Oh, Babe, What Would Stevie Say

Perhaps Stevie Smith should be better known as a novelist than poet. There's lots to like about her Novel on Yellow Paper whereas after her very famous anthology piece, I'm less enamoured of her poems.

Very autobiographical, Yellow Paper isn't very much a novel in terms of plot but, as is being pointed out here increasingly often, it matters little what we call it. It is more a vehicle for some sideways observations on her suburban milieu, the 1930's, church and people that are sort of cynical but in a wide-eyed way. It's difficult to find easy comparisons for it unless its idiosyncracy and tone remind us of Holden Caulfield. But, after decades of wondering what it was like, it's a good thing to have (almost) read it now and maybe her other two novels will be supplemented to the waiting bookpile. 

 

Similarly almost finished is my first trawl through Vladimir Ashkenazy's complete Mozart Piano Concertos which has contained not one minute that was not enjoyment and now, having arrived at no.20, I'm in familiar territory. It's Mozart so it is endless invention, never less than good company and at times either having a good time or tempering the sadness with harmonic consolation. I prefer box-sets of the whole shebang these days, not buying the concerto I've heard and want but having all the others, too, because one can and because there is bound to be other things worth having. They are worlds within worlds, whether it's the Beethoven or Haydn Sonatas, Bach Suites or Schubert Symphonies. While I have world enough, and time, now is the time to indulge in them completely.

 

On a touchier note, I've long been aware of concert hall etiquette and at Wigmore Hall of all places one wants to be on one's best behaviour. I thus find myself seats at the end of a row and keep my note-taking as sly and unobtrusive as I can. I was thus troubled by a lady turning round at the slightest movement on Saturday, not confrontational enough to look directly at me but, wow, she must be hyper sensitive to have picked up any rustle from me, across the aisle and south south west of her.

Right, that's it, then. I put my pen away and remembered a few choice words to say about Errollyn's music from then on as best I could but, ha !!, the lady soon suffered a mild coughing fit that she bravely suppressed as best she could. You see, people in glass houses are sometimes hoisted by their own petard. But it's a worry, the tickle in the throat, the seasonal sneezing. Nobody does it on purpose, though some fidget and distract without knowing they're doing it. I get seasonal sneezing but have been lucky not to have it during a concert. L'enfer, as Sartre knew, c'est les autres.

 

But, entirely otherwise, maybe the Autumn/Winter season is genuinely underway with a couple of confidently backed winners at Wincanton and Huntingdon, very much my sort of racetracks to be wise at. It is to hoped that tomorrow while I'm involved with one job in Chichester, I continue to be successful in another at Chepstow.

The right sort of horses trained by the right sort of trainers in the right races at a proper track, all I have to do is decide on the plan because they might not all three win and however full of it one feels, it is still best to play within safety limits.

Actually, Alan King's horse in the first, at 12.25, shows up a bit worryingly in the betting so I will hedge against the Skelton's horse there but Don't Tell Su, at 12.55, and surely Mr. Nicholls in a Chepstow bumper with Captain Bellamy at 4.16 are the sort of investments that can reasonably be expected to help with the year's profit as part of a vague system that continues to work, year on year.

Funnily enough, just to round off in a neat way, Florence Margaret Smith was nicknamed and became known to posterity as Stevie after the jockey Steve Donoghue. It's unlikely to come up in a quiz but Paul Sinha probably knows anyway.