February Face

... You have such a February face
So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness.
Much Ado About Nothing 5.4.41-42

Paul Lewis

From my Shakespearean insults desk diary. February is rather that type of a month and my mood was not lightened by hearing Richard Dawkins on Today as I drove to Leeds this morning. How does such a proudly irreligious man manage to sound so pious and sanctimonious - is this irony lost on him? The more sorry he feels for me in my delusions the more I dislike him. Which is of course irreligious of me but what the hell.

Richard Dawkins

Just one more thing about Dawkins - have he and that whingeing consumerist pile of indignation Paul Lewis ever been seen together because they share the same toe-curling voice. We should be told. As you can see The Overgraduate may have another scoop on its hands here.

But enough of that. My day improved vastly as I sat in a meeting in which people talked honestly about profit, risk and health care without succumbing to liberal hand-wringing. It can be done.

Now has come the time for me to comment on the first two rounds of the Six Nations. Greatest indignation has to be reserved for the avarice which one has to assume led to the France v Ireland fixture being scheduled to kick off at 9.00pm local time in the middle of bloody winter on a pitch which lacks under soil heating. Did you hear why there is no such heating by the way? Apparently because the Stade de France (magnificent, been there) is built on land infested with pockets of methane and it might go up in flames if electricity is introduced. Anyway I now understand the cancellation was the fault of the referee, which rather stands to reason given his nationality - English. Please remember that racism is not racism when practised on the English, merely justifiable payback for centuries of oppression. This is the Gibson-Harinordoquy Law.

Talking of my mate Imanol Harinordoquy, probably the most fearsome thing about the current French team is that as sound a judge as Saint-Andre believes he doesn't need the magnificent beast in his starting line-up. Scary.

Other highlights - the English outlook is not too sunny but there is praise for Alex Corbisiero and that yeoman Englishman Mauritz Botha. Wales were impressive against the Scots (for whom Richie Gray is immense) but I still harbour the feeling that they could get sorted out up front against the French. You have to observe however that not a single Englishman would make that Welsh back line. Wales to win quite comfortably at Twickenham I'm afraid. This is not to condemn the coaches of England - as I observed in the autumn, England really don't have many outstanding players at present and , most frustratingly, one of the few, Ben Youngs, is currently playing like a tart. Not for the want of trying. It seems to be hurting him even more than it does his admirers. To add to the frustration Danny Care is playing the rugby of his life but is banned from England duty for being a piss-head. Is that why I never got a cap? No Dave, that was because you were no bleeding good.

Ireland: any side would miss O'Driscoll. Period. But the Irish have been the instigators of the most effective new defensive tactic - the stand-up tackle. Watch how well Donnacha O'Callaghan does this and thereby creates the turnover. Clever and strong.

Final standings? 1-France; 2-Wales; 3-Ireland; 4-England; 5-Italy; 6-Scotland.
 

Encore Une Fois Je Suis Etudiant

It's started, it's official and I've got the student card to prove it. Student discount here we come. Only five years (with a following wind and a dollop of inspiration) and you might have to start calling me Dr Roberts. Loving it already - I've got my beloved on line library access back which means hours of fun making obscure searches on Jstor and EEBO.

But, but, but, there's still a few things bugging me despite my happy student outlook. Ed Miliband - just what the hell is he for? David Cameron - given that his principal opponent is so gobsmackingly inept, why doesn't he take the opportunity to actually do something interesting/radical/not crap? France - how on earth can they have the gall (yes that is deliberate) to tell the hapless Greeks how to behave? For the Germans such behaviour is perhaps understandable if ultimately indefensible, but the French, give me a bloody break.

Loads of money

Fat cats. Actually some middle sized cats as well. In my old days as a jobbing commercial lawyer I evidently enjoyed the luck of the draw because the number of inexcusable capitalist gobshites I met was quite limited. Yes there were some but more often I encountered people who worked hard, played harder and had the humility to admit to some good fortune in doing well for themselves, even in one notable case (the utterly peerless Alan Robert Murrall) where no such modesty was required. Yet now the evidence of guileless, gutless greed lies all about us, deep and crisp and even. As I have said before, my generation has blown it and all I can say in my defence is that it wasn't me guv. But still it irks me, nibbles away at my nether regions that perhaps I have been wrong all along. Damn you fat cats, you have made me doubt myself and if I'm wrong then what on earth will become of the world?

But hey ho, there'll always be Shakespeare and Bagehot and bad jokes with good friends. And more, much more than that, there will be Sharon. The boy Roberts done good. 

With The Glums

Now you will say that I don't look old enough but honestly my younger, yes younger, daughter was 21 on Saturday. So her mother and I toddled off to that London for a bit of celabratoriness with the offspring. We drunk a couple of bottles of champagne, we stayed in a nice hotel and we went to see Les Miserables. Which I have to say is really jolly good. And this song is up there with the all time great songs to get you in the mood for killing people. Now this is quite a specialised category of music but it is an important one which includes Welcome to the Jungle, Tomorrow Belongs to Me, The International and probably Jerusalem, all of which in their variousness should ensure that I've offended someone somewhere. Job done then. So gird your loins and sing along as you man the barricades.

God And Mammon



Premier League eat your heart out

Nobody, or at least nobody who has watched and understood Bull Durham, will fail to appreciate that there is a poetry, spirituality even, to the playing of competitive sport. Especially team sport. That poetry is sorely challenged by the intrusion of money but it does survive even the most extreme exposures to the forces of avarice. As witness to which please see Exhibits A and B, yesterday's AFC and NFC championship games. Pats and Giants Win Classics The day of the conference finals is a far better day's sport than the overblown and stamina-sapping Superbowl. The blood lust of home fans and the absence of the ludicrous half-time show combine to make this proper raw sport notwithstanding all the money sloshing around the players. At another extreme please also see last Friday's Heineken Cup tie at a dog track in Galwey wherein Connacht beat up a perplexed Harlequins team in a stinking gale. Brilliant. You can't make this stuff up. 

The Rise Of The New Man

Our more seasoned observers will have welcomed the return to the commentariat of that beacon of reason Viperjohn. We wish him a prosperous new year. You may gather that Viperjohn is a man for whom the adjective vituperative might have been invented but before my liberal readers hasten to condemn him, let me tell you a few facts about the man. He is one of my closest friends and I happen to know (from the privileged position of professional involvement) that he puts his money where his mouth is. My dear you simply wouldn't credit it, he actually employs people in businesses that make things. How unfashionable. How bloody laudable. I also happen to know he works his bollocks off which rather puts the Overgraduate to shame. And he can take his beer, boy can he take his beer. And he's effortlessly better than the Overgraduate at golf, the bastard.

All of which in a rather round about away gets me to today's point because what I am about to say will, I suspect, confirm him in his belief that I've gone soft in the head. Here's the thing - for the past couple of weeks I've tried to be a Monday to Friday vegetarian. I do this not for any reason of conviction but because I thought it might just be a way of stimulating some post-Christmas weight loss. News flash - if you start from the point of being a greedy carnivorous bastard who eats too much, this system can work. Hero of the experiment is the world's best vegetable - the humble leek. There's lovely.

But here is a promise to Viperjohn. In late April will come a day when we dine on Sea Food Chowder, followed by gargantuan King Rib, rounded off with a proper man's pudding and swilled down with the black stuff, a sauvignon blanc and, what else, a robust rioja. We will talk eminent good sense throughout. And we will be temporary kings.

I've just realised that my spell-checker recognises neither sauvignon blanc nor rioja. I'm sacking it.

Abject Terror ... Plus A Good Television Programme

Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for. Like for instance the lead part in an amateur production of a farce. I read for It Runs In The Family, which is one of them Ray Cooney jobbies, that is to say mistaken identity, cross-dressing and double entendre. I now face the prospect of learning a shit-load of lines and the renewed terror of being on stage. Darling I'm positively dripping with fear. As for the play, well high art it ain't but you do have to admire the dramatic craft and ear for low humour. I play an arrogant hospital consultant (oxymoron?) which shouldn't be too much of a stretch attitude-wise.

Unlikely tv star

But most importantly, today I want to urge you to watch this if you get the chance - Jonathan Meades On France. I really can't tell whether or not this is what the licence fee should be spent on but I love Meades - he's unapologetically clever, rude, opinionated and stimulatingly deadpan. Half the time I don't even know what he's on about but it's great fun watching him say it. 

200th Post

Yes, it's been that many, and not a dud among them.

Back to salaried serfdom today (in truth not as trying as self-employment had become when I ducked out back in 2008) and the day was enlivened by opening up my desk diary bearing daily one of Shakespeare's insults. I am not going to do this every day because, well, it would soon get boring for me and even sooner for you, but I do reserve the right to quote the chosen extract when it catches my fancy. As today.

Who deserves greatness
Deserves your hate; and your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. He that depends
Upon your favours swims with fins of lead
And hews down oaks with rushes. 

Coriolanus 1.1.178 (OpenSource Shakespeare internet edition)

I like the Roman plays, bloody good job because they will play a significant part in my thesis. In particular I like Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus. Admittedly both predilections are not unrelated to contrariness on my part but I think I can muster a defence of both these relatively neglected texts. I've blogged about Titus before so let's deal with Coriolanus. The magnificently scathing words above are close to the very first that Coriolanus utters in the play. His mood doesn't ever get any better. This is the point. His tragedy is that he cannot temporise. Like a good Yorkshireman, he knows what he likes and he likes what he bloody well knows. One's view of him depends very much on whether one shares his disdain of the great unwashed. So the play can be structured as fascist encomium or socialist dismissal or, best of all, as neither. Questions are so much more interesting than answers.

Well known Overgraduate impersonator

Here is a picture of that Charles Dance who once played Coriolanus at Stratford. He is my idea of what the tragic Roman should look like. In common with your correspondent he has also played Maxim de Winter, he on commercial television, the Overgraduate on the stage at Holly Lane United Reform Church, Erdington. Even my Mum thinks Dance was better.

If you fancy some fun with Shakespeare but can't be arsed to buy a book try the quite excellent website OpenSource Shakespeare. If nothing else use the concordance to see how many times, if at all, the bard uses your favourite swear word. 'Bum' appears on three occasions, twice in one play. But I'll leave you to find out which for yourself. Welcome to my world.