Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

The First Night of the Proms and thank heavens for it. BBC4 on Friday nights has been essential viewing for a few weeks with the Good Old Days and the indefatiguable Leonard Sachs but the Elgar Cello Concerto is a cut above Terry Scott doing his schoolboy act from 1974. With the Elgar being only the first of ten cello concertos in the Proms programme this year, there is for the next six weeks at least some landmark, some beacon to give at least the appearance of stability and worthiness in these unstable times.

Which is not necessarily to be said for my trial subscription to the TLS. Taken out so that I could follow the continuing debate generated by the Shakespeare twins theory, by the time the administrative section had processed the order what little response the idea sparked in the letters page was over. A few dignitaries from the high end of Shakespeare Studies derided the idea via the minimalist medium of Twitter without attempting to refute it and I'm left with 10 weeks' worth of highbrow charades, the letters page in particular being a pastiche of arcane point scoring that one imagines conversations between Oxbridge dons would be like if written by Peter Cook. So, I don't know whether to let the subscription stand or abandon hope that it will ever start to be of more than passing interest.

Another thing that could be better understood as pastiche is David Mitchell's Slade House. A disappointing blend of Murakami, Tolkein, theosophy and mystery, I need someone to explain why it is any good because, as an introduction to Mitchell's previous books, it has done nothing to make me want to read more. And so the newly arrived Sean O'Brien novel will be followed by Stendhal, who I first meant to read about 40 years ago but never quite got round to it.

And something else that needs explaining, although I apologize for mentioning football in this usually football-free zone. Yes, Wales did splendidly in the European Championships and Chris Coleman's reputation is at an all-time high, whereas England outdid any previous low that England have achieved with the performance against Iceland but is this black and white, binary differentiation of the two teams entirely accurate in the light of the result between the two sides in the group stage, when it was a genuine, competitive match that 'mattered'. One might have thought that such a recent win against such a wonderful side as Wales didn't make England quite such a deadbeat lost cause. But, yes, v. Iceland, they were rubbish and a team with that much talent playing so badly is most often a sign that they don't feel like it, as per Chelsea once the players had taken against Mourinho.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the poems for South 54 are duly selected and a good bunch of poems they are, too. The more you look at them, the more you like them and one is only sorry that so many have to be left out. But the reading to launch the magazine, in the Square Tower, Portsmouth, is a date for anybody's diary who is nearby and interested. I suspect that date will be Thurs October 20th but will confirm that later.