King Lear

King Lear, BBC2, 29th May 

I've not always been entirely convinced by Lear. He seems to bring it all on himself to a greater extent than Shakespeare's other tragic heroes and so my sympathy for him is limited. I've seen a few eminent Shakepeareans (Beale, Wells among them) nominate it as the greatest Shakespeare play in recent years, assume they must have seen one or two productions of Hamlet and so don't understand their choice. Hamlet seems to me to be the 'signature' work for a number of reasons - the way it resonates, its layers, complexity and possibilities- and one is tempted to agree with Middleton Murray who regretted that Lear was written at all for its 'uncontrollable despair' but we've come a long way since then and become more attuned to despair.
This new film production, a bank holiday treat, has Anthony Hopkins, Richard Eyre, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent and much more, is set in a modern totalitarian state that looks like London and the only thing more commonplace than Shakespeare tragedy being set in modern totalitarian states these days is me pointing out that it's become commonplace rather than a bold new re-reading. It seems less appropriate in Lear than Hamlet or Macbeth because I'm not aware of it being customary in totalitarian states for the succession to be organized by devolution. One expects centralization, the appointment of one successor rather than three. And therein, I suppose, is his first mistake.
But such a cast, the language, the sheer brutality and magnificence of the thing make it possible for all such reservations to be overcome,
All's not offence that indiscretion finds
And dotage terms so.
Indeed not. If Shakespeare's other tragic figures are reduced by their fatal flaws, Lear is perhaps redeemed in the consequences of his foolishness but much too late for it to do him any good. Hopkins brings forward some of the pausing thoughtfulness from his days as head butler in The Remains of the Day to good effect but is not far enough ahead of Jim Broadbent's Gloucester or his Fool to dominate his own play in rainswept torment that achieves a compelling balance between grandeur and appalling. The set piece scenes on the heath, and Gloucester on the cliffs at Dover, the putting out of the eyes and subsequent blindness that in Titus Andronicus would have been written off as horror for horror's sake, will remain long in the memory. Always a good metaphor, blindness- perhaps it can go round again despite how many times it's been used.
A Shakespeare Concordance would identify, if we didn't notice already,

These dispositions which of late transport you

From what you rightly are.

and we are thus guided to the idea of someone being derailed, even more alarmingly here than when the word first showed up in the oeuvre. But whereas Hamlet was a passive victim of circumstances that he eventually, very eventually, has to confront, Lear is much more the architect of his own tragedy and the victim of his own nature. Perhaps that is profound but the usual excuse for military fatigues, machismo and the abuse of power is only an extension of his controlling nature, his sense of entitlement to overstated flattery and upset at being told by Cordelia that she's not that bothered. There's plenty of people who would still benefit from being told as much.

It is worth noting that Act 5 is shot in black and white. In the same way that poetry itself works on a limited number of effects - rhyme or not, ryhthm, alliteration, assonance, all those things - film also only has a few choices to make and so they should not be wasted but the greying effect of b/w, the worn out atmosphere suggested in the last stages of the drama, is worth the use of it here.

So, I am turned around by this new Lear after all and will watch it again while it remains on the i-player. Life goes on. Albany and Edgar inherit the traumatized kingdom. It is the same news story as is on every week. Another bunch of fanatics plot, scheme and massacre in pursuit of power, nobody wins, somebody else turns up and the poet records it. 

I'd much rather be the poet. 

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A Kind of Renunciation

Ali Smith's Hotel World provided excellent Bank Holiday weekend reading. She came recommended from a few directions and this was a title more recommended than most. Impressively done. One might want to say it's more of a long prose poem than a novel, susceptible as it is to some non-traditional stylistics but we must not be led into the temptation of invlovement with such genre definitions - do they matter, no - and Ali Smith captures life as it is lived by more than one might think, I think, has her heart in the right place and is well and truly among the finest of contemporary British fiction writers.

But nothing is better than the hugely anticipated and not one bit disappointing A Very British Scandal with Ben Whishaw doing Norman Scott some great favours, Hugh Grant not far behind capturing a good deal of the Thorpe charisma and plenty of fine work in support. I watch each episode again the following day and episode two built on the first, especially in the black comedy category. So it's onwards again this evening with Hopkins' Lear to keep me up past my bedtime. I must remember to make some notes to do my homework with.
But after The Perfect Book and, slightly to a lesser extent, it not being mine, First Three Tales, I don't know if I'm suffering some syndrome akin to post natal depression, which is not the deflated feeling one gets on returning from South Africa but something like 'after the Lord Mayor's Show'. Is that it. Another thing now behind us and no longer to look forward to. There is no urge to write anything more, not poems and not anything else either.
It comes at the same time as the eleven months it has taken me to squander the personal best gambling profit I was showing halfway through last year. All gpne, it's all come to nothing, and while being level for eighteen months with several huudred pounds profit to show for the previous five years is a highly respectable performance, one can only see the abyss into which one is steadily dripping money. I was lucky for longer thasn I dereved to be, flattering myself that I was reading it right and knew what I was doing. So continued involvement is subject to a moritorium and, in the absence of horse racing and writing, there is a gap to fill.
Having given football pundits some credit recently for their stalwart efforts, the coverage of Liverpool's trip to the European final was more grimly overdone than any royal wedding. The message was endlessly about the passionate support but nobody, not one of them, foresaw the goalie handing it to Madrid quite so complicitly. While one can admire the fervent attachment the supporters feel towards this inglorious trivia, one must also be glad not to suffer from it. Of course, Fulham done good in the play-off, ensuring a return to a Premiership that will be very hard work, and I did find commentary on TalkSport for a second half of some tension that gave some clue as to how people can get caught up in such melodrama but somewhere, not very deep down, it didn't matter. I cared little more about the careers of players I wouldn't recognize in the Fulham Road than they do about The Perfect Book.
I'll have to keep faith with the overgrown churchyards, Wigmore recitals, this week's abject failure with Saturday's Times crossword having warmed up so convincingly with Wednesday's and re-assess what can usefully or at least enjoyably be done henceforth.
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
There are people, I understand, who take pleaure in their garden and home maintenance. Now there's a challenge to someone who only tidies up once the piles of books, papers and disorderly records makes the house almost un-navigable and that one volume you want to find lost in an unindexed wilderness.
I'm not looking forward to it but I'm increasingly distracted about how the days are filled once the empty consolation of paid work eventually comes to an end. It's the same only different to being endlessly rich; once there is no struggle it's hard to find a reason to do it. Ask the Rolling Stones.     

No New Things is Not Bad New Things

Afer a few days of coming home to find no new book or record arrived in the post one realizes all one's orders have been fulfilled. But one can begin to miss that small thrill. With three novels piled up and waiting, though, and the effect of reading Gramophone every month not resulting in any sort of spending spree, maybe I don't need the fix.
The surfeit of choice in Gramophone has resulted in buying less rather than more, if anything. What does one do in the face of such overwhelming opportunity. Not as much as you might. In fact, the reviews, although undoubtedly informed and useful, begin to blur into each other. The subscription might be stopped in due course, the vanity of regarding myself as a Gramophone subscriber having been enough for the time being.
Karthryn Simmonds' Love and Fallout was an enjoyable read and an extended one, for a poet. I can't imagine that I'd have read a Greenham Common novel without it. It was affectionate satire for the most part, I'm fairly sure, and not just of Greenham but a variety of 'women's issues'. I did wonder if there was one too many threads in the plot woven into the design. They can't all come to a climax together without a bit of congestion but it is an accomplished book, sympathetic, nicely observed, not to be under-rated or categorized in any limiting way.
Meanwhile, A Very British Scandal lived up to all expectations and I have watched the first episode twice already. It took me straight back to the books on Jeremy Thorpre which tell me very little I don't remember vividly from first reading them.
Jeremy's letter about the marriage of Princess Margaret to Lord Snowden is a classic for any anthology of letters and is very much in tune with a theme I want to elucidate from each of several issues here.
That, without being deliberately oblique or 'alternative', it is rewarding to see a little bit further than received opinions. That one can survive on a diet of slightly less and not demand a constant flow of new acquisitions to satisfy an appetite or addiction, that enough is enough and over-indulgence not always necessary. That grimly puritanical, sloganizing campaigns can be gently and affectionately seen for what they are without taking a contrary position.
And in a similar way, the wedding of Prince Harry to the utterly compelling Meghan need not be dismissed in the ready-made terms of righteousness and piety that some regarding themselves as leftist reserve for their own private use. Quite how royal the marriage is is open to some discussion anyway but given the pomp and circumstance accorded to it; the presence of God called upon as well as the Clooneys, Beckhams, James Corden ( ! ) and, of course, Elton; the reverent commentary detailing the horses, jewellery, clothes, children and weather as if all were of sublime significance - and I enjoyed it more the longer it went on because I started to 'get it', I'd like to know from any of my contemporaries, all throwbacks to the great days of the 1960's and 70's, how they can be such devout fans of Monty Python and yet say they don't like this. They're not watching it properly. Try harder. It's worth the effort.
And I'll extend that to football pundits and professionals, the very most dreadful class of broadcaster ever given airtime. I think it reached its nadir a few weeks ago when somebody diagnosed Southampton's parlous situation as being due to them 'not scoring enough goals'. You don't need to be an ex-professional player paid to be on the wireless to come up with stuff like that. I could have gone on the racing channel this afternoon and told them why San Benedeto lost me my last fiver. It didn't run fast enough. It had got to the stage where these people seemed to be in competition to see who could get away with saying the most gormless thing and yet still get football fans nodding sagely at the wisdom offered.
So I think we've turned the corner and the only way is up, only really now waiting to see if Fulham go up before the agonizing coverage of yet another World Cup. Because I heard Jurgen Klopp, or somebody, droning on about their team last week and I thought, no, it is quite brilliant how these people show up week after routine week of unfascinating drama and deliver still further rococo variations on the same tired old theme. Arsene Wenger became the maestro of the incredibly dull interview whereas Ferguson could be a phrase-maker and Mourinho's early work was to be admired but, no, all is forgiven. In a saturated market so full of old rope you'd think no more could be produced, a bit like the campus poetry weighed in by the cartload in America, they insist on producing more. They make prolific composers like Telemann and Vivaldi look frugal in comparison. Hats off to them. The football talk goes on indefinitely and I will henceforth admire it rather than cringe.         

Some Very British Scandals

A Very British Scandal starts as not quite the traditional Sunday evening costume fare on Sunday at 9 p.m. but it was another age, the characters will wear old-fashioned clothes and so it is not far off being somewhere between a Trollope and Midsomer Murders. We will see what Hugh Grant is like as Jeremy but Ben Wishaw as Norman Scott sounds ideal.
Jeremy Thorpe was my favourite politician. Still is, in many ways, for what he stood for, the flair and flamboyance of his style compared to the stuffed shirt of Ted Heath and the wily but clapped-out Harold Wilson. I didn't want to believe it at the time and still somehow don't, however much of a travesty of justice the whole thing was. And, as a dog lover, it only makes things worse.I re-recommend the book to you, by John Preston, as well as the fuller biography by Michael Bloch.

What comes out of it all for me, above all else, is what a fragile thing Jeremy's position was, apparently enjoying the risk of his lifestyle and vaunting ambitions with regard to Princess Margaret while his leadership of a very motley group of twelve Liberal MP's was only based on horse-trading when six of them voted against him and it was no less than Cyril Smith who dealt with the crisis within the party.

And yet, one might still prefer to have the country run by any of Heath, Wilson or Thorpe compared to the parcel of rogues currently in place. Cameron completely screws up our position in Europe and signs off with witty self-regard about having been the future once. Poor Theresa is left as the last candidate to succeed him after all the others backstab each other out of the running but, most poignantly, look at poor Jacob.

Once so debonair that, in my favourite television moment of the last few years, Vicky Coren told him on Have I Got News for You, that she found him 'strangely attractive' - and I could equally strangely see why- all that has now been replaced by the rattiness of someone who thought he had ordered ice-cream and a delicious fruit cocktail but has been served an unappetezing plate of boiled cabbage. Well, no, Jacob. Your friend Nigel said that a 52-48 split wouldn't be final and the debate would go on. At least he got that right. My disappointment only extends as far as not being able to find a price quoted about him being next UKIP leader. I suppose that since he is being aimed at the Derby, the leadership of the Conservative Party, he is unlikely to run in the seller at Fontwell.

But my disappointment does extend further than that.

Every generation seems to find a reason to be 'lost' or 'Generation X' or find itself in a war that claims so many of its most promising people. Except mine. We had it made, with The Beatles, moon landings, Concorde, George Best, liberal education, grants for the few that went to university rather than loans for anybody who fancies three years of attendance resulting in a 2:2 in Creative Writing from what was once a college of further education. We had David Bowie, some of us adored Sylvia Plath - some of us for good reason- we had the belief in progress and things getting better; we had Basil D'Oliveira and most of us got far enough down the line to be comfortable enough to realize that there is nothing you can do with so much privilege.
It might have been due to circumstances beyond our control but I never voted for any party that got into government. If anybody that I voted for achieved office, their responsibility went as far as arranging what day my rubbish was taken away but they do that very well.
But we blew it. It looks to me as if we were prodigal. We took what was offered, were allowed to think ourselves clever, are now sold t-shirts from advertisements in The Observer that say, I might be old but I saw all the best bands (I bought a Jesus & Mary Chain one instead) and are now smug and glib enough to complain about kids. The kids to who we have bequeathed the likes of leaders such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
Scandalous, really.
Saying sorry doesn't seem adequate.         

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

I'm glad Paddy Power don't offer odds on the Young Musician of the Year because I'd have been more than happy to back cellist, Maxim Calver, before the final and even after his tremendous performance of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. But what was to follow was just as astonishing as Frankel's win in the 2000 Guineas.
Lauren Zhang's Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.2 obliterated the memory of anything else. It was hardly a fair race with Lauren riding such a powerful horse with Maxim having set an honest pace on the classy but non-monstrous Tchaikovsky but she still had to nail it. The result was never in doubt, though. 16 years old and a sensation, convincing me completely about a piece that wouldn't normally be very high on a list of priorities. It must be terrifying for established concert musicians to see the talent coming up behind them, not only Lauren but instant superstar Sheku. It was a wonderful concert, top marks to the BBC, notwithstanding the Cliff debacle, and thanks to everybody for it.
--
Meanwhile, taking time out from Julian Barnes and Ali Smith, I found Kathryn Simmonds' novel, Love and Fallout. I liked Kathryn's poems and so was interested to see the novel, a more substantial thing than one might expect at 349 pages.
I might not have actively campaigned for some sort of formalist or 'death of the author', post-structuralist approach to texts but I have nurtured the hope that writing was about sentences, syntax, form and such and less about gender or identity. I thought it was simply my fault that I couldn't tell which bits of Jane Austen were supposed to be funny and which not when actually I found it all quite dull.
But, even if there are more divisions within feminism than ways in which it divides itself from a macho-centric culture (and I'm sure we would all like to do that), one needs must tread so carefully because somebody somewhere will take it upon themselves to be offended whatever you say.
Love and Fallout is an excellent book and I hope I'm somewhere near a 2:1 essay mark if I say it is an affectionate satire. Its depiction of the Greenham Common Women's protest seems to capture its earnestness, its sloganizing, its die-hard commitment as well as its absurdity in just the right measure. I realize I may not have been its main target audience but I'm enjoying it nonethelesss and it's great to see some poets moving so easily into the novel and doing so well at it when others, (me), can only knock out the most formulaic 50 thousand words in order to say one's done it and then hide it as soon as possible.
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The TLS crossword was a piece of cake last week, being music-themed, but the double proved beyond me with a failure in Saturday's Times, not being able to put away 23 down, Come to main track (4), -A-E. I dare say it's one of the easiest in the grid, if only one could see it but I can't. I was in on goal, six yards out, just needing to side foot it in and I missed. I thought I'd seen the last of such nightmares 40 years ago but now it translates into crosswords.
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A very gorgeous walk at Bursledon this afternoon was enhanced by any number of things, the joy of handing out copies of The Perfect Book, more people hearing First Three Tales, much more than that and, what more can one ask for, an overgrown church graveyard. They are all sublime,

Belcea's Shostakovich

Shostakovich String Quartet no.3, Piano Quintet op.57, Belcea Quartet, Piotr Anderszewski (Alpha Classics)

Shostakovich's op.57 has come a long way with me. First taped from medium wave through a microphone in the 1970's, bought on LP in the 1980's and heard intermittently on the radio since, it is one of the few opus numbers I know, having once known a few but not as many as Robin Ray.
It is difficult to overestimate Shostakovich's achievement, given his circumstances, the vast range of his output, the captivating music in so many genres and I'm betting without the symphonies which are monumental and perhaps his greatest work but, for the time being at least, I can't manage a whole one at once.
Although the String Quartet is given top billing here, it wasn't the reason for buying the disc. It was Record Review's 'Disc of the Week' last Saturday, it was the quintet they played, it immediately became essential and is first on the shortlist for my Disc of the Year.
I had been struck by its quietness. There is immense sensitivity in the playing, the wintry desolation and most of all the restraint with which the quintet ends. Of course there is light and shade, energy and emptiness but one is never far away from a feeling in Shostakovich of being 'at odds' with something. He had every reason to be that but it is as much a part of his process as it is a biographical statement. One is aware of layers of pastiche, irony, any amount of allusion or meaning, only really uncertain about how much could be read into it. And yet he explains the piano part in the quintet as having been written so that he could go on tour to play it and see the world rather than be left at home. But all the time one is held by some mystery and bleak soulfulness.
The third quartet is another piece I became well acquainted with as a teenager taking a year out from pop music, which was regarded by such a serious 15 year old as trivial and so I spent that time with Beethoven and Shostakovich, mainly.
If the quintet is abstract and atmospheric, the Quartet no. 3 is quite clealy about something. Written in 1946, it is about the aftermath of World War 2. The viola riff in the moderato is described in the notes here as having 'militaristic obstinacy', a phrase presumably rendered in translation from the original German. For me it has always provided a graphic account of a fighter plane shot out of the sky on its downward spiral. That image is never going to go away after more than 40 years and Dmitri's no longer here to confirm or deny it, or be cagily evasive on the subject.
Familiarity with music like this won't ever breed contempt, one only has to avoid thinking you know it and be open to the more it still has to offer. It can't be downgraded to background music in the way that even Mozart, Bach and Handel can be if you must. If it begins jaunty but haunted, the war is evoked in the second movement, the shifting gusto and disturbance of the third leads us to post-war ruin in the fourth and, if we insist on being programmatic, perhaps there is some rebuilding being solemnly contemplated in the last before a gentle ending.
I know he can do loud to great effect in the symphonies and when required in Lady Macbeth of Mtensk but quiet he does even better.
This new recording will have to be considered with the Fitzwilliam Quartet's in the seminal box set of them all. That should have been my answer in the Culture Fix questionnaire below but I thought I was expected to say The Wire or Breaking Bad and that wasn't possible. I wouldn't dare compare the Fitzwilliams and the Belcea but I'm sure this is every bit as sensational as the widely-recognized top interpretation.
 
Having played this through a second time last night, I had intended to give something else another listen. It is still not a week since the release of the first disc and download that I am privileged to have a songwriting credit on and, having hit no. 117 in the Amazon Album Download chart it is now back down among the also-rans of the list, so fleeting has stardom become. But it seems inappropriate to play anything else after this. It's not that it is so final and not quite that nothing else is worthy but one wants to be left with the feeling it leaves you with. It has great length and complexity in the aftertaste. Nominate me for a bad writing prize for that if you want but I'm on full-time irony duty and so like to think I can say such things when necessary.
You need to get this disc, assuming you've read this far for having an interest in Shostakovich or C20th music. I know there is Sibelius. I'd put up Poulenc against, or at least alongside, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Elgar, Rachmannov and the litany of luminaries from the C20th but none of them are Dmitri Shostakovich. Like anything truly worth its while, he continues to impress and is always worthwhile. Perhaps there is a trick to it but there are some things that one never gets to the bottom of, that are never exhausted. These are two such pieces.   .

With the JDB - picture exclusive

I was wearing my new Spring Collection by Jasper Conran, Red Herring but not, this year, any Armani.

Caught by Julian Paparazzo, as one is won't to be on such occasions, I don't want to hear any jokes about Bernie Ecclestone and his wife because I've done them already; it might look like guitarist Duncan is fascinated by my latest spiel about the Velvet Underground, David Bowie and T. Rex but he's being very polite and then I didn't think Alan wanted to be on here so I edited him out. He isn't even one of the boys in the band, he just does what he's good at which is much of the rest of it.

My Culture Fix

When you're in top form you can not only land the nap and tip the winner of the big race but you can say how the accumulator is going to go down as well.

But The Times has a new questionnaire, the interest of which sort of thing is generally to fill it in oneself rather than read what the celebrated guest has put. So,

My favourite author or book - James Joyce, Dubliners
The book I'm reading - biography of Delmore Schwartz has been put to one side in favour of Ali Smith, The Whole Story and Other Stories; there's usually some poetry lying around, Rory Waterman and Michael Longley happen to be those at present
The book I wish I'd written - as above, really
The book I couldn't finish - Stephen Hawking, like everybody else, and I took a break from Proust about 35 years ago and haven't gone back to it yet. If I ever pick it up again I hope it reminds me of something. 
The book I'm ashamed I haven't read - not really ashamed or else I'd have read it by now but I'm short on Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
The box set I'm hooked on - not applicable
My favourite piece of music - is an essay question. Spem in Alium, bits of Bach, Handel and Buxtehude, Soave s'il vento, Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground, I Want You Back by the Jackson 5, Stop! in the Name of Love by Diana Ross & the Supremes and Mama Told Me by the Jess Davies Band. For starters.
The instrument I wish I'd learnt - any would have been nice but all would have been beyond me. I'm sure it's piano for anybody who can't play it but cello is my favourite instrument. I don't know if I can play the trombone. I've never tried.
The music that saved me - not sure I understand the question so let's put Dear Lord and father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways
The music that cheers me up - possibly Mendelssohn. The Next Time by Cliff Richard.
My favourite film - Noce Blanche, Tous les Matins du Monde, Un Coeur en Hiver
My favourite play - Hamlet
The play I walked out of in the interval - Murder in the Cathedral
The Last TV programme that made me cry - it's never quite cry but I find Dad's Army increasingly moving
I wasted an evening watching - Lost in Translation. It was an afternoon, actually. An hour and three quarters just to hear a Jesus & Mary Chain song inexplicably added on at the end.
My guiltiest cultural pleasure-  I don't think any make me feel guilty. I hope I'm not supposed to put Camberwick Green.
If I could own one painting it would be - any Vermeer would do nicely, thank you.
I'm having a fantasy dinner party, I'll invite these artists and authors - no, I don't think I would
The place I feel happiest - I like Wigmore Hall very much these days. Being asleep is a good one. I'm not entirely happy about the idea of being happy. Cheltenham races if one is winning.
What I'm looking forward to - having just done a new booklet of poems and been privileged to contribute a small part to a record, I have just passed a peak on that graph. I have just ordered the new disc of Shostakovich's op. 57 by the Belcea Quartet, so in the short term it's that. At this very moment, I'm very much looking forward to receiving some photographs of Thursday night by e-mail.
 

The Man in Form

I mean, come on. I'm sure it's hubris and nemesis can't be far behind.

Times crossword today - Angstrom, Apothegm, Omphalos and yet despatched before 1 o'clock.

First Three Tales is a sensational record to have had some small part in.

The Perfect Book will do just fine.

The stars are all lined-up. Let's hope they don't move into some other conjunction or syzygy before Not That Fuisse and then the others run.

The Saturday Nap

In a rare one-off special Saturday Nap at this time of year, one must be aware that confidence can be a dangerous thing in turf investments.
However, Not That Fuisse (Uttoxeter 2.40) is a stone-bonking certainty in the ongoing battle to redeem my minus positioi for 2018. I'm then putting it into a 4-timer with Saxon Warrior who looks the big news in the 2000 Guineas (Newmarket 3.35), Swashbuckle (Hexham 8.05) and I have done Bags Groove (Uttoxeter 3.20) which is now being opposed by the long-term fancy, Verni, and so I can see what's going to happen there.
The road to recovery begins here.

Jess Davies Band at the Orange Rooms

I'm not usually the lachrymose sort but there can be moments when I feel I might like to treat myself. Little Polveir winning the Grand National in 1989 was a memorable occasion. Ridiculed as I had been for sticking to a horse I believed in that had fallen and unseated rider in two previous attempts. Boom! 33/1.
And tonight, in Southampton, privileged to be there for the release of First Three Tales by the Jess Davies Band, one's cup almost runneth over. Why wouldn't a poete maudit, rapidly overtaking his sell-by date, want to find a rock'n'roll band, or even a country one, that doesn't need but will accept a helping hand. 
The great thing about co-writing songs is that your name is attached to all the brilliant things that the other writer did and it's only Jess and me who know who did what. I can't even remember now. Most of it is hers, I reckon, but I am in there somewhere.
It was a beautiful evening. Impossible to ask for anything more. I'm thrilled about the whole thing and I take some thrilling these days.
Pictures to follow.

Oh, Babe, it's the JDB

If you can get to Southampton tomorrow night, by all means come to the Jess Davies Band event as per their Facebook site under Recommended here. I've looked at the Orange Rooms website and it looks completely mortifying to a 58 year old but one must be brave and the gig won't necessarily be overrun by teenagers spending their student loans on shots of vodka.

First Three Tales will be available there, then released on Friday and be on i-tunes and Spotify, too.
It was once inconceivable that the first time my name appeared on a pop record, if ever, it would be in the Country genre but that's fine. Genre is neither here nor there and my only preference would be to be in no genre at all.
--
Regular readers might be awaiting my review or article on Rory Waterman's poems and those of his father, Andrew. That might be still to come but the pace is slackening at DG Books and the necessity of passing comment here on anything and everything that I come across is less imperative than it was.
Both of the Watermen are fine poets and to be admired but if the TLS review of Rory's Sarajevo Roses led me to believe he might be added to the super league of living poets whose books are essential, maybe he's not quite that. Enjoyable, sympathetic and admirable though the poems consistently are.
But it did prompt the question of which living poets are 'essential' to me, then. Who can't publish a book without me having to order a copy.
Admired but not essential are major names like Paul Muldoon, Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion and Simon Armitage, a list that includes the last two Poets Laureate and the next.
But those whose books will be ordered unquestioningly until further notice, in no particular order, are Don Paterson, Julia Copus, Derek Mahon, August Kleinzahler (although the latest two titles look suspiciously like re-packaged Selecteds), Martin Mooney, Caitriona O'Reilly and, I dare say, the two Kathryns, Gray and Simmonds, plus Sean O'Brien and Roddy Lumsden. I said it was 'in no particular order'. But that doesn't mean they are the essential poets currently writing, they are just those that, in Facebook terms, I'm following.
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But there is such a thing as a kind of post-natal depression, a need to blank it all out, after finishing a 'book', however minor it is. Thom Gunn said he couldn't start writing poems again after publishing a book and so put the finished book away and continued writing before going to press.
It sounds almighty precious to say I can't follow up The Perfect Book but writing a poem is the last thing on my mind since editing that to a standstill and then still finding things in it I should have addressed.
What was the point. Readers have been very kind about it, it would be impolite to be otherwise and, yes, they are generous to say it is better than what went before but I still quite like several things from many years ago. Moving determindely into harder irony doesn't always make for better poetry. Maybe it's not just that, then.
It's all very well but, really, is that all there is to it. Where does it go from there. Having tried to write poems that embraced cliché rather than try to avoid it but fall into it anyway, the only way to transcend anything properly is to leave it behind, like I did with sport.
But it would be far too grandiose to announce any such thing. I'm sure there will be another poem along one day and I'll be there for the JDB if ever they want a song idea. I am forever in their debt for using my words once.
Meanwhile, it's not as if the world is over with yet. The shame of not finishing last Saturday's Times crossword means that next weekend, the effort must be re-doubled. I'll sit on very respectable chess ratings at Chess24 and hope to carefully plot my way through the summer horse racing by avoiding the so-called big issues of flat racing, an industry so boxed-off by cartels that it's more a subject for players of Monoploy than sport. The Skeltons are likely to be helping themselves in some low-wattage summer jump racing, Dan will be leading the jockey's table in September and all one has to do is be on a good percentage of those winners that put him there.