Partygate And Appropriate Swearing

I've read the Gray Report on what has predictably come to be known as Partygate. For those of you who may have been on another planet, or more accurately aren't British and are therefore less than interested in the machinations of our shitty political class, this is the sorry tale of the serial breaches of Covid Regulations that took place in Downing Street. I have let the dust settle for a few days and I find that my reaction has not changed. And here I have to apologise to more delicate readers because I will have to lapse into the coarsest language. My conclusion? Boris Johnson is quite clearly a complete f****** c***. He plays you and me, dear reader, for complete fools.

Let us remind ourselves that this man was educated at Eton and Oxford - now I didn't go to either of these august institutions but both sell themselves as being best in class. So let us first dispose of the most charitable interpretation of Johnson's behaviour - that is to say, that he misunderstood the tenor of the Regulations - those very Regulations he kept explaining to us at innumerable televeised press briefings. Horseshit. If he's that thick he shouldn't be in government. End of. I saw that dreadful creep Michael Fabricant pleading on Bozza'a behalf that a Prime Minister could not be expected to know the finer details of every Regulation - ok, I'll just about buy that but not of a man who had laid out to his poor old public what the rules meant. This shouln't really matter but Johnson's case is hardly helped when the man espousing it does so in a truly dreadful Boris Johnson fright-wig. Get a grip Fabricant.

So what other excuses have been paraded for the Downing Street shenanigans? Well, apparently they were all working very hard and under intolerable pressure. Oh the poor little poppets. Here's what Gray, in her fabulous civil service prose, has to say about that:     

Those challenges, however, also applied to key and frontline workers across
the country who were working under equally, if not more, demanding conditions,
often at risk to their own health. It is important to remember the stringency of
the public health regulations in force in England over the relevant periods and
that criminal sanctions were applied to many found to be in breach of them. The
hardship under which citizens across the country worked, lived and sadly even
died while observing the Government¶s regulations and guidance rigorously are
known only too well.

So what does the sober-sided civil servant  conclude about all of this?

I have already commented in my update on what I found to be failures of
leadership and judgment in No 10 and the Cabinet Office. The events that I
investigated were attended by leaders in government. Many of these events
should not have been allowed to happen. It is also the case that some of the
more junior civil servants believed that their involvement in some of these
events was permitted given the attendance of senior leaders. The senior
leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for
this culture.

All of this at the end of a report that also catalogues incivility towards the security and cleaning staff at No. 10. This sort of boorish behaviour upsets me even more than the odd illicit drink. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned. So there we have it - Boris you're a c***. Resign!  

It Catches All Of Us Eventually

That at least is how I feel at present. On the very morning (yesterday) that I was looking forward to a knock at the Belfry, I felt a tad ropey so dutifully took a Covid test and, Sod's Law at work, I joined the infected millions. I have felt more than just slightly ill today and I'm unwarrantedly knackered but, all in all, I think I'm relieved to have had some symptoms - it would feel wrong to be asymptomatic. So here I am, feeling that masculine self-pity (the Groupie is powering through the virus) and writing for your delectation. You have been tuning-in to the blog in greater numbers recently. Not anything earth-shattering but thank you anyway.

Sean Connery has more presence than any other actor I can think of (and I have considered Brando and Bryner) and he brings this to bear in The Hunt for Red October. He plays a Russian submarine commander with a distinguished Scots brogue but none of this matters - the camera devours him. The movie is based on Tom Clancy's Cold War pot-boiler and does it s job very nicely. I have to confess that, despite my dubious status as a student of literature, Clancy is one of my guilty pleasures. The man can do plot. As for the film, 69/100.  

Same As It Ever Was

Sorry, I have gone through an inactive period blogwise. I have not been entirely lazy, rather I have been waging my ineffective war with my chapter on Antony and Cleopatra. Still mired in that task though an end (or more exactly an interval - there will have to be substantial revision) is in sight. Great play, as yet a patchy chapter only.

Enough of my problems. How have you been? Are you yet vaccinated against Covid? That seems to be the key to getting out of this bloody lockdown. Waiting for a Covid-free world will be stupid. Within reason, we have to live with it as we do with other ailments. I find the cozy stupidity of those who think we can all live at the cost of each other the most frighteneing aspect of current thinking.

Aren't the Tories a shower? The sheer blind stupidity of Matt Handjob takes some believing. And isn't Dominic Cummings quite simply the nastiest, most odious, disloyal little shit you have ever seen? These bastards drove me into a position I never want to be in - I found myself agreeing with that shit of all shits, Alastair Campbell. I got over it but please never again.

More tee shirts sold than records?

So why today's title? Well, I was going to go (yet again) with my favourite 'Pop Will Eat Itself', but I thought you might be bored with that. You know what I mean by now. That lucky phrase comes to mind again as Sky flood the sporting airwaves with advertisements for the Hundred - cricket designed for people who hate cricket and find Tweny20 too boring. The same weary sentiment is reinforced by the news that Premiership Rugby are increasing the size of the league and imposing a moratorium on relegation. Watch this space - the rich will get richer. And what about the complete charade of the group stages of football's Euros. Thirty-six matches to accomplish the minor task of eliminating only eight of the twenty-four teams. Stultifying. Greedy. Mind you I ask you to give me credit for having backed the nil-nil draw in the England v Scotland match. I'm sorry but it was as obvious as Scotland's failure to garner any other points. 

Still, no matter. I'm enjoying golf with the lads and it's QMT tour in three weeks time. Glorious stupidity. I had a particularly joyous outing at Forest of Arden last week with CC and BH. The greens were an eye-opener for those of us who are used to the speed-bumps on the greens at Royal Pype Hayes.

England v Germany tonight. I'm not sure I can stand to watch it. 

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky

But I can't. Or more precisely I cannot go to my beloved Plas Piggy, where I can wake up to the scent of sea air and the view of the bay, best taken with that first good coffee of the day. Because, you see, nothing better illustrates the downsides of devolution than the fact that though the Welsh Assembly has deigned to allow us to use the property (on which I will remind you we pay a punitive Council Tax), our English masters prohibit us from travelling. Thus the Welsh economy is denied the pent-up spending power of eager English wallets until after the first bank holiday of the year. I know that the powers that be are concerned for my health but some consistency wouldn't go amiss. Anyway, let's hope that I can get there when the English shutters go up in a couple of weeks.

But fear not, it is not all bad news. The golfing Pig is back. Eight of us (socially distanced into two groups - honest) headed to Pype Hayes yesterday to celebrate the re-opening of the golf courses. I hit our first shot of the year - at a forty-five degree angle, into a tree and obediently back to my feet. It got better, in fact I played sporadically good golf. When I was good, I was very, very good but when I was bad - well you get the picture. 

Still on golf. I was watching the WGC Matchplay at the weekend. Why are American spectators (well some of them) such knuckle-dragging morons? 'Get in the hole' is assinine but mitigated by some small sense, but 'Mashed potato' - wtf? And as for the shit-for -brains who yelled 'Get in the water' at the top of John Rahm's backswing - well, this actually makes me reassess my view on American gun laws. People should be permitted to bear arms for the sole purpose of shooting these pricks. There you are - Big Fat Pig, the voice of reason. 

     

A Pleasant Trip To Villa Park

I'm a Baggies fan so Villa Park (notwithstanding its proximity to my dear old school) is not really one of my happy places. I do remember us winning there in the eighties in the League Cup (1 - 0, Andy King) but that's about it.

Well today I went there for my Covid jab. Bloody brilliant. The whole set-up was bloody brilliant. Cheerful, professional and efficient. Why can't things always be like that? And, no, it doesn't hurt. 

Goodbye To all That

2020 is at last behind us. The year started in the shadow of my father's death. We did at least get to give him a memorable funeral before the darkness of Covid engulfed us all. By government dictat we spent much of the remainder of the year cowering in our homes - could it have been handled better? Well yes possibly but no plausible candidate for stewardship of the ship of state suggested him or herself. Perhaps the only political illumination in the year came last week when the largely risible Michael Fabricant kept referring to Keir Starmer as a smarmy lawyer. 

My golf did get marginally better but paranoia sufficiently clouded governmental sense to mean that we could hardly even lock ourselves away in the Anglesey home we own and on which we pay punitive tax. What did they think we were going to do - run around the village coughing our nasty English germs through people's letterboxes?  

Anyway, it's over now and the new year does at least arrive with the hope inherent in the new vaccines. And in nineteen days Donald Trump will cease to be President of the world's most important country. Do you think we ought to tell him he lost? Loser.

 

I'm Sorry But Now I've Had Enough

I was watching CNN this afternoon and they showed some voxpop from a Trump rally. The line of questioning was 'Why aren't you wearing a mask?' Some predictably parroted the lines about their constitutional freedoms but the prize for most entertaining (in a quite horribly morbid manner) has to go to the shaven-headed biker type who answered in all seriousness, 'Because it's a fake virus, it doesn't exist.' You have to marvel at the potency of a deep state that such idiots believe could pull off a stunt on that scale.

I'll tell you what constitutes the best argument against the existence of these bizarre plots. The performance of our own dear government in the face of the virus, that's what. To fake a response to the pandemic every bit as inept as the one we are seeing, would take administrative genius on an unprecedented scale. No the sad facts are these: the virus exists and our leaders have completlely lost both plot and control.

So yes, I am (after an implausibly long period of biting my tongue) now officially pissed off with the whole shebang. By the time (if ever) we come out of this, our economy will be shot to pieces. Actually, that's unfair - it's already shot. I know it's difficult lads but please, please, can we have some hint that there is a strategy underlying the constant changes in policy. I will at least concede that the virus looks pretty.

Croeso - Encore Une Fois

How's that for a polyglot heading? Admit it you're impressed - a Pig of hidden depths. Well you will probably have guessed that Big Fat Pig is at Casa Piggy Cymraeg again, ostensibly to meet a roofer to get a price for a new roof - the original seventies roof is now held together by a lot of moss. That moss is much loved by the pestilential gulls who are once again nesting on the roof, their offspring now thumping around on the flat section and shitting everywhere. Possibly a shiny new roof will be less attractive to these flying vermin.

I say ostensibly here on account of the roof but of course I need little excuse to decamp here, even if it does separate me from the Groupie who puts the Pig to shame by her work ethic.

Anyway enough of my domestic arrangements - here's the news: for the second week in a row the Pig took his long run in Anglesey, this time heading inland and back to Benllech. Ninety-two minutes (and two seconds - it all counts) in a refreshing (for the runner at least) drizzle. Oakleys were worn, otherwise I doubt that the Pig could have made it. Thus continues the fitness drive - the Pig can now pull his unbelted trousers down without having to undo them. He does not, naturally, do this in polite company - mind you he does not often keep polite company.

Whilst writing this I have been listening to a brilliant album by the most disappointing act I have ever seen live - the album (taut and compelling) is Armed Forces, the band Elvis Costello and the Attractions. I am pleased to say that that evening at the Hammersmith Palais was more than rescued by the two support acts - John Cooper Clark, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. It is not a little frightening when I realise that this all took place more than three decades ago.

It is also nearly twenty years since the Pig and the Groupie took Daughters Number One and Two on a four week Australian holiday. It was completely fantastic. But I won't bore you with the details, instead I will refer to one small episode that sticks in my mind from that vacation. We transited via Paris Charles de Gaulle and were in the Club lounge (Groupie had a lot of air miles from her business travel - the major factor in the Pig's predilection for turning left when he gets on planes) where the decision to shut the smoking area was causing an uproar. The area in question was merely a demarked section of the room, no physical separation being in place. In short the room was (as we had found when on our outward journey, the closure occuring in the interim) Passive Smoking Central. The Pig is not a vehement anti-smoker, indeed enjoys the occasional crafty cigar, but there is a world of difference between endangering your own health and the freedom to infect your fellow man. As something of a libertarian (admit it, you'd noticed) I wrestle with these sorts of things but at some point common decency ought to intrude - first do no harm. What am I getting at? Well, take  a look at this video of boorish libertarians in the States - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-53411955/you-call-me-selfish-for-not-wearing-a-mask

They have a point - but that point is wrong. First do no harm. Primum non nocere. Which by my count means that smart arse Pig has now used four languages in today's tirade. Pig out.

Quiet Nights In

The country yesterday took its biggest step yet towards emerging blinking into the daylight of normality (I was toying with 'normalcy' there but decided that it is too transatlantic) - this giant leap for British mankind was the reopening of the pubs. The police were on full alert apparently. The Roberts family (we have Daughter Number 1 here with us this week) opted for a night in but we did greatly enjoy fish and chips ordered online (click and collect) and collected from the estimable Mere Green Chippy.

Last week we had re-watched Inception - the third time of asking for me. Visually stunning and with a thunderous score this is a tour-de-force from director Christopher Nolan. Due deference to DN1 is needed here and I must point out that Nolan read English at her alma mater University College London. We will generously forgive them both this defect. This is a film which is a feast for the eyes but one does also have to concentrate because the plot is labyrinthine - there is much play with levels of consciousness, dreams within dreams within dreams and onwards down as in a hall of mirrors. On third viewing I think it made more sense to me. Highly recommended. 81/100.

I mention our choice of viewing because yesterday evening (after the chips) we fired up the neglected big screen upstairs (when we bought it it was expensive state of the art, now it is unexceptional) and watched a very different movie, Greenbook. The fact that this won Best Picture at the Oscars might usually disconcert me but, no, this is a bloody good film. Its two stars, Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, are on brilliant form and, yes alright, it does sometimes tip into the sentimental but its message of racial tolerance and friendship is uplifting. Catch it if you can. 88/100. 

Regulation 6

I have been doing something that is open to anyone with an internet connection - I have read the Coronavirus Regulations that have, in the context of Dominic Cummings, got the commentariat and various legislators so exercised. If more of the fuckwit journos and politicos had bothered to do this then we might be enjoying (probably the wrong verb but sod it I'm on a roll) a rather better debate about that drive to Durham that the Boy Cummings saw fit to take. The only issue on which we have clarity is that there are a lot of people in our political and journalistic elite who utterly detest Cummings. Plain and simple they loathe the man, blame him for Brexit and Boris' mini-landslide. By the way we haven't heard the end of Brexit just yet - there are still people (take the sanctimonious windbag Ed Davey) getting themselves in trim for one last attempt to confound the will of the people. We can safely leave that for another day.

Anyway back to those Regulations. Here are the relevant facts and pertinent questions - trust me, I'm a lawyer:

• The Regulation states baldly, 'During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.'
• The Regulation then has thirteen sub-clauses which list examples of what will constitute a reasonable excuse.
• Those thirteen sub-clauses are not intended as an exhaustive list - there can clearly be other unspecified examples of reasonable behaviour. It is into this unspecified category that Cummings asserts his behaviours fit. That assertion is his right. It is the right of anyone else caught up in this wretched pandemic (so that means all of us) to attempt to exploit what lazy journalese calls this 'loophole'.
• So the two proper questions it seems to me are these: (i) was that initial 260 mile jaunt to Durham reasonable in the context of Cumming's precise situation vis-a-vis childcare? (ii) (and this I think is the more difficult one for Cummings) was that shorter excursion to Barnard Castle also reasonable in all the circumstances?

That's it - simple. If you think that these questions merit the public expense of judicial determination then you differ from me. That is your right. As to the crap about public opinion well, I'm sorry, that's irrelevant garbage as is the call for some sort of government enquiry - what a waste of resource. As to whether Cummings should resign (or be sacked) because he has breached some invisible 'spirit' (more lazy journalese) of the law, well that is a purely political question which we can safely leave to the political class as they roll around the whole bloody mess of them in the gutter.

One final biblical thought - those who live by the sword, die by the sword.    

Quotable Stuff

In my eclectic reading over the past week there has been a surfeit of stuff that had me thinking, yes he's got a point there, possibly wrong but there's an arguable point to it.

First up is my favourite member of the commentariat, Rod Liddle, Milwall fan and provocateur. In this week's Spectator on the topic of the lockdown (of which he is broadly a supporter):

The notion that we might end up kindlier, greener, gentler as a consequence of our brush with this ineffectual Armageddon was always horribly misplaced. The only lasting impact will be that reform of the cumbersome and often fantastically inept National Health Service will be off the cards in perpetuity and instead we will probably still be forced to kneel down before it every Thursday evening to give praise, clutching a used face mask in lieu of a rosary.

Next, my favourite denigrator of all things Bagehot whose lucid vitriol when it comes to my old mate Walter has even me thinking again. This, from his one hundred and forty page rant against Bagehot The Case of Walter Bagehot, is C.H. Sisson:

The central object of Bagehot's writing - and it is a destructive one - was to give exclusive respectability to the pursuit of lucre, and to remove whatever social and intellectual impediments stood in the way of it. Intellectual pursuits, and whatever strives in the direction of permanence and stillness, have to give way to the provisional and divisive incitements of gain. In the end one is left contemplating numbers over a great void. 

Finally from Waugh's Officers and Gentlemen, the arrestingly crafted summary of Guy Crouchback's private desolation occasioned by the entry of Russia into the war:

It was just such a sunny, breezy Mediterranean day two years before when he read of the Russo-German alliance, when a decade of shame seemed to be ending in light and reason, when the Enemy was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off; the modern age in arms. Now that hallucination was dissolved.

I am not, of course, at all sure where I am going with all of this but I take mild comfort in the fact I am in my inefficient way still trying to get somewhere.  

Writers Read

The urge to read has remained with me as we go deeper into the coronavirus lockdown. In the last week I went straight from Simon Raven's Friends in Low Places to its successor in the Alms for Oblivion sequence, The Sabre Squadron. To my mind this is the best of the ten novels. It can profitably be read without reference to the other books, but once you have read it I suspect you will want to search out the remainder.

After the scabrous Raven, a change of tack altogether. I fancied a chunk of comfort reading so it was back to a childhood favourite author, Arthur Ransome. I lazily thought I had read all the Swallows and Amazons tracts but I had overlooked Missee Lee. A book which would today have child protectors rushing to condemn it and which might very well also be deemed racist, it rockets along at breakneck pace and is a plain and simple delight.

Politics still intrudes. In America the Democrats have at least stopped fighting each other and will hopefully direct all their energy to defeating the narcissistic sociopath that is Donal Trump. Mind you whether the selection of someone as obviously second-rate as Joe Biden to lead the fight is a good one must be very open to question. Good luck to them in any event. In 1980s America I met Republicans who were very thoroughly decent people but one has to say that the amoral manner in which today's GOP has fallen in behind Trump should leave members thoroughly ashamed.

At home I'm afraid I have to say that I have always found something vaguely unpleasant in the phenomenon of Keir Starmer. Yet another bloody lawyer, he was a good enough prosecutor to attract a knighthood under a Tory regime. Despite his carefully cultivated appearance of moderation he had no problem falling in behind the laughable policies of Corbyn. He started his leadership of the Labour Party by disavowing factional opposition for the sake of opposition and the very next day published a mealy-mouthed attack on the conduct of the coronavirus crisis. When Boris Johnson fell seriously ill Starmer blathered self-serving bollocks about constitutional procedures. Sanctimonious prig.

But hey ho, the sun is shining, the Pig ran five miles this morning and there is one glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape left from last night's bottle (it was a bank holiday so therefore does not count as a weekday) - the recliner in the garden is calling and the Pig is going to read another chapter of John Wilders' The Lost Garden, a consideration of Shakespeare's history plays (including those of Rome) in a lapsarian context. You must be so jealous.

Contagion

She's a cheery soul the Groupie. Last night she wanted us to re-watch Contagion (available on Netflix) - a film that documents the wild progress of a new virus around the world. The first thing to say, in the current coronavirus context, is just how much the film gets right. The initial scepticism of some fictional officials would have some real politicians (you know who you are) squirming. Fortunately we have not yet seen the posited looting and societal breakdown, but don't hold your breath.

This is a solid piece of film-making with a good ensemble cast. I particularly liked Jude Law as a shitbag blogger/journo. Have you got the stomach to watch it at present? 72/100.   

On Ageing Disgracefully

Yesterday it rained. Today it has not, although the temperature has been sharp to say the least. Still I saw quite a few hardy souls out for a walk as I ran four miles (yes you did read that right - the Pig is back) this morning. I traded greetings with various people and exchanged knowing nods (the stock in trade of the self-righteous) with a few fellow runners - this is an exaggeration of course, what the Pig does these days is not so much running as shuffling. It is, in the Pig's defence, moderately faster than walking.

At what age does middle age end? I will hit sixty next month. Will I pass from being a MAMIL (middle aged man in lycra) to some other status? Is wearing lycra after passing six decades on the planet an affront to decency? Do you know what - I don't care. It makes me feel good, even if the pre-exercise stretching and the post-exercise recovery take longer and longer.

And another thing - I'm off the midweek vino at present. Sodding hell I feel smug! And the FTSE went up today so I am moderately richer than yesterday and still substantially poorer than one short month ago. You can't take it with you but I'm thinking of living for ever.

The Return Of Good Manners

We are still in the early days of the lockdown but one positive consequence is the re-emergence of courtesy. Now even a jaundiced old cynic like the Pig will concede that good manners had never entirely gone away but incivility makes more noise and pre coronavirus Britain could be hurtful. Well now when one is out and about taking the permitted daily dose of exercise cheering features are the coy acquiescence in social distancing and the ready exchange of polite greetings. The last time I can remember quite such an atmosphere was during the London Olympics, an event I was fortunate to be part of as a volunteer. A sign of the times is that the Excel Centre where I did my stewarding has now been converted into a field hospital.

Another side-effect of the lockdown is the opportunity to get some films watched. Groupie and the Pig have viewed three already this weekend. All notable. First up was Gloria Swanson relishing the golden opportunities given to an actor by a script as cynical and de trop as Sunset Boulevard. I have taken a unilateral decision to revise my future film gradings to mark on a scale of 100 instead of the old 10. And for all you wiseacres out there, yes I know the simple expedient of going to one decimal place might have rescued the old system but it would not have felt half so revolutionary. 87/100. So pretty bloody good in other words.

Also pretty bloody good if not quite a classic is Blinded by the Light. The uplifting Asian/British genre is well-populated (East is East, Anita and Me, anything scripted by Hanif Kureishi - who went to King's, just so you know) and this is not quite the best but the Springsteen soundtrack carries it along and the end is nicely touching. Strong central performances and even the de rigueur Thatcher bashing is not overdone. 73/100.

And to finish - another rather lovely little film, Il Postino. Now there he goes again that pretentious Pig recommending a film with subtitles. But stay with the project folks and you will be rewarded with a gentle love story - the love of a man for a woman and the (sometimes competing) love of that same man for the possibilities of poetry. 82/100.

So all in all it's been a good weekend - the Pig even fitted in another run yesterday morning.     

Writers Write/ Writers Read/ Kill Your Parents

Any of you who have been with me since the start will recognise these three injunctions as the Imperatives of Marchant delivered as with lapidary permanence by my first creative writing tutor.

I have found the first of these difficult to observe of late, rather feeling that what little I have got to say has already been said. As for the second, well I drift in and out of reading - I'm in one of my good phases at present. I alluded to this in my last entry. Since that entry I have completed Waugh's Men at Arms and have saved the next instalment of Sword of Honour for later, treating myself now to an interval of Simon Raven. I have read and re-read his Alms for Oblivion sequence countless times already - first encountering him from the fiction shelves of Erdington library as a teenager, pointed in the direction of this magnificently louche author by my father. To repeat the most oft-used critical estimation: the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel.

So it is that I am a hundred pages into Friends in Low Places, the second novel of the sequence. In my mind I had thought that this was one of the weaker books of the ten. Either I have hitherto been wrong or the whole shebang is even better than I had thought. Entrancing - no that's not quite the bon mot - let's try raucous and compelling, which is two bons mots. Just writing this piece is making me want to get back to read some more.

There is a temptation to read into the fictional mind of Raven's proto-novelist Fielding Gray something of Raven himself:

But what then? Suppose his work found favour with Somerset and his novels were published by Gregory Stern, suppose, even, that they achieved some measure of public esteem, what was to follow? Would there be anything more to say? Could he face the prospect of carrying on indefinitely with such a career? For did not even the two existing manuscripts pose the question, "While this is quite well done, was there ever, in truth, any real reason for doing it?"

I think we can take it as read that Raven himself would not have set much store by the opinion of a jobbing commercial lawyer but for what it's worth Simon old boy, these novels have been important to me. And here is another sample of why - this is the Marquis Canteloupe's reflection on his first meeting with the gruesome Somerset Lloyd-James:

In short, Somerset Lloyd-James would do. That he was manifestly not only a gentleman but also a howling shit did not deter Canteloupe one iota: for one thing, as he reflected, he was a shit himself, and for another he preferred working with them. For the great thing about shits was that they got on with it (provided the price was right) and didn't ask damn silly questions.

Delicious and so so right, as any honest jobbing commercial lawyer will tell you. Mind you, good luck in finding such a tradesman who is both jobbing and honest.

Away from books and outside on the mean streets of Britain, coronavirus continues to hold us in its invisible grasp. The Prime Minister has gone down with it now, not to mention the heir to the throne. The Roberts household is fine thus far and indeed Big Fat Pig is rather relishing the feeling of virtuousness that comes with regular exercise - two runs this week and an outing on the Precious Bike. All of this the Pig reports to you exactly one calendar month away from his sixtieth anniversary.

The mood of the domestic incarceration we are all enduring is no doubt made lighter by the gorgeous Spring weather we are enjoying. When, as it must, rain keeps us from even the sole exercise excursion we are permitted each day, the national mood may darken. As for how people will feel when we finally emerge blinking into the sunlit uplands of normality is a more troubling question - because then we will survey the full wreckage of our economy. But that is for another day.    

   

Social Distancing

This is what we have to perform if we dare to venture outside - 'social distancing', which means keeping 2 metres away from other human life forms. As for the 'vulnerable' (that's my dear old Mum I suppose) they have to lock themselves away for twelve weeks. The whole ghastly business carries with it an air of unreality. Sooner rather than later the economics of the the thing will sabotage this dream-like scenario and things will turn nasty. It is all the harder to credit when the weather (after three months of seemingly unbroken shite) has turned all nice and Spring-like on us. All the world and its wife has headed for public open space - the Boris has thus far resisted the temptation to close the parks (some municipalities have already done this) but if we don't start behaving ourselves he reserves the right to do so. Some gardening induced stiffness aside (old bones) I feel guiltily healthy. The garden is looking good even if there is more moss than I would like in my precious lawn. The lawn service is coming this week so hopefully it will soon improve, not that coronavirus is going to allow me to show it off to anyone. So it goes.

Slick, concise and underrated - this is how I would summarise Men In Black 2 which the Groupie and I watched last night. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are, in their markedly different ways, two of the coolest customers in the cinema firmament and this film deliver laughs at a gattling gun pace and does not take itself too seriously. 7/10.

I have to admit to my shame that the current lack (almost total) of any live televised sport really brings home how much of the stuff I watch. Does this make me a bad person? No, just a rather shallow one. I am not alone.

'You can tell a man who boozes/ By the company he chooses/And the pig got up and slowly walked away.' That lyric pipes up in my mind every time I see Mike Pence standing behind Doanld Trump and taking the buffoon seriously. The difference is of course stark - Pence never does walk away. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.     

What Was It Like Before Coronavirus?

Can anyone remember? The whole bloody world has ground to a halt, interrupted by explosions of activity as people indulge in panic-buying bog roll. Not a good look. As of a few minutes ago all the schools have been closed save for the offspring of 'key workers' - whatever that means and assuming such workers have not already self-isolated themselves and their children. Has it occurred to the powers that be to suspend the stock markets as well? After all the markets are run by and for children who sometimes need protection from themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry about all this - if the medics say we're all going to die then I'll go along with it. For now.

What else can I report. Oh yes, last week at Cheltenham was fun albeit tempered by an end of holidays feeling that soon such frivolity would be banned. Sure enough it has been. When last we corresponded I was optimisticallly clutching my Lucky 31 voucher which was going to land me some £13500. As it turned out it paid a return of £6.71. About as good as my punting got all week.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter - listening to it now. Now there's a reason to be cheerful. Good old Joni.

I've been out running the last couple of days after an indecent period of sloth. Yesterday was dreadful - two miles and nothing more rewarding than the sensation that I might be sick. Today was better - three miles and now I can barely walk. I must rediscover those balmy and energised days of 1996 when I ran the London Marathon and lost only narrowly in a sprint finish with a bloke in a rhino costume and another with one leg. Once were warriors indeed.

More good cheer: I have regained the reading bug (it deserts me on occasion) and am immersed in several good books. Gary Imlach's My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes is that cherishable beast, the good sports book - a record of a game now long gone with the wind. Premier League millionaires might do well to read it. It tells of a time when the professional players were treated lamentably and we should not be nostalgic for those times but we might want to stop for a moment and see how far the immorality has has spun to the other side of the coin. For fiction I am re-reading Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. A delight. Poignant as well because I read the first couple of chapters to Dad the last time I saw him alive. I'm also dipping in and out of a tatty old paperback edition of World at War, the book that accompanied the fabulous television series.

The Groupie and I are off to collect a wine order. I hope she's ordered enough to last the length of the curent crisis. Now that really would be bad news. See you on the other side.