A Thames Swan Watches Barney Run in Lechlade

Daisy & Davey

Of course, we would prefer it was still 1973 and Christmas entertainment meant Morecambe & Wise and Christmas Night with the Stars. But it's not.
Never mind. There's still Daisy & Davey.
http://daisyanddavey.com/

The Christmas Nap

There's a lot to like about Christmas if you pick and choose your way through it with due discrimination and it is a particularly good few days for horse racing.

There are plenty of favourite horses to be seen but it might be wise to remember that they are facing their biggest challenges of the season in the biggest races they'll run in before Cheltenham. And I like to think of Christmas as a time of frugality rather than excess and so I don't want to throw money around as if, as the demise of Western capitalism would have us believe, it was going out of fashion. Well, it's just the fashion for those that have it already.

And so although we might have small interests in our favourite horse Bobs Worth as he takes on Grand Crus in the Novice Chase at Kempton and might look at Giles Cross at decent odds in the Welsh National and a speculative punt on Captain Chris who might upset the King George (although I'd much prefer 10/1 than the 7's he's more likely to be), it will be Rock on Ruby to beat Binocular and Overturn in the Christmas Hurdle that carries our main hopes of putting this feature finally into proper profit. I'm going to avail myself of 2/1 while I can.

We went in, had some winners and got out in one piece. It might have been better but it could have been worse. It's not an easy game but we didn't do bad at it.

Signed Poetry Books - Jeffrey Turner

Our Christmas walk on Monday was reduced by the weather to a Christmas pub meal but there was compensation to be had when Jeff finally remembered to bring me a copy of his fine booklet and then consented to add himself to my signed poetry books collection.

It's a luxury, limited edition on hand-made paper and consists of only five poems but one comes away from it with a feeling that it must have been a more substantial set. The poems are meticulously made and, without wasted words or extraneous padding, provide a full and rich impression that many don't achieve in a full length book.

They are acutely observed poems, thematically concentrating on minor detail, quiet moments and meditating on small things made significant by his care and attention. Slightly more 'written' than I might do but in places very similar in temper, they are very much 'considered utterances', if that is the phrase I half remember from Donald Davie's critical writing. As isn't always the case, it might be the title poem that is most memorable with its fine description of woodlice discovered on Moving the Stones,

Creatures of an erratic

and unhappy god,

the god of ghosts and expulsions,

or, in Chorley Cemetery,

A broken angel someone's propped

against a headstone leans like a thrush

waiting for its worm, stone listening to mud.

I'd like to think that perhaps once or twice a review or feature I've put here has encouraged someone to read or buy a book or CD. I'm afraid that won't be possible on this occasion because this very slim volume is gloriously art for art's sake and not commercially available although you might find earlier books by Jeff available on second-hand websites. For those who prefer their poems calm and sensibly thought out, they would be worth a look.

The Saturday Nap - Week Nine

Ascot tomorrow is quite likely to be a routine Saturday Nicholls-Walsh benefit. Why wouldn't it be. Big Bucks would be long odds on even if opposed by every long distance hurdler that could be found to put up against him but it's hardly a tip and I've seen 1/3 shots turned over before now. The Minack is a possibility for serious investment. But I might leave Ascot well alone on a day when the going has changed and the state of the ground is the single most important thing in horse racing. There might be a few 16/1 shots going in tomorrow. The form book doesn't go out of the window but it needs to be used properly, which means looking at which horses have and haven't won on soft or heavy ground.
Haydock could be the place to look, where Wymott, 2.45, in the Tommy Whittle Chase apparently has the right credentials to justify favouritism. That will be the Saturday nap unless updated before 11.30 in the morning.
Week 10, posted perhaps next Thursday with a thought for Boxing Day, will be the last edition of this feature. It has proved a recession-busting success and after Kempton we can sit back and tot up by exactly what percentage these investments have outstripped more gilt-edged funds. But my point was that October to December, in the right sort of races, was the best time to get involved. It's a shame if you didn't get on but maybe we can do it again in the first half of next year's jump season. Until then, it's Quot Erat Demonstrandum and don't forget to tune in for the Cheltenham Festival Preview in March.

The Annunciation

A Christmas card arrived from Pluscarden Abbey, as it usually does about this time of year. My friend there was wise enough to join a community that is allowed contact with the outside world and we exchange as many as three letters a year.

But this year I was particularly taken with the picture and it's already up here by me on the wall.

It is The Annunciation (1898) by Henry Ossawa Tanner.

I like Mary in this; I like the folds in her clothes and the bedclothes; I like the screen behind her and the blinding light.

Brilliant. Christmas can bring out unexpected wonderful things and this is a highlight of this year.

Happy Christmas.

Geoffrey Hill - Clavics

Geoffrey Hill, Clavics (Enitharmon)

I wonder who frames the prices on poetry events for Paddy Power bookmakers. They made Clavics 13/8 favourite for the Forward Prize, ahead of Sean O'Brien who had an unbeaten record at the distance and some other very worthy collections. It could only have been done on the basis of career achievement and 'stature' or reputation. The prize could never have gone to Hill on this form. It was like making Corinthian Casuals favourites for the F.A. Cup.

In his wonderful performance last weekend, Prof. Hill explained his long held admiration for the cover illustration and all but said he wrote the book so that he could make use of it. The other element that has made him so prolific in old age is that the adherence to strict formal requirements help him to produce poems as a knid of midwife to bring forth the work from inside him.

It shows. The form here dictates a disjointed, unpretty poetry that is forced into highly demanding rhyme forms and lines that serve mainly to demonstrate how difficult it is to do. Hill refers us to Herbert's poem Easter Wings, a model of shape but also of diction and syntax, but Herbert's lines fit perfectly into the design whereas in several places Hill's are adjusted by spacing and typography to stretch or bend themselves to his chosen template. None of this seems to be justified, as it were; it is stricture and discipline entirely for its own sake. It is not so much unproductive as counter-productive.

As a tribute to William Lawes, the C17th composer who was killed at the Battle of Chester, 'clavics', it says here, is 'the science or alchemy of keys', so musical keys, then, we can assume is meant. It's not all about Lawes, but, as one would expect from one as expressly difficult as Hill, much more widely referential. If I can't buy the aesthetics of the project, I can take some pleasure in moments and lines, glimpses of Hill's gravely disconsolate view that the world, or more specifically, England, isn't quite what he would like it to be. I doubt if it ever would have been.

In 3, he plays on the name in fashionably Elizabethan-Jacobean ways,

As good epitaphs go Will Lawes is slain

Permit me, sire, is slain by such whose wills

                      Be laws

and, in 9, he ends on the memorable and ever true reflection that,

England rides rich on loss.

And in 26, as Lawes is killed in battle,

                  How your rutter-

        Kin dabbles in these tacky shows.

where a genuinely fine, edgy music transcends its meaning. If only more of the book had been like this. Hill's distemper might be better suited to a freer line but, presumably, that happened in his previous books more than in this one.

The reading last week was a great event and also included poems from other books than this but it was more exciting and satisfying to hear him talk about his work than read it. That wouldn't be said of, say, Bach or Mozart, however much one would love to hear them talk about their music.

Clavics was a false favourite for the Forward Prize and even in the summer I realized that sufficiently to oppose it in the betting. It's just that the judges preferred one of the other books to my choice.

The darkness is a sultry mistress

The darkness is a sultry mistress

The darkness is a sultry mistress
and tonight she’s come protesting
in an unkempt wind that scatters
sprays of fine black rain so cold
against the passive window.
Why she’s like this I couldn’t say,
neither why I have to love her
who keeps me so undemanding,
stalled inside her wicked tantrum,
seeming to make me a promise
that there’ll never be young sunlight
coming back one day in Springtime.
For she knows that I’m her secret,
that I’m stranded here without her
with stories of shipwrecks and blizzards
and fearful of release.

Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill, The Purcell Room, South Bank, London, 11 December 2011

'It's not stand-up comedy,' Geoffrey Hill explained, 'but, there again, they're not paying me stand-up comedy money'.Professor Hill spent as much time talking about his poetry as reading it, which is always welcome, especially in a poet like him. His grasp and intellectual acuity in history and culture is apparently monumental and poets don't come any more high church than this. He explained that his work belongs with that of the painter Anselm Keifer and Paul Celan, so it is serious matter.

Poetry for him is not 'self expression' but 'a conjoining of shapes and harmonies' and I couldn't quite get down exactly what it went on to be to do with language. His poetry has been described as 'iron spikes sticking out of a blasted landscape' and I don't think he would have quoted it if he didn't like the description.While it is interesting to hear poets of this stature talk about their own work, the poet is ideally not their own best critic and it looked mildly alarming when he named his own three best books but it didn't turn out to be quite so self regarding from then on. Some self awareness is a good thing and his realization that his work is 'weird and unlovely' was reassuring.

Anybody with the slightest interest in poetry would be aware of George Herbert's Easter Wings. Well, yes and no. But that's the sort of level he works at even if I allow myself to dip below it occasionally. It is a fine and marvellous thing when the country's most doyen and eminent of poets can tell his assembled audience that 'nothing would drag him to a poetry reading', those most 'abysmal functions' and I can see that in a way but, on the other hand, one gets more from an hour in the presence of the poet than from several hours pouring over their books. Interestingly, after I have charted the general trajectory of most poets' careers as not reaching maturity until the age of 40, and then eventually fading or becoming repetitive sometime after 60, Prof. Hill's Collected Poems has grown exponentially in the last few years leading up to his 80th birthday. It is perhaps due to the rigour of form being able to impose itself on the chaos, where at least some of the chaos is dementia. But while apparently frail enough physically, there was little evidence of any dimming of acerbity, observance of the most difficult formal strictures and a non-curmudgeonly clarity of vision that can't help but pass as the driest of wit. This was not, as he pointed out, Poetry Please. Poetry plays oblique games with him.

But for all that, I haven't laughed as much or as satisfyingly at any other poetry reading. I've been equally thrilled and impressed and I've thought about several for a long time afterwards but none will have been so paradoxically 'laugh out loud' and the more impressive for it when the most serious and high-minded, one of the bleakest and spare, provides more genuine hilarity than those whose main object is to be comic and yet don't quite raise a laugh although you notice where the jokes were.

If young Hill were to attend a masterclass run by me I might even advise that his internal rhymes might in context look like affectation and if he wants to use rhyming forms then he could hide the rhymes more subtly as half rhymes so that the frugality and bareness of his 'vision' were not occluded by such simple effects. His music is that of deep and complex rhythms devoutly adhered to but it's a lot to ask. As he says, 'you try writing in these meters.'Fulfilling his hour with delightfully grumpy grace, he observed that we are run nowadays by a 'financial plutocracy' decorated by a small amount of aristocracy and democracy. Although one can't help but feel that he would be politically somewhere on the right, this is the preception that is beyond day to day politics and really ought to have wider currency and not need explanation from one of such austere dignity and dark, brooding solemnity.As if to provide some context or contrast, there was a reading afterwards by three young poets under the title Echoes of Geoffrey Hill in which the trace of any echo eluded me in three unprepossessing performances. Fine poets in their own milieu, I'm sure, but very forgettable. And then a half hour spent looking at the magazines in the Poetry Library made me reflect that the best thing that could happen to the poetry industry in this country would be a paper shortage. I don't think I saw a poem worthy of the shelf space. But the curmudgeonly spirit can only be properly exercised by those who have earned the right and my disdain is less worth having than Prof. Hill's. We will soon see how my credentials measure up in the next week or so if and when I review my signed copy of Clavics.

The Saturday Nap - Week Eight

There's no such thing as a bad or dull meeting at Cheltenham, the most spectacular sporting venue in the world. There's plenty of talent and interest to watch tomorrow but a couple of the likeliest stars are not going to be at backable prices.The Nicky Henderson-Barry Geraghty partnership had a couple of winners today and Grandouet, 3.05, is a horse that has shown plenty already and could have more to come. My main worry is whether at 4 years old he's quite as experienced or tough as Overturn or Menorah but the latter wasn't quite up to it in last year's Champion Hurdle when carrying my featival nap and although Overturn has been impressively resilient in putting together a hat-trick already this season, he was getting weight when probably going to get beat by Oscar Whisky a few weeks ago when our money stayed in the bookies' satchels. So, I've taken the 11/4 already and don't want to get off.

Jaroussky/Cencic - Duetti

Philippe Jaroussky,Max Emanuel Cencic,Les Arts Florrissants, Duetti (Virgin Classics)

Philippe Jaroussky's last CD, Opium, was a set of French songs and came, it has to be said, as a bit of a disappointment. Bought on the strength of the wonderful A Chloris, the rest of the set didn't match up to it. It joined that unfortunate list of records, or poetry books, bought on the promise of one piece that wasn't reproduced among the others.There's no such risk with a collection of baroque arias and cantatas. These are all by composers roughly contemporary with Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti being the closest to a household name; Bononconi and Marcello being best represented.With duets, if not necessarily guaranteeing twice the value of solo performance, it is generally going to involve call and answer, interwoven lines and harmonies. While Andreas Scholl might look and sound slightly more academic at times, Jaroussky and Cencic here are warmer, with fine clarity of tone and perhaps greater sensuality. If nothing's ever going to surpass Bowman and Chance in the Couperin Lecons de Tenebres for me, this in places creates similar effects and Les Arts Florissant in the continuo, violin and cello parts make more than a background contribution.While there are nimble, grand and spirited passages to show a wide range of feelings throughout, it's always going to be in the arias of love and estrangement that the most exquisite moments are going to come. Forlorn and fretful are the things that counter tenors do best. The Bononcini Chi d'amortra la catene, much of the Marcello Chiaro e limpido fonte and the cantata Veggio fille are those,

Say, god of hearts,

if there be any pain equal to mine

There never is, is there, if you're a lovelorn shepherd. But it rarely fails and doesn't here. Christmas has come early for counter tenor afficiandos.

View from the Boundary

I'm looking forward to seeing Geoffrey Hill in London on Sunday. The high priest of English poetry has not always been quite to my taste but recently I've had the opportunity to at least appreciate some of his poems and if I'm never going to be a complete devotee I do at least want to take advantage of this rare chance to share in the spare austerity of his point of view. The price of a drink on the South Bank is alarming for a provincial thirsty man and so if you recognize me there by the hat (not the pink one), before I have to get back to Victoria, please feel free to buy me an after show glass of beer.

This December outing to London replaces what I've done for the last two years which has been a day at the London Chess Classic, which can be watched from the comfort of one's own terminal here right now, http://www.livestream.com/LondonChessClassic . The story so far is early dominance by young Magnus while it is being suggested that my personal favourite personality, Anand, is being careful to show nothing that he might have prepared for his forthcoming world title defence against Boris Gelfand. But I do recommend some time spent with the commentators live from the venue if their dubious suggestions and meanderings might be the sort of entertainment you prefer to Strictly Come Dancing or Celebrity Ratings Grabber on the telly. Chess players seem so nice these days, accessible and media-friendly as the age seems to demand - it's been Levon Aronian today, World number three on his day off. Has it gone the same way with poets, too. Do we miss the madmen and ladies, the off-beat, unapproachable genius, the Fischer or Ezra Pound, that never had to explain itself so often in interviews and as casually approachable human beings but could hide in a reclusive mist of unexplaining hero status.

Somewhat less cerebrally, I've been reading John Francome's Back Hander for cheaper thrills. I notice that although the Greatest Jockey of All Time has his name on the front of the book, the copyright is shared with another, and apart from the inside knowledge of particular racetracks and what it's like to ride a racehorse, I'm not sure how much is Francome and how much his helpmate. While we hear that Alan Hollinghurst delivers a typescript that needs virtually no editor whereas Jefferey Archer provides a story written in capital letters in pencil on the back of a Corn Flakes packet and someone else makes a blockbuster out of those thin beginnings, the Francome method must lie somewhere in between. Even so, this opus seems to have a high body count, a sensational rather than tense approach to plot and doesn't seem as well done as what I remember of Dick Francis. But as long as it has horse racing in it, I don't mind. You could tell me a story of a trainer called Jack who has a horse called Dobbin, he runs it in a novice hurdle at Uttoxeter and it comes third and I'd be gripped.

We have had such stories here every Saturday if anybody has cared to follow the Saturday Nap and I'm pleased to say that Sizing Europe was a confident tip last weekend and won like one. It means that we have had four winners out of eight selections and now, with three weeks to run before ending on Boxing Day, one more winner will put us into clear blue profit. I'd imagine that if Bobs Worth runs in the three mile novice chase at Kempton at Christmas, that will be where we'll go for a big finish.

That will conclude that little series and I wonder if we can replace it with a series on My Whole Life in poetry, tracing my own mundane career as a poet from its earliest genesis in Infant School in Nottingham in the mid 1960's up to now. I hope it might provide a diverting little excursion into poetry as well as revisiting for the first time in decades some esoteric examples of poetry. It will begin in January, all being well. Don't forget to tune in for that.

The Saturday Nap Week Seven

Sizing Europe in the Tingle Creek, Sandown 3.05, is a confident pick tomorrow and I'm steaming in at 6/4.

Gender in Poetry

So, is there a difference between poetry written by men and that by women. Or, as the same question can apparently be put, is there such a thing as Women's Poetry. Many would seem to think so, including Fleur Adcock, and thus Faber, because I have a book called the Faber Book of C20th Women's Poetry.
Having been brought up, as it were, 'educated' some might say, at a time when the text was said to stand on its own with no reference to the author, Roland Barthes, Intentional Fallacy and all those orthodoxies were in fashion, I tended for a long time to think that surely poems are verbal constructs made of nouns, verbs, adjectives, punctuation and grammar and such like and these things function in the same way whether put to use by a male or a female practitioner of the art. I probably still think that, or at least can't completely discount such a well-established idea after so long.
I don't see it as a feminist issue or of any political significance. That there are far more men than women in the historical canon of poetry, in English at least, is not something that is going to be easily reversed even if research could find an equivalent female body of work. Perhaps women had better or more important things to do than mooch about and jot down verses. But the politically correct conscience has gone too far when at least one magazine in my memory would publish the figures of poems received from each gender and then, to prove their purity of selection criteria, show that they published a very similar ratio. And Roddy Lumsden, however conscientiously, points out in the introductions of anthologies that he's edited, how close or spot on he's been in achieving a 50-50 split. It shouldn't come to that. Even though we have champions in Tae-Kwan-Do and Iron Triathlon in this country, the shortlist for Sports Personality of the Year was 10 out of 10 blokes. I'd be likely to prefer a triathlete over a golfer any day but media coverage doesn't agree but ideally we would be above this tokenism and quota system. If I had to select 10 poems from a big pile and found I'd picked almost all women, I wouldn't go back to try and fit some more men in, I'd trust my first instincts.
But there might be a discernible difference between poems written by men and women, a general, unquantifiable but nonetheless perceptible way in which men might be represented perhaps by a tendency towards 'ideas', in Virginia Woolf's phrase about the 'arid scimitar' of the male while women might sometimes concern themselves more with describing an emotional response. Is that fair. Does it hold any useful truth at all, or is it a lazy stereotype. Providing just one or two examples that contradict it wouldn't immediately destroy a basic acceptance that there is as broad difference.
Could Tall Nettles by Edward Thomas have been written by a lady. Do some poems by Sylvia seem so syntactically tough and hard-edged that they might have been written by men. I hope it doesn't work like that and I'm absolutely sure that there can be no litmus test, so I'm still optimistic that my first instinct, or that thing instilled by purely textual reading, might still be right. And it's much easier to be the one who asks the questions rather than provide the answers.

Rivers

I've been looking at poems about rivers in preparation for a forthcoming evening with Portsmouth Poetry Society.
Probably the first thing that came to mind was the Thames inter-textually referenced from Spenser in The Waste Land. Thinking of rivers rather than poets, I remembered the Severn being mentioned in Ivor Gurney a few times. I need to save Gertrude's speech in Hamlet, 'There is a willow grows aslant a brook', because it's just about my favourite bit of Shakespeare and there is an evening on him later in the programme. I think of Kleinzahler on the grey Passaic; Alice Oswald obviously on the Dart and Uncle Ted, too.
But what I'll talk about briefly and read will probably be Douglas Dunn's The River Through the City, cited by Prof. Sean O'Brien as a formative influence and, in fact, now looking more Sean than it does Dunn. And the last section of Andrew Motion's Fresh Water, a poem following the Thames from Lechlade to the Marchioness disaster which I've enthused about on here before.
But if anyone has other rivers in poetry they can suggest, my e-mail box is always open and I'd be glad to hear them.

Murakami - 1Q84

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Harvill Secker)

I don't think even the Greeks had a word for this. Among the Oedipus and Elektra stories, they didn't find the need for one where a girl kills the father of the one-off lover of her childhood sweetheart, the father being leader of a religious cult while the girl is immaculately impregnated by the cult to provide a new leader. Or something like that.

Murakami's almost 1000 pages are well-organized enough and the story given a gradual enough pace for the complexities to assimilate rather more easily than one sentence can summarize. It is the long distance separation and love story of Aomame, a clandestine hired hit lady revenging sex abuse cases, and Tengo, who rewrites a sensational best-seller in a publicity coup. The religious cult and those uncovering its abuses are stalking each other throughout. It's a thriller and succeeds in that project, much more so than Steig Larrson did for me. Murakami's method is at its most lucid in his Chandleresque and Raymond Carver-like economy of prose style but also in his trademark use of parallel worlds and unexplainable phenomena. It's surprising how far one can suspend disbelief and allow Murakami's description of everyday detail and characters isolated in the mass culture of modern Japan but the synopsis of the novel Tengo rewrites for the teenage Fuka-Eri can't disguise what a lot of hokum it really is.

One has to forgive Murakami's obsession with expressionless, poised young women and, usually, their breasts. There is a building of leitmotifs in creating character and themes and it almost seems as if whole paragraphs recur, but I'm sure they don't. What Murakami does, or his translator for him, is achieve moments of radiant beauty, like on the occasion when Aomame visits her employer, the dowager,

Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end. Whenever she came in here, Aomame felt as if she had lost all sense of time.

Or, in the final pages when Aomame and Tengo are reunited for the first time since childhood,

Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. / Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and re-birth of a planet.

The overlapping worlds of 1984 and 1Q84, of fiction and fiction within fiction, of the worlds of the characters, is dizzying but brilliantly conceived. If the Air Chrysalis and Little People themes are not entirely convincing, the novel as a whole does throughout and this must be Murakami's finest work, ostensibly expanding the early novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun with all the layers of strangeness that his subsequent books developed. Thoroughly enjoyable and by no means as daunting as the weight of it might suggest. It never fails to maintain its impetus and a manageable amount of tension. Admirable work.

Top 6 Cyclists

This Top 6 feature began, as I'm sure longstanding readers will remember, as a poetry item in which someone, and it was inevitably nearly always me, selected a Top 6 poems by a favourite or major poet.
The website was called David Green Books to make the world aware, if it cared to be, of my books- okay, booklets- of poems. That became a books website as I began to review other books of poems and any other books I felt like. And, then, it became my 'blog', although, lordjesussaveus, I didn't intend to be a 'blogger'. But it's a little while since we had the Top 6 of any poet. Please send me one if you feel the urge or inspiration to do such a thing.
But this week I had reason to refer to the tremendous document I was presented with as a 'This Is Your Life' album on my 50th birthday a couple of years ago and in it was this photograph, which I find it hard to believe is me, on what was presumably my first bike. The bike that I began on before flirting with cycling as a sport as a teenager and then reverting to in my thirties with great dedication, enormous stamina but no electrifying speed. It's all over now. It's been over for a few years really. It was tremendous while it lasted and the most enjoyable thing one could have done - the countryside, the effort, the concentration, the mediocre achievement and, mostly, the lie in the bath afterwards.
But I am not, even though pictured here, one of my own Top 6 cyclists. According to the rules of the game, one isn't supposed to name any but the six and I'll adhere to that while paying tribute to my biggest influence, my father, Phil, who organized and kept the stopwatch meticulously for many years while keeping riding to the age of 74 and counting, and my nephew, Chris Chadwick, who decided he'd just nip up from Land's End to John O'Groats last year for the sake of it. I took the opportunity to introduce Chris to the great Phil Griffiths at the Tour of Britain in London this year. Phil is a droll and witty man in his way but when told that Chris had done the End to End, he just asked 'why?'.
Ah, yes, Phil. Good question. I'm not often short of a clever remark when one is required but I wish I'd asked, 'but you went to the Commonwealth Games in, was it, 1974. Why?'
Anyway, that's all sorted, then. Top 6 cyclists. There's lots of different sorts of bike riders. The track is a dull, muscular and attritional game. I was a quaint old time triallist with some regard for the clubman but the grand tours provide the enormous heroes if and when we are ever allowed to distinguish the rider and his personality from the drugs they're taking.
Early top hero and dynamic little exponent of the 25 mile time trial on every course available on Sunday mornings within a wide radius of Gloucester in the 1970's was Ted Tedaldi, who was all that a junior schoolboy could want of a hero. A bit of style and swagger and he even said hello to me. The claret and gold of Gloucester City CC were never worn with more panache.
Panache and sometimes, it has to be said, vainglorious time spent in full view of the television camera was Jacky Durand's raison d'etre, if you'll excuse my French, as he made countless attempts to escape the peloton in the Tour de France and any other race he found himself in. The best story about him was when a younger rider went back to ask Jacky's advice in the Tour. Should he attempt a lone break or not. I don't know what else he was expecting the answer to be.
The young me idloized the dark-haired winner of the day, Eddy Merckx. I had a goldfish named after him. It's impossible to compare sportspersons from one age to another but the race most bike racing supporters would like to see would be Eddy v. Lance. Without drugs, if that would ever have been possible.
Mark Cavendish is currently sensational and should remain so for a few more years yet. Never previously a devoted admirer of the art of the sprinter, he has changed my mind. It's brilliant what he does and every accolade should fall to him. The economic crisis is not going to cause a revolution in this country but if he's not Sports Personailty of the Year then there is no point in having it.
Janet Tebbutt wasn't Beryl Burton by any means but we saw her through Gloucester one night in the early 70's on her way to setting new figures for Land's End to John O'Groats for a lady and you'd never meet such a modest and charming lady even if they weren't a sensational bike rider. Although my 12 Hour record appears to show that I beat the great Andy Cook three times out of three because he packed every year from 1994-6, it's probably a greater honour that I rode in the same races as her. And then, of course, she kept on doing it after I was finished.
And with only one choice left and yet a host of candidates to choose from, it's never easy but let's have Gwen Shillaker, who showed me more than anyone how to ride a 12 Hour. I mean, I didn't exactly have a pink bike to match my outfit but I saw how, throughout the long afternoon, while piling up a respectable mileage, she waved and smiled and was nice. I think we had a bit of a laugh towards the end of my best rides, too, once we knew the result was in the bag. She was where I learnt it from.
I would still, honestly, rather be a cyclist than a poet.

The Saturday Nap Week Six

Disaster struck at the last hurdle last week at Ascot when Oscar Whisky was possibly being asked to go too fast and jump at the same time to go past the winner and so now we have form figures of 11013F but I'm sure regular readers will be relieved to hear that I got most of last week's money back on our old favourite, Bobs Worth, today in what sounds like a heart-stopping finish at Newbury.
I almost thought we might have to swerve tomorrow completely as I won't be getting involved in the Hennessey Gold Cup, there are some big stars at long odds-on in various places and although the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle is usually our type of race, I'm not a fan of Binocular but can't bet against him either.
But the only firm with prices chalked up so far on Newcastle's 1.10 are going 13/8 Allthekingshorses and if something like that is available in the morning, it will probably do.
It will be the selection unless replaced with other advice by 11.30 in the morning.

Leonardo Exhibition

Yes, I suppose we should be really cross that tickets for the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery are sold out but available from touts for several hundreds of pounds rather than the sixteen that the gallery asked for them. But, perhaps, isn't there just one reassuring little bit about it that there is enough demand for tickets for an art exhibition that these entrepreneureal rascals can add this event to the profiteering that they can only usually exercise on football matches or boxing contests when either the bloodlust of those who wish to see one heavyweight (and I had it confirmed by a quiz question today that if I wanted to challenge for a world boxing title then it would be a Klitscho that I'd be up against) smack another or see a bunch of mercenaries from faraway countries they've never heard of try to establish that their city has the best football team, it might be great that Leonardo commands such inflationary touting.

But I wouldn't have gone even if I lived in London. I'm not disputing that he's a wonderful painter and one of the greatest talents the Western world ever produced but I can look at this painting on the interweb for as long as I want and I still don't like it. I really like animals, just about all of them, I really do, but I'm prepared to make an exception for this one that the calm young lady is holding.

But if Leonardo really commands the same sort of black market ticket price as the European Cup Final then all is not yet lost.

View from the Boundary - Peter Reading Special

I see from the very useful news links on the Poetry Society website that Peter Reading has died. Not a poet that I've heard so much about recently but there could be reasons for that. To call him 'maverick' might be understating the case, his concentration on the dirty downside of humanity being coupled with an anarchic classicism that made him somehow proto-punk, 'punk rock' culture having possibly been a deliberate descent into miasma in strictly traditional forms that might have been a revolt against the way they saw the world going.

If poetry is already by defintion an outsider's genre then Reading was a genuine outsider in a world in which too many mistakenly believe themselves to be the different one. Without having any first hand knowledge with which to pay tribute to him, I do remember a story about him resigning or being sacked from his job as, I think, a weighbridge operator when he was expected to wear a uniform to do it. There are a few things that poets ideally shouldn't be expected to do and we've seen previously that drive cars is one of them but wearing uniforms is another. And, yes, there was Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen, Keith Douglas and Alun Lewis but that's not the point, is it.

I wonder if he would have appreciated the return of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, back on the wireless for a tireless umptieth series and apparently in the rudest of fourth-form health and Jack Dee now seemingly perfect in the role of Humph. Tonight's episode had a round based on the popular Radio 4 programme, Poetry Please, or, as Jack said, as most people know it, Poetry ..'click'.

Reconstituting radio repartee is a desperate and doomed art but I laughed out loud in the previous programme as well when it was explained how Jeremy Clarkson kept the Top Gear audience guessing about the real identity of the mystery car driver, The Stig, and indeed the viewers furrowed their brows and went into deep thought as they wondered whether it was a monkey's or a toss that they didn't give.

It's still a helluva show the old codgers are putting on and, I found this evening, even funnier on a Monday evening with a T with a bit of G in it rather than on a Sunday lunchtime without such a stimulant. It turned up in a quiz somewhere that there is a blue plaque to Willie Rushton at Mornington Crescent. I didn't know that but was glad to hear it. Keep up the good work, boys.

Basil D'Oliveira

Not only a great cricketer but a truly exceptional man, the passing of Basil D'Oliveira is a sad thing of course but with at least something of a merciful release about it as his Parkinson's disease had meant a long and difficult eight years during which visitors had been discouraged because he simply didn't know who they were.

Neither are obituaries likely to give his precise dates as he had lied about his age in order to play for England because he thought he might be too old and didn't make his debut until he was (possibly) 36. So, although his age is being given as officially 80, it seems he was 83 or 84.

Somewhere about here must be the autograph I got in Worcester in about 1985 but the best story I heard on the radio this morning was from a contributor who had also been an autograph hunter.

The lad approached Geoff Boycott and asked for the usual bit of useless scribble and received in return a customary helping of Boycott candour. D'Oliveira overheard the exchange, came over and apologized, took the pen and paper into the dressing room and got autographs from the whole England team. Hopefully still without the dreadful Yorkshireman.

They simply don't make them like Dolly anymore.

The Saturday Nap Week Five

Nobody's perfect but at least when we're not, we have so far explained why not in advance.

Last week it seemed to be very much the larger Cheltenham obstacles that prevented a very willing and able Restless Harry from continuing our run of success but excuses don't pay out and I realize that we do need to get back on track immediately having only ostensibly tipped an 8/11 winner in the last three weeks.

There is a tremendous day's racing in prospect tomorrow and that more or less means for the unwary that one is a likely fall guy for lots of old bookmaker's tricks like showing you good horses that you've won on before that you assume are going to be lucky for you again. But the question in a horse race is not 'which is the best horse in this race' but 'which one is going to win today'. Long Run is unlikely to stay unbeaten throughout the season and first time up against some who might be fitter and aimed more specifically at lesser prizes than Kempton on Boxing Day or the Cheltenham Gold Cup could be the time he's most likely to not come first but by which horse he will be bested is hard to say and I'm not going to say Weird Al although I'd like to.
There are such tempting propositions as the return of an old favourite like Get Me Out of Here but there must be safer options and it looks as if in the morning I'll be choosing between Grandouet and Oscar Whisky. In fact, you'd think both should be short-priced good things. I'm happy enough to take the even money about Oscar Whisky, Ascot 2.45, now and unless I've posted a change of mind by 11.30 in the morning, that has to be the tip.

Best Poetry 2011

Good evening, Ladies & Gentlemen, and welcome to this gala night at David Green Books for the announcement of my awards for Best Poem and Best Collection of 2011. The prestige of these awards is underlined by the fact that they are not accompanied by large amounts of prize money but are chosen and recorded solely for artistic purposes when tacky five figure cheques would only spoil the Parnassian spirit in which they are intended. The gin & the tonic are mixed and settled, clean and spritely in the glass and the murmur of expectation is growing. I'm joined here by Gervase Madstrangler, editor of Lokomotiv Salamander magazine, and Melody Nice, author of the collection Wednesday Ribbon Dance.

Gervase, what do you make of the shortlist for Best Poem.

Well, the list has been kept sensibly short. There aren't any obvious poems one could rule out as a worthy winner.

And do you have any ideas about which poem will win.

Anybody who wants to know will probably know already as I think there have been enough clues if you knew where to look.

Melody, there are even fewer titles on the Best Collection short list. What do you make of them.

As a woman I'm bound to point out that the list consists of three men and, as a poet under 40, I also notice that they are all over 40.

But, apart from that. Are they good books.

Well, I'd have picked a different three if I only had three choices.

Thanks. Well, I think we are ready for the announcements.

2011 has been a good year. In fact, it still isn't over because one last trip to London is planned to see Geoffrey Hill and a big performance from him could change one's perspective quite drastically but he wasn't in place when the shortlists were drawn up and so that would just be hard luck. The year began with a grand battle in prospect, titles from Lumsden, Mooney and O'Brien, all established favourites, being in the presses. Then David Harsent came from the ranks of the previously unconsidered and during the summer both prizes were very much wide open. Then in the Autumn, Sasha Dugdale attached herself to the leading group.

Although it would be easy enough to give the Best Poem prize to Harsent, O'Brien or either of the other short-listed poems, it has been marked out for Martin Mooney's Dream of the Fisherman's Wife for a long time now and nothing else has quite made a big enough impression to shift it.

The Harsent book grew and grew throughout the year and was the collection I returned to most often, with poems like Spatchcock, and the series of garden poems impressing themselves on one's consciousness as well as the very fine Ghosts, which was the pick of a tremendous set and so Night by David Harsent wins the Best Collection award.

Congratulations to the winners and shortlisted poets and thanks to all the other poets who have contributed to make 2011 a satisfying year for poetry in these islands.

Abbado Mozart 39 & 40

Claudio Abbado, Orchestra Mozart, Symphonies 39 & 40 (Decca)

Mozart 40 was the first record I ever bought, admittedly in the 1971 hit parade adaptation by Waldo de los Rios but Mozart 40 nonetheless.

And then teenage posters on the bedroom wall were Deutsche Grammaphon promotional material of the conductors and artists among which the suave and sleek Claudio Abbado was my favourite. So this is a journey back to the roots of 40 years of record buying.

It's unlikely that anything I'm going to think about Mozart or these symphonies in particular hasn't been thought more expertly by someone else already. 39 wouldn't be among the best for me, apparently beginning somewhat ominously with echoes of Don Giovanni but then proceeding in stately, somewhat grand fashion with signature Wolfgang flourishes throughout. There must be more to it than that but it is a little bit standard issue Mozart on automatic pilot. It is nowhere near as touching and expressive as the G Minor, kochel 550, with its shadowy, haunted first bars opening out into gaiety, but never quite escaping the anxiety that is always somewhere just under the surface of Mozart's state of mind.

Abbado's account here, coming after serious illness that leaves him looking understandably frailer now, seems to me spare, bringing a stillness to passages, sometimes even in parts where it wouldn't be expected. It's a tremendously clear and considered expression but quiet in a sense until making its way to the spirited allegro climax. Someone else will be able to comment on various timings of the piece but this gives the impression of being unhurried and that suits me, and suits the music very well.

I wish I could have gone to see Abbado in London last month but he would insist on giving us Bruckner 5 on both nights and although it sounded better than I might have thought on the radio, it does rather keep piling it on and I'm sure they managed to fill the place without needing me there. But if the catalogue was in need of another Mozart 40 then I'm sure this is a welcome one.

Bach B Minor Mass

Portsmouth Choral Union, Bach B Minor Mass,

St. Mary's, Fratton, 12 November

On 27th March, 1993, I was at St. Mary's for the Portsmouth Choral Union's previous performance of Bach's B Minor Mass and, so 18 and a half years later, I thought I'd better go and have another helping.

What I remembered as a dazzling display last time was if anything almost frenetic in a place or two here, the choir revved up and enjoying their fortissimo passages to the full but for the most part they are spirited, the independent movement of each singer making for a pulsing, breathing body in the opening Kyrie.

Quite gloriously at best in such a fine setting in their red frocks and black for the gentlemen, they allow Bach to set out his calling card to the Duke of Saxony in no uncertain job application.

Robyn Allegra Parton (soprano) and Angharad Lyddon (contralto) are a superb duet , followed by a spritely chorus with glistening trupmets in the Gloria.

The highlights for me were Jack Maguire's violin in the aria, Laudamus Te; Angharad's graceful contralto in quoniam to solus sanctus and the impressive chorus Sanctus sanctus sanctus. David Webb in the tenor part was also clear and expressive among the four young soloists.

Among all his other array of talents, Bach is a tremendous writer of bass lines, as befits one who wrote cigar adverts and for Procul Harum, and the bass player was always a star turn. While in the chorus Contieor unum baptisma, one wonders that the lively, playful line isn't a little joyful to communicate such a dry-sounding sentiment as 'I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins' but Bach must have found it a very uplifting prospect.

One might be concerned that he has peaked too soon with two choruses done with such gusto still have to be relaxed back into more reflective mood before the final Dona nobis pacem but the choir are having such a good time of it by then one need not be worried about that.

It is, of course, a triumph and was never going to be anything else.

The Saturday Nap Week Four

Cheltenham wouldn't be the easiest track to jump round when facing steeplechase fences for the first time in public but Restless Harry, 4.10, was impressive at Wetherby two weeks ago and currently at 7/4 is an obvious choice as the most likely conveyance for our cash today.

The Saturday Nap Preview

I can't see why Araldur is 16/1 for the Mackeson tomorrow. I know it's called the Paddy Power now but we all know it's the Mackeson Gold Cup.

It would be quite something to add a 16/1 winner to the roaring success of this feature so far but it would be going against all the principles of trying to find safe options in sensible races so rather than say one also fancies Wishfull Thinking and we'll go for the forecast, I will probably post a less ambitious piece of advice before midday tomorrow.

Beverley Knight - 100%

Beverley Knight, 100% (Hurricane)

One night last week I was flicking through the pre-set channels on the radio and stopped for a while on a track that sounded good enough to stay with and it turned out to be our Beverley who was something of a favourite when she did Shoulda Woulda Coulda.

She only enhamced her position a couple of years ago on one of the best ever episodes of Celebrity Mastermind when she beat the sinister Michael Howard who was falling for that tired old politician's trick of showing how much he liked football. Beverley's subject was Prince.

Amazon, for reasons best known to themselves, advertise this album as 2011 but it is ostensibly a 2009 release from all other indications. It hardly matters to me. Being two years out of date on pop music is the most up to date I've been for a long time.

Beautiful Night was the piece I heard on the radio, a highly passable expression of transient romance but, as has happened with so many albums bought on the strength of one track, not all of the rest of it is quite as good. In Your Shoes sounded familiar at track three, possibly because I did actually remember it and not because it samples Orange Juice's Rip it Up riff. I don't know if that makes it 'dubstep'. For the most part, perhaps the album as a whole is more workmanlike than genuinely inspirational. Bare is Beverley in more authentic Aretha-diva mode. Gold Chain brings to mind Aretha's Ship of Fools or when The Temptations went a bit funkier. I just can't tell the echoes from the new ideas any more, like if Moneyback would sound like Patrice Rushen's Forget Me Not to anyone else but me. Painted Pony is nicely forlorn and might have been a good place to stop but Robin Gibb turning up to help on a version of Too Much Heaven presumably kept him in work for a day or two back then. I admire the early Bee Gees as much as anyone and they did a fine job in re-inventing Diana Ross once upon a time but not as good a job as Chic did. Robin has by now left his thumbprint in a few too many places on pop music over the years.

It's not entirely fair to review an album while listening to it for the first time but I can't see this ever persuading me it's as good as 2003's Who I Am. She's a good girl. I can't help thinking that she doesn't quite establish an identity here that her obvious talent and personality should be capable of. I think she would benefit from better songwriters. I'd love to help.

The Shortlists - Best Poem and Best Collection 2011

I don't see many more things happening between now and Christmas that will affect this website's very sincerely considered but hopelessly disregarded awards for Best Poem and Best Poetry Collection of 2011. It's not as if I read everything and so such books as the Geoffrey Hill or Carol Ann Duffy were deselected without being given a fair chance, it has to be said.
We could add in further mentions for Best Event and Best Novel. In which case Tasmin Little's Naked Violin recital in Portsmouth in the summer wins a helluva classy affair for Best Event, holding on in a compelling battle with the Glyndebourne Rinaldo at the Proms and Natalie Clein's Cadogan Hall Prom as well as Muldoon, O'Brien and Harsent at Cheltenham. But one appeciates what a good year it must have been when The Tallis Scholars make the effort to come all the way down to a cultural outpost like Portsmouth and don't even get shortlisted for their trouble.
Julian Barnes would probably get the verdict over Hollinghurst for being a somehow better done job in the Novel but I also enjoyed the re-issue of Patrick Hamilton's Twopence Coloured and they could all be surpassed by Murakami's 1Q84, which I am halfway through as yet but does look like his best work and is proving most worthy of the time it is taking. 
But the real issue is the poetry and I'll leave you with the shortlists before returning with the answers some time later. There is no point including anything on the shortlist if they aren't potential winners and so I will keep the shortlists short. Only to say that Sasha Dugdale narrowly misses out on a place on the Best Collection list and so is compensated with a Best Poem contender.

Best Poem

Judy Brown, The Helicopter Visions
Sasha Dugdale, Plainer Sailing (Alzheimer's)
David Harsent, Ghosts
Martin Mooney, Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
Sean O'Brien, Elegy

Best Collection

David Harsent, Night
Roddy Lumsden, Terrific Melancholy
Martin Mooney, The Resurrection of the Body at Killysuggen

I'm fairly sure that the answers have finally been decided upon but I'll let it simmer for a while and if you come back next week the winners might have been announced by then.

Stephin Merritt - Obscurities

Stephin Merritt, Obscurities (Domino)

Albums of oddments and rarities aren't expected to be classics and can't fairly be compared with the choicest bits of the back catalogue. The Jesus & Mary Chain's Barbed Wire Kisses seemed as good as the real thing at the time but in general we might as well accept that such albums are the remnant sale that tries to scrape the last few dollars out of the fanbase while it can. And I don't think anybody pretends any otherwise. There's often a reason why a rarity is rare. But being a Merrittophile, I had no choice but to purchase my own copy.

Like its author, it's no better than it should be. Most of the tracks listed as The Magnetic Fields are those 'experimental' studio exercises in which Stephin tries out every noise he can find on his keyboard. The version of I Don't Believe You here is so full of mobile phone ringtones it's like being in the office on a Tuesday morning. Rot in the Sun by The 6ths has a good locomotive percussion track on it; Plant White Roses has Shirley Simms in her accustomed plaintive, country role. Most of the songs are in Stephin's lovelorn doomed romantic mode without breaking out of a creative canter, which make them very good songs compared to 99% of the world's pop songwriters but nothing to put alongsdide his own highspots. There's nothing at all wrong with When You're Young and In Love,

You can teeter on the brink of a precipice

Ov'r an infinitely deep abyss

And somehow not even notice this

When you're young and in love

but you've all but given up on the album by then and, once it's lifted your hopes, he leaves you with one last synthesizer doodle. The thing about experimental music is that one seems to get served up with the result whether the experiment worked or not. You wouldn't do that with a recipe for sponge cake. I suppose it's reassuring to know that even a genius like Stephin Merritt has a weak spot.

And let this CD purchase serve as a warning to any other would-be almost completists of anything. You don't really need everything.

Michael

I was told by a friend that her friend's partner had died. He wasn't someone I had met but I had heard plenty about him over the years. Would I write something for him. Well, I didn't know him., etc. Okay, I'll see what I can do.
And now it might be read at the Catholic Cathedral in Portsmouth at the funeral. It's a strange feeling.


Michael

The world enjoys some showmanship, bravado,
A challenge to reticence done with style.
There’s no point having rules if you obey them
And the way it’s done defines the man.

We know that everything is temporary,
That even kings can only briefly reign.
Some go bravely, unwilling to concede it,
And fly south forever into the sun.

Judy Brown - Loudness

Judy Brown, Loudness (Seren)

I didn't even notice Judy Brown in the Identity Parade crowds last year and it took a while before her poem in Best British Poetry 2011 revealed itself as a favourite. This was not love at first sight.
But The Helicopter Visions in this year's anthology demands attention once it makes itself known. Judy Brown's effect is often through visual effects and

How the dawn breaks open, orange and fatal,
like a pomegranate landing on concrete.

is almost too good. You can imagine a creative writing group loving it like mad. But there's a deft use of phrase and cadence, an easy modulation between perspectives and a confident exploration of the strangeness highlighted in the book's epigram, 'a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost' (Thoreau, Walden).
As a debut volume, one can trace a bit of autobiography in the youthful readiness for booze, romantic encounter, travel and London. And there's a relationship or two that's done with, possibly acrimoniously. But, the other stand-out poem is from a similar but less elevated vantage point, not in a helicopter but cataloguing the detritus seen on top of bus shelters from the top deck of the bus.
As in The Helicopter Visions, Sky Burial brings her to the thought that she interpreting code in what she sees. But there only appears to be an enjoyment of gentle mystification, an appreciation of possible beauty when in fact, much of the book is set in ordinary places and times. She finds extraordinary things where others might find none.


In Dignity,

In the toilet you fall in love
with your own boozy sweetness.

I know. I know.

One day someone might get a degree for counting how many times the collection mentions 'water', whether as tears, a constituent part of the body, a drink or geographical feature. Then its significance might be set against the latent resentment that flickers under so many of the poems. It might or might not mean anything. Nothing, it seems, needs to mean anything these days but this is a memorable and telling collection that will keep many of us interested to see in which direction the difficult second album takes us.

The Saturday Nap Week Three

I did usher you in the direction of the safest race to bet on last week and the favourite duly obliged but the tip was a more ambitious 6/1 shot which probably in all honesty wasn't going to win when impeded just when it was making a forward move but that clearly wasn't part of the plan.So, this week, it's back to first principles and if you can get the even money or better about Silvianiaco Conti, Sandown 2.15, then there was no disgrace in his third place on chasing debut behind two top prospects and this time he'll open his steeplechase account.
Volcan Surprise, Sandown 2.15, will have to be scrutinized for confidence in the movement of his price later in the morning because a juvenile hurdle with a number of unraced horses in the field is not quite the open and shut case one might hope but there might be a double to be had if it looks solid.

Top 6 -Television

Some wireless broadcasts over the last couple of days have been remarking upon and marking in their way the 75th anniversary of television, which I think is very fine and generous of the older form of broadcast in respect of its trashier upstart sibling. Not all of us will be available for the centenary so we need to do it now.

The form of the events have revolved around celebrating great or historic television moments and, in a break from the strict rule on only mentioning six items in a Top 6, I will have to make room for such memorable sporting moments as Alberto Juantorena in the Olympic Games, Stephen Roche in the Tour de France, Fulham's fairytale progress two seasons ago through the Europa Cup towards the inevitable debacle five minutes before the end of extra time, Grundy v Bustino in the King George at Ascot in 1975 and, most movingly, Little Polveir winning the 1989 Grand National at 33/1 when I still believed in him. I cried.

Of course, one wants moon landings, Camberwick Green, General Election nights, Bolan or, possibly Hendrix, on the Cilla Black Show or even the time on Big Brother when George Galloway said, 'Rula, do you want me to be the cat now'. Or possibly not that last one.

My favourite moment of all time might be this moment when the great Barney Curley has John McCririck for breakfast,

'I saved your bacon one time. You were gone.' (And he apparently did and he apparently was).

And all McCririck can say is 'yes, yes, yes'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfPpBpDaSXE

But, Top 6 Television programmes, apart from all that.

The Simpsons, above all others, the defintive show of its generation and, I suspect, all others. And proof that a committee can be better than one writer, which is hard to believe but ostensibly true.

Fawlty Towers. Just about flawless and impeccable. Still laugh out loud on the twentieth or thirtieth time you see them and already know what's coming because it is now all written deep down inside you.

Two somewhat different quiz shows. Gallery, in which actually the lovely Pat Nevin, a sensible footballer, guested once with the imperious Maggi Hambling and outrageous George Melly in a panel game about paintings. Admittedly, the answer almost always seemed to be 'Gericault' but Maggi's awestruck comparison of a painting with Chartres Cathedral was devastating.

And the fey romp through opus numbers, Kochel numbers and old Joseph Cooper battering at the dummy keyboard that was Face the Music. If they really are going to do away with University Challenge, then there's precious little chance we'll get that back.

There will, of course, have been music performances of endless brilliance but I'll take Top of the Pops as not only a thing to look back on with both affection and horror but the night that Jeepster was on, or when Rod did Maggie May. And, especially, this week of all weeks, when it was 'now then, now then, now then, howzabout that, then, guys n gals.' Thursday night was the only night you had to make sure of a place in the TV room at University and so we all saw at least the second half of Tomorrow's World whether we wanted to or not.

And with one choice left, although I'd like Monkey Dust, Blackadder, Alan Bates in The Mayor of Casterbridge or test match coverage when it was Derek Randall, Michael Holding, Basil D'Oliviera, Viv Richards and all, I'm going to have Brookside, because at its best in the early 1980's, it was consistently the best drama on telly week after week, month after month.

Hats off to the telly in those days. I only switch it on for horse racing and Vicky Coren now.

The Poetry Premiership

So, is Jo Shapcott Fulham in disguise. If you see what I mean.

With apologies for the infantile preoccupation with list-making, which I do realize isn't the point, I have been wondering for a while which twenty living British poets would constitute the Poetry Premiership.

There will be some who would be disappointed not to be considered a part of it and legions of supporters of others who would claim their heroine or hero is deserving of a place. Well, what I've tried to do here is judge their standing in critical and public esteem as well as lifetime achievement and not pick my own top 20. I'd be delighted to hear suggestions from anyone for amendments but however many names you suggest for inclusion, I do ask that you nominate the same number to be removed from my list.

I might have missed someone completely but this does come from a long list of about 70. They are in some approximation of league positions and so I'd expect more debate about the lower half of the table rather than the top few who, I imagine, are firmly established as Premiership in status.

Do let me know. I am looking for some sort of consensus rather than a controversial blood-letting.

There is a semi-scientific way of working it out without counting prizes, book sales and column inches of coverage in magazines and journals. At any poetry reading, one can usually tell that the biggest name comes on last. We all implicitly sort of know that. It isn't quite headliner plus support acts but it does usually amount to the biggest reputation being the climax of the event with the other names in descending order from there.

One often sees a poet, artist, musician or suchlike described as 'one of the leading' exponents of their art. But this is easy and lazy praise to attribute to anyone unless we know who else is also in the elite group and, more importantly sometimes, who isn't. So, let's see. We can only have twenty. Let me know who else should be in and thus also who left out.

Seamus Heaney

Paul Muldoon

Geoffrey Hill

Tony Harrison

Don Paterson

Sean O'Brien

James Fenton

Derek Mahon

Simon Armitage

David Harsent

Colette Bryce

John Burnside

Carol Ann Duffy

Lachlan MacKinnon

Alice Oswald

Jo Shapcott

Ian Duhig

Roddy Lumsden

Andrew Motion

Michael Longley

And I am aware I've left out Douglas Dunn, Glyn Maxwell, Ruth Padel, Craig Raine, Anne Stevenson, Paul Durcan, Robin Robertson, Ciaran Carson, Kathleen Jamie and many more, which can only show what a competitive league the Championship is these days.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Top 6 - Violin Concertos

One of the highlights of the summer was Lisa Batiashvili, pictured, playing the Shostakovich Violin Concerto at the Proms, so scintillating that the spirit and atmosphere came out of the radio in a way I'd hardly ever experienced before. She was neither a musician I'd heard of before and neither was the piece although I've long stopped being surprised by the variety and greatness of the Shostakovich oeuvre.

But I spent a few quid and a few hours exploring the violin concerto repertoire in somewhat more depth than I so far knew. In the end, it might not have added much to a top 6 as it would have been before and eventually one can tire of yet another virtuoso bravura performance of yet more flamboyance, but it's a rich and rewarding genre if taken in the right quantities.

The Bach Double Concerto would be a certainty for almost any list but in this glorious performance, it is reserved for top place, with Oistrakh and Menuhin providing a paragon example of everything a performance should be from a more demure age. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmmpjziKcFU&feature=related

Tasmin's performance of the Beethoven in Portsmouth Cathedral a couple of years ago would secure another giant of orchestral music a guaranteed place. For some reason, I don't know if it's his portrait or reputation, but Beethoven is never as dark and foreboding as one thinks he might be. Fidelio, the Late Quartets, Missa Solemnis, etc. all turn out to be much easier going than one thought they would be and the Violin Concerto is perfectly charismatic.

Although I'm supposed to be picking concertos rather than performances, Henning Kraggerud's passionate account of the Tchaikovsky at last year's Prom gets it in ahead of several other deserving cases as the long list is ominously too long for the dwindling number of places that remain.

And so with Tasmin's recording of the Sibelius coming in, for me, just ahead the other recordings I have by her, I'm left with only room for a personal soft spot for the much under-rated Mendelssohn, it always seems to me, who is a tremendous composer seemingly overshadowed by too many other Romantic nineteenth-century masters and I'm having his haunting opening over and above a few other very persuasive claims and some big names who, to be honest, didn't make quite as much of a case as I'd expected.

The Saturday Nap Week 2

Customary tactics for me in selecting horses for investment involve choosing the right sort of race. That is, not handicaps which are so often bookmaker's benefits. Novice hurdles are my favourite.
I certainly couldn't get involved in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby which will be one to watch and the most straightforward race of the day might be Wetherby's 2.15.
However, I am persuaded by the claims of Muirhead in Ascot's 3.40 and, with it being available at at least 6/1 at present, we can do it each way to try to insure our unbeaten record.

The Friday Nap

Just in case there's not a better option on Saturday.

It has to be noted that even though Ruby Walsh has said he will be reducing his appearances in England after the new rules on whip use, he is riding at Wetherby tomorrow and has only one ride booked.

This is Fistral Beach in the 3.20.

These top jockeys don't travel all that way for one ride unless they think it has a good chance. In fact, a top jockey with one ride at a meeting is one of the biggest ticks a horse can have against its name on my card.
But also bearing in mind that Ruby went to Fontwell for a Paul Nicholls trained horse last week, and finished second on it.

Still, I'm on. The 9/2 currently indicated on the Racing Post website would be lovely. And this website will continue to feature books and poetry, as before, just as soon as it can.

The Saturday Nap Week 1

The money for Camelot in the Racing Post Trophy is persuasive and the sort of thing that often persuades me but the effect of it has been to push the other horses who have accomplished more so far out to bigger prices so I'm not getting involved with what might be a false favourite there.


Chepstow's meeting has some interesting races with big stables bringing what might be some bright prospects for early season skirmishes. One notes Tim Vaughan's winners yesterday and that Paul Nicholls would usually start running up multiple winners at this stage of the year but Fingal Bay, Chepstow 3.40, from Philip Hobbs, might be a different class and offers better odds of reward than the Nicholls trained favourites in the first two races so if there's still 5/2 available on Fingal Bay, let's get on.

View from the Boundary

The world seems to have been wobbling on a precipice for months now, the global financial meltdown that is just about to happen and has been just about to happen for what is beginning to feel like forever. If you've got a job you're still okay and if your retirement is tidily all wrapped up then no worries but once the whole edifice of world capitalism collapses, then who can say.
Capitalism depends on boom and bust, the regular clear out of failed efforts. It is fuelled by borrowing and debt but they are supposed to last forever except they need to. But the new angle now is that it's China that has all the money. We didn't see that one coming.
It couldn't have been only me that knew that Greece wouldn't meet the repayments on its bail out and yet the markets went into a further tailspin when they realized it wouldn't. I only wish I understood it all well enough to have bet on that. Those in Britain who argued that we should stay out of the Euro were mostly right for the wrong reasons. It wasn't because we fought wars to keep the Queen's head on our currency and don't want our money to be the same as what they use in Italy. But it was a sound decision anyway.
The Conservative argument, under George Osborne, who looks like he clearly can't comprehend what it's like to not be a millionaire, was that the entrepreneureal spirit will create enough jobs to take up all the public service redundancies. But it's not a matter of if or when, it's simply not going to happen. They are as flotsam and jetsam blown about on the tides of world trends and there's nothing they can do about it. His job is just to defend the well off against the inevitable for as long as he can. The permanent look of bemusement on his face is just as worrying as Blair's old Bambi impersonation ever was.
The trouble is that there's no such thing as Economics. It ought to be abolished as a University subject and put into that dubious range of issues like Astrology, Palmistry, Creative Writing or Origami. Economics is no more than getting oneself down to the dog track and sticking it all on trap one except, of course, our dog track in Portsmouth closed some time ago now.
So, let's see if we can't fiddle our way ahead of the withdrawing tide by having a feature called the Saturday nap in which I'll scrutinize the horse racing of a Saturday morning and look where we might put our precious cash. The tip will be posted here by lunchtime and if we're not doing okay by Christmas, we'll admit defeat. The first half of the jumping season is often a good time to bet in my experience and I wish we'd started last week when Ongenstown Lad strolled in at Cheltenham at 5/2. I'm looking at Camelot on the flat at Doncaster tomorrow, who has been well backed in the week, but we'll see about that in the morning.
-But, Sport, otherwise. Who'd have it. Wales were denied their place as beaten finalists in the Rugby World Cup when their captain tried to drill an opponent head first into the ground and, although to much disgruntlement, quite rightly so. Rugby doesn't seem to have many rules and fails as a game because you can't really make up rules for a boisterous scrap between burly, beery men. But then last night, Fulham's prospects of getting through their Europa Cup group were left largely unaffected by the sending off of Dembele who no more than pushed a provactive opponent on the shoulder, who then collapsed as if he'd been shot. So I'm not sure if Rugby's a game played by real men and football by overpaid poseurs but I think the biggest problem with sport might be taking it seriously and the only way to make it matter, if you need it to, is to bet on it.
-Still looking through Lumsden's Best Poetry of 2011 anthology, I'm taking note of Judy Brown's fine poem in there and have ordered her forthcoming collection Loudness. I have high hopes of it on the early evidence and the poetry year is by no means over yet.
-Whereas, somewhat more controversially, I found myself calling last week's reading at Cheltenham a 'Premiership' event and so wondered exactly which twenty British poets would constitute the Premiership. There's no point allowing lazy journalism that says things like ' Smith is one of the top such and such in Britain' unless the writer can say who else is and who in fact isn't. So, one ought to be able to name the Premiership poets. The shortlist extends to maybe 80, which I have in three divisions. 18 so far in the Premiership with a Women's league for the benefit of those who think that Women's poetry is a different field altogether (which I really can't see). I don't know whether to publish my eventual findings here and would welcome nominations. One finds oneself pondering whether Jo Shapcott is Premiership; is Glyn Maxwell top of the next division or whether Craig Raine is now Sheffield Wednesday. It's bound to be wrong but wrong in different ways to everyone who thinks so but it is based on a list I saw, compiled decades ago, by an academic who had counted up the lineage of coverage that poets had been allocated in critical journals and suchlike. Heaney was top and Hughes second. My list, if I ever summon the nerve to publish it, is nowhere near as scientific but is my attempt at judging what the world thinks, or those who have any inclination to be interested. It won't be my top 20. I could make that up any time you like. Surely there's more to enjoy about it than making league tables but I've never grown out of the boyish infatuation with a list, you see.
- Meanwhile, this house is patiently waiting for the arrival of the new Murakami. In some ways, I hope it never comes. Long books are daunting. I read the whole of The Gulag Archipelago, and all of Solzhenitsyn to date, in my teens. I sat in front of Middlemarch and tried to let it pass into me by some sort of osmosis one University summer and reached roughly page 1300 of Proust in my twenties until the bookmark stalled at the place it has remained ever since.
But, Murakami is the Nobel laureate in waiting, a worldwide cult I was trapped into by his easy way of making you think it's fine to crack open a casual beer, talk to a cat and apparently walk into a painting and find yourself involved in something you don't really understand. But if I don't review any more novels this year on here, you'll know why.