Baltimore

 For about 45 years, I've known Baltimore as a reggae classic by the Tamlins, inevitably with the riddim section of Sly'n'Robbie, 'one of the biggest hits in Jamaica in 1979'.

And then last week I heard it by Nina Simone in what I took to be a cover version because it was reggae. And now Bob Harris has just played Randy Newman doing it. I might have been vaguely aware that he wrote it but, heaven knows, that gives you no right to be credited with the best version. He trails in a non-descript, almost tailed-off third of three, being far too pedestrian and soul-less. It doesn't even sound like a good song when he does it.

It's not going to be easy to displace The Tamlins, so imprinted on one's later formative years, as the preferred version but if anybody can do that, Nina Simone is one of the most likely to do so. Not that one has to choose. Not everything needs to be competitive sport.

One can be glad to have both. Not all three. Credit to Randy Newman for having written it but I know what it's like. I wrote a few songs, too, but it's best for their sake if I don't sing them.

 

Racetrack Wiseguy- Cheltenham 2026

 Nicky Henderson has been robbed of his big Champion Hurdle hope and the Good Lord only knows what Constitution Hill will produce but the stable has quality if not the in-depth quantity to still be optimistic about these four days of crucible, red hot racing.

Of course, we don't want to dismiss Ireland's chances because it's become almost a home fixture for them but Mr. Henderson might be 2-0 up after the Supreme and the Arkle on

Tuesday. Old Park Star (nap) and Lulamba have looked impressive against UK opposition so far. Joseph O'Brien's Talk the Talk in the Supreme might be doing exactly that but only squeaked in at Leopardstown on heavy ground. There's more to worry about in the Arkle where Kopek des Bordes presumably won like a 2/9 should last time out and Romeo Coolio only beat Kargese a neck and I'm not 100% convinced about Kargese, having once backed her and lost. The  reasons why I'm not taking ante-post prices about this opening double is that it's still five weeks away, ante-post markets are strewn with disappointed chancers and Lulamba, despite being overwhelmingly on top by the end of his races, has taken the first half of them to find his feet, which might be a plus up the Prestbury Park finish but there's just half a chance he's not flawless over the bare two miles. 

Nevertheless, it looks like we go in all big and brash. The week could be all but over by 2.10pm on the Tuesday but that's sport for you. I know several people who pay good money to go and watch Portsmouth play football. They'd understand about disappointment and, hey, Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. The plan for the rest of the week entirely depends on how those first two races go. Some years ago, one of our local 'faces' went for the whole four days and backed 24 consecutive losers. I can't see the enjoyment in that. I was told, yes but you back the favourites, don't you. Quite often, yes, I do, but that's not cheating.

Jeriko du Reponet will be given the widest of berths in the handicap because it's not a natural jumper of fences and you need to be at least that to win a big Cheltenham handicap.

The Champion Hurdle market has had to be carved up and re-written several times already so I'm not committing to that yet, if at all. I was all over The New Lion before the two runs he's had this season; the race turned out to be Lossiemouth's for the taking last year had she been put in it; I'd be angling towards Betterdaysahead at present but not with money; I'd bloody luv it if Mr. Henderson could find the old Constitution Hill but that's a challenge that might be even beyond him. Golden Ace might yet pick up another top race and become a legend almost by default. It's a complete guessing game and a bookie's benefit.

On Wednesday, if body and soul are still intact, one might think that Majborough ought to be odds on to be Champion Chaser after Leopardstown but Marine Nationale wins at Cheltenham, so far. I'd be siding with Majborough because he's three years younger with maybe more ahead of him. There could be a bet in the first, the Novice Hurdle, and it might be Doctor Steinberg on a day where I'd have to ask for odds ungenerously about Ireland overall. I might come back here and edit this as a 'living document' ( !!! ) as things become clearer.

Thursday can almost be a rest day some years. At present the market that goes 10/11, 5/4, 7/4 for the Mares Hurdle means first of all guessing which of the ladies are sent to it rather than the Champion Hurdle. Except if they all chose the perceived 'easier option' it could make it the harder one. You'd need to be a wiser guy than me to be on who runs never mind who wins. 

I wish the Ryanair Chase could establish itself as a prize as much respected as the Champion Chase or the Gold Cup. Maybe it's at a disadvantage by being sponsored by an airline known for being cheap but not cheerful. There is no reason why middle distances should be less respected than shorter or longer. It's the other way round in flat racing. And in human racing the mile, or 1500m, is at least as much of a 'gold riband' as the 100m or marathon. They put £211k up for the Ryanair which ain't bad compared to £225k for the Champion and 351k for the Gold Cup, roughly in line with how much further you have to run and how many fences you have to jump. I can't be having anything at the prices at present, though.

The fact that 11yo Bob Olinger is 6/1, third fav, for the Stayers Hurdle says a lot about how bleak and starless things are in that division. And then you notice that Doddiethegreat is 10. These by all means classy races and would be riveting stuff at Sandown or Aintree but the argument against trying to fetch more cash out of the paying customer's pocket by making Cheltenham a five day meeting is that Thursday's already like it is. There are only so many good horses to go round.

Depending on which horses have taken their chance in the Champion Hurdle on Tuesday, there will probably be a bet in the Mares Hurdle but until nearer the time I'd not be taking those prices on them running, never mind winning. 

Whereas, if one has rested on the third day, Friday and the Gold Cup is worth having. If the race brings back memories of confident disasters such as Ten Plus, Silviniaco Conti or the ante post 5/2 I was stuck with when Burrough Hill Lad won, having been given away at much more than the SP of 7/2 as Mrs. Pitman insisted that there was nothing wrong with him, it might also remind one of some winners. But not as many as it should.

But Jango Baie is a bet, at 9/2, not going overboard but a go one could have. I'm a bit surprised it's favourite but in that blanket finish of 2025's race of the year in the King George, I reckon it was the one that wanted another furlong, or two and a half. That will be some sort of business on the day or else why do I still play this game. There was much to like about Haiti Couleurs keeping up the gallop at Newbury yesterday and at 8/1 isn't out of the question or even a reverse forecast. It's a long time since I did one of them.

There will probably be a bet in the Albert Bartlett, the long distance novice hurdle, and maybe if Doctor Steinberg and No Drama This End avoid each other, given that they are both entered in the first on Wednesday, it could work out alright to bet on both races.

That's not the most imaginative plan but the bookies' profits and the poor house are maintained by those who stride in all full of imaginative plans. I'd have landed the Coral place pot yesterday, and a few weeks ago, if I hadn't gone against a well-backed favourite. One wants to get by, not break the bank. 

So it's Old Park Star. Then it's Majborough and Lulamba. And then you mix in the others mentioned in bold type here and if you're lucky, three of them might land a treble. Because you do need to be lucky as well as a wiseguy. Or not unlucky, at least.

--

Why don't we have a little game here, if anybody wants to play. Send in your treble for the week, to be calculated as a Trixie- 3 doubles and the treble. I'll publish them here before it all gets underway. The prize could be something like a Thursday afternoon in The Dolphin, Old Portsmouth, date tba, but you'd have to get your round in.

First Four Questions

The TLS has its own Twenty Questions feature. It's a long time since I ended my subscription  but their e-mail still arrives each week, giving a tempting glimpse of what one could have if one went to the lengths of finding a shop that sold their paper.

Nevertheless, a questionnaire is hard to decline even if it's only the first four questions out of twenty that one can see. It's only the same as it ever was, not being able to watch a quiz on telly without taking part and not quite as much reading these questionnaires for an insight into the inner lives of the eminent person interviewed as thinking what one would have said oneself. So, as far as it goes, 

 “How can I know what I think, until I see what I say?” (E. M. Forster). How much of your writing surprises you?

Not all that much by now. I'm unlikely to suddenly find out in the process of writing anything that I believe in God, had misjudged Boris Johnson or should have been listening to Pink Floyd and Bruckner rather than Tamla Motown and Bach and Handel. 

On the other hand, if any piece of writing doesn't find something one hadn't been expecting to say then it was probably not worth writing.

What is the first thing you remember reading or having read to you?

Thomas the Tank Engine was certainly the first book I ever borrowed from a library, Nottingham, circa 1965. There were the heroic escapades of a collie dog called Black Bob. 

But, probably like most people of my age, Janet and John was the first set text at school.

Is there a particular sentence that has stayed with you throughout your life?

Not one, no. Plenty of good lines from great poems or novels. But, an almost throwaway line that Danny Baker used to use when encourgaing listeners to take part in his radio phone-ins,

All you've got to be is any good. Not throughout my life but for about the last twenty-five years.

What is the most interesting item on your bookshelf?

It's surely got to be a book signed by a poet who I thought of as a god at the time and for a long time afterwards. My copy of Touch by Thom Gunn. I was overawed in his presence in Cambridge in 1979 when he did so and he was kind enough to make a conversational gambit. But, no. I could think of nothing to say by way of reply.

Related to that is a magazine called Navis, no.6, Summer 1997, on the back of which my name appears in block capitals as a contributor to that issue, above Gunn's in ordinary type who had been in a previous issue. I got paid just about enough for that poem to spend it on a copy of the magazine with Gunn in. 

My copy of Larkin at Sixty, ed. Thwaite, was bought from one of his secretaries that he had given it to but I have no evidence ot its provenance.

Scannell and Discipline

James Andrew Taylor's biography hasn't made Vernon Scannell any more appealing to me as it progresses but in real life there were plenty ready to be charmed by him and I'd like to think that any friend of Anne Stevenson's might be a friend of mine. None of us can do very much about what we are like and the upbringing he had augmented by his army experiences can't have been of benefit.

I haven't really regarded his poems as much more than a C+ - in what would be a rigorous marking system- until Chapter 12 pointed out the rhyme scheme of Enemy Agents. If nominative determinism is at work in a poet called Scannell, he could equally have been called Rimell. In the first three lines, 

Expert in disguise and killing blows,

Fluent in all languages required,

They wrote me ardent letters but in code.   

 he establishes the subtlest of rhyme schemes in which the consonant sound in 'blows' and the 'd' and the end of 'required' come together in 'code'.

That's good form for you in more ways than one and entirely puts into practice his repeated criticism of 'pop' poetry, like that from Liverpool, and the wider idea of vers libre that Eliot is quoted here as saying, 

No 'vers' is 'libre' for the man who wants to do a good job'. 

 Having set off on this rescue mission, Chapter 12 goes on to describe how Scannell, in a mostly disastrous brief period on a fellowship near Oxford in 1974, found it difficult with students who weren't interested in close reading or technical improvement but wanted to hear fulsome approval of their efforts. Never having attempted such a job, I can't concur with him first hand but I can see how it would be, up and down the country, with thousands of such homemade talents all thinking it was them and not the other thousands that were the naturally gifted one.

Scannell fits the certain stereotype of the poet as penniless, wayward and itinerant all too well but his application to his art is admirable. And it was all too little appreciated during this posting. Not just unappreciated but targetted by local no-marks who made a point of abusing him in public and taking their animosity s far as a sustained campaign against him whether or not they knew of his pugilistic prowess and propensity to use it.

And so it's taken some time to find a lot of sympathy for him but a degree of it arrived in due course.   

Gioia on Kees and other stories

 Not for the first time, one is indebted to Anecdotal Evidence. This time for a link to a new film by Dana Gioia on Weldon Kees,

It's a good match. It sent me straight back to the Kees books - the poems, the stories and the biography and the best of them were vividly much better than I remembered them, possibly helped in no small way by Dana's seal of approval. It is such things that make one's continued interest and desultory participation in 'poetry' worthwhile.

The Pushkin biography was set aside to accommodate Rory Waterman's essays, then the John Lucas novel has to wait its turn in deference to the Vernon Scannell biography which itself had some time off while Kees was given an updating look. I'm not necessarily putting him in the very top echelon but there are poems and stories that belong alongside the best.

--

The upstairs room where the ceiling fell in is back together again, like Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. Re-arranged, not exactly pristine but at least serviceable for my unfussy requirements. 

Putting back the books on the Novels, M to Z, shelves I felt some sorrow for 50 year old paperbacks showing their age. Most of them won't be read by me again and could hardly be given away to anybody who wanted them. So, why continue to give them houseroom. 

Firstly because it's not clear which of them won't be read again and one can't tell what's going to happen to make me want to look back at something. And, secondly, I never really recovered from the trauma of disposing of the pop vinyl that was ostensibly only taking up space and wouldn't be played again. And so I lost that essential archive of 'personal heritage', those sacred items that represented 'who I was' - the Yellowman albums, the first singles I bought, the PiL Metal Box. It's necessary to enjoy living in a library of one's own making while one can.

Vernon Scannell

One book leads to another, and it's good when they do. Rory Waterman's impressive sense and judgement in Endless Present were always good company. Apparently using Larkin as a reference point as much as some of us do, it was noticeable how when writing about books he had reservations about, he usually had the time or good grace to find something positive to say. But if you agree to review everything you agree to be sent then maybe that's the price one has to pay. One doesn't want to take someone else's work apart for the sake of it. I'd rather that their audiences were left to their own devices but Rory is kind enough, having made it clear that some work isn't much good, to try to see the point of it.

The book that he led me to is Walking Wounded, the Life & Poetry of Vernon Scannell by James Andrew Taylor. While still taking refuge from the heavy detail of the Pushkin biography at a suitable halfway point, this isn't an easy read, either, but for entirely different reasons. It's gripping but unpleasant.

Scannell was a prominent name in the 1970's even if it wasn't originally his own name. John Bain was a brutalized child at the hands of his abusive father and was further damaged by his army service in WW2. By that law that makes it necessary for such victims to re-distribute their suffering, he became less than the ideal husband more than once.

It's not easy to sympathize with him. It happens as often as not with poets. Byron, Hughes, Eliot, Yeats, Gunn, Shelley, Baudelaire- one comes out of their life stories thinking none the better of them. They don't always look as heroic in real life as they thought they were. But if Scannell's life is painful to read with its horrendous bullying, the boxing, the army and the later life, there are reasons to understand him to be found.

His time spent being mistreated by sadists who enjoyed their work, as a deserter in military prison, came at least partly from the horror he felt at seeing the dead being looted for wedding rings, watches and all by their surviving comrades. But, what were you going to do? Leave the gold to the enemy? 

He was a serial absconder, not only from the army but his early shotgun marriage. Violence almost inevitably became a default reaction, in due course against his father but also against the bloke in the pub with who his 'little town flirt' future wife had allegedly shared her attentions. But in the old nature v. nurture debate in which nobody's shortcomings are their own fault, I don't know in how much of this misery story he's the culprit or the victim.

I'm not convinced his poems justify such a deeply researched biography. He's a competent versifier without going much beyond his formats. His memoirs might have foreseen the fashion for unreliable narrators by claiming to have been at El Alamein when the evidence suggests he was not. A life in the military would have been bad enough without it being in time of war and I don't blame Scannell for 'cowardice'. He was brave enough to be a renegade within the army and take the consequences which in some ways were worse than gambling on one's chances of surviving the fighting.

If not ultimately memorable as a poet, it's still another lurid story of a poet's life, grim though it mainly is. Who would have thought that this contributor to 1970's poetry, whose name made him sound as mundane as a Larkin, Jennings, Davie or Thwaite, safe in their peacetime institutions, had such a back story. And there must have been thousands like him who never wrote poems and so whose lives never got written.    

Schubert and Melancholy

It's like being a 'face' at the racecourse. I'm regularly to be seen at various local music venues. Enough for many of those involved to know who I am by now even if I'm severely underqualified in the technicalities of music to write anything authoritative about it. But I'm indulged by the community, a bit like the Toby Jones character in Marvellous who is so keen to be involved at Stoke City that Lou Macari appoints him as kit man.

Much of the time I appear to get way with it but once in a while it becomes alarmingly apparent that I'm an impostor among the music professionals. Yes, yes, Mozart, Shostakovich. Op. 57, K.545. But, no, I've no idea what B flat minor is.

Thus, it was all going well after the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata and then I said I never found Schubert 'down-hearted' and the whole thing fell apart. He's the most approachable, kindly and helpful musician you could wish to meet but the look on his face was one of horror, disbelief, bewilderment or all three. I should have quit while I was ahead.

Hamlet is melancholy. Most artists, with the possible exception of Haydn, can express it but beyond the general premise that a certain sort of creative artist must be touched by some of it sometimes, I'm not sure how many are outright melancholics in their work.

It is a 'Romantic' trait, surely. It's Keats, Goethe and Baudelaire. Schubert, for me, is where Classical moves into Romantic, if we need to deal in these vague terms. The C20th organ music of Vierne is devastatingly dark - what I've heard of it- and Shostakovich can be bleak. Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman are melancholy personalities in their work but musicians rarely so thoroughgoingly so, it seems to me. I've been giving it plenty of thought. 

I don't know if there are right or wrong answers or if my melancholy threshold is higher than average. Neither Larkin or Sean O'Brien seem melancholy to me although Larkin at least has been called 'miserabilist'. What did we expect from this life ? So yesterday I played 3 discs of Schubert- sonatas, quartets and the Quintet, D. 956, to investigate. Not even the intensity and stillness at the centre of that was what I'd call 'melancholic', so do we use adjectives in slightly different ways in the same way that we can see colours differently.

D. 956 is where Schubert 'goes beyond', like Beethoven in the Grosse Fuge - is it- Bach in that particular Cello Suite and Shostakovich in the Viola Sonata. By then we have transcended the contingencies of transient feelings. 

But without writing whole essays or dissertations on an artist, one thinks of them summed up in more of a snapshot and Schubert remains for me more notable for his lightness of touch, a delicacy that maybe even Beethoven doesn't always have. Premier League among composers because the Premier League consists of twenty names.

I could still be wrong, of course, but as Prof. Bill Murray said of the dissertation I provided on Andrew Marvell in 1981, he didn't agree with a word of it but he had to admire the argument and give it a respectable mark.

A biography of Schubert has gone onto the 'to do' list. To read one, not to write one. It was said on the wireless yesterday that he was 4ft. 11. I know he contracted dubious diseases and was possibly disappointed in love as per Beethoven, Brahms and perhaps quite a few of us. Saturday's little chat might have been worth the trauma it put me through if a better understanding of him is the result of it. And I can survive to write about music another day, as Robbie Williams sang in Angels,

whether I'm right or wrong.