Well Set Up

 One is at one's most vulnerable when everything seems in place, well organized and 'nothing can possibly go wrong'. Confidence and complacency are the bane of those who much prefer, or only know how, to be anxious. Thus it is that I survey the dubious state of affairs that makes it all look well set up at the moment.

The library would only let me have Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time for two weeks because there's a waiting list for it. I know, I've been waiting. It won't be a problem because I've only had it for a couple of hours and I'm 51 pages out of the 260 done already. And I'm not at all surprised. He's a very fine writer, steeped in all that Irishness that runs through Joyce, George Moore, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien and a powerful squad that makes them contenders in any Literature World Cup against England, France, Russia, America, Italy, Japan and all those we either haven't read or haven't been translated. Some words about it will be here, if only to concur with all the other eulogies, before one needs must go into the back catalogue.

 

Less enthralling was an investigation into some names listed at the ever captivating Anecdotal Evidence. I simply don't know how he does it, every day. In 45 years of Thom Gunn Studies, I'd not heard of,

the “Stanford School,” the finest of that generation of American poets – J.V. Cunningham, Edgar Bowers, Janet Lewis, Thom Gunn and Helen Pinkerton.  

Perhaps he's made it up but I thought there might be some names with which to revive my fading enthusiasm for any poetry that I don't know already. Lewis and Pinkerton were two I looked up and, certainly, they must be well-regarded because their books don't come cheap. But reading some samples on the internet didn't make me want to add their titles to my library.

A bit profound, maybe a bit too obvious; well-crafted but maybe a bit too structured; serious but maybe a bit too much so. I'm sure they're fine poets and it's not their fault if poetry's moment, and integrity, has become lost on me. If I know your work already and I believe in you, you're probably okay but I'm very hard to impress with anything I don't already know I'm comfortable with. It's a shame but perhaps 45 years is enough of anything for anybody. However, 'engagement' is a word I've embraced more than most of those terms thrown about by the corporate powers that there were in work. Engagement is a good thing and I have it again with a new essay to write, re-adapting all the old truisms and ready-made lines on a select bunch of favourite writers, mostly poets, and so -one more time, at the very least- I'll gradually compile a loosely assembled survey that I'm sure will convince few of its academic rigour but seems absolutely crucial to me.

 

That said, the end of the football season is putting on a rousing show. Not least for Nottingham supporters, which I still am by birthright even if I adopted Fulham at an early age for reasons of my own. County's last gasp, fingernail hold on their chances of returning from the National League were almost equalled by Forest's nervy dog fight with Southampton and both are now favourites to achieve their season's objectives although neither has actually happened for sure yet.

And, taking advantage at the last reminder of the latest Waitrose wine offer, having thought I'd better not do that again, they are brilliant. Not only the office people on the phone but the gorgeous delivery drivers. Being Waitrose, they must be specially trained in etiquette because they know they are dealing with the 'middle class', at least. It's not for them that it's just a job in some resentful way. They make it seem like it's their pleasure. 

MontGras De-Vine Reserva Zinfandel is from Chile, not California, but Chile has a great reputation of being not noticeably, to me, much different from the 'real thing' in the same way that the premium of travelling to Wigmore Hall to pay £40- £75 to hear internationally famous musicians is hard to justify when I'm just as thrilled by those who play in Portsmouth and Chichester and cost me next to nothing in travel time or actual cash. 

The good lord only knows how much I'd like to find out what it would be like to sit here in my Armani suit with a bottle of Pauillac but that's not sensible. 

I'll maybe review Portsmouth Cathedral's Lunchtime Live on Thursday with the aid of some Chilean Zinfandel. Somebody has to.