Days Of Heaven, Days Of Thunder

I sat last Friday in the bar at Royal St. David's Golf Club, Harlech, nursing (not very tenderly I would have to confess) a pint of Guinness and conversing with my great friend Big Will Macfarlane. We had just played eighteen holes in decent weather (a bit of breeze and a tad on the cold side but mercifully rain-free) on the magnificent links. I've raved about the course before but it's worth reiterating - bloody brilliant.

Anyway the point is this - from my vantage point in the bar, the door framed a view of the eighteenth green with the huge dunes in the background. I permitted myself a grin of self-satisfaction and thought, 'Days of Heaven - life's been good to me so far'. 

Not a bad back-drop

Which rather brings me round to last night as I enjoyed the bar-room joviality at Pype Hayes with my mates. We are growing old together with as little dignity as decorum permits. I had played passably well at Harlech, which fact made my dismal efforts yesterday all the harder to bear. I had felt thunderously angry towards myself but as I glanced around those jovial faces, known to me for decades from rugby and cricket fields, I thought to myself, 'Days of Thunder - life's been good to me so far'. 

Another Day, Another Film

This blog is in danger of being taken over by my estimations of various films. Sorry about that but I do watch a fair number of movies and I find the political world so tawdry that it is difficult to comment upon it. Difficult, that is, in the pain it affords me to begin thinking about it. But there is, even in my limited world, rather more than films and politics. That is true - I realise this as I type it. So never mind that latest film (of which more anon) here is a scattergun smorgasbord of what is going on in the Pig's mind.

The Conservative Party has been in power too long and its parliamentary party is stuffed full of mediocrities who never seriously thought they were going to win a seat. I once had dealings with a relatively wise man who made the arresting defence of our first-past-the-post electoral system that it produced an inevitable swings and roundabouts effect and that the variety between successive governments acted to our benefit, certainly was more desirable than some sort of proportional representation induced perma-coalition. As I think of it now, the problem has been that we had a highly conservative (note the lower case c) Prime Minister in Blair and, after a brief interlude for the temperamentally unsuited Brown, we then got another smooth indifferentist in the lazy Cameron who might as well, as it turned out, have been wearing a Blair mask. Just to spice things up the Labour Party then followed the comically useless Ed Miliband with the barking mad and unelectable Jeremy Corbyn. All of which condemned us to a succession of useless Tories, prime amongst them the clever but venal Boris. We now have Rishi Sunak who, one has to admit, does give the impression of being a clever chap but who leads the aforesaid bunch of mediocrities. And then I look at bloody Keir Starmer and I despair. We should remember just how loyally Starmer served Corbyn. I've never done it before but I am tempted to spoil my ballot next time around. Or maybe I should transfer my voting domicile to Ynys Mon (where I pen this) so that at least I can be part of a meaningful contest between Plaid and Conservatives.

So that's politics out of the way. You will gather that I might best be described as pissed-off. And I haven't even touched on world politics. Another day. No, let's move on to drink, wine to be exact. We are pleased to announce that the winner of the OG wine variety of the year is, not for the first time, Barolo. This stuff is just bloody fantastic as we oenophiles put it. As with much else (and ironic for a man who has always described himself as having the palate of a stray dog) the Pig has saddled himself with expensive taste. Oh well you can't take it with you - how's that for a tax planning strategy.

I returned to my beloved rugby union in my last post so I won't dwell. Suffice to say that there is a learned treatise to be written (I might be just the man) on the Welsh Rugby Union (and for that matter the English as well) and restraint of trade. I can feel my inner Mr Angry welling up again.

Golf. What solace this game is to me notwithstanding my fluctuation from adequacy to incompetence. This fluctuation is not from day to day but from minute to minute. No matter, I have got myself a game at Royal St. David's on Friday with my mate Big Willy. I've loaded a box of new balls into the bag in anticipation.

So at last we come to that film. Effie Gray (2015, available on iPlayer) is a curate's egg of a film. Emma Thompson's screenplay is predictably learned and acute but seems to cut off just as the story threatens a crescendo. What we do have is a neat consideration of the doomed marriage between Gray and John Ruskin. Just as she frees herself of the wretched man and his awful parents, the movie closes without so much as a signal of the later and deserved connubial bliss that the real Effie found with John Everett Millais. Perhaps Thompson had her sights on an unlikely sequel. 63/100. 

Do you know what are nice? I'll tell you: Tunnock's Caramel Wafer Biscuits, thats' what. I'm going to have one now. I went for a run this morning so I've earned it. Goodbye.

 

Six Nations 23

In the wake of England's underwhelming start to the championship I have not been motivated to get too deep into this year's Six Nations. On reflection I should have known better. There are some signs of hope for the grand old game from the first two weekends, even if the stultifying caterpillar ruck still makes the odd appearance. I won't get bogged down in the direness of this tactic but will confine myself to saying that it is the arch-signifier of precisely what can be achieved by soulless coaching.

will someone please ban this crap

England have been left in a mess by Eddie Jones. I never was a fan but now that he has gone I think we can identify his principal failing - he hates the English. We are left with a group of players conditioned to feel apologetic about who they are. That never works. 

International sport must per se be a cruel mistress and she may be playing a particularly malicious trick on poor old Owen Farrell. He has been a player on the cusp of greatness, a prime example of the solid English fly-half (as opposed to the Celtic preference for the will-o'-the-wisp) but now he looks slow and confused. At least he is now playing in his best position but if he is to be persisted with then he must be given the latitude to play his way. 

Enough of poor old England. Did you see the Ireland v France match? Now that did show the possibilities of the sport. Breathless, brutal, controversial, magnificent. Compare it to the decidedly lower division fare served up in both of week two's other games. Scotland were decidedly better than Wales (who have got themselves in a right pickle and have gone back to a man as unlikeable as Eddie Jones in the shape of Warren Gatland) but the match was littered with the sort of human error that was simply not a feature of the Dublin classic. England v Italy was also painfully second-tier stuff. I wouldn't put it past England to lose to Wales next weekend, thus once again reviving the corpse of the Welsh game. All part of life's rich pageant. But please no bloody caterpillar rucks and brain-dead box-kicking.  

National Treasure At Work

No not me you fool. No, I refer to Armando Iannucci, about whom I have waxed lyrical on previous occasions. He directs and co-writes (with Simon Blackwell) the magnificent The Personal History of David Copperfield. It is a brilliant film. Clever but not overly or self-consciously so, it achieves its proper goal, that is to say it is entertaining from beginning to end but finds time to make you think. There is plenty in there for Dickens afficianados (I am not one but I did recently read Claire Tomalin's excellent biography of this puzzling genius) but it is not your standard classic adaptation. Instead it plays numerous narrative tricks while taking justifiable liberties with the source text. As I say, brilliant. 90/100.

Haiku Number 1

This is not Haiku

It is just an exercise

Ce n'est pas Haiku