679 Songs

 Playing DGBooks Radio on Spotify, as I sometimes do, it says it is now 679 songs and thus, as it has been for a long time 'over 24 hours'.

It's no rubbish. All carefully considered. I never seem to find it necessary to delete a title. Radio stations can be fairly 'niche' these days, making sure you will hear, say, Dire Straits at least three times a day and two of them will be Sultans of Swing. That failed attempt at 'cool' isn't on DGBooks Radio.

So, 679 x 3 and a half minutes, according to the calculator on the computer, makes 2376 and a half minutes. Divide that by 60 and  it makes 39.6 hours of the best possible, choice pop music. No Queen guaranteed. Tune in.

It will be sometime before it becomes my official Top 1000 but 679 tracks, none of which I see fit to delete means I'm two-thirds of the way there. I'll give it some thought. At first, thinking of it as a radio playlist, I tried not to overload it with favourite artists but if it's shifting towards a Top 1000, it will be necessary to look further into Bowie, T. Rex, Motown, the Magnetic Fields, Al Green, reggae and Northern Soul. Once one has had a thousand guesses there will not be room to say, oh, that one should have been in. There will be no prize for being no. 1001.

Is the fifteenth best track by Bowie better than the best thing Queen ever did without his help.

Yes, it is.   

Shadowy Lives

 It says at the top here, and has done for some time that,

The website is now what it has become, ... It will be about whatever suggests itself. 

I quite the way that from time to time a theme develops, rather than the mere repetition of old opinions and prejudices that have been set out several times before.

Coming to the end of Katherine Duncan-Jones's Ungentle Shakespeare, it is every bit as impressive as Jesus by A.N. Wilson and is doing a similar thing. Both are shedding highly informed and rational light on lives that have got out of hand in traditional re-tellings and idolatry. Germaine Greer was one who, in her life of Anne Hathaway, scorned the 'bardolaters' for who Shakespeare could do no wrong but even their devotion is paltry and half-hearted compared to that of Christians and their versions of Jesus. Wilson knows the scriptures and reads them with an alert scepticism and Duncan-Jones brings the same intelligence to her interpretation of Shakespeare. Implicit in both of their approaches is an understanding that their subjects are human. If they weren't then their work would have been less likely to be relevant. Wilson is Church of England and maybe his ex-wife was, too, but the C. of E. in recent decades has been quite liberal on belief in God and perhaps they have an inkling that gods are the product of man's imagination.

Where the tradition Sunday School Jesus was meek and mild and suffered little children to come unto him, we come away from Wilson with the impression of a firebrand preacher who wanted Jews to be better Jews, not establish his own church. He was a troublesome political figure crucified by the Roman rulers. Similarly, Shakespeare, on account of his sublime writing, was elevated to the sweet Swan of Avon who charmed everyone who met him and understood the human situation sympathetically. Such an account overlooks the litigious businessman building a portfolio of investments, a misogynist with an ongoing disgust towards women and an obsession with establishing his gentlemanly status. Both built up sizeable followings in their lifetimes while both would surely be astonished not only at their influence over 2000 and over 400 years later but also the myths and legends put about by their subsequent followers that have become so widely accepted.

--

One last aspect of the KDJ book is her setting out of the last part of Shakespeare's career before retirement circa 1613. Throughout her book she has very sceptical about the success of the marriage to Anne and she is consistent in explaining that the purchase of the Blackfriars gatehouse with three trustees was a move to prevent the property being left to her. 

She was writing before the discovery of the letter addressed to 'Good Mrs. Shakespaire' which has been dated to the 1600's. With William living as a 'lodger' in Silver Street from circa 1604, any credence given to that letter might need to be put nearer to 1610. The purchase of the gatehouse is not until March 1613. The incumbent there on Shakespeare's death, John Robinson, could plausibly have been in his service.

Anne being in London circa 1610 fits with the idea of some reconciliation that is reflected in the themes of the 'late plays' that were written from then onwards. But it doesn't look like such a complete reconciliation that such an asset was to be left to her. And the famous difficulties of interpreting what the bequest of the 'second best bed' in the will is meant to mean. None of which makes it impossible to form an idea of what was happening. There is no need to explain away every detail in a convoluted way and come up with a story that fits it all in for the sake of it. We don't know for sure and it's best to say as much.

--

But a third title of the seven shortlisted for Best Book in the House is on a comparable theme. KDJ is quick to correct the often-heard truism that 'not much is known about Shakespeare's life'. Not enough, certainly, but quite a bit. Not all of it reliable, as in the case of Jesus Christ. But much more guesswork and assuming are needed if one wants to imagine the life of Vermeer, another raised to quasi-saintly status on the back of the tremendous legacy left in his work. Due, possibly next up, as I re-read the best books I've ever read, is Benjamin Moser's The Upside-Down World, which isn't a life of Vermeer but alongside Carel Fabritius and Pieter de Hooch, he is one of the foremost in the greatest Golden Age anywhere in any genre, Dutch C17th Painting. Not everybody will agree. There is a time around 1720 when European music was doing especially well. There was 1971 when pop music was very wonderful for the most part.

--

On a slightly less elevated level, I'm most gratified that my mate, Kev, has chosen my poem, Romanticism, to read at an ongoing local event where readers recite poems from memory. I said I could thus attend in support and if one was required to perform I could do Rainyday Woman which I do know. Gladly, in what is a wise guideline, one isn't supposed to do one's own poems and one hardly wants to instigate a celebration of oneself.

What I do like, though, is how people choose poems of mine, when required, that are among the best of them. Over the years that has also included The Cathedrals of Liverpool, Windy Miller and Situation. There is something reassuring about others liking the one's I like best. It would be awful if none of my favourites ever got a mention and people chose titles that, in retrospect, might have been lucky to get into print. There are a few of those.

One thing KDJ says about Shakespeare's late plays is how they are 'backward-looking', partly at his own career, like The Tempest. He was only 52 when he died but he seemed to know he had done enough. Again, not imagining myself quite in the same league, I have been spending some time reviewing the oeuvre, aged 66. Poems rarely came in battalions but single spies and they come less often than ever. But I'd rather have one worth having per year- when it used to be four- than none at all. It isn't over til it's over.    

Ungentle

 Ungentle is what one needs to be in literary studies, or anywhere else. As well as less deceived. It's exactly what Katherine Duncan-Jones is in her Ungentle Shakespeare and the book is not only well worth its place on the shortlist of Best Books in the House, it is putting up a serious challenge to her ex-husband, A.N. Wilson's Jesus to be the best book in the house.

What she brings to Shakespeare biography is 'disinterest', in the way Thom Gunn was once at pains to stress, does not mean 'not interested'. She comes with no motive or need to make Shakespeare hers or in her own image. Behind much such work is an impulse to make him like oneself - like 'happily married', 'virtuous', in line with one's own ideology- anything like that as long as one feels some kinship with the perceived greatness.

Katherine has no ulterior motive in noticing what little part women take in Shakespeare's life. She goes into great detail on many things but where many pass over the pursuit of 'armigerous status', the acquisition of a coat of arms, the issue of achieving 'gentle' status is central here. But that is almost eclipsed by how she describes his cult hero, pop star, standing among the young when at the height of his powers in the early 1600's and maybe feels that the customary tributes paid by other poets to the deceased queen and incoming king are beneath him. She is not only deeply immersed in the culture and lesser known work of the time but good enough to bring insight to bear on it.

Who knew- I didn't even though I've read this book before- that Hamlet has a companion piece in John Marston's Antonio's Revenge as well as Twelfth Night having too much in common with Marston's What You Will. There is a depth to KDJ's scholarship that is not to be found in other generally available Shakespeare biography.

She wouldn't have been aware of the discovery of a letter addressed to 'Good Mrs. Shakespaire' in London in the 1600's that has been used to claim that Anne moved to London and William lived with her there, thus establishing the happy marriage. It's not for me to dispute the provenance of the letter but it's not only Katherine that has Shakespeare lodging in Silver Street from 1604 onwards, Charles Nicholl has a whole book about the period in The Lodger. I wouldn't have thought the biggest theatrical name of the day would live with his wife in lodgings. Katherine's version of him sees him as almost itinerant in London, like a rock star on tour, while piling up assets in Stratford. 

One doesn't have to answer every question that might arise about the life but one can take the most persuasive bits of likeliness, one of which is that conjugal relations between William and Anne came to an end in the 1580's. 

If you are only going to read one book on Shakespeare's life, it ought to be this one but it might be necessary to read another one before it in order to appreciate how good it is. 

Gone So Soon

 One straightforward way to measure how much one has enjoyed a book is how long it took to read. Michael Henderson's That Will be England Gone was a quick two days. Not necessarily agreeing with it all, and maybe it lays on the lament for bygone days a bit too much in the end, it is nonetheless engaging stuff, Henderson being in a position to namedrop from high, like Simon Rattle and Harold Pinter downwards.

I don't agree that Nottingham is in the north. Henderson uses the Trent to make his north-south divide and says Nottingham feels like the north. I feel no more northern than I do southern but consider myself from the midlands. The West is bounded by Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire; the East is East Anglia and Lincolnshire; it's around Stratford that the South becomes the Midlands and about Stoke or Sheffield where the Midlands become the North.

I don't agree that Marlowe lived in Shakespeare's shadow. He's been in that shadow since a few years after his death but didn't live in it.

I can sympathize with the view that,

Oasis specialized in rancid stupidity,

but that doesn't mean they didn't make two and a half great albums before Noel ran out of ideas and Liam's gormless swagger became recondite.

I'm not entirely convinced Ian Botham was a 'Somerset man' but he's neither completely a Yorkshireman either, not having been born there, but since publication, he has been awarded the baronetcy Henderson thought him worthy of, ahead of the knighthood, if more for services to Brexit than cricket.  It is Henderson's concern for such gin-swilling, doddering delineations that make one read him increasingly cautiously, realizing that his sympathy for Larkin includes some politics and isn't only literary but in both cases one can appreciate the work while taking exception to some of the attitudes.

And Henderson laces his text with as much poetry as Jeffrey Bernard used to have vodka in his vodka and tonics. It is powerful and engaging and tremendous value for those of us of the right age to 'get it'. But we are of an age just old enough to remember the introduction of the Sunday 40-over bash, the John Player League and remember it fondly. There must have been an old guard in place then who didn't think that was cricket and so, just possibly, we are only in the same position sixty years later in finding the Hundred meaningless. It's only by a matter of degrees that sport is meaningful or meaningless and we are defined in our attitudes by our age as we are by our given names. Not many of those dutifully doing as they are told and taking an interest in the Hundred are called Michael or David.

--

So, onto the next of the shortlist of the recent Best Book in the House survey. Quite remarkably, two of the seven shortlisted authors were married, A.N. Wilson and Katherine Duncan-Jones. The latter's Ungentle Shakespeare is the equal of her husband's Jesus and 'less deceived' rigour. She allows herself some imaginings because Shakespeare biography can hardly do without some but hers are at a level beyond the wish fulfilment with which many furnish their versions, apparently trying to bend Shakespeare into the hero they want him to be. It is deeply impressive and a tremendous thing that, having bought it once, I can read it as many times as I like and look at it whenever I want to. Like now.

--

Already at August 11th, one plays one's way through a summer like Brian Close negotiating the last session of Michael Holding at the Oval. Not as resiliently and ending with fewer bruises but with survival in mind. One knows that September is not so far away but summer is stockpiling its armoury. What happens when there is no more water in one's taps, if it never rains again. I dare say it will. When Aberdeen saw no sunlight for two months earlier in the year and it rained every day, I knew what the story would be six months later. Stig Abell on Times Radio complains about the monotony. Yes, but that's a bit aesthetic, like complaining about Vivaldi all sounding the same; a bit middle-class, as if the weather should entertain us- almost like moaning about wind gathering turbines spoiling a bit of landscape when actually they are trying to gather the power that makes your fridge able to cool your pinot grigio.

If I were called on to construct a religion, I'd make use of water and, if I were a poet worth having, I might fill out a book with a poem that said so even if it wasn't one of my best. 

That Will Be England Gone

It's always worth listening to recommendations or what other people are reading. If it sounds good, one's hit rate is likely to be more than one title that suits for each one that doesn't. One such thing is certainly That Will Be England Gone by Michael Henderson. Ostensibly a book about cricket, it extends into other preoccupations of the author's and, being of the same age as him, they overlap with mine without being a perfect fit.

The setting is the 2019 cricket season but the perspective is much longer, referring back to Neville Cardus and John Arlott as commentators and bringing in almost any of the great players one can think of as well as some less great. With the book's title and each chapter's coming from Larkin, one would anticipate a lament for a world Going, Going if not already gone. By the time one achieves a certain age, one is likely to prefer things how they used to be rather than the way they are going. Henderson is no fan of the T20 or the Hundred that was due when the book was written. We prefer the things we decided we liked when we first found them, not how commercial strategies have shaped them since. Very much the same applies to pop music- maybe all music, television, film and nearly everything.

Beyond Trent Bridge, Basil D'Oliviera, Mike Proctor and Fred Trueman, Henderson has loving things to say about Bach, Beethoven, Auden, Ken Dodd and an England that there was even if it wasn't quite as idyllic as any edited version of it our selective memories might want to provide.

Like a Larkin adherent ought to be, Henderson is 'less deceived'. While not entirely defending Bernard Manning, he cites an appearance on Parkinson on which Esther Rantzen said that 'anybody could tell a dirty joke' to which he replied, 'All right, let's hear you.' Other undermining of received opinion is in a few paragraphs questioning John Lennon and his Working Class Hero status, a record that by now is surely impossible to hear without taking it to be ironic, like Imagine. But for me Henderson exceeds himself in his summation of Schubert,

Yet for all his anguish, there is no anger. For all the joy there is no affirmation...In Schubert's music everything is provisional, an emotional state that reflects more truthfully the balance of our own imperfect lives.

That is what I wish I'd said when blundering into saying I never felt Schubert was down-hearted but I'm not a good enough writer to put anything so subtle into words. When reading a book like this, as so many times before, I'm tempted to think I could do something comparable but over and above the realization that, no, I couldn't, come brilliant things like that. Never mind the informed detail that, whether he researched it or knew it already, Henderson pads out his text with material that isn't padding at all.

He includes Test Match Special in his litany of fings that ain't what they used to be, which is ungenerous. He has mentioned in passing how F.S. Trueman's mask became part of his face in the role of plain-speaking Yorkshireman and it was he, during test matches, who chronically 'didn't know what was going on out there'. Well, get us a commentator who does, then. Trevor Bailey was taciturn and Blowers another caricature so the current team involving Aggers, Tufnell, Cookie and Vaughan are not as unacceptable as is argued here. 

But we are all conservatives now. Henderson might be a more or less acceptable Conservative, his main jobs having been with the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail but he's been in the more liberal press, too. The Golden Age isn't coming back and one day people who are young and impressionable now will look back on the 2020's with the same feelings of loss and regret as Henderson, I and others perceive the 1970's. Except my mother's Best Notts XI featured Reg Simpson and Walter Keeton rather than Hadlee, Rice and maybe not even Sobers.

It's a book that can make its proper reader laugh out loud and also feel like crying but time and its effects are its underlying theme, as it is in so much of the literature that is brought in to such good effect. Researching what other books Michael Henderson has published, there's only the previous title, 50 People Who Fouled Up Football, that must be out of date by now being pre-Infantino and, one might guess, more about money than time.   

Orwell, Auden

One comes away from D.J. Taylor's Orwell biography well-informed but probably knowing less what to think of the man than before. To call someone a 'complex character' is often to cover a multitude of things one would rather not say but with Orwell, he's perhaps a complex character. I'm not entirely convinced by the socialism but these days I'm not entirely convinced by socialism anyway. And the idea of 'secular saint' would be overshadowed by the knowledge of what some saints were really like. Being austere might qualify him as such but it's not what the phrase is meant to imply.

But he got shot through the throat for his efforts and was apparently almost manically devoted to his writing so he deserves some sympathy. All but disowning his early novels, which are fine, the great success of Nineteen Eighty-Four might be some way ahead of what it deserves except for its brilliant insights into totalitarianism. I'd long thought of him as not a difficult writer but his life reveals quite a difficult man.

--

I'm never much of one for the poetry workshop. Any editing process is a private thing and unshareable, being personal to oneself, and I'd much rather wait for the poem to be ready to be written before trying to write it when it is then more likely to write itself.

But the Auden poem was presenting difficulties in lines 5-8. I sat outside for some time trying various options but it seemed never to be satisfactory until the bright idea of leaving them out. It's always an idea and I think it worked. I'm happy with this now. Best thing I've done since the last booklet- which isn't saying much- but possibly a candidate to go on the highly selective Collected list which now extends to 27 poems.

 
 

Auden 

The cigarette he sucks is surrogate
for something more than likely sexual,
the eyes can summarize a likely mate
like something due to be intertextual.

The lines that might look careworn are in fact
a rare affliction or a gift that came
to him as queerly as a lovers’ pact
that turned out, as can be the case, the same

as everyone else’s do – electric
at first but too soon too habitual
to seem more than the sort of magic trick
that might or might not happen to us all. 

 

Fifteen Poems

 So, having idly wondered about my own poems the other day, what better inconsequential thing to do of a Sunday afternoon, while Lulu plays her Sounds of the 70's, than pick over them. Not pick over them as much as see what there were. One can forget. What little time spent reading poems these days is not spent on my own.

I looked through the booklets and, with strictness aforethought, noted those certain for any short list onto a spreadsheet. I ended up with fifteen titles which is a frugal Selected, not the selective Collected I had in mind. Then, to put them in order, I played Devil Take the Hindmost and worked up from no. 15 as the game intensified.

It was in hindsight a game that was designed for Rainyday Woman to win because that is foremost in my thoughts. I'm the last person who ought to be picking such a list but I wouldn't expect anybody else to do it and there are precious few I could trust not to miss the point.

A further session would be needed to extend the list to the 30-40 that might constitute the selective Collected but it's a job that's never quite over, one's preferences in any such list varying almost from day to day. 

It was worth doing, not just the process of doing the list but the little look at what I ever produced in this esoteric endeavour. I'd be the first to allow I have much to be modest about but poems, in a mostly underachieving sort of life, were one of the few things I sometimes wasn't bad at. I'm glad that the list is dominated by later titles. A proper artist improves with time rather than begins well and proves unable to follow up. I'm not ashamed to be the author of,

Rainyday Woman

Fiction

Windy Miller

The Cathedrals of Liverpool

Piccadilly Dusk

Cygnus

Herbstregen

Starý židovský Hřbitov

Tycho Brahe at Uraniborg

Romanticism

Success

Situation

Summer

Kiss

Move Over, Darling

 

Pilgrimage

 I try to make a point of visiting the grave of Rosemary Tonks each summer. Today it provided a good reason to get out of the house. Bus to Emsworth, pleasant walk back to Warblington. Especially good to look upon some water, salty and probably polluted though it may be. The wireless said it's not going to rain until Autumn. Proper communing with oneself, the lines of Rainyday Woman inappropriately revolving in my head as what began as a modest little lyric takes on greater proportions and significance and, unforgivebly self-absorbed, I wonder whether to put my own poems into an order of perceived merit to see how high it stands. And to see where the cut-off point comes where the Selected Poems would reach down to. I'd call it Collected but it would be quite strictly chosen. Which poem would be the unluckiest of all and be the first not to get in. 

The idea of an autobiographical note would be even more vain for a poet of my uncelebrated status. Thom Gunn did such a thing because he thought somebody else would do it if he didn't. And then, many years later, somebody did - in great detail probably far beyond what Gunn had thought likely. But the great advantage of not being noteworthy is that such a thing is not required. As far as the poems go, it's just the poems. If I wanted somebody to study me I'd go to a psychiatrist.

--

It was Orwell who wrote that writers are 'vain, selfish and lazy' and there is something akin to Larkin in his English austerity. Both socially out of their depth at Eton and Oxford respectively, their writing has a candour that doesn't always equate to honesty but it's writing so there's no need for it to be entirely honest.

I think one of the big issues with Orwell is the Socialism. He has traces of the anti-semitism that have more recently been found alongside such ideology and he has snobbery which may or may not be an unfortunate bi-product of the sort of elitism that values worthwhile work. His involvement with the poor looks laudable on the surface but may contain a sort of fetishism. To his credit, like Auden, he was committed enough to the cause to go to Spain in the 1930's but the big umbrella term, Socialism, covers a lot of ground. Keir Starmer and Arthur Scargill both expressed themselves as such. It is clearly well-meant thing but it appears in many forms. 

My first experience of it was really how, at election time, council estates would have Labour posters proliferating whereas 'better' areas would be Conservative. Oh, how I wished that they would all listen in church or in assembly at school and the well-off would vote Labour to help the less well-off and the disadvantaged would stoically accept their lot, be embarrassed to vote for help and do something about improving their position if they wished to.

Not Conservative was, and remains, the obvious thing one must be to be righteous but then one went to university and witnessed the righteousness of the left first-hand and was put off all those beloved fragments of Bolshevism almost for life. 

It's not an easy course to navigate, one's way through Socialism even if one instinctively think it is right. I will continue to follow Orwell's particular difficulties with it, in D.J. Taylor's account, always aware that about fifty years ago, I noted in the special book of quotes I kept that it says in Keep the Aspidistra Flying,

Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.  

 

They are tremendous books of quotes - Shakespeare, Joyce, Roger McGough, Carole King, Bob Dylan, The Beano and more. It is now that one appreciates not having thrown such things away. 

Romsey Abbey

 I got lucky only two nights before the event, finding that Angelina Kopyrina was playing in Romsey Abbey today.  An ideal day out at this sparse time of year. By now it goes without saying that the familiar Bach-Busoni Chaconne and Rach Sonata no. 1 are tremendous, especially played by her but at least until her next new repertoire, I've said all I can think of to say. But I can review Romsey, not to my knowledge having been there before.

There lots to like about it. In the relaxed centre was someone wearing a Gustav Mahler t-shirt. As I went into the Oxfam bookshop, Celebrate Summer by T. Rex was playing. The abbey is relatively modest but provides a spacious concert space in its nave. Following my recent reading of Catherine Nixey's account of how Christianity came to rule so much of the world, I was interested to see John Chrysotom featured in a stained glass window. Perhaps, though, its main claim to fame is the grave of Lord Mountbatten.

There's more to such buildings than grandeur although all the interior is grander than outward appearances seem to promise. Whether it was due to Angelina or not, Romsey rustles up a good-sized audience and, travel being not significantly more onerous than Chichester, I might be monitoring what goes on there in future.  

 Not necessarily a place 'proper to grow wise in' but Larkin doesn't say that such places are. He says 'someone...once heard' it was. It's always a good idea to deflect such thoughts onto somebody else even if one needs to invent an anonymous fictional character to deflect it on to. And I'm not convinced that the likes of Ethelflaeda, the first abbess, in the C10th are good people to be admired without question but they are  exotic and have been dead a long time and that gives them a strange glamour.

The Library Tour

 If it's not quite the Bodleian, I'm quite satisfied with my library. Not for the first time I conducted a short guided tour for a guest the other day. He liked it a lot, the way it takes over the whole house. I wonder how far it is to a bigger collection of poetry books. It could conceivably be only a couple of hundred yards round the corner to where Tony lives, though.

This latest tour was all too brief as I was careful not to want to bore my visitor with arcane collector's items but now I keep seeing things and wishing I'd shown him them.

The great thing for me, living among them, is that my tour is not a matter of being shown things as exhibits but re-reading them. I've not bought a new book for some time because I've not seen anything listed that demands reading so I make use of the stock. There would be no point in keeping them if I didn't do that. If books are great value to read them once they become of infinite value when one can read them, or refer to them, any amount of times from thereon in. How much does it cost to go to a cinema to see a film once? I don't know. It must be twenty years since I've been.

Revisiting Catherine Nixey's The Darkening Age followed on from A.N. Wilson's Jesus in going back over what might be closer to the truth about Christianity after all the upbringing and being surrounded by its culture that is so inculcated in us that we find it hard to dispel. One can suspect Catherine of zealotry as much as I suspect myself in her compilation of evidence against the rise of this vast aberration but it is the idea of 'gentle Jesus meek and mild' that is in the way of taking her point. One only wants to approach her work with the same scepticism that one considers the religion because even if she is preaching, as it were, to the unconverted, I'm not looking to have my prejudices confirmed, only for lesser known evidence in my favour.

John Chrysotom, the savage preacher, and Shenoute, the gaunt ascetic, are two heroes of the book, so crazy in their devotions one might call them 'hell-bent'. Catherine re-diagnoses the extreme devotions of early monks in modern terms as 'depressive' rather than pious. And the story in the end is really about how Christianity replaced Classical culture no less effectively than Greek and Roman culture had come to dominate Europe, systematically wiping out a huge percentage of its writing and art in the process.

--

And so, the next book to catch the eye was D.J. Taylor's 2004 biography of George Orwell.

While the essays might have been unchallenging to do for 'A' level nearly fifty years ago when we could more usefully have done Yeats, he is not quite so easily pinned-down on any political spectrum that is left between left and right. He didn't try very hard at Eton, served hos own interests and possibly could, being there on a scholarship with his parents, who couldn't have anyway, not paying fees. For all that we might have thought of Orwell as leftist but anti-Soviet, he makes for a mix of class distinctions and serious doubts about the limitations of socialism, which we always knew. I just wonder where his sympathies would lie now and I honestly don't know. 

Hereward the Wake

 Hereward the Wake is an unlikely hero of mine, not so much for his rearguard action against the Norman conquest in the area of Ely but for the filthy steam engine we used to see going under Perry Road bridge in the 1960's, pulling the fish train from Grimsby.

But now I identify with him in a more significant way. I, too, stood for as long as I could against the inevitable and had to give in eventually. There have been a few occasions on which

I might have benefitted from having a mobile phone but I liked not having one. Time moves on, though, and eventually one is revealed as being wilfully difficult by not having such a device and however much one reasons that we got by somehow without them in 1971, they have become all but compulsory. So now I have the simplest such thing one can buy and even that has a camera on it.

I had expected a difficult afternoon setting it up, not the 3 easy steps it blithely lists on the wholly inadequate leaflet provided. Whereas such instructions might be easy for those with a certain level of tech savvy, for me it was the equivalent of them being told to simply translate a few basic sentences into Latin. Two hours went by and I was locked into an inescapable circle of getting nowhere so I went by bus and foot to the nearest Tesco Mobile place where the helpful bloke fixed me up with all I need at no great expense.

I'd give you the number here so you could ring me up but I'm not in love with it and don't want to encourage it. Who would have thought that such an admittedly cheap and ingenious little thing would so soon be one of the Bare Necessities. I don't want to be the sort of person for who it is but, once in a while, it seems like I am.

I have admitted defeat with as much good grace as I could summon up. I take more pride in how long I held out, determinedly if not quite as fiercesomely as Hereward. 

Pride isn't it, though. I'm deep into a second reading of Catherine Nixey's The Darkening Age that convinces anybody who wants to be convinced what bad things Christianity did in achieving the status that it in due course did but at least they had pride on their list of deadly sins. It's a similar orthodoxy I've been so unwillingly, if less violently, pressed into. Some of us are not naturally inclined to do what everybody else does.

It's a long time now since Danny Baker said on the wireless that it was him, Frank Skinner and some other celeb that got by without mobile phones. I think they might not have lasted as long as I did. And Prof. Terry Eagleton, the doyen of Marxist Literary Theory, didn't even do e-mail. I was in sympathy with them, whose books I have, whose work I enjoyed. I will still be reading books on the train rather than gazing at this debilitating accoutrement.

It might be a while before it seems to me that texting you is the appropriate way of making contact. I don't mind at all arriving at an age old enough to not want to understand how younger people get by. I'm happy to have understood T. Rex and David Bowie when generations before me didn't.  

Garfield Sobers

 It's been a long time since the last obituary here. The qualifications required to be remembered are arbitrary. I either think someone is worthy or I decide against.

It's possible that I saw Garfield Sobers play at Trent Bridge circa 1966 v. the International Cavaliers of a Sunday afternoon but I remember Gamani Gooneseena and, I think, Basharat Hassan better. On that occasion, the ball was retrieved by a small boy in the crowd- me- after boundaries not once but twice within a couple of minutes and returned to one of them. Sadly, we got home to find that my grandparents had not been watching this televised game and so there was never any witness to my only telly cricket appearance.

Sobers is twelfth man in my All Time XI because the criteria for selection is me liking them rather than being grim enough to pick the best players because I want to win but, yes, he would be an obvious pick as the greatest all-rounder ahead of batter and specialist cover point, Derek Randall, or perfect gentleman amid the apartheid issues of the 1960's, Basil D'Oliviera, if winning was what it's all about. And Sobers entirely fitted with the ethos of playing cricket properly, not in the gritty often Australian way of sledging, abuse and machismo but by simply being better at it.

I don't remember Sobers as any sort of fast bowler because he was medium pace by the time I saw him but one remembers very well the occasion of his six sixes in an over at Swansea. The last of them went out of the St. Helen's ground. Whether it actually landed in the road where Aunty Joyce lived is in some doubt and could be apocryphal but one doesn't easily dismiss any chance of a connection with such a story.

Quite why Sobers chose to join Notts is hard to fathom. Maybe, like me, he had sympathy for underdogs. The bottom three counties in the league then were perennially Notts, where we lived; Glamorgan, where we went on holiday and Gloucestershire where we moved to. I'm not sure how much he helped. Notts were to become a cricketing power in the 1980's with the more pragmatic Clive Rice aided by Richard Hadlee but Sobers brought a bit of class if not silverware.

His numbers in test cricket stack up impressively against any Botham, Kapil Dev or Imran Khan one wants to compare him with and stories of his off-field excursions are not outdone by any Keith Miller, David Boon or other such party animal. Not highly paid for being the best at the sport he was performing in by today's standards, he chose to blow much of those earnings on horse racing and so was never rich but was supported by jobs from the Barbados government.

The most impressive thing, for me, is how, having been the very best at what he did, he said he would have rather have done something else- golf !!!

I can see his point, financially perhaps, but there must be a limit to what one would do for money and golf wouldn't be one of them for me, especially if you are only going to throw it away anyway. It was a life well-lived, blessed with outrageous talent. I don't think he had much to complain about. There's more to it than piling up cash.  

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

The climax of The Dewy Morn is more political than personal, the triangle of Martial, Felice and Godwin seemingly only having been constructed to make a point more important to Jefferies. The squire, Cornleigh Cornleigh, is presented as such a useless article, alongside his steward, Godwin's, venal devotion to duty, that one can't help suspecting Jefferies of overloading our sympathies unnecessarily but, more subtly, the tenant farmers are presented s their own worst enemy in their subordination and respect for a system that exploits them to the limit.

As in a Hardy novel, motivations run deep and over long periods and Godwin's nine year infatuation with Felice is as crucial to his animosity towards Martial Barnard as his martinet application of the terms of tenancy on the estate. Mary, Felice's maid, is an innocent victim not unlike Hardy's Marty South in The Woodlanders and such a plot building to its final dramas is worthy of the Dorset man even if Jefferies delineates good and bad in such absolute terms. In as far as the diatribe on the condition of the rural poor will allow, we are left with a happy ending.  

That  was a few quid well spent, books already being by far the best value entertainment one can have and further Richard Jefferies will be pursued in due course.

--

The temperature outside is perfect. I hardly wanted to come in but it's nearly time for Sounds of the 70's. The return to comfortable conditions, especially with quiet reigning, is as welcome s the end of toothache or the restoration of other normalities usually taken for granted. And, one book finished, a return to Dr. Johnson and his tremendous sense was most fitting.

I had heard it suggested that his Lives of the Poets were dubious. I thought, well, literary criticism was a different thing in the C18th. Fashions change. One day we might be less impressed again by Paul Muldoon's ludic outlandishness.

So, I read a bit of Johnson on Abraham Cowley.  The problem, stated in several different ways, is summarized in how,

by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange; and that writers fail to give delight, by their desire of exciting admiration. 

Johnson's preconception of what constitutes 'nature' might be getting in the way of appreciating the ingenuity but he has a point if he thinks that cleverness on its own isn't enough. I don't think he's far wrong and, of course, criticism is there to be taken or left as much as the primary texts are.

But I progressed to the Selected Essays, 500 pages of highlights from The Rambler, The Adventurer and The Idler, produced prolifically from 1750-60. It can be opened anywhere and it is brilliant, often melancholy in its implications but wise to the consolations of philosophy. Returning to any of those seven Best Books in the House has not so far disappointed and I'm thinking I got that shortlist right.

For the most part he is in pursuit of happiness or at least wondering what is the point. And that is the point. Much of it lies in being active or absorbed in life rather than dilatory but observing the folly of others helps a lot, like,

others...lie down to sleep and rise up to trifle, are employed every morning in finding expedients to rid themselves of the day, chase pleasure through all the places of public resort, fly from London to Bath and from Bath to London, without any other reason for changing place, but that they go in quest of company as idle and vagrant as themselves.  

It's not the highest state of satisfaction to despair that others lead more pointless lives than you do but their example can be learnt from. Avoiding their behaviour reduces your own chances of the encounter with what Sartre would identify two hundred years later as existential angst. There might be ironies involved, though, in how the likes of Johnson and Sartre were concerned about it whereas those so 'passionately' following the fortunes of England - and, especially, Scotland- in the World Cup attribute meaning to their vicarious belonging to such a cause and believe themselves to belong to something.

Paradox, Negative Capability, whatever it is - we are all on one side of it or the other. 

Auden, poem

 I'm not- at least yet- saying this is any good but it's only a few minutes since I said I might or might not sometime see about writing the poem about Auden that I dreamed about about ten hours ago. I just thought I'd see what happened during the Pinot Grigio.

I reckon I can still do it given an idea worth having. 

Auden 

The cigarette he sucks is surrogate
for something more than likely sexual,
the eyes can summarize a likely mate
like something due to be intertextual.
At a European outpost, someone
holds a nervous gun. At home his mother
wonders whether the shooting has begun
while preparing dinner for his brother.

The lines that might look careworn are in fact
a rare affliction or a gift that came
to him as queerly as a lovers’ pact
that turned out, as one might have thought, the same
as everyone else’s do – electric
at first but too soon too habitual
to seem more than the sort of magic trick
that might or might not happen to us all.

(revised 17/07)

Dreaming of Auden

 Nothing quite as boring as other people's dreams, is there. They are clearly the sub-conscious trying to sort out its baggage and anxieties, whether in obvious or symbolic ways, and while it's obvious that other people would dream about their obsessions, it's fascinating when we do so, so vividly, about our own.

This morning, in the last stages of R.E.M., I was back in Linden Huddlestone's sixth form class, circa 1977, and he had set us an exercise to write a poem that was a 'character study'. I immediately decided to write about Auden, sure that I could do it and knowing he had an interest in him. In the way that dreams mix up timescales, I probably wasn't aware that Mr. Huddlestone was an Auden admirer and I wouldn't have known enough about him to write the poem I might now, then. But that's neither here nor there.

I made a few notes of lines to put together to make my collage portrait and was confident I could make it work. But not necessarily before the end of the lesson when we might have to read it out or hand it in. But I was so sure I could do it that I thought I'd be fine saying, no, I haven't finished yet but I'll give it to you tomorrow and it'll be great. 

That was until I mislaid the notes I'd made and was desperately trying to reconstruct them. In real life, more than 30 years ago, I lost a poem, reconstructed it from memory, and then found the original and saw that they weren't very like each other. I was half re-making the fragments of the poem in a bit of a panic, knowing I'd miss the deadline and have to rely on my promise of a teenage masterpiece when I woke up.

The idea of the poem was still sharp enough for me to make approximations of a couple of lines once awake but I didn't write them down. They've all but gone now. I could go back to the start and undertake the exercise all over again. Or I could try to remember the idea for a poem I had the day before yesterday which seems to have gone completely. Either way, if anything came of them I'd put them here but don't come rushing back in expectation. It's rare for poems to realize the idea of how good they'll be. The best are those that somehow turn out to be something different in the process of making them and are better.

The Dewy Morn

My recent return to Coate Farm and the Richard Jefferies Museum found two copies of Amaryllis at the Fair in not very good condition and no copies of Bevis so I came away with The Dewy Morn. 

The title comes from a poem in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1598, attributed to Shakespeare at the time, open to some doubt now. It concerns the fortunes of Felice Goring, her infatuation with Martial Barnard and the wicked ways of the squire's steward, Robert Godwin who has no sympathy for the tenants on the estate.

The first few chapters elaborate at great length on how Felice's great natural beauty is one with the beauty of nature. If it seems overdone then it is a tribute to Jefferies that he can write so much on the subject to make his point so abundantly clear. She is full of love without having an object for it but she finds one in Martial, which seems to me one more of the profound things that Jefferies is capable of that make him a writer so worth reading in spite of his perceived faults. Restless Human Hearts contained many wonderful passages without, perhaps, being a great novel. Felice is compared to a woman's face the narrator had seen at a window,

Upon that face waiting had had set its seal unmistakably. She was waiting- she had been waiting years. No end to waiting. 

She plots to gain the attention of Martial,

Has anyone thought for an instant upon the extreme difficulty of knowing a person?

... People's entire destiny depends upon those whom they know. One's friends lift one or depress one to their level. 

But, maybe even better than that,  

Is it best to have a strong imagination, or to be entirely without it? 

Surprisingly, from the author of fiction, 

An imaginative mind creates for itself a beautiful world; but upon entering into practical life, at every step, first one and then another portion of the structure is shattered till the entire fabric falls to pieces. Dust under foot and bitterness to the taste are all that remain; a void heart, a hopeless future, a weary present.  

It's a melancholy reflection from a very writerly writer of the type that broods long enough on such things for them to be self-fulfillingly melancholy. Except, given a few more pages, this argument in favour of the practical life turns out to be by way of introduction to Godwin who has no notion of anything but the practical and that is what makes him a monster.

The book is to become a tract on the socio-economic condition of the rural poor who are closer to the land they work on than those who own it and, effectively, them. Published in 1884, ahead of any progress made by Socialism, there were plenty of writers making similar points but now that Socialism has come and maybe gone, one wonders at the partial success it had.

The Dewy Morn survives its slow, overly poetic beginnings to confirm Jefferies as an admirable writer if a flawed one. Not subtle, maybe not brilliantly clever but one that it is easy to be in sympathy with. The empathy with nature is idealistic and it is easy to see him as a lonely misfit in a society based on commerce, business and profit. Such a writer is maybe all he could ever have been so good for him that he was and that he is so fondly, if not widely, remembered as such. 

The Renaissance Choir in Southsea

 The Renaissance Choir, Church of the Holy Spirit, Southsea, July 11

There is no higher accolade I can give than my Concert of the Year award and having chosen the Renaissance Choir with much of the same programme last year I thought there was little left for me to say this year. On the other hand, the occasion was their 50th anniversary and Peter Gambie's penultimate as conductor and so it ought not to go unremarked.

The choir wasn't exclusively Renaissance for long and in recent years have ventured into the avant-garde with great success considering what an intrepid undertaking that is. Thus Jackson Hill's bewitching A-ki no ko-e followed hard upon the cool, smooth lines of the Graduale from Victoria's Officium Defunctorum. Having thought I wasn't going to write about it, I took no notes, didn't spend all my time searching for 'les mots justes' and was an unusually passive witness almost at a loose end, it felt like.

But everything was of interest, not least the anniversary commission, Ian Schofield's Songs of Hope, setting words by Maggie Sawkins, an ideal illustration of Peter's words in the very useful book provided, The Renaissance Choir: 50 years, about how they,

sing with passion when necessary, with delicacy when appropriate. 

Split between the two halves of the concert, its stand-out passage was Our song is where it starts- fuller and richer as if that was where it had been building towards.

Byrd's Ne Irascaris is a glorious lament and Byrd something of a choir speciality. One is readily wrapped in its textures, and theirs, before I wonder whether one should just luxuriate in those or ponder such academic questions as whether the pattern of notes at 'Jerusalem' is the same as that in,  And then, if it is, whether it constitutes theft or homage. Three questions prompted by one word in a text. Some might say academics think too much at the expense of enjoyment.

But nothing really compares with or prepares one for the sublime Allegri Miserere, with soloist Jenni Halliday. It can't be helped that it can only have its initial thrill on its first hearing but hearing it a second time was a major reason for attendance being essential. Music at its best aspires to this condition of something beyond knowledge and very few things achieve it so compellingly.

The second half regathered itself through more Victoria, some kindly Eric Whitacre and the second half of Songs of Hope before the contemporary Miserere of James MacMillan, bringing the penitence forward into a new austerity of great depth. The standing ovation flickered and was kindled here and there before spreading to become all inclusive, almost certainly with elements of appreciation for the 34 years of Peter Gambie's direction in it.

I'm not one for the herd instinct but am glad to join a good cause. I'm much happier expressing support for the Renaissance Choir than joining those dressed in obbligato football shirts. Nobody else along Albert Road was wearing a Josquin des Prez t-shirt but I contend that he wrote better songs than those Eng-er-lund anthems. I don't mean to be all haughty about it and I expect the incoming musical director has plenty of ideas of her own but I don't see much Josquin listed in the choir's history and a Renaissance Choir that doesn't sing his music would be like the story of 1960's pop music without The Beatles.

Either way, she inherits a choir in tremendous form pulling in sizeable appreciative audiences. It's quite a prize to have won in what must have been a competitive process to see who sets its future direction.  

The Complete Works of Bach

And so there it is, then. Just within the year of having bought the 172 discs, all of them have been played, if not quite every note heard as I left the room for a few minutes. I finished this morning with some most enjoyable flute sonatas with dogged bassoon keeping up the bass line, and then keyboard arrangements of concertos by other composers. I think halfway through the year it was announced that some further fragment attributed to Bach had been discovered but the definite list of the complete works, lost and/or found will forever be beyond us and so one can't worry about that.

Perhaps it's inevitable that there's a feeling of, is that it, then, like there would be if one read all literature, knew all there was to know or witnessed the whole universe. It wasn't infinite after all even if at times it implies eternity. And, in such a reductive, begrudging mood, one might have to say Bach is reduced rather than increased by the idea one has 'heard it all'. Of course, it's not been inwardly digested. I never did get to the end of John Eliot Gardiner's Music in the Castle of Heaven which becomes a survey of the cantatas more than anything else. One lifetime wouldn't be enough to grasp it all so thinking that one has in any way covered Bach would be a silly mistake. 

But perhaps some of the mystery has been taken away. One was familiar with most of the best bits. As with reading 'all of literature', one would find great things one didn't know about but one does know Hamlet, John Donne, Anna Karenina, Dr. Johnson. One would become accustomed to the mannerisms and ways of doing things of anybody and Bach benefits from a sense of impersonality more than most. The more convincingly one can slip the surly bonds of personality, the 'greater' and more eternal one can appear to be, if indeed escaping them is desirable.

So, other composers will now get more of a look in again and I can check back through these postings for BWV numbers noted along the way for things to play again. 

Racetrack Wiseguy on the World Cup

 Horrific exploitation of readily-duped supporters who have been conditioned into a state of bad faith passionate engagement it clearly is but I'm torn between how much of a critic of the once-much-loved World Cup I'm prepared to be and how much a dissenter from the once-almost-unassailable orthodoxy of Marxist analysis. One wants to be both but the usual liberal dilemmas apply and it's a bit of each.

It's an absolute piece of cake, though, to re-invigorate the turf account. Not on the horse racing turf but on the football turf of the Americas in summer. I was on the lookout for an obvious group game win to pile into at odds on to generate some ammunition. I'm glad I did enough research into Brazil to find that Pele & Co have retired by now and it isn't proper Brazil anymore. While a few 'dead certs' went in, other good things did not and one wants to be risk averse when one false move puts one in the minus for the year and I'm not used to that.

But, working through the draw and how it all pans out after it began to look like some other old, much-vaunted old names weren't much good, it seemed that there wasn't a lot in Argentina's way to the final and only Spain were a danger to France. Patriotism, 'the last refuge of a scoundrel' according to Dr. Johnson, does one no favours and I'm glad I don't suffer from it. 

France to beat Argentina in the final paid 22/1 only a few days ago and the other way round it was 25/1. Nothing but the entirely expected has happened to either of them in the meantime but those prices have collapsed and I can already take a modest profit from having invested.

But you'd think there was more to be had, that we can wait until just before the semi-finals and then cash out one or both bets or maybe even field against Spain.

So far, it feels like taking candy from a baby but I haven't snatched it off them yet. I'm waiting for my moment. One mustn't leave it too late in case they suddenly swallow the lot but one doesn't want to go too soon because there could be odds of more than 20/1 to be landed.

It's not that that keeps me awake at night, it's other things and I don't mind being awake at night. I'm enjoying being in this advantageous position. I've just got to make sure I don't blow it.

Library Discovery

My reading of Henry James ground to a halt halfway through The Ambassadors. I felt I needed to borrow the rubber stamp Larkin had made that he used on unsolicited poems he was sent, 'Why should I care?'

Sitting in my upstairs room, the second half of the alphabet of prose fiction is on my right hand side. Closest to hand is Dylan Thomas, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, very good to return to and maybe I approve of him more in prose fiction than in poems. But Treasure Island was worth picking up and I'm enjoying it very much. I knew how old it was but hadn't realized it was a Christmas present from 1967. It is inscribed to me from Aunty Joan and Uncle Andy, who do not appear on the family tree but were next door neighbours.

A 235 page novel is a big ask for an 8yo and I don't think I ever got further than its first two or three pages, which were a bit scary. I'd like to think Uncle Andy, and Joan who I don't remember now, would be glad to know I'm grateful, 59 years later. It's not my oldest possession but comes in not far behind my dog, Jock, who arrived at my first Christmas in 1959, and is roughly contemporaneous with my Astronomy books that tell me that Jupiter has 16 moons and Saturn 9. At least they were ahead of Galileo who thought Jupiter had 4.  

Jeffrey Turner - A House Called Paradise

 Jeffrey Turner, A House Called Paradise (Chestnut Press)

I am the privileged and grateful recipient of a copy of this limited edition produced 'for private distribution'. If it hadn't dawned on me years ago, when it should have, I'm beginning to grasp now that in the poetry world much depends on who you know. Now that I'm glad to benefit from sometimes knowing such people.

The Chestnut Press take special pleasure in producing these editions on fine paper, elegantly typeset and Jeff Turner is a poet they rightly regard as one whose poems are worthy of such presentation.

Flumen est Arar, Julius Caesar begins a passage in De Bello Gallico, before going on to explain that there is a river Arar that flows so incredibly slowly that it is impossible to tell with the naked eye in which direction it is flowing. Not all of that rote learning done to achieve 'O' level Latin fifty years ago was wasted. That line comes to mind now as almost appropriate to how Jeff's poetry works. It is luxuriantly slow-moving. It doesn't demand anything beyond patience but it certainly rewards close reading. It can't possibly have been poured out in a rush of inspiration. It must have been thought over, finessed and allowed to mature in a way that I'm sure those who enjoy fine wines or whisky would understand.

It is contingent, feeling as if it might be somehow formal or metrical but not being, exploring what might be only to find that the exploration was all there was, like,

                a track that stumbles on, uncertain

whether to find or lose itself. 

That is both a theme and the way the theme is expressed and, as such, a paragon example of how poetry at its best can extend beyond the shackles of the language it needs to escape from. Before too long, this pathway and the house called Paradise that it leads to are both the poem and an extended metaphor for life itself and,

We must take them at their word

And take our chance that this is paradise:

 

One is even impressed with four judicious semi-colons in a 45-line poem. A couple more might have made Jeff look like a campaigner for the preservation of a threatened species of punctuation but they become necessary, if not quietly radiant, in such considered writing.

But, reading as closely as I have, I've gone back several times to find how the mice evoked in the final stanza can be called 'they' when such a pronoun must surely refer to some entity previously mentioned. I go back to those that 'we take at their word', who before that 'meant to stay' and before that were 'whoever built it' and either Jeff has performed some syntactical legerdemain, it's poetry taking a bit of a chance or the poem has been loosed from its moorings. But,

There is no more, they are saying.

No further on to find

Beyond the memory of what never was.

 

Which leaves us none the wiser, then, but with some sense of having been somewhere and seen something. I told you it was about 'life'.  

Sara Deborah Timossi & Valentina Seferinova: Songs of Summer

 Sara Deborah Timossi & Valentina Seferinova, St. Peter's, Petersfield, June 27

Once upon a time I went all the way to the Handel House in Mayfair to hear the few minutes of the Biber Passacaglia in real life so it's not too much to go to Petersfield to hear some choice Ysaÿe. Such opportunities are rare. It's like being an ornithologist going off in search of a not-often-seen species of bird.

The magnum opus was really Mozart's Sonata KV. 454, though, first up and an ideal piece in which to witness the fine balance and understanding achieved by these two friends. I understand on no lesser authority than that of Alfred Brendel that Mozart is difficult because there's 'no hiding place'. As it happens, Sara and Valentina don't need such a thing. My first encounters with Valentina involved her explosive Romantic repertoire, like Joachim Raff, and so it's been hard to shift those first impressions of her but that little local difficulty is surely resolved now after the delicate opening Largo and the frolic of the Allegro with Sara's courtly etiquette embroidered in. The Andante was poignant as perhaps only Mozart can be, the gorgeousness completed with the sweetness and light Allegretto. People sometimes discuss which composers they'd most like to have met. I'm sure Mozart would have been memorable but he might have been a pain in the neck at times. As is often the case, it's the work we treasure irrespective of who wrote it.

The Danse Rustique from Ysaÿe's Sonata for Solo Violin, op. 27, no. 5, was as spectacular as could have been hoped. Surely not to be undertaken lightly as an example of the supreme virtuoso's masterpiece. Quite how the pizzicato notes were fitted in during the tour de force of bowing remained on the outskirts of understanding. Like the Bach Partitas that this music is surely related to, one wonders that the violinist does it with only the standard issue two hands. But Sara is a calm presence, doing it without the extravagant gestures that some either feel the need of or put in for dramatic effect.

Following our latest heatwave, conditions were perfect with the church doors left open and ultimate levels of comfort made for the ambience we might remember as being right for Songs of Summer and Romance. It was quite recently that some 'small-scale' Tchaikovsky was available in Chichester, not that he is ever knowingly small in scope. Valentina opened the second half with more such in a luxurious June from The Seasons, op. 37a, all en plein air and verdant before melting way. Lushness continued in the Three Romances, op. 22, by Clara Schumann, culminating in the rolling lyricism of the Leidenschaftlich schnell, the translation of which belies my interpretation of it.

Manuel de Falla's miniatures in Suite Populaire Espagnole expanded the variety of music further with some rich atmospherics. From the piano dance rhythms of El Pan Moruno, Sara's mute strings in Nana and into the dark heart of Polo, we were left to contemplate the possibilities of things not quite as civilized as Mozart but we also left contemplating consummate musicianship presented for the sheer pleasure of it.