A Night In front Of The Telly

The more observant of you may notice a change of OG policy - previously I have favoured 'tele' over 'telly' on the basis that the former is more accurately a derivative from 'television'. However some internet searching suggests that I am completely wrong. The other possibility (not entirely inadmissible) is that the internet is wrong. Perhaps more on that particular and interesting conspiracy theory at a later date.

I was in Anglesey for a couple of days warming up the shamingly neglected country estate in readiness for Daughter Number 2 who is going up there for a couple of days. As ever there was the rather wonderful feeling of being on a different and less noisome plain, this, of course, being a piece of wishful autosuggestion to fight the guilt at being (in a small way only) over-endowed with property. Such guilt is, most probably, a load of old bollocks but I think that Jeremy Corbyn must be getting to me. So it goes. Terrible thing guilt - a point of which I was reminded when I used up six plus hours last night rewatching the Channel 4 adaptation of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time (available on the excellent All4 service). It was the the doomed and tragic socialist aristocrat Erridge who put me in mind of this. The series is well worth another view. The source sequence of twelve novels sprawls over the middle of the twentieth century and might seem unadaptable but my conclusion on this second viewing was that the script did a better service to the source material than I had remembered. It does probably help that I had (not recently but since the first transmission) re-read the entire sequence in the right order. Just as had been the case with Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion novels, I had first encountered them in the random order that they became available in second hand book stores (I am very parsimonious in my book buying habits) or in public lending libraries (you remember those surely). So, I recommend that you find yourself the time to read the books or watch the television series, but preferably both. But here's an even stranger recommendation: I was idly googling what commentators have made of Powell's efforts (because of his perceived snobbishness he has diced with unfashionability, not one suspects that he would have given a fig) when I came across a dread concatenation: 'Tariq Ali/the Guardian/Anthony Powell'. I am glad I overcame my prejudice and read it - Tariq Ali on Powell - scholarly and, to this eye, spot on, right down to the doubts about the quality of the last volume. Incidentally the definitive Proust biography to which Ali refers was written by George Painter Junior, the son of the English master at King Edward's Aston in whose memory the annual sixth form English prize is still awarded. My father and I won that prize twenty-six years apart, a fact that fills me with unbecoming pride - not at the prize itself, in truth it was not what racing parlance would term a strong renewal, but at matching an achievement of the man I most admire.

I rounded out my viewing with a couple of contrasting documentaries on BBC4: Fifties British War Films: Days of Glory and The Most Dangerous Band in the World: the Story of Guns N' Roses. The first of these was good, the second a revelation - why are none of Guns N' Roses dead? Talented bunch of lads but individually and collectively bonkers. Welcome to the jungle indeed. Appetite for Destruction - never mind the tracks (which are good), what a great album title.  The attached is the Robert Williams artwork (soon ditched for reasons of taste apparently) from the original release. Nice.