What Did I Do To Deserve That?

I've been making a concerted effort to keep myself sound of body and mind. The body is catered for by the running which continues to go quite well. I didn't get out whilst in Anglesey last weekend and instead rather overfed and overwatered myself. Compensation came in the shape of seventy minutes up and down the local hills on Tuesday and three sharper efforts to round the week off. As for the old mind, I visited Waterstones to spend some vouchers and any bookshop visit always fills me with good intentions. Under this new ascetic regime I have largely foresworn the perils of daytime television (dangerously addictive) and instead got stuck into a variety of tomes. For most of my life I have read only one book at a a time but I have now adopted my father's method and I have two upstairs books and three downstairs on the go.  My reasoning is that if it is possible (as it is) to imbibe more than one television serial at a time then one can do the same with books. Yesterday I finished off Waugh's A Handful of Dust, quite simply a masterful novel, one I first encountered as a set text for English A level. The modern edition I have just finished includes as an appendix the alternative ending that Waugh was forced (for copyright reasons arising from the ownership of an original short story that went on to become the concluding chapter of the novel proper) to write for a serialised American edition. The author himself described it as a 'curiosity ' when it was appended to a 1963 reprint. 'Travesty' might be more apt and you rather suspect that Waugh bashed it out for the money, tongue admirably and firmly in his cheek.

Other books in the midst of which I find myself include Mrs Barrington's Life of Walter Bagehot, Atlas Shrugged (itself something of a curiosity but not unfascinating), Hearing Secret Harmonies and Jamaica Inn. Catholic tastes? That was rather the image I was going for.

Preferable to Blatter

Finally I get to what I meant to say and what you were entitled to expect from the heading of this post. I  did, between books, dip into the BBC News yesterday and I saw two reprehensible characters: that awful con-man Sepp Blatter was distancing himself from the chicanery at FIFA; Alex Salmond was giving  a withering speech in his new home, the House of Commons. Both in their way loathsome but there is an important distinction. Salmond is merely objectionable but acts within the law (even those he abhors). Blatter is either a kleptocrat or a massive idiot incapable of seeing beyond the end of his administrative nose. As I write this the good burghers of FIFA are voting on Blatter's continuation in office. Nobody is predicting that he will do other than survive. Hang your heads in shame.