A Black Wednesday

When troubles come they come not single spies but in battalions. Well perhaps not battalions but certainly double spies last Wednesday. On that day I heard of the death of two men who profoundly influenced me. One was the best of a very good bunch at school and the other a university teacher (though this was only a minor specimen of his achievements) who was responsible for the start of this blog.

John G. Smith succeeded my father as Head of English at King Edward VI Aston. He took up post two terms before I arrived at the school in 1971 and stayed there until his retirement in 2002. In me he burnished the love of literature already encouraged by my father and his rough wisdom still patterns my thinking to this day. On top of that he was the greatest influence on my rugby both as a player and as a coach. The instinct to ruck rather than to maul was hammered home to me and from JGS I learned the desirability of educated roughness. A great man taken too soon although I am selfishly pleased that he lived long enough to know of my doctorate in English. I supect he found it balls-achingly funny and a proper expression of my pomposity.

Ian Marchant

And it was near the start of that journey to my PhD that Ian Marchant comes into the frame. He lectured/encouraged me in Life Writing in the second year of my second degree and if you go to the very first entry in this blog (27 January 2010) you will get the gist of what he instilled in us. He was novelist/author of critically accalimed non-fiction/broadcaster/scurrilous performer and an all-around good egg. He was only two years older than me but aeons ahead in wisdom.

God rest you both. 

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.

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.

And Goodbye To All That

Alongside this text will appear rather inadequte pictures (yes, taken on my antediluvian telephonic implement) of the two books I returned last week to the university library. Their subject matter (evident from their forbidding titles) will tell you where OG was felt to be lacking in his first submission of his doctoral thesis Shakespeare and Bagehot: a Study in Drama and Politics. 

Having now kicked over the traces of the opinions of my learned examiners, I am more than happy to concede that they had a point. So what is this all leading up to? Well, I will mention this just once (not entirely sure that I will keep this promise) but my formal studies are at an end. On October 11 2023 I received an email (no snail mail I'm afraid) addressed to 'Dr David Roberts'. It took me bloody years and no small amount of doubt and panic but I got there. No more examinations for Dr. Dave. 

About those two books. After I had consigned them to the returns bin, I instinctively turned left to go to the literature shelves to seek more obscure tomes for my studies, only to pull myself up short - I didn't know what next to read. The necessity had gone. There was a mild tinge of regret, followed by a knowing grin. It is over. I hope I never stop learning, but there are no more badges to be won. In 1978 I failed to do myself justice in my A Levels. I think I have now, and only now, atoned. To all who kept me going and put up with me, thank you. The Nobel laureate Bob Dylan sums up my state of mind best: 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'.    

Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends

OG/BFP has been silent for too long. Sorry about that, those few of you out there who might have noticed, and, I suppose, more pertinently the few of those who give a stuff.

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been? I went down to London to visit the queen. Which is exactly, well nearly, what OG, the Groupie, and DN1 did. We queued for twelve hours to pay our respects to our late monarch. Cold logic fails to explain why I felt compelled to attend the lying in state, but (and I'm sorry if this disappoints some of you) it is something I needed to do. I had always promised myself that when Queen Elizabeth II passed, I would make my small gesture of gratitude for a job well done. Whether I will ever come to feel the same about Charles III is a question I cannot yet answer. I hope so. A good start will be the ostracising from the working family of Prince Andrew and the freezing out of Harry and his knowing duchess. I bow to no man in  my gratitude for their armed service but there are stupidities that cannot be endured. 

To happier themes. I, for the first time in a decade, am free from my self-imposed guilt at not getting on with my thesis. It may be a piece of crap but it is my piece of crap and it is finished and submitted. Examination/humiliation by viva voce awaits. We shall speak of this no more - not sure that's a promise I am up to keeping.

Film as art. We watched Kenneth Branagh's Belfast last weekend. A tender and beautiful piece of cinema, particularly resonant for anyone privileged to have been welcomed into the Irish diaspora. And what a performance from the juvenile lead, Jude Hill. In racing parlance, I hope he trains on. Even if he does, one has to doubt that he will ever be in anything as good again. 91/100. That good. 

Film as art. When I was young and impressionable I thought John Steinbeck a great writer. Modernist snobbery made that an unfashionable view. I hold to it. I read The Grapes of Wrath almost at one sitting on a cross-channel ferry. Until this week I had never viewed John Ford's movie adaptation. It is (not my words but they are apt) a poem of a film. It moves away from Steinbeck's bitter/sweet/harrowing ending (still burned on my memory) in favour of a mildly more optimistic tone, but it is, like its source novel, a thing of artistic majesty. 97/100. That good.

It is a pretty good week when the third best film you see in those seven days is another Ford masterpiece, The Searchers. I treated myself to another screening of this film last night (I am on one of my flying visits to Plas Piggy to turn on the heating). It is not as consistently brilliant as The Grapes of Wrath but that is to compare it to a near-perfect artefact. No, The Searchers is an important piece of americana, one that faces up to the racist difficulty at the heart of Manifest Destiny. And in John Wayne's portrayal of Ethan Edwards, we have one of the most undererated performances in cinema history. 91/100. That good. 

Not quite so good but perfectly watchable was this afternoon's choice - the John Huston 1956 adaptation of Melville's unfilmable Moby Dick. Gregory Peck seems an odd choice to play the demented Ahab but the film has its strengths. It is a tale of toxic masculinity and the obsessions it can spawn. Quite fittingly there is not a word spoken in the film by a woman. Better to read the book but nevertheless 69/100. 

So that's it. The boy is back.   

 

 

  

Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth

Or should that be weeping and gnashing of teeth? Biblical? Probably - anyway you've got the internet or you wouldn't be reading this.

Besides which, the wailing/weeping etc is that peculiar thing - an introductory aside. Because the wailing would be about Ofsted, and that is a subject about which I am forbidden to gnash teeth. It is a process entirely (well almost) well-intentioned but it is hanging like a sword of Damocles over me in my gubernatorial guise. Bring it on I say and I can carry on with my other jobs and get on with making a great school even better. You've got to aim high.

No, today's real business is to trumpet a candidate for the accolade of greatest British film director. As you will previously have gathered I can't be having Alfred Hitchcock, good though he might be. Lindsay Anderson? Too weird. No, no, no - my suggestion is David Lean. What brought this to mind was watching a beautifully sharp reprint of 1948's Oliver Twist. I might not be alone in preferring to watch adaptations of Dickens rather than have to read him - is that a sin? I have read him but it can be a bit of a trudge. I feel the same about Tolkien - and that's not just because he went to King Edward's School. 

Anyway, the Lean Oliver Twist is terrific - a rambling novel is tamed (I believe Lean co-wrote the script) and you can scan the full library of film noir and you won't find a better casting of shadows - right up there with Touch of Evil, and that is one of the best films ever made. Oliver Twist - 86/100.

Right, back to work. Progress 8 scores anyone?    

Silence Is Golden

But not so golden when you are a blogger.Writers Write.

I am ever grateful for the company of good men. Winter golf can be a tad disspiriting, apart from all else, it gets your precious white shoes dirty - I have to wear white shoes. Not sure why but have almost invariably done so. To counter this desecration of my summer shoes, I have taken to wearing my old shoes - these look fine (also white) but my sodden feet remind me why I replaced them earlier this year - there'a substantial hole. No part of this small personal drama dims the lustrous company of BH, JRS, CL, MS and RW at Royal Pype Hayes. 

More good company: the Aston Old Edwardian Reunion Dinner at School on Saturday, an event which seemed to have been crawling to a sad oblivion, transpired as a resurgent iteration. This was the first time that our new Head had heard the School Song being sung. Silly but brilliant. Long live the good old schoolboys, God bless the brave old school. 

The T20 World Cup has come and gone. Good riddance. Australia winning anything is a little tiresome but this is, after all, only pub cricket. The height of the tournament was the ignominious exit of India - the nation who have stolen the soul of first class cricket. Ha ha.

You may recall me concluding some months ago that Eddie Jones has outstayed his welcome as England rugby coach. I stand by this. Apart from the fact of his fondness for acting the charmless nerk, forgivable when winning perhaps, he just does plain stupid things - he plays his best player (Tom Curry) out of position in a specialist position for example. I could go on. But won't. 

'We Are Penn State', Other Sporting Triumphs, And A Significant Anniversary

Number nineteen ranked Penn State travelled to number twelve Wisconsin and won 16-10 with a glorious defensive performance. After last year's near disastrous record, things look better for the Nittany Lions. We are Penn State.

While the cosseted stars of the PGA Tour spent their weekend chasing the obscene $15m prize at their Tour Championship, the better spectacle was to be found in Toledo, Ohio where the women of America and Europe battled it out without recompense for the Solheim Cup. For once the often anodyne Iain Carter gets it spot on - Solheim Triumph 

Can you remember what you were doing fifty years ago today? As it happens I can - 7 September 1971 was one of the very best days of my fortunate life. On that date I started at King Edward VI Aston School. Not a day goes by without me being grateful for the companionship and learning that School gave me. Long live the name of Edward, our founder and our king. Silly but you've got to love it.

The Siren Idiocy Of 'Make America Great Again' ... And Some Cheerier Stuff

The message is delivered knowingly by a dangerous man who cares for nothing other than his own crude ambition. If his blandishments have their desired effect then America (which we of course concede has on occasion been a great force for good) risks slipping idiotically into a politics of eternalism in which unpalatable truths are treated as invention and decency is sacrificially slaughtered.

The politics of eternity consumes the substance of the past, leaving only a boundless innocence that justifies everything. (Timothy Snyder)

Enough I hear you say. Ok - for now let us have some faith in the American electorate coming to its senses. 

What is the cheery stuff? Nothing startling or new but sometimes old nostrums bear repetition. After the second recent occurence of my calf injury I am back on the roads again, now wearing my very silly-looking calf warmers. Touch wood, so far so good and I am definitely feeling the benefit of the relatively large amount of running and cycling I did in the Summer. The nicest aspect of running the same route most days is that I see familiar faces - this morning was particularly gratifying as a succession of senior citizens (yes even more senior than the Pig himself) waved or spoke to me. As Blur nearly said, it gives me a sense of enormous well-being. Actually, come to think of it, that may even be precisely what Blur said. Answers on a post card etc.

Yesterday was the forty-ninth anniversary of my starting at School. I've said it often enough before but King Edward VI Aston School has been an overwhelming source of good in my life. As if to illustrate how some gifts just keep on giving I played fun and sociable golf yesterday evening with NJ, BH, JRS, CDL and RM, all of them part of the Aston community. Life's been good to me so far.    

 

Advent 24

I could nominate the house in which I grew up and where my parents still live. I could nominate this house I sit in, or indeed the previous two houses where I have been privileged to abide with the Groupie, DN1 and DN2. But, no, door 24 belongs to the place that did most to make me man enough (I hope) to deserve those benevolent homes.

My taste for the Victorian Gothic (Guillermo Del Toro anyone?) probably comes from the architecture of the old building at my school, King Edward VI Aston. Take a look at that picture, imagine yourself joining the throng of boys, take a right turn in the lobby and at the end of the corridor you will be in Room 1, form room for 1F, where first I sat on 7 September 1971. Also sitting in alphabetical proximity to me were JRS and ICW, both of whom I have supped with in the last week.

Our magnificently barmy School song enjoins us to sing both our living heroes and our great departed. Amen to that.

Happy Christmas and may your god go with you.

   

National Treasures

After enjoying (very much as I had expected to) the opening episode of Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, I was delighted to note that Kermode had co-authored the series with the seriously good but less telegenic Kim Newman. OG hereby nominates both as national treasures. Both are deadly serious about film but wear their learning lightly without ever patronising or over-simplifying. I feel this generosity of spirit in their work rather personally because of my own dispiriting experience when I briefly studied Film on my second degree. Private grief is generally best kept that way, but I have to say with feeling that the wretched man who taught me left me depressed and belittled. I'm well over it by now but the cloud over my memories of an otherwise happy time remains. My problem? Very possibly but education doesn't have to be that way.

The Kermode/Newmwn series can be found via Secrets of Cinema

What's The Collective Noun For Tossers?

A certain Chris Heaton-Harris has written on House of Commons notepaper (so far so good - he is an MP so he's entitled to use the stationery) asking university vice-chancellors to kindly let him know who is teaching European Studies and what they are teaching about our old friend Brexit. You can find a copy of the letter here: Heaton-Harris letter

I've had a good think about it and on balance, all things considered, looked at from all angles, I've decided that this man must, charitably, be a tosser. The information he seeks would be interesting but his method of trying to assemble it is disingenous in the extreme. As I say, tosser.

However, the reaction to it from certain universities is a little pathetic - rise above it, let him do his own research. Bin the bloody thing.

And here's something that isn't a secret - yes our universities are a hotbed of self-pitying leftist tosh. They have been for all of my life and I suspect it will be ever thus - and I include in that disparagement both of my almae matres, the both of which I regard with proud affection. It is always open to people to go against the flow - I did and lost no friends through it. It is when they won't let you speak you should be worried. And I strongly suspect that this is what is in Heaton-Harris's tiny little mind. Certainly the shrill reaction to his tossery suggests that they fear that that tool of the assinine left, no platforming, is to be turned on them by the big bad bear that is the government. Don't worry yourselves my dears - this government has trouble in breweries, piss-up wise.

How about a 'throw' of tossers?  

Local Hero

I took my dear old dad on a little pilgrimage today. Dad was the centenary historian for our alma mater, King Edward VI Aston School. In that capacity he added to his existing store of admiration for martial Aston Old Edwardians - prime amongst them Robert Edwin Phillips. He died in retirement in Cornwall after a career as a tax inspector, having cheated death in the Great War. This is the citation for his Victoria Cross, earned in battle in Kut, Mesopotamia in January 1917:

After his commanding officer had been mortally wounded while leading a counter-attack, Temporary Lieutenant Phillips went out under most intense fire to his assistance and eventually succeeded in bringing him back to our own lines. Captain Phillips showed sustained courage in its very highest form and throughout he had little chance of ever getting back alive.

This son of Aston was born and brought up in West Bromwich and a little delving (this internet thingy really ought to catch on) taught me that his home town has of late doubly honoured him. At his modest boyhood phone there is a blue plaque and nearby on a pleasant newish estate there is a road named for him. Behind this second tribute lies a tale of modern bureacracy - they got his name wrong (using his middle name rather than the first by which he was always known) and when the local residents were consulted about correcting the error, the majority refused on account of the inconvenience it would cause them. On balance anyone who has ever dealt with utility companies will see their pont of view. There is a happy ending however - the incorrect designation remains but the gallant Phillips has a unique street sign explaining his valour.

A happy ending to a tale of modern maladministration

We completed our little expedition with a carvery lunch and a pint and a half of mild at the Dovecote public house - change from thirteen quid for the two of us.

Sometimes life has more to offer than fulminating at the latest obscenity from the vile gobshite Trump. I know, I know, I shouldn't watch the news but old habits die hard,

Toodle-oo.  

An Insignificant Milestone

This is my 750th post. To the very few who have been with me all the way: thanks, you must be suckers for punishment.

I was at a wedding on Saturday - the nuptials of Hannah Lucy Watson and Andrew 'Dougie' Dugmore. this was a signally happy event and even old misery guts here was moved, if not to tears, at least to reflection that there is hope in the world. The bride is the daughter of my long-time friend IW and I have therfore known her for all her life. She is  a notably cheerful child and I can wish her nothing but happiness and good fortune. IW spoke movingly as befits a man educated at King Edward VI School Aston, even if he did waste much of his time there in my rather distracting and noisome company. Days of wonder.

My mood today has matched the weather - overcast but not direly so. However I lightened the gloom by visiting a deserted university library (the Kenrick Library at the old Great Barr Campus of BCU) to sample the delights of Shakespeare Survey 58, which has interesting things to say about presentism - a trick I am trying to pull off myself in my nascent thesis.

In the late afternoon I abandoned the Bard and treated myself to a very good old film - White Heat. This is James Cagney on prime form as the psychotic, mother-fixated gangster. It rattles along and, although noted in its day for its violence, it lacks the often tedious gratuitousness of many modern offerings. And at less than two hours it can tell modern film-makers a thing or two about editing. 7.5/10. 

The Sun Shines On A Troubled World

Our expensively remodelled garden is bathed in evening sunshine and all the world can do is cast metaphorical shadows on the lovely scene.

Donald bloody Trump seems to have worn down all opposition to achieve the GOP nomination for President. It will not have passed you by that I do not regard this as good news. The man is a foul-mouthed, misogynistic, rabble-rousing bully, and the best thing that can be said of him is that he is not Hillary Clinton. Clinton seems his presumptive opponent for the leadership of the free world - a serial charmless liar, of whom we can very positively put it that at least she is not Donald Trump. How the hell did it come to this? Should we stand back and laugh or should we howl at the moon. There but for the grace of God etc. Oh but hang on, we go to the polls ourselves tomorrow (local elections so most of the enfranchised won't bother) and our choice is between parties led respectively by the smug, patrician Cameron and the utter buffoon Corbyn.

Just to illustrate the bleakness of it all, let us consider the nearest alternatives to the Donald v Hillary show (for Heaven's sake, it's not even the proper spelling of Hilary, ask Wedgwood Benn) - on the right there was the more than vaguely terrifying Ted Cruz, an evangelical Christian libertarian, if that's possible; and on the left there was (or remains, just) Bernie Sanders, a pacifist quasi-nutter graduate of the Corbyn School of Utter Bollocks.

For reasons not important to my current whinge, I have this afternoon been immersed in the total crapfest that is the Education Act 2011 and its doings. What baloney and proof if it were ever needed that politicians as a breed are actually opposed to any education other than their own. 

Do you know, the FTSE fell by 1.19% today and I am past giving even the vaguest toss. Such things used to vex me.

On the very bright side has been the triumph of Leicester City's millionaires over the multi-millionaires of the bigger Premier League clubs. Apologies if that sounds overly cynical - I do in fact acknowledge the Leicester victory as the best story in professional team sports for several decades. Football eh, bloody hell.

I am just listening to Donald Fagen's The Nightfly, one of the greatest albums ever cut and proof positive that mankind is capable of wondrous things to offset and overshadow the omnishambles that is modern politics.

Goodnight sweet prince.

Political Correctness Gone Mad

The title of today's blog is meant to catch your attention  - it is a phrase that has become a joke because it belongs to the old and the reactionary. I'm pretty sure that someone will quickly be able to track down The Donald having said it. The Overgraduate would not, of course, ever use it himself unless being ironic - ironic in the sense of being drunk and yet still talking.

So let's today provoke some thought and invite you to read these two items:

• Sean Faye in the Guardian
• UNSW guidance

Faye's piece in The Guardian ends with a really well-made summation,

'No-platforming is as valid a means to exercise free speech as any other. We are not in a declining era of free speech - but we appear to be in a golden age of entitled hypocrisy.'

As a man who used to earn his living making cause for some fairly unpalatable types, I rather admire the spare, compelling quality of those words. Read his article and reach your own conclusion and see if you share my inference that this is bilge, stylish and persuasive, but bilge nonetheless.

The second link is to guidance given by a leading university to its students about how they should express themselves 'appropriately'. I've read it a couple of times now and it really is a magnificent specimen of Orwell's Newspeak. 'He who controls the past controls the future.' Aye, you're not wrong there son.

Tomorrow I shall share with you parts of my doctoral paper on 'Bogshite's Theorem: or precisely how many wrongs do make a right'.

Advent 16

When I consider the entries in this list thus far it is hard to escape the conclusion that I perhaps spent more time than your average teenager watching BBC2 in the 1970's. So it goes and here is another example. From 1976 the top class filth that was I Claudius. Influential and racy, witty and watchable. This sort of stuff is arguably the precursor of the Game of Thrones et al phenomenon but done less salaciously and more classically. As an aside, it was one of the early acting credits for the excellent Kevin McNally who had the good fortune to be a pupil of my father at Central Grammar School. As another aside it may or may not be interesting (I suspect it depends on your politics) to note that Central Grammar School also produced Tony Garnett and Nicol Williamson and was exterminated by political vandalism in 1974.

Mens Sana

Feeling better and a tad younger today. After much deliberation and delay I went for a run this afternoon in the wind and the rain. Blew the mental and physical cobwebs away.

It's that time of year again fans - tomorrow sees the start of the Overgraduate advent calendar. And this year we will have my twenty-four most favoured television moments. Not necessarily the best or most edifying television but my favourite bits and pieces.

We were at Speech Day at King Edward's Aston last Friday. This served to start lifting my spirits and not merely because I got to sing the school song. The School Captain is an Aston lad of Asian descent and he finished his vote of thanks with an unforced and unaffected plea for tolerance and decency.  Gets my vote every time.

All Is Not Well In The World

Last week you were no doubt surprised to find me confessing common cause with John McDonnell. As an aside I do note that McDonnell is a fellow alumnus of God's own University of London, though not, of course, of King's - we didn't really do lefties. Anyway my inner political correctness is nagging away at me once again. Surely I can't be the only died in the wool capitalist who is queasy about this undignified toadying up to the Chinese that our esteemed government deems fitting - Where is the morality?

The tiger who came to tea

I am considering inviting the Dalai Lama round for tea so that he can be assured that we're not all like George Osborne.

I wouldn't mind our creeping to the Chinese if I felt we were on the upside of a cunning plan to exploit the one party statists and their loathsome fellow travellers and thereby precipitate their downfall. But I am left with the unpalatable conviction that our new found mates will simply shit on us again and again, much as they have already shat on our steel industry. Nobody sane is an absolutist about foreign policy but you do have to draw the line somewhere. Don't you?

At times like this I read my tattered volume of Bernard Levin's journalism (a thrift shop find) and wonder what the great man would make of it all. He was close to a lone public voice predicting that the Soviet 'evil empire' would collapse under its own odious weight. I hope the same is true of China's project but it will occur all the more slowly if we underpin the superstructure.

As another aside, Levin was another London graduate - LSE in his case, a place that really did produce lefties of heft. It was with a little sigh of regret that I read last week that the LSE is these days one of the country's most conservative colleges. Bloody hell, where will I be without my cultural stereotypes? 

Why Am I Not Surprised

I'm a Brummie. Thus the undermining of Birmingham''s educational institutions pains me. We used to be able to rely on our politicians to vandalise the system - all hues of the knob-heads have been laying waste the landscape for most of my life. But the latest desecration is being practised by Islamist entryists. Saddest of all, no one is really one bit surprised that this goes on. And now we have all sorts of fatuous claims that henceforth there will be a concentration on 'British values'. By which they mean? Here's the news - the people making the loudest noise have no real clue what they're shouting about. So it will be for me dear reader to tell you what I think and to put your minds at rest. Watch this space. I spy a high horse that begs to be ridden. Tomorrow belongs to me!