Advent 21

Volume 21 (Sord to Texas): South Africa.

This page 63 game has a nasty way of serving up a philosophical minefield for the Overgraduate to negotiate. Not content with Advent 13 lobbing the grenade of Zionism to me (there I go again, mixing my metaphors and bringing them home to roost) the equally troubling entity of South Africa now hoves into view. Well, I'm going to dodge the trickiness if you will permit me and move onto something I do know about - South African rugby. 

The Springboks have won the last two World Cups so whatever they are doing is obviously working. Furthermore their deployment (perfectly legally and intelligently) of the so-called bomb-squad has been less successfully aped by other sides and, also predictably, has provoked calls to change the laws, most particularly so far as they relate to the numbers of tactical replacements. Now here's the news boys and girls - putting genies back in bottles is notoriously difficult and you can almost sense the lawyers getting revved-up in readiness for any new dictates that mandate medical certification of departing players. 

As it happens I think the laws as they have been framed for professional rugby are doing a bloody good job of murdering the game at the recereational level I loved, the playing of which I still miss on a daily basis. But that is not the Boks' fault. And here's another piece of news - England should not be trying to play in the style of South Africa. Law of averages, they won't be as good at it as  those they mimic. You can run around walls just as well as you run through them.  

Advent 20

Volume 20 (Sars to Sorc): Scheldt.

The River Scheldt rises in northern France then meanders for two-hundred -and-seventy miles through Belgium towards Antwerp before entering the North Sea in southern Netherlands.

It was the site of a notable five week battle in October/November 1944, Allied victory at which freed Antwerp to be used as a port to supply the forces forcing their way toward Germany. The battle therefore made up some of the ground lost by the Allies as a result of the famed failure at Arnhem (memorialised as the bridge too far). The spearhead at Scheldt was the First Canadian Army under the leadership of Guy Simonds, a hard leader who was thought by Montgomery to be the best of the Canadian soldiery. The role of the Canadians in World War II deserves to be greater emphasised, alongside those of other colonial forces. I attach the modern Canadian flag, the Canadian red ensign (bearing the Union flag in one quadrant) having been abandoned (entirely appropriately) in the mid sixties. I note that there is some agitation for Australia to take a similar step - this gets reported by the dreg elements of the  British press as somehow bigoted. Bollocks - they can have any flag they choose, having more than earned it.   

Advent 19

Volume 19 (Rayn to Sarr): Regence Style.

Not much for me to get my teeth into today. The French regencey ran from 1715 to 1723, so designated because between those dates Louis XV was still a minor. Philip, Duke of Orleans was in charge.

The Regence Style in architecture and decorative arts marked the transition from the classical grandeur of the Louis XIV period to the more free-form rococo of Louis XV's reign. In doing my research (that is code for surfing the net) on these design matters, I have decided that rococo is a great word. The V&A website describes it as a style that is 'excessively flamboyant'. Or to quote that great philosopher Mel Brooks, we might term it the 'if you've got it, flaunt it baby' school of design. Here's a rococo interior for you to wonder at. Not even the OG is that daring, although he has been accused by some insensitive souls of taking Brooks' comic mantra (put into the mouth of that great comic creation, Max Bialystock in The Producers, Brooks' best film) rather too seriously. 

Advent 18

Volume 18 (Plants to Raym): Plato.

Plato (427 -347 BC) survives as a major influencer on philosophic and political thought. The man himself stayed out of active politics having become convinced that there was no place in that field for a man of conscience. I hope that conclusion is wrong but it is a difficult proposition to name men or women of absolute conscience who have played on the major stages of political life. Britannica explains the foundation of platonic philosophy thus:

The reason why men forfeit felicity is that they mistake apparent good for real, the conditionally for the absolutely good. If a man ever knew with assurance what absolute good is, he would in practice never pursue anything else. It is this sense that 'all virtue is knowledge' and that 'all wrong-doing is involuntary' (i.e. consists in the pursuit of what is falsely supposed to be good).

 

  

Advent 17

Volume 17 (P to Plant): Painting.

Last year's advent calendar was the grand tour of Big Fat Pig's dubious taste in art. Well what do you know, the magic of page 63 brings right back round to painting. But older readers will have had quite enough of my tastes so instead today, in what I think is a first in the history of these calendars, I am bowing to the superior and less affected opinion of the Groupie. Her favourite artist is Hans Holbein the Younger and so here is his right regal portrait of that old villain Henry VIII.

 

Twelve Films At Christmas - 5 & 6

 

In my limited and amateur stage career, the most taxing emotionally of the plays I have been in is The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a daunting text for any amateur group but we were brilliantly directed by JK and, I think, pulled it off. By its very subject matter it has to be a claustrophobic piece and I had my doubts that it could properly be presented on film. Having watched the 1959 movie, I still have those doubts. Don't get me wrong, the film works but its presentation in Cinemascope is plain wrong. As well the film suffers from one particular piece of miscasting and is too long. I would still recommend it but this frighteneng tale fits better on the stage. 70/100.

The Colditz Story may share the same historical space as Anne Frank, but is different kettle of fish altogether. This is a broadly faithful telling of the Boy's Own heroics of would-be escapees from Nazi imprisonment. There is a predictably reliable troupe of British character actors on display and it rattles along. 69/100.

Advent 16

Volume 16 (Mushr to Ozon): Names (in Linguistics)

Linguistics, the scientific study of language and its structure. This has been an overlooked element in my sprawling education. Yes there were bits and pieces in my primary education (more, I suspect, than is currently fashionable) and studying Latin at secondary school certainly helped (funny how we've come back to the classics for a third consecutive day!) but there was little of it an English degree. It does impinge upon the study and practice of law because meaning is at the heart of good drafting - and believe me, good drafting is a disappearing art. One of the great challenges with the advent of AI is going to be seeing whether it promotes clarity or rehashes obfuscation. If legal AI programs could take as their first source the delivered opinions of the very great Lord Denning (the greatest jurist of the last century) then we might just be in for a new age of enlightenment. As an undergraduate I used to eschew library time and instead wander down the Strand to sit at the back of the Master of the Rolls court to watch this titan in action. I have a signed first edition of his The Discipline of Law. 

Names. The intriguing and diverting article in my Britannica suggests ten categories of name in what it concedes is a 'rough classification': 1. Personal names (who is the real David Roberts?); 2. Quasi-personal names; 3. Names for things not definitely personified; 4. Place names; 5. Names of tribes; 6. Names of institutions and corporations; 7. Titles (The Overgraduate); 8. Brand names; 9. Names of events in history; 10. Names of abstractions not personified.

I could have hours of fun with this! But you don't want to know about my personal predilections.

  

 

Advent 15

Volume 15 (Maryb to Mushe): Materials, Strength of.

Static analysis of suspension bridge - a solved example

I am really enjoying the challenges presented to me by the daily provocations of the pages 63. Yesterday transpired to take me back to my schooldays and the study of Latin and Physics. By a happy coincidence, it is the operation of physics that I am prompted to ponder again today. I don't understand this stuff beyond my admiration of it.

When I think about mechanical/civil engineering, it is bridges that enthrall me. How clever is mankind to build such things. My two favourite bridges are in Sydney and Anglesey. Where are yours? And yes I do know that they are different types of construction. Both bloody clever and a nice change from contemplating the vicissitudes of modern lfe.

 

Advent 14

Volume 14 (Libi to Mary): Light.

After yesterday's angst, I am relieved to offer some light relief - pun intended.

Fiat lux, let there be light - Genesis verse 3, offered here to you in both Latin and English. This is actually one of the few bits of Latin that I can remember - it is not clear to me why that should be so. I have Latin O level thanks entirely to the brilliant master, Stanley Calvert, who dragged me through the subject in a year. I had spent the previous three years being thoroughly beastly to another teacher who was a perfect gent but who tolerated my wilful and total inattention. I carry shame.

Still on the subject of O levels, I also have one in Physics, the only science in which I have taken a public examination. I liked the subject (good teaching goes a long way in masking inaptitude - thank you Andy Pargeter) and loved the contemplation of light and those drawings of the actions of lenses on light waves. Refraction is a nice word and I shall leave you with what my great friend TPW (himself a physics graduate) would describe as physics in action, more specifically physics in art - a contender for most recognisable album cover ever, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

A Kingsman

Hanif Kureishi was at KCL just ahead of me. I'm not aware that we have ever met. He does not boast of his alma mater on his dustjackets. Neither do I - but then again I don't, of course, have any dustjackets to boast from.

I have just finished reading Kureishi's Something to Tell You. It is a substantial novel, both literally and figuratively. It contains occasional solecisms, which I can only take to be deliberate (it has a first person narrative) but which I confess I found distracting. That minor quibble aside it is thought-provoking and manages to be both funny and serious. A fine novel then. Its final short chapter commences with words that neatly summarise the novel's central theme (don't worry, spoiler alert not needed):

I am no longer young, and not yet old. I have reached the age of wondering how I will live, and what I will do, with my remaining time and desire. I know at least that I need to work, that I want to read and think and write, and to eat and talk with friends and colleagues.

In our very different ways (his eminent, mine not) we seem to have arrived at a similar place. Especially the eating and talking part.

Advent 13

Volume 13 (Jerez to Libe): Jews

I promise you I'm not doing this on purpose. I don't look at the volume of the encyclopaedia until the evening before the day in question - the one exception to that will be the final entry on Christmas Eve. That is planned, but even in that case the text will only be scripted on the day itself.

I have dear friends who are Jewish. Equally, I have encountered confrontational and mean Jews. I can say the same of most races and creeds, not least the Catholic faith to whose elegant wreckage I cling. At this point in history it is the case of Israel that most concerns. Last month that stupefyingly self-regarding institution the Oxford Union staged a debate around the proposition, 'This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide'. The proposition passed by a substantial majority. Cue the understandable cries of protest at the ant-semitism wrapped around the debate and its pre-destined verdict. 

Of course I've never met the man (just as I have never met Trump) but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take to Benjamin Netanyahu. I am entitled to reach this conclusion - the man has put himself on the world stage and his actions have implications for the multi-racial land I live in. I am also clear that I have no truck with radical Islam (in its many factions) and its resolve that Israel has no place on the world map. If pressed, I am a Zionist and believe in a two-state solution. This simple conclusion is, I accept, about as much use as a chocolate teapot. There can only be prayer and reason.

The Oxford Union has been down this road before. Consider one of the speecehes made in 2008 in suppport of a motion that 'This house believes that the State of Israel has the right to exist':  Zionism and Neo-Zionism . This elegant argument offers intellectual cover for the two-state solution. But consider this - if you research a little deeper you find that the maker of the speech got so aggravated by the conduct of his own side that he crossed the floor of the debate and voted against the motion. Anyway, and as we say at the best point in the Catholic mass, peace be with you.

Advent 12

Volume 12 (Hydroz to Jerem): Idaho.

Idaho entered the Union in 1890. It is a vast (roughly the size of England and Scotland combined) state with a sparse population and it returns only four electors to the Electoral College. In the recent presidential election a convicted criminal and proven misogynist received over two-thirds of the votes cast. The state has a thriving evangelical Christian population. Go figure. I've tried and I can't, though we have to say that the intellectual vacuity of the case made against him perhaps had much to do with it. As Hamm says to Mr Potato Head in the justly revered Toy Story, 'Way to go, Idaho'. NOT.     

Advent 11

Volume 11 (Gunn to Hydrox): Hackett, James Henry.

Hackett as Falstaff

Hackett (1800-71) was an American actor/impresario who achieved eminence on  both sides of the Atlantic, particularly for his portrayal of eccentric characters. He was a notable Falstaff and this he might be said to share with another American impresario, Orson Welles. For those of you who have not been paying attention, Welles is one of Big Fat Pig's favourites. Falstaff was the last part that Welles played on the stage and he later crafted a film that centred on Falstaff  and pulled together text from four Shakespeare plays and lines of Welles's own invention - Chimes at Midnight. Welles is thought to have regarded that movie as his finest though, as with all of Welles's later work, its production was shrouded in controversy and chicanery so far as the financing went. By the way, if you still haven't seen Citizen Kane - what's wrong with you?

Welles as Falstaff

 

Advent 10

Volume 10 (Game to Gunm): Gastropoda.

I would be better off leaving this one to The Groupie, among whose many accomplishments is a Zoology degree. Let's crib straight from Britannica before going off on a cheery tangent, because yesterday's entry was a tad bleak.

A large group of invertebrate anaimals ranked as a class of the phylum Mollusca and represented by such familiar forms as the limpet, the whelk, the common snail and slug.

So they don't have to have a shell but they do have to lack a backbone. Thus slugs are of their number and I will talk to you today about the best season of rugby I ever played. Now this is not much of a boast because although not useless, I was never a great player. However there was one season when I scored a fair number of tries and played to the peak of my limited powers. And at the core of this happy time was my great friend RAM, who, on account of a mildly stocky stature and a lack of burning pace was jovially nicknamed 'The Slug'. But boy did he have a head on his shoulders and a left boot that was highly educated. He captained me, generally from full-back or occasionally from fly-half, and he trusted me to get on with my game. I have played under better tacticians and under better players but when I stop to think about it (and I still often do) nobody got as much out of me as this honest man did. He had a backbone, and some.   

Advent 9

Volume 9 (Extracti to Gamb): Famine.

The sobering Britannica entry lists thirty-six notable historic famines then follows its list with a yet more disquieting reminder that it omits the deliberatley inflicted famines of the Second World War. As Do They Know it's Christmas issues from our radios, we hardly need prodding into the knowledge that famine is ever with us. Britannica (speaking, remember, from 1959) offers us a potent clarion call:

Only a blind optimist can think this tale complete. Half the population of the world consists of peasants struggling to produce food against the uncertainties of primitive agriculture. In the industrial cities, the social and economic factors that poise the delicate balance between the outflow of manufactured goods and services to the countryside in return for a supply of food are uncertain and readily upset. Then hunger and perhaps famine must follow.

I apologise that I cannot be more cheery. I go where the book takes me and these reminders are all too necessary.

Twelve Films At Christmas - 3 & 4

The first of today's movies has afforded me an opportunity, as the old examination questions used to do, to compare and contrast. The Day of the Jackal (1973) is an excellent adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's compelling novel. Even those (and I was one) who came to this film having already read the book, could applaud its cool examination of the machinations of the hired assassin. This is not merely a police proceduaral but also a killer's procedural. Even as you know the wrinkle that spares the target (de Gaulle) you still engage with this film. 73/100.

Now for that contrast, for we have (on Sky at present) a modern borrowing from Forsyth's text (fully credited so I assume/ hope that Frederick is profiting) with Eddie Redmayne as the cool English gun-for-hire. Most striking is the hyper-inflation in what you have to pay for someone to be bumped-off! That aside the technology of murder has moved on but, all in all, this a fair updating of the tale. 

And now for something completely different. Planes, Trains and Automobiles makes no pretensions to depth. It is a two-handed farce (Steve Martin and John Candy both excellent), an able successor to the best traditions of Abbott and Costello and (now I come to think of it, this is the greater compliment) of Laurel and Hardy. It is silly, wild and, above all else, it is funny. 69/100.

Advent 8

Volume 8 (Edwa to Extract): Egypt.

History, bloody hell - it's just one bloody thing after another. And today's page 63 pitches us into the middle of Egypt, all sixty-eight Britannica pages of it.

My predictable instinct was to drone on about Shakespeare's Egypt, Antony and Cleopatra being one of the candidates for my favourite play and, if I say so myself, the subject of one of the better chapters in my thesis. But no, by a piece of serendipity I shall regale you with a reference to a favourite artwork. A large print of this used to adorn my office wall back when I was a legal services mogul in Walsall. Stop laughing at the back! It is The Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of Giza, by none other than David Roberts. And yes, there were some clients kind/daft enough to ask if I had painted it myself.

Cleopatra, the Suez Crisis, Nasser, Sadat. There's plenty to get your teeth into with a total area of 386,100 square miles of which only about 3.6% is normally habitable. Now, not many people know that. Mind you those are 1959 figures. 

 

Advent 7

Volume 7 (Damascu to Educ): Dartmouth, Earl of.

Now, if only I had set page 65 as my trigger, you would today be reading about Charles Robert Darwin. But you are not. Instead we have the Earls of Dartmouth who in days of yore made their home at Patshull Hall, outside Wolverhampton. It is not the Hall that triggers me however, it is the beautiful parklands that accommodated it and I'm afraid it is the now abandoned golf course that leads the Pig to a bit of boastfulness. The course at Patshull was a rather splendid affair and the good old Heart of England Building Society used to stage their golf days there. 

It was at  one such corporate day that the Pig played the fiirst nine holes in level fours - and yes I did break eighty and, yes, I did win the competition. It has all been downhill ever since. 

The course (and the hotel attached to it) was a casualty of Covid - it never re-opened after the pandemic. My golf game has suffereda similar decline. But there is always another day.   

Twelve Films At Christmas - 1 & 2

I know I tend to repeat myself but, hey, there's only so many prejudices one man can inflict on the world. Don't worry I'm still staying clear of letting Trump get under my skin and I'm not even going to start as the world accelerates towards Hell in a handcart - have you seen the state of France and South Korea? It can make a man glad to be living in the People's Republic of Starmer. Steady on there Pig, you might end up contradicting yourself.

No, no, no, it's that time of year for watching even more films than I normally do. And let's start with a worthy repeat. The original 1947 Miracle on 34th Street is succinct and sweet. I see no reason to deviate from my earlier ranking of it. You'll have to look that up - the hit-count massages my ego.  

A very different kettle of fish is Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, Oh! What a Lovely War. This well-mounted succession of tableaux works from a Len Deighton expansion of the hit stage musical. Does it work as cinema? Critics have had doubts but I tend to think that this is an estimable piece of work which deals with tragedy without having to show any gore. My father (a martial man who held the Queen's commission) admired this film. So do I. 79/100. 

Advent 6

Volume 6 (Coleb to Damasci): Colour Blindness.

These days referred to as Colour Vision Deficiency. This was a difficult one - I thankfully know nothing of suffering from this condition and my initial instinct to spin it off to a consideration of the beauties of Titian Blue, would be in poor taste.

When I introduced this year's calendar theme, I reflected that the 1959 Britannica was a neat approximation of the state of human knowledge at my birth. Armed with that most dangerous of things, a liitle knowledge of my own, and that equally dangerous thing, the internet, I set out to learn whether a cure for the condition has been found in the intervening sixty-five years. So far as I can tell, it has not. I stand, indeed hope, to be corrected.     

Advent 5

Volume 5 (Castir to Cole): Causality or Causation.

This one carries reverberations for anyone who has ever studied and practised Law. It also has important contexts in philosophy and science but let's stick to something I know a bit about - I can already hear the snorts of derision emanating from my litigation colleagues who would (not entirely baselessly) question what precisely any commercial lawyer might know about any aspect of the law, never mind something as delicate as causation. Nonetheless I will plough on.

I dimly recall those lectures on the Law of Tort delivered by the brilliant Tony Guest in those over-heated subterranean lecture rooms at King's. It is the greatest compliment to the estimable Professor Guest that I actually managed to stay awake for his lectures, hung-over and sleep-deprived as I too often was. My first degree was not the cerebral high-point of my time in education.

Anyway, causation. This is how I recall it: in terms of liability for a negligent act, the plaintiff has to establish a causal link between the negligent act and the damage alleged. That is to say that the damage would not have occurred but for the act. Once you have got over that hurdle we get onto the question of damages and that is tied-up in the knot of foreseeability, blah blah.

For me the importance of causation is best illustrated by examples where there is no causation but one is somehow implied by the lazy application of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. And if you want a brilliant explanation of that phenomenon then you can do no better than refer to series 1, episode 2 of the matchless West Wing. Or if you want real-life examples just tune-in to any political show and listen to the shysters of all political hue. The standard of public debate is disgraceful, but then I've told you that before.

Advent 4

Volume 4 (Brain to Castin): Bread.

There is a silly game you can play with Britannica - you measure the cultural worth of a topic by the size of its entry in the encyclopaedia. By this measure today's entry is an important one - four and a half pages of dense text and two pages of photographs of the manufacturing process. Let's get the definition out of the way:

Bread is a baked product made of dough that has been raised by yeast or other gas-forming agent. Some of the gases are trapped in the dough, which is hardened by yeast.

But that's enough of the technical stuff. Let's talk about Big Fat Pig's favourite bread - I give you naan bread, specifically keema naan, a meat-paste filled Indian flat bread. I love a good curry, most particularly those late-night convivial curries with fellow rugby players at the Light of Bengal in Perry Common. I have long been of the persuasion that you don't need rice with a good curry, just a good keema naan. As to my favoured curry, well my tastes have varied over the years from the very hot to the mild but these days I would nominate the Paneer Peas, and just to prove that I am not a vegetarian I accompany that with, yes, a keema naan.  

Advent 3

Volume 3 (Baltim to Brail): Bank of England.

An unusually modest admission here: macro-economics (and micro for that matter) is not a subject that Big Fat Pig has mastered. However I did have a part in running a medium-sized business for two decades and acted as an adviser to a large number of businesses of all sizes so I have been prey to the machinations of our central bank, principally the control of interest rates - a power ceded to it by Gordon Brown in 1997, one of his better moves.

The Bank, despite being the de facto  central bank for two and a half centuries, was not nationalised until 1946 by the Attlee government. Rather against my best instinct the Bank's logo reproduced here is the new 'modern' version adopted for no good reason in 2022.

The Bank issues our bank notes (remember those?), sets interest rates and administers the funny money (quantitative easing) created by spendthrift government. Its principal target is to keep inflation at or under 2% pa. Those of us long enough in the tooth to remember the 70s can only applaud this target. I can only wish the Bank good luck.

Advent 2

 Volume 2 (Annu to Baltic): Antietam, the Battle of the.

I wake to the news that Joe Biden has issued a pardon to his son Hunter. Had Trump taken such a step, there would be quite proper liberal outrage. Enough said.

Today's entry again finds us in the United States. That crucible of the American Dream, the Civil War, heated to its bloodiest day on 17 September 1862 on and around the banks of the River Antietam. Thule de Thulstrup's artistic imagining of the battle is reproduced below.

The outcome of the battle was that the incursion into the Union States by Lee's field army was rebuffed by McClellan's larger force. McClellan has been judged by history as over-cautious. His President, Abraham Lincoln, came to share that view and dismissed him in November 1862 for his failure to pursue Lee's retreating army.

Lincoln stands to me as the exemplar of how a legal traing can incubate decency. Consider these words from his first Inaugural Address delivered on 4 March 1861and ask yourself whether either of the candidates in the recent election would be caable of such modest dignity and sagacity:

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authorityfrom the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

That term 'the Chief Magistrate' refers to the head of state and is an echo of the same terminology used by sixteenth century constitutionalist Sir Thomas Smith. Legal theory does sometimes have a purpose.

Advent 1

Volume 1 (A to Anno): Absentee Voting, U.S.

As you might have noticed we have just had an American presidential election. But don't worry I'm not going to spoil the pre-Christmas mood with a trademark tirade against Trump although I can't make any promises about tomorrow.

The history of absentee voting (and here I am principally concerned with postal votes) is (honest guv) interesting. As with so much else in American history, the Civil War prompted its birth. Eleven Union states permitted soldiers on active duty an absentee ballot. After the war other states gradually followed suit and federal legislation eventually arose in World War II, provoked because only a fraction of the huge armed forces negotiated the labyrynthine regulations to cast a vote. By the latter part of the conflict a more efficient system was thought desirable for the by now nine-and-a-half-million service men and women scattered around the globe. The advent of postal voting was not without its controversies. Predictable Southern states feared a widening of the franchise beyond their racist registration laws. Republicans feared that the military vote would be tilted towards the left. Plus ca change.

Today's political right still fear the postal vote and the left's alleged greater proficiency at exploiting the system. This issue will come into focus again because we are surely going to encounter agitation for absentee voting via the internet. And on that subject we encounter something unusual - The Pig doesn't know where he stands on the issue. Universal suffrage is one of our greatest societal adornments (even when it gets the answer wrong) but a romantic part of me still wants to see people exercising some effort in making their vote. 

So there we have it, rather a dry opening to our calendar. That is the way the magic number takes us.  

 

A New Survey Of Universal Knowledge

For those of you who give a stuff, here is my explanation of this year's OG advent calendar. You might recall that I am rather proud of our complete edition (24 volumes plus a two volume dictionary) of the 1959 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Books do furnish a room. I am even more chuffed that we paid the princely sum of £1 for the whole lot - admittedly I had to drive (I think it was somewhere in Essex) to collect them but a bargain nonetheless.

1959 is quite an apt date for this survey of knowledge. I was born in 1960 so the handsome red-bound edition is a nice approximation of the state of knowledge at the date of my birth. Gagarin had not yet been launched into space; within my first decade man would walk on the moon; the microchip would ventually revolutionise life in unforeseeable ways. It has been quite a ride.

 

  

 

The Overgraduate may be vain (after all, like a preening boxer, he refers to himself in the third person) but he will not pretend to a new survey of universal knowledge (the proclamation fronting each volume of Britannica), rather there will be a partial and digressive dip into page 63 of each of the twenty-four volumes of that 1959 edition. The reason for the number 63 will be disclosed only at entry number 24. If you too have a 1959 edition you might be able to anticipate what is to come. Hopefully you will be wrong!

The Magic Number

As I have said, and in the spirit of Sesame Street, this year's advent calendar will be brought to you by the number 63. As will become more apparent in subsequent blogs, this number was not the starting point for this year's theme, but has rather been cast upon me by that best of all authors - fate. 

Fate has a nice way with it. At least I like to think it has. My favourite number is 8, a legacy of my best position on the rugby field. However (and I am not making this up) my second favourite is 63. I'll exlain. At junior school we were vividly encouraged to master our multiplication tables, up to the twelve-times-table. I've often wondered why we stopped at twelve but I suppose it might have something to do with our pre-decimalisation monetary system or perhaps it was thought that young brains might explode at the thought of multiples of thirteen. Whatever, I responded diligently to the task of memorising my tables. The Headmaster (Mr. Jackson) used to burst into lessons and ask some poor random a question. To my mind the hardest multiple to master was 7 x 9. Whch is of course 63. It has stuck with me.

All of which has nothing to do with advent but is a nice coincidence. And if we encounter a further rather monumental coincidence then the lucky amongst you will be able to predict each calendart entry. I do realise that no one really can be that bothered, but this keeps me off the streets and is good for society.

The Pig's Big Book Of Knowledge

Do you know what, two people in London actually asked me, at the weekend, what will be the topic of this year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar. This sounds impressive and speaks well of this blog's reach. I have to disabuse you of any taint of admiration and tell you that the two in question were Daughter Number 1 and her husband. Worse still, you might well judge that they were humouring me. But for those of you still reading (for which thankyou) today's entry is by way of a teaser. This year's calendar will be brought to you by the number 63. And just to emphasise the point here is a stock image of that very number.

I very much hope that this has whetted your appetite. If so, please tell your friends.

In The Bleak Midwinter

Actually by the OG measure of seasonality, it is not yet even winter - by my reckoning that comes on 1 December. Nonetheless we awoke here at Casa Piggy to a blanket of snow. Thus the Pig is not playing golf today. Just as well because he is not friends with his driver at present. 'Twas ever thus.

The Lower Grounds at Casa Piggy

 So anyway, you have all no doubt been wondering why Big Fat Pig has been silent after a flurry of posts during Groupie and Pig's brief holday at Plas Piggy. Sorry about that. Just to fill you in, the last day of our stay was spent walking from Wylfa Head to Cemaes, the walk including a stop-off for a pint at the turning point. Lovely. We than had a very good pub meal back in Benllech at the Breeze Hill, under new management, marked by a particularly fine example of that prize side, onion rings.

We watched three films during our holiday, nothing to get overly excited about but decent holiday fare. In ascending order of merit, we first have The Mirror Crack'd, a workmanlike Christie adaptation laden with stars but lacking in pizzazz. I have to be in a certain relaxed frame of mind for Agatha Christie on either film or television. I have no interest in identifying/guessing the culprit, but rather want the text to wash over me. 55/100.  

Next best is Blunt a television film from an age when the BBC could afford more ambitious projects.This retails (yet again) the Philby/Burgess/Maclean/Blunt spy scandal, concentrating in particular on the relationship between Burgess (played by an excellent Anthony Hopkins) and Blunt (the equally meritorious Ian Richardson). In particular Hopkins conveys a convincing picture of Burgess as hugely well-educated but prize shit. 61/100. 

Finally we have the 1974 film of Murder on the Orient Express. This is the one decorated by Albert Finney arrestingly hamming it up as Hercules Poirot, whilst surrounded by a cast of more restrained co-stars. Poirot is worthy of caricature so Finney just about gets away with it. The pace occasionally drops to the pedestrian but the period detail is consitently well-done. 68/100. 

And now the snow is melting. Back to November drabness. Soon be Christmas.

Yesterday I Have Mostly Been:

Visiting Bodnant Garden. This is a wondrous place and as good a reason as you might find to justify the National Trust policy of taking over a great garden even if the adjoining great house does not come with it. I believe this policy may have been instituted with Bodnant as its first example. The Groupie and I walked extensively and enjoyed a picnic lunch at the Far End of the garden. 

Eating - anchovies on toast. A particular favourite.

Drinking - Chianti.

Feeling - good about life.   

Yesterday I Have Mostly Been:

Worrying - about my stiff knee; about Trump's clear victory in the US election. Shame on the Democratic Party for finding no better candidate than Kamala Harris. But the sun is shining on the Great Orme as I write this and I will expend my energy on things I can control.

Walking - along the coast path at Trearddur Bay, probably the nicest village on Ynys Mon. I was, of course, with the Groupie, so life can hardly get better.

Eating - at the Sea Shanty in Trearddur Bay. Monster portions at bargain prices with swift, unobtrusive service. Washed down with a pint of Golden Gate IPA. Altogether most satisfactory.

Reading - The Mabinogion. Still.

Yesterday I Have Mostly Been:

Running slowly - before breakfast and ruing my stiff knee, the latest manifestation of my old age. To add to the knee, it's bloody hilly here at Plas Piggy.

Visiting Caernarfon - the castle may be a symbol of oppression but you have to say it's a rather magnificent symbol. Nice pint in the bar of The Black Boy and a bowl of chips shared with the Groupie.

Listening to - Gil Scott-Heron, Pieces of a Man. Nice.

Reading - The Mabinogion. In English translation, sorry about that.

Film's Most Charismatic Actor?

I refer to Marlon Brando and I turn for evidence not to his famous turn in The Godfather (one of my favourite movies but one where Brando goes a tad over the top) but to two monochromatic performances in 1953 and 1954 respectively. The second of these even has learned nominations as the greatest cinematic performance of all time.

Julius Caesar was the first Shakespeare I ever studied seriously (O Level) and it has a chapter to itself in my doctoral thesis. The play is not, I have decided the 'broken-backed thing' derided by some critics. Yes Caesar gets bumped-off barely halfway through the text, but the play fair rattles along and gives us, particularly in Brutus and Antony, plenty of politico-drama to get our teeth into. The 1953 film is loyal to the text and James Mason makes a persuasively priggish Brutus. I am never quite sure about John Gielgud (this, I accept is probably my problem) but he enunciates Cassius's lines beautifully. It is, however, Brando who muscles his way to the foreferont as Antony. A highly resepctable adaptation. 70/100. 

Brando's work in On the Waterfront is on an altogether higher plane. This is a magnificent film, ornamented with a slew of notable method-acting tours-de-force - take your pick from Rod Steiger, Karl Malden or Lee J. Cobb, but you will eventually be brought back to Brando as Terry Molloy. It is a gift of a part but what Brando does with it is breath-taking. The movie lasts barely more than ninety minutes but satisfies on every level. 93/100.

Tweve Monkeys And A Panda Crossing A Bridge

I bet you were expecting a convoluted joke after that heading, but no I'm afraid it's another of my opinionated blogs on films, all of them good but not of the top notch.

I really enjoyed Kung Fu Panda (I think I watched it one Christmas although I don't seem to have reviewed it on here) but it is the sequel Kung Fu Panda 2 that is now under the OG microscope. As with almost all modern CGI, the animation is breathtaking whilst lacking the romance of the early hand-drawn cartoons - I still regard Snow White as arrrestingly brilliant and somehow satisfying, perhaps a recognition of the intense labour involved in its production. Well KFP2 lacks that appeal but it is vibrant and funny. 65/100.  

And now for something completely different. Twelve Monkeys is a Terry Gilliam film, craftily directed and gripping as its plot veers about in the protagonist's time travel. That the protagonist is played by Bruce Willis is a help - always watchable and particularly well-suited to a role that has him dripping with sweat and lurching from one beating to another. Good but not great. 68/100.

Let's take it to the bridge. The Bridge on the River Kwai to be exact. I had somehow managed to avoid sitting through the entirety of this film until last week. I had caught multiple snatches of it over the years (so much so that I think I had taken in the whole thing in a cut and paste manner). The wait was worth it. This is a compelling and beautifully realised piece of cinema. However when you come to it armed with the knowledge that it is directed by David Lean and that Lean was responsible for the truly great Lawrence of Arabia, there is a risk of mild disappointment. So I have no hesitation in calling it a very fine film but not quite a very great one. 79/100.     

21st Century Gothic

I take you all the way back to 19 January 2013 when I praised to the hilt Pan's Labyrinth as part of my advent listing of great films. I have just watched it again this afternoon and can confirm that this is cinema at its most enthralling. Guillermo del Toro has never done anything better (in itself quite a recommendation) and Sergi Lopez's performance as the evil Captain Vidal is a terrifying treat. I won't let you know the plot since that would spoil the fun but I really do urge you to track down this film. If you can find it showing in a cinema, please let me know. I first saw it at Vue in Birmingham in a near empty theatre at the time of its first release. 95/100.

The Trap Of Certainty

I know, I know, You've long since got the message that I can't stand Donad Trump. I think he's vile and, in all but unimportant matters, pig ignorant. But his advent on the political scene (and to a lesser extent the scar on British politics that is the dissembling Boris Johnson) has taught me an important lesson - life is not merely about policy. It is also about decency. You should not want to be governed by someone you wouldn't want to share a dinnner table with. Sorry Donald, sorry Boris, you're not getting invited. 

And what has got me trundling down this philosophical by-way? It was a combination of watching the Tory leadership contenders making their respective pitches to the party conference and something I read. Of the contenders I will only say this - I don't like the cut of Robert Jenrick's jib. As for that thing that I read, it is from Pope Leo XIII in 1878. In my less moderate days I might have seized on this as a clinching argument. Now I merely offer it up as a stimulating contributor to life's puzzles. The subject His Holiness considers is that of socialism/communism:

Misled by greed for the goods of this world which is the source of all evil, and the desire for which has caused many to err in the faith, they [socialists] attack the right to property sanctioned by the natural law, and while they pretend to have at heart the needs of all men and claim to satisfy all their desires, they make a criminal attempt to seize all individual possessions whether acquired by legitimate inheritance, intellectual or manual work, or by economy, and to make them common property.

Makes you think, well does me anyway.

 

Carry On Richard Curtis

I have written before about feeling vaguely exploited when enjoying Curtis's Love Actually, a film full of strong performances that can mask its mildly dodgy sexual politics. In similar vein The Groupie and I enjoyed re-watching The Boat That Rocked the other day. Bill Nighy delivers his usual scene-stealing performance as, well, Bill Nighy. The lamented Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent. So is Rhys Ifans. I could go on. Like the  more acclaimed parts of the Curtis oeuvre (Four Weddings and a Funeral; Notting Hill) Boat is at its strongest as an ensemble piece. The critics didn't like it and took issue with its perceived misogyny. I take their point on the misogyny although the Groupie (who should be a poster girl for feminism) was not offended. What I find hard to understand is that critics failed to find it funny. It is. And what a soundtrack!

As I pondered whether I should be feeling guilty at the pleasure I took in this cinematic confection, it came to me that Curtis films are the bigger budget, more refined successors to that peculiarly British filmic form, the Carry On film. Which leaves me to make the important point that if you can't laugh at Carry On Cleo and Carry On Up the Khyber, then there's a defect in your sense of humour. Or possibly in mine - take your pick. Conceivably we could both be right.

The Boat That Rocked. 68/100.   

Tommy

I try to keep at least one non-fiction book going at any one time, alongside a couple of fictions. In this, as in so much else, I find myself inadequately mimicking the learning habits of my late father. I have just finished Richard Holmes's Tommy: the British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-1918. I have just noticed that Dad had written a Christmas message inside the cover when he and Mum gave it to me. How he would have loved Helen's wedding last weekend.

I commend Tommy to you. It is compendious, seven-hundred plus pages, but never tedious. It is impossible to read of WW1 without wondering just how you might have responded if you had been called to arms. One-hundred-and-twenty-three of the Aston Old Edwardians who went to war would never return. To this day we play our rugby on the ground bought in their memory. My generation has been spared.

Holmes quotes C.E. Montague whose war memoir was tellingly titled Disenchantment, but the power of the quoted words is not in that disaffection but rather in that agnosticism that is a necessary shield for all but the most gifted/afflicted:

But the war had to be won: that was flat. It was like putting out houses on fire, or not letting children be killed; it did not even need to be proved; that we had got to win was now the one quite certain thing left in a world of shaken certainties. 

A Warm Little Hand - Love And Letting Go

Last Saturday at the Fitzrovia Chapel (beautiful) Helen Frances Eileen Roberts (better known to you as Daughter Number One/DN1) was married to Christopher William Larkin. It was an altogether splendid occasion - she, of course, looked beautiful; he, of course, looked proud as punch. God bless them.

It was a celebration to reaffirm your faith in the younger generation. Helen, Chris and their friends partied joyously but properly. The weather was kind, the venues (the aforementioned Chapel and, afterwards, The Coin Laundry) excellent, and all of this suffused with that mightiest of human emotions - love. 

Big Fat Proud Father Pig made a speech at the reception. Alongside the eulogy at my father's funeral, this rated as the public oration about which I was most nervous. It went well. I took as my Proustian trigger the cherished memory of DN1's warm little hand in mine: when she first came to the hospital to meet DN2; at her first visit to the cinema (the Regal in Wadebridge to see The Jungle Book); as we skimmed stones over a frozen tarn. Now that hand is released and entrusted to Chris. God bless them.

Please Pander To My Vanity

If you type 'Shakespeare and Bagehot' into Google, the top result will take you to my doctoral thesis, now deposited in the open access area of the BCU Library. If that sounds like too much work, don't worry, here is the link https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/15794/

Thank you and goodnight.

Epic As An Adjective And Other Exercises In Writing

A weekend of sunshine on the island as the Pig enjoyed a brief break at Plas Piggy. Now as you know, the Pig is well down with the kids and he therefore wants to describe the weekend as epic.

Those of you who have been paying attention for the decade and a half that the Pig has been writing this guff, will know that another adjective is also pretty important - 'precious', as in the Precious Jag, the Precious Petrol Mower, and the Precious Bike. Well here's another entry to the Piggy Hall of Fame - the Precious Drain Rods. These got an ultimately epic outing on Friday evening. The enjoyment of using rods is in direct proportion to the scale of the blockage under attack. Unless you have done it, you cannot comprehend the adrenaline rush that comes at the point of rodded release of a major shitberg - though prose of the same quality as what this sentence is, gives you a pretty good idea. The Pig even made a trip to Screwfix in Llangefni to add a new tool to his set of Precious Rods. Behold the Bailey drop scraper.

 

Pretty exciting I'm sure you'd agree. But there was more and here you will see how clever the Pig is being with his vocabulary - because as he enjoyed an epic high tea of tinned hot dogs in appropriate finger rolls, he watched a film that can accurately be described as an epic - you see that's a noun! The film in question is not epic in its artistic attainment but is epic in scale and ambition. Nicholas and Alexandra may be a tad plodding at points but as a dramatic primer on the retreat of Mother Russia from the divine right of kings it seves very well. 68/100. 

And on the way home the Pig listened to Steely Dan. Epic.

Interim Report On The Great Oleaginous One

I refer, of course, to Sir Keir Starmer. I suspect, much to my regret, that I am one of those people he refers to as having 'the broadest shoulders' and that I will be paying more than a proportionate share of the price of rescuing the country's economy. It's all blather of course, economically illiterate and powered by that great engine, envy. Don't get me wrong, I count my self blessed to have what I have but just in case his ridiculous class-warrior deputy, Angela Rayner, has missed the point I would point out that all that the Pig and the Groupie have attained has been through taxed income and that neither of us has ever had even a day of private education. I agree that the country is in a mess and that the Tories are a shower of shit but this is not the way to put us back on track.

Oh well, at least we don't live in America. For the sake of what is left in the way of societal decency, Kamala Harris must please defeat Trump. The difficult part is that after she has done this great service to the world, she must eschew the hare-brained poilicies she tends to offer up on those rare occasions when she is tempted to talk turkey. Government price caps anybody? 

By the way, if you want to see some relatable rugby unon on the television, seek out New Zealand's National Provincial Championship on Sky.

Distinguishing The First Rate From The Great

No sooner have I immersed myself in the murky waters of film rankings and pulled myself out than I find myself volunteering to dive right back in again. The reason - Richard Atennborough's seminal work, Ghandi. 

This is a stately and properly sympathetic biopic about Mahatma Gandhi, whilst also giving the viewer a balanced overview of the sacred wonder and worry that is an independent India. It is masterful. But is it a great film? Ben Kingsley's central performance is magnificent, compelling even. I would say on a par with Peter O'Toole's tour de force in Lawrence of Arabia, but the movie that contains it arguably falls just shy of the greatness of David Lean's masterpiece. Don't get me wrong, Gandhi is, by a comfortable margin, a first class film but it is, perhaps, the undoubted saintliness of the central character that contains the germ of the film's slight defect. Lawrence was no saint and in his neuroses we have the stuff of great drama. So that leaves me perching on the edge of a designation of greatness for Gandhi. In the final analysis the film leaves me awestruck but not anxious to see it again soon. 89/100.   

The Impossibility Of Rankings And The Irresistibility Of Doing It Anyway

I'm on about films again. Those of you who have been with me since the beginning (for which thanks) might recall that my film reviews were intially accompanied by gradings out of 10, with half point demarcations. At some point I refined this to marks out of one hundred with single point separations. When I took this revolutionary step it was underwritten in my mind by the grading (to which I had become accustomed) applied to undergraduate essays, that is to say, sixty betokens a 2:1, seventy a First. Belatedly therefore I admit that when I award a mark of seventy or more, I am classifying a movie as first class. I have also to admit that, because I do have a life outside the blogosphere, I do not go out of my way to watch films that are likely to prove crap. There may therefore seem to be a surfeit of Upper Seconds and Firsts. 

Explanation out of the way. Now, about the impossibility of such rankings - hardly needs any explanation does it really? So often one is comparing apples with pears. But fun anyway and this was all brought back to me yesterday when greatly enjoying watching Mrs Harris Goes to Paris. This is a confection of the type that Ealing Studios might have made in the forties of fifties. Deceivingly slight but quite beautifully put together and faultlessly played. Not a text of soaring ambition but one crafted with quiet skill. First Class. It's on Netflix. 72/100 

 

An Unquiet Mind

There but for the grace of God. What follows is not intended to be presumptuous or self-aggrandising - it is a subject close to my heart.

Graham Thorpe played one hunded test matches for England, scoring sixteen centuries along the way. Last week he ended his own life by standing in the way of a train. We need to talk about this.

I had no particular affection for Thorpe as a player, rather a considered admiration. I'm afraid that my romantic soul made me more of a Gower fan when it came to the left-handed batsmen of my lengthy cricket-watching life. We do not need to talk about this.

There but for the grace of God. My personal stars aligned (family, medical, religious and social) to keep me alive but the loss of a soul brother touches me. We need to talk about this. Please, please, just talk. Sleep peaceful my brother man.