A Trip To The North-East

Why aye man pet! And that is the last I will attempt of the lyric qualities of north-eastern dialect.

Just back from a trip with some of the usual suspects to play golf and to take in a day's test cricket at Chester-le-Street. A pleasure as always. We had a preliminary game of golf at Melton Mowbray (where AO is a member) which went passably well by my own dull standards until I collapsed as if spineless on the last two holes to hand the win to our host. In the smallness of those two holes I threw in three shots in a greenside bunker and a shanked chip when triumph still beckoned. Defeat was thus wondrously snatched from the jaws of victory.

Dunstanburgh Castle Golf Club

Most of Saturday was spent crawling up the A1(M) to our destination of Dunstanburgh Castle Golf Club. The long trek was worth it. I have an affection for Dunstanburgh dating back to 1975 when Brother and I played it during a family holiday. The Northumberland coast is a matchless piece of deific design. My golf was matchless rubbish but hey ho.

After the golf we journeyed back to Newcastle to our base at the Grand Station Hotel - a piece of faded glory with high ceilings, large rooms and coldish showers. A reliable base from which to strike out into the wonders of Newcastle night-life. Such life seems to be defined by a lack of adequate female clothing and a penchant for wearing what is available in a size too small. It is rather like our own Broad Street but somehow less self-conscious. This might be me romanticising the northern charm. Anyway I'm glad to say there are some proper drinking pubs where you don't have to shout over the music and climb over prone bodies.

great sliding banisters

Test cricket needs all the friends it can get in facing the tasteless international onslaught of franchise-based Twenty20 slogfests. In that context the spirit shown by Sri Lanka in a losing cause on Sunday was welcome. What is not, on balance, welcome is much of the mirthless humour of the pissed-up crowd in the cheap stands. I don't expect to sit in cathedral hush to watch my cricket and some of the badinage is even rather clever but the constant braying of the same inanities is tiresome and unfair on those in proximity to the noisome bunch. My particular loathing was reserved for a scouse tosser (this is a medical term) in front of me who was under the mistaken impression that his racist under-appreciation of Moeen Ali would be welcomed as humour. As I say, tosser.  It is a sobering thought that he will presumably get the same number of votes as all the rest of us in the forthcoming referendum. No wonder people become patrician eurocrats. In the end you can't let these bastards win.

A Couple More Films - Good Ones

Two oldish movies worth being reminded about and available via the Sky archives.

The Odd Couple betrays its conversion from a stage play (the reliably funny Neil Simon) but the expansive complementary talents of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon lift it rather sweetly. A fine and professional piece of americana. 7/10.

A very different but actually equally sweet comedy is to be had from the swear-fest that is The Commitments. It is a fine essay (among other things) on the use by the Irish of foul language as a means of oral punctuation. The soul music that is at the heart of the film is even more arresting than the profanity. 7.5/10.

A View From Over The Pond

It has been a week of much sound and fury signifying the ramping up of lies, damned lies and statistics in the EU debate. The whole thing has become tiresome and there is something decdedly distasteful about the sight of our Prime Minister getting down and dirty with the lying part of the equation. He will say pretty much anything to win and his motivation is clearly the winning of an internal Tory war. The country's interests can go hang. He is no better than the clown Corbyn whose dishonest conversion to the Remain cause fails to get the scrutiny it deserves.

For a sober neutral view (this time on the Leave side of the equation) try George F. Will in yesterday's Washington Post. Will on EU

A Soviet Hamlet

Grigori Kozintsev's 1964 Hamlet complete with its Shostakovich score is proof that good art can be forthcoming in a totalitarian state. That doesn't make totalitarianism acceptable but it does say something about the power of good storytelling. As with Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (a brilliant Japanese Macbeth, which the observant of you will remember being part of my filmic advent calendar) there is a distinct argument that black and white cinematography adds rather than detracts.

The translation used for the film was Pasternak's, so you might say that some pretty talented types worked on this stark and pacy film adaptation. I was particularly taken by the performance of Anistaysia Vertinskaya as the doomed Ophelia.

The film is currently available on BBC iPlayer as part of the general Shakespeare celebrations. Definitely worth a gander. 7/10.

Further Evidence

Further evidence of the Law of Diminishing Returns, as if more were needed. Last night IW and I drank the second of my cherished bottles of La Serra Barolo 2001. It drinks beautifully but is prohibitively expensive for any sort of regular consumption, even if you could get hold of more bottles. On reflection that's probably the point! If someone offers you the chance, drink it but don't guzzle. Nice. It's back to the cheap rioja today.

It's Time To Stop Dissing Saracens

In fact the time had come some while ago. One of the things that struck me markedly when attending the Toulon v Saracens European Cup final a couple of years ago was the number of English followers of other clubs who so vociferously supported Toulouse on the grounds that Saracens constituted a mercenary oupost of South Africa. Whereas Toulon are, I suppose, the great manifestation of growing your own talent. Yeah right.

Dudes can play

Saracens won the European Cup kast weekend with a functional display in dire conditions against Racing 92's assembled galcticos. It wasn't pretty and the usual plonkers were decrying all things northern hemisphere blah, blah, blah. Saracens did all this with a predominantly English team.

Well Saraces have just furnished an answer with their evisceration of Leicester in the Premiership play-off semi-final. They scored tries, they kicked goals, they were bloody impressive. If there has ever been a club pairing at second-row as monstrously good as Kruis and Itoje then I haven't seen it. And yes I did see Johnson and Kay play. And no I'm not suggesting that either of the Sarries lads is even in the same continent as the deity that is Johnson. Yet. Ben Kay, by the way, has emerged as a sane and sensible commentator on BT Sport. He makes as many insightful remarks as Austin Healey but without the need to signal himself as the biggest tosser in the room. Mind you, I'll take Healey over Stuart Barnes any day. At least Healey displays signs of self-knowledge.  

Cymbeline ... RSC

Cymbeline is one of the late 'problem' plays in the Shakespeare canon. Hitherto rarely performed, it is in temporary vogue and can be found presently in the RSC main house. I unfolded myself this afternoon in stalls seat J1 for what was a curate's egg of a production.

The play is not easily categorised and its peculiarity seems to have played on the mind of the director so that all sorts of presentational tricks are thrown at the staging. King Cymbeline is given a sex change and becomes Queen Cymbeline. Guiderius gets the same treatment. In the programme notes director Melly Still offers that this is done to disturb the expectation of patriarchal order. Maybe, maybe not - generally I'm inclined to the view that such tricks are a form of showing-off.

To emphasise the inherent clashes of cultures (the play climaxes with a pact between Augustan Rome and a fledgling Britain) some of the text is translated into Latin, Italian and French. At first I thought this selfishly indulgent but then realised that the original words were being projected onto the back wall. The problem is that the thrust stage does not make for ready reading of back projections. My view was blocked at various times and I'm not convinced it's anything other than impolite to put on a show material parts of which are unavailable to a sizeable chunk of the paying public.

So all in all not an unmitigated success. However it is a rare performance that masks the Bard's merits completely and there is plenty to take away from this, not least the comic possibilities of the vile Cloten. Also, in its investigation of national identity, this play has rather nice echoes for those of us intrigued by the EU referendum. When I found an article making this very point in the programme I feared a prototypical luvvie blast in favour of the In campaign (Emma Thompson being the sanctimonious torch-bearer in chief on this front - quelle surprise) but Rachel Sylvester's piece is actually even-handed.

To conclude, this production tries too hard to be cutting edge and thereby gets a tad messy. However an afternoon in Stratford is always to be recommended if only to make one feel young - apart from those on the stage and the gaggle of kilted schoolgirls on an outing, I didn't spot anyone who could convincingly be argued to look younger than me. Result.