The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill all The Lawyers

The above line in Henry VI Part II always gets a laugh, even from the affluent lawyers who make up an inevitable portion of the audience at performances of Shakespeare's lesser plays. Quite right too.

Q: Why don't man-eating sharks attack lawyers?

A: It's a matter of professional courtesy.

Q: What do you have if you have a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?

A: Not enough sand.

Q: What do you call one hundred dead lawyers?

A: A start.  

I've heard them all before and am quite happy to join in the laughter. The lot of the lawyer is often a lucrative one (not always and not to the unworthy extent of some other professions) and, done properly it is a job that can be spiritually rewarding - yes, I do mean that. Good lawyering is important labour.

But something has happened to cast us all in an unfavourable light and that is the advancement onto the world stage of J.D.Vance, Vice President of the United States. Vance is an odious bigot and a massively educated (Yale Law School no less) lawyer. This, I'm afraid, casts a shade over all of us and we must call it out. So here is a variation on yet another of those lawyer jokes.

Q: What is the difference between lab rats and J.D. Vance?

A: You can get attached to lab rats.

 

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 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.

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.

Making Yourself Read

Marchant's Second Law - 'writers read'. Thus while I have been recovering from my recent back injury (still sore but I'm being a very brave soldier) I have supplemented my diet of telvision documentaries with quite a glut of reading. I surf the web thingy a fair bit - the BBC website is my starting point for news but I am also drawn to American sources because of my morbid taste for American politics. Trump/Biden has all of the dreadful allure of a grisly car crash. All you can do is look on and ask yourself yet again how it comes to this. What has happened to that welcoming and optimistic country that took me into its arms back in 1981? 

Real reading does not though (in the humble opinion of your correspondent) involve a screen - it is a matter of printed paper. And I am currently enjoying three very good books. One has to forgive Jonathan Coe the fact of his schooling at KES. He has a conversational dleivery and is funny about serious things, always the best way to aproach the difficult. I am a good way through The Closed Circle and I look forward to the time of day when I read it. I will review it thoroughly when I have finished.

I have become more like my late father and I have at least three books on the go at any one time. I try to ensure that at least one of these is non-fiction. At the moment that means Tommy, Richard Holmes' heavy tome on the lot of the soldiers of the Great War. It is authoritative and moving. Come to think of it, I think it was Mum and Dad who gave me the book for Christmas back in the good old days when he was alive and his mind still accessible to us.

The third book in my rotation is Evelyn Waugh's Unconditional Surrender, the final part of the Sword of Honour trilogy. On the last day that I saw Dad alive I read aloud to him from these novels. Decades earlier he had gently pointed me in the direction of Waugh, as he did with much literature without ever being prescriptive. Such statements are inherently ludicrous but I nonetheless offer up Waugh as the greatest English writer of the twentieth century. As for Dad, well, it's far easier - he was the greatest influence on my life.      

The State Of Our Union

Symbolic or what? My journey to Anglesey on Friday evening took the best part of six hours. A wicked combination of pot-holes, road works, chaotic driving (not by me you understand), and sheer bad luck. Symbolic of what? The state of the country that's what. Broken Britain. We have a government incapable of governing, a Loyal Opposition scared shitless of professing any plausible policies and, just to cap it all, David (now Lord) Cameron is back in the cabinet. Actually I don't mind the Cameron appointment - he does at least have gravitas and must have plenty of political energy left after doing basically sod-all in his time as Prime Minister. 

What have I done to deserve this? Mind you, could be worse - I could be American, a native of a great country that seems determined to waste all of its manifest advantages. Please surprise me.

I think I've got a wart developing on my finger. Bloody hell, I repeat - what have I done to deserve this?

2021:1

It's been a funny old year. Again. You might have noticed that I can be mistaken for a creature of certainties - this is deceiving, I am rather a creature noisy only in my uncertainties. I am a catholic convert who is also a Unionist and sympathetic to the ministry of women. These are hardly the signatures of the adamantine. And 2021 has been a year that has seen my core prejudices shift under the pressure of events. I didn't want this to happen, Damn you 2021. Or should that be thank you?

I thought it might be interesting (for me really - this is my selfish space after all, that anyone else ever reads it is a constant source of joy and wonder)  to look back on the twelve months of this challenging year and to pick apart one event per month. This approach does not pretend science but might just cast some light on the shifting sands of my psyche.

On January 6 2001, an outgoing President of the United States repeated the lie that an election had been stolen from him. He did so knowing full well his own mendacity and desiring nothing more worthy than  to shore up his monstrous self-esteem. The results of his speech probably surprised him as much as they delighted the scumbag. An insurrection followed and people died in the human mess that Trump stirred up. The United States of America had surrendered its right to be the beacon of the free West. That great and sadly diminished country has replaced the megalomaniac Donald with a decent geriatric who cannot control his own idiotic left wing. As the Washington Post trumpets - democracy dies in darkness. 

As I write this the sclerotic state of American politics persists. The party of (as we are tiresomely reminded) Abraham Lincoln remains in thrall to a bouffoned kleptocrat and lacks the morality to call him what he is. Meanwhile the party of JFK spews the idiot identity politics that pass for intellectualism in diminished circles. Meanwhile we are invited to take comfort in the knowledge that if anything happens to the dotard Biden, Kamala Harris will take over. This does not help.

 

 

The Washing Of Dirty Linen

I seem to recall raising this point before, I think in the context of the Robert Redford movie, The Candidate. A good film but one most memorable to me because I have a teenage memory of having watched it with my Dad. My father (an exceptional and wise man) commented that he admired the American ability to wash its national dirty linen in public. Well, the two films under consideration today are about two lots of dirty societal linen, one primarily Irish (though it has wider implications), the other American.

Philomena is, on one level, an unlikely buddy movie - Judi Dench's warm-hearted and genuine Irishwoman and Steve Coogan's cynical and world-weary journalist turned disgraced spin doctor. But at its best, it is so much more than a mixture of sound leading performances and a skilfully tear-jerking script. It is an airing of the catholic church's scandalously dirty linen. I won't spoil the plot for you because I want you to see this film. Suffice to say that for anyone who cannot help getting misty-eyed about Irish catholicism (and I, a convert to that faith, stand guilty on that count) this is essential viewing. 79/100.  

My go-to source of cinematic critical wisdom is the Ebert website which continues the work of the great and now deceased Roger Ebert. In a bizarre twist it can be reassuring on the rare occasions when I find myself disagreeing with the Ebert view. This provides a small measure of validation - I am something more than a purveyor of second-hand postures. Which brings me to a movie that the good people at Ebert find 'dull'. The Report may be dry and highly verbose but it is vital stuff, conveying measured outrage at the shaming use by the CIA of torture. It is held together by a compelling leading performance from Adam Driver, As the posters said, 'Truth Matters'. Though not quite of the same supreme quality as All the President's Men, nevertheless The Report desreves to be mentioned in the same context. 82/100.

The Kipling Test

When Donald Trump expressed his 'America First' doctrine, the sane world winced at the moral inadequacy and the cowardice of it all. Now Joe Biden unapologetically takes a page from the Donald's book and oversees a quite craven retreat from Afghanistan. 

I will not enunciate the Kipling Test because its terminology would cause proper offence. However there is, beneath a racist carapace, a method in Kipling's entreaty to America. Or to put it in the phrasing of a more modern fable, Spiderman, 'With great power comes great responsibility'. 

The word 'Taliban' apparently derives from the terms for 'students' or 'seekers'. That which they seek is a perverted Islamic fundamentalism that relegates women to enslavement and condemns music as unholy. Is the world safe with these people in charge of Afganistan? Of course it isn't. Being the 'Home of the Brave' ought to have meaning beyond the confines of America. And as America discharges its burden, so ought we.   

There's An Eerie Hush In The Close Tonight

The pandemic is still with us, its physical effect still being felt and its economic backwash still to come. There was a deadly attempted putsch at the U.S Capitol only threee weeks ago. And yet all already seems quiet and less worrisome than has been the case for four years. And it is all because the wretched man Trump has pranced off the world stage in a fit of high dudgeon - vaingloriously and with no sense of irony, going out to the most vainglorious song of them all - the problematic My Way. What a prick.

He will be back in the limelight in a fortnight when the Senate has to hear his impeachment trial. You do just wonder if the Democratic leadership is missing a trick with these proceedings. Might they be better off leaving him to sulk in his Florida redoubt or should they press on with trying to exclude him from future politics? My personal (and I accept vindictive) hope (a forlorn one I am afraid) is that enough Republicans gather behind the impeachment to convict the weasel. Take note of what his odious offspring, Donald Jr., barked at the mob at the Capitol on that lethal January day: 'This is no longer the Republican Party, this is Donald Trump's Republican Party.' Do the world a favour and prove him wrong. 

Insurrection. Democracy Dies In Darkness

But reconciliation can’t happen without truth, and the truth is that the blame for the American carnage we saw unfold in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, can be laid at the feet of the president and his many Republican enablers. Those with integrity will admit, first to themselves and then to the wider world, their complicity in the deceitful and disgraceful presidency of Donald Trump. It is the only decent thing to do, and we’ve gone far too long with an absence of decency. (Peter Wehner in The Atlantic)

Yesterday afternoon in Washington a lunatic mob urged on by the sitting President of the United States invaded the Capitol. Four people lost their lives in the insurrection. I had been searching for a suitable summary of the depths of sadness I feel at this state of affairs. Wehner encapsulates it nicely. Read his whole article at Insurrection

I had originally intended my piece today to be an unsubtle excoriation of the loathsome Ted Cruz - a man of clear intellect who has, for reasons which can only be attached to his own ambitions, been an enabler in chief of the malevolent and conscienceless President. However, let us instead hope that yesterday will stand as the low-water mark of this Trump inspired era. It is difficult not to have doubts.

I have a friend in America, a wise and good man - JB. He is a lifelong Democrat and he and I would diverge on many matters of policy. However what we would agree on is the mandatory preservation of the rule of law and, more flowery I know but still true, the need for common decency. Trump has trashed both of these concepts and done long-term damage to the serious Right. Let us put it in terms Trump would understand and let us do it in his own childish font - LOSER!!! This is apparently a term that Trump despises - there are nastier and yet justifiable epiphets one could use but let's keep it simple shall we. Sleep well America but rise wisely.

The Bright Side

It seems we got out of Wales not a moment too soon. Not satisfied with the various travel bans the administration has now gone the whole hog and mandated a full lock-down for a fortnight starting on Friday. At least you can't accuse them of muddle - everyone knows where they stand and they better bloody well stay there. I wouldn't want to be a legislator just now. Here's an admission - the Pig has lost his usual unbearable certainty on any given topic. Not quite true of course - there are some things on which I haven't lost my voice, Trump prime amongst them. Even when the alternative is the tedious Joe Biden, Trump simply has to go. It is tempting to venture this opinion on the grounds that the democracy is at stake. I may in fact have done so - no I'm pretty sure I must have done. I'm sorry - democracy is as democracy does, the least bad way of running things. No, what is at stake is that elusive construct, the rule of law. A victory for Sleepy Joe will not deliver us entirely safely from harm - he will have to escape the clutches of his own pudding-brained left - but he is our best chance. And for those who wonder why I get so exercised about America, I repeat that I love the stupid, irritating place, just as I love the stupid, irritating United Kingdom. There is (as often) a line in Kipling that would sum up why America must remove itself from its present self-absorbed, self-harming malaise, but its use would be misconstrued so I won't do that. Just get a grip folks. Please.

How a calf muscle should look

Enough of that- I promised you the bright side. The news you've been waiting for: today, fully five weeks and two days since he was so tragically lamed, Big Fat Pig went for a run this morning. Thirty minutes (that's about three miles at Piggy pace) and although he is now stiffening up, the Pig feels all the better for his efforts. Sod Covid, sod Trump, sod political posturing, he's back.

More good news - tomorrow the Pig takes his golf game to Cavendish Golf Club, which, as any fule kno, is the Pig's favourite golfing destination.

Do you know what, the corny Christmas film channels are already broadcasting, have been for a couple of weeks. It's daft but I have decided to be charmed by it. It speaks of unusual optimism in a time of doubt. I know it's all probably driven by dire marketing ploys and a hunger for advertising revenues, but I am rising above it and so announce an elongated season of goodwill to all (well not all of course - see above). I've even got a good scheme for this year's Overgraduate advent calendar. My lips are sealed. 

My charitable mood towards the commercialisers of the birth of Our Lord, may have something to do with the scent of turkey soup dominating the kitchen. The Groupie is working her way through the contents of our freezers and that has included a turkey carcass. Her turkey soup is most excellent.

Fahrenheit 11/9

Fahrenheit 11/9 is Michael Moore's furious polemic against Donald Trump. Thus, much as I do not share Moore's politics, I find myself applauding the venom with which he upbraids The Donald and his loathsome cronies. Yes, the dubbing of a Trump speech onto pictures of Hitler probably does not advance the quality of debate, but behind all this is the quite proper fury and mystification at this ever having happened in what styles itself a liberal democracy.

Moore gives Bernie Sanders and his childish politics too easy a ride but Trump is the right target. In addition and refreshingly Moore pricks the bubble of Obama veneration and gives the Clintons a good bashing on his way through. This film should be taken with a largish pinch of salt but it very much should be seen. Ignore the illogical jump it makes in its middle (it gets close to the point when it denigrates the electoral college but then veers off elsewhere) and just feel the outrage. Despite its glaring faults, 8.5/10.

Advent 2

Let me take you back to the Summer of 1981. The Overgraduate does not yet exist - he is an undergraduate waiting for his degree result. On  a June morning he bids a tearful farewell to the Groupie (she of course is not yet the Groupie but she and OG are already together) and heads off on a great adventure. He is to work as a counsellor at Camp Half Moon, Great Barrington, MA, USA. He coaches basketball, acts as a lifeguard and works hard, playing even harder at Graham's Bar in Barrington on nights off. He makes life-long friends and learns to love the USA, a country with optimism at its benevolent heart. He returns to Thatcher's Britain to an uncertain future (he has not yet determined to be a lawyer) but is an important step closer to being a man.

The picture is of beautiful Lake Buel, on which stands Camp Half Moon. God Bless America, Trump or no Trump.

God Is In His Heaven And ...

All is well with the world. Well perhaps that is a bit strong but I, at least, feel well. I have cut the lawn, cut the verge at the front (having abandoned hope that the Council might actually deliver on one of the few services we get these days), I have taken the cuttings to the dump, and I have trimmed the hedges at the front. Now I am sitting in the garden felling vaguely smug. I have even remembered to text my little brother to wish him happy birthday.

We spent the weekend on Anglesey, the Groupie making and fitting curtains, me mostly loafing around. This loafing included watching an extraordinary game of rugby between South Africa and England. It ended (deservedly) 42-39 in favour of the hosts - a match in which neither defence really showed up. South Africa now have a proper coach again and went back to their proper and formidable smash-mouth methods - big men running very hard. Breathless stuff. Modern tackling technique is found wanting in the resulting collisions, a point I have been boring people about for ages.

My old mate Trump skulked away from the G7 Summit and took to Twitter to slag off other world leaders, Justin Trudeau getting particular treatment. Trump is presently in Singapore readying himself for the Battle of the Coiffures when he meets the only man in the world with a more daft hairstyle than his own, Kim Jong-un. Meanwhile in amongst the usual offensive guff Trump makes a fair point (though not untypically he does do with the wrong numbers) when he bemoans the inequalities in the funding of NATO. You can see why even fair-minded Americans (there are loads of them be assured) might assume that other countries are rather taking them for granted. Noblesse oblige? Well yes, but not to the point of taking the piss, so be careful what you wish for.

Do you know what? My garden is looking rather good so I'm going to sign-off and then sit out here reading a good book. All that will be missing is a glass of something alcoholic and chilled because my tiny health-kick has me being abstemious on Mondays. TTFN.

Things Ain't What They Used To be

It's me, I am still here but I haven't been in the mood for blogging. I've been lacking in inspiration, alternating between high and low moods, with my family and friends the cause of the highs and the perfidy of mankind the harbinger of the lows. Neither of these factors is new and, you might very well observe, this state of affairs has never stopped me droning on at you in the past.

So what's different? This question has been gnawing away at me and I have had to conclude that what has drained away my will to write, has been the lack of any reliable prescription to cure the ills of the world. You know me - usually I think I know the answers (well some of them) but just now I feel defeated. Defeated by Trump perhaps. I no longer wake with the vague hope that overnight America will have found a sense of decency and taken steps to remove this wretched man. I am resigned to his awfulness. Will democracy ride to the rescue? I just have this horrible feeling it will not, that America is to remain calamitously divided and damnable. We should not be surprised by any of this - the almost equally loathsome Bill Clinton has this week averred that, given his time again, he would handle the Lewinsky Affair exactly as he did when in office. The man, like Trump, is a cad.

Pop Will Eat Itself - quite possibly the greatest rock band name of all time. My old mate Adam Dolgins wrote a whole book on that very subject by the way (band names that is). You will (if you read me regularly) have heard me use this delicious phrase (PWEI) before. It's one of my favourites and I think I most often use it in the context of the parlous state of that loveliest of games, cricket. Because here's the skinny, Cricket is not so much eating itself as devouring itself like a deranged self-harming tiger. T20 - here's another skinny: it's not fucking cricket. With this one I am pissing into a strong prevailing wind but that doesn't mean I'm not right. I look at my collection of Wisden almanacs and wonder how long it will be before there is no first class cricket to contain within those yellow dust jackets. A nice aside, Pop Will Eat Itself (the band) issued a track Reclaim the Game, though their context was the game of football. At least we don't have anyone force-feeding us abbreviated football. Not yet anyway.

On my recent journeys on public transport in Porto and Bilbao, I was struck by the unaffectedly polite cheeriness of the commuters and the cleanliness of the trains. Taking a train in England is so often a dispiriting experience. Does it have to be this way? I don't think it's the infrastructure so much as the people. Or maybe the infrastructure has deteriorated so much that we find a retreat into oafishness our only coping mechanism.

You see what I mean - I've become a right misery guts. Let me then introduce a moment of good cheer. I'm going to buy myself a new lawnmower, petrol and self-propelled of course. The current precious mower has done twenty years of loyal service and I want to retire it before it gives up the ghost altogether. I like petrol mowers. I like a tidy lawn.

Another reason to be cheerful, I ran four and a bit miles this morning. Slowly but continuously. I have a vague notion that I'd like to do a 10k in the autumn. Should be manageable, even for these old bones. Big Fat Pig redux.

You know what, just typing this blog has cheered me up. A problem shared etc. Thanks for listening.    

Reasons To Be Cheerful ... And Reasons Not

After the holiday splurge of blogging comes the inevitable new year lull while I try to cobble together something to write about. Of course there's plenty out there, but you have to make the effort to galvanise it into prose. So here goes.

Here's a paragraph I read this morning and which is so good that I should share it. It is from Rory Sutherland in the Spectator. He analyses the imperfections (nay imperfectability) of economics, the 'dismal science'. He explains how he confronts the dogma that underlies the forecasting failures of economists:

I try to solve this problem myself by being passionately and unquestioningly dogmatic about stupid things which don't matter: I believe the true word of God can only be expressed in 17th century English, am a great fan of the monarchy and am convinced, without a shred of empirical support, that the drink Dr. Pepper has real medicinal powers. The great thing about this is that by clinging to irrelevant certainties, I am free to change my mind about things which are actually important, such as the minimum wage or the need for free movement of labour. The ability to hold irrelevant things sacred is, I think, a great intellectual defence of conservatism.

Well, amen to most of that - I'm not so sure about Dr. Pepper but I think you'll find that this is true of a good Barolo.

The world is readying itself for the Trump presidency. It's already getting messy. In just the past few days we've had a run-in with Meryl Streep, allegations of a lurid blackmail tape and a bizarre press conference. Let's take them in turn.

Streepgate. La Streep used the platform of the Golden Globes (where she was getting yet another award) to condemn Trump's belittling of a disabled reporter. I have to be even handed here - I almost always find the right-on bleatings of luvvies tiresome and self-indulgent, so I should not put up with this instance just because I find Trump repellent. Of course she had a point. The man gives every indication of being a prize shit. His bellicose reaction (in which he offered the opinion that Streep is one of Hollywood's most overrated actresses) spoke volumes. For fuck's  sake Donald, rise above it.

That sex tape. Does it really exist? Who knows and until someone actually proves it one way or the other this is a non-story which has the liberal press foaming at the mouth and risking a gift to Trump of enough rope with which to hang his accusers. Mind you, it will be balls-achingly funny if it transpires to be true.

That press conference. Out of this world. The man has zero humility. Piers Morgan speaks well of him.  Enough said.

And the irony of this? To the extent he has a political agenda, there are plenty of good things on it. But if only, if only, it was someone less palpably immoral implementing it. And by the way Donald, an election where you lost the popular vote is not one that you won 'easily'. Still, in a gruesome sort of way, it's going to be funny watching him, so funny.

2016 And The Kindness Of Strangers

So ends (well almost - there is another day to come) 2016. It has been a year of celebrity deaths, an unattended Olympics (this fact overlooked in the mood of British triumphalism), electoral schisms and general pessimism. I started the year unattached to any medication and finish it back on everything. In this latter regard I have learned my lesson - some things are meant to be. To those, particularly the Groupie, who were alarmed by my tumble from the well wagon, I apologise and thank them, particularly the Groupie. I'll try not to do it again.

Those electoral schisms - Trump first. The dust begins to settle but still I cannot see this as anything other than a scar on the face of America. The man is vile. What does become yet more obvious as Democrats sift through the electoral rubble, is that Hillary Clinton was a catastrophically poor candidate. Yet the closest they came to an alternative was a barmpot like Bernie Sanders with his half-baked student politico socialism.

As for Brexit, well you know which side of the fence I fell. What has been by turns most amusing and most horrifying is the wounded self-righteous gibberish of the bien-pensant. Usually sober and sane commentators have lost all perspective. And yes I'm talking about you Matthew Parris - you have branded millions of us as racist (which I am not) and you should be ashamed of yourself. I expect Polly Toynbeee to write bilge but I thought you better than that.

Help!

All of which can leave a nasty taste in the mouth. So it is good to finish on a note of reassurance. On Tuesday afternoon La Famille Roberts set out on a walk over Cannock Chase. DN1's GPS reading was our guiding star. Well here's the news - sometimes the technology goes wrong. We ultimately exited the Chase three miles from our starting point and enveloped in swift-falling darkness. We resolved to call a taxi and were on the point of knocking on the first door we came upon to get an exact postal location. Our interlocutor would have none of it. He would drive us round the Chase (we had conspired to traverse it) back to our car. I do not know your name Sir and we will never meet again but for that kindness you win the OG Man of the Year Award for 2016.

Happy New Year.

Keeping My Hand In

If you go all the way back to my very first blog entry, you will find the words of the very eminent and admirable Ian Marchant, the man who set me off down this route. His first rule bears repetition - 'Writers Write'. So this is me, a little damaged by recent events, keeping my hand in. I've been a bit poorly in the head again but it now seems to be under control - thanks, despite all its fallibility, to the NHS, but thanks most of all to the love of a good woman.

But enough of such things. I'm still deciding how to make sense of the whole Trump thing - possibly the best view is that it is western society's postmodern joke upon itself. Who's laughing?

On the subject of bad jokes I could be found last week in The Erdington Players' revival of the stage version of Are You Being Served? If you don't know the original it is pointless me trying to describe its mutiple political improprieties to you, but do go on YouTube and you'll see what I mean. My health meant I enjoyed the process of the production less than the norm but I avoided any pratfall or obvious memory loss and I'm glad I did it. The comic mechanisms are actually quite clever but there is an air of inappropriateness to doing pussy jokes in a church hall. All part of life's rich thingy? Or am I getting priggish?

a film

Two films to report on: one of which will be familiar to regular readers. But before I get to that, what are we to make of Kingsman? This has its tongue lodged very firmly in its cheek as it pastiches Bond et al. The violence had, I suppose, a comic point to it. The language was unnecessarily rich (and yes that is me saying that) but in the end I was suitably diverted by it all. 6/10. But not even vaguely a patch on Hoop Dreams, which can be found hidden away on Netflix. If you have never seen this gargantuan documentary about American high school basketball, please track it down. It is one of the best dozen films ever made. 9.5/10. 

a truly great film

Unusually I Have Nothing To Say. I Have Said It All Already. Vulgarity Vanquishes All.