On Ageing Disgracefully

Yesterday it rained. Today it has not, although the temperature has been sharp to say the least. Still I saw quite a few hardy souls out for a walk as I ran four miles (yes you did read that right - the Pig is back) this morning. I traded greetings with various people and exchanged knowing nods (the stock in trade of the self-righteous) with a few fellow runners - this is an exaggeration of course, what the Pig does these days is not so much running as shuffling. It is, in the Pig's defence, moderately faster than walking.

At what age does middle age end? I will hit sixty next month. Will I pass from being a MAMIL (middle aged man in lycra) to some other status? Is wearing lycra after passing six decades on the planet an affront to decency? Do you know what - I don't care. It makes me feel good, even if the pre-exercise stretching and the post-exercise recovery take longer and longer.

And another thing - I'm off the midweek vino at present. Sodding hell I feel smug! And the FTSE went up today so I am moderately richer than yesterday and still substantially poorer than one short month ago. You can't take it with you but I'm thinking of living for ever.

The Return Of Good Manners

We are still in the early days of the lockdown but one positive consequence is the re-emergence of courtesy. Now even a jaundiced old cynic like the Pig will concede that good manners had never entirely gone away but incivility makes more noise and pre coronavirus Britain could be hurtful. Well now when one is out and about taking the permitted daily dose of exercise cheering features are the coy acquiescence in social distancing and the ready exchange of polite greetings. The last time I can remember quite such an atmosphere was during the London Olympics, an event I was fortunate to be part of as a volunteer. A sign of the times is that the Excel Centre where I did my stewarding has now been converted into a field hospital.

Another side-effect of the lockdown is the opportunity to get some films watched. Groupie and the Pig have viewed three already this weekend. All notable. First up was Gloria Swanson relishing the golden opportunities given to an actor by a script as cynical and de trop as Sunset Boulevard. I have taken a unilateral decision to revise my future film gradings to mark on a scale of 100 instead of the old 10. And for all you wiseacres out there, yes I know the simple expedient of going to one decimal place might have rescued the old system but it would not have felt half so revolutionary. 87/100. So pretty bloody good in other words.

Also pretty bloody good if not quite a classic is Blinded by the Light. The uplifting Asian/British genre is well-populated (East is East, Anita and Me, anything scripted by Hanif Kureishi - who went to King's, just so you know) and this is not quite the best but the Springsteen soundtrack carries it along and the end is nicely touching. Strong central performances and even the de rigueur Thatcher bashing is not overdone. 73/100.

And to finish - another rather lovely little film, Il Postino. Now there he goes again that pretentious Pig recommending a film with subtitles. But stay with the project folks and you will be rewarded with a gentle love story - the love of a man for a woman and the (sometimes competing) love of that same man for the possibilities of poetry. 82/100.

So all in all it's been a good weekend - the Pig even fitted in another run yesterday morning.     

Writers Write/ Writers Read/ Kill Your Parents

Any of you who have been with me since the start will recognise these three injunctions as the Imperatives of Marchant delivered as with lapidary permanence by my first creative writing tutor.

I have found the first of these difficult to observe of late, rather feeling that what little I have got to say has already been said. As for the second, well I drift in and out of reading - I'm in one of my good phases at present. I alluded to this in my last entry. Since that entry I have completed Waugh's Men at Arms and have saved the next instalment of Sword of Honour for later, treating myself now to an interval of Simon Raven. I have read and re-read his Alms for Oblivion sequence countless times already - first encountering him from the fiction shelves of Erdington library as a teenager, pointed in the direction of this magnificently louche author by my father. To repeat the most oft-used critical estimation: the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel.

So it is that I am a hundred pages into Friends in Low Places, the second novel of the sequence. In my mind I had thought that this was one of the weaker books of the ten. Either I have hitherto been wrong or the whole shebang is even better than I had thought. Entrancing - no that's not quite the bon mot - let's try raucous and compelling, which is two bons mots. Just writing this piece is making me want to get back to read some more.

There is a temptation to read into the fictional mind of Raven's proto-novelist Fielding Gray something of Raven himself:

But what then? Suppose his work found favour with Somerset and his novels were published by Gregory Stern, suppose, even, that they achieved some measure of public esteem, what was to follow? Would there be anything more to say? Could he face the prospect of carrying on indefinitely with such a career? For did not even the two existing manuscripts pose the question, "While this is quite well done, was there ever, in truth, any real reason for doing it?"

I think we can take it as read that Raven himself would not have set much store by the opinion of a jobbing commercial lawyer but for what it's worth Simon old boy, these novels have been important to me. And here is another sample of why - this is the Marquis Canteloupe's reflection on his first meeting with the gruesome Somerset Lloyd-James:

In short, Somerset Lloyd-James would do. That he was manifestly not only a gentleman but also a howling shit did not deter Canteloupe one iota: for one thing, as he reflected, he was a shit himself, and for another he preferred working with them. For the great thing about shits was that they got on with it (provided the price was right) and didn't ask damn silly questions.

Delicious and so so right, as any honest jobbing commercial lawyer will tell you. Mind you, good luck in finding such a tradesman who is both jobbing and honest.

Away from books and outside on the mean streets of Britain, coronavirus continues to hold us in its invisible grasp. The Prime Minister has gone down with it now, not to mention the heir to the throne. The Roberts household is fine thus far and indeed Big Fat Pig is rather relishing the feeling of virtuousness that comes with regular exercise - two runs this week and an outing on the Precious Bike. All of this the Pig reports to you exactly one calendar month away from his sixtieth anniversary.

The mood of the domestic incarceration we are all enduring is no doubt made lighter by the gorgeous Spring weather we are enjoying. When, as it must, rain keeps us from even the sole exercise excursion we are permitted each day, the national mood may darken. As for how people will feel when we finally emerge blinking into the sunlit uplands of normality is a more troubling question - because then we will survey the full wreckage of our economy. But that is for another day.    

   

Social Distancing

This is what we have to perform if we dare to venture outside - 'social distancing', which means keeping 2 metres away from other human life forms. As for the 'vulnerable' (that's my dear old Mum I suppose) they have to lock themselves away for twelve weeks. The whole ghastly business carries with it an air of unreality. Sooner rather than later the economics of the the thing will sabotage this dream-like scenario and things will turn nasty. It is all the harder to credit when the weather (after three months of seemingly unbroken shite) has turned all nice and Spring-like on us. All the world and its wife has headed for public open space - the Boris has thus far resisted the temptation to close the parks (some municipalities have already done this) but if we don't start behaving ourselves he reserves the right to do so. Some gardening induced stiffness aside (old bones) I feel guiltily healthy. The garden is looking good even if there is more moss than I would like in my precious lawn. The lawn service is coming this week so hopefully it will soon improve, not that coronavirus is going to allow me to show it off to anyone. So it goes.

Slick, concise and underrated - this is how I would summarise Men In Black 2 which the Groupie and I watched last night. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are, in their markedly different ways, two of the coolest customers in the cinema firmament and this film deliver laughs at a gattling gun pace and does not take itself too seriously. 7/10.

I have to admit to my shame that the current lack (almost total) of any live televised sport really brings home how much of the stuff I watch. Does this make me a bad person? No, just a rather shallow one. I am not alone.

'You can tell a man who boozes/ By the company he chooses/And the pig got up and slowly walked away.' That lyric pipes up in my mind every time I see Mike Pence standing behind Doanld Trump and taking the buffoon seriously. The difference is of course stark - Pence never does walk away. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.     

What Was It Like Before Coronavirus?

Can anyone remember? The whole bloody world has ground to a halt, interrupted by explosions of activity as people indulge in panic-buying bog roll. Not a good look. As of a few minutes ago all the schools have been closed save for the offspring of 'key workers' - whatever that means and assuming such workers have not already self-isolated themselves and their children. Has it occurred to the powers that be to suspend the stock markets as well? After all the markets are run by and for children who sometimes need protection from themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry about all this - if the medics say we're all going to die then I'll go along with it. For now.

What else can I report. Oh yes, last week at Cheltenham was fun albeit tempered by an end of holidays feeling that soon such frivolity would be banned. Sure enough it has been. When last we corresponded I was optimisticallly clutching my Lucky 31 voucher which was going to land me some £13500. As it turned out it paid a return of £6.71. About as good as my punting got all week.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter - listening to it now. Now there's a reason to be cheerful. Good old Joni.

I've been out running the last couple of days after an indecent period of sloth. Yesterday was dreadful - two miles and nothing more rewarding than the sensation that I might be sick. Today was better - three miles and now I can barely walk. I must rediscover those balmy and energised days of 1996 when I ran the London Marathon and lost only narrowly in a sprint finish with a bloke in a rhino costume and another with one leg. Once were warriors indeed.

More good cheer: I have regained the reading bug (it deserts me on occasion) and am immersed in several good books. Gary Imlach's My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes is that cherishable beast, the good sports book - a record of a game now long gone with the wind. Premier League millionaires might do well to read it. It tells of a time when the professional players were treated lamentably and we should not be nostalgic for those times but we might want to stop for a moment and see how far the immorality has has spun to the other side of the coin. For fiction I am re-reading Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. A delight. Poignant as well because I read the first couple of chapters to Dad the last time I saw him alive. I'm also dipping in and out of a tatty old paperback edition of World at War, the book that accompanied the fabulous television series.

The Groupie and I are off to collect a wine order. I hope she's ordered enough to last the length of the curent crisis. Now that really would be bad news. See you on the other side.  

Grumpy Old Man Somewhat Soothed

The definition of insanity is, we are told, doing the same daft things over and over and expecting different results. I mention this because everyday life often serves to remind me of that maxim. Most days I awake and hear the same news and it is the same things that push my buttons over and over again. Donald bloody Trump, natch. Jeremy bloody Corbyn, natch, though that irritant is on its last legs - to be superseded no doubt by the equally, though for different reasons, bothersome Keir Starmer. Litter, bloody litter. It's everywhere. It's shaming. And don't get me started on the bloody Sussexes - I mean, who cares any more? All I will say is that the Queen, God bless her, has played her usual blinder. We'll miss her when she's gone.

And so here's the cheery bit. The obverse of that maxim is that the defintion of sanity could be doing the same healthy things in order to get repeat results. Well this week I have been in Mon with the Groupie, following hard upon three days here last week with Daughter Number 2. The familiar - I have walked twice at Newborough and loved it both times - it is the best beach on the island and the bacon roll from the van on the carpark is unbeatable. DN2 and I also walked at Lligwy (second best beach?) and dined at the Harbour Inn in Cemaes and at the Tavern at Red Bull Bay, the former good, the latter excellent. More of the familiar - Groupie and I have been to Plas Newydd and to Penrhyn Castle for the umpteenth time. Top grade. We have eaten at the Panton Arms (reliably sufficient) and at the Anglesey Arms (a new and commendable find) in Menai Bridge. Savage brow soothed, Cheltenham to come.

When she feels herself compelled to talk about politics I find Emma Thompson insufferably woke, a manifestation of that educated intolerance peculiar to liberals. But that should not detract from this fact - she's the best actress currently at work. I was reminded of this last night when we watched Sense and Sensibility, in which she is terrific and for the screenplay of which she won an Oscar. 8/10. 

The world is presently obsessed with coronavirus. I am not but the bloody thing has hacked some twenty per cent off the value of my pension or more accurately it has been a convenient excuse for the tossers in the City to make the adjustment that was needed to stock valuations.  The games people play. But never mind I have had a 10p each way Lucky 31 on the first five races at Cheltenham tomorrow which will win me £13500 when it comes in. Sorted.