What a Day for a Dave Green

I can see why long ago, and some people still now, might have thought it was all decided by the stars. That sometimes they are all lined up nicely for you but other days it would have been better to not bother.
It began yesterday, really, with a postcard from the postman saying my latest book delivery was at the sorting office waiting to be collected despite me having several neighbours who have happily taken them in in the past.
Perhaps a bibliophile is a nuisance in the community and they've finally drawn the line at it. But, never mind. I rose early so that I could buy the paper, look at it while Danny Baker whipped through the usual routine from 9 to 11,
Good Morning, Everybody,
It's the Danny Baker Show,
Radiating out across the airwaves.
In the sunshine or the rain 
Come aboard the Danny train,
Kick off yoyr slippers,
Throw your cares away.
What better thing to do
Than have have a jolly jape or two,
Don't touch that dial,
there's nowhere else to go.
Something about a session,
something else about recession.
Dum di dum di dum di dee da dee.

And Uncle Griff was the guest so that was fine.
Since I was going to a play in the evening, I realized that great parsimoniousnes would be rewarded by going down town on a day ticket on the number 21 bus. Which took me right where I needed to be, except the queue outside the post office was ten outside the door. More than twenty minutes I waited, the girl in front of me giving up once we had got inside.
The Elder Pliny didn't like to waste a moment of his day and so would have a slave read to him while he was in the bath, it is said. Neither do I, so I took The Times crossword with me but I haven't finished it.
Remembering to pick up my prescription before coming home, it looked as if things were turning out okay. The racing began in earnest for me with a 4/1 winner but that was not the main event. The vibes were all against Road to Riches at Gowran Park and the market moves proved right. Chasing that money was a bad idea and I knew I shouldn't have done it and all the week's good work was undone on Saturday, as often can happen.
I read a bit of Murakami's running memoir in the bath and then a chapter of George Gissing before going back to the bus stop to go to see Murder in the Cathedral in the cathedral. It's a long time since I've been to see any play and even this time, I only saw half of one. The Southsea Shakespeare Actors have always been a worthy troupe and have put on some memorable productions. However, plays about ideas, I've heard, are not in fashion and Murder in the Cathedral, judged only on its first half, is dull fare, as I expect  Joyce's Exiles or Sartre's In Camera would be if anybody put them on.
Being not only congenitally disposed to being early rather than late for any appointment, especially if dependent on public transport, I was among the first dozen in the queue before the doors opened only to find that the best seats were reserved for quite a few local dignataries. But, with all due credit to the work put into the production, it was one of those that 'made use of the whole theatre space' and so more actors spoke from behind the audience or up and down the aisle than is strictly necessary, just so that the director was shown to be aware of that facility.
There is a stage. That is where the actors go. There is an auditorium and that is where the audience sit. It was a long tradition and it worked. I couldn't bear to move into the other part of the cathedral for the beginning of the second half and then be herded back to where we had been sitting and so left at half-time, thinking that I could catch the update on Auden's Night Mail by some contemporary poets as it went out.
Home by 9.10, I was soon on a train with Michael Symmons Roberts. Liz Berry, Andrew McMillan, Imtiaz Dharkar et al came on and I assumed Sean O'Brien was the big name who would provide the ending. But he wasn't. I'd missed him. He'd provided a few lines to set it all off and they were read by an actress.
When Kate Tempest's Live performance on 'prime time BBC2 on Saturday night' began, I wished I'd stayed at the play. Of course it is poetry. She says it is, and so it is. An artwork is an artwork if so designated by the artist. And that doesn't preclude this shouty, facile performance from being as much and providing the very latest of all the things that get poetry a bad name. It wouldn't be quite so bad if she wasn't quite so pleased about it. I could still hear it maundering on from the front room while I retired back here to the computer to take some pointless revenge on some unsuspecting chess players who were unlucky enough to offer me a game.
But if all of that is all I have to complain about, then it's not too bad, is it. If every day was a glorious sequence of untold pleasures, it would be dull. Perhaps not as dull as a life spent listening to Kate Tempest but it would lack nuance in very much the same way. And now tomorrow is almost here, with Postponed looking all over the winner of the Arc. Let's hope the stars align themselves better on a new day because that one result will make everything look so much better, not for the money- that doesn't matter much- just for the feeling that we are back on track, our explorations of discords and minor keys are over and we can return to equanimity.
There is a lot to look forward to, including presenting an hour of Latin for Beginners, which is in preparation and will be as much fun as The Sooty Show or The Wacky Races if I can get a quorum of an audience.  Portsmouth bookshops would sell out of Ovid, Catullus and Horace within hours if they stocked any of their books.