Pop Will Eat Itself (Redux)

One can get to missing these things. The Conservative Party is presently in a dire state - BoJo having lost his mojo but his majority being large enough to preclude any serious rocking of the boat. And boy does the boat need rocking as we continue to sail our way blithely into an economic depression.

Still the good old Labour Party has come to the rescue and given us a nice bit of internecine warfare to warm the cockles on these cold evenings - Corbyn suspended 

This tawdry tale is all part of Kier Starmer's attempt to detoxify his party, or that at least is the way he tells it. What we ought to remember is that (unlike Andy Burnham who may be overplaying his mayoral cards a little but has a clean bill of health hypocrite-wise) Starmer served Corbyn as a loyal lieutenant during the last parliament. Starmer suffers from what we might call Mike Pence Syndrome - wherein an outwardly decent bloke uncomplainingly bows and scrapes at the feet of an utter shit. 

And as if to bring me yet more fun, the infantile SNP is also eviscerating itself with the odious Alex Salmond cast in the unlikely role of avenging angel - Saint Alex of Salmond  

Finally if you want to see how low an Englishman can stoop, track down the clips of Nigel Farage eulogising the shit's shit, the Donald - An Englishman Abroad   

As a wise man said to me only last week - life is like a glass of champagne, drink it while it's fizzy.

I'm Spartacus

Spartacus is a cultural artefact as old as Big Fat Pig. Regular readers might know that the Pig is not a particular devotee of the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick - deeming A Clockwork Orange a pernicious little film, 2001: A Space Odyssey a monolithic slab of pretension, and Doctor Strangelove grossly overrated. On the topic of that last mentioned film, I'm afraid Peter Sellers also leaves me cold most of the time. These are not fashionable views. The Pig perhaps redeems himself a little in the eyes of the cinematic bien pensant by admiring Full Metal Jacket, but generally that has been the limit of any pleasurable engagement with this oft acclaimed directorial genius. 

But here's the thing, we actually got round to watching all of Spartacus at one sitting yesterday. Hitherto it has been one of those films I have seen in snippets, generally around Christmas. It's good, marked in particular by a sharp Dalton Trumbo script, by its pace and by several (Kirk Douglas, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Laurence Olivier) heavyweight performances. 70/100. 

Doctor Zhivago

Not the book. Haven't read it. I understand it weighs in at one hundred and sixty thousand words so I've read longer. In fact I'm in the middle of Moby Dick which is even longer than that. 

No, I'm talking about the film. It's a leviathan of a movie. As one critic said, it tries to do for snow what the same director's Lawrence of Arabia did for sand. In that aim it fails. Lawrence of Arabia is Lean's masterpiece, Zhivago is an emptier vessel - magnificent to look at and despite its length never dreary but with a vacancy at its core. Another problem - the music is famous but in its context within the film it fails. It jars - there's a bad pun wrapped up in that statement - I'll leave you to work it out. 68/100. 

It Makes You Think ... Which Is A Good Thing

A glorious autumnal day, the sun flecking the doomed foliage and the temperature neither too warm nor too cold. Venue - the National Memorial Arboretum. 

The whole place is splendid and it goes without saying that it is moving.  A banal observation I know but it does make you think. And the memorial that particularly got me thinking seems to have affected many others in the same way. By the weird un-science of surfing I note that googling 'Shot at Dawn Memorial' provokes a tally of 352,000,000 hits. I wouldn't normally recommend that you jump into the rabbit hole of the internet but on this occasion it is worthwhile. What you will find (and no I haven't read all three hundred and fifty-two million entries - does it look more when in figures or words?) is a surfeit of excusable lax thinking - twenty-first century sensibilities being applied to an early twentieth century tragedy. We all do it but the process can leave you a little queasy. Search hard enough and you will find more nuanced reactions to the tragedy - there's that word again, but tragedy is right.

The arresting memorial commemorates three hundred and nine Empire soldiers executed for cowardice or mutiny in the Great War. All were pardoned by government fiat in 2007. This monument unequivocally does belong in the National Arboretum but it is an indicator of our sensitive modernism that it should provoke the most thought. And on balance - that is a good thing.

The Bright Side

It seems we got out of Wales not a moment too soon. Not satisfied with the various travel bans the administration has now gone the whole hog and mandated a full lock-down for a fortnight starting on Friday. At least you can't accuse them of muddle - everyone knows where they stand and they better bloody well stay there. I wouldn't want to be a legislator just now. Here's an admission - the Pig has lost his usual unbearable certainty on any given topic. Not quite true of course - there are some things on which I haven't lost my voice, Trump prime amongst them. Even when the alternative is the tedious Joe Biden, Trump simply has to go. It is tempting to venture this opinion on the grounds that the democracy is at stake. I may in fact have done so - no I'm pretty sure I must have done. I'm sorry - democracy is as democracy does, the least bad way of running things. No, what is at stake is that elusive construct, the rule of law. A victory for Sleepy Joe will not deliver us entirely safely from harm - he will have to escape the clutches of his own pudding-brained left - but he is our best chance. And for those who wonder why I get so exercised about America, I repeat that I love the stupid, irritating place, just as I love the stupid, irritating United Kingdom. There is (as often) a line in Kipling that would sum up why America must remove itself from its present self-absorbed, self-harming malaise, but its use would be misconstrued so I won't do that. Just get a grip folks. Please.

How a calf muscle should look

Enough of that- I promised you the bright side. The news you've been waiting for: today, fully five weeks and two days since he was so tragically lamed, Big Fat Pig went for a run this morning. Thirty minutes (that's about three miles at Piggy pace) and although he is now stiffening up, the Pig feels all the better for his efforts. Sod Covid, sod Trump, sod political posturing, he's back.

More good news - tomorrow the Pig takes his golf game to Cavendish Golf Club, which, as any fule kno, is the Pig's favourite golfing destination.

Do you know what, the corny Christmas film channels are already broadcasting, have been for a couple of weeks. It's daft but I have decided to be charmed by it. It speaks of unusual optimism in a time of doubt. I know it's all probably driven by dire marketing ploys and a hunger for advertising revenues, but I am rising above it and so announce an elongated season of goodwill to all (well not all of course - see above). I've even got a good scheme for this year's Overgraduate advent calendar. My lips are sealed. 

My charitable mood towards the commercialisers of the birth of Our Lord, may have something to do with the scent of turkey soup dominating the kitchen. The Groupie is working her way through the contents of our freezers and that has included a turkey carcass. Her turkey soup is most excellent.

Putting The House To Bed

Big Fat Pig and the Groupie rushed to fit in a few days at the old country estate before the Welsh government threw the English out of Cymru, ostensibly on account of Covid although in the Pig's fevered imagination it is the product of unconscious racism - still, no one likes us, we don't care. The Pig's view on all of this is, not unnaturally, stoked up by the payment of double Council Tax for a property he now finds himself prohibited from even visiting. 

Wylfa Head

Enough whining. We had a lovely time. We even found a stretch of the Coastal Path we had not walked before - from Wylfa Head back to Cemaes. Cracking. Another rather muddy adventure took us down to Ynys y Fydlyn, this second walk being celebrated with drinks and a bowl of chips each at the Trecastell Hotel in Bull Bay. Sausages for tea, washed down with Romanian red. Tidy.

Ynys y Fydlyn

And so we have done with Plas Piggy (or should that be more modestly Ty Piggy - no, Pig doesn't really do modesty - admit it you've noticed) what the National Trust do - Plas Piggy is now asleep for the winter, eagerly awaiting the day when the powers that be let us return. Damn this virus and the ham-fisted legislative response to it.

 And I'll tell you what's nice - nice is when the house opposite chops down its horrid leylandii and unclutters your view of the Great Orme. 

And I'll tell you what else is nice - a free-flowing M6 that allows the journey to Mon to be done in well under three hours.

One final thing that's nice - Joe's Pizza swilled down with a ruby ale I got for Christmas and about which I'd forgotten. 

Worth looking up on Netflix - Jimmy McGovern's Broken - by turns tragic, affecting and finally redemptive. Actually rather more than worth looking up - it's a must see. 

Three Games Of Golf

QMT (I've said before, it's a long story) Golf Tour got pushed to October by Covid. Destination Newark. Outcome: brilliant fun. A combination of comic wisdom, plain wisdom and quite a lot of plain daftness.

First up was Newark Golf Club. Nice course and the weather stayed dry. RW won the QMT trophy for the umpteenth time. I played. Badly.

On Friday the majority of us went to Rufford Hall Golf Club - not Blob who quite shamefully had gone home. Beautiful golf course. It rained. Not too much. I played. Well. Seventeenth hole simply spectacular. The picture below does not do it full justice but you get the idea.

Saturday, AO entertained JS and the Pig at his home course, Stoke Rochford. Another nice course. It rained. Heavily. I played. Adequately.

Good golf, great company. Good beer. Life is good.

  

Once Upon A Time In The West

Once Upon a Time in the West is nearly, but not quite, a great film. It is big, brash and stylish but ultimately does not really know what it wants to be about. Hell, even the titles take twelve minutes to get done. Still Sergio Leone is, well, Sergio Leone and ever watchable, plus Claudia Cardinale is magnificent to look at. At almost three hours it is a long ride but always fun. 73/100.

I'm Younger Than That Now

Nobody should doubt the brilliance of Bob Dylan as a lyricist. He's up there with Clive James - and anybody who knows OG's predilections will know that this is praise indeed.

I was reminded of this when Spotify (as it does - these algorithms are clever you must admit) pointed me in the direction of the Byrds. Their version of Dylan's My Back Pages is, whisper this only, better than Dylan's own version but it is the lyric that makes it:

Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

That Nobel Prize was well-deserved.