All Of life Is There

Man and beloved Cannondale in
perfect harmony

Well ok not all of life, not even all of my life, but quite a nice slice of it. It's been a busy few days.

On Friday and putting aside the various excuses (all plausible but none compelling) I got out on the bike again. I am very saddle sore today but the virtuousness has not quite dissipated. It is going to be a diet of cycling and swimming from now on - the running just causes me too many bloody injuries. I'll leave the running for my refereeing and the few triathlons I still aim to do. I love the event but the road running just doesn't love me. The latest addition to the catalogue has been a thigh pull which lamed me a couple of weeks ago. Old age, a super-structure too large for the chassis (ie fat) and bad luck are all against me. As the Pet Shop Boys so ably put it, what have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?

As it happens, yes I am

It was off to that London again on Friday evening to stay with Daughter Number One, who, by the way, is admirably well-adjusted, self-sufficient and altogether an example to her old man still scrabbling around in search of his destiny. The purpose of my southern travel was my Olympic volunteer training alongsige 9,999 other 'Games Makers' at Wembley Arena. I am prohibited from reporting upon that training in detail (which I know sounds prissy but I take such undertakings seriously)  but suffice it to say that my anticipation of the Games is heightened. I sat between a giant man from Matlock (of roughly my age at a guess) who charmingly admitted that he had now conceded he would never compete at a games and that this was his only chance of involvement, and a nice young lass from Bristol University who sported, I noticed, one of those 'WWJD' (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets, though not at all ostentatiously. I have decided that, on balance, I find such things admirable. Which you will probably agree is pretty big of me.

Soothes the savage beast

The low point of the weekend was my laughable attempt to find the only West End cinema showing Coriolanus yesterday afternoon. I tramped all over Bond Street, Picadilly and Regent Street in the pissing down rain getting ever angrier with an unaccommodating world - this I believe the psychiatrists call displacement activity, an action contrived to help keep me from the realisation that I'm a wanker who really should write things down. By the time I reached the divine ICCo (it stands for Italian Coffee Company) at 46 Goodge Street (write that down because you should go there) the displacement had ceased to be operative and I was firmly convinced of my wankerdom but £4.50 on a pepperoni (I know - it really is that cheap) later I had calmed down a little and resolved to cut my losses and head out of the Smoke for home.

Trains are good for self esteem because almost invariably one encounters people so much more dreadful than oneself. It is terribly reassuring. Yesterday it was a youngish affluentish couple, married, though not to each other and who plainly felt it droll that they were going to Birmingham to visit Imogen who, poor soul, has ended up being forced to live there. WWJD, I found myself wondering. To which I answered that he would probably travel economy and thereby expose himself to yet worse privations.

I was pondering a bottle of cab sauv as I settled my weary self before the television when I had a moment of inspiration. Might Coriolanus be showing at the Midland Arts Centre? Well what do you know. So I dashed back out and across the city and even had time for a bolted glass of sauvignon blanc before hunkering down in an aisle seat for a satisfying cinematic two hours.

   

Ralph Fiennes gets much right. His  Caius Martius Coriolanus is bloodily magnificent, unforgiving and unforgiven. Vanessa Redgrave's Volumnia is perhaps even better. James Nesbitt does his best Martin McGuiness as Sicinius the tribune. Liberties are taken but hey ho, they always have been. Allowing Menenius an honourable suicide gives the character greater moral heft than the text warrants but it works in its modern context. I can even accept the intertextuality of Coriolanus' elevation/descent (this can depend on your political sympathies) into Colonel Kurtz territiory. See it - an intelligent and provocative addition to the canon. What we now need is a similarly bloody Julius Caesar to stand alongside this and Julie Taymor's raucous Titus in a modern Roman trilogy. Perhaps Tarnatino could be persuaded to have a stab - how marvellous if the bard could provoke him into a finally mature film.

Seeing Redgrave in such magisterial form reminded me that the last time I had seen her was in an irritating interview about Anonymous. No doubt dutifully toeing the party line she gave credence to that film's advocacy of the Earl of Oxford as author of Shakespeare's works. I will let the real David Roberts (professor of the species, head of the School of English at BCU) explain why this is unworthy bollocks,

If you see Anonymous and feel remotely persuaded by it, find a copy of James Shapiro’s Contested Will or Samuel Schoenbaum’s Shakespeare’s Lives. There, you’ll find a commodity that doesn’t concern Emmerich or his backers: the truth.

Quite. That bit of specious crap from Redgrave puts me in mind of something similarly assinine currently making news. Sean Penn. Creditable actor and if we do have to query the sanity of a man who married Madonna we can at least credit him with having divorced her. But now he is on the movie star equivalent of a state visit to South America and Sean thinks that we Brits should give Las Malvinas to poor little Argentina. Has this man no sense of irony, indeed has he never seen his own role in the brilliant Team America? Sean son, a word to the wise - keep your trap shut. And I should stay away from Catterick for a while as well. A nice piece in The Telegraph (not words you hear from me that often) spears this knob rather well,

America’s claim over Malibu is tenuous and rooted in patriarchy. Sean Penn’s house is a mocking reminder of that brute chauvinism, with its high white walls and spacious interiors. Its swimming pool is an insult to the honour of the Mexican people.

The Unquiet American

And while you're at it Sean, how about giving, I dunno, say, Massachusetts back to native Americans. Be a nice gesture.