Apres Nous, Le Deluge

The Pig is back from QMT Golf Tour, definitely safe and largely sound. Mind you, I'm still sleeping like a baby and fighting a sense of senile knackerdom. It was a boisterous three days of carousing with twenty-two generous souls. All in all we did well to survive the broiling weather and your correspondent was the only man never to take to a golf buggy for any part of the sixty-three hole marathon. Indeed the Pig was the only player who carried his clubs throughout. This last is, on reflection, probably a sign of senile obstinacy - it was, in technical terms, bloody hot. Very bloody hot. As for the golf - quite good at Droitwich, bad, good, passable, by turns at Cleobury Mortimer. I didn't win.

Droitwich Golf Club was, for the Pig, a known quantity, having played there once before. First impressions had been very favourable, second even better. Not a long course but plenty of twists, turns and changes of elevation to keep you honest. Great greens. The back of the twelfth even has a look of Gleneagles about it. Recommended.

Cleobury Mortimer is a village of some three thousand souls which boasts a twenty-seven hole golf club and just about enough pubs and curry houses to satisfy even the demands of ageing ex-rugby players. The golf course has accommodation on site (we took all of it, with some overspilling to the village itself) and is incredibly competitively priced. Quite how the economics of this all works I wouldn't know but it is mighty impressive - a lot of challenging holes and, again, good greens - certainly good enough to catch out the denizens of Royal Pype Hayes. Quite brilliant, even if we did drink them out of the best bitter. Chapeau to RJW and JRS who put the tour together. My next golf trip will be to the rather more exalted Woburn in a couple of weeks but it will struggle to live up to last week. Mind you we'll give it a bloody good go.

And now it is raining. Hard. Apres nous, le deluge.   

Tales From The Heatwave

Hot. You call this hot. You should have been with us in the summer of 1976, taking our 'O' Levels during the drought. That was bloody hot. And did we complain? Of course we bloody did, all to no avail. Anyway the outcomes for me were largely satisfactory so it now resides in my sun-kissed meories as one of the best years of our lives. Funny thing memory.

All of which is not what I intended to write about today but it is a fact that it is scorching hot today so I thought I would remind you that we did occasionally have heat before global warming. No, what I was going to regale you with is the tale of two films. I was ensconced in Plas Piggy last week so that I could enjoy the Open Championship - the best television marathon of the year for this sports fan. Very enjoyable and doesn't Collin Morikawa seem a nice sort? No machismo (DeChambeau), no surliness (Koepka). By the way, if you want to buy some money, I would lump on the USA to win the Ryder Cup in September. But what do I know - I always say that and half the time I'm wrong.

So anyway, those two films. I watched them in the sultry seaside evenings at Plas Piggy. First up was what I have decided was one of the most dispiriting bits of cinema I have had the misfortune to encounter. It had high production values and a starry cast but, wtf, why does a film like The Jackal even get made? Who sat in a meeting and okayed the pitch to do a broad remake of The Day of the Jackal and then lobbed God knows how many millions at the project? This film is garbage - a good bit of the budget must have gone into fitting Bruce Willis for the various fright wigs he sports. As the contract killer he brings about as much danger as a melted box of cinema chocolate. But that's not the worst of it - I repeat, wtf, Richard Gere with a laughable Irish accent. Don't even start me on the horror of an IRA gunman as the honourable freedom fighter and his inamorata, a principled ETA terrorist. Americans just don't get this stuff do they. I could put up with such twaddle if it served up some tension but, no, this film seems to aim to fail on all fronts. Utter tripe. 23/100. And the great Sidney Poitier phones in a lamentable cameo. How are the mighty fallen.

And just as you despair of Hollywood, a French animation crosses your path and all is well again. Belleville Rendez-Vous opens with a surreal musical number and proceeds to get more and more endearingly weird. The plot involves an old woman with a club-foot whose professional cyclist grandson is kidnapped by the Mafia. She and her faithful hound cross the ocean where the weird and ancient Belleville Triplets eventually help her to effect a happy ending. It's barking mad and visually stunning in a heavily abstract sort of way. Not for small children but perfectly good for small adults and Big Fat Pigs. 80/100.

And talking of Big Fat Pig, he's off on his travels tomorrow. It's QMT golf tour, destination Cleobury Mortimer Golf Club but with a first stop at Droitwich Golf Club where the sainted GC is a member. Good weather (call this hot!) and good company. What more could the Pig want? Well, some good golf would be nice but the early season promise seems to have evaporated. Ah well, you can't win them all. Or any, in the Pig's case when it comes to golf.  

My Friend Is Not A Racist

You may have been deafened by my silence on England's 'tragic' defeat in the final of the European Nations Cup - since this is a (should that be 'the') Blog of Record and in case you missed it, we (I do still mildly identify with the team) lost 2-3 on penalties to Italy. Enough said. Well almost. Bear with me on this one.

The three missed penalties unleashed a wearyingly predictable torrent of racist abuse of the penalty-takers on what has come to be known as social media. That has been roundly and correctly condemned - this vile cacophony is what happens if you give wankers a megaphone. I can hear some of you baying that those of us who live in glass houses shouldn't lug stones about but I'll carry on heedless. Let me unravel for you the tale of Marcus Rashford and my friend who is not a racist.

Let's go back to Rashford's unfortunate penalty miss and let's not beat about the bush - it was comically bad - a stutter-step to the ball and a tame shot that unerringly hit the post. But that is the thing about sport - six inches to the right and the ball would have rolled into the net. Arise Sir Marcus. So anyway, there is a meme doing the rounds which intercuts Rashford's arrested run to the ball with old footage of Max Wall doing his comedy walks. Well my friend (for whom the term 'good bloke' might have been invented) found it mildly amusing and showed it to a customer. This customer promptly and casually accused my friend of being a racist. That is offensive bollocks. It is, and I'm sorry to get all portentous here, the self-righteous and asinine product of the world bequeathed to us by the Macpherson Report - a report which, full of good liberal intentions, encouraged a cult of lazy denigration and vicarious identity politics.

It is not racist to criticise or to lampoon Rashford for his penalty. It is racist to suggest that this occurred because he is black. All that happened is that  a young millionaire who has done much commendable political work made a bit of a prat of himself in his day job. Laughing at it makes it bearable. He'll get over it. So should we and, most importantly, my friend is not a racist.   

Paris, Texas

One has to be careful about bandying the word 'great' around in any context, not least that of films. However I've looked at this from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow - I've decided that Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is a great movie. It is two road movies rolled into one and is a hymn to the American hinterland coupled with a moving speculation on the human spirit and the harm it, unintentionally, wreaks. The enigmatic opening sequence is alone worth the price of admission. The script is by Sam Shepard, one of the great unsung heroes of American culture and the score is by Ry Cooder. Nice. 84/100.

Rams

Rams (2020) is one of those intriguing oddities - an Australian remake of an Icelandic film, a blackish comedy about sheep farming. This may not sound too promising but it is rather good. The dialogue is sparse yet manages to speak volumes about the absurd nobility that makes humans tolerable. The excellent Sam Neill is on fine monosyllabic form. Miranda Richardson turns up (oddly but to predictably good effect) as an ex-pat English vet. As I say, an oddity but fun. 69/100. 

Sherpa

I like a good documentary and Sherpa just about fits the bill. Not a great film but a good one. It follows the Everest industry and the stoic sherpas whose labour underwrites it. It is tinged with tragedy and the filming itself has to skirt (not always successfully) the edge of being exploitative. The focus of the movie is ostensibly the sherpas and intriguingly it covers a summer of tragedy that sparks some semblance of organised labour. Fascinating. Yet almost more telling is the insight into the attitudes of the westerners whose equipment the sherpas heave up the mountain. In particular there is one American adventurer who unwittingly tells you all you need to know about the single-mindedness/crude selfishness (you pays your money and takes your chance) of America. 69/100. 

The Emperor Has No Clothes, Or At Least Not Many Clothes

I have now seen the last of the Worriker trilogy. Salting the Battlefield is markedly the worst of the trio. The assembled cast of worthies obviously think they are doing important work but the sad fact is that they are lumbered with the clunkiest of dialogue and a plot of mounting absurdities. This is diverting stuff but at base it is no more than entertaining hokum. 58/60. Or is it just me being thick? We should not dismiss this possibility. 

Am I Superstitious?

I have to pose this question because it seems to me that the performance of our national football team is irretrievably linked to whether or not I trouble to watch the games. It did not start as a deliberate policy but for various reasons I have thus far been only an intermittent spectator of Euro20 (I do know it's 2021 but the branding seems to have remained unchanged). I generally find group games turgid and, in particular, I avoided the match against Scotland since I had long forecast a goalless draw or worse. Then came the Germans and on that occasion we were taking DN1 to the station - England actually scored twice while we were in transit - by this stage my superstition had kicked in and I wouldn't even listen on the radio. Instead the Groupie looked up the result on her phone.

Nor did I watch the Ukraine game, although I flicked the television over to check on progress just as Jordan Henderson headed the fourth goal. Here arises the dilemma - did my presence spark the goal or had my absence provoked its three predecessors? I have now to make my mind up. Do I watch tomorrow? A nation turns its weary eyes to me.