Apologies For Absence

I have been away from this blog for a few weeks. I apologise. The world has been in a catastrophic mess. It still is. It has not really seemed that I can add anything to the commentary on Trump's war in Iran. By calling it Trump's war I am probably doing a disservice to Netanyahu. Hey ho. I will say only this: this war has been prosecuted on a vainglorious whim boosted by a misunderstood Zionist zeal; the Americans have not come even close to articulating a proper reason for their attack; Iran is a crazed theocracy but the way to deal with it is not Operation Epic Fury.

Enough of such things. Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three. Last week BH, MS and RW were kind enough to let me join the Appleby Renegade Tour, a golfing trip of sheer fun. The history would bore you, suffice to say that Appleby was the venue for the early QMT golf tours - I have blogged about that before and, as I always say, it's a long story so I won't weary you with it.

Immodestly I have to relate that the Pig won the golf. Not through any great competence but by sheer obduracy. Enough of that. The courses. First up was Bentham, comprised of nine old holes and nine newer. I'm glad to say you could not really see the join. The Pig got the tour off to an inauspicious start by blasting two out of bounds from the first tee - thereafter a degree of sanity and good fortune came to his rescue.      

A god meal and a few pints were followed by a goodish night's sleep (I'm not as good as I used to be with an unfamiliar bed) and we even went for a walk around Appleby on the second morning before our afternoon outing at Appleby Golf Club. I had played Appleby twice before and thought it adequate. I was wrong - this is a fine golf course on wild moorland. We played through a blessedly short but biblical storm and under high winds. I should also record that the Pig produced an improbable clearance break of twenty-two to clinch a frame on the clubhouse snooker table. Great moments in sport.

More food. More beer. Another truncated night's sleep and then an early start on the journey home. We broke the journey at Breadsall Priory which is where QMT Tour is to be held in June. Very much a hotel/resort set-up with two courses. We played the Priory course. A perfectly decent lay-out but very hilly. Not remotely as memorable as Appleby but a good end to the trip. I slept well back at home and woke as stiff as a board. I was till sore on Sunday morning but dragged myself out for a thirty minute run and that made me feel much better. You're not getting any younger Pig but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Pride Comes Before A Fall

Big Fat Pig is nothing if not an entertainer. Yesterday he slopped around the golf course in the mud and the puddles - for once it wasn't raining but we are going to need a very prolonged dry spell to get Royal Pype Hayes back into shape. Now the Pig's game has been in pretty shabby order for the past couple of years. Much of this is down to age and an inherent lack of talent but I do also have the excuses born of my own clumsiness. First I fell down the stairs and damaged my back. Next up was the infamous bike crash when I cycled into the back of a stationary Merc and wrecked my knee. Finally I somehow ricked my foot so that I could hardly walk. These misfortunes meant no running and no cycling for a lengthy spell but I persisted with the golf and got progressively (quickly in truth) worse at it. Only recently do I detect some green shoots of recovery. This may not be totally unrelated to an encouraging amount of running and the resultant mental wellbeing.

So here's the story. By my low standards, I started yesterday's round well. By the time we reached the ninth tee I was playing comfortably under my handicap and feeling rather good about it all - the ball was under control and the company was excellent - GB and JW thank you. Hole 9 at PH is stroke index 18, that is to say it is the easiest hole on the course. The Pig had the honour after a deft up-and-down for par on the 8th. All was well in Pig World. No need for any heroics so the driver stayed in the bag and Pig aimed to lay-up with a calm 2 utility. It is at this point that Pig's recollection becomes blurred. The tee shot travelled all of a yard and nestled in front of the tee mat. No matter, Pig would take his medicine and lay the second shot short of the ditch at the front of the green. From there he would make a five. The problem was that Pig then pulled his second shot miles right (the Pig is left-handed) onto the roof of the greenkeepers' hut, off which it bounced back but settled down three yards out-of bounds. Sharp intake of breath. Repeat. The next swipe took the ball even further out-of bounds. By the time the Pig had effected that sensible lay-up he had already played seven. There was more playing indignity to come, but we will park that for a moment. You see the first ball out-of-bounds was findable, perched on a muddy mound. The Pig retrieved it nonchalantly having scrambled the mound still with his golf bag slung across his shoulders (the Pig always carries). This is where it gets worse because the Pig then slithered down the other side of the bank and landed on his back. Have you ever tried to rise from a prone position with a golf bag pinioned on your back? The Pig has to tell you it's bloody difficult. So difficult that if there is a nearby bed of nettles, one might roll into them. This the Pig promptly did. One might go so far as to say that the Pig looked not unremotely like a bit of a fool. Brushing the dirt off his back and legs and trying to get some undergrowth from out of his belt-line, the Pig returned to the ball in play - I would remind you it had taken him seven strokes to get that far. Never mind, down in two more and the indignity of a ten is avoided. Pig therefore, took a deep breath, swung slowly and ... deposited the ball into the ditch. By the time he finished he had used a dozen strokes. You ought to get some sort of award for such persistence.

As I say, pride comes before a fall. For the record, I played neatly for the rest of the round.   

6N 26.3

Saturday was a funny old day. I seem to have a lot of those - I think I often fall victim to my own contrarianism and also to my bipolarity. In fact the latter was accentuated last weekend because I was in Anglesey and had forgotten to take my anti-psychotics with me. Keep taking the pills Pig, they work for you.

Anyway, Saturday. I awoke early after a fitful night (that's another benefit of Olanzapine, it helps you sleep) and was determined to go out for a decent run, during which I was going to undertake the mental composition of a blog entry excoriating England Under 20s loss to Ireland on Friday night. I even had a title - 'Brainless Behemoths'. Those of you who have been with me on this journey will recall that this is not a new theme. In the end I abandoned the task as my running (up towards Storws Wen Golf Club, for those of you know the local geography) became more and more a painful exercise. At twenty-five minutes I turned back from my route and headed home to Plas Piggy. But stubborn old Pig then willed himself to take control and I embarked on a series of deviations from the straight route home. I reckoned that if I could count my steps to twelve hundred on these deviations I would add enough time to get me to an hour. I did it - bloody knackered but I did it. And I felt a good deal more sanguine about the previous evening's rugby. So mood was now up.

Then England played Ireland in the Six Nations. Mood down again. What a calamity. I counted twenty handling errors from England and lost count of the missed tackles. Outplayed, outthought, outmuscled. Garbage. At moments like these I am relieved that I am at least Irish by marriage. In my defence of this shameless abandonment (I'll be back) of my homeland, I can point out that both of my daugters have Irish passports. 

Wales v Scotland cheered me up. I would have preferred it if Wales had clung on to win but it was an estimable game to watch as a neutral. Mood back up again. Sunday, back home to Casa Piggy to take in the ultimately comfortable French Victory over Italy. But let us get this straight - Italy are no mugs and if England play again as they did on Saturday, they will lose to Italy. I might actually have a bet on that - it makes the game more bearable to watch.  

Pig's last game of golf

Good night's sleep last night and I am due back on the (soggy) golf course early tomorrow with the Seniors at Royal Pype Hayes - I have had a few weeks off to get over the effects of a very poor slog in the mud last time. These things should never become a matter of arduous habit. Keep taking the pills. 

A Suitable Obsession For The Old

JTC was a wise and amusing man, much my elder. He was a stalwart member and Honorary Life Vice President of our rugby club and, in his more decorous moments, a member of that great seat of affluenec, Little Aston Golf Club. Many years ago I was chatting to him at the bar and mused out loud that I might play more golf. Jim counselled me against this and uttered the sage words, 'play team games for as long as you can'. In this, as in so much else, Jim was right.

I played rugby until a week short of my forty-eighth birthday, by which time I was held together by strategically applied tape and over-medicated on anti-inflammatories. I loved close to every minute of it. I had played my last game of 1st XV rugby at forty and thereafter grew old gracelessly.  

I mention this only because I spent a fun two hours this morning on the practice ground at Clwb Golff Ynys Mon. I was merely tatting around and it was only when I switched on my computer just now that I noticed the date (a boon in being elderly is that the date is a matter of only passing import) - tomorrow is the fifty-first anniversary of my first game of golf. Founder's Day 1974. I love golf in all its infuriating detail but my advice, should you choose to hear it, remains, play team games as long as you can. 

Lions 25.7

Yesterday was a day for sports watching - first the rugby and then the third day of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Both events started attractively only to descend into a weird and rather boring predictability.

The Lions first. They came out of the traps in an angry rush and, truth be told, they had put Australia away within the first quarter of the match. Huw Jones and James Lowe both butchered try-scoring opportunities but this did not matter against an impotent opponent, Tom Curry and Tadgh Beirne showed themselves to belong in that over-used categorisation 'test match animals'. I must admit that I had been against Beirne's selection - I am an admirer of Ollie Chessum. I was wrong. Beirne was commanding and, in the best sense, destructive. The last thirty minutes of the match desceneded into that product of the modern squad game, disjointed replacement-strewn boredom. I stick by my 3-0 prediction, however the Lions missed a chance yesterday to demoralise utterly their opposition.

It's certainly not his fault but I'm afraid Scottie Scheffler's brilliance on the golf course is a tad boring. He is superb but I doubt that anyone would call him charismatic. I was never a Tiger Woods fan but one does have to admit that he had a whiff of cordite about him. Despite my misgivings, I will be tuned in for the final round of the Open this afternoon hoping to be proved wrong.

Of Heroic Failures

Last week was the Graham Scott Memorial QMT golf tour. This year's venue was Hawkstone Park Hotel, our first visit and, one has to say, it ticked all of the boxes I can think of. Two courses, a well-staffed bar, decent food and, the final ingredient, excellent weather. Congratulations to PC, our new champion, but the greater part of the trip was all about our aged frailties on the course and our eternal ability to laugh at each other. Bloody great fun. 

Now I could belabour you with details of my birdie on the 6th on the Hawkstone Course, but, quite frankly, you would not believe the brilliance of it. Instead let me tell you about our last day and the Texas Scramble on the Championship Course. Big Fat Pig was on the tee ten minutes early - an atempt to live down the shame of his hung-over tardiness on the previous day. He was in a team with CC, RP and RW. The Pig had his personal moments but, then again, too few to mention. No, the highpoints of the round were twofold. First up was RW's sublime driver off the deck on the fifth hole - it went like a tracer bullet and, yes, we made our birdie. Perhaps better was RP's mishit tee shot on the short ninth which unerringly blind-sided a goose pecking at the ground to the left of the green. The bird seemed none the worse (if a little peeved) for its encounter with a scuffed Callaway. Laugh? We nearly shat. RP later redeemed himself with a sterling performance on the last par five and with some clutch putts. We came second, one under gross. Roll on next year. 

 

   

Odeon Ynys Mon

 I am on one of my solo sorties to the island. Yesterday was a fine day. I went to C.G. Ynys Mon and spent a fruitful (well hopefully) hour sharpening (it was very blunt) my short game. As if that was not enough I wasted my money backing Perceval Legallois in the Grand National and found time to watch two very different films.

Father Brown is a 1954 piece of British whimsy capped by a superb performance from Alec Guinness in the tile role. It puts the flimsy modern television version of the tales of the priest/sleuth to shame. Somehow films of this idiom are all the better for being in black and white. A wholly worthy piece of movie-making. 70/100. 

Hang 'Em High (1968) is an altogether different kettle of fish. In fact not a kettle of fish at all, rather a plate of spaghetti americano. Hard upon the success of Sergio Leone's three Clint Eastwood westerns, America reclaimed Eastwood as its own and made this paleish imitation of a spaghetti western. Eastwood speaks more than in his seminal role(s) and the sheer visceral quality of Leone's pictures is missing. Notwithstanding this daub of filmic polish, there is enough to get your teeth into and there is, if you look hard enough, a moral speculation trying to get out. Worth a watch. 64/100.

It's Still A Funny Old World

I've been away from these pages for a few weeks. Apologies to my regular readers - yes there are a few of them - a very few. I note that the last time I wrote, I was mildly despairing of the world at large but happy in my own skin. Well the world at large has got worse - who would have guessed that Trump's VP would turn out to be an even bigger **** than the Donald himself. Yale Law School must be so proud.

But enough of such whining - you don't need me to tell you that the United States has fallen under the spell of narcissistic sociopaths. Instead let's talk about some of the good stuff. The Six Nations has been fun and I apologise for those who look forward each year to my minute analysis and, in particular, to the bestowing of the Ronan O'Gara Memorial Gobshite Award. This particular decoration has become harder to award as the game more and more allows all and sundry to question the referee and demand rugby's equivalent of trial by television replay. Such is professionalism. The other symptom is the Bomb Squad problem - the ugly feature by which the bench is emptied of replacements and an all-but-complete new pack takes to the field. Anyone know how to put genies back in bottles? No matter, there has been plenty to admire: France's hubristic self-immolation against a gallant but out-gunned England; France's brilliant destruction of Italy; France's even better pricking of the bubble of Irish entitlement. As I say, all good stuff. As for the weekend just passed - Scotland at last showed up but only for two-thirds of a match; Wales only condescended to play once they were safely condemned to lose; I seem to be alone in the view that England were turgid against Italy. In Cheltenham week (not going - I'm afraid I'm getting old) my fun bet is not to do with the horses but a speculative wager on Wales to beat England in Cardiff. The Welsh are rather touchingly obsessed with beating the English and this England team are fragile.

Enough of rugby (not something you would have heard me say in my wild youth) and back to the subject of Cheltenham. Tomorrow's card looks set to feature four odds -on favourites. Where is the fun in that? The dominance of the Irish (or more particularly of the brilliant Willy Mullins) is also a problem. I have no answer to these factors, nor to the increasing numbers of skinny-suited young men who do their betting on their phones even though they are but a step away from the most exciting betting ring in the sport. I'm just saying it's a pity.

Let me tell you of a good weekend, or rather a long weekend. My trip to Ynys Mon last week could only have been bettered if the Groupie had been with me. Work could not spare her. What her absence did mean is that having checked out the bricks and mortar of Plas Piggy (all sound), I was free to have a ridiculously self-indulgent few days. I watched five games of rugby (Six Nations and U20 Six Nations), I played golf on a gloriously sunny and calm afternoon on the deserted links at The Anglesey, and on Saturday evening I watched The Magnificent Ambersons. I reviewed this long ago (25 August 2010 when this blog was in its infancy) but was not at that time in the habit of giving a rating to pictures. I refer you to that early brief review but now add a rating of 90/100. That good. Even better when accompanied by a bottle of Barolo. I made myself a rather good cheese omelette for my tea. And to cap off the trip I had an unobstructed return journey and broke my PB for the route. There may be three steps to heaven but who knew that one of them takes only two hours and thirty-two minutes.   

 

Days Of Wonder

I am here on the island, my ostensible reason being to see a roofer about the leaky chimney, but, in truth, mainly because I love it here. The only downside is that the Groupie has not been able to join me on this occasion. It has been a notable break.

For journeys up here I have abandoned the M6 even though it is potentially the quickest route - the expense of the M6 Toll cannot be justified and, besides, if you get held up on the motorway, you really do get held up. The shortest route is the old A5, also the most scenic. However I favour the A458/A55 - quickish (exactly three hours on Thursday) and scenicish. 

A very productive meeting with the roofer, RJE, on Friday. Like all the tradesmen on the island (in my experience) he is friendly, reasonable and charming. So far , so good then, but it was yesterday (Saturday) that turned into one of those days of wonder. Up early and drove to Anglesey Golf Club where I maintain country membership (ludicrously cheap compared to Birmingham) and I had bitten the bullet and entered a Stableford. Now playing with strangers can be daunting but not at The Anglesey. I was warmly greeted and paired with AJ, a Mancunian who served with the RAF at Valley and married a local girl and stayed here after he left the forces. The course was wet but eminently playable and there was a strong wind that made the back nine very challenging. We were round in three hours. The course won but I had a lovely time. If you see me, remind me to tell you about my birdie on the fourth. 

And as if that was not enough, as I drove back across Mon, Snowdonia (sorry, Eryri) glared at me, sun-kissed and snow lying on the northern slopes. Beautiful. 

I was back in plenty of time to open a bottle of Rioja (Gran Reserva naturally) and watch England subside to defeat to Ireland in the Six Nations. This much was predicatable and I won't bore you with another lecture on the problems besetting the grand old game in England. I then watched the recording of the Scotland v Italy match without knowing the result. Isn't Blair Kinghorn a good player!

Anchovies on brown toast for supper. 

You will notice that I have drawn a sensitive veil over the demolition of Wales by France on Friday evening. I find it best not to intrude on private grief. Mind you, DH the greenkeeper was kind enough to remember that I had been a player and elicited my opinion. I comforted him by saying that England would lose and that Wales have unearthed another quality player in their captain, Jac Morgan.

Slept like a baby. Days of wonder.

Am I Getting Old And Reactionary?

Of course I am. Indeed my friends will tell you that I used to be young and reactionary. No matter, I'm still going to go off on one about the state of three of my favourite sports, most particularly the way that they seem to think they can attract a 'new audience'.

These three sporting passions of mine may be on their way out, certainly in the satisfying manifestations that have enraptured me for most of my life. Let's start with cricket, the state of which I have lamented many times before. I watch the tedious Big Bash from Australia. The commentary is odious. Shouting does not make something more notable. This noise is rubbish.

Next, the sport nearest to my heart, rugby union football. The RFU thinks it advisable to pay its Chief Executive Officer over a million pounds per annum as he signs-off on a year in which the organistaion culled a load of staff and in which the grass-roots game is dying on its feet. The game struggles to make viable a top league which has only ten solvent teams. It denies itself, when fielding a team to represent our country, the services of anyone who has the audacity to ply his trade outside England. This too is rubbish.

And the game I play (very badly) these days - golf. I watched the utter drivel of the TGL indoor game that is being used to line the pockets of Woods and McIlroy. Professional golfers hitting a ball into a screen linked to a computer that traces where the ball would have gone. All the time the commentators roar at us and attempt the impossible of making golfers sound interesting. Good golf is plenty interesting, its practitioners have no need to be. This too is rubbish. 

Test match cricket. Well-coached top-level rugby. Proper golf played under pressure of terrain and climate. Mark my words, we will miss these when they have gone.       

Advent 7

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

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

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

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

The Cambrian Williams

This is a tale of Cambria and two Englishmen called William who have moved there. Both have appeared in these pages before - they are my brother WJR and my dear friend Big Willy Mac. Over the past two days I have enjoyed  a game of golf with each in turn. The weather has been kind but with a wind that made the game gratifyingly difficult. First up was a chastening defeat at WJR's hands at Welshpool Golf Club. I actually started competently but two lost balls on the ninth presaged a collapse in morale on an epic scale. This has happened before and, as night follows day, will happen again.

At the high point of Welshpool Golf Club

I urge anyone who has a feel for truly rugged golf to go to Welshpool, a James Braid course that improbably climbs up and down hills and is a test of imagination and stamina. There is not a single sand bunker on the course - it doesn't need them. A snip at less than thirty quid. Next time I'm going to play better.  

Golf as God intended - Harlech

From Welshpool I drove on to Ynys Mon and Plas Piggy. Slept like a log and then undertook the drive to Harlech where Big Willy (who has transplanted his life to Criccieth) is a member of the truly wondrous Royal St. David's Golf Club. This is golf on an epic scale. Amongst a plethora of great holes, perhaps best is the fiendish 15th that takes you up a narrow gully between the dunes. I played a little better than at Welshpool but could not better Big Willy's nous and local knowledge.

Feeling a little foot-sore today and will recuperate with an impertinent Argentinian red whilst watching the Open from Royal Troon. I've said it before - when I grow up I want to be me. 

Water, Water Everywhere, And Rather A lot To Drink

The election campaign drags its weary way to the inevitability of a stonking Labour majority and the requirement for Starmer to make his mind up what he wants, other than merely wanting to win an election. Boring, boring, boring.

So let us turn to happier events. Last week the thirtieth edition of the QMT Golf Tour invaded the Worcestershire countryside. Thirty men of encroaching decrepitude over-enjoying themselves. Nothing could be further from boring. In summary, bloody brilliant. Big Fat Pig (fatter this week thanks to last week's over-indulgence) arrived with his golf game in relative disarray and the first day at Droitwich Golf Club did nothing to improve things. BFP self-prescribed alcohol as the answer and felt decidedly under the weather when he teed-off for the nine hole curtain raiser on day two. He played like a drunk for six holes but then found some form. The main championship was being played that afternoon and our hero again started badly. However he had a purple patch in mid-round and rose to the respectability of fifth place. We'll settle for that. The final day (after another late night) presented a Texas Scramble, always a nice way to warm down. I repeat, bloody brilliant. The two main days were spent at Bransford Golf Club. This can be highly recommended. Opened in 1990 it styles itself a Florida style course. There is a lot of water. There are six each of pars three, four and five. Great fun. Thanks to all who organised it. Bring on next year.

A Surprising Voice In An Anodyne Wilderness

Herbert Warren Wind, Henry Longhurst, Bernard Darwin, Peter Dobereiner. Golf is a game that has attracted great sports writing. Sadly, great sports journalism is in retreat, sacrificed at the altar of the professional. There are exceptions but my generalisation holds good, no more so than in the case of golf. I do still subscribe to a golf periodical but, sad to say, Today's Golfer is mostly a repository for endless reviews of expensive equipment and lists of expensive places to play. And don't get me started on the spineless failure to call out Donald Trump for the misogynist shitbag that he is - we should apparently   look past his manifest faults and be grateful for his contribution to the world of golf. Please.

Thus I was encouraged to read the sage words (doubtless shaped by a ghost writer but nonetheless carrying the happy taint of authenticity) of Andrew 'Beef' Johnston in this month's edition. He may lack (by a wide margin) the poise of the writers listed above but he cuts through the forest of lame writing when he dismisses the PGA Tour's Player Equity Program: 'Basically it's the PGA Tour saying , "Here's a shit load of money from us for not taking a shit load of money from them." It's madness man'. Well amen to that brother. Certainly a far more helpful diagnosis than Rory McIlroy's recent lumping together of the PGA/LIV schism and the Northern Ireland peace process. Grow up. 

Growing old is, all too literally, a pain. This time it's plantar fasciitis. Poor old me. 

The Aping Of American Sports Coverage

I like my golf. Well, not my personal golf you realise - that will no doubt (once I have recovered from my bad back - getting there thank you) transpire still to be wayward. No, I like golf and golf courses. I like it done well and sympathise with it done badly. But there's a problem and it is one I have alluded to before. As Sky Sports throw more and more time (and one presumes more of that nice Mr. Murdoch's money) at their coverage, so it becomes less bearable. Overall the standard is dire - a sort of sentimentalised hard-core mediocrity.

Sky's coverage of the European Tour (must we really take the petro-dollars and call it the DP World Tour?) can largely be exempted from my denigration because the broadcaster generally puts the B Team on the commentary job - Richard Boxall et al. Even Rob Lee has become bearable. Problem is of course that the product (the golf itself) has beend devalued by the wrong-headed machinations of the PGA Tour and its European partner, such that the best players are siphoned-off to ply their trade in the States before an ever-diminishing televisual audience. The game has plummeted from meritocracy to a kleptocracy, running scared of that prize gobshite Greg Norman. Much gets more was how my Yorkshire grandmother used to put it. Quite. Unattractive. 

So what's so wrong with Sky's A Team? Ewen Murray is a great broadcaster but he has ceased to be the dominant voice. Instead we get too much of the pathetic Nick Dougherty and the over-promoted Wayne Riley. I can stomach Riley when he is out on the course but that is where he belongs. Dougherty has talent but bloody hell can a man get his tongue any further up Sir Nick Faldo's arse? Even Faldo (not the most unassuming of men) can seem embarrassed. Dame Laure Davies is excellent but gets drowned-out by the tidal wave of Dougherty's schmaltz and the inanity of Paul McGinley - that Blarney Stone has a lot to answer for. And as for Butch Harmon - well, really?

So what I am saying (ironically in a verbose McGinleyesque manner) is that there is too much blather and not enough objectivity. And it is not the OG pocket that drives this rant - I actually won money on the Masters this year but couldn't be arsed to watch the climax, waiting instead to check out the result when I awoke this morning.   

Species Of Noir, The Curse Of Google, And The Dangers Of Taking Stairs Quickly

Last Tuesday morning I was feeling quite optimistic about my golf game. I was due for an early start with the Seniors Section at Royal Pype Hayes and I had it in mind that I had learned the lessons of my humbling at Ynys Mon the previous week. Yes, this was going to be a good round, two in fact because my ambitious plan was to play two games in a day. The Monday night rugby/cricket boys had switched to Tuesday on account of bank holiday. What I had left out of my tactical armoury was a plan for getting downstairs. Long story short, I came a right pearler and fucked my back up (medical terminology) good and proper. A week on and I am still feeling the pain of the splenetic trauma (idiomatic slang) and golf is definitely off the menu. So is any form of exerecise. Silly old bastard.

Whilst I have been laid-up I have been watching a lot of television and old films. Until now it has not even been comfortable to hold a book - I am strangely particular about the right conditions for reading. There has been a lot of the noirish but first the widescreen spectacular. The Robe was the first film exhibited in Cinemascope. I would like to see it in the cinema but a decent print on a largish modern television still gives some idea of the spectacle. Richard Burton allegedly hated his own performance in it (for which he received the first of his multiple failed Oscar nominations) but I thought he was rather good. 70/100.  

Not all of the classic noir tropes are deployed (no narration, no flashbacks for instance) but The Big Sleep is beyond doubt film noir. Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe spits out the crackling dialogue with huge presence and the atmosphere itself crackles when Lauren Bacall joins him on screen. It is not original to call this a great film but it is correct. And I do still love to wheel out the fact that Marlowe's creator was, like that other great writer P.G. Wodehouse, an Old Alleynian. On occasion you have to doff your cap to the English public school system. 90/100.

Many years ago (I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now) I compiled a list of my fifty favourite movies. That list would change a good bit if I undertook it again but I do recall that Orson Welles' Macbeth was on it then and, having revisited it, it would be today. In this I diverge from my learned doctoral supervisor. Yes, it is full of faults, not all of them down to the straitened financial circumstances in which it was produced, but it does manage to convey the visceral darkness that is at the heart of this, Shakespeare's tautest tragedy. Renaissance noir. 83/100. Mind you, if you really want to see Macbeth at its best on screen, take in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.  

Next some Gotham Noir. I must declare an interest - I think Christian Bale is superb in pretty much anything he does. Thus I came to The Dark Knight Rises pre-disposed to enjoying it. It is perhaps the weakest of Christpher Nolan's Batman trilogy but we are talking about three very good movies here. 71/100. As I allocate that grade, I wonder if I am guilty of watching only good films these days. Old time is on our tracks boys and there may not be time to accommodate the mediocre. On which topic, I heard a voice I respect proposing 2001: A Space Odyssey as a great film. Should I give it yet another chance? The defect is probably mine.

I will finish with a film of the New Noir West, No Country for Old Men. But before I turn to that, a note of sadness. The film is adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy. I was introduced to McCarthy's fiction by the poet/academic Anthony Mellors. I googled Anthony to see where he might now be hanging his academic hat and/or practising his poetic art. It transpires that he died last year. We were very diffferent people but I regarded him as a good bloke - a designation he might have found amusing. 

Anyway, No Country for Old Men, a bleak tragedy of America's New West. It is testament to the brilliance of McCarthy and also that of the Coen Brothers who produced the film. Roger Ebert regarded their Fargo as a genuinely great movie and his conclusion that No Country is every bit as good is correct. 91/100.

Happy Places And The Shadow Of Asymmetric Warfare

Our world is a dreadful place. Our world is wonderful. This contradiction has, you may have noticed, been weighing upon me for some time - pretty much for ever.

Of all places I thought about this as I occupied a new happy place (actually a sub-set of a wider place) - the practice ground at Clwb Golff Ynys Mon where I am now a member. I practised my short game (very necessary) in a mood of self-righteousness burnished by having cleaned the windows at Plas Piggy this morning. As I flailed at golf balls, jets roared overhead as they came in to land at RAF Valley. I find their presence comforting. We can go into that at some later date. No, what I was thinking about was the asymmetric war currently being waged in Gaza. Israel have a formidable defenec force and are deploying it ruthlessly in Gaza - the ratio of terrorist deaths to civilian deaths is numbing. Netanyahu does not care an iota. He sees an enemy constitutionally committed to the eradication of the state of Israel and will pursue them no matter how many bodies he must trample over. This horrifies most of the watching world. However the vital point that evades those spectators is that Hamas' approach to the conflict is knowingly as asymmetrical as Israel's. Hamas care not a jot how many civilians they have to put in Israel's path. Their god is on their side. And before we get all gooey-eyed about the horror of it all, we might pause to consider the asymmetry of the bombing of Dresden, of Hiroshima, of Nagasaki. It makes one weep. Not, I suspect, that you care but the OG's preference would be for Israel to take what is left of the moral high ground and desist. This seemingly will not happen so long as Netanyahu is in power. Whilst liberal hand-wringers (in whose number I count myself) pontificate on this catastrophic mess, we might care to turn our attention to influential wings of two monotheistic religions, in their very different manners, acting as grisly death cults. If I wasn't so happy, I would cry.

But you see, that's the problem. I am happy. It is only when I face the world outside my euphoric bubble that I do just wonder if this whole human experiment has turned to shit. Will I feel better if I buy an electric car? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

 

Back On The Chain Gang

Which, by the way, is the title of my favourite Pretenders' song, not that this has anything to do with what I was going to say. No, what I want to talk about is Big Fat Pig's return to the streets of Four Oaks. Those new running shoes I told you about have passed their first test, indeed two tests. Two passages of my favoured route and no calf strain to complain of. In addition I have been out on the Precious Bike on each of the last two Sundays. Nothing gargantuan but plenty of middling climbs to make the thighs burn. What with my twice-weekly golf (I have joined the Senior Section at Royal Pype Hayes to add to the Monday outings with old rugby mates) I am feeling quite chipper about my physical condition. 

Here's something that bothers me - the England cricket team. They have revolutionised their approach to test cricket and quite properly hoovered-up some praise for their exciting approach. But these are the facts: by their hubris they gifted the Ashes to Australia and last week they lost catastrophically to India in a match they could quite plausibly have drawn. Since when has a defeat been a more desirable result than a draw? Unprofessional - and I don't care if they come charging out of the blocks this week and demolish India in the fourth test, my point still stands. It's sport, not professional wrestling. Making a classically gifted batsman like Joe Root look like a pissed-up pub player is no achievement at all. 

Usually at this time of year I would be girding my loins for the annual pilgrimage to the races at Cheltenham. Not this time. Never again I suspect. Too crowded, too corporate. This is a sadness but hardly a new phenomenon. It is precisely the same thing at Twickenham. God, never mind the running and cycling, this middle-aged-man-in lycra is knocking on the door of miserable old git country. Doesn't mean he's wrong though!

Definitions And The Defined: Venality

Venality: the state or quality of being venal (= willing to behave dishonestly in exchange for money)

 

 

About This Boy

When About a Boy was released in 2002, Hugh Grant's performance was trumpeted as marking his rise above the foppish-aristo that had been his party piece. I'm not entirely sure about that but the fact is that Grant is generally good in whatever her does and that he is a natural and unaffected comic. Ally that to good source material (I've read the Nick Hornby novel, which is even better than the film) and to the standard brilliance of Toni Collette in support, and you have a markedly satisfying film. Funny, touching and with that rarest of things - a good British child-actor (Nicholas Hoult). 70/100. 

This particular boy (your scribe, the Pig) was on QMT golf tour last week. A most excellent time was had by all and Forest Hills GC and Forest of Dean GC were admirable venues. For the record, Floyd (that's us) beat the Rest of the World 4 - 2 in the team competition on Wednesday; David Curwen (Floyd again - it's the house we were in at School) won the individual competition on Thursday; The Pig and his little brother joined forces with Aj and the Slug to triumph in the Texas Scramble on Friday. Brilliant. Knackering. There was even limitless fried bread at breakfast.

I'll tell you what great sport looks like - Australia's State of Origin rugby league, that's what. Just saying.