On Sunday, we had all 4 titles in the Top 35 but then somehow, Walter the Worm disappeared from the Poetry chart and only appeared in the Children's Humourous list but, as ever, Walter performed as well as, if not better than, the poetry back catalogue.
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The BBC Music Magazine continues to disappoint with its dubious name-dropping and reviews only slightly less fatuous than my own. But the CD this month is Rostropovich playing three of the Bach Suites and so one gives it another chance.
This time I was at first disappointed in the BBC, once a fine bastion of English language usage, and then grimly fascinated by this piece in which Kathryn Tickell (surely not in words she transcribed herself) describes the Northumbrian pipes - well, I'm not sure how I'd feel about air coming from bellows strapped around my waste.But in similarly pedantic form, I e-mailed the Observer about the identification of Bach music in the ITV drama about Christopher Jefferies,
At the risk of sounding too schoolteacherly, I feel
I must point out that the music that Christopher Jefferies was listening to
(Euan Ferguson, TV Review, 14/12) was not a Bach cello concerto but one of the
Cello Suites.
but, sadly, the following week's Review was a review of the year and carried no responses to the previous week's issue.
I wouldn't want to be a full-time pedant but I enjoy the occasional foray.
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And I have also been enjoying a year's worth of holding Amazon to their word when they advertised the paperback of Kate Atkinson's Life After Life at £3.50. They have been e-mailing regularly to say they can't supply the title and would I like to cancel the order while ostensibly now selling it for £5.59. Well, no, I didn't want to cancel, thank you very much, I can read other things while I wait, and have. But, on my way to Christmas, I found a copy for £2 in the Heart Foundation Charity Shop and so, after 12 months of Amazon reneging on promises, I'll let them off.
Kate Atkinson is a tremendous writer and a joy to read even when, or perhaps even better when, not much seems to be happening. When anything does happen, perhaps Life After Life will be another masterpiece but I have only just started it.
This Side of Paradise built to a great final 20 or 30 pages as the gauche Amory Blaine grew out of the excesses of his vainglorious youth and was a further example of how little I appreciated so many of the books I read 35 years ago at University and showed again how worthwhile it is to re-read some of the things I thought I had known all about then.
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On the train home today, I made a list of the projected subjects for the forthcoming series here, Why I Like..., due to begin on a Friday evening soon with Why I Like James Joyce. The other nine little essays, subject to alteration, could be- Vermeer, Handel, Horse Racing, Pop Music, Books, Poetry, Shakespeare Biography, 1971 and Gin & Tonic. But, we will see.
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And, finally, another series of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue ends all too soon but, even though now without Humph and with an almost entirely new cast, it is as good as ever, and I'll leave you with this masterpiece of a joke, which is a beautiful thing within the genre,
A woman walks into a bar.
The barman says, What can I get you.
She says she'd like a double entendre.
So he gave her one.
And, By Jove, Missus, By Jove, wasn't it good to see 87 year old Ken Dodd do quite well on Celebrity Mastermind.
What a beautiful day, I thought. What a beautiful day to go on Mastermind and be asked What do they call a road that goes over a mountain.
Pass.
And, By Jove, Missus, By Jove, wasn't it good to see 87 year old Ken Dodd do quite well on Celebrity Mastermind.
What a beautiful day, I thought. What a beautiful day to go on Mastermind and be asked What do they call a road that goes over a mountain.
Pass.
HNY.