But, yes, it was alright in the 1970's, especially as one's teenage years are inevitably more interesting than being in your 50's and the 70's contributed the work of Bowie, Bolan, Roxy Music and Lou Reed, for examples, whose gender ambiguity and bohemian chic was a coherent alternative to Les Dawson, Miss World and Bernard Manning.
In twenty years time there might well be a show revealing that,
In 2014 there were a lot of television programmes made on the cheap by stringing together old clips and inviting dull commentators to say a few bland words about them which were supposed to be astute observations by those who knew better than , and for the benefit of, a gullible public.
Well, there is no need to wait twenty years, there it is, I've done it now.
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Derek Mahon's recent book, Red Sails, arrived this week. Perhaps I should be more careful. I opened it to find a page of prose, turned to another page and that was prose, too. It is a book of essays. I was expecting a book of poems and was disappointed at first but, reading a few, it is perhaps a good thing I didn't know that because I might not have ordered it if I had and it looks very worthwhile indeed.
The final paragraph of the book includes this,
'Postmodernism' is or was the literary and artistic face of that induced chaos in its repletion and vacuity, its deceitful appropriation of the 'counter-cultural' idea.
It is a long paragraph and a magnificent one and I look forward to arriving at it having read the rest of the essay that leads up to it. The above quoted sentence is very much the sort of sentence I like to find in books. Postmodernism, the whole of Postmodernism, was, and presumably still is, apparently a relativist tool for the dumbing down of the highbrow and noble elitism for the benefit of marketing strategies and even the TLS is implicated.
It might turn out to be an even better book than a book of Mahon's poetry and he remains hugely admired in this house.
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And I'm looking out for a wildlife photography competition to enter so that I can sweep up the prize money with my study of a barn owl taken in Southwick, Hants, on a recent walk. Here it is, both the original panoramic shot and the close up detail. It is rare, I understand, to see such as thing and so I feel privileged to have caught it digitally in all its glory. I was a bit slow on the uptake, actually, I didn't realize soon enough what had gained the attention of my friends. Otherwise, I might have got an even better picture. It was right over this side of the field when it was first spotted.
