The Christmas Nap

It's gradually becoming clearer what will run where in the big races, with Ireland especially having mid-season prizes for all the big guns to play for.
We can expect Min and Nichols Canyon to win at odds on. I'll probably suggest Vroum Vroum Mag might be worth a go against Yanworth over Kempton's two miles but much of the programme will be best watched rather than fall victim to all the temptations to plunge in.
If the King George comes down to a jumping contest, one might not want to rely on Thistlecrack outjumping Cue Card. I don't want to choose between Valseur Lido and Djakadam in the Lexus. Many will be of the opinion that Bapaume can improve past Landofhopeandglory and there's Vicente lurking in the Welsh National betting at 16/1 asking to be backed each way.
It's wise to sit tight while it's all still ante-post and wait until we can have non-runner, no bet. But I will suggest that Frodon (Kempton, Boxing Day, 2.05) is one of the best novice jumpers, qua jumping, for a long time and currently quoted at 3/1, I'll have that all day to beat his stablemate Present Man who surely hasn't been in with quite the same level of opposition. That's the nap.

If The Professor comes through with his value recommendation, I'll let you know but I must point out that it isn't me that's responsible for it.
 --
And that was him, coming down the line as clear as a bell just now. He goes Vroum Vroum on Boxing Day, too, and when we agree we are unstoppable. 

 

Best CD and Best Event 2016

There is unfinished business held over from last week on these important matters.

There is still one disc on its way but it's hard luck on Venezia 1700 by Thibault Noally because I have a hard enough job on my hands already.
How to go about deciding is the first step. We need to weed a few out. I can console the Couperin disc with the thought that it probably would have won did I not have a recording of it already but, as a disc, it is very unforgiving to mark it down for interrupting the choral glories with less spectacular instrumental interludes. The Mozart is very fine indeed but similar strictures can be applied in that more soloists and less choir would have made it better. The Abrahamsen is the most 'extreme', which is no mark against it, but might not be the choice if one could only keep one disc and had to lose the rest. Which leaves the marvellous account of Telemann that I can't really find any such ultra-critical fault with except that it is not a wonderful cello concerto by a composer of my generation, later augmented with a spectral vision of Purcell rising out of a Berlin-period David Bowie piece.
There are pieces in the middle of Errolyn Wallen's Photography that didn't do as much for me. There would have been ways of arguing the case for any of these five discs but Errolyn's is the last to be thrown over the side of my balloon.
--
I have already dismissed Prof Sir Stanley Wells and those from the world of Shakespeare Studies for their cursory denigration of the Curtis-Green letter in the TLS. We remain interested in hearing from any of them if and when they come up with a reason why Hamnet Sadler could not have been father of Shakespeare's twins.
Meanwhile, how does one compare a great day at the races with a Monteverdi opera.
Namanja Radulovic put in an impressive late bid with his Khachaturian Violin Concerto.
It has to be a completely arbitrary decision.
The one that made me feel best, and helped a great deal towards another record profit for me vs. the bookmakers, notwithstanding that Cheltenham racecourse on a fine day is some way ahead of what Wordsworth said about being on Westminster Bridge, it's Cheltenham's April Meeting, and thanks to Nigel for taking us there and Richard Johnson for riding Fox Norton to the win that tied so many bets together in the novice chase..
--
So, a new record profit, a profit for the Saturday Nap feature and, I'm surprised to find, more posts here than in any other year (which wasn't supposed to happen), as well as plenty of evidence in the award winnersto suggest it was a good year. Strange to reflect, then, what a godawful large affair and very bad year 2016 was for the 'liberal intelligentsia' that I'm allegedly one of. Bowie and Prince were shocking news items before the Referendum and Trump but what can you do.
As well as the Venezia disc, there are Delmore Schwartz, poems by Charlotte Newman, commentary by Stephen Burt on contemporary American poems and my introduction to the Avant Garde for Portsmouth Poetry Society to look forward to in the New Year. And then later, the third volume of Danny Baker's memoirs as well as the very long-awaited Selected Poems of Thom Gunn in which I hope Clive Wilmer will have done some annotating to make the wait worthwhile.
If that wasn't enough to look forward to, the novel Time After Time should be finished in its one-off draft by the Spring, to be read by only the very select few who both want to read it and I decide are allowed to, as well as, I hope, some pop songs I've had a hand in writing.
There should be no need to revert to the stand-by of the My Life in Sport series, which still has running, chess, pool and darts and possibly even my brief career in gaelic football  to recount but that sporting memoir is always waiting to be completed.
Thus, it only remains for the Christmas Nap to be posted later this week and that will have been that for another year.
Best Wishes to Everyone.
Keep the Faith.
It'll Never Be Over For Me.

Today's Times Crossword Solution

Probably the hardest crossword I've ever finished and I would never have done it without the Wordfinder.

The Saturday Nap

Following the successful  two-pronged attack last weekend, the project is now £20 in front to a level £10 stake at the early/guaranteed prices I took and so, with two weeks to go, can't lose. Whatever wins from now on is the profit. At starting prices, however, it is £8.66 down which just goes to show that SP is daylight robbery.
So, whereas we could go for a big punt, it would be nice to win at SP, too, and so the nap is Top Notch (Ascot 1.15).
Those in adventurous mood can join me in a yankee and take on some favourites with Ptit Zig (Ascot 2.25), Le Mercurey (3.00) and Tearsofclewbay (Haydock 2.05). Although I have done Colin's Sister, favourite in the Haydock race, in a double with Top Notch, too.

I will be back to add the considered opinion of much-vaunted local tipster, The Professor, who has done well this week, once he's sobered up from his Christmas outing last night.
--

And here he is on the wire right now,

Indian Brave 12.05 Newcastle . 

He likes second favourites, does The Professor.

Best Poem and Best Collection 2016

I'm very happy to announce what were the Best Poem and Best Collection I saw this year. Those decisions turned out to be very easy to make in the end when at first they had seemed impossible.
It's those subsidiary categories that are giving me so much trouble.
It takes no time at all to announce Graham Swift as the best novel of the year for Mothering Sunday, even in a year in which Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan were supposedly in contention. They never really were, not even them.
I would love to make the reaction to the Curtis-Green letter to the TLS on the subject of Shakespeare's twins the Best Event of the Year for its steadfast refusal to provide any reason why this 10 year old but newly published theory could be inadmissable. But the stalwarts of the Birthplace Trust, along with a Professor from Oxford University, were only able to disparage the idea via Twitter rather than apologize in writing for their inability to dismiss it any more convincingly. That doesn't deserve an award, it is only worthy of  approbation and despair at the current state of Shakespeare Studies. The ball remains in their court whenever Mr. Curtis and I decide to play again. So, I can't in all conscience give it to Wells, Edmondson and Smith.
Neither can I decide between at least 5 sensational discs or even set a method by which I could decide. If I make it that I must say which I would keep if I had to throw the others away, I might have to discard the Couperin in order to keep Errolyn Wallen's Cello Concerto, but it is hardly their fault that I have several other versions of the Lecons de Tenebres.
It is, however, a problem with that disc that the Couperin is interrupted with extraneous sonatas. It is as fussy as that when Errolyn's disc ends with her wondrous reinvention of Purcell in the style of  David Bowie in his Berlin period. And that's betting without the Telemann or Mozart. I just need to give the decisions more time to emerge.
But they did emerge very clearly in some furthrer reading of the poetry shortlists.
Pastoral by Helen Farish was definitely the best new poem I saw this year.
And if the rest of her collection that it came from had all been as perfect as that, it would have been beyond belief. There is no such poet that would write poems like that all the time.
It took a long time to decide between Helen's book, for including a couple of sensational poems; Ian Duhig, who has to do no more than be Ian Duhig to make any such shortlist, and Bernard O'Donoghue, whose collection one wouldn't ever want to put down except that it might just be too relaxing, not quite jumping up and arresting the reader poem and poem. Which is exactly what Judy Brown does in Crowd Sensations. 
I don't know now why there was ever any question about it, it is a thrillingly good book, deep and rich time and again. Only her second book, when the first was very good, too, I no longer think we should be looking to the likes of Paul Muldoon for invention and wizardry- that might have had its day- Judy Brown is attaching words to experience, densely and with charm. She wins my vote all day long.
   

New Acquisition - Walter Sickert

It all went right on Saturday morning when the heroic postman delivered three packages that, had they arrived on any other day, at least one would have had to have been re-arranged. It is now time to stop placing orders for books, discs and even artwork for the year. I don't mind the cost, it's the house room, it's the worrying about delivery and its having the time to do them justice and appreciate them fully.
A picture gets more attention than a book or music in the long run because it will be there long after the others have been filed away. Walter Sickert's Brighton Pierrots looks great in its new frame in the front room while Vermeer's Street in Delft has made way for it by moving over into a corner opposite. I wanted Brighton Pierrots as soon as I saw it in the Ashmolean a few years ago but however many novice hurdles they run at Wincanton and Plumpton, I thought I'd never be able to afford it, nor could I find a print of it available anywhere on the whole of the internet.
But one never stops trying. After all these years, I am still in search of a track called Breaking the Rules by Racing Cars, broadcast in a Peel Session. I will find it one day. Last week I found Brighton Pierrots.
On opening it, I was dismayed by the quality of the poster. At close quarters, the colours looked wrong, the print looked vague and I thought I'd blown it on some cheapjack operation. But I think it's fine. Seen from six feet or six yards away it is better than from six inches and such, I suppose, is Sickert's brush work.
The composition is in two halves, the pillar supporting the stage roof divides the canvas into a close up left side of the stage and the long perspectives onto Brighton seafront on the right. The point of view is from the side of the stage, skewed as Sickert often does decide to see things from non-obvious angles, and we see the sunset, the empty deck chairs in front of this colourful vaudeville act whose fading glamour looks a bit desperate. What a sensational painting. It owes a debt to Impressionism, of course, but we don't let France have it all their own way if we can help it.
So Vermeer is now not relegated by given a rest between Lips & Bananas and Dave Brimage's Rainy Night, both of which are the original. Below Rainy Night are two small black and white photographs of Prague and below that my so-far thriving cyclamen, which is the most gorgeous colour of any of them.
But, to complete this tour of my front room art collection, we must not leave out Gwen John who has occupied that quiet corner demurely but much loved for so many years. All I really want now is a bit of outrageous passion or unrestrained flamboyance from Maggi Hambling to fill a remaining space, to the right of Lips & Bananas and it simply won't need anything else.


--
But the bingeing on these tremendous luxuries must be curtailed. The more one has, the less one appreciates each item. With thirty discs of Buxtehude to listen to, the purchase of Dvorak's Complete Symphoies is put on hold. One last book order was placed over the weekend to augment Delmore Schwartz over Christmas and one more disc of solo baroque violin music is on its way. And then there must be a moritorium. It's not as if I need to go looking out for new things to buy but it's difficult to read reviews wityhout feeling a compulsive need to have them. I don't know what it would have been like if I could have afforded everything I wanted in 1971 and didn't just go into HMV to gaze at Electric Warrior whereas now I don't even have the time to decide which version of it to listen to because there's a steady stream of differently crucial material coming through the front door.
It will take until April to finish the books I have lined up, finish writing my own makeshift novel, hear everything of Buxtehude that has come down to us and exercise some restraint. Making a New Year's Resolution is not the sort of thing I'd do but let's see how it goes.

Mozart Mass

Mozart, Great Mass in C minor, Carolyn Sampson, Bach Collegium Japan/Suzuki (Bis)

Record companies would do well not to get their new releases reviewed too far ahead of their release date. This wasn't listed in the usual place when I first wanted to order it and it was only a few weeks later, looking for something to make up an order to post free status, that I remembered it. I'm glad that I did.
This mass, K.427, is dated 1782-3 when Mozart was in his mid twenties and thus an old hand at such profundity. But it is thus nearly ten years ahead of the Requiem. It emerges from shadows to clarity and, especially in Carolyn Sampson's performance is operatic in its tone and energy. It lies somewhere between Bach's B minor mass and The Marriage of Figaro. 
It is some time since I bought a disc of Mozart but there's always a place for one's first love and here is all of that potent mix of the playful jester and poignant romantic. If it is still put about that Romanticism begins when Beethoven moves on from his first two symphonies, which were somehow akin to late Mozart - and such an idea has been put about by me- I might want to point to melancholy paassages here which reach beyond the 'classical'. Genius is usually not just off its time and for all time but ahead of its time, too.
The busy hosannas of the Sanctus are a rousing finale of glorious proportions after the lively Laudamus te and the portentous meditation on 'taking away all our sins'.
Masaaki Suzuki brings his characteristic 'crispness' from Bach and with the lustrous Carolyn, at the top of her brilliant best, makes something of such clarity and compelling grace that the Best Disc of the Year shortlist is extended further before it is possible to come to any decision.
 
 

The Saturday Nap on Sunday

I just want to put in an extra one here to set us right before the Christmas finale where we will hope to finesse this little game, probably with Valseur Lido in the Lexus Chase although we will mind our bets there for the time being with Coneygree lurking in the ante post list.
Djakadam (Punchestown 2.00) is not my idea of a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner and so this sort of consolation prize, that he won last year, is very much the sort of target he wants to win and Ruby chooses to go to Punchestown to ride him rather than the greater star potential of Douvan at Cork.

The Saturday Nap

Today was never going to be a day to get overly involved at Cheltenham. I have now spent this year's profit from betting and so am not inclined to take too many risks and jeopardize the position.
Tomorrow, though, is too good to miss. Defi du Seuil and Domperignon du Lys are both horses I want on my side so I won't be picking between them in the first. I'm never quite sure about My Tent or Yours, or The New One these days, so the International Hurdle will be another to sit out. But Different Gravy (12.50) is one not to miss and the better price of Wholestone (2.25) makes him a confident nap.
Midnight Tour in the last is one to either play up some profit or attempt to make amends with.

BSO/Nemanja Radulovic

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Karabits, Nemanja Radulovic, Khachaturian, Tchaikovsky, Karayev, Portsmouth Guildhall, Dec 8th.

One can become suspicious of the photogenic artist in case they think they can distract us from any shortfall in talent by their striking appearance. Nemanja Radulovic at first bore comparison with Prince but it was soon apparent that the parallel could be carried forward to a similar level of virtuosity and not remain a merely visual reference.
The title of last night's concert, Fireworks from Armenia, gave us expectations of excitement and bravura, knowing Khachaturian from the extravagant orchestration of Spartacus and the hell-bent explosions of Sabre Dance. The Violin Concerto did nothing to dispel any of that except that it was the andante second movement that impressed beyond the pyrotechnics with its sostenuto reaching lyrical, emotional places that no amount of rapid technique can conjure.
Radulovic communicated openly and happily with the orchestra and conductor in a compelling performance of an excellent, perhaps insufficiently known, piece of the repertoire which would be ordered on disc already were it not for the welter burden of Buxtehude already on its way here. One simply can't keep buying more music when there are only so many hours to listen to it.
I wasn't quite at my best on a day when I'd had a setback in the morning but the concerto and its rapturous reception did much to restore me.
Tchaikovsky's Suite no.3 is very 'orchestral', sharing the theme through out the sections, including an attractive passage for woodwind. Leader, Amyn Merchant, had a prominent part with an extended solo part and the rousing finale, which built once before subsiding only to return even more grandly, gave the percussionists opportunity to bash and bang in a piece that delivered considerably more than might have been expected.
Russian, and Armenian, folk tunes echoed throughout the programme with traces of something like the Volga Boat Song to be heard in the themes from the all-too-short Seven Beauties Waltz by Kara Karayev onwards.
As usual, the Bournemouth put on an impressive show and in Nemanja Radulovic there is another sublime musician to look out for. You can't miss him.
 

Let Joy be Unconfined

I don't have big ambitions but that doesn't mean there aren't minor things to try to achieve.

On Sunday the novel, Time After Time, reached halfway, as chapter 5 was finished in the unrevised first draft that it is only ever going to exist in, which is 25000 words towards the 50000 and, as it happened, it reached a point comparable to Hamlet's decision to act if I may make any such a parallel between one of the greatest works in Eng Lit and one of the worst. So that project is on course and likely to be completed in the Spring.

Another aspiration was to win enough from my turf investments to pay for Ton Koopman's Complete Works of Buxtehude. Its 29 CD'S and DVD are a luxury purchase and one I wanted to earn rather than just pay for.
Today's win by One Sixty, in a handicap hurdle at Leicester, by a head, was as routine as it gets, at 3/1. But it led me to review the current state of my advantage over the bookmakers for 2016 and compare it to the lowest price that the Buxtehude was available for. And, because the gods were on my side, there was one offer much lower than the general going rate so I made all haste to snap it up.

There are two more discs already on their way with every chance of being added to the superlative shortlist for this year's Best CD but this release was from 2014 so it won't be a candidate for that. It might be some time before anything appears on here about it either but it comes with a great sense of achievement, having bought a painting from the profits in September when it seemed this monumental purchase was too much to hope for.
There is another picture in the way, too, in what seems an orgy of winter spending that has even extended to £1.75 for a cyclamen plant that, for reasons I can't say quite why, needed to be bought on Saturday morning.
But it's a big Hallelujah and thanks to all the horses that ran fast enough to persuade Paddy Power to so generously stump up for a Christmas present that is just what I always wanted.
   

Every Trick in the Book

Every Trick in the Book

It might start out one misty morning

with a highwayman on horseback

emerging on a lonely road.

His dark eyes flash beneath his hat

and, for good measure, if you will,

he wears a mask as expected.

What a liberty, the scoundrel

never gets his true comeuppance

but leaves his crestfallen victims

by the roadside tied up with their

own apparel.

                    His mistresses

in York and London do not know

he doesn’t love them but he is

heir to a fortune not in need

of all the bounty that he loots

from passing traffic, he’s only

in it for the devil in him

treats it as cheap entertainment.

The Post Serious

I was quite pleased recently to be told that I am 'a bit outside the norm of poetry commentary in this country'. I hope my correspondent doesn't mind being quoted. I'm sure we all like to think we are not the usual run-of-the-mill, poets perhaps more than most, and it becomes more difficult to say what constitutes the normal as soon as one identifies everyone as individual. But I was glad not to be it and immediately developed the idea of the 'post-serious'.
In the year that the Oxford dictionaries cited 'post-truth' as their word of the year, I'd like to be among the first of the expected spate of new 'post-' usages. I don't think Donald Trump is by any means the first to be 'post-truth' in his particular skewed presentation of the world but he seems to be the one to have given it a name.

Post-Serious would regard self-regard as a bad thing but not let that, as here, prevent us from being guilty of it ourselves. It is certainly not a manifesto and would regard them as one of the many things we want to avoid, swerve, fly by or, if we must, rise above. In terms of poetry commentary, it is a matter of avoiding being too precious, or too serious. By all means poetry, to many of us, is a precious thing and it can be taken seriously but it is a shame to see how earnestly some reviewers strive to say the most profound, insightful and often almost meaningless things about it. I'd prefer to say less rather than try too hard. As has been said in various ways before, if the thing could be described properly there would be no point in writing it. The poem is the thing, as soon as you start trying to say something in appreciation of it, you reduce it.
The Post-Serious is about enjoyment rather than study, about pleasure rather than righteousness, about thrills rather than virtue. It doesn't aspire to anything. It is amoral without being immoral, it has no ambition, it doesn't even want to improve anything.
In pop music, the Post-Serious likes nothing better than records like Sugar,Sugar, Wig Wam Bam, Barbados and the complete works of Abba and is suspicious of Dire Straits, The Doors, anything that attracts devoted audiences who want to discuss it and it knows that Queen are awful.
In classical music, it accepts the light touch of Boccherini or Donizetti, the glorious Water Music or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik  and generally only gives Wagner and Bruckner as much attention as they need.
But it doesn't want to prove anything. Like the Monkees, it's just trying to be friendly and doesn't really want to put anybody down. There is no centre, just the idea of such a thing, and so there is no reason to try to distance oneself from it. The Post-Serious is very happy to be 'mainstream' in order to distance itself from those who distance themselves from it.
As it once said at the top of this website, I didn't want to be a blogger but with a face that suited me for radio and a voice that suited me for the internet, that is what I inevitably became. As an amateur poet, I prefer a good review to book sales because it is art for art's sake. The same thing applies to this ongoing enterprise. That is a seriously Post-Serious attitude.

The Saturday Nap

Last season, at an earlier stage than where we are now, Graham Cunningham said on Channel 4 that it's every Saturday from now until Christmas. Tomorrow is one of those Saturdays, in the thick of it, with four jump meetings full of possibilities and pitfalls. Readily, and quite possibly unwisely, I'll give it a go because when I think of all the books I could have read, or even written, while the horse racing was on, I'll take the post-serious (see above) view that I'm glad I didn't.
One look through Sandown's card made me think it won't be there that we re-invest this week's profit so far. I don't want to be jumping out of a high window if Altior unthinkable gets beaten; I'll happily oppose Un de Sceaux in the Tingle Creek but having had Sire de Grucy's unforeseen return to form rob me blind the other week, I'd rather sit it out. I hope Fingal Bay gets back to the winner's enclosure somewhere but I'm not sure it will be this time. Nicky Henderson has won the novice hurdle on this card for the last seven years which makes it difficult to back Cruiseaway without worrying all day about what Bardd might do. But then the last makes me wonder if I dare put this project almost to bed by tipping a 4/1 winner. One's eyes light up at the thought of what various balance sheets might look like.
Sandown tomorrow is one of the landmark meetings in the calendar which makes one wonder why Barry Geraghty and Richard Johnson are elsewhere. Big races usually feature the top jockeys.
Is Dickie Johnson going to Chepstow to ride Lamb or Cod because they are aiming him at the Welsh National. I hope so. I hope he's not going for Rebecca Curtis' benefit to ride Geordie des Champs because I'll probably include Touch Kick (1.40) in the multiple bet(s).
Geraghty's at Aintree for reasons that will become apparent. I don't know if he'd ever been to Catterick before this week but it was unlikely he would go for the sake of it and so his only ride was worth backing and helped towards the treble that made me glad enough to be alive. It might not be Minotaur (1.00) that he's primarily there for but then again it just might and that looks a confident shout and, on any other day, a sound nap selection.
At Wetherby, Apterix (2.50) is another that won't be a 'working man's price' but some shrewd working men put two or three such things together to be multiplied up and find they are much likelier to win by doing that than trying to find a 10/1 winner.
But, it's sport, isn't it. One's heart bleeds for the poor bookmakers in a market so competitive that the thoughtful backer has it all ways with guaranteed best price, the exchanges and SP announced on ticker tape at the bottom of the screen during the race to show that the favourite has gone off at 2/1 and won't be returned at 7/4 if it wins and 9/4 if it gets beaten.
So Minotaur or Apterix would both be sensible be sensible naps in the style of Peter O'Sullivan in the Daily Express, the only thing that dreadful paper was worth buying for apart from The Gambols, whose best bet was regarded by me in the 1970's and early 80's as something approaching scripture.
But, let's put our betting boots on and go for Doing Fine (Sandown 3.30) because we like Neil Mulholland very much and his winning run hasn't stopped and we like Noel Fehily a lot as well and we like 4/1 as much as we like either of them.