Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

The TLS, for which by now you must know my subscription is constantly under review, has saved its skin again. A tremendous piece this week by James Mumford explains how Jude, Tess, The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Return of the Native all subvert Bible stories. If you already thought Thomas Hardy was clever, multiply that up again. It is the very stuff of literary studies to discover that a work is not quite what it seems but is something more or entirely different.
The essay is worth the entrance money alone, without Stanley Wells's letter inevitably providing learned reaction to last week's Shakespeare item.
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In a piece of remiss planning, I raced to the end of Tony Visconti's autobiography, that made me want to be a record producer more than a Tai Chi teacher or cocaine addict, to leave myself bereft of new books to read over the Bank Holiday weekend. The recent Visa statement with so few debits on it should have been as warning. The remnants are long abandoned and may not be picked up again- the Delmore Schwartz biography, Six Four, The Years, etc. so I might re-read Gatsby again, following this week's Fitzgerald programme, or try to remember which other titles I thought I might return to. There's no point storing them in a three-bedroom house if you never look at them again.
I have visited the charity shops in the hope of turning up a likely candidate but the readers near where I work don't give away the same sort of books that those near Oxfam in Marylebone High Street. So I picked up a Fairport Convention CD for a pound only to be told I could have to for a pound. Looking again, it was either Maria Callas or Olivia Newton-John. If Not for You beat Puccini in a tight finish.
Flicking through the Olivia singles, leaving out the cover versions except for Amoureuse, listening in my new role of studio maestro, I wonder if re-mastering is always a good thing. Some records sound a bit 'thin' nearly 50 years on, played on equipment they weren't designed for. Great records, of course, but they were made for medium wave and vinyl singles radio rather than treatment that hadn't been thought of in those innocent days. The Fairports come out better, and Si Tu Dois Partir is never less than enormous fun. It's just that the blokes sing in that time-honoured folky way that folky blokes sing and one would prefer more Sandy Denny.
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The enthusiastic presenter on Radio 5 through the night, covering the council elections, had never heard of 'Dead Cat Bounce'. Do they teach them anything at University these days.
It was, of course, with reference to the perceived Liberal revival. But if you can't revive when standing against these two 'big' parties at the moment you never will. I wanted to vote Whig.
Ken Clarke on Question Time, hardly concealing his glee, pointed out that it was the European Research Group's fault we hadn't left the EU yet, but we still haven't so that's fine.
What I want to know from the potential Sensible Party of the centre, inheritors of the mantle of Roy Jenkins, is why they are still divided just as the so-called 'right' and 'left' are. The sensible centre is not about the Liberals and the dreadfully-named Change UK not being able to work together. The point is they surely must because with all others shooting off into the wild weirdness of dogma, doctrine, indecision or the inability to defend against accusations of anti-Semitism, there must be an open goal waiting to be shot at, the same open goal that the SDP somehow missed in the early 80's.
So, everybody from Hilary Benn, through the base percentage of the Liberal vote, the Independant Group - Chukka, Heidi and their mates, Ken Clarke and Amber Rudd, what's the problem.
We have seen the political system melt down under the pressure of an ostensibly fairly simple question that proved not to be. None of the unrepentant stalwarts, whether Corbyn, Jacob, Farage, UKIP, DUP, Boris or even the subtly re-invented Gove, and apparently not the scarred and weary Theresa, are capable of sorting it out, so why not do what they can't do and forget about party loyalty, tradition and what went before and join together.
I realize it can't actually be called the Sensible Party but at least that's a better name than Change UK, which is only splitting the Liberal vote as it stands. I never thought I'd say this but I'll vote for a Conservative. If they represent a party that doesn't include some of the other Conservatives.