Fry on Leave

The Osmonds

Unstinting, relentless and tireless in my campaign to make cool the uncool, I was impressed, convinced and moved by Jay and Merrill Osmond on the Johnnie Walker Show on Sunday. And, top marks, too, to Music Magpie, suppliers of pre-loved CD's to those who will love them all over again at a bargain price, for their rapid delivery of the Ultimate Collection.

While everybody else is lauding the Queen film, I can do without that but, 45 years after my sister bought these records, it is time to roll out one of my favourite, contrite admissions, she was right and I was wrong. To be fair, I can't remember particularly disliking The Osmonds but Faust, Lindisfarne, the likes of Medicine Head and Steeleye Span were more conspicuous on my radar at the time.

Would Diana Ross, Marc Bolan or Rod Stewart, for instance, have sat over to the right on a stool to provide backing vocals on The Proud One. 
Of course, One Bad Apple is a pastiche of the Jackson Five but that doesn't make it a bad record. Subsequently The Osmonds were a split personality between the 'rock' efforts like Crazy Horses that brought them in a long-haired, denim-clad, drugged-up audience in Paris who knew only that about them before they had to go out in white jumpsuits, in late Elvis style, and sing the likes of Love Me for a Reason. 

They are not a completely convincing rock outfit but neither are Black Sabbath, Deep Purple or Motorhead, for me. It is energetic, loud music and has its moments but it is the 'ballads' that they excelled at, songs that I'd love to have written for the love of having written them never mind the royalty cheque.

Give me love, not a facsimile of it is the best line but there are plenty of Tin Pan Alley masterpieces that presumably stand up very well without the welling up of nostalgia for an age of innocence still possible then, reported faithfully in Jackie magazine, that isn't possible any more.

One might have forgotten I Can't Stop, that lends itself well to the Supremes' classic hand gesture, and I'm Still Gonna Need You, which I'm heartbreakingly grateful to be reminded of. The debt they owe to The Temptations, Motown in general, and being a safe version of what was already a safe version of soul music is only the same as that owed by Cliff Richard to Elvis Presley, and no bad thing. Some people take water with their whisky.

All you have to do is be is any good.

I feel no animosity towards those of my teenage 1970's contemporaries who are still poring over Dark Side of the Moon but I had got over that by the time of the Chi-lites, the Stylistics and Al Green, which was only a few weeks later. But, get a grip, lads.

I was really a pop music fan in the first place. The weirdo phase didn't last long and by now it's become drearily mainstream anyway.

And then, one moves onto Disc 2, which is all the Donny singles and then Donny and Marie. What more do you want.

I'm not joking. 

Not the Biggest Aspidistra in the World

But the biggest gin and tonic I've ever seen. And it was all mine, if all too briefly before it was knocked over - not by me. Lucky tablecloth, I say. But what a beautiful thing it was, as the climax to a great day, while it radiated all too gorgeously for its own good like the Chatterton of drinks. 
Thanks to Joe Coral for another fine day out, all paid for, including the train fare via the 12.10 from Haydock, finding a fiver on the floor on the train back that paid for the taxi when it was cats and dogs in Portsmouth and then the account had gone up a bit, too, which I think means situation retrieved as far as this struggling, sometimes unlucky, year has gone.

Doux Pretender got out of an unpromising position just in time; Grand Sancy had gone in at Haydock; Politologue wasn't in as much of a race as it might have looked. Cyrname didn't really get into its race but I was credited with having tipped Caid du Lin at 16/1, which I'm sure I didn't. The big mistake was not, in the end, coupling Doux Pretender (9/2 !!!) and Politologue, having thought too much, but Grand Sancy/Politologue sufficed.

Lucky with trains on the way there, the return train with Southampton supporters on their way home from Fulham, West Ham people having witnessed Manchester City helping themselves to 4 and, presumably, some of those from Twickers, made me resolve never to travel anywhere again but it was a good way to finish before retirement into my planned reclusiveness.
These people, who are they - young men in tweed going to Ascot mentioning the names of horses that I know aren't going to win. Older men with adjusted noses and cauliflower ears going to see the rugby union brutality continue now their days have gone. But worst, the obsessive teenagers flicking through devices on their way home, checking fantasy football points. They won't find themselves girlfriends doing that.
If Corals want me to do the celebrity tipster spot next year - and I'll have my price, having achieved three winners and a second out of five in the tipster competition - but they'll have to come and fetch me. I can't see them inviting Rishi Persad back after his efforts this year. Luke Harvey was better than him.

But, thanks, Joe. Much appreciated.
--
Whereas, Carlsen- Caruana goes into extra time at 0-0. They both had their moments but the other wasn't ever out of their depth in handling it.
There is always more going on in the possible variations they are calculating while I gaze at the position as if it were a poem by Ezra Pound. I have Carlsen fractionally ahead, certainly in game 12, but needs must that they go to rapid play because they have full diaries and can't just keeping playing until one is so worn out they make a mistake. First to win six these days could take all year.
--
But, Hold the Poetry Lists.

Ms. Duffy is added to the Best Collection of the Year Shortlist for Sincerity.
And Derek Mahon appeared with me noticing, even though I looked, from Gallery Press. So, we have contenders beyond Sean O'Brien and we might yet have a game on.
And, pressing on, it is possible Murakami will be read, digested and thoroughly considered in time to challenge in the Best Novel category. But the award ceremony might be later than usual to fit that in. 

Saturday Nap - Ascot Special

It all seems possible while you're doing your homework. Going through the card isn't out of the question but having got so close at Wincanton recently, 7 out of 7 is expecting a lot. So I'm leaving one race out.
But even if I don't back a winner, I had a good one today and am unlikely to give that back while enjoying another dose of Joe Coral's generous hospitality.

First thoughts in the 12.20 were very much for Doux Pretender to progress from an easy win at Towcester over a longer trip and be a possible nap but once the prices were chalked up the in-form Paul Nichols's Trevelyn's Corn looked significantly shorter than it might have been so I go in double-handed in the first, taking against Stoney Mountain at my peril. It will be hold one's bets for any further interest beyond the accumulators until the betting gives further clues.

In an open novice handicap at 12.55, I'm with Dino's Benefit mainly because it owes me one after foiling a double last week. This sort of appeal to good fortune either works or it doesn't but, first time in a handicap, the Tizzards might have him in on a very fair weight and it's otherwise guesswork.
I need two options in the 1.30 again and go with Petticoat Tails and Oscar Rose, neither of which are likely to be proper bets and aren't tips outside of compiling an audacious punt.
Politologue has to be the short-priced good thing for the big-hitters, having higher ambitions and bigger things to aim at later in the season that mean he needs to beat these. To what extent I join them remains to be seen but one can't oppose him.
I'm swerving the big hurdle race because it was We Have a Dream that let down my 4 lines of attempted completism at Wincanton and I can hardly let him ruin it twice, either way. The only reason to think he can turn it around with If The Cap Fits is if he wasn't ready last time but he was backed as if plenty thought he was and so early market moves against him this time put me against him, too, but drifting Nicky Henderson horses win often enough so I'll sit it out, when the main course vegetarian option is due anyway.
Plenty of money for Cyrname (nap) in the 3.15 already makes me glad he's in a few yankees and a treble at 5/1. There's enough form from last season to suggest he's very fairly in here for Nicholls/Sean Bowen and he rates the bet worth having, having replaced Modus as favourite without much ado.
The bumper is anybody's guessing game and the market is best watched if you want to have a go. So much of a guessing game that Luke Harvey tipped the winner last year, with the bonus that it drifted to 6/1 after his recommendation must have ruled it out of most people's calculations. I've got Jelski, from the Twiston-Davies yard, the best thing about it being that I took 6/1 whereas it's generally less than that now.
Getting out in one piece is the main objective but I only have to land one of several combinations to make it a pay day or free day out and one can't turn down the generous hospitality of Joe Coral, via the Professor, when it's offered. We may not get the glorious  November weather we had last year but, train strikes permitting, we'll do our bit.

And, wait, I've got the Prof on the wire, just like in olden days when The Saturday Nap was every week up to Christmas and required reading for all students of the turf.
He says,

We Have a Dream. I think Geraghty may get a bit more out of it with the owners' retained rider, Daryl Jacob, being at Haydock for Bristol de Mai. 
And there we have it, the Prof goes in where I fear to tread. It is classic Prof material, taking on a favourite with a Nicky Henderson horse.
As I said to Mr. Henderson at Cheltenham in April - and, yes, I actually did - 'he only backs your horses', to which Mr. Henderson replied, 'bit like me', and then blithely removed himself from my presence.

 

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, British Library

Brought together from all over the place to tell the story of the beginnings of English, one can't be less than impressed with a show like this.
£16 even seems fair enough for two hours of gazing, not really comprehendingly, at these venerable books, documents and artefacts. And I'm not usually one to look for longer than I have to so the serious student might take longer to have a proper look.

If the Lindisfarne Gospels are an obvious star turn and the show ends with the phenomenal, epoch-ending Domesday Book, there's plenty to admire and wonder at in between. Somewhat unexpectedly, even if I had a brief career as a jeweller, it was the Alfred Jewel that somehow charmed the most for me in the absence of - and I don't even know if there is such a thing- a manuscript of the poem Wulf and Eadwacer.

An item of Kentish law code, c.600, was said to be the earliest evidence of 'English', not that one could hope to make sure the people of Kent were behaving themselves by reference to it now. Then Gildas lambasts the Romano-British c.540, who brought on the wrath of God by their louche, lax behaviour and thus caused the Saxon invasion. You can't say he didn't understand cause and effect.
Similarly, Bede reports that the Synod of Whitby in 664 debated the date of Easter, thus bringing about a solar eclipse and plague. We meddle with the Gods at our peril, or did then.
And what a doorstopper could be made of the Codex Amiatinus, the earliest complete Latin Bible, C8th. It would be impractical to expect Amazon to deliver you one of those by post and I'm glad it wasn't our O level set book.

I had been unaware that there had been established an Archbishop of Lichfield in order to facilitate poltical maneouvring and outvote Canterbury, was it.
Offa turns up and manages Mercia to challenge Northumbria's hold on the title. And while we are wondering where the North Saxons were because there might be Essex, Sussex, Wessex and Middlesex, there isn't a Nessex, we might wonder how much further north of Umbria Northumbria is.

It could also be thought, with no academic justification whatsoever, that some of the patternings on illuminated texts resemble the islamic embroiderings in mosques and perhaps Old English script, immaculate as these documents are invariably scribed, looks a bit like Arabic.

Athelstan, as set out by Michael Wood in the TLS recently, can be credited with being that good thing, a bookish ruler and the climax, after listening to some convincing Old English on a recording, is the Domesday Book open at a page about Euruiscire, which is still very much how Yorkshire is pronounced in certain parts.
Sadly it didn't have Geoffrey Boycott's batting average for that season.

So, top marks, or something very like it on a day when a top, top girl meets up for lunch, consisting of a cup of tea and the not-quite-so-distant past floods back not in document form but in the vibrant, living flesh. Which highlighted how the old books, tremendous though they may be, only conjure ghosts and one ought not to forget how good some select examples of the living still are and we neglect them only at our own cost.

With time to pay homage in another room to Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven, listen to Virginia (unbelievably posh) and Jimmy Joyce (wonderful and Irish beyond one's English comprehension) and check out what a luxury volume a 1623 first folio was, there is no way I could possibly go to London on the coach for a third day running tomorrow, not even if Prince, Bach and Mozart were Al Green's backing band in a recreation of Cliff's Greatest Hits.
But you put in the effort and you get the rewards, you really do, and it was worth it. I hope the office is kind to me for three days before the next big, spoilt indulgence of Ascot on Saturday. I know I should be more grateful. I will be when I know I've survived.

Roberta Invernizzi - Wigmore Hall

Roberta Invernizzi, Wigmore Hall, Nov 19th.

CC1 was the worst seat in the house at Wigmore Hall today and I was in it. The singer was much of the time obscured by the gamba player's back but we were an audience who went to listen, not spectators who went to see, so it's a minor point.
The programme of Monteverdi and several of his contemporaries ranged from impassioned operatic arias, giving Roberta Invernizzi scope to demonstrate impressive power and control of the more dramatic moments, to more delicate ornamentation in the mannerism of the baroque stylings and not only the forlorn, bereft mood but happier expressions too.
Andrew McGregor explained to the radio audience, and I know because I sat behind him while he did so CC1 isn't all bad, how in Monteverdi, music served the words which was something of an innovation. If this high, early baroque is mannered then its expression of rage is all the more effective, beyond the capability of unrestrained Romanticism, when it happens.
If the instrumentation was listed as viola da gamba and two lutes, I'm sure it was a gamba but the lutes looked like theorbos to me and one of them was at times exchanged for a guitar, by Craig Marchitelli. If viola da gamba is always a favourite for me and Rodney Prada was very much the part there, it was a surprise that Kapsberger's Toccata Arpeggiata somehow emerged to grab more than what might have been intended as its fair share of attention. Surely the instrumental interludes are only to put in to give the singer a rest. Perhaps not, or not today. Guitar and lute/theorbo by Franco Pavan combined in a lyrical piece evocative of perhaps gentle summer, pastoral reveries and a sure-fire hit for a 'soothing classics' album for those who believe in music as therapy. Even more soothing than the theme from Tales from the Riverbank and, while I'm making completely inappropriate comparisons, I heard the riff from Feelin' Groovy in Tarquinio Merula's  Folie e ben che si crede, which it was beguiling enough to survive with plenty in hand
One might suggest that Roberta's strength is operatic but the finale, Monteverdi's Voglio di vita uscir was the longest, and presumably main feature, unregretful at parting this life, renouncing the world with some glorious abandon before the quartet returned for an encore of more Caccini, information for which I am indebted to the radio announcer, making it unnecessary to wait until Sunday's repeat broadcast to find out.
Gorgeous and moving through a wide range of feelings throughout, this was consummately Wigmore Hall and why one takes the trouble to go that far for a concert. Because it is value, makes for a day out if one can combine it with, say, the item below, and it is the best place to find such things and be there rather than habitually let it pervade the home atmosphere throughout the weekend. It's never knowingly not the choice place to be.


  

Maggi Hambling - New Portraits

Maggi Hambling, New Portraits, Marlborough Fine Arts

Disconcerted to find Marlborough full of paintings by Nina Murdoch, we were first concerned we had gone on the wrong day. It's a great painting Nina does and one might as well use the idea several times and sell it several times rather than just get paid once.
I'm only quoting Don Paterson quoting Sorley Maclean on George Mackay Brown. Lovely poem. What? That one he always wrote.

We needn't have worried. Maggi's upstairs, but surely not relegated to upstairs and no longer headline news. No, not that, either. These are small canvasses, 30.5 x 25.5 cm, and might be lost in wider spaces. There's something of Tony Hancock's quantative costing, from The Rebel, involved here. A 30.5 x 25.5 cm will set you back £6500 whereas the self portrait that greets you, 152 x 122, is £50k.
I'm going to Ascot on Saturday, Maggi. If I'm much luckier than I expect to be, I'll be in touch.

Valkyrie, above, lifted from elsewhere, is representative, unwilling to be entirely figurative but certainly not abstract either. Maggi's signature passionate brushwork only allows the image to emerge marginally, to a greater or lesser extent, as if from a storm.
Everybody will recognize Trump. You'll need to be much further ahead on images of Greta Garbo than me to recognize her 'want to be alone' silhouette. I entirely get the two-faced nature of the politicians, who are un-named and possibly generic because it can't be Jim Callaghan with so many better examples to choose from. Candidates for the model for the rock star included Alice Cooper and Ian Hunter but we might be flirting with specific identities much of the time and a good proportion are self portraits, whether acknowledged as such or not and ghosts ghost about the collection as ghosts, or suggestions of ghosts, often have in Maggi exhibitions.
Self-Portrait, Blushing raises the unlikely possibility that the lady ever would but she's only human.

There are always traces of more colour to be found on closer inspection, deep in the mix like instruments you don't know you've heard in an orchestra. You need to look, you need to stay longer and, once on one's way, one always wishes one had and, it turns out, I also should have looked at the visitor's book but I didn't realize.

And if Mike Nesmith probably won't go to Rio, I might have to miss the other exhibition in Hastings. One can have most things, and do one's best, for seriously cared-about people but there are quite a few of them and completism is an illness rather than a tribute. But one is never disappointed, having dutifully turned up, for a proper painter, betting without the compelling personality, just the paintings.
And, for as long as I can be, I'll hope to be there because this is the sort of art, the sort of painting, that needs to be there, ahead of David Hockney and some of the inmates at Hastings, not all of who are primarily painters.
I've heard Maggi make the point and I make it here, too, by using the label 'painting', as usual. It is about 'painting' specifically, not more broadly about 'art'.


 

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reason why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

WH Auden

one boy very gently off his bicycle

I can only really comment on literary biography rather than biography in its entirety but if there's a better one than Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf, I haven't read it.

There is John Stubbs on John Donne, Humphrey Carpenter on Auden, Susan Brigden on Wyatt was any good. The endless paper given over to Shakespeare depends on pet assumptions so that Anthony Burgess, relating every legend and fairy tale, makes for the best if least rigorous read. But even if Hermione has a head start with the wealth of material avaiable in Virginia's friends, like Lytton Strachey, Vita Sackville-West and Ethel Smyth, hers is a consummately well-organized account in chapters lined-up on various aspects of the life in a beautifully coherent order. 

In a life that blurred the boundaries between the life and the writing, it works like no other could be expected to and is worth reading simply as an example of the biographer's art notwithstanding the goldmine of stories, characters, literary history and Virginia that it contains. 

The highlight thus far for me is Virginia's own account of her driving,

I have driven from the Embankment to Marble Arch and only knocked one boy very gently off his bicycle.

I have a significant enough pile of books waiting before more are due at Christmas, and that is betting without being behindtime on writers like Sebastian Faulks who will just have to wait his turn, but while I don't want Hermione's Virginia to finish, I can see the end of it by now but it is an example of reading's most awful, skewering paradox- that one has to use up and move on from that which one most enjoys.

--

With Carlsen and Caruana plenty good enough to extricate themselves from problems they bring upon themselves, the World Chess hasn't quite caught alight like it looked like it might have done in game 1.

In the quicker-paced world we now live in, it is always likely that the chess title will be decided in speeded-up games so the players can fulfil other commitments. Those days when one player had to win six no matter how long it takes are long gone.

At a much lower level, I achieved 1909 in the 10-minute discipline at Chess24, admittedly with many of the points gathered in games where the position was lost but I had played faster and the opposition's clock ran out. You only need a pawn left on the board once their clock says no time is left and that will do. 

So I gazed at my pair of 1900+ ratings, that might not be repeated for quite some time, enjoyed them for a bit but knew that I couldn't stay in my tent like Achilles indefinitely. Heaven knows, it's not only physical sport I don't do any more, it's pub sport, too, and might even be poetry so one has to do something. So I left 1909 intact for 10-minute games and returned to my long-preserved 1903 at 15 minutes and, of course, very soon ruined it. But if ever I can get it above 1909, I'll keep that and return to 10 minutes. You can see the plan here.

--

At least one can preserve something for posterity there.

Not so in the treacherously unforgiving sport of turf investment.

I e-mailed the Professor on Friday night with the outrageous claim that, at Wincanton on Saturday,

Going through the card is a penalty kick.

and I was right except I hit the inside of the post, the ball span along the goal-line, hit the other post and came out again.

6 winners and a third. Two races covered with two horses so four bets that might have landed odds of over 2000/1, and one of them all but did.

I hope the Prof doesn't get invited to Ascot by his bookmaker like he did last year because one can't turn down such an invitation but it's cruel to do such things to me. 

After- what is it- 9 winners out of my last 14 selections, fate, or, yes, possibly a couple of desperate decisions by me, I'm down on the exchanges when I could have brought forward a life of self-indulgent leisure while the rest of the country suffers.

There's something a bit Virginia about it all. 

Perhaps literature is all there is, elusive though it may be, plus Bach, Handel, Buxtehude and Mozart. 

One really ought to have worked it out by now. 60 next year.

Over the weekend, in one of those moments you might sometimes have, I thought 60 next year and I think I passed into what some might want to call 'late middle age', at best.

And Bells on Sunday was the best ever, an 11/11 special from Westminster Abbey, Stedman Caters half-muffled. Completely the business. Luckily I have realized that I can set a series link to Bells on Sunday on the TV box and collect them, never miss one by being asleep at the abnormal times it is broadcast, and accept that when, in about 1971, I thought I'd never miss Pick of the Pops because it was essential, I was wrong. What I meant was, it will eventually be Bells on Sunday.