View from the Boundary

It was with an elegant disregard for the happy ending that a handful of fundamentalist paralympians put the final full stop to the British sporting glories of 2012 with some ungracious reflections on the honours list. It is a sorry tale of hubris and expectation when one bemoans the inadequacy of the honour awarded by suggesting that a higher honour was deserved.
But I'm afraid they are not the first to be so ungrateful. The revelations a couple of years ago of who had declined such awards in the past brought to our attention Philip Larkin's refusal of one of those 'British Empire' appendices to his name and he went up further in my estimation all too briefly until it further transpired that he wanted something better, which he did eventually get.
But, really, such attitudes simply will not do and not for the first time it is Ken Livingston that exhibits some common decency, although possibly offering a diluted reason for doing so.
Following on from my own summer's Olympic triumph in our family bag boggling tournament, the Christmas events in Swindon had one major star in my neice, Laura, who established herself in a class of her own at Scrabble, including the remarkable game pictured in which she produced three 50 point bonus words. I am sometimes suspected of being good at Scrabble, or I ought to be, but I'm not. Laura has found her talent for the game and from now on we are all merely Joey Bartons playing in the shadow of her Lionel Messi.
-
So, we are now in a position to audit the second season of the Saturday Nap feature here and find that we improved on the marginal profit our selections showed in 2011. Those that stuck with it and didn't take the profit after 10 weeks were rewarded with two further winners (at short prices) that left the £10 level stake profit at starting prices at £28.45 and a 23.7% return over 12 weeks which was enhanced to £37.60 (31.33%) if you had taken the mostly better prices that I did. That is a healthy enough return, with 6 of the 12 selections being successful, and next year- who knows- I might have to make it a subscription-only feature and charge for such gilt-edged information.
-
The highlight of the Christmas television was surely Restless, the William Boyd novel brought to the small screen. Not because of any older woman glamour provided by Charlotte Rampling but for an all-round good job well done. Celebrity Mastermind continued to downgrade the brand by asking some apparently well-known people (and I realize that they are well-known to some if not to me) questions that didn't really belong in the Mastermind quiz book. In fact, with some knowledge of the specialist subjects- like David Bowie- even they crossed over into the General Knowledge area at times.
But I got done those things I had saved up to do in the midwinter break, which was to write the introductions to two forthcoming Portsmouth Poetry Society meetings for 2013- one on e.e.cummings and one on Is there a difference between poetry written by women and men, which I notice we have been beaten to by Pascale Petit's piece in the winter issue of Poetry Review. I'll be able to use these to fill a gap when ideas are running short here in the new year and when Portsmouth Library have made available their copy of Sean O'Brien's Collected Poems, I will try to find something I haven't said before to say about that major career retrospective.
And 2013 might be the date of a new booklet of poems by me. It's possible that the file of poems for inclusion will stretch to the requisite number of pages by October and at present the working title in progress is The Perfect Murder, so if I could just reserve that title for the time being, I'd be grateful if nobody else used it in the meantime.
But if I find myself still here doing the same thing this time next year then we will count 2013 as successful as 2012 was. I don't ask for much.

HNY, Best, D.

The Saturday Nap - Week Eleven, and Christmas Nap

I was quite apologetic a few weeks ago when tipping an odds-on winner here and so felt considerably worse than that last week when the selection went off at odds-on and then got beat.
However, to a £10 level stake at starting prices over the ten weeks so far we are still £12.30 ahead, a 12.3% return on the investment in ten weeks which is better than you'll get from a building society. And so I suggest that the project can end there for anyone who has lost confidence in my guaranteed profit-making scheme. Take the money and, by all means, run.
For those determined to see out the full stint until Boxing Day, though, there is only one horse tomorrow that looks anything like an investment. Ulck du Lin, Ascot 3.40, would be one to keep on  the right side of and 7/4 would be fine. Keep it simple and stick it all on that.
Looking towards Boxing Day and an end to this little adventure, the Christmas Nap will be Dynaste, Kempton, 2.00.

And Best Wishes to Everyone who is good enough to look in here from time to time.

Wiggo played guitar

....jiving us that we were voodoo,
the kids were just crass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NkBB-nu28E

An Indiscretion

An Indiscretion 

The room is unfamiliar and so are

the minutiae of etiquette here.

For neither of them has been here before. 

It’s not as awkward as one might think, though,

to linger on buttons being undone

inside an ecstatic, unworldly calm. 

The vertigo of zips in slow motion,

the dazzle of such ordinary flesh,

are choreography you don’t mention 

while all the time it seems to be going

at least as well as could be expected.

And, having achieved the necessary 

standard of detachment and disarray,

they put each other back how they found them

close enough to what they’ll get away with.

The Saturday Nap - Week Ten

We were a bit unlucky last week with Join Together coming with a late flourish that would have nailed it for me, this project and lots of other good judges had the winning post been just a few yards further away. As it happened, Hello Bud got all the plaudits for staying on tenaciously at 14 years old but we now have a genuine Grand National prospect (16/1 favourite), which is something I apparently haven't had for a few years and the story has a happy ending.
For all I have thought about Blue Square in recent weeks, they do, once in a blue moon, add a free bet to your account (out of sympathy, I imagine) and last night I noticed that the exact amount of the two bets I had on Join Together had been added to my account in free bets. So, having missed the well-backed At Fisher's Cross when he won recently, I took the 4/1 about him at Cheltenham today and he readily obliged at 11/4. So, hats off to Blue Square.
But we do still need to make sure that the Saturday Nap ends on a level stake profit at SP. Doing Join Together each way would have put us mathematically safe but I deliberately went for the big hit. So this week we are back on a 'safety first' strategy.
One way of finding a horse to avoid in recent weeks has been to simply check the headline of the Racing Post Weekender and this week they go for Walkon. It has drifted in the market today while Nicholls' Cristal Bonus has been supported but Nadiya de la Vega at 11/1 might be worth staying with again in a race that doesn't look like one for a big punt.
Zarkandar is tempting in the hurdle at Cheltenham and while I would oppose Rock on Ruby there, I am less happy in taking on Grandouet, who I might even back against the favourite but this might be one best watched because you'll only have yourself to blame when being wiser and poorer after the event.
With Far West and Oscar Whisky at prohibitive odds on in other races at Cheltenham, it might be preferable to look at Doncaster where Henderson and Nicholls send their second jockeys to contest a Grade 2 hurdle and where Vasco du Ronceray, 2.45, is preferred.

Patrick Moore

One of my first memories of the internet was being shown this, http://www2.b3ta.com/patrickmoore/ and so I thought I'd leave it as a tribute to the great man.

The Saturday Nap - Week Nine

Novice hurdles are generally the sort of races I like best for sensible investments but we are safely ahead of the bookmakers in this project and I don't mind having an old-fashioned punt once in a while.
And so, while Sam Winner in the handicap at Sandown is of interest and there might be a couple of short priced, safety first options available, I might try to put this project to bed once and for all with a 6/1 shot and none of that each way messing about either.
Of course, the first clash of  the Henderson- trained Sprinter Sacre and Nicholls' Sanctuaire is a race to relish but not, I think, to bet on. These two are likely to get to know each other fairly well over the next couple of years, one might think.  But the Becher Chase at Aintree is one of those minor classics that provides real jump racing. A horse I have liked for a little while now is Join Together and I hope that this might be the race in which he makes a name for himself. But I don't just hope, I think that 6/1, or more if you can get it, is a fair enough reflection, and worth doing.

Give a Poet a Bad Name

It might not always be wise to introduce oneself as a 'poet' when asked 'and what do you do?' Some little pieces of body language tell you all you need to know when people start glancing at their watch, looking across the room for some imaginary acquaintance they need to see or simply shuffling away uneasily.
While many poets are perfectly reasonable sorts, the epithet has dubious overtones that usually make me offer some other enterprise I'm involved in, even if I genuinely think of myself as a poet on that particular day or don't. Sometimes it might be preferable to say you are a tax inspector, an accountant or even an estate agent, shrug and airily make some observations about the state of the property market. It is a worthy occupation on the face of it, the equivalent of a carpenter, I sometimes like to think. It's just that the idea of 'poet' brings with it a number of connotations or overtones, or the unavoidable prejudices that others carry with them.
Most harmlessly, but not to be desired, would be the lingering stereotype of the Romantic dreamer somehow detached from the humdrum world, thinking of higher things and with a predilection for swooning. Long hair (on a bloke), some disarray or eccentricity of dress sense or a distracted manner might be identifying aspects of one of these. It's an old-fashioned idea in many ways but still, I imagine, with some currency.
One might be suspected of some self-regard, announcing one's poetic calling, as if you valued your own wit, insight and use of language above that of lesser, non-poetry writing mortals. This is based on the assumption that 'poet' is a good thing to be and that 'poetry' is intrinsically a good thing when clearly, and in vast reams, there is such a thing as 'bad poetry'. Thus, if admitting to being any sort of poet, I generally add that I'm not a very good one. The responsibility to be consistently profound, original or hilarious in conversation is far too much pressure to bear.
Among any other assumptions one might trigger would be that relatively modern curse of poetry which could be that you are 'difficult'. This would be the worst situation and, if poets do have a bad name that has only journalists, politicians and bankers as obvious types to put below it, then there is a certain faction among them who brought it upon the profession and it is they who really need to be identified and separated off from the otherwise less blameworthy majority of peaceable wordsmiths who, in Auden's phrase, are never going to make anything happen.
Ezra Pound, of course, must take his fair share of the rap. There possibly was difficult poetry before him but it became part of the agenda for a significant number of poets roughly 100 years ago. By no means all of Pound's manifesto was damaging and, as a sharpening up exercise, his legacy had arguably as many beneficial effects as bad ones. However, individuals will pick and choose for themselves which parts of a menu they will find to their taste and the tradition that remained high church modernist, translating into areas of the precious 'avant garde', are those that took to heart the maxim that poetry should be difficult.
Why anybody would want anything to be difficult when it doesn't have to be is as mystifying as their poems, especially in the light of Homer Simpson's wise advice that 'if something's hard to do then it isn't worth doing'. I had some trouble with Prof. John Fuller's argument in Who is Ozymandias, that poetry presents puzzles that the reader enjoys solving. I don't. I don't necessarily want one reading of a poem to reveal all I'm ever going to find to appreciate in it but neither do I want it to be unfathomable and, in the end, I'm often happy for my understanding to be incomplete if I've enjoyed the outing. In fact, I'm not sure one can ever be certain that something has ever been fully understood or if it is desirable for it to be reduced to that.
I can see that some readers will enjoy difficulty. Whether that needs to be a prerequisite of poetry when there is The Listener crossword to be done every week in The Observer to satisfy those savants, I would doubt, though. But if difficulty depends on a thorough grounding in classical references and etymology for interpretation then there are many of us who will make little progress however hard we study the lines. Geoffrey Hill tells us that poetry is not 'self expression' and I like the idea although it does rather torpedo anyone who feels like expressing themselves in verses. But certainly, a poem is often best regarded as a free-standing thng, succeeding or otherwise on its own terms.
The enemy within are those that deliberately set out to be difficult, even going to the trouble of attacking those for who some degree of clarity was regarded as a virtue, and then complaining that some of their potential audience are philistine for finding it difficult. These poets are affronted by the lack of gratitude they encounter from the dismal 'mainstream' (which means everybody except them). And, yes, as you can now see, I've arrived at my old sore point, the itch that I have to scratch once in a while.
Why should we be surprised that if someone deliberately sports what they consider strange attire that they are once in a while met with raised eyebrows or the non-committal gestures of a cartoon Frenchman by those who accept that, yes, okay, that is a bit strange, isn't it. We cling to whatever remains of our liberal culture and welcome all comers but if they take great pains to make themselves obtuse and then are recognized for their obtuseness then it is nobody's fault but theirs.
Of course, there is no stereotype with which to define the generic class of 'poets' and if some of the vestigial impressions of  poetry weren't the fault of the poets themselves in the first place, it's a shame that one of them is ostensibly actively encouraged. By those who then take great pleasure in complaining about it.
So, next time I'm asked, Oh, are you a poet, I'll probably shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other, glance down at my diminished glass of wine and remark how property prices in the area have been flat-lining for a long time now.
   

Kristina Train / Matchbox Twenty

 

Kristina Train, Dark Black (Mercury); Matchbox Twenty, North (Atlantic) 

 

I happened to catch Kristina Train singing Dark Black on Loose Ends on Radio 4 on Saturday and was immediately smitten, having first noticed that it was based on the Whiter Shade of Pale/Air on a G String chord progression that serves so well. It was another factor in her favour that Kristina is a much better candidate to inherit the role of Dusty Springfield as the new white soul diva than was Duffy, that passing fancy who I once paid tribute to by going via Warwick Avenue tube station when going to Lord's cricket ground..

I understand entirely that studio maestros these days can do anything they like to make a consummate pop record because the suspicion remains for some of us of a certain age that pop music ate itself some time ago and can now only reproduce itself, only flawlessly, should it care to. But none of that sort of know-all, seen it all before world weariness can argue with the one and only genuine barometer of critical judgement, which is the involuntary thrill down the back of the neck which the first two tracks here actually restored after I'd been missing it for quite a while, especially in 'popular music'.

Dream of Me is a masterpiece that could have come from Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl album,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNyhWXrLv8Y. We readily suspect that Kristina doesn't actually live a life in which she needs to dream that there is a life where 'everything is bright' that one day she will call 'this life'. On the more bereft of these songs it is hard to believe that anyone would sound quite so gorgeous but that, I suppose, is part of the trick of cheap music's potency. And good luck to her.

I don't quite accept that in the dark grey of winter I'd ever 'Wanna live in LA' but each to their own.

The album uses the track ordering convention of CD's rather than that of LP's in stacking up its best pieces at the start rather than saving them for the beginning and end of each side and so it might be suspected that it trails off towards banality with those less immediate songs that might have been hidden in between their more attractive peers all grouping together towards the end but this is still music that passes pleasantly if not quite as memorably as the opening pieces, which I think will remain favourites.

And I do realize that these are two MOTR, AOR, mainstream, FM and presumably artistically unadventurous albums that would be bought by people that don't buy many pop records. Well, it's a long time since I bought The Faust Tapes, Psychocandy, Metal Box or The Velvet Underground with Nico and so perhaps I ought to be checking out the Katie Melua back catalogue because there's nothing better than music that you enjoy rather just than identify with because you imagine it gives you some credibility.

I hate to think how Matchbox Twenty came to settle on such a naff name for their band. It deserves some sort of prize in a putative award ceremony for the Uncool, and I'm sure they would qualify for the shortlist in other categories there, too. But that only makes Rob Thomas with his routinely impassioned songs of angst and self-examination more attractive.

I saw once that it was their ambition to be Fleetwood Mac and, on reflection, I wouldn't mind being Fleetwood Mac either. They also claim a rare place in popular music by being the answer when I was once asked if I could think of a pop song with the word 'jaded' in it. Yes, Bent.

In my daily considerations on candidates for the Top 100 Pop Songs, Last Beautiful Girl is the Rob Thomas performance that is nudging itself upon my attention but it is early days yet. The thing is that formulae work and this sort of relatively undemanding music 'does what it says on the tin' in that rather blase cliche and if you think you're going to like it, you probably will.

She's So Mean, detailing the attributes of quite an interesting sounding lady, and Overjoyed are presumably the two here that might become Matchbox standards. It's not immediately obvious that this album, their fourth, is one of their best three but in its honest way it does enough and, in that tame genre of mid-Atlantic rock (albeit Australian, it says on its passport), it seems to me at least to come with a bit more verve and spirit, a genuine will to do a little bit extra than some of the safer purveyors of the creaking tradition.  

I daresay it will easily satisfy the existing fanbase without extending the franchise by much.

                                                                     



Alan Bennett - Smut

Alan Bennett, Smut (Faber)

While one can hardly complain when one has gone to a usually reliable source of entertainment and found it very much as you expected, the question will eventually arise as to when did the prepetrator eventually not be quite themselves any more- by being very much the same as they've ever been..
Alan Bennett has been a tremendous writer of plays, films, television, memoirs and fiction for longer than one of my age can quite remember. His masterpieces are many and he has more variety of style about him than any who immediately think of Thora Hird and afternoons eating macaroons might imagine. But there might come a time when we've all played the part of ourselves too long. It would be very harsh to make this allegation of Bennett quite yet but I have an inkling of it in these 'two unseemly stories'.
The theme is familiar in which the racy and, quite honestly, illicit is contrasted with the prim. Satire and/or gentle mocking is achieved on the fulcrum of an unlikely balance between the two. In the first story here, The Greening of Mrs. Donaldson, a widow's student lodgers find an innovative way to make up their rent arrears and Mrs. Donaldson's life seems to benefit from the distraction. You'd say it was unlikely but if you were to read some of the stories in the less edifying Sunday papers - which I admit I haven't for some decades- I'm sure more outlandish things happen. It is no less artfully written or realized by Bennett than one would hope but it wasn't quite 'classic' and one suspects he never got out of third gear in writing this one.
The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes is more successful, more contrived in its plot but openly admitting itself so. There are subterfuge, counter-espionage and layers of deceit as the intricacies of snobbery, money, lust and hypocrisy gather forces in a slightly more convincing tale.
For Graham's mother there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and Catholics had children in much the same way.
And, of course, Mrs. Forbes needs no shielding from the facts that nobody thinks she wouldn't be able to handle. She knew all the time as the story criss-crosses nearly all the possibilities in a denouement as beautiful as The Importance of Being Earnest.  
Enjoyable but, possibly suffering from the immense expectations one has of its author, it is no better than it should be.

The Saturday Nap - Week Eight

You wouldn't have got rich backing Dynaste at Newbury today but at 4/9 he was more of an investment opportunity than a gamble and he provided some small change to go to war with tomorrow.
First Lieutenant was announced a non-runner for the Hennessy Gold Cup two weeks ago and Paddy Power didn't have him in their ante post list whereas Blue Square kept him in and so were rewarded with a somewhat questioning e-mail from me (that they duly ignored). Now it looks as if the Irish-raider will raid and the 10/1 I took then will still at least get a run. If he runs, I'll owe Blue Square an apology but if he wins they'll owe me a few quid. And that's fair enough.
Pictured here with a big favourite of mine, Bobsworth, the two reoppose tomorrow with First Lieutenant in receipt of a pound for a two and a half length beating there. I'm reasonably happy enough to desert Bobsworth tomorrow even if it could be his real 'coming of age' day, not only because he has drifted in the last couple of days from 100/30 to 9/2 but because, even if First Lieutenant is a Cheltenham specialist, the 10/1 is better value and he looks very solid each way here for the faint-hearted. A.P. on Teaforthree for Rebecca Curtis at 16/1 is another that you could give a chance.
The Novice Hurdle at Newbury is interesting but tricky; the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle, so often an early Champion Hurdle trial, has cut up so badly that even if Newcastle goes ahead there won't be a fifth of any description in it this year although if you really can get 5/6 Cinders and Ashes, then, yes, one would have thought so.
And so although, on the face of it, it looks like yet another of those exciting Saturdays of autumn jump racing, there might not be quite as many options to choose from and I'm going to stick with First Lieutenant, officially each way for the purposes of judging the success of this project, but in real life I'm happy to forego the reduced returns of a placed each way bet if I can at other times collect better returns on outright winners.  

Bart Simpson on Poetry

I'm glad I found this the other night while looking for something else.
We might as well use it at the top of the page for a while.

London Chess Classic 2012 Preview

Judit Polgar is an eye-catching addition to the line-up for this year's London Chess Classic, Kensington Olympia, 1-10 December, http://www.londonchessclassic.com/ . She is living evidence that genius can be nurtured, if not quite created out of nothing, as the most successful of three Hungarian sisters brought up and developed to be chess grandmasters. Currently number 48 in the world on the constantly updated list, only Michael Adams among British players, at number 22, is ahead of her.

Ladbrokes are not usually a firm I applaud in the bookmaking industry but they do have odds to offer on this event. At 25/1, they don't seem to think Judit will win this immensely strong tournament but she is ahead of the three British players in their list.

Given the great success of last week's Saturday Nap feature here, which was not only one of the best pieces of horse racing journalism I've ever written but also one of the best I've ever read, and given that this website's record of tipping chess winners is even better than its record on horse racing, having suggested that Anand would retain his World Champion title against Boris Gelfand, why don't I offer some sundry reflections that might help us guess what might happen.

The scoring system of three points for a win and one for a draw, rather than the traditional one for a win and a half for draws, favours those players whose style encourages decisive results. This most obviously brings in Luke McShane, who will quite probably lose a game or two but might compensate by getting some well deserved rewards for his adventure, as he has previously. Ladbrokes don't believe that, though, and will let you have 33/1.

Magnus Carlsen usually comes good here, too, as well as nearly everywhere else and has apparently taken this event as seriously as any in its brief history. As World number one and suited to this sort of tournament, you will need to be confident and have your betting boots on to make any extra cash for Christmas out of him as he is odds on at 5/6.

Vishy Anand is hard to beat, which makes him a durable title holder but less likely to come first in an event like this and so he might look generously priced at 11/2 but the odds compiler has factored in our reservations and I don't think he's likely to win this. I wouldn't even take 10/1 even if he is my favourite chess player these days.

It's a shame that there doesn't appear to be an each way option on the first three places in a field of nine. One could have a sporting punt on McShane, or maybe Judit, if there were. But the sensible options in taking on the favourite in a win-only market would appear to be only Lev Aronian or Vladimir Kramnik. I like Kramnik a lot as a player and even more so of what I've seen of him as a person.

And seeing the class act, Aronian, who I've not seen in the flesh, as well as Judit, would be the main reasons for getting myself a ticket and going to watch. But the internet coverage is so good that the bone idle option is to stay here by the gas fire rather than traipse up to Kensington via train or coach and tube.

Kramnik's rating has been on the rise again recently but I don't see him winning this. The most likely bet is Aronian, at 3/1, if you want to oppose the perfectly justifiable hot favourite that is Carlsen.

Of the others, the H-Bomb, American number one, Hikaru Nakamura, will wear a nice hat, play his first 10 moves in almost no time at all but his opponents will usually find the time to neutralize the time pressure he tries to create. He is not an attractive gamble at 8/1; Michael Adams perhaps is a 28/1 shot and English Champion Gawain Jones similarly realistically priced at 40/1 but I'm sure they will stand up for themselves well. But it will be no surprise if somehow the results eventually make Magnus Carlsen the overall winner once more.                                     

 

The 99th Anniversary of the Crossword

I saw that it was the 100th anniversary of the crossword and so thought I'd compose one to mark the occasion. Now that I've done it and I look up the story, it seems the first crossword was published in December 1913. And so it's only the 99th.

Across 

1.   Larkin book ceded these evils differently (3,4,8)

9.   Edited Reid poems established again (9)

10. View six with half of stable (5)

11. Skint Ross includes openings (6)

12. Roman poet sounded direct (8)

13. Not meant to be satirical (6)

15. Detected, O’Connor wept (8)

18. Boris’s hair in limousine appetizers (8)

19. Dawn’s language (6)

21. Witches touchdown in city (8)

23. Hound deaf Ghanaian has (6)

26. A payment for islands (5)

27. Novice driver with dog in vehicle (4,5)

28. Shins cad refined, refined and lost the vote (15) 

Down 

1. Violinist coach changed in first half of ties (7)

2. Poet in deli others use (5)

3. Brass for economic group to ring pointlessly before one hesitation (9)

4. Ribbon Lisa shabbily conceals (4)

5. Arcade we destroyed with Wulf’s rival in poetry (8)

6. The King the Spanish only half visits (5)

7. Emperor’s scooter ran over Welsh girl (9)

8. Slowly intoned impasse was ahead (7)

14. Clear about 6 unaware (9)

16. Approx. one fleet onward to station for Brief Encounter (9)
17. Great jumper in the early spring, a fiework all year round (8).

18. Ford or Cliff (7)
20. Old Administrative division C (7)

22. Filipino language includes singing sisters’ name (5)

24. Rash for bees (5)

25. Plan on including unsigned work (4) 

The Saturday Nap -Week Seven

This time last year Oscar Whisky was the tip and he came to win the race only to trip over the last hurdle (going just a bit too fast if you ask me -who has never sat on a horse), which spoiled my day more than somewhat.
Old favourite Get Me Out of Here is in opposition tomorrow, who I'm glad has been putting some well-deserved 1's against his name recently after some very worthy 2's.
Long Run is one that I'm happy to oppose and so, even given the Henderson stable's treble today, I'll be giving Silviniaco Conti every consideration at Haydock; another of Henderson's several stable stars, Finian's Rainbow, has interesting opposition at Ascot in For Non Stop and Captain Chris, who returns after a troubled season last year still capable of proving to be the top class horse I thought he was on his way to being at the start of 2011/12.
Oscar Whisky would be the selection but it's such an obvious thing to do that 8/11 is all we can have now and 4/7 would be no surprise tomorrow. Similar things apply to Balder Succes and Baltimoar at Haydock.
Katkeau could be one for the Pipe stable in a race they have made their own in recent years, Haydock, 2.30, where we will get a price worth having.
But, the nap on a Saturday of many and various options, will be Easter Day, Ascot 12.35.

Maybe tomorrow might be the day that one can tiptoe through the alternatives and put some kind of combination together with the nap, plus Katkeau, Oscar Whisky and Silviniaco Conti.

But, as we know after the very expensive defeat of Grand Crus last week, nine out of ten of us account holders has the footnote 'Mug Punter' added at the bottom of our bookmaker's file on us and we spend whatever fraction we choose to of what we get from our week at work to pay for their fat cigars.
You flirt with ruin every time you look at a horse race and wonder what might win it. And that, for me, is the highest form of glamour.

Best Poem and Best Collection 2012

As explained in the announcement of the shortlist for my website awards for 2012, these personal choices depend entirely on me having read them and, thus, having been aware of them and made the decision to read them in the first place. Last year would have been made even more competitive had I read the John Burnside book before the decision but, as it was, the result wouldn't have been any different.
This year has been quieter but that takes nothing away from the decision that The World's Two Smallest Humans by Julia Copus, the only collection on the shortlist, is well worth its place alongside the previous winners of the Best Collection prize.
And when I say 'prize', there isn't one.

Kate Bingham's poem, Open, has been a big favourite since the publication of the Forward anthology and I've read it most nights and love it. It has given the winner everything to think about in a tight finish but the award of this most obscure of honours goes to Julia Copus for Stars Moving Westwards in a Winter Garden from the winning collection. And so congratulations go to her on the first double in the short history of this feature. 

World Of Its Own

World Of Its Own

A team of Scientists at the University of Montreal research facility in conjunction with European colleagues and data provided by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope  and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope has discovered a rogue planet in the Milky Way Galaxy.


 

http://guardianlv.com/2012/11/scientists-discover-new-planet-that-has-no-sun/
 

It turns and turns in search of a sunrise,

something it’s dreamed of but has never seen.

The landscapes are dark and extravagant 
 

but, like a lover who’s now bored with love,

they go to waste ashamed of what they think

and also what they think they might have been. 
 

There are no memories of orbits, moons,

although everything came from somewhere once

and so there might have been a life to write 
 

if ever any evidence were found

of seasons, apogees or sibling worlds.

But, for the time being (if time occurs 
 

where there’s no other thing to fix it by),

it is perfect, ripping through the painless

wild, lost but not the least bit concerned.

The Saturday Nap - Week Six

If we lose this week the project goes into deficit and we can't have that.
Tipping the favourite in the big race is a very obvious thing to do but Grand Crus would appear to be that sometimes dubious thing, 'a handicap good thing'.
There's every chance that the 5/2 currently available in places will prove good value, the most convincing reason for that being the current good form of the stable with Dynaste going in today and The Package winning at Wincanton last Saturday.
Under David Pipe they nowadays pull off their share of big race wins in races they target rather than racking up the four-timers and a regular litany of winners in novice hurdles that Martin used to. Their sole winner at the Cheltenham festival, Salut Flo, had been announced as their best chance and it duly obliged.
The Paddy Power Chase is of course a competitive event with Walkon apparently fancied for the King/Thornton partnership and Nadiya de la Vega at 14/1 a bit eye-catching after wiining very nicely first time out this season. But the selection could prove to have been put well in at these weights and sometimes one has to believe in what appears to be straightforward.
Another old-fashioned point in his favour is the fact that Ladbrokes are shorter than other bookmakers on this. That used to be a broad hint when I studied such things rather more obsessively.

Shortlists for Best Poem and Best Collection

I am delighted to be now in a position to announce the shortlists for this website's Best Poem and Best Collection awards for 2012.

Since their inception, these awards have found their own very obscure place in the poetry community. Untainted by prize-money, they bring with them for the winners only the knowledge and satisfaction that their work was appreciated by me. And anybody who has been following The Saturday Nap feature here will understand why there isn't likely to be anything as tawdry as a cash prize any time soon.
It is a particularly difficult honour to achieve because first of all the work needs to have been read by me, which means it has to have been noticed by me and subsequently considered worthy of my attention. Only then can it be compared with the other candidates and prove its ultimate worth.

The winners will be announced in a couple of weeks' time. The shortlists under consideration for the time being are,

Best Poem

Kate Bingham, Open, from the Forward anthology
Julia Copus, Stars Moving Westwards in a Winter Garden, from The World's Two Smallest Humans
James Fenton, Cosmology, from Yellow Tulips
Chris Preddle, Sharpnosed Fish, from South 45
Jane Yeh, The Body in the Library, from The Ninjas

Best Collection

Julia Copus, The World's Two Smallest Humans.

And, yes, that is a shortlist of one so the announcement of the winner of that category isn't going to be very exciting. I could have made a game of it by including the Fenton and Yeh books but I like to think that anything shortlisted is a serious candidate for the prize and in this case the conclusion is foregone.
Those observers who remain keen on monitoring the gender balance of those successful in the poetry world will be able to note that 60% of the Best Poem shortlist are female as well as 100% of the Best Collection. I don't think this indicates a crisis in the state of poetry written by men. In fact, it is of no relevance whatsoever.

I have collated a list of previous winners, for my own benefit as much as anything.

Best Poem

2011 Martin Mooney, Dream of the Fisherman's Wife
2010 Paul Muldoon, The Fish Ladder
2009 Don Paterson, The Day

Best Collection

2011 David Harsent, Night
2010 Lachlan MacKinnon, Small Hours

Jane Yeh - The Ninjas

Jane Yeh, The Ninjas (Carcanet)

I never thought I'd buy a book called The Ninjas. I doubt if I ever will again but, in the meantime, the title does befit one of the themes of this collection, which draws a cartoon parallel world, a skewed displacement and conspiracy that both threatens and protects our own.
The poems overlap and link together in a way that makes it very much more a 'book' than a set of poems.
There are a number of groups of poems spread throughout the running order, not only the android, ninja and robot poems but some on wildlife, poems on paintings of siblings (by Sargent and Van Dyck) and then Last Summer, , Five Years Ago, , Last Spring, and This Morning, that somewhat unexpectedly ends the book not on its customary uneasy tone but with a rising feeling of fulfilment.
The Body in the Library is a fine piece of knowing angst and suspicion. We live precariously not very far from a hidden underworld of strange motives and supernatural forces, or is it just a child's baroque imagination.
In Sequel to The Witches,
They restore bassoons as a front for their larceny.

It is impressively imagined, clever, mildly disturbed and discomfiting because it might be more real than the indulgent fantasy it purports to be but where it fits on a scale between superficial trivia and profound is hard to say except that since it is undoubtedly postmodern, the question perhaps should not be put.  

Danny Baker - Going to Sea in a Sieve

Danny Baker, Going to Sea in a Sieve (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

The Greatest Living Englishman has delivered a first volume of memoirs that, in spite of the highest of expectations and overdue wait, refuses point blank to disappoint and, if anything, exceeds its remit.

Although it might look like another celebrity book from a well-known personality, it differs from the vast majority of the rest of those in that the author actually has a personality and it is written by the person whose name appears on the front. And this book covers the years to 1982, the period of his progress towards being and then being a pop music industry ‘insider’ rather than only a broadcaster in a league of his own in an age when his 6.06 radio phone-in on Radio 5 was taken over by David Mellor and only then received awards. If that is the required level of mediocrity then it’s not so surprising that Danny Baker has been removed from jobs at regular intervals. One can’t imagine Mellor throwing away such remarks as when Alan Dicks, a desperate appointment by Fulham FC at their lowest ebb, was inevitably sacked, ‘and with him went the best chant in the football league’. 

However, before I roll out the requisite paragraphs that establish that I revere the wunderkind on this side of idolatry, it is worth noting that some of his charmed career was spent at the NME and some of it passing judgement on pop records. And I’m not enamoured enough to be persuaded by his choice of Steely Dan as his second favourite act after the Beatles. I’m a big fan of Al Green but there’s more to liking him than the fact that some of my name is in his. But it is, I’m told less often these days, a free country, and so we can let Steely Dan be. Somewhat less convincing is his insistence on a devotion to British progressive rock. What Baker doesn’t seem to realize is that you are supposed to actually listen to your stated favourite music from time to time and not just pretend to like it so that people think you are outré and of a different stamp. That claim is surely an affectation based in nostalgia for bygone days. Whereas his choice of Cliff’s The Next Time on Desert Island Discs as ‘a last hurrah for a lost innocence’ in pop music was by no means a contrary statement but a beautiful observation. But he rates Queen very lowly indeed and so you lose some but you win enough to end up in credit. And this is no sort of dull survey of pop history, anyway, but an avalanche of anecdote and adventure by one who’s naturally outgoing disposition continued to get its rewards by forever landing him on his feet, in the right place at the right time, to make the most of it.

At 266 pages, it is all too short. I was expecting at least 900 pages of such exuberance but he is a professional and enjoys himself for money so why would he want to do more than deliver anything thicker than the approximately just acceptable length of this discourse. But it is LOL at regular intervals and rarely less than absorbingly entertaining in between. And well-written enough to make a few passages demand re-reading immediately.

 

His time at the coolest record shop in London brought him into contact with the biggest names in pop at an early age. Marc Bolan, Elton John and all were regular visitors to the shop. Bolan gets as good a report as any, famously giving Danny the very t-shirt that he was wearing only for that story to end tragically soon after. Queen and Mick Jagger come out of it badly. After buying a record with the help of his minder, Mick,

fixed me with a huge knowing smile that seemed to dare me to find him preposterous.

 

As he says, it is remarkable to reflect now that it was only seven years from Woodstock to the Sex Pistols (whereas now all that happens in seven years is that it progresses from series 5 of the X Factor to series 12). From involvement with punk in 1976/77, through Blondie and Paul Weller, we climax with the trip to America to encounter Michael Jackson but all these famous names are not the stars of the piece or even really the main point of it.

The most memorable character in the story is surely Baker's father, Fred, a docker with an uncomplicated way with words, money and life itself. When eventually Danny's sister's boyfriend has occasion to come to their house rather than entertain at his place, Mr. Baker answers the door, takes one look at the lad, unsuitably attired in his view, and says,

Well, you can fuck off for a start.

 

And the other star turn is Blackie, the genius dog who answers the door in more hospitable style.

 

It is over all too soon, this unplanned stumbling forward, living on his wits, from one piece of miraculous good fortune to the next but apparently always retrieving from adversity further gratefully received good times beyond imagining. It is further evidence, if it were needed, that talent is no use to one at all unless you have the right attitude to tie it to and make of one's allotment a fertile patch of good humour with so little side to it that nobody can see it if it stands sideways on.
It is one of the best books I've ever read.

The Saturday Nap - Week Five

Wincanton tomorrow is all set up to be a typical Paul Nicholls benefit and the fact that I've just looked through it and talked myself out of Zarkandar, Poungach and Michel Le Bon makes that a virtually cast iron 36/1 treble.
I'll take Stagecoach Pearl, Kelso 2.40, to go and do again what he did there this time last year.
I don't share the widespread superstition or partiality towards grey horses but have nothing against them either. If we want a genuinely mug reason to back him, the jockey is called Ryan Mania and one can't help but like that.

Signed Poetry Books - Kate Bingham

This was a bonus.
Having been suitably impressed with the Kate Bingham poem in the Forward anthology, I ordered her two books of poems from Amazon New & Used.
And this one turned out to be signed.

Top 100 Pop Records

I've admitted before, and will continue to admit, that the list making compulsion is a dreary and wrong sideline that one should have grown out of as one became adult.
But it remains possibly the unattainable purpose of an interest in any art form to decide what is best, and perhaps more importantly, why.
I've never been happy with the Top 100 Pop Records I posted here a few years ago. It's never right.
And so, how can one improve the process to make a better list.
What I have embarked upon is a project of adding one more certainty for a Top 100 place to my list last thing every night. I've been doing it for just over a week and it's easy so far and should remain easy for at least another month. There are Motown classics and works of such perfection that, I hope, still don't need questioning. Not even Baby Washington's That's How Heartaches Are Made is on the list yet, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuPpUMwJlY8 but I'm hoping I'll get to it before too long.
It is starting to look very different now and I would hope that the long view might filter out passing fancies and leave me with just the ultimate classics but I know there's a danger that some things that were old favourites and very worthy might be overshadowed by some late emerging predilection to present myself as if I was always a Northern Soul fan at heart, or some other mantle I might like to try on even now. I'm hoping that nominating one record at a time prevents that from happening.
Do tune in sometime around next February to see the final list.

View from the Boundary

The deadline for submissions to South is at the end of the month. I sometimes wonder if I should send poems to other magazines like I used to in olden days but, quite honestly, there aren't enough of them. Poems, I mean. There are still plenty of magazines. Last night I went through my very business-like attache case of poems to see what I had to offer.Within the case are two files. One is for poems that are likely candidates for my next booklet, which we could call file A, and the other is for those that might not even make it as 'fillers'. Not that I'd ever admit to including any fillers, of course.

Two of the A set have already appeared in print. Two got relegated to file B on the latest reading, and that left me with five from which to pick three to sent to South. We will see about that. I feel I ought to maintain the vaguest of presences as an obscure figure on the outskirts of the literary world, like one of those low magnitude stars that doesn't even get joined up into the recognized shape of the constellation that it is in. In the meantime, two poems were relegated from file B to oblivion. And so although I generally have in mind a booklet of about 14 poems every four years, it is now three years since the last one and I have only seven likely candidates for the next. But when one has nothing to say it is best to say nothing and the frugality of 'less is more' is an approach I approve of.

Two things are required to produce a good poem. Something to write about and a way of writing about it, not necessarily in that order. It doesn't sound that difficult until you don't have either.

--

I have been enjoying the first chapters of the biography of Chagall, above, with the sensitive young artist moving from the Jewish quarter of provincial Vitebsk to sophisticated, tough St.Petersburg. But I'm taking it slowly while reading other books alongside. Last winter my attempt on a biography of Walter Sickert began with the best of intentions but was eventually abandoned at about halfway, stalled in a quagmire of dense detail.

John Francome's Stone Cold was reasonably thrilling but heavy-handed in its stereotypical baddies and overcooked sex and violence. I'll read anything with a horse race in it from time to time but, as in my previous encounter with Francome as novelist, I wondered how much of it he wrote himself (possibly quite a bit of it) and thought of Dick Francis as being from an age when thrills were more cliff-hanging, page turning and less gratuitous.

Soon to arrive are Danny Baker's first volume of autobiography and Jane Yeh's new book of poems.

--

Once the Yeh book has been considered, it will be nearly time to think about the annual website awards of Best Poem and Best Poetry Collection and the shortlists will be put up here a week or two before the winners are given the satisfaction of this minor honour along with no cash prize whatsoever. 

In the meantime, it is possible to announce that Ian McEwen's Sweet Tooth was convincingly the best novel I read this year but that the best event I attended is a wide-open heat.

Out of the three superb Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concerts, the Beethoven 'Pastoral' Symphony might just have been the favourite but not by much; The Magnetic Fields in the Royal Festival Hall in April was inevitably great; The Brodsky Quartet in Portsmouth Cathedral in June has to be a candidate on account of the Golijov Tenebrae; that was quickly followed by the Poetry Parnassus reading back in RFH with Heaney, Soyinka et al; and two readings at Cheltenham deserve at least places on the shortlist.

I don't know. Let's give it to the Brodskys.
The best CD I bought this year was the Charpentier Lecons de Tenebres, exactly what I was looking for as 'something like' the best disc ever which was, of course, James Bowman and Michael Chance doing Francois Couperin's setting of the same thing. But that disc wasn't released this year. And so, the best CD of the year, and certainly the most played (certain bits of it) was the Music from the Eton Choirbook.
But the gala nights of the poetry shortlists and prize-giving are still to come. You will be required to be suitably attired and be within reach of an appropriate glass with which to toast the winners when you tune in for those. 



The Saturday Nap - Week Four

We were the victim of a bit of a price collapse last week. It is not the intention to tip odds-on shots here but with the winners of several races in opposition, it was reasonable to think we might get even money or a fraction more at Chepstow. However, the word had clearly got out and he won convincingly enough having looked for a few heart-stopping moments as if he wasn't going to quicken up.
This weekend is another full of interest with Smad Place in the long distance hurdle at Wetherby probably the best advice in the racing taking place on this side of the Atlantic.
The Breeders' Cup can be a graveyard for European hopes. The travelling involved, the end of a long season, the significance of the draw on American tracks and the fact that one doesn't really have proper form lines to be sure about make taking short prices about raids by our best potentially trappy. It is something of an act of faith but faith is something I do have in Excelebration (Santa Anita, 11.40 pm our time), highly consistent, genuinely top class and a complete professional in the best sense of the word who put up his best performance yet (above) last time at Ascot.
According to Aiden O'Brien, the only worry is that the QEII, pictured, was only two weeks ago.
I've taken the 11/8 already and am happy with it.

Salonen - Out of Nowhere

Salonen, Out of Nowhere, Leila Josefowicz (Deutsche Grammophon)

For at least the first four minutes of the Violin Concerto on this new disc of music by Esa-Pekka Salonen, one is ready to be thrilled by any amount of exhilarating violin skittering and shattering of itself over a dreamy, impressionistic, lightweight accompaniment exploring a brightly-lit palette of sounds.
The second movement is restrained and thoughtful and then the third more deranged. Listening to it more closely, I'm not regretting buying it now after three or four hearings than I was at first. There is no doubting Leila's immense energy and technical mastery or that of the piece that Salonen wrote for her to play. But it used to occur to me quite regularly when some of my contemporaries enthused about various rock music guitar heroes that just because you can play like that doesn't mean you have to and it's up to me to decide whether it gives me any pleasure to listen to it. This is difficult music and in places quite noisy. I'm sure it would be tremendous in the concert hall to see it being done but I don't necssarily get excited just because the music I'm listening to seems to expect me to be.
The final movement of the concerto works its way to a bursting climax that ends on a more morose note and, it would appear, is a statement of the composer's unresolved world view. I am grateful to him for it without sharing all of it. But I'm enjoying it more on fourth hearing than I did before. It is undoubtedly a fine piece by a major composer of my generation.  It's just that one can't be too careful reading newspaper reviews when the impression given by the reviewer is written from their point of view but you read their words from your own.
The 19.15 of Nyx is an orchestral piece definitely on a scale too big for me. I don't really buy this sort of thing apart from in the sense that I order it from Amazon in error. It's possibly things appearing in the night, bad dreams or anything like that but the more it imposes on us with its brass and dramatic intentions, the less I'm impressed.
You take your chances. It would be a dull world in which every record you bought outranked the previous one in one's list of all time favourites. I'm glad that I now know about Leila Josefowicz. 

The Forward Book of Poetry 2013

The Forward Book of Poetry 2013 (Forward)

Questions of Good, Better and Best would be the ultimate aim of literary criticism if it were possible to decide. Thirty-odd years ago at Lancaster, the Stylistics and Criticism course stopped at 'Interpretation' and refused to go anywhere near the next step of 'Evaluation'. It seemed at the time that the English Department were withholding some precious secret from the undergraduates but now I can see that they probably didn't know either. Sometimes it would be preferable to simply enjoy poems but it's difficult not be quietly wondering 'if it's any good', trapped forever in a nightmare of critical judgement.
After that, it's only a short step to making comparisons between poems, poets and, in the end, anthologies.
I can't help but put this book in a different division to the Salt Best of British book. I'm sure that is a heinous, wicked and elitist thing to do but I'll have to compound the felony by adding that this might be seen as a collection of poems by poets whereas the Salt selection is a book of creative writing course graduates.
There are, of course, good and less good in both books and every reader will take different things from two surveys of the year in poetry in these islands. But once they start awarding prizes or using the word 'best' in their titles, with whatever caveats, then the idea of putting some things ahead of others is embedded in the process and we are stuck with it.
Glyn Maxwell in expansive and nostalgic mood and Geoffrey Hill as love poet are two that immediately stand out here, with a less ambitious but equally striking poem, Open, by Kate Bingham also a ready hit for me. A couple I've seen and admired already, like Julia Copus and James Fenton and a litany of mostly easily recognizable names like Marilyn Hacker, Paul Durcan, Jane Yeh and Michael Longley make this a credible attempt at what might be something like the 'best' of what had been published in the year to July 2012. There's no attempt to show how admirably diverse the range of poems are, they've just issued prizes, a short list and some commendations.
Once I've settled on my own short list for the year and nominated my favourite poem and collection I might look forward to not deciding what was more worthy than what else for a while. I'm sure that is not the purpose for which poems get written. Well, I'm not completely sure in all cases, actually, but for the most part it would be better if they weren't.

Brian Wells - Opus 9

Brian Wells, Opus 9

Members of the Portsmouth Poetry Society joined together last Thursday at Trinity Methodist Church, Southsea, with family and friends of Brian Wells, who died earlier this year, aged 81.
The readings, music and tributes marked the launch of his book of poems, Opus 9, which had been produced in time for him to see just before he died. It was both a moving and fitting event to remember Brian who worked in visual arts as well as being a poet.
The book brings together a number of elements in his work,  his interest in challenging forms, war poetry, ancient lore and an awareness of tradition.
Time allows no time is one of a number of his cyclic poems here in which five haiku begin with the last line of the previous until the last line of the poem is also the first. Typically Brian in its insistence on stopping the moment but also in its observance of a complementary shape to do so within.
Unmoving but curious describes an encounter with a deer in woodland that 'swiftly disappeared',
its deer-shaped space leaving
a leafy hollow of silence 

Four poems on The Four Horsemen are grim encounters, accepting no comfort in the face of Death and his three unforgiving friends. Death Speaks begins,
Revere my sable panolpy
and rictus of my skull,
for I ride a tireless stallion
unsleeping through your night.

and there is no relief in the next four pages as Famine, Pestilence and War have their say, either.

The darkest moments are in this central section. While Autumn and a sense of endings are thematic to these last poems, it is elsewhere captured with a more relenting serenity although never without a suggestion of regret or loss. More than anything we have the expression of Brian's gentle humanity, his modest sensitivity and considered economy with words.
The feeling for tradition leads him, quite deliberately I think, to use some antiquated phrasing. Although clearly aware of and interested in modernist practice, he is more 'school of' an A.E. Housman or Ivor Gurney.
In an expertly edited book, Shattered Trees is a further statement of the horror of WW1 before ending on the perfect note with Old Winchester Hill, a love poem mainly to his wife, Sheila, but also to a favourite place. I can't think of another poet whose poems are so recognizably and sincerely their own. 

The Saturday Nap - Week Three

There are two things one can dwell on, looking through tomorrow's racing.

One is that Aiden O'Brien had a few options in the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster but goes there single-handedly with Kingsbarns. The other is that Ruby Walsh rides at Chepstow when you might think the bigger prizes are at Aintree.

I backed Kingsbarns the other day and I'm not changing my mind on that. We have a similar top prospect opposed by some potentially very dangerous opponents under a different code in Wonderful Charm, Chepstow 3.40. It might not be your 'working man's price' but we are in safety first mode here, hoping to include this project in the generally successful run I'm having outside of it and so it is to be hoped that this horse is perhaps the main reason for Ruby to be going to Wales rather than Merseyside tomorrow.

BSO/Tasmin Little in Portsmouth

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Tasmin Little/Rubikis,
Brahms, Schubert, Stravinsky, Portsmouth Guildhall, October 26

The Portsmouth Guildhall accorded Tasmin Little and the BSO an ovation from the top end of their repertoire for a great evening of music featuring a welcome return for Tasmin Little.
The Brahms Violin Concerto was doing nicely enough thank you very much before Tasmin's cadenza in the slow movement grabbed one by the labels with some force and from then on seemed to be on a different level. Superb lightning fingerwork from Tasmin and a concerto that I think probably really does improve as it goes along certainly did tonight. It's always a pleasure and it had been worth it by half-time whatever the second half was going to do.
We were on safe ground with Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, poignant and shimmering with its touch of sturm und drang that forever makes one wonder what the third and fourth movements were going to do. It stops where Schubert left it, perhaps not quite as eerily as Bach's Art of Fugue in which he leaves us just as he is signing his name in the final theme, but nonetheless it is an unintentionally open ending. I mean the boy was only 31.
But the real bonus for me was the much less familiar Firebird by Igor Stravinsky (above), that I had certainly not gone specifically to hear.
By turns skittering and (perhaps) pellucid with harp and woodwind the verisimilitude of a bird, it made my neighbour in C11 jump out of that seat when we reached the identifiably Igor riot in a brief middle section. But then, the bird's dying embers are gorgeously described with a song on the cello, a plaintive repeated riff on the harp and the tuba over at the back inserting a mute that brought tears to one's eyes just to see it. The programmatic music comes to a wonderful climax to finish a monumental piece that was a revelation to me and a tremendous finale to another fine concert. Get there if you can to see them. They are an orchestra in top form.
I think I said that the last time I saw them.

Reform Section 5

http://reformsection5.org.uk/

I'm not quite so much one for campaigns, petitions and the like as I might have been when once just a little bit cross without much cause to be when I was a teenager. I suppose it was seeing how naff student politics was that put me off it for so long.
But I was genuinely surprised to see how far we had allowed the particularly pious strain of 'correctness' to take us in Vicky Coren's piece in The Observer last Sunday when she highlighted the Reform Section 5 campaign. And so I'm back in it as far as this goes.
Blimey.

Don't you dare mention a ham sandwich in my hearing. As a vegetarian, it would seem I'm well within my rights to be offended enough to get you put away.
I'm not saying I would. Just don't push me too far. Is all.

I don't know if we can do much but please try to do anything you can.

Spot the Ball

One of the miseries involved in football in my childhood was how impossible it was to 'spot the ball' in these daft competitions.
And so, I've rather inexpertly scrubbed the ball off this photo from Portsmouth Ladies v Cardiff Ladies yesterday, which was a quite exciting 3-3 draw, and I invite you to send me a copy of this picture with an x where you think the ball is, assuming you are good enough at computers to do that, and the closest will win a very inappropriate prize. A poetry prize, I expect, because if I ever get Shelly Cox's autograph, I'll probably keep it myself.
I've become a bit of a supporter this season, although first deceived into thinking I was watching Premier League football when actually there is a Super League above it. But, never mind. I would have never known aboout Gemma Hillier, Charley Wilson or Shelly Cox otherwise.
Best of luck to them.

Alison Moore - The Lighthouse

Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)

Literary prizes are not a viable betting proposition. Second guessing a panel of judges is probably not something I'm going to do again but this year, after the fact, I certainly thought I should have backed my feeling that Hilary Mantel would win again. I was afraid of Will Self- who isn't- but can see now that him winning was not a realistic outcome. Alison Moore's debut novel was never likely to win either but I'm glad it was short-listed to bring it to my attention because I liked it a lot.
It is 'slight' but accomplished and beautifully made like a poem with its recurring images, themes and understated language.
Futh, the main character, goes on a walking holiday after the break-up of his marriage and both his childhood and marriage are recounted in flashbacks. There is also the life of the couple who run the inn in which he stays at the beginning and end of the walk.
He is an unprepossessing character, awkward and somehow secondary in his relationships with his father, his childhood friend Kenny, his wife, the hotel people and even Kenny's mother. He works in the less masculine world of perfumiers, which is not approved of by his over-bearing father, and smells, whether redolent of place and time or those of alcohol or smoking caught on the breath of others, are a central theme of the narrative. He has a habit of checking out emergency escape routes whenever staying in an unfamiliar room and his father bores his mother on the subject of lighthouses during their unhappy time together.
It is an unhappy book with all of the characters defined by their dissatisfactions, the tawdry or unredeeming sex they pursue or engage in and their obvious inability to escape such circumstances. Futh's walk significantly takes a wrong route, doesn't deliver much relief from the life he is leaving behind but the steady rhythm of the sentences draws us on towards a gripping climax as the ordinary and undramatic chapters sustain an undertow of vague threat until leaving us, expertly delivered, through lighthouse references, to a point of apparent no return.
Possibly not somehow big enough, despite Julian Barnes' win with an equally short book last year, to win such a prize but a very good novel and I'm pleased for its author, publisher and for myself as a reader that the shortlist surely brought it to a wider readership. 

BrandosHat

I miss him so much. I had to have a look at what he's up to.

It's the same old story, I'm afraid. He's still issuing prescriptive lists of what we all ought to be reading although they are olde worlde recommendations of completely predictable poets from a tired idea of challenging some perceived idea of orthodoxy. And you don't get much more orthodox than that.

It was ever thus. Men will be men and want to try on what they think are tough guys clothes, like the leather jackets that their heroes wear. But it doesn't look right on them somehow and they are the only ones who don't realize.

It's a wide church, poetry. Everybody can play. Those who try to look 'cool' are always the ones who don't.

Natalie Clein - Bloch/Bruch

Natalie Clein, Bloch, Bruch, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ivan Volkov (Hyperion)

It is always interesting to see which music from presumably wide repertoires musicians choose to record. Natalie is staying in roughly the same late C19th/early C20th but moving from better known Romantic composers to what might be more personal choices, following a Kodaly set in 2010 with this pairing of two composers with explicitly Jewish cultural reference points.
Bloch's Schelomo, as could be said of all three of his pieces here, moves from a lonely searching mood to more passionate passages but it's  unsettled music. If the contrasting moods are in some way compensation for each other, it is not for me a satisfying passion and 'tension' seems to be the apposite word that stays with me from the booklet notes that give detail of where the original texts were taken from. Although in no way avant garde, at least to our battered C21st sensibility, this isn't easy music, its dramas concentrated into bursts and rapidly-shifting directions. Longer deliberations that might dwell on the haunting slower tempi would suit me better but that is not Bloch's or Natalie's purpose here.
The Bruch piece, Kol Nidrei, is formed of two parts- the first (it says here) based on a C16th German synagogue chant and the second on Psalm 137. From 1881, and thus significantly earlier than the Bloch, it is still a more coherent whole, lyrical and inevitably perhaps devotional, and for me more successful. Natalie's most popular recording so far is ever likely to be her Elgar concerto with its gorgeous selection of fillers on the programme, too, but the lesser known parts of the cello library need investigating, too, and she is doing us a service in bringing to our attention, by which I mean mine, these things that I had no idea of. I was aware of a second Bruch violin concerto but not much more beyond that and, as I think I've said somewhere else quite recently, it isn't right for any artist to be known for only one work.