Diary

 An impressive turn out of 17 at Portsmouth Poetry Society this evening was, I'm sure, due to the interest in Thomas Hardy but one likes to think of oneself as being 'box office' and they do generally, and very kindly, make the effort for the annual 'lecture' by the man from David Green Books.

Next up here, bookwise at least, is Don Paterson's new memoir of childhood. The Elgar book took almost the length of the library loan period but was worth it. There is almost a perceptible slowing of pace, it seems to me, in the last pages of a biography in which time waits to claim its illustrious victim. You can see the pages rapidly diminishing, the sentences seemingly taking on an adagio rhythm and the subject fading but holding on. Or maybe I'm imagining it all. 

The Don takes precedence over the Phil Spector biography and a return to the History of Writing and we'll see how soon the library has a copy of the recent Maggie O'Farrell for me, Hamnet having been such a surprise hit. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised as she's clearly 'any good'. But before all that, come back soon for tomorrow's Szymanowski at Portsmouth Cathedral with local superstar Valya Seferinova and Catherine Lawlor. Imagine that.

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It told us all we need to know about bookmakers when William Hill were offering 13/1 about any two teams being drawn together in the last 16 of the cup. That is a 15/1 chance, obviously, and anybody taking them up on their offer really needs their head testing. Of course, the bookies have to take out their percentage but that is blatantly pickpocketing their customers far too transparently. With an actual sporting event you can take on the odds because you have an 'angle', like the trainer of a horse being in form or believing that one team have more reason to be trying than the other but at least it goes to show how the odds are so plainly set against you and staying in front of them means you're doing something right.

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I thought I'd put on the Brenda Holloway disc this morning. I thought, wow, this is 'soul' and more sophisticated than the glories of early Motown usually were. Listen to that guitar. Good Lord, this is 'something else'. That's because it was something else but it took until I Can't Stand the Rain for me to realize that somehow I'd put Ann Peebles on instead. But thank you very much, dear Bob Harris, for playing You Keep Me Hanging On (but not 'Set me free why don't you') and opening up more of the work of the tremendous Willie Mitchell Band.

I really don't know if it's the songwriters, Ira Allen and Buddy Mize, or the singer that make the line,

My heart is like a yo-yo string

and it must be both but that, and the song as a whole, stop one in one's tracks, as it were and it is a team effort, naturally. You can hardly make a great record with a bad song or a bad singer. I'd know.