Tempus Fugit - And Takes Automotive Technology Along For The Ride

As you will know if you have been with me on this blog's meanderings for the past decade and a half, I own my Precious Jag - a beautiful Jaguar XK8 that spends most of its life sleeping idly in the garage. It may be a small and stupid thing but it is, for me, a piece of automotiive pornography. It is getting on for thirty years old and runs beautifully. 

Overgraduate with his Canyonero

But enough of such mild boastfulness because today I am saying goodbye to the more prosaic car that has been my main vehicle for eleven years. It is a Kia Sorento, it has done a shade under one hundred thousand miles and has been hardly any trouble. I shall miss it - the Canyonero as Daughters numbered One and Two and I dubbed it - you have to be a Simpsons devotee to get the reference.

 

Krusty with his Kia

 

And let me tell you how to measure automotive sophistication/progress. The Precious Jag has a CD player which I had to have specially fitted. Canyonero came with a CD player as standard and also has a bafflingly unreliable digital radio which I had to buy as an extra. Canyonero has been superseded by a Dacia Bigster (terrible name I know but a lot of car for the money) and that has an efficient digital radio and Android Autoplay so that I can listen to Spotify via my (also new as it happens) phone. No CD player in sight - so last century!

I like the new car  and here's a thing - it's a hybrid. Will that be defunct by the time I next change cars? 

It's a Funny Old World

On the macro-political side of things, it's been a bloody awful week. On the micro-personal side of things, I've had an absolute blinder of a week. It's a funny old world.

The bad stuff first. One really cannot get away from that bastard Trump and his shameless lies. He works on the principle that if you say a lie often and loud enough, it will mutate into a truth. Thus Ukraine 'started' the war and the embattled Zelensky is apparently nothing better than a dictator. Of course Trump neither wants nor cares to convince effete liberals like me that his sordid dissembling represents some new truth. He merely has to carry with him enough of his enablers to continue in power. I was wrong - his is not a policy of America First, rather closer it is America Only. Even that is wrong in the ultimate analysis - in this age of the unrestrained grifter, what we are witnessing is Trump First/Trump Only. 

To happier things. I have eaten well and sensibly this week. I feel good. Golf: on Tuesday, in partnership with MB, we posted a net 62 in the Winter Alliance. I think we might have won although I have not checked yet. Just nice to be in contention. I feel good. And best of all, yesterday I enjoyed a joyous lunch with eleven men with whom I had started at KEGS Aston back in 1971. To JRS, ICW, CDL, SH, MN, DC, SS, RGB, SW, TS, and NN, my heartfelt good wishes. Some of these I had not seen since the late 70s when we all left school. The years fell away. I feel good. I hope they all do as well. Particular chapeau to the good doctor, MN, who put it all together. 

Listening to the Moody Blues. I feel good.

In Defence Of The Meta-Text: Two British Examples

You have to give it to the BBC, its iPlayer streaming service is a treasure trove. I have just finished watching two Le Carre adaptations with quiet enjoyment: Smiley's People (better as television than as a novel); and A Perfect Spy (a notably good novel and a less satisfactory, though stil meritorious, television series). But that is not what I want to talk about. My main concern today is two films that can be found on iPlayer.

You won't (or at least shouldn't) need telling that the Beatles are brilliant. I use the present tense because their music remains as fresh as the proverbial daisy. I'm listening to it now. Their first venture into film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), is a stylish, bordering on brilliant, film about a band called the Beatles, played by (and credited as playing - that point is important - pay attention at the back) John, Paul, George and Ringo. The meta-text - it's about their trials and tribulations on their way to making a television show. It is consistently good-natured and Richard Lester's direction is superb. A real treat and, oh, that music. 75/100. 

An even more self-aware piece of meta-text is presented by A Cock and Bull Story. This is a film about the making of a film of a famously unfilmable metatextual novel, Sterne's Tristram Shandy. If this was done with anything other than a very deft touch, it would be in danger of disappearing up ts own fundament. It doesn't. It is very, very clever without being alienating. There is a great line (delivered by the excellent Steve Coogan) about Shandy being a postmodern novel written two hundred years before there was any modernism to be post of. Also 75/100. 

 

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.

The Love Of A Good Aphorism

I do like a good aphorism. Recently I seem to recall sharing with you the observation (not mine I should modestly admit) that music is the greatest expression of man's spirituality. Well here is its companion piece, one I picked up from a documentary on Sky Arts: good architecture is like frozen music. For those of you who have the misfortune ever to encounter me in person, be prepared to hear me passing that off as one of my own.  To round off this piece here is a picture of my idea of great frozen music. Unoriginal I know but, hey, there's a reason why these things become cliches.

I've Got The Only Cure For Life, And The Cure For Life Is Joy

Not the first time I've purloined a masterful Clive James lyric (written for the music of Pete Atkin) and it won't be the last. Anyway, it came to mind as I mused my way out of the downer threatened by yesterday's speculations on asymmetric war. The cure for life is joy.

I have just watched (it's on iPlayer - seek it out) Listening Through the Lens : the Films of Christopher Nupen. It is no false modesty to say that I have a tin ear and zero musical talent but, rather as with wine, I have come to know what I like. The documentary about Nupen, himself a documentarist, reminded me that music is quite possibly the highest marker of human spirituality. As long as mankind is possessed of musicality there can be some hope.

Also there is running. My new shoes are working well and this morning I ran up the hill and back down into Benllech with the view out to Red Wharf Bay opening up before me. The cure for life is joy.  

Advent 5

This, arguably the most widely influential piece of pop art, was created by Jann Haworth and Peter Blake. It is the cover from arguably (there's that word again - utilised to camouflage my own adamantine opinions) the most important album of all time, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

The pop art flavour will continue tomorrow. OG is so down with the kids. Or more accurately he is down with those who were kids when he was himself a juvenile. Uber-pseud.

Advent 24

Door 24 on the calendar. It's an arresting piece of country music, the track that won the Oscar for Best Song. Robert Altman's Nashville is an undervalued bit of cinematic genius and this song is delivered by Keith Carradine in one of the screen's great ironic scenes. I won't try to explain it - watch the film for yourself. So here it is, the latest entry into the pantheon of Doors 24 - I'm Easy.

I hope you've enjoyed the trawl through my musical mind. Not inspiring I suspect, possibly even hard core bland out. But maybe there has been something that has sent you back to your own stereo. Happy Christmas and may your God go with you. 

Advent 23

 

 

Only one day to go calendar wise. DN1 and DN2 will be with us by the end of today. As Noddy so wisely bellowed, IT'S CHRISTMAS.

Castles in the Air by Don McLean is a poetic lament against city life, a cousin, if you will to my favourite Elton John track, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Castles in the Air is from McLean's first album, Tapestry but made perhaps its greater impact as the B side to the later Vincent. Hauntingly good.

Advent 22

 

 

Now this, I believe, is what those of us who are down with the kids might call a chooon. Possibly a banger. Hell, I don't know, I'm hardly down with my own kids, let alone anybody else's. No matter, this track explains to me why people like electro and why loud dance music has its uses. Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl.

Advent 21

 

 

There is a strong Eagles thread running through much of the music I find attractive. Yesterday's Poco track is a good example, Timothy B. Schmit having been a member of both bands. Schmit crops up again today, singing backing on Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band's Fire Lake. Don Henley and Glenn Frey, Eagles both, are also on the track. I rediscovered it recently.

I have the vinyl of the album (Against the Wind) from which the track is taken. I remember I got it from the bargain bin at, I think, Boots for 50p. Nice. 

Advent 20

 

  

I'm a sucker for a bit of country rock and when you listen to an Eagles inspired playlist on Spotify, it won't be long before a Poco track turns up. This my idea of their most memorable song - Rose of Cimarron. Oddly enough, only a couple of days after I had discovered this song, I was out running and some workmen were up a scaffold in Dunton Close, radio blaring out, and this was the track being played. More serendipity.

Advent 19

 

  

The week leading up to Christmas. Today it's festive hats and jumpers on the links of Royal Pype Hayes and then drinking with the golf lads at the Bishop Vesey in the evening. It's a hard life but someone's got to do it.

So here we have a real party banger. Some may prefer Love Shack, but for me Roam sees the B52s at their joyous best.  

Advent 18

 

  

No list is complete (apparently) without some 80s alternative rock, whatever that means. Here is a top song, Shine On by House of Love. This is the third day in a row that has thrown up music to drive to. Or indeed music to draft a thesis to. Never end a sentence with a preposition. Certainly never end two in a row. One week to Christmas.

Advent 17

 

  

More glorious noise. Bearing probably the best band name of all time, Pop Will Eat Itself are a riotous alternative rock band with left wing tendencies. Which you might think makes them an odd choice for this reactionary old blogger. Not a bit of it. Nearly thirty years old and still relevant today, this is the brilliant Ich Bin Ein Auslander.  

Advent 16

 

  

Forget the love songs; crank the volume up to 11. This is one I play very loud when driving the Precious Jag, preferably while wearing the Precious Oakleys. Mid life crisis? Hell no, I'm older than that. More like an old age crisis.

From 1985 The Cult with She Sells Sanctuary. More noise tomorrow.

Advent 15

 

  

We had a soppy song yesterday and today we have another one. Don't worry, things will get more raucous later. Yesterday's video was from Top of the Pops. Today's live rendition of Just the Way You Are by Billy Joel is from the cooler pillar of seventies music, The Old Grey Whistle Test. This is an unashamed love song and I enthusiastically dedicate it to the Groupie who has taken me just the way I am. For my part, loving her has been easy - she is perfect.

Advent 14

 

  

This is beautiful. Listen to it and I defy you not to have it meandering around your head for the rest of the day. It is the title song from Kiki Dee's 1973 album Loving and Free. She wrote the song; Elton John played keyboards on the album and co-produced it. The single was not released until 1976. It reached No. 13. Deserved better. For those of a certain innocent age, here is her Top of the Pops performance.

Advent 13

 

  

As I write this I realise that this has been a strong list for guitar heroes - you have my nomination of John Williams and yesterday we had guitar work from Clapton. Well here's another contender - in a mesmerising live performance, Richard Thompson (founder member of Fairport Convention) gives us his brilliant 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. 

Advent 12

 

  

You live and learn. Apparently the lead guitar on this track is Eric Clapton. Apologies for the less than woke video - it was the eighties after all. The album on which it appeared had an equally dodgy cover.

From his first solo album this is 5.01 am (the Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking by Roger Waters. A far cry from yesterday's offering from Townes Van Zandt, but hey ho, viva eclecticism.