Weird World

It's a bloody good job that I inhabit the same skin as Chortley Chuckles and am ensconced in marital bliss with the Groupie. The great triumvirate (that's OG, BFP and CC in case you haven't been paying attention) finds itself wound up in the paradox of modern living, wherein the good things are very good and the bad are frankly dreadful. As we (the triumvirate - for today I am all three at once) sit here typing we are listening to Maddy Prior's heavenly voice. This is a good thing. On the wall are various movie posters and an Aston Old Edwardians club shield. These are good things. Fresh in Pig's memory is yesterday's golf when he actually played quite well. This is a good thing. Rather than play again this morning (my shoes are letting in water and there was a drizzly fug) the Pig went for a gentle run in the rain and felt the better for it. This is a good thing. The OG then took to his keyboard and ordered a new pair of golf shoes (rather an overdue purchase), a new golf bag (zip bust on the old one), and some golf balls (didn't lose any yesterday but supplies are looking a tad thin). Such retail therapy is a good thing.

So we feel quite well. A state of mind that makes me feel a little guilty because the world outside Casa Piggy is going to hell in a handcart. The Labour Party seems intent on self-evisceration as a quite unlovely cast of characters hovers over the near-carcass of the mass of inadequacy that is Keir Starmer, each member betraying a revolting ambition and a lack of political morals. The Conservative Party, well what can we say about them? You're right - nothing. They are a quivering mass of nothingness. Lurking in the shadows is the curious beast of Reform - an inchoate sub-moral sliminess. The Greens? If you're going to tell me that Zac Polanski is a potential PM, well, sorry, you need your bumps feeling. Anarcho-syndicalism anyone? 

The triumviarate is bipolar - does that mean there's six of us? It's getting crowded in here. 

The State Of The Nation

What exactly is the point of Kemi Badenoch? No seriously, what has happened to right of centre politics - we seem to be left with a vast wasteland where once was important ground. Still we can at least take some comfort from the fact that the morally ungrounded Keir Starmer is turning out to be the best Conservative prime minister since that nice Tony Blair.

Enough of such gloom (well actually ther might be some more to come - sorry) because I am on one of my flying inspection visits to Plas Piggy. The sun is shining and the Great Orme smolders in a heat haze in the distance. The wretched flying vermin gulls are nesting on our roof again but that cannot take away the attractiveness of this place.

And last night I watched an interesting film, a Danish/Icelandic speculation on humanity and morality - Godland.  It follows the travails of a Danish pastor tasked with building a new church in the remoteness of South-East Iceland. It is a tale of endurance and obdurance. Three men die, as do two horses. The pastor is a pioneering photographer and the movie is shot in an almost square ratio with rounded corners that mimics his glass-plate photography. A serious film. A good film. Available on iPlayer. 78/100.

The VE Day celebrations last week were moving. I particularly enjoyed how much it all meant to my mother who remembered the sheer joy and relief of that end to war, celebrated in her case as a ten-year-old in Gloucester. That generation who lived through WWII have been the guiding influence on my generation and as we lose them we need to reflect on our own actions upon those growing-up behind us. Are we, the baby-boomers, as wise an influence as our own parents have been? Such thoughts can cast a pall over my day so I have risen from my desk and looked out once again over the sun-dappled sea. I may even have a third cup of damned fine coffee. Life's been good to me so far.

 

Another Day, Another Film

This blog is in danger of being taken over by my estimations of various films. Sorry about that but I do watch a fair number of movies and I find the political world so tawdry that it is difficult to comment upon it. Difficult, that is, in the pain it affords me to begin thinking about it. But there is, even in my limited world, rather more than films and politics. That is true - I realise this as I type it. So never mind that latest film (of which more anon) here is a scattergun smorgasbord of what is going on in the Pig's mind.

The Conservative Party has been in power too long and its parliamentary party is stuffed full of mediocrities who never seriously thought they were going to win a seat. I once had dealings with a relatively wise man who made the arresting defence of our first-past-the-post electoral system that it produced an inevitable swings and roundabouts effect and that the variety between successive governments acted to our benefit, certainly was more desirable than some sort of proportional representation induced perma-coalition. As I think of it now, the problem has been that we had a highly conservative (note the lower case c) Prime Minister in Blair and, after a brief interlude for the temperamentally unsuited Brown, we then got another smooth indifferentist in the lazy Cameron who might as well, as it turned out, have been wearing a Blair mask. Just to spice things up the Labour Party then followed the comically useless Ed Miliband with the barking mad and unelectable Jeremy Corbyn. All of which condemned us to a succession of useless Tories, prime amongst them the clever but venal Boris. We now have Rishi Sunak who, one has to admit, does give the impression of being a clever chap but who leads the aforesaid bunch of mediocrities. And then I look at bloody Keir Starmer and I despair. We should remember just how loyally Starmer served Corbyn. I've never done it before but I am tempted to spoil my ballot next time around. Or maybe I should transfer my voting domicile to Ynys Mon (where I pen this) so that at least I can be part of a meaningful contest between Plaid and Conservatives.

So that's politics out of the way. You will gather that I might best be described as pissed-off. And I haven't even touched on world politics. Another day. No, let's move on to drink, wine to be exact. We are pleased to announce that the winner of the OG wine variety of the year is, not for the first time, Barolo. This stuff is just bloody fantastic as we oenophiles put it. As with much else (and ironic for a man who has always described himself as having the palate of a stray dog) the Pig has saddled himself with expensive taste. Oh well you can't take it with you - how's that for a tax planning strategy.

I returned to my beloved rugby union in my last post so I won't dwell. Suffice to say that there is a learned treatise to be written (I might be just the man) on the Welsh Rugby Union (and for that matter the English as well) and restraint of trade. I can feel my inner Mr Angry welling up again.

Golf. What solace this game is to me notwithstanding my fluctuation from adequacy to incompetence. This fluctuation is not from day to day but from minute to minute. No matter, I have got myself a game at Royal St. David's on Friday with my mate Big Willy. I've loaded a box of new balls into the bag in anticipation.

So at last we come to that film. Effie Gray (2015, available on iPlayer) is a curate's egg of a film. Emma Thompson's screenplay is predictably learned and acute but seems to cut off just as the story threatens a crescendo. What we do have is a neat consideration of the doomed marriage between Gray and John Ruskin. Just as she frees herself of the wretched man and his awful parents, the movie closes without so much as a signal of the later and deserved connubial bliss that the real Effie found with John Everett Millais. Perhaps Thompson had her sights on an unlikely sequel. 63/100. 

Do you know what are nice? I'll tell you: Tunnock's Caramel Wafer Biscuits, thats' what. I'm going to have one now. I went for a run this morning so I've earned it. Goodbye.

 

The Games Come To Brum Just As Football Comes Home

I was up early on Friday in the company of ICW. We were making the small hop to Coventry for the opening session of the Commonwealth Games Rugby Sevens. I analysed the organisation at the venue with the expert (take that with a large dose of salt) eye of a 2012 Games Maker. There were teething problems at the venue (the excellent Coventry Stadium) and clearing security took too long, such that despite our early arrival at the venue we missed the first couple of matches. No matter, the volunteers started to find their collective voice and the general atmosphere of bonhomie went undisturbed. I can pay it no better compliment than to say that it put me in mind of London 2012.

The rugby was good. Sevens (never a discipline that suited a mud-plugger such as the Pig) requires deftness, vision, and buckets-full of speed. Unfortunately the English men seemed clumsy, tunnel-visioned, and slow as they got dismantled by Samoa. Oh well. 

ICW was on a Games marathon of his own on Friday. Having spent the morning with me, he was up and in spectating mode once again for the evening session at the swimming. He jovially reports that it was an excellent night, bar having to hear the all-conquering Australian anthem seven times. Oh well.

The Games were just up the road in Sutton Park for three days as the site of the various triathlons. The locals were out in force and rewarded by a lot of English gold medals. For today I am here at my desk but playing golf later with the Monday Night at PH lads. Tomorrow I have the first of five days at the athletics, accompanied on this first day by WJR. This will bring back memories of all the athletics we were privileged to see live as youngsters in the company of our grandfather, W. Harry Hayward, a Vice President of the Amateur Athletic Association. He would have loved all of this on his doorstep. Oh well. 

Football's Coming Home. That excellent sentiment has become rather stale since it was given musical life by Skinner and Baddiel back in 1996. Well yesterday it at last made some sense as the England Women won the European Championship at a packed Wembley. That Germany were the beaten finalists seems somehow fitting. And it is nice to see that we can stage a major final without it being hijacked by a rogue tribe of coked-up piss-head savages.

Cerrtainly all of this uplifting sport serves as a welcome distraction from the unlovely spectacle of the Conservative Party tearing itself apart to find a successor to the awful Johnson. I cannot slide a fag-paper between the two candidates in terms of their lack of loveliness. Thankfully I don't have a vote. Never have I felt quite so divorced from my political instincts. Apathy Rules UK? Oh well.    

Missing An Open Goal

I tuned into Prime Minister's Questions today in the vain hope of some parliamentary fireworks. Instead what I got was that prize drip Keir Starmer (who let us not forget served Corbyn so loyally) failing to hit the net from six inches out and with the goalkeeper nowhere in sight. Thus the loathsome Johnson survives to pass another political day indulging his trademark political nothingness. Forty-plus percent of his own parliamentary party have signified that they don't trust him/have confidence in him and yet he blunders on. The Conservative Party needs to relocate its vaunted ruthlessness and show this mendacious toad the door pretty bloody pronto. I am fed-up to the back teeth of the SNP being the most efficient Westminster party.

So what's a man to do as his country crumbles around him? Start running again, that's what. The Big Fat Pig has been nursing a sore Achilles since January but yesterday he thought 'sod it' and headed out of the door with the full lycra on and sporting the precious go-faster Oakleys. He shuffled and perspired for a virtuous thirty minutes and thirty-four of your English seconds. Today he is feeling the full muscular tenderness of the short distance runner but the virtuousness has not rubbed off. Pig redux.

I'll tell you who I had in the back of my cab - that Neville Chamberlain. I was reminded of this when watching Munich - the Edge of War the other day. It's adapted from Robert Harris's novel Munich, the title of the film presumably expanded to disambiguate it from Spielberg's dour but worthy movie of that name. In Edge of War, Chamberlain gets off rather more lightly than popular history has allowed. Harris likes playing with history. Jeremy Irons does a more than passable physical imitation of Chamberlain but makes this starchy Tory too avuncular by half. Not a bad film I suppose but it never quite overcomes the fact that we know how it is going to end. 62/100. 

And another reason to be cheerful - golf at Royal Pype Hayes on Monday evening with an ever-expanding band of AOE brothers (fourteen of us this week). Weather: fine (makes a bloody change after two consecutive soakings); golf: moderate but not unpromising; company: matchless; Guinness: lovely.

 

Same As It Ever Was

Sorry, I have gone through an inactive period blogwise. I have not been entirely lazy, rather I have been waging my ineffective war with my chapter on Antony and Cleopatra. Still mired in that task though an end (or more exactly an interval - there will have to be substantial revision) is in sight. Great play, as yet a patchy chapter only.

Enough of my problems. How have you been? Are you yet vaccinated against Covid? That seems to be the key to getting out of this bloody lockdown. Waiting for a Covid-free world will be stupid. Within reason, we have to live with it as we do with other ailments. I find the cozy stupidity of those who think we can all live at the cost of each other the most frighteneing aspect of current thinking.

Aren't the Tories a shower? The sheer blind stupidity of Matt Handjob takes some believing. And isn't Dominic Cummings quite simply the nastiest, most odious, disloyal little shit you have ever seen? These bastards drove me into a position I never want to be in - I found myself agreeing with that shit of all shits, Alastair Campbell. I got over it but please never again.

More tee shirts sold than records?

So why today's title? Well, I was going to go (yet again) with my favourite 'Pop Will Eat Itself', but I thought you might be bored with that. You know what I mean by now. That lucky phrase comes to mind again as Sky flood the sporting airwaves with advertisements for the Hundred - cricket designed for people who hate cricket and find Tweny20 too boring. The same weary sentiment is reinforced by the news that Premiership Rugby are increasing the size of the league and imposing a moratorium on relegation. Watch this space - the rich will get richer. And what about the complete charade of the group stages of football's Euros. Thirty-six matches to accomplish the minor task of eliminating only eight of the twenty-four teams. Stultifying. Greedy. Mind you I ask you to give me credit for having backed the nil-nil draw in the England v Scotland match. I'm sorry but it was as obvious as Scotland's failure to garner any other points. 

Still, no matter. I'm enjoying golf with the lads and it's QMT tour in three weeks time. Glorious stupidity. I had a particularly joyous outing at Forest of Arden last week with CC and BH. The greens were an eye-opener for those of us who are used to the speed-bumps on the greens at Royal Pype Hayes.

England v Germany tonight. I'm not sure I can stand to watch it. 

All Political Careers End In Failure - But This Is Bloody Ridiculous

So Theresa May has finally admitted defeat and we shall soon have yet another Prime Minister. At her moment of resignation she was dignified and serious - have we ever found her otherwise? But we should not allow our instinctive sympathy for a kind soul to obscure the fact of her ineffectiveness. In my lifetime we have had some bloody awful Prime Ministers (Douglas-Home, Callaghan, Brown all spring to mind) and I'm certain that none of them was saddled with such malign mood music as May. Brexit is a shaming dog's dinner, the Conservative Party is an ungovernable dog's breakfast and, to cap it all, she let that turd Donald Trump hold her hand in public. Notwithstanding such unprepossessing circumstances, it has to be said that she has demonstrated an uncanny knack when faced with a fork in the political road for steering with utter conviction down the wrong way. In all of this she threatens to deliver us into the hands Corbyn and McDonnell, a gruesome pairing which should in any sensible world be unelectable. So, sorry Mrs May, I am not sorry to see you go. Brexit means Brexit indeed.

Much more importantly you will need to know that the Overgraduate has been suffering with that most debilitating of illnesses, the summer cold. I have been unspeakably brave about the whole thing as I'm sure the Groupie will confirm. I do just have to make it clear that this was not Man Flu - which as any fule kno is much, much worse.

Mission Impossible - Fallout - a film of sustained and explosive silliness. It has first Paris and then London being trashed in chases and shoot-outs before repairing to Kashmir for a climax that twins a helicopter chase with nuclear threat. Bloody silly. Bloody well done. 6.5/10. For people who like this sort of thing etc.

For a man who is an avid watcher of Gardeners' World Big Fat Pig is not a keen gardener. It seems to him that if you weed regularly this merely stimulates the bloody things to grow back even bigger. The Pig does of course like a well-kept lawn and is pleased to report that the new Precious Mower is doing a great job, both in standard mode and the alternative mulch mode which he uses when doing the Council's job and mowing the verge at the front of Casa Piggy. As for the institutional uselessness of Birmingham City Council, let's leave that for another day.

Remember you heard it here first: Brexit means never having to say you're sorry.



    

I've Been Avoiding The Subject

I went to bed last Thursday with a bad feeling about the whole election farrago. I awoke on Friday to find my unease was fully justified. In surely the most catastrophic act of hubris since Edward Heath had the temerity to ask the unions who governed the country, Theresa May managed to lose the moral high ground to a third rate terrorist apologist and his sidekicks Madame Stupid and the Smiling Larcenist. Apparently the young are to blame - perhaps they will have to live with rampant inflation and a stony-broke Treasury before they realise just how shit a place Britain can be. Perhaps they might like to take a look at how Venezuela has ended up - why it seems only yesterday that Citizen Ken was using taxpayer money to laud the 'achievements'of Hugo Chavez. Corbyn was another cheerleader, natch.

Actually I don't blame the young. I've totted it all up and I blame ... Theresa May and the boneheads who advised her that this was the right time to open the Pandora's Box marked 'Dementia Tax'. Still the good thing about a hung parliament is that the shit-for-brains politicians will find their legislative ambitions stymied and might just leave us alone to order our lives as we see fit. Fat chance. And if I hear one more pudding-brained cretin telling me that all that is required is for the 'rich to pay their fair share' I might swing for someone. I'm not particularly rich (despite rumours to the contrary that I may have started by my irresponsible lifestyle) but I am one of Larcenist McDonnell's target group and I can tell you this, John Boy, I've always paid my due and it has felt like plenty. The problem is the use to which successive politicians of all hues have put it.

When in doubt reach for a quotation from a nineteenth century French economist:

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.

All is well in the world - beer is being brewed

But not to worry, ICW and I had a long and liquid lunch on Friday and if we didn't put the world to rights we at least agreed that between us we could do a better job at practically everything - governing, running the Lions tour, and so on and so forth. We were fuelled by Sutton Pale Ale at the Brewhouse and Kitchen in Sutton Coldfield. Politics is only politics but mates are for life.

     

Isn't It Nice When Things Work Properly

Whilst British Airways spent the weekend looking like the most disorganised company in the world - BA IT meltdown - and the Conservative Party continued in its self-inflicted death spiral, we had a nice couple of days at the old country estate. Things worked properly.

The drive to Mon took less than three hours without a single traffic jam. The journey home also came in at less than three hours including a stop to buy safety snacks (this is family slang for emergency rations) which included very satisfactory chicken balls. Not sure how much actual chicken was in them but they tasted great.

Even the bank holiday weather worked with us. We walked round to Red Wharf Bay, enjoyed a couple of outdoor drinks at The Ship Inn and the rain left us alone. Glorious. Main object of the visit was to firm up plans for the kitchen extension and allied works of improvement. Meetings with both kitchen designer and builder were fruitful so it's full steam ahead.

Nice. And we drank champagne while watching a silly but enjoyable film, Jack Reacher. He may be as mad as a box of frogs but you have to concede that Tom Cruise has presence. 6/10.