The best part of the year provided several spectacularly good days this time around, with that welcome cooler edge in the air perfectly paired with seemingly endless clarity.
It climaxes with the Cheltenham Literature Festival- for me this year a much anticipated menu of Copus, Reid, Paterson and O'Brien, then me setting a new personal best for what age I am, 53 if I make it, before Tasmin comes to Portsmouth Guildhall to play the Brahms concerto the day after we remember stalwart Portsmouth poet, Brian Wells, who died earlier this year, aged 81.
It's Maggie May time of year,
It's late September and I really should be back at school.
I was reminded on Radio 4 this evening that Ray Jackson, the good-looking one from Lindisfarne in a not too difficult heat, played the mandolin as a session man on Rod's masterpiece, got paid his wages for the day's work but was replaced by a miming Dancing Jack Peel on TOTP. A bit unfair, perhaps, but that's session work for you.
I think I knew that Ray played the mandolin on that but, in the same way that I'm no longer sure if I have certain books or if I have some particular music on CD, LP, cassette or at all, I'm not quite sure if I knew it or not.
I heard Rod interviewed once when he was some way down the road to overblown glam icon and the interviewer asked him about his songwriting and why he hadn't done more since he was a 'bit of a dab hand', and he was. He was one of the truly great voices in pop music, too, and I still forgive any suggestion that he took the safest option by shifting into the middle of the road. We have Danny Baker's word for it, and I think Nick Kent's, that he is the best bloke you could ever want to meet. Although possibly by now with the same proviso that David Mitchell jusified the royal family, 'albeit with a massive sense of entitlement'.
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After such a special year of sport, the Sports Personality of the Year award (in which I must admit I don't actually understand the question), is going to be difficult. All except one of Bradley, Jessica, Mo, Andy Murray and my longshot suggestion, Nicola Adams, and a litany of others are going to be very unlucky to miss out when you consider that Greg Rusedski once won it, and Ryan Giggs was apparently once given it for still being available to play.
I don't know why there was so much fuss about the Ryder Cup. I mean, firstly, it's golf. But coming back from 10-6 down isn't so remarkable. I saw Fulham come back from 4-0 down at Fratton Park on 1/1/84. We know the Ryder Cup had to be altered from USA v. GB into USA v. Europe just to make a game of it and so now it's usually close. In fact, why not save a lot of messing about, and simply draw lots to select which player has to sink a 10 ft. putt and just decide it on that.
But my suggestion to solve the impossible job of evaluating all of this year's performances would be to make it ironic this year. A straight head to head of Kevin Pietersen v. John Terry.
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But I think I've found an answer to the vexing problem of early Sunday morning radio. It is a wasteland on Radio 5 as the breakfast slot can only warm up yesterday's football as if anybody who was interested didn't know already and then you get the unbearably serious Sportsweek, in which everything you know already is examined by Garry Richardson as if he is Jeremy Paxman and sport actually has colossal global implications, like whether Rio is in England or not. Radio 4 is okay with its broadcast of dreary singing of fine hymns and 4 Extra fills in with a reminder of how many comedy programmes from one's childhood were bad beyond belief, especially if as currently, one of them is The Clitheroe Kid.
Go straight to Radio 3. I've done it from time to time and never been disappointed but after last week, I know it's where one should be. It's a wonderful programme and although drifting in and out of sleep means you miss parts of it, listening to some of the superb things they play in that state of maybe 25% consciousness is a sublime luxury. It made me by a CD of Michael Tippett's music last week, on which I don't even mind that the 6.14 of the lament from Sellinger's Round is the only thing I want it for. I'm glad I know about it now because I didn't before.
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And my latest visit to the upstairs room in which the supposedly less essential of my books are kept found me coming back out again with The Go-Between. It's been tremendous.
I mentioned at work that I was re-reading it.
Someone said they had done it for O level. But they couldn't remember who wrote it.
I'm glad that the value of education isn't misunderstood or its purpose misplaced.
I suppose I should collect my books and get on back to school
Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool.
