I Love It When People Agree With Me

The Commonwealth flag apparently - No I didn't know either

Boma Ozobia (and I do have to say that is a fantastic name) attended my alma mater, King's College London, and unlike your correspondent she has gone on to make waves in the legal world. President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association no less. I quote from her recent interview with the most boring journal in the world, The Law Society Gazette (that may be unfair, because per force there are many periodicals I have never read):

The UK focuses too much on the EU to the detriment of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a group of friends that shares a common heritage and language with your country. You should throw in your lot with us to promote the common law worldwide and achieve a genuinely global voice.
 

Hoo-bloody-ray, someone talking my language. The Boy Cameron was recently schmoozing his way round India begging for them to take us seriously. Good luck with that son. That ship sailed when the bien pensants turned their collective back on the Commonwealth and cosied up to Europeans who rather despise us. Now just imagine a free trade block that included, inter alia, Australia, Canada, Singapore, South Africa and India, plus little old Britain and maybe even a functioning Zimbabwe. Bloody visionary me. Forty sodding years too late.

Go on, man up and take a swing at him

Ooh, another thing while I'm going off on one. Does anyone seriously believe the British government is more (or indeed less) likely to default on sovereign debt than it was a week ago? No, thought so. Which makes Moody's downgrading of the UK credit rating stunningly irrelevant and what's more it gives that smug tosser Ed Balls the chance to crow about that other smug tosser George Osborne. A plague on both your houses etc

A Nice Little Film

I make no comment on this year's Oscars but we did finally get around to seeing last year's Best Film, The Artist a couple of weeks ago. I liked it, slight as the central conceit may be. And the period of transition from silent film to talkies is, of course, even more winningly deconstructed in Singin' In The Rain. But don't let that stop you - and the dog deserved an Oscar of its own.

Benllech Beach High Tide: Being A Poem What I Wrote

it can seem to
the casual
onlookers unversed in physics
ignorant of lunar pull
that waves crash in
angles askew
to the stark sea wall and then bounce
back out again with force renewed
and still rant in
beating harshly
then at mirror angle thrash
away into new waves rashly
only to come
more fluently
a self refreshing energy
mute force speaking lucidly
 as comforter
soothing savage
nightmares that drive me out of doors
to confront my place in nature
 

 

 

 

                        

A Weekend To Remember

All the Roberts of the male line spent the weekend in Edinburgh watching the Scotland v Italy clash and eating too much. The latter partly due to the world-class breakfasts at the Priestville Guest House - an institution I cannot recommend strongly enough. We were royally and inexpensively looked after. Website at Priestville.

As eaten by Fl LT B.D. Roberts
(RAF ret'd)

This was a first international match for the youngest tourist, George. Far from that for the oldest, BDR, but his first trip to Murrayfield and also his first ever Burger King and first ever Thai meal. You're never too old to learn new tricks.

We combined Shanks's Pony and a taxi ride to get us back from the stadium in time to watch France v Wales at the hotel. The French conspired to make me look an even lousier pundit than in their encounter with the Italians. They have announced their squad today for the visit to Twickenham a fortnight hence - Michalak still included so there are grounds for English optimism. Just watch that statement blow up in my face.

Just thought you ought to know but I hit a couple of buckets of golf balls at the range last week and made an important discovery, or rather a rediscovery - I'm just not very good at golf. I can hit a fade and a draw, I can even hit it straight - but I cannot do any of these things in the correct order. It is like constantly losing at paper scissors and stone - my perpetual incompetence is a statistical wonder. 

I've Changed My Mind

I should have said in yesterday's blog - yes I am the one who tipped France for the Six Nations, thus sealing their fate in losing to Italy on Sunday. Freddie Michalak played a bit like me, only slower on the uptake.

Oh well at least I've still got my looks.

Bloody Raining Again

Which has nothing to do with this blog but I just thought I'd lament the awful weather. Snow at least can have some romance to it, but the rain's just a sodding nuisance which makes golf an impossibility and means my boots get intolerably dirty when I referee. You have no idea how I suffer.

To business. There are eight items on my aide memoire slip of paper so off we jolly well go.

One. Truffle chips - that is to say fried potatoes drizzled with truffle oil. I had them (off someone else's plate - this greatly improves a food's taste)  at The Laughing Gravy in Southwark. I recommend the restaurant and the chips, the latter washed down by the respectable Valpolicella.

Two. Michael Portillo - have been enjoying his Great British Railway Journeys on BBC2. How is it that an ignominious exit from politics can make a man quite so much more likeable. He's really very good.

Ours is a much more fetching grey

Three. Range Rover Evoque. We now have one on the drive - a second portion of automotive porn to add to the garaged Jag. Seriously pleasurable to drive. Some have a fixation with speed, others with luxury. I rather like both. But please don't ask me to begin to explain what goes on under the bonnet. That is for others.

Four. Shropshire. I refereed at Bishop's Castle last weekend on a grand sunny day. A beautiful drive in the precious Jag.

Five. Mark Radcliffe. A much underrated broadcaster. Six. The Radio 2 Folk awards which I saw him introducing between coats of emulsion on Sunday.

Seven. The girl at the Co-Op in Benllech who tipped me off that Doritos were on special offer and saved me from buying the wrong chips to dunk in my humous between coats of emulsion.

Eight. High Noon. Serendipitously I found this being shown on Channel 4 yesterday afternoon just as I needed to stop to let coat number two dry. I had forgotten quite how bleak a film it is, Cooper's discarding of his Sheriff's tin star at the end speaking volumes. Also it is one of those films it is impossible to imagine being anything other than black and white. Tidy.

In The Deep Midwinter

It's snowing. It's snowing. I love the snow. It excuses isolated indolence within our lovely home. In fact we haven't been utterly indolent - yesterday we walked down to the shops, no doubt inspired by the Shackleton documentary we'd watched the night before. We bought Mexican food which we had for tea last night.

Well, what have I been up to in the post-Christmas lull? Ooh, this and that, you know, this and that. I've been putting in some time with my old Victorian mate Walter Bagehot - there may be an element of the self-fulfilling prophecy but I find a lot of modern resonance in good old Walt's oeuvre. Remember that con-artist Tony Blair and 'Education. Education. Education.' Well try this for size,

Our University has shown upon what principles a sound and sensible culture can be given to young men sincerely bred in different religious creeds, without sacrificing either the faith to the culture or the culture to the faith … The cry should now be “Educate! Educate! Educate!”
 

That was Walter to the graduates of God's own University of London in 1867. A time, by the way, when the University had its own MP voted for by the alumni. Sounds a great idea to me. I see no sound reason why I shouldn't have at least two votes to the one of most mortals.

We went to see Merry Wives of Windsor at the RSC. A beautifully staged production of a lesser play which, to my mind, tails off in the final acts. A good night though. I do recommend the rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Theatre as a congenial performance space.

Time spent with Walter also gets me thinking about the stinking morass that is modern constitutional politics. I've been having some thoughts as to what Bagehot would make of the EU. To the extent that it disenfranchises its citizens and leaves government to an elite, he might be anticipated to approve. However Bagehot accepted such arrangements to the extent that they were either efficient or dignified. You will have a job convincing me which category le Grand Projet can squeeze itself into.

I'll tell you who is efficient - that Alex Salmond. He has manoeuvred the SNP into a position of beautifully unaccountable power. You have to admire his method. And even more skilfully he knows his limits - he will always struggle to tick the dignified box so he would keep the monarchy for that purpose. Hard to deny that Queen Elizabeth II does dignity in spades. I bet he's read his Bagehot. She definitely has. Daft they ain't. Heard him the other day on the radio and his latest little tic is never to say just 'Scotland' but 'oil rich, green energy rich, Scotland.' I wish him well. If the Scots transpire to want the sort of Scotland Salmond would want, a Scandinavian annexe, then they can go with my blessing because the majority of the English, to the extent they ever really think about such things, want something fundamentally different. In an uncomfortable way I rather admire Salmond.

Ronan O'Gara has received  a one week ban for full-on kicking a bloke last weekend in a Heineken Cup match. Apparently they took account of his 'previous good record.' Wtf - if you added up all the yards he has run over the years to land a cheap shot in fights that were none of his damned business you'd get to Cork and back a good few times. Gobshite.