Novella No. 1:2

Memory is not linear. Memory is not reliable. Not all memory is memory. Memory is imagination. A deep breath, readying for a major decision. Do I get up? A warm bed beckons, seared chilly by proper rebuke. Can I even get up? I do not want to know the answer. Falling through  a hedge is easy - even twice. Smile. Stay put. Lay off the brakes and steer into the skid. It has been a happy day - a peculiarly brief innings, leading the mammoth run chase. First ball pitched on leg and clipped sonorously over midwicket for six. Happy. Second ball, repeat the stroke. Miss it. Bowled. Done. Drink. People unseen for years. Warm memories bathed in unquestioning inaccuracy. Now. Prostrate. Accuracy intrudes. They despise me. A fool tolerated. Maybe. Hope not.

Another sport, my ever refuge. Violent, inherited poetry. Once were warriors. That last ever tackle, measured, executed, and the immediate decision to retire. I miss it every day but (unusually) good sense prevails. Ponder sleep. Perchance. Risk it. Sleep.

Memory is not linear. There has, for me, never been a retreat to the womb. Earliest image is of the quiet waters of the boating lake. I am in the charge of an older boy, a stranger given sixpence by my watching grandfather as the fare to share his pedal boat. I am barely two and that morning my little brother has been born. I cherish that memory. I bear his name. I loved my own father (who never fell through hedges) and he loved his. Happy lineage. My faults are my own.

 

Shakespeare Imagined

Sir Ben Elton? Would the reliably radical Elton accept such a gong if it was offered. He holds the Order of Australia so presumably would accept a knighthood if proffered from there. I hope so. He always made me laugh notwithstanding that we stand poles apart politically. Furthermore he is responsible for the brilliant Blackadder and the knowingly amusing Upstart Crow. 

I mention all of this apropos of All is True, a Kenneth Branagh directed film of Elton's clever script. It is a speculation on Shakespeare's last three years, spent, in the Elton version, in a haunted retirement back in Stratford. It is proper to stress the speculation element - we cannot know the full truth. However there is enough fact woven into the fictive scheme, to make this entertaining even to Stratfordian scholars. Certainly it does not remotely deserve to be cast to the waste bin of denigration that holds the truly dreadful Anonymous - a crock previously reviewed. 

This is not remotely a great film but it is a competent and clever one. There are some Shakespearean in-jokes (just as in Upstart Crow) but not so many that it disappears up its own posterior. 66/100. 

Novella No. 1:1

Falling through a hedge is easy. Any fool can do it. Preferably a fool. It is all the easier if it is an immature hedge, unthick at its base. Saw-stunted leylandii will work. Why grow such hideous things - perhaps a headlight-stunned fear of the misanthrope world. People are such wankers. Understandable wankers.

Such an ill-formed hedge bounds No. 64, three doors down from his house. It is on a corner. Falling through that hedge is easy, just lay off the brakes and steer into the skid. Falling is easy. When you're pissed. So it goes. Who the fuck said that? a happy-addled brain wanders over the question. Delay. Annoyance. Delay.

Vonnegut. Thank God for that. They haven't killed me yet. Good. 

Second thought - am I hurt? No. God protects drunks. Or does he? Chuckles. On balance (more accurately off it), falling through a hedge is easy. Particularly this one. Half (legs) in the street, the rest in someone's garden. Someone - I live three doors away but don't know his/her/their name. So it goes. Bare fragments of reading pulling rank. Half on the lawn. Dew-flecked. Not a flower bed. Good. Such would be vandalism. A warm night, well, not cold and he has on his old waxed jacket. It is a drunk's companion piece - his, mine as the alcohol transports you out of point of view. A universal wisdom. A universal stupidity.

Falling through a hedge is easy. Standing up again is fraught. A grim remembrance chills me. Falling over in the bar. Time for you to go. Walkable. Shit. Undignified. Note to self - dignified drunks are preferable. This is as good a place as any to ponder sleep, perchance to dream. The swimming pool in Sunset Boulevard.    

A Surprising Voice In An Anodyne Wilderness

Herbert Warren Wind, Henry Longhurst, Bernard Darwin, Peter Dobereiner. Golf is a game that has attracted great sports writing. Sadly, great sports journalism is in retreat, sacrificed at the altar of the professional. There are exceptions but my generalisation holds good, no more so than in the case of golf. I do still subscribe to a golf periodical but, sad to say, Today's Golfer is mostly a repository for endless reviews of expensive equipment and lists of expensive places to play. And don't get me started on the spineless failure to call out Donald Trump for the misogynist shitbag that he is - we should apparently   look past his manifest faults and be grateful for his contribution to the world of golf. Please.

Thus I was encouraged to read the sage words (doubtless shaped by a ghost writer but nonetheless carrying the happy taint of authenticity) of Andrew 'Beef' Johnston in this month's edition. He may lack (by a wide margin) the poise of the writers listed above but he cuts through the forest of lame writing when he dismisses the PGA Tour's Player Equity Program: 'Basically it's the PGA Tour saying , "Here's a shit load of money from us for not taking a shit load of money from them." It's madness man'. Well amen to that brother. Certainly a far more helpful diagnosis than Rory McIlroy's recent lumping together of the PGA/LIV schism and the Northern Ireland peace process. Grow up. 

Growing old is, all too literally, a pain. This time it's plantar fasciitis. Poor old me. 

Two Films

And that is it - just about the only thing that A Night in Casablanca and The Power of the Dog have in common is that they are both films. The first is anarchic, ragged and comfortingly predictable, The second is beautiful and truly disquieting. I watched them on consecutive days and it really does make you supicious of a criticism that attempts to lump them together. However, I know that is what you want me to do!

A Night in Casablanca is later MGM Marx Brothers. The plot is slight and full of holes, serving merely to get us from one classic comedic set-piece to another. It is Marx Brothers by numbers but  still very much worth viewing. 67/100.

The Power of the Dog is an altogether different beast. This movie comes with the lazy label 'revisionist western' but that doesn't tell you the half of it. It is a fantastically structured and beautifully filmed text. Normally I would be tempted to reveal at least some of the plot but not this time. You must see this (it is currently available on iPlayer) and prepare yourself for a heart-rending finale. Chock-full of great performances, pour yourself a nice red and settle down in a darkened room with a large screen and just let it seep into your soul. 89/100.

Our England

Perhaps I should refer to Our Britain but no, I think England is right. The Celtic nations have their own particular malaises and the novel I want to review carries a distinctly English tone.

The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe is a novel about Blair's England and the part in its delusions played by the generation to which I belong. It is a comic but still painful analysis of the retreat of decency. It has no hero but it does allow the dreadful Paul Trotter a chance of deliverance in his resignation letter as an MP. This is a skilful fiction from a voice of my generation. It runs to four hundred pages yet the ending feels a little rushed - that however should not detract from its undoubted quality. Its gentleness disguises a proper rancour.   

The Method, The Music, And The War-Cry

Sit down you're rocking the boat. A favourite song from an interesting musical. The film adaptation of Guys and Dolls is not from the very front rank of Hollywood musicals (think, Singin' in the Rain, and Seven Brides) but it is nonetheless good stuff and it includes Marlon Brando's only singing performance. By all accounts Frank Sinatra coveted the Sky Masterson role that went to Brando. As it happens Sinatra had to settle for being an arresting Nathan Detroit while Brando brought the method to his Masterson - with conspicuous success. The camera loves him. 67/100. 

And on to the promised war-cry, or more accuarately battle signal. Tora!Tora!Tora! takes its title from the final coded signal for the Japanese fleet to launch its attack on Pearl Harbour. I'm a sucker for big war movies but this one poses a problem. It operates more as drama-documentary than as drama. Unless you are fascinated by the politico-military machinations of WW2 (as I freely confess I am), you will be confounded by the stilted dialogue and the lack of personal threat. The film does at least try to tackle both the American and Japanese perspectives but nowherer near as well as Clint Eastwood's underrated, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, two fims released together as companion pieces. Tora!Tora!Tora is worthy but unexciting. 59/100.