Advent 4

There has to be a golf course in this list. From a peak, many years ago, of near competence, my personal golf game has descended to the point of farce. Sometimes I think I should walk away from the game altogether and spare myself the embarrassment inherent in my uselessness. But that would be to deny myself the compelling atmosphere of the game and the playground of people watching that is the clubhouse.

Guess where Big Fat Pig put his ball?

And nowhere is the game more fun and the watching more pleasant than at Cavendish Golf Club in Buxton. Not the greatest test of golf (though estimable) but the place and its denizens are rather lovely - an old-fashioned adjective for an old-fashioned place.  

Advent 3

It won't come as a surprise to anyone to hear that I am a big fan of Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank. However if you pressed me to name the best place I have watched Shakespeare, I would point you to Southern Oregon and the town of Ashland, home to the ten month long Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Groupie and I visited as part of a blissful Holiday and we even got to see my favourite bit of Bard - Antony and Cleopatra. Favourite that is until the next time I change my mind.

 

Advent 2

Let me take you back to the Summer of 1981. The Overgraduate does not yet exist - he is an undergraduate waiting for his degree result. On  a June morning he bids a tearful farewell to the Groupie (she of course is not yet the Groupie but she and OG are already together) and heads off on a great adventure. He is to work as a counsellor at Camp Half Moon, Great Barrington, MA, USA. He coaches basketball, acts as a lifeguard and works hard, playing even harder at Graham's Bar in Barrington on nights off. He makes life-long friends and learns to love the USA, a country with optimism at its benevolent heart. He returns to Thatcher's Britain to an uncertain future (he has not yet determined to be a lawyer) but is an important step closer to being a man.

The picture is of beautiful Lake Buel, on which stands Camp Half Moon. God Bless America, Trump or no Trump.

Advent 1

So here we are again pop-pickers. The snow is not laying all about and is not therefore deep and crisp and even. It does not exist. Instead December has arrived with what you might term typical November weather - grim skies and a permanent fog of fine rain.

Which is all to the good because it puts me in mind of the climatic conditions I liked to encounter when I visited the first place to be honoured in this year's calendar. This may very well be the only time that anyone has listed Nuneaton as a place they loved visiting, but if I had to name my favourite away fixture it would be Nuneaton Old Edwardians - a tough match played in heavy mud and usually in the rain, in fact once and memorably in the snow with the lines swept clear.

It tells you a lot about Big Fat Pig as a player that what he really needed to enable him to thrive was mud that slowed the game to his pace. It's a dirty old job but someone has to do it. Happy, happy times. Favourite iteration - Nuneaton OE 1st XV: 6, Aston OE 1st XV: 16. The Pig was captain that day in what everyone who saw it deemed a dreadful game of rugby to watch. The true glory is in playing. I still miss it. 

There Now Follows An Advertisement From Big Fat Pig

BFP Productions are proud to announce the subject for this year's Overgraduate Advent Calendar.

With your indulgence (well, without you too I suppose but you can always stop reading - please don't) I am going to write of twenty-four places that have happy memories for me and as I do so I will attempt to describe those positive feelings.

We start tomorrow with somewhere distinctly unglamorous.

On another topic, I confirm that I have dutifully finished watching Black Earth Rising. I find admiration and ambivalence wrestling to be my prime reaction. Admiration for tackling its excruciating subject matter (the Rwandan genocide) and ambivalence because of its self-conscious styling and some overwrought acting. Well above the televisual norm though one has to say. Would I watch it again? Very possibly.

Also on at the moment is yet another Le Carre adaptation, The Little Drummer Girl. I've read the book but enough years ago not to remember how it will end. I'm enjoying this though the Groupie found it too slow to get anywhere. I can see her point but the prevarications are half the point with Le Carre - I'm still not sure about the need for Ricki Tarr in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but I've loved watching the television adaptation whenever they show it. In Drummer Girl I also enjoy the loving recreation of the drabness of the 1970's - every sighting of an Austin Allegro stirs a nostalgia in me. We didn't know any better - which is rather what made the 80's even more fun.    

The Last Cut

I think that's going to be it for this year. I cut the lawn today, more a matter of mulching and collecting the remaining leaves from the lawn than a serious manicure. If I say so myself, it looks pretty good - the patches killed by the summer heat have all now recovered and the whole suits its autumnal deep green.

Mind you the cutting was not without its mild sadness - my precious petrol mower has served me well for two decades and on three lawns, the old scabby affair in Streetly and both the original lawn here in Four Oaks and the beautiful new one that was laid when we had the garden re-done. My Christmas present to myself will be a nice new mower - not a sit-on, that would be de trop, but definitely a powerful petrol self-propelling model. Stripes a-go-go.

By the way I bet you're all salivating at the imminent prospect of the Overgraduate Advent Calendar. It will be all systems go on Saturday morning. This year's subject is ... I'll tell you later in the week. 

The Critical Tide ... And Swimming Against It

I really enjoyed Killing Eve, so on that score I was with the critics. Phew.

However I must confess to struggling with Black Earth Rising. Now in my defence I am a few episodes behind so perhaps it will rescue itself but, whisper it only, I think it's just a tad (and damagingly so) overwrought. Now I can hear the howls of anger from my miniscule readership - of course it's overwrought you idiot - the subject matter is so ghastly (and I accept therefore important) that the series has to shout when other dramas might favour subtlety. I don't agree - the shouting can be alienating. It's all a bit Oliver Stone if you know what I mean.

Mind you, I will keep watching.