number of composers who either converted to or emerged in a renaissance of highly spiritual but accessible music along with Henryk Gorecki, Arvo Part and the younger James MacMillan. The Protecting Veil was a great commercial and artistic success in the recording by Steven Isserlis and the Song for Athene was a profoundly moving feature of Diana Spencer's funeral. As well as his numerous settings of religious texts, mostly taken from his adopted Greek Orthodox belief, two string quartets are of particular interest, The Last Sleep of the Virgin and The Hidden Treasure, one written to be heard at the threshold of audibility to represent his awareness at the edge of consciousness during serious illness.
One didn't need to share his religious convictions to appreciate the spiritual power of his music Of the many composers that one might be aware of now from our period, I'm sure his will be remembered as one of the far fewer names whose work will be played and appreciated throughout future generations.

Best Poem and Best Collection 2013 Shortlists

The winners won't even get a cup as magnificent as this little trinket presented to the winner of Portsmouth Poetry Society's annual competition but it is nonetheless a sincerely considered tribute and not easy to win. The Best Poem and Collection that I've read in the year.
First of all, the poem or book needs to come to my notice and then I have to decide I'm interested enough to read it. This is an appallingly difficult criteria for any poetry to meet if not written by anyone I recognize as a personal favourite but I do read reviews and sometimes specifically scan the internet or the Poetry Library for likely candidates, not initially for the purposes of the prize, of course, but to find new poems worth reading.
Once I'm reading it, then, the poems are well ahead of the opposition from the huge amount of new poetry published each year and the game is on to make the shortlist. I will provide some commentary when the winners are announced next month but these candidates will be considered further for a few more weeks while I convince myself I got it right.
A list of previous winners was compiled and put here on the equivalent posting last year.

Best Poem

Sue Hubbard, The Ice Ship, from The Forgetting and Remembering of Air
August Kleinzahler, A Wine Tale, from The Hotel Oneira
Roddy Lumsden, Women in Paintings, from The Edinburgh Review 137
Glyn Maxwell, The Case of After, from Pluto
Sinead Morrissey, A Day's Blindness, from Parallax
Sean O'Brien, Lamplight, from Poetry London 74
Michael Symmons Roberts, In Babylon, from Drysalter

Best Collection

August Kleinzahler, The Hotel Oneira (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Sinead Morrissey, Parallax (Carcanet)
Michael Symmons Roberts, Drysalter (Cape)

View from the Boundary

It is approaching that climactic time of year when it begins to look as if nothing else is going to happen and even though more than 10% of the year remains I can decide which poems and books go onto my shortlist of the year's best.
In the meantime, I can summarize the minor awards which have grown up in the wake of this little-known prizegiving.
The prize for the best event usually goes to something that I have attended but this year I didn't go to any Proms, not to Cheltenham for the Literature Festival and missed some other of the things I often include in a year's itinerary. And so, exceptionally, or at least for the first time, my best event was Chic at Glastonbury which I only saw on telly, probably the best way for me to see it, but still found Nile Rodgers quite a moving and exhilarating experience 35 years after he was my favourite pop act.
Of the few new novels that I read, I think Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary stole it in the end and so now I'm reading The Blackwater Lightship, which so far seems similarly good.
The best CD I bought was John Holloway playing the Biber Mystery Sonatas (Virgin Veritas) although it was not a 2013 release so that category is not limited to new issues.
The poetry shortlists will be here later this evening.
--
But I see from Eyewear that there are to be poets invited to Buckingham Palace although nobody seems to know which ones yet. I wonder why that would be. Is the Duke of Edinburgh to be sent abroad on a trade mission promoting British-made verses to spearhead the economic revival based on the export of slim volumes to unleash our new tiger economy. One wouldn't have thought so.
It seems to have caused some consternation about who has received an invite and, more to the point, who hasn't. I remember similar trouble being caused when some kids from junior school were invited to certain birthday parties and others weren't. But some poets do seem genuinely put out by it. I hope it is not in the hope of any such recognition that they ever got involved in the industry because the pleasure of reading and writing poems is all the reward there needs to be and it really ought go no further.
Todd Swift is surely an admirable organizer and energetic publisher, editor and general factotum but he is taking it a bit hard if he thinks he has been left out of a 'defacto Who's Who'. Part of our pluralist culture these days is the admission that there is no canon, no centre and no official reading list and so to even entertain the thought that the guests at the palace are such a thing looks like an admission that deep down there still is.
As with any such choice of names, there will be some missed off who would have been suitable, worthy or would like to have gone. But as I find myself saying increasingly recently, no award, prize or recognition actually makes one's poems any better than they were already. The poetry world does appear to be run more on cliques and groups as much as it ever was and I don't think there's any end to that in sight because it is somehow inevitable.
Whereas it is a good thing that The Echo Chamber is back for another brief run in the Poetry Please slot. All too brief, I suspect, as it would be nice if it were a permanent feature, a magazine of the airwaves bringing more poets to such an audience. This week it was Michael Longley and Roy Fisher. Poets like these are established figures not because they are 'mainstream' or 'safe' or 'establishment' but because they are any good. I doubt if they would be upset if they weren't invited to a reception to fleetingly be in the same room as royalty.
--
But all of our precious institutions are under attack. I saw that Adrian Chiles has been given the job on Radio 5's Drive on Friday tea times. Perhaps the legend Peter Allen has not been doing Fridays for a while now but if this is the thin end of the wedge and the latest place that Adrian Chiles has washed up then my increasing migration from habitual Radio 5 listenership to elsewhere can only continue.  
Meanwhile, I have two shortlists to compile. So excuse me while I do. 

Signed Poetry Books - Cliff Blake

One of the great advantages of being a part of a 'community' of poets is that you inevitably get back more than you put in. I generally think of poetry as a solitary activity rather than a social one but the benefits of turning up to the Portsmouth Poetry Society meetings over the last few years have been considerable.
I recently dished out copies of The Perfect Murder there and was delighted to get back in return Rhapsody, Rhyme and Rhythm by the great octagenarian rhymer, Cliff Blake, and so I got him to sign it so that he could be a part of my pantheon of signed poetry books.
It is a fine selection that begins with Cliff's outline of his 'modus operandi', not quite a manifesto but an explanation of his way of working. Some of it sounds exactly right to me, like,
Sometimes it appears to magically come from nowhere.

Not all of it does, though. And that is because Cliff isn't the same sort of poet as me. He says,
I consider a poem without rhyme as prose

but he qualifies that very acceptably by continuing,
although it may be associated with poetry by having the other attributes.

Perhaps we will talk about that next time, sir. The first meeting of PPS that I ever went to was in 1982 and the subject was 'What is Poetry?'
I don't know if I want to go through all that again or not. But thanks for the book, and a very articulate summary of how you do what you do. Welcome to my collection.

The Saturday Nap

It was reported that cars leaving the car park at Towcester yesterday were turning round to go back in when it was announced that J.P. McManus was buying everyone on the course a drink.
All the tributes to A.P. McCoy's 4000 winners echo the same admiration of the dedication, the will to win, the single-mindedness and even the somewhat reluctant star in the spotlight. As my tribute I show here my copy of The History of Fontwell Park signed to me by the great man.
The poll in the Racing Post identifies Wichita Lineman's Cheltenham win as his best ride which was one of many that surely no other jockey would have worked at and galvanized to such a success from a horse who, let it be remembered, did at least his fair share of the work. Battle Hymn at Ascot several years ago was a similar one I remember because I had backed it and that's what it's like in racing - one remembers one's own winners for money. And so slightly less strenuous and more easily achieved wins were some of my favourites like Black Jack Ketchum in the Novice Stayers Hurdle at Cheltenham and At Fisher's Cross last year.
I was not one that was too dismayed when Clan Royal was very unluckily forced out by a loose horse in the National. A.P. was going ominously well at the time but it was one of my National wins that year and so you win some and you lose some.
As McCoy well knows because a few years ago at the Festival, race after race went by, then a day and another day without a winner and his expression was increasingly more on the grim side of taciturn. It might have been the year that Valiramix died in the Champion Hurdle which didn't help.
Synchronized and Darlan were two other high profile fatalities in recent years and then one might have to temper the adulation with the opinion that perhaps he didn't succeed as substitute jockey on Denman either.
All of which downside is only to balance the successes with some trials and tribulations, to say that it wasn't all a picnic in the park and that, in the words of Lester Piggott (when explaining a defeat to an owner), he couldn't come without the horse.
4000 winners at a strike rate of, let's say very roughly, 25%, is 16000 rides which will virtually all have been at least two miles and often more than that. So that is likely to have been more than 40000 miles with a fence every couple of furlongs and although obviously with the advantage of riding one of the best horses most of the time, it will have been done quicker on average than anybody else went.
So, a driven man, a modest man, a record that surely to goodness won't ever be beaten and thanks very much for signing the book that day. It was Stubbsy that picked it up and asked for me. I wasn't actually there.
--
So, are we going to back A.P. to celebrate tomorrow. Not for the nap, we're not, no.
Saturdays at Wincanton at this time of year can turn into Paul Nicholls benefits and he is delivering the winners, most noticeably on Saturdays, at present. And so we will see what price the bookies put up about star novice chasing prospect Wonderful Charm and then, if that's not going to be exciting enough, scrutinize the prospects of Far West. One of these, or maybe something else, will be in bold letters here later this evening.  
--
That Wincanton Hurdle at 2.05 looks a cracking race in prospect and the bookies don't seem to agree yet. Ladbrokes go 7/2 Far West and 5/2 Melodic Rendezvous, and there are two other serious contenders, whereas Paddy goes 11/4 joint favourites.
But Paddy is 6/4 Wonderful Charm at 3.15 and even though he has already shortened up Third Intention from 11/4 to 5/2, that's the nap and there's a double in there for anybody in an adventurous mood.

World Chess Championship, Anand/Carlsen

This was the historic position reached last night when rizagex resigned to give me the win required to break through to a new personal best rating of 1418 on FICS, the Free Internet Chess Server, http://www.ficsgames.org/cgi-bin/show.cgi?ID=345625038.

It is an ambition achieved, only to be replaced by a new ambition to go higher, but I won't be risking that for a little while and will play only unrated games. I am already rated well above my ability on there, at 48.06% of the way down the list of registered players, which is odd because when I reached 1417 a long time ago, I'm sure I was about 46% but the distribution must have altered. I'm not going to ruin my ranking while the World Championship is on because, of course, such prestigious status gives me every right to pontificate on the match that starts on Saturday, http://chennai2013.fide.com/.

Magnus Carlsen, aged 22, would appear to be Champion Elect but would miss out on being the youngest Champion ever because he is nearly 23 and Garry Kasparov was 22 when he won the title in 1985.
Carlsen's rating makes him officially the best player in the history of the game but such ratings are only that and it would be a matter of some debate if he is already better than Kasparov, Fischer, my personal favourite Capablanca, and all the others. It certainly isn't for me to say, who is well aware of what it's like to enjoy watching sport without having the faintest idea how the players can do what it is that they are doing.
Carlsen, it seems to me, will pursue a win, or fight for a draw, to indefatiguable lengths and sometimes get it but in a match that is these days over 12 games, it is a situation in which an early advantage to one side or the other leaves precious little time for the loser to equalize. The schedule of tournaments and matches nowadays surely means that the exhausting race to six outright wins will never be used to decide the championship again. That title, as in every other sport, is just another sponsored event in the calendar. A win with white by Anand early on could see him retain the title against all apparent odds if he can then play out the remaining games as draws and so I don't recommend taking odds of 1/3 about Carlsen.
Anand might have dropped down the official rankings but he is a wily old hand at match play and I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing him delay the inevitable in making the languid Norwegian wait a bit longer to add the Champion's title to his overwhelming status as World no. 1.
The recent match, I think in the Candidates Tournament through which Carlsen earned the right to challenge Anand, against Aronian, returned us to those heady days of weird accusations and paranoia with the suggestion that Carlsen hypnotizes his opponents. Aronian appeared to blow a safe position and Carlsen prevailed.
Or is it that Carlsen doesn't break under pressure whereas his opponent eventually does. I don't know. But one thing that many of these Uri Geller-type insinuations have in common is that Viktor Korchnoi is often involved in them. Korchnoi is 81 years old now and very much not to be disrespected but here he is somewhat disrespecting Sofia Polgar, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxeiGipoFSE. And that was ungracious.
So, when it kicks off in Chennai on Saturday, I'll be following. Given the choice, I am usually a supporter of the underdog and so, for what it is worth, I'll be hoping rather than expecting that the champion will retain his title.

The Replacement Nap

Gone Too Far is the new nap in the second race at Wetherby.

L'unique is fancied in the mares race at 1.50 and Declaration of War is worth a go at 7/1 in the Breeder's Cup after midnight.

The Saturday Nap

I'm not Long Run's biggest fan and so will only watch the Chrlie Hall Chase at Wetherby.

There is no need to think too much tonight, though. If At Fisher's Cross (Wetherby 3.00) is anywhere near fit- and Rebecca Curtis had a winner to follow a lot of seconds and thirds in recent days- then he should signal that he is on his way to the World Hurdle. If you can get even money then take it while it is there.

But I will add a Tuesday Bonus to the Saturday Nap and suggest we include Cue Card in the Haldon Cup at Exeter in the project.

View from the Boundary

There are few less amenable types of people than the disgruntled punter.

I know that there are one or two readers who are following the Saturday Nap, more out of casual interest than in the hope of making themselves rich, but I'm almost glad there aren't more than that. It won't help if I explain that, actually, you are in expert hands but it just hasn't gone quite right in picking one horse as the nap. It wouldn't prevent a hostile crowd from accosting me in the street if I explained that, actually, 8 out of my last 9 single win bets on horses have won, since last Thursday. In fact, it would probably make it worse.
But we will try to focus on Saturday and get it right. Rebecca Curtis has the great At Fisher's Cross entered at Wetherby. Let's hope that her recent litany of seconds and thirds become a win with the stable star. In the meantime, if you really want to know, and if you don't mind taking odds on, then the routine novice hurdle winner from a big stable in midweek tomorrow should be Dispour in the first at Sedgefield or I'll eat my hat.
That is the hat made out of pizza that I'll buy just in case.

--

Walking on Water only reached no.19 in Amazon's Free Poetry Download chart in its 5 days as a free kindle and so perhaps it is time to give up on being an overnight sensation after 35 years of having poems in print and return to my place in the underground. But Alan is now working for David Green (Books) and doing a wonderful job.
There is an inevitable tension now within the company between a natural marketing man and me who only really wants to write a poem once in a blue moon and then make the best of them available to anyone who wants to read them. But, don't worry, it is all about me, not him, and I can sack him whenever I feel like it even if it would be a foolish boss who fires a technical genius.

--

I had a great evening with Lou on Monday, playing the lesser known Velvet Underground albums as well as a couple he released under his own name later. I hadn't played them for years but could understand how at least R.E.M. could have been listed among the many bands that critics said were 'influenced' by the Velvets without John Cale. On the other hand, whichever dogsbody expert it was who turned up on the wireless to say that U2 were a beneficiary needs to be given 100 lines to write out. How did Lou ever equate to Bono.
It must be one of those failures of the liberal Humanities project in which no answer can ever be marked wrong if there are people let loose on the airwaves allowed to say that.
--

And so, my notes towards a shortlist for the very unprestigious and prizeless award of this website's Best Poem and Best Poetry Collection of the year must be nearly complete and ready for my discerning consideration. I have missed books in the past that would have at least made the shortlist although I don't think it has affected the choice of the eventual winner and so, if you know of a book of poems that I ought to read in the next few weeks then please let me know.
For obvious reasons, The Perfect Murder is inadmissable although in the same way that I'm sure parents like their own children more than they like other people's, I love it. If I hadn't written it, I'd love to meet the author.

How disappointed I would have been.

Colm Toibin - The Testament of Mary

Colm Toibin, The Testament of Mary (Penguin)

The panel on the Booker Prize Preview Show spoke highly of how well-written, how impressive and, just as importantly for me, how short it was and so I ordered a copy.
I took a break from reading a much longer book late on Sunday afternoon and by early evening had finished it, not only because one could and because it might be best done that way but mainly because it was impossible to put down.
Colm Toibin maintains the spare, hard-eyed, insistent language of Mary with an economy that soon becomes hypnotic. She is sorrowful but undeceived by the events she reports of her son's later life, last days and death. She tells of being watched, being followed and of a political murder.
Her son has gathered some misfit friends and their long discussions, she can tell, are increasingly led by him. But she is aware of sinister intimations surrounding him.
The detached narrative of events become more passionate and desperate as the dangers become more apparent but she is powerless to prevent the inevitable. Escape is not an option until she has witnessed the grim crucifixion and all but his harrowing last moments. His family,
watched helplessly as their brother grew easily towards death in the same way as the source for a river, hidden under the earth, begins flowing and carries water across a plain to the sea. 
I can't see why it should be particularly controversial but there again I am not religious, not Catholic and no theologian. Thus, if there is some heresy in an account like this then perhaps it doesn't help that has been done so well. The stories in the gospels are compelling however much, or little, credence one is prepared to give them, written several years after the fact without much verification of detail (and apparently with several other accounts that didn't fit the early Christian church's version omitted) and Colm Toibin's words for Mary here are powerful in very much the same way.
She is hugely dignified, even glorious in her Stabat Mater here, tougher than 'dolorosa' would suggest, as she concludes,
I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say it was not worth it. It was not worth it.
Is that the world or the redemption that wasn't worth it. I don't think we need to ask.
I don't care whether it won the prize or not. By my very rough calculation, this might be less than 30 000 words long and a novel, I have seen it said, is at least 50 000. So where do categories begin and end. The prize brought it to my greater attention and it was two hours well spent reading it and so prizes, as far as that goes, are a useful thing. The book wouldn't necessarily benefit from being any longer. Toibin gave us it as he saw fit. And giving it a prize wouldn't make it a better book.

Lou Reed

We were only wondering when it was that we saw Lou Reed in Portsmouth Guildhall when we were in there on Thursday. Subsequent research found that it was 14/09/2000. Some idiot near us kept shouting Perfect Day so that perhaps I secretly hoped Lou would do a characteristically curmudgeonly thing and not play it but it was the second encore.
At the time, Portsmouth Guildhall was having a brief but ambitious spell that included gigs by Bob Dylan and The Who as well which are acts somewhat above their usual fare. Of those, it would always be Lou that I would want to see the most.
The famous Warhol banana LP The Velvet Underground and Nico is a favourite, a genuine favourite because of the music it contains rather than any critic's hipster acknowledgement of its 'influence'. It is surely better to be 'any good' than influential. It mixes the low-life, bohemian themes of sado-masochism, New York streets and dark self-indulgence with the rare beauty of the pharmaceutical daydream of Sunday Morning, and the Nico classics I'll Be Your Mirror and Femme Fatale.
Transformer was the commercial success in the early 70's that Bowie worked on but I'm not sure who was learning more from who in that symbiotic relationship and Bowie songs like Queen Bitch suggest that the Dame took a fair bit from not only Lou but the whole Warhol Factory milieu. Well, we know he did.
Lou Reed was one of those pop songwriters that could be realistically termed a 'poet' if any such cross reference were felt to be useful. With a recognizable world view, coming from an early career on a hit production line, modernist sensibility and a life that provided all he might have needed to reflect back the tawdry downside of urban style, gloss and glamour, his most memorable aside in the Portsmouth gig was, 'after the first kiss, it's downhill all the way'.

The Saturday Nap

It's a shame Handazan let the nap down last Saturday- I'm afraid he didn't look like the winner from a long way out- but the main story was always going to be The New One (pictured), a very big favourite with me, and he won every bit as well as could have been hoped and I added some 5/1 to the 10/1 I already had for the Champion Hurdle next March.
It has been a tidy little week with Pendra winning yesterday and Wonderful Charm today. These good novices from top stables in weekday races, a shade of odds on if you like, are the bread and butter of this, the best time of the year to set about putting money on horses. I only wish we could have had the nerve to unleash obscene sums on The New One and Wonderful Charm because confidence was enormous, defeat unthinkable and they won as routinely as they should have. But it is horse racing, you see, and things happen. The penury and disaster lying just around the next corner for the unwary gambler are a part of the louche glamour of it and so you don't just go whacking on unseemly amounts at odds on, you take great pleasure in seeing performances like The New One and you look forward to what might come about at Cheltenham next year.
But if I'm alright, Jack, then level stake followers of the nap so far are not and so we must set about remedying that unfortunate state of affairs.
One thing we could do is go for the 4/1 about Aidan O'Brien's standard issue entry for the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster which this year is called Century. It is almost too good a price, really, and we will have to swerve it at the risk of some heartache by 4 o'clock tomorrow afternoon.
Shutthefrontdoor looks solid enough at Aintree where A.P. goes to ride for Jonjo, which partnership advertised their good form with winners at Carlisle yesterday but the exchanges are only showing 7/10 in a 4 horse race and we must do better than that.
The Paul Nicholls machine is moving smoothly into action and although Potters Cross would have won me money two weeks ago but for jumping badly at two of the last three hurdles and was marked down as one to back again, let's hope he doesn't quite get it right tomorrow either because Caesar Milan is the nap in the Chepstow 3.35

BSO's Pictures

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Vedernikov, Rachmanninov, Sibelius, Mussorgsky, Portsmouth Guildhall, October 24th.

The BSO's programme last night was titled Musical Pictures. We wondered what the Sibelius Violin Concerto was a picture of and I still haven't found an answer but it's never a bad thing to have a concerto and so we didn't mind.
Rachmanninov's Isle of the Dead broods quite benignly with its riff in the cellos and bass and elsewhere before reaching its climax. Its gloom isn't too sinister and it by no means reduces the composer's high standing in my regard, whose range goes from those lush piano concertos to the Russian Orthodox Vespers.
On a night dominated by Russians, I hope I wasn't taking a short cut by finding Sibelius at his most Russian-sounding in the concerto. There could have been traces of folk song in there that owed something to Finland's overbearing neighbour. Nikita Boriso-Glebsky was technically dazzling and perhaps at his best when delicacy and deftness were required but it took a while for the performance to gain authority or momentum. It finished well but I was surprised to find that for a second time in recent years it was the Sibelius piece in a concert that was the slight disappointment. That is not what one expects will happen.
I don't know if it was Nikita or me that felt more at home in his encore which was a movement from a Bach partita or sonata but it retrieved the situation and then some as one wondered if it was only one violin or a duet but the solo includes its own accompaniment when the bow is on the appropriate side of the strings to play the required notes. Brilliant.
Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition was a teenage favourite of mine in both the piano version and Ravel's orchestration. Many of my generation would say Emerson, Lake & Palmer and I'm not too snooty to acknowledge that, too. It's just that I didn't repeatedly listen to that in those formative years. I generally preferred the piano version on the grounds that less is more but hearing the full orchestra from the third row made clear the difference between listening to its full range of sound textures in the flesh compared to a recording on a small cassette player. The brass were tremendous, but the woodwind were superb as well in their lively parts, the percussion is prominent, there are two harps, saxophone and everybody gets a turn. I hadn't realized quite what a good job Ravel had done on it.
Alexander Vedernikov is an entertainment in himself as conductor, at one moment leaning on the rail of the rostrum and waving the baton nonchalantly in the general direction of the orchestra but then apparently engaging in bad dancing like a maestro buffa, and next imperious in a bucolic pastiche of a Karajan or Klemperer. But he got a performance out of the BSO, who are a great orchestra anyway, and for only the second time in my life I added my own 'hurray' to the applause almost involuntarily. It is a monumental piece of writing and orchestration in a performance like that and, as we always do from these concerts, we went home in fine spirits.

Walking on Water kindle edition

Walking on Water, my booklet from 2006, is now available as a kindle on Amazon but hold on until tomorrow or the next day by which time it should be into its five days of being free to download.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Walking-Water-David-Green-ebook/dp/B00G05NTMK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1382459538&sr=8-2&keywords=david+green+walking+on+water
This follows the success of The Perfect Murder which reached  number 13 in the Free Kindle Download Poetry chart over the weekend. This is the same chart position achieved by Because of You by Dexy's Midnight Runners, Crying by both Roy Orbison and k.d. lang and I'm Coming Out by Diana Ross.
It would have been nice to have a top ten hit but the excitement of being in a chart at all was plenty thrilling enough.
The possibility of adding further titles from the back catalogue is being investigated.

Thanks to all those who downloaded The Perfect Murder.