Turning Left And Arriving

Well actually a minor disappointment - the layout of the plane was such that we turned right. But thereafter all was well, service spot on and usual comforts. The food (lobster to start, responsibly sourced haddock to follow and a nice cheese board to finish) was presentable and a wide choice of wines, most of which I tried. Didn't watch much on the screen but rather managed to snooze whilst listening to Radio 4 programming. Tres satisfactoire as some Canadians are wont to say.

Third floor corner suite ours for now

We were arriving in Vancouver on Canada Day which meant an interesting taxi ride through the downtown thronged streets - we had a diminutive driver in a responsibly sourced Prius (Sunshine Cab S31) who must have broken some sort of record for lane changing as he negotiated us to the Fairmont. Vancouver is an exceptionally civilised city as betokened by the fixed fare from airport to centre - absolute bargain at $31.

Multi grain bagel for breakfast. Weather fine. All well in the world.

Turning Left

It's holiday time and we're doing it upmarket. Virgin Train business class to Euston, followed by taxi to Paddington and then the very satisfactory Heathrow Express (Business First natch) to the airport. Now reporting to you from the BA South Lounge in Terminal 5. A bit busy if truth be told but the wine and food are all free and gratis so I'm getting stuck in before we head for Vancouver. An oddity is that the wine list seems to eschew the New World. I'm grinning and bearing it in my new spirit of entente cordiale.

Meanwhile the world outside bakes in 35 degree heat and I've spent barely any time away from air conditioning. Life's been good to me so far. More to follow.

Little Things Please ...

One of the things that please this little mind is to seek comedy in the television listings. I don't mean tracking down classic comedy programmes, no no no, what I do is to read across the schedules for amusing juxtapositions. Of which there was a beauty on Wednesday on E4: Great Canal Journeys … World's Largest Penis. The former being a cruise along the Rochdale Canal with Prunella Scales and Timothy West, the latter, despite its rich promise, transpiring not to be about Piers Morgan.

Returning To An Earlier Tune

Guizot
1787-1874

There ain't half been some clever bastards. On which topic I've come across the doings of Francois Guizot. He was a leading historian with more than a passing interest in English history, a prolific and influential translator of Shakespeare into his native French and, in-between times, he found he had the energy to serve France as Prime Minister. He was a constitutional monarchist and I've happened upon his doings in the context of my research into our own favourite constitutional monarchist, Walter Bagehot. Because, dear reader, it was as a nominal response to Guizot's 1852 republication of his Shakespeare et Son Temps that Bagehot wrote his less voluminous (but nevertheless the jumping-off point for OG's postgraduate thesis) Shakespeare - the Individual. Walter, as he could, rather damned M. Guizot with faint praise, comparing him to Pitt as someone incapable of learning by experience. Walter's point was that Shakespeare had an 'experiencing nature'. I'm afraid that by extension Walter rather immodestly saw himself in this way.

Guizot was briefly exiled in London but it was in Bagehot's formative journalistic years so it is unlikely they met, which is a pity - I can imagine Guizot insisting on speaking flawless English and Bagehot equally adamantly sticking to French. I reiterate - there ain't half been some clever bastards.

Feet Of Clay?

What is one to make of the writer of this letter to his father?

I sit down in great perplexity of mind to write to you … I hope I am doing right, certainly I am not doing what is pleasing to me … I have for some time suspected, although I have tried to disbelieve it, as long as I could, that one of my companions Jessop has exceedingly improper connections, and that he is in the habit of visiting them at times, when Dr Hoppus thinks, he is engaged at college, and on Sunday evenings, when he is thought to be at church. Now certainly I feel that it cannot be my duty to allow this state of things to continue; I do not think it would be doing right either to Dr Hoppus or to Jessop himself; yet the office of talebearer is so invidious, and in general so contemptible that I confess I am exceedingly loath to undertake it. The immediate necessity of taking some step is, that tonight under pretence of going to a debating society at the college, Jessop is going to introduce another of my companions  Collier to these women: this certainly must be stopped and I possess no other means of doing so, but informing Dr Hoppus immediately.

What further do you make of that writer if you learn that he was sixteen years of age when penning this apologia for dobbing in poor old Jessop and Collier? Well you'll probably have guessed that the boy in the frame is our old favourite Walter Bagehot. He wrote this within his first month away at University College London as he took it upon himself to report the doings of two fellow lodgers at the house of Dr Hoppus. There is no record of what became of the miscreants but Bagehot's later correspondence suggest that he was himself sent to Coventry by fellow students and experienced some consequent difficulty in gaining admission to the college debating society. If we read a little later into Bagehot's time at UCL we spot his creation (with Richard Holt Hutton, later co-founding editor with him of the National Review) of a new debating society. None of Bagehot's biographers seem to make the link that this was necessary because the extant society would not have him. That however is for another day - what intrigues me now is the assessment those biographers make of what we might term the Jessop Affair, and what it tells of the process of assembling personal history.

It will not have escaped notice that I have a soft spot for old Walter. But even his greatest admirer (and in that category we could suggest two prime literary candidates - the said Richard Holt Hutton and Walter's first full biographer, his sister-in-law Mrs Russell Barrington) might have to concede that he was prone to priggishness. Mrs Barrington, indeed, might not have seen priggishness as a vice but she does perhaps unwittingly allude to the problem:

Walter Bagehot seldom had other than friendly relations with those with whom he came in contact, but his real friends were few.

Mrs Barrington's description of the Affair is charmingly delicate. Mention of Jessop's and Collier's names is excised; she quotes admiringly from Walter's letter but does so sparingly, omitting any mention that the alleged indelicacy related to 'women'. Bagehot's letter was presumably in Mrs Barrington's possession but it was not fully published (so far as I can tell) until it appeared in the penultimate volume of St John Stevas' vast Collected Works in 1986. Thus its contents were denied to successive biographers, Irvine, Buchan, Sisson, all of whom rely on Mrs Barrington's telling of the tale. Sisson (by a wide margin the least enthusiastic assessor of Bagehot) is in no doubt, "One cannot but think that the sixteen-year-old moralist was taking a bit much on himself." Sisson perhaps falls prey to his own Anglo-Catholic prejudices when he asserts that the young Bagehot was "merely the medium of his father's sentiments." Bagehot's father was a resolute Unitarian but might the young Walter not equally have been the medium for his mother's Anglicanism?

Possibly Buchan gets closest to a fair summation of Bagehot's behaviour,

It reveals at the same time moral courage, a strong sense of right and duty, together with something which could either be officiousness or an overdeveloped fastidiousness.

What if I had been one of Bagehot's co-boarders at UCL in 1842? I'm rather afraid that I would have been amongst those giving him a wide berth, only later coming to admire his strength. Nobody likes a smart arse.

      

A Good Time To Be Welsh

I qualify (in the terms that are accepted by international sport) as a Welshman but I have to say I have never knowingly presented myself as anything other than English. It seems that Christian Bale is the same - he was actually born in the Principality but avers himself English. I mention this merely because I had cause to admire the work of both the Bale boys at the weekend. And yes I know that they're not related but it makes a convenient peg on which to hang this post.

These for me were the cultural highlights of the weekend: Wales beating Belgium at football; Christian Bale (and others) in American Hustle; Gareth Edwards getting a knighthood.

I watched the football with my hands over my eyes because the fear kept creeping up on me that Gareth Bale and his team-mates would have the cup dashed from their lips at any moment. I really hope that they resist vertigo and go on to secure qualification for Euro 16. I actually hope that all of the home nations make it through. I know that Scots nationalism is tiresome but there is something charmingly bonkers about Gordon Strachan and I wish him well. As for Northern Ireland, well bonkers is a polite word for the whole country but I love it and the hospitality its natives have always lavished on me. England are already near as damn it qualified but I care least of all about their fate. Humility and English football make unlikely companions.

I came to American Hustle with trepidation because Daughter Number Two (usually a good judge) warned me off it. I think she was wrong. Christian Bale (whom I have never seen give a weak performance) was excellent. I thought this yet another notable example of America washing its dirty linen in public - I first heard that summation used by my father in the context of The Candidate and I have been reliably pilfering it for four decades now. 7.5, no, 8/10. That good.

Finally congratulations to Sir Gareth Edwards, the finest rugby player of my lifetime. Period.

PS. In case anyone is interested, Big Fat Pig ran for seventy-five minutes in the midday sun and came over all wobbly as a result. But he recovered sufficiently to mow the lawn so all is well.

Of Running, Rain And The Perfidy Of Builders

In case you missed it, that was Summer that we had on Thursday. Yesterday was murky and today it has just hosed down for most of the day. Which is at least good for my lovely garden but does encourage the grass to grow more swiftly than is ideal.

The view from the bridge of the good ship BFP

After a delay (detail to follow) I went out for a run in the rain. New running shorts were a success but my precious Oakleys were a categorical error. No matter how cool I think they make me look, they are impractical in heavy rain for the obvious reason that you can't see a bloody thing. And yes I do know that a man of my education should have been able to work that out but they do look soooo cool.

What kept me in the house was the promised attendance of our builder who simply never showed and ignored a dozen phone calls. This is uncharacteristic so I hope nothing nasty has happened but I do have to confess that my state of mind, couching it in Wodehousian terms, is that if not entirely disgruntled I am certainly far from gruntled. A glass of red is presently soothing the savage beast.

I ran a comfortable four miles but having to carry my Oakleys disturbed my finely honed body balance.