Twelve Films At Christmas - 7 to 11

Another year is nearly done and I have been keeping up my diet of films. Just one more needed to complete the requisite dozen. We shall start with a good film of a very good book, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. The movie (1949) won the Best Picture Oscar and is undoubtedly very good as it comprehensively makes its point that all power tends to corrupt and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not quite in the same league as the source novel, though probably more accessible. 76/100. Not to be confused with the 2006 remake which the critics hated.  

The industry engaged in attempting to make a tele-ready Christmas classic is a vast one - for evidence one need look no further than the dedicated Christmas film channels that pop up from September onwards. A Boy Called Christmas is thankfully a good few steps ahead of the general dross. It is captivatingly filmed and, a few limp attempts at liberal politics aside, it marches on rather nicely. It has Maggie Smith and Jim Broadbent in it, always reliable signifiers. Not a great film but miles from being a bad one. 62/100.

I was reluctant to watch the BBC's prize offering on Christmas Day, the final ever Gavin and Stacey. I had an uneasy feeling that it would not be up to the standards that had preceded it in this admirable comic sequence. I was wrong, it was superb. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that the other pillar of the Beeb's Christmas Day schedule was Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. This too transpired to be a joy. The patience of the stop-frame animating is awesome and the quiet wit at play in the script has you smiling throughout, that is when you are not plain laughing. 77/100. 

In amongst all this joy (my reviews thus far have been generally favourable, I think you would agree) a little rain must fall. Cromwell (1970) is a failure of a film. The source history certainly has potential for drama but what we get here is an austere plod through the Civil War and an awful lot of Richard Harris (Cromwell) being bad-tempered and Alec Guinness (Charles I) being effete. There is potential in both of these characters but these fine actors are ill-served by the pedestrian script. A pity. 54/100.   

Let us finish for today (indeed, unless a I get a sudden fit of imagination, let us finish for 2024) with the joyous interlude that is Field of Dreams. Unless you understand something of the American obsession with the poetry of baseball, you may find this picture slight and rather silly. It is not. All of us who obsess over silly games and couple that obsession with a love of literature will find something redeeming in this film. 77/100.

And now we shall leave it until 2025. Thank you for humouring me with your presence. Happy New Year.

Advent 24

Volume 24 (Index and Atlas)

This is where it all started when I had the idea for this year's calendar. And this is where it all ends. Page 63 of the atlas bears the disarming legend, 'Palestine showing the 1949 armistice boundaries between the Arab States and Israel'. A lot of water and too much blood has passed under the bridge since that time. 

My uneasy notion was to take Bethlehem as my key and there it is, slap bang in the middle of page 63.

There has been a far from cogent thread of spirituality in these calendar entries. That is good as it gets with me I am afraid. It is not for the want of trying that my ideas are still unformed, or perhaps I should more accuarately say are re-formed on a daily basis. I am of an age when the impermanence of existence weighs heavy. 

What can be said is that Bethlehem is where the greatest story ever told has its near beginnings. And as evidence of my agnostic eclecticism I will, despite my voluntary attachement to the Catholic church, quote, not from an accepted catholic scripture but from the King James Bible (a 'Proddy' bible if ever there was one) since that is a beautiful deployment of the English language. One might say that I am guilty of having my communion wafer and eating it. All of this, in its grandeur and its silliness, proclaims for me the mystery of faith.

And Joseph also went up from Galileee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (Luke 2:4)

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. / For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11)

 And this encapsulates my meagre faith:

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. / No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:17-18)

That's all folks. Thank you for reading. I will leave you with words of those two sages, John Lydon and Dave Allen: may the road rise with you; may your god go with you.

 

 

 

 

Advent 23

Volume 23 (Vase to Zygo): Venice.

And so we reach the end of the text entries in Dave's Big Book of Knowledge. Tomorrow we have only the Index and Atlas to work from. Don't worry it will all come together seamlessly. Have I ever let you down?

I have never been to Venice but it's on my list this, 'city and seaport of Italy, occupying one of the most remarkable sites in the world'. If the pundits are to be believed I will need to get my skates on as the place is drowning under the twin burdens of climate change and tourism.

the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel

The appearance on page 63 of Venice gives me the opportunity to return you to quite possibly my favourite author, Simon Raven. Evelyn Waugh is demonstrably a better writer but we are talking about my middle-brow prejudices and so Raven gets the prize. He was a dilettante spendthrift who plied his authorial gifts in the service of earning money and his later works betray haste and some laziness. However his ten novel sequence Alms for Oblivion is an underrated and massive fictive achievement. Had my doctorate not been about Shakespeare, I would have chosen Raven as my subject. Anyway in the tenth and final instalment of that roman fleuve, The Survivors, Raven deploys Venice as a magnificent extended metaphor for the dying world of elegance. I was going to quote the final paragraph of the novel here but I will leave it for you to read the entire sequence yourself. You will thank me. Instead I will give you an extract from the brilliant and acerbic Introduction that Raven himself contributed to the 1998 reprint of Alms for Oblivion. I have quoted these lines before in these pages, but, hey ho, it is my blog after all.

The cry, 'If I can't, you mustn't', had some trace of justification, however sullen and unlovely the sound of it. Nowadays we hear instead an even less lovely cry, 'If I don't want to, you mustn't': i.e. 'It is just possible that I am, after all, missing out on something of value which you have been shrewd enought to detect and I haven't, and that wouldn't be fair and equal, now would it?' Once upon a time, however strong and righteous you considered your message, you scorned to become a pest: in 1998, however trivial your grievance, you find yourself encouraged and even 'morally obliged' to become not just a pest but a pestilence.     

Advent 22

Volume 22 (Textile to Vasc): Theology.

Another day, another giant topic for the Overgraduate to sink his inadequate teeth into. My overtaxed grey matter does wonder at the wisdom of the task I have set myself. Has anyone ever gone on Mastermind with the specialist subject of pages 63 of the volumes of the 1959 Britannica?

Theology is that branch of philosophy that is concerned with the explanation of the world in the terms of a supreme mind or spirit. The study of theology is not therefore, as I comprehend it, the same thing as religious experience but the study of religious experience is a legitimate (in fact, one might argue, essential) constituent of theological study.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church invites us to distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia), the former being the mystery of God's innermost life, the latter the works by which God reveals himself. I understand this as the contrast between the spiritual and the temporal and it is in the space between those elements that my own unequal and impertinent negotiation with God takes place. Heavy man!. Page 63 has much to answer for.

Advent 21

Volume 21 (Sord to Texas): South Africa.

This page 63 game has a nasty way of serving up a philosophical minefield for the Overgraduate to negotiate. Not content with Advent 13 lobbing the grenade of Zionism to me (there I go again, mixing my metaphors and bringing them home to roost) the equally troubling entity of South Africa now hoves into view. Well, I'm going to dodge the trickiness if you will permit me and move onto something I do know about - South African rugby. 

The Springboks have won the last two World Cups so whatever they are doing is obviously working. Furthermore their deployment (perfectly legally and intelligently) of the so-called bomb-squad has been less successfully aped by other sides and, also predictably, has provoked calls to change the laws, most particularly so far as they relate to the numbers of tactical replacements. Now here's the news boys and girls - putting genies back in bottles is notoriously difficult and you can almost sense the lawyers getting revved-up in readiness for any new dictates that mandate medical certification of departing players. 

As it happens I think the laws as they have been framed for professional rugby are doing a bloody good job of murdering the game at the recereational level I loved, the playing of which I still miss on a daily basis. But that is not the Boks' fault. And here's another piece of news - England should not be trying to play in the style of South Africa. Law of averages, they won't be as good at it as  those they mimic. You can run around walls just as well as you run through them.  

Advent 20

Volume 20 (Sars to Sorc): Scheldt.

The River Scheldt rises in northern France then meanders for two-hundred -and-seventy miles through Belgium towards Antwerp before entering the North Sea in southern Netherlands.

It was the site of a notable five week battle in October/November 1944, Allied victory at which freed Antwerp to be used as a port to supply the forces forcing their way toward Germany. The battle therefore made up some of the ground lost by the Allies as a result of the famed failure at Arnhem (memorialised as the bridge too far). The spearhead at Scheldt was the First Canadian Army under the leadership of Guy Simonds, a hard leader who was thought by Montgomery to be the best of the Canadian soldiery. The role of the Canadians in World War II deserves to be greater emphasised, alongside those of other colonial forces. I attach the modern Canadian flag, the Canadian red ensign (bearing the Union flag in one quadrant) having been abandoned (entirely appropriately) in the mid sixties. I note that there is some agitation for Australia to take a similar step - this gets reported by the dreg elements of the  British press as somehow bigoted. Bollocks - they can have any flag they choose, having more than earned it.   

Advent 19

Volume 19 (Rayn to Sarr): Regence Style.

Not much for me to get my teeth into today. The French regencey ran from 1715 to 1723, so designated because between those dates Louis XV was still a minor. Philip, Duke of Orleans was in charge.

The Regence Style in architecture and decorative arts marked the transition from the classical grandeur of the Louis XIV period to the more free-form rococo of Louis XV's reign. In doing my research (that is code for surfing the net) on these design matters, I have decided that rococo is a great word. The V&A website describes it as a style that is 'excessively flamboyant'. Or to quote that great philosopher Mel Brooks, we might term it the 'if you've got it, flaunt it baby' school of design. Here's a rococo interior for you to wonder at. Not even the OG is that daring, although he has been accused by some insensitive souls of taking Brooks' comic mantra (put into the mouth of that great comic creation, Max Bialystock in The Producers, Brooks' best film) rather too seriously. 

Advent 18

Volume 18 (Plants to Raym): Plato.

Plato (427 -347 BC) survives as a major influencer on philosophic and political thought. The man himself stayed out of active politics having become convinced that there was no place in that field for a man of conscience. I hope that conclusion is wrong but it is a difficult proposition to name men or women of absolute conscience who have played on the major stages of political life. Britannica explains the foundation of platonic philosophy thus:

The reason why men forfeit felicity is that they mistake apparent good for real, the conditionally for the absolutely good. If a man ever knew with assurance what absolute good is, he would in practice never pursue anything else. It is this sense that 'all virtue is knowledge' and that 'all wrong-doing is involuntary' (i.e. consists in the pursuit of what is falsely supposed to be good).

 

  

Advent 17

Volume 17 (P to Plant): Painting.

Last year's advent calendar was the grand tour of Big Fat Pig's dubious taste in art. Well what do you know, the magic of page 63 brings right back round to painting. But older readers will have had quite enough of my tastes so instead today, in what I think is a first in the history of these calendars, I am bowing to the superior and less affected opinion of the Groupie. Her favourite artist is Hans Holbein the Younger and so here is his right regal portrait of that old villain Henry VIII.

 

Twelve Films At Christmas - 5 & 6

 

In my limited and amateur stage career, the most taxing emotionally of the plays I have been in is The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a daunting text for any amateur group but we were brilliantly directed by JK and, I think, pulled it off. By its very subject matter it has to be a claustrophobic piece and I had my doubts that it could properly be presented on film. Having watched the 1959 movie, I still have those doubts. Don't get me wrong, the film works but its presentation in Cinemascope is plain wrong. As well the film suffers from one particular piece of miscasting and is too long. I would still recommend it but this frighteneng tale fits better on the stage. 70/100.

The Colditz Story may share the same historical space as Anne Frank, but is different kettle of fish altogether. This is a broadly faithful telling of the Boy's Own heroics of would-be escapees from Nazi imprisonment. There is a predictably reliable troupe of British character actors on display and it rattles along. 69/100.

Advent 16

Volume 16 (Mushr to Ozon): Names (in Linguistics)

Linguistics, the scientific study of language and its structure. This has been an overlooked element in my sprawling education. Yes there were bits and pieces in my primary education (more, I suspect, than is currently fashionable) and studying Latin at secondary school certainly helped (funny how we've come back to the classics for a third consecutive day!) but there was little of it an English degree. It does impinge upon the study and practice of law because meaning is at the heart of good drafting - and believe me, good drafting is a disappearing art. One of the great challenges with the advent of AI is going to be seeing whether it promotes clarity or rehashes obfuscation. If legal AI programs could take as their first source the delivered opinions of the very great Lord Denning (the greatest jurist of the last century) then we might just be in for a new age of enlightenment. As an undergraduate I used to eschew library time and instead wander down the Strand to sit at the back of the Master of the Rolls court to watch this titan in action. I have a signed first edition of his The Discipline of Law. 

Names. The intriguing and diverting article in my Britannica suggests ten categories of name in what it concedes is a 'rough classification': 1. Personal names (who is the real David Roberts?); 2. Quasi-personal names; 3. Names for things not definitely personified; 4. Place names; 5. Names of tribes; 6. Names of institutions and corporations; 7. Titles (The Overgraduate); 8. Brand names; 9. Names of events in history; 10. Names of abstractions not personified.

I could have hours of fun with this! But you don't want to know about my personal predilections.

  

 

Advent 15

Volume 15 (Maryb to Mushe): Materials, Strength of.

Static analysis of suspension bridge - a solved example

I am really enjoying the challenges presented to me by the daily provocations of the pages 63. Yesterday transpired to take me back to my schooldays and the study of Latin and Physics. By a happy coincidence, it is the operation of physics that I am prompted to ponder again today. I don't understand this stuff beyond my admiration of it.

When I think about mechanical/civil engineering, it is bridges that enthrall me. How clever is mankind to build such things. My two favourite bridges are in Sydney and Anglesey. Where are yours? And yes I do know that they are different types of construction. Both bloody clever and a nice change from contemplating the vicissitudes of modern lfe.

 

Advent 14

Volume 14 (Libi to Mary): Light.

After yesterday's angst, I am relieved to offer some light relief - pun intended.

Fiat lux, let there be light - Genesis verse 3, offered here to you in both Latin and English. This is actually one of the few bits of Latin that I can remember - it is not clear to me why that should be so. I have Latin O level thanks entirely to the brilliant master, Stanley Calvert, who dragged me through the subject in a year. I had spent the previous three years being thoroughly beastly to another teacher who was a perfect gent but who tolerated my wilful and total inattention. I carry shame.

Still on the subject of O levels, I also have one in Physics, the only science in which I have taken a public examination. I liked the subject (good teaching goes a long way in masking inaptitude - thank you Andy Pargeter) and loved the contemplation of light and those drawings of the actions of lenses on light waves. Refraction is a nice word and I shall leave you with what my great friend TPW (himself a physics graduate) would describe as physics in action, more specifically physics in art - a contender for most recognisable album cover ever, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

A Kingsman

Hanif Kureishi was at KCL just ahead of me. I'm not aware that we have ever met. He does not boast of his alma mater on his dustjackets. Neither do I - but then again I don't, of course, have any dustjackets to boast from.

I have just finished reading Kureishi's Something to Tell You. It is a substantial novel, both literally and figuratively. It contains occasional solecisms, which I can only take to be deliberate (it has a first person narrative) but which I confess I found distracting. That minor quibble aside it is thought-provoking and manages to be both funny and serious. A fine novel then. Its final short chapter commences with words that neatly summarise the novel's central theme (don't worry, spoiler alert not needed):

I am no longer young, and not yet old. I have reached the age of wondering how I will live, and what I will do, with my remaining time and desire. I know at least that I need to work, that I want to read and think and write, and to eat and talk with friends and colleagues.

In our very different ways (his eminent, mine not) we seem to have arrived at a similar place. Especially the eating and talking part.

Advent 13

Volume 13 (Jerez to Libe): Jews

I promise you I'm not doing this on purpose. I don't look at the volume of the encyclopaedia until the evening before the day in question - the one exception to that will be the final entry on Christmas Eve. That is planned, but even in that case the text will only be scripted on the day itself.

I have dear friends who are Jewish. Equally, I have encountered confrontational and mean Jews. I can say the same of most races and creeds, not least the Catholic faith to whose elegant wreckage I cling. At this point in history it is the case of Israel that most concerns. Last month that stupefyingly self-regarding institution the Oxford Union staged a debate around the proposition, 'This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide'. The proposition passed by a substantial majority. Cue the understandable cries of protest at the ant-semitism wrapped around the debate and its pre-destined verdict. 

Of course I've never met the man (just as I have never met Trump) but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't take to Benjamin Netanyahu. I am entitled to reach this conclusion - the man has put himself on the world stage and his actions have implications for the multi-racial land I live in. I am also clear that I have no truck with radical Islam (in its many factions) and its resolve that Israel has no place on the world map. If pressed, I am a Zionist and believe in a two-state solution. This simple conclusion is, I accept, about as much use as a chocolate teapot. There can only be prayer and reason.

The Oxford Union has been down this road before. Consider one of the speecehes made in 2008 in suppport of a motion that 'This house believes that the State of Israel has the right to exist':  Zionism and Neo-Zionism . This elegant argument offers intellectual cover for the two-state solution. But consider this - if you research a little deeper you find that the maker of the speech got so aggravated by the conduct of his own side that he crossed the floor of the debate and voted against the motion. Anyway, and as we say at the best point in the Catholic mass, peace be with you.

Advent 12

Volume 12 (Hydroz to Jerem): Idaho.

Idaho entered the Union in 1890. It is a vast (roughly the size of England and Scotland combined) state with a sparse population and it returns only four electors to the Electoral College. In the recent presidential election a convicted criminal and proven misogynist received over two-thirds of the votes cast. The state has a thriving evangelical Christian population. Go figure. I've tried and I can't, though we have to say that the intellectual vacuity of the case made against him perhaps had much to do with it. As Hamm says to Mr Potato Head in the justly revered Toy Story, 'Way to go, Idaho'. NOT.     

Advent 11

Volume 11 (Gunn to Hydrox): Hackett, James Henry.

Hackett as Falstaff

Hackett (1800-71) was an American actor/impresario who achieved eminence on  both sides of the Atlantic, particularly for his portrayal of eccentric characters. He was a notable Falstaff and this he might be said to share with another American impresario, Orson Welles. For those of you who have not been paying attention, Welles is one of Big Fat Pig's favourites. Falstaff was the last part that Welles played on the stage and he later crafted a film that centred on Falstaff  and pulled together text from four Shakespeare plays and lines of Welles's own invention - Chimes at Midnight. Welles is thought to have regarded that movie as his finest though, as with all of Welles's later work, its production was shrouded in controversy and chicanery so far as the financing went. By the way, if you still haven't seen Citizen Kane - what's wrong with you?

Welles as Falstaff

 

Advent 10

Volume 10 (Game to Gunm): Gastropoda.

I would be better off leaving this one to The Groupie, among whose many accomplishments is a Zoology degree. Let's crib straight from Britannica before going off on a cheery tangent, because yesterday's entry was a tad bleak.

A large group of invertebrate anaimals ranked as a class of the phylum Mollusca and represented by such familiar forms as the limpet, the whelk, the common snail and slug.

So they don't have to have a shell but they do have to lack a backbone. Thus slugs are of their number and I will talk to you today about the best season of rugby I ever played. Now this is not much of a boast because although not useless, I was never a great player. However there was one season when I scored a fair number of tries and played to the peak of my limited powers. And at the core of this happy time was my great friend RAM, who, on account of a mildly stocky stature and a lack of burning pace was jovially nicknamed 'The Slug'. But boy did he have a head on his shoulders and a left boot that was highly educated. He captained me, generally from full-back or occasionally from fly-half, and he trusted me to get on with my game. I have played under better tacticians and under better players but when I stop to think about it (and I still often do) nobody got as much out of me as this honest man did. He had a backbone, and some.   

Advent 9

Volume 9 (Extracti to Gamb): Famine.

The sobering Britannica entry lists thirty-six notable historic famines then follows its list with a yet more disquieting reminder that it omits the deliberatley inflicted famines of the Second World War. As Do They Know it's Christmas issues from our radios, we hardly need prodding into the knowledge that famine is ever with us. Britannica (speaking, remember, from 1959) offers us a potent clarion call:

Only a blind optimist can think this tale complete. Half the population of the world consists of peasants struggling to produce food against the uncertainties of primitive agriculture. In the industrial cities, the social and economic factors that poise the delicate balance between the outflow of manufactured goods and services to the countryside in return for a supply of food are uncertain and readily upset. Then hunger and perhaps famine must follow.

I apologise that I cannot be more cheery. I go where the book takes me and these reminders are all too necessary.

Twelve Films At Christmas - 3 & 4

The first of today's movies has afforded me an opportunity, as the old examination questions used to do, to compare and contrast. The Day of the Jackal (1973) is an excellent adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's compelling novel. Even those (and I was one) who came to this film having already read the book, could applaud its cool examination of the machinations of the hired assassin. This is not merely a police proceduaral but also a killer's procedural. Even as you know the wrinkle that spares the target (de Gaulle) you still engage with this film. 73/100.

Now for that contrast, for we have (on Sky at present) a modern borrowing from Forsyth's text (fully credited so I assume/ hope that Frederick is profiting) with Eddie Redmayne as the cool English gun-for-hire. Most striking is the hyper-inflation in what you have to pay for someone to be bumped-off! That aside the technology of murder has moved on but, all in all, this a fair updating of the tale. 

And now for something completely different. Planes, Trains and Automobiles makes no pretensions to depth. It is a two-handed farce (Steve Martin and John Candy both excellent), an able successor to the best traditions of Abbott and Costello and (now I come to think of it, this is the greater compliment) of Laurel and Hardy. It is silly, wild and, above all else, it is funny. 69/100.

Advent 8

Volume 8 (Edwa to Extract): Egypt.

History, bloody hell - it's just one bloody thing after another. And today's page 63 pitches us into the middle of Egypt, all sixty-eight Britannica pages of it.

My predictable instinct was to drone on about Shakespeare's Egypt, Antony and Cleopatra being one of the candidates for my favourite play and, if I say so myself, the subject of one of the better chapters in my thesis. But no, by a piece of serendipity I shall regale you with a reference to a favourite artwork. A large print of this used to adorn my office wall back when I was a legal services mogul in Walsall. Stop laughing at the back! It is The Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of Giza, by none other than David Roberts. And yes, there were some clients kind/daft enough to ask if I had painted it myself.

Cleopatra, the Suez Crisis, Nasser, Sadat. There's plenty to get your teeth into with a total area of 386,100 square miles of which only about 3.6% is normally habitable. Now, not many people know that. Mind you those are 1959 figures. 

 

Advent 7

Volume 7 (Damascu to Educ): Dartmouth, Earl of.

Now, if only I had set page 65 as my trigger, you would today be reading about Charles Robert Darwin. But you are not. Instead we have the Earls of Dartmouth who in days of yore made their home at Patshull Hall, outside Wolverhampton. It is not the Hall that triggers me however, it is the beautiful parklands that accommodated it and I'm afraid it is the now abandoned golf course that leads the Pig to a bit of boastfulness. The course at Patshull was a rather splendid affair and the good old Heart of England Building Society used to stage their golf days there. 

It was at  one such corporate day that the Pig played the fiirst nine holes in level fours - and yes I did break eighty and, yes, I did win the competition. It has all been downhill ever since. 

The course (and the hotel attached to it) was a casualty of Covid - it never re-opened after the pandemic. My golf game has suffereda similar decline. But there is always another day.   

Twelve Films At Christmas - 1 & 2

I know I tend to repeat myself but, hey, there's only so many prejudices one man can inflict on the world. Don't worry I'm still staying clear of letting Trump get under my skin and I'm not even going to start as the world accelerates towards Hell in a handcart - have you seen the state of France and South Korea? It can make a man glad to be living in the People's Republic of Starmer. Steady on there Pig, you might end up contradicting yourself.

No, no, no, it's that time of year for watching even more films than I normally do. And let's start with a worthy repeat. The original 1947 Miracle on 34th Street is succinct and sweet. I see no reason to deviate from my earlier ranking of it. You'll have to look that up - the hit-count massages my ego.  

A very different kettle of fish is Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, Oh! What a Lovely War. This well-mounted succession of tableaux works from a Len Deighton expansion of the hit stage musical. Does it work as cinema? Critics have had doubts but I tend to think that this is an estimable piece of work which deals with tragedy without having to show any gore. My father (a martial man who held the Queen's commission) admired this film. So do I. 79/100. 

Advent 6

Volume 6 (Coleb to Damasci): Colour Blindness.

These days referred to as Colour Vision Deficiency. This was a difficult one - I thankfully know nothing of suffering from this condition and my initial instinct to spin it off to a consideration of the beauties of Titian Blue, would be in poor taste.

When I introduced this year's calendar theme, I reflected that the 1959 Britannica was a neat approximation of the state of human knowledge at my birth. Armed with that most dangerous of things, a liitle knowledge of my own, and that equally dangerous thing, the internet, I set out to learn whether a cure for the condition has been found in the intervening sixty-five years. So far as I can tell, it has not. I stand, indeed hope, to be corrected.     

Advent 5

Volume 5 (Castir to Cole): Causality or Causation.

This one carries reverberations for anyone who has ever studied and practised Law. It also has important contexts in philosophy and science but let's stick to something I know a bit about - I can already hear the snorts of derision emanating from my litigation colleagues who would (not entirely baselessly) question what precisely any commercial lawyer might know about any aspect of the law, never mind something as delicate as causation. Nonetheless I will plough on.

I dimly recall those lectures on the Law of Tort delivered by the brilliant Tony Guest in those over-heated subterranean lecture rooms at King's. It is the greatest compliment to the estimable Professor Guest that I actually managed to stay awake for his lectures, hung-over and sleep-deprived as I too often was. My first degree was not the cerebral high-point of my time in education.

Anyway, causation. This is how I recall it: in terms of liability for a negligent act, the plaintiff has to establish a causal link between the negligent act and the damage alleged. That is to say that the damage would not have occurred but for the act. Once you have got over that hurdle we get onto the question of damages and that is tied-up in the knot of foreseeability, blah blah.

For me the importance of causation is best illustrated by examples where there is no causation but one is somehow implied by the lazy application of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. And if you want a brilliant explanation of that phenomenon then you can do no better than refer to series 1, episode 2 of the matchless West Wing. Or if you want real-life examples just tune-in to any political show and listen to the shysters of all political hue. The standard of public debate is disgraceful, but then I've told you that before.

Advent 4

Volume 4 (Brain to Castin): Bread.

There is a silly game you can play with Britannica - you measure the cultural worth of a topic by the size of its entry in the encyclopaedia. By this measure today's entry is an important one - four and a half pages of dense text and two pages of photographs of the manufacturing process. Let's get the definition out of the way:

Bread is a baked product made of dough that has been raised by yeast or other gas-forming agent. Some of the gases are trapped in the dough, which is hardened by yeast.

But that's enough of the technical stuff. Let's talk about Big Fat Pig's favourite bread - I give you naan bread, specifically keema naan, a meat-paste filled Indian flat bread. I love a good curry, most particularly those late-night convivial curries with fellow rugby players at the Light of Bengal in Perry Common. I have long been of the persuasion that you don't need rice with a good curry, just a good keema naan. As to my favoured curry, well my tastes have varied over the years from the very hot to the mild but these days I would nominate the Paneer Peas, and just to prove that I am not a vegetarian I accompany that with, yes, a keema naan.  

Advent 3

Volume 3 (Baltim to Brail): Bank of England.

An unusually modest admission here: macro-economics (and micro for that matter) is not a subject that Big Fat Pig has mastered. However I did have a part in running a medium-sized business for two decades and acted as an adviser to a large number of businesses of all sizes so I have been prey to the machinations of our central bank, principally the control of interest rates - a power ceded to it by Gordon Brown in 1997, one of his better moves.

The Bank, despite being the de facto  central bank for two and a half centuries, was not nationalised until 1946 by the Attlee government. Rather against my best instinct the Bank's logo reproduced here is the new 'modern' version adopted for no good reason in 2022.

The Bank issues our bank notes (remember those?), sets interest rates and administers the funny money (quantitative easing) created by spendthrift government. Its principal target is to keep inflation at or under 2% pa. Those of us long enough in the tooth to remember the 70s can only applaud this target. I can only wish the Bank good luck.

Advent 2

 Volume 2 (Annu to Baltic): Antietam, the Battle of the.

I wake to the news that Joe Biden has issued a pardon to his son Hunter. Had Trump taken such a step, there would be quite proper liberal outrage. Enough said.

Today's entry again finds us in the United States. That crucible of the American Dream, the Civil War, heated to its bloodiest day on 17 September 1862 on and around the banks of the River Antietam. Thule de Thulstrup's artistic imagining of the battle is reproduced below.

The outcome of the battle was that the incursion into the Union States by Lee's field army was rebuffed by McClellan's larger force. McClellan has been judged by history as over-cautious. His President, Abraham Lincoln, came to share that view and dismissed him in November 1862 for his failure to pursue Lee's retreating army.

Lincoln stands to me as the exemplar of how a legal traing can incubate decency. Consider these words from his first Inaugural Address delivered on 4 March 1861and ask yourself whether either of the candidates in the recent election would be caable of such modest dignity and sagacity:

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authorityfrom the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

That term 'the Chief Magistrate' refers to the head of state and is an echo of the same terminology used by sixteenth century constitutionalist Sir Thomas Smith. Legal theory does sometimes have a purpose.

Advent 1

Volume 1 (A to Anno): Absentee Voting, U.S.

As you might have noticed we have just had an American presidential election. But don't worry I'm not going to spoil the pre-Christmas mood with a trademark tirade against Trump although I can't make any promises about tomorrow.

The history of absentee voting (and here I am principally concerned with postal votes) is (honest guv) interesting. As with so much else in American history, the Civil War prompted its birth. Eleven Union states permitted soldiers on active duty an absentee ballot. After the war other states gradually followed suit and federal legislation eventually arose in World War II, provoked because only a fraction of the huge armed forces negotiated the labyrynthine regulations to cast a vote. By the latter part of the conflict a more efficient system was thought desirable for the by now nine-and-a-half-million service men and women scattered around the globe. The advent of postal voting was not without its controversies. Predictable Southern states feared a widening of the franchise beyond their racist registration laws. Republicans feared that the military vote would be tilted towards the left. Plus ca change.

Today's political right still fear the postal vote and the left's alleged greater proficiency at exploiting the system. This issue will come into focus again because we are surely going to encounter agitation for absentee voting via the internet. And on that subject we encounter something unusual - The Pig doesn't know where he stands on the issue. Universal suffrage is one of our greatest societal adornments (even when it gets the answer wrong) but a romantic part of me still wants to see people exercising some effort in making their vote. 

So there we have it, rather a dry opening to our calendar. That is the way the magic number takes us.