But it will be a good job. The sample copy I have already, with all its errata, looks very lovely and by all means pre-order Calliope, Portsmouth Poetry Society 2014 from here if you wish. Let's make it four pounds including p&p. It might be three pounds fify at the 'launch' on National Poetry Day.
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A bigger production job was the Monty Python pension benefit gig, a genuinely good, old-fashioned world television event. I didn't stick with it all the way through but it still had its moments and such a seminal act is certainly worthy of a valedictory show.
Of the several things one wonders, one that stayed with me longest was whether it had quite so much fourth-form obscenity and if it is really necessary from 70 year old men. If we think we can tell which Beatle wrote which bits of their songs then I think we also think we know who did what in Python. It's Eric Idle, isn't it. And I think all the stuff about philosophers is Palin and Cleese and those are the parts that have lasted best.
Another concern was the number of people from the audience interviewed before the show who had come dressed as the Spanish Inquisition or other celebrated characters. They had come from all over the world, apparently. Who are these people, I wondered. And then I guessed they might be the same people who wear fancy dress at test match cricket, obsess about Glastonbury, queue for days for the Harrods sale or even stand in by-elections.
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It has not been a great summer for British sport so far with Cav and Froome early departures from the Tout, Murray only just making week two of Wimbledon, the cricket in apparent disarray and Roy's young guns finishing bottom of a poor group in Brazil.
I don't remember the Commonwealth Games being such a big deal. I suppose the BBC think they can recreate Olympic fever all over again but Mo is injured, Jessica's had a baby, not all the cyclists are there and we are not so good at swimming. I never was, either. And it was only two years ago and things like that soon stop being special if you try to make them happen all the time.
But I was thrilled to see a Scot take it all the way in the final of the Squash. Not thrilled enough to stay long enough to see if he won but the impact on Scottish Squash should be enormous. New squash centres immediately opened up from Oban and Dingwall to Thurso and Kirkcaldy. Scotland was gripped by squash mania. Scottish squash will benefit from a golden generation in years to come and that is the legacy of having had the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
However, it was not great as a spectator sport. I played squash for one term at school when we were allowed to go to Gloucester Leisure Centre. I was hopeless at it. I only won once. When my opponent had a bad ankle. So not only did I not get much out of watching it, I didn't reckon much to playing it either.
And on the eve of the classic King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, one can only think that if Telescope can be 5/2 favourite then we are not expecting the sort of legendary race that Grundy and Bustino put on in 1975.
Apart from that, everything's fine.
