Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

 Not long ago here I reported on the changes in the Radio 3 schedule. I have not adapted well to the new timings and am no longer a regular listener to The Early Music Show, Record Review, Building a Library, the repeat of the Monday Wigmore Hall concert on Sunday or This Week's Composer.  A certain type of government would like to do away with the BBC and the likes of R3 in particular and it is be hoped that my desertion of these programmes is not extrapolated across the country to add to their commercial agenda.

As a species, I suspect we take change for the better as our due and aren't grateful enough for it but we do not take readily to change that doesn't suit us. Now the Saturday Review section of The Times has changed its radio and TV listings. I'm not concerned what is on Radio 1 or 5Live but Radio 4Extra, Talking Pictures and a bit of detail on Radio 3 is useful and now that they've been unlisted it's unlikely they will be back.

Of course, if that's the most I've got to complain about I can't have much to complain about but my world shrinks by just a little bit more and I might not know when All Gas and Gaiters is back on, or Much Binding in the Marsh or some old film with Googie Withers. 

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It's been gloriously busy here with, not the for the first time, the 'books' part of the website's address looking like a misnomer. Some reading continues, though, and a return to Benjamin Moser's The World Turned Upside-Down from last year has been the highest of pleasures. C17th Dutch Art is about as wonderful a subject as there is and it is shown off to even greater effect by his informed, considered account. One could ask for more but it's best to be grateful for what there is. It would certainly be on a short list for the Best Book in the House which, since I'd acquire any book I found out about that I wanted, makes it a candidate for simply My Favourite Book.

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How long does it take for potential heroes to disappoint us, though. Think of Beethoven scoring out the dedication to Napoleon on the Eroica Symphony. Prime Minister is a difficult job and the situation he applied for, and got, makes it no easier for Keir Starmer but it hasn't looked quite as good as it might have.

He'll never get anywhere near the depths of depravity achieved by Boris - which is the main point- but surely if one's advisor is paid more than you are you might think she'd advise against allowing the opposition, if there were any, the least opportunity. I wouldn't mind if it were Proms tickets, some Rembrandt or Vermeer exhibition but it's Arsenal and Taylor Swift.

Not being the last lot is still plenty good enough for me but the public are a fickle thing, his landslide was fragile and he's not really theirs forever because they don't feel that everything's free and could easily ask him to move over, darling, sooner than they should.