Writers Write

Which, as those who have been with me from the outset of this journey will recall, is the First Law of Marchant, he being the man what schooled me in writing. I think you'll agree, he did a bang up job.

By turns this brings me to the crux of my dilemma (do dilemmas have cruxes? Is that the right plural? How did I get here? That last one a knowing crib from Talking Heads): of late I mostly feel just so low about the fate of Planet Big Fat Pig that I can't be arsed to write. This is silly (that's an understatement) because all is golden domestic-wise - the Groupie is still with me (she must be bonkers I know) and Daughter Number One and Daughter Number Two are both thriving, a credit to their parents in fact. No, it is the wider world that aggravates me. No, not just bloody Trump (doesn't help though); no not bloody Brexit (doesn't help though); No it is the sheer asininity (one of the Pig's favourite words - mind you, if you've been with me on the journey this far, you'll know that) of what passes for adult discussion these days. Just listen to serious radio news and hear what I mean. We live in interesting times but debate takes place behind a screen of mediated PC bollocks. Brexit is, I suppose, the biggest and best example - a major constitutional moment being mishandled by a failed political class whilst the unlovable and the condescending (work out for yourselves which is which) are pitched at each other in the deepest circle of Hell by a flippant commentariat. Too serious to be funny.

I'm avoiding the Trump business most of the time but he still makes me sick - how's that for a telling response to asininity! In that connection however my eye was taken by this:

[He] has been honest, but he has been vulgar; and there is no greater external misfortune ... than for a great nation to be exclusively represented at a crisis far beyond previous, and perhaps beyond future, example by a person whose words are mean even when his actions are important.

You may have guessed that this is our old mate Walter Bagehot. He was writing about another Republican President - one Abraham Lincoln, no less. You have to wonder what the Boy Bagehot would have made of the ghastly Mr Trump. Walter, by the way, had the decency (and one has to admit, unusually for him, the modesty) to recast his views on Lincoln as the full scale of Lincoln's political genius unfolded. I'm not even remotely persuaded that I will have similar cause to repent of my opinion of Trump.

On the subject (which I sort of have been) of the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable (another favourite BFP aphorism) Baron Hain (Pete to his mates) has used the cloak of parliamentary privilege to out Philip Green as the beneficiary of a super-injunction preventing his being named as an alleged serial racial and sexual discriminator. I could bore you on the rule of law on this one but, you know what, I can't be arsed. Green should know better - and so should Hain.

What's Not To Like? No. 3 - Of Red Wine And Trifle

Storm Callum is today battering Ynys Mon so the Groupie and I have been housebound, her doing some housework (which, yes, does make me feel guilty) and me clattering out a few hundred words of the thesis - actually clattering is the wrong word of course because the modern keyboard does not sound the percussives of old-fashioned labour. How many of you who happen upon this will wonder quite what the old fart is on about?

More good times have been had here on the island and indeed on the mainland. Bodnant Garden: another bloody brilliant experience - been there umpteen times but it still enthralls and we actually managed to find a part of the garden that had eluded us on previous visits.

Church Bay in the rain - spendid. Robinson's Blonde Ale at the Trecastell Hotel - splendid. Coronation chicken on white bloomer with side orders of chips and onion rings - even more splendid. Red wine for supper with Tesco trifle - food of the gods. That wasn't all I ate but those are the bits I can recall. Lovely.

Schitt's Creek. Heard of it? On Netflix. Rather good.

It's still pissing down but storms do have an attraction. Weather is transient, scenery is permanent. 

 

What's Not to Like? No 2

There is beautiful and there is bloody beautiful. Take the A4080 to Pen-lon and park at the end of the road. Walk from there through dune and forest to the beach at Llanddwyn. Stop and take it all in. Bloody beautiful. Thereafter take in some good English fizz (Leckford Estate 2013) and eat the Groupie's home made chili con carne. Bloody beautiful - or Sunday as we call it.

Next, proof of the miracles of modern technology - have a look at the photograph below as taken by the Groupie on her iPhone. Compare it to the stock picture of the same aspect which I used in my last blog. The Groupie's is better, don't you think?

    
Yesterday we mooched round Beaumaris, one of those towns that put the 'Ee' in genteel, and a reassuring experience compared to the urban decay that is Bangor lying across the Menai Strait. A pint of Hartley's Cumbrian Ale in the George and Dragon before home to more of said chili. Bloody beautiful.

Today the Coastal Path from Lligwy to Dulas and then a pint of Unicorn to wash down sausage, egg, chips and beans at the Pilot Boat. The Groupie has baked some scones while I tackled the thesis. Did the Romans sanction human scrifice or was Shakespeare (or more probably George Peele - it's a long story - only ask me if you're bored) just make it up to spark the atrocities in Titus Andronicus? Another blody beautiful day.

What's Not To Like?

A bracing walk with the Groupie around the Treborth Botanic Garden (under the care of Bangor University) and down to the Southern side of the Britannia Bridge. I love this coastline and its human interventions.

A benign intervention

Shopping at Waitrose - such a civilised store even if the parking bays in Menai Bridge are too narrow.

Late lunch/early dinner at the Panton Arms in Pentraeth. Excellent food (as ever), great service (as ever), washed down with Glaslyn Ale from the Purple Moose Brewery. The Groupie had hake and a glass of sauvignon blanc.

Paddington 2. I loved the first film and I think this sequel might even be better. Ben Whishaw as the voice of the lovable bear is a very fine actor (a brilliant Richard II) but he runs the risk (as per the Robin Williams example) of his greatest work being as the voice of an animation. Altogether a warm and uplifting movie, viewed at the end of a day when I already felt uplifted. 8/10. Slept the sleep of the innocent - quite something for a gnarled old lawyer.

Cultural Artefacts And The Zone Of Sanity

You have heard me whinge before about the world going to Hell in a handcart and in the past ten days we have had to bear the twin peaks of desperation that are the party conferences of our benighted major parties. First up we had Labour who announced a new piece of state sponsored larceny dressed up as widening share ownership. Hopeless and gormless as the Tories can appear (actually it's not an appearance - they are hopeless and gormless) it is them to whom we must look if we are going to avoid the Labour wrecking ball being taken to the economy. Cue an assembly of forced rictus smiles as the Tory party faithful attempt to put on a brave face whilst they destroy each other over Brexit. The brazen Boris Johnson makes shameless play for the leadership and poor old Theresa May essays as dignified a stab as one can manage at retaining some dignity. What a complete shambles.

So here are things to cheer us up. I've been listening to The Beatles blue album while I work - some paid labour and rather more work on the old thesis - will it ever be done? Quite possibly not. Now I know that the cool kids don't approve of compilation albums but the blue album can be excused since it reminds us just how sodding brilliant The Beatles were. Go on, search it out, ideally using it as a gateway to their entire oeuvre.

And another artefact to recommend. The Martian is the cheery and comprehensible side of sci-fi. Beatifully shot and deliberately not as portentous as the genre can be at. Behind the science (and there is a lot of it) there is a story of human endeavour and redemption. There are even some well constructed jokes. Worth a look. The bigger the screen the better. 7/10. 

A Television Revolution

By the way, I still reserve the right to call it the 'tele' rather than 'telly', the former, to this writer's mind, being the more acceptable diminutive of 'television'. Deal with it - as fans of the Buffalo Bills used so aptly to put it (sorry haven't got time to explain that one).

There is a glut of really quite passable drama on the tele at the moment. Most notably the big old beast of the BBC is kicking back at the mooted hegemony of the subscription services, in particular Netflix and Amazon. For what it's worth, we prefer Netflix, the Amazon interface not being as user friendly, at least to this sad old e-cripple.

A selection of these new dramas competing for our attention: Bodyguard; Black Earth Rising; Killing Eve; Jack Ryan.

Bodyguard is attracting much of the attention and prompting the discussions in the broadsheets. It has garnered huge (by modern standards, that is to say miles short of the old Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show gold standard) viewing figures for the Beeb. It's quite good, no more - laden with just too many implausibilities. From the enviable mind and pen of Jed Mercurio, it is not a patch on his earlier and brilliant Line of Duty.

Black Earth Rising is a joint production between the BBC and Netflix - the latter screeening it everywhere but the UK. It has a stellar cast and suitably dead serious pretnesions. I've only seen the first episode and that wasn't quite as good as it obviously thinks it ought to be, but since that would be an impossibly high bar, I think this one has potential.

Killing Eve - Again the BBC but this time BBC America, hence presumably the forty-two minute episodes and the casting of the excellent Sandra Oh. Two episodes into this one and for me this is the best of the lot. Quirky, disturbing, amusing, all at the same time. It's an odd sort of target audience that will stay tuned after two such venerable shows as Strictly Come Dancing and Casualty, but let us asume that the schedulers know what they're doing. We watched it on iPlayer, whereat you can get the whole series if you're impatient.

Jack Ryan - I have to confess a guilty pleasure here - I am a fan of the Tom Clancy novels which introduced Ryan to the world - an everyman hero who (spoiler alert) rises to become US President. In the age of Trump this seems more than mildly attractive. This show is more old-fashioned with a lot of big bangs and deafening gun-play, but it's well done.

So all in all, no bad thing for Big Fat Pig to have lapsed back into couch potato mode. There are extenuating crcumstances - a deadline at university is looming and it is BFP's long-practised method to leave things to the last minute. Plus, indignity upon indignity, having set off in my habitual lycra and wholly necessary Oakleys the other day I went arse over tit over an uneven paving slab and had to beat a cowed retreat back to base, dripping blood from hand and arm wounds. Groupie has not been entirely sympathetic particularly as I left some blood stains on the clean bedding. I still bear the scars but I'm being a very brave soldier.  

A Tour De Force Followed By A Bloody Big Meal

Sunday: still feeling flabby and lazy in the aftermath of a major session on the beer on Friday. The Groupie stirs me from my torpor with the suggestion that we go to the pictures. We discover that there is a cinema cum cafe at Barton-under-Needwood of all places, part of the marina complex no less. The Children Act is showing. We go. Sat nav sends us up a dead end but we get there unscathed and with time for a glass of wine before the show. We sit too close to the screen so suffer from cricked necks but this is nonetheless two hours spent in communal darkness that is decidedly worthwhile. As for the film, well, Emma Thompson, bloody hell. Woman can act. Superb. This is by some margin her film although the support of Stanley Tucci and Jason Watkins is understatedly competent. Unlike the Groupie I have difficulties with the novels of Ian McEwan, but this translates better to the screen than most critics seem to have asserted. Film - good. Thompson - brilliant. Whole thing - 8/10.

As for the cinema at Barton - recommended - not a popcorn machine in sight and no wankers on mobile phones. Post screening we walked down to the Waterfront pub and had really good pizzas and a mountainous portion of fries. Top draw.