The Small Matter Of 2.9 Million Votes

2.9 million votes. We don't mention this often enough - it is the number of votes by which Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote in 2016. There are perfectly good justifications for the vagaries of the Electoral College but you might think that the 2.9 million margin would engender a little humility in the victor. Has it bollocks.

This Is The Age Of The Contracting Man

Big Fat Pig is keeping up with the latest of his exercise fixations. Nothing de trop you understand but a suitable commitment for a Pig of advanced years. I managed to clock up over an hour running on Sunday, helped in no small part by the most welcome and refreshing rainfall - only problem, I can't wear my Oakleys when it's raining - well, of course, I can wear them but then I can't see where the hell I'm going. Just concerned my image will suffer if I'm seen without the shades too often. It's tough being me.

This morning I wheeled out the Precious Bike and skittered my way over the potholes of Four Oaks for upwards of an hour and a half during which, and this is the good bit, I tackled Mont Worcester twice and Col de Hillwoood Common once. Thus is the Pig waistline shrinking a little.

Pig looking svelte

I've also been playing a bit of golf - at Pype Hayes, the municipal course where I played my first ever game more than forty years ago. I'm still crap but getting less so by small degrees and enjoying the company of good rugby men whilst doing so. The thirteenth has been stretched considerably since my youth and is now a very good par five. All in all, jolly good fun - which is rather the object of the exercise, an object I had overlooked in a dark past.

Talking of good guys (which I sort of was), what a joy to see Chris Woakes make a maiden Test hundred at the weekend. Woakes was coached as a youth at Aston Manor CC by no less a luminary than my dear friend ICW. I shall bask in his reflected glory the next time we share a long lunch.

Come on you Bears

Internet serendipity: I have just typed 'pig playing golf' into Google Images as I look to illustrate this blog. One of the first images thrown up is of Donald Trump playing golf. Fake news? I don't think so.

Confected Outrage And Bad Taste

Before one wades into a fit of outrage at what someone has written it is better to read the source material rather than rely upon the selective reporting of that source. Thus have I let the latest Boris Johnson scandal stew for a few days and, unlike plenty of others who have pontificated, I have read again what the talented Mr Johnson has actually written. Here is your chance - Boris on the Burka

Read it? Is it that outrageous? After all the headline point is that banning the burka (as Denmark has done) is not the right thing. This central point should please the most liberal of people. But what have caused a furore are the rather weak jibes about the offending garment causing its wearers to look like letterboxes or bank robbers. These we are told betray 'dog whistle politics' and 'Islamophobia'. Let's unpack those two assertions.

Dog whistle politics first. There is something in this. Johnson is clever and I doubt that this calculating man is in the least surprised at the storm that has broken around him. It is what he wants. He can have his cake and eat it - on any comprehensive view of his article, he is on the side of the secular gods, but before the more general court of public opinion he is talking sense. I find this manipulative behaviour on Johnson's part the most offensive thing about the whole circus.

Islamophobia? No. Islam cannot expect an uncritical public reception any more than can the Catholic church for its dogma on birth control and abortion.

Johnson is calculating and by my reckoning that makes him unlovable, notwithstanding his affected clownishness. There are unpleasant echoes (albeit couched in rather more intellectual language) of Trump in Johnson's machinations. I'm all in favour of a bit of bad taste but it has its place. Whether the centre page of the Telegraph is the right place deserves a rather more nuanced debate than we have witnessed for the last few days.     

The Wisdom Of Others

There is a sense of great abundance in Shakespeare's plays - so much so, indeed, that in every generation there are interpreters who cut and simplify, unable to cope with the wealth of ideas and experiences in the plays, or supposing their audiences incapable of doing so. I believe, on the contrary, that abundance is a great strength of Shakespeare's plays, that they are designed deliberately to expand the mind - to generate a sense of concentrated vigorous life in emotions and ideas, to promote as multiple an awareness as possible of differing facets of a story; and that this aim, already discernible in Shakespeare's earliest work, is at the core of his development, and of his power and distinctiveness as an artist. (Brian Gibbons, Shakespeare and Multiplicity)

This hits the nail so squarely on the head that I won't expand upon it save to say that when I read it I thought I ought to share it with you.

"I believe that the conditions of the twenty years which precede a man's birth set the pattern of his early thinking, and leave a permanent mark upon him" Joel Thursfield quoted in Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare)

Jones goes on to expand upon his theory that Shakespeare is thereby shaped by the middle years of the sixteenth century. For my part I am taken by Thursfield's position and am struck just how true this is of my own generation. Born in the early sixties, the dominant factor in setting the patterns of our thinking was World War II. There is an interesting piece to be written about the exercise of this factor upon the gnarly issue of Brexit. Perhaps another day. 

National Treasures

After enjoying (very much as I had expected to) the opening episode of Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, I was delighted to note that Kermode had co-authored the series with the seriously good but less telegenic Kim Newman. OG hereby nominates both as national treasures. Both are deadly serious about film but wear their learning lightly without ever patronising or over-simplifying. I feel this generosity of spirit in their work rather personally because of my own dispiriting experience when I briefly studied Film on my second degree. Private grief is generally best kept that way, but I have to say with feeling that the wretched man who taught me left me depressed and belittled. I'm well over it by now but the cloud over my memories of an otherwise happy time remains. My problem? Very possibly but education doesn't have to be that way.

The Kermode/Newmwn series can be found via Secrets of Cinema

A Long Weekend

My lawn here is a motley of little green and rather more burnt straw and still no sign of meaningful rain. All of which made for a contrast in Anglesey where it rained (not torrentially but with feeling) last Friday while we waited in for the man who was measuring for some new blinds. As with so much else on the island we were taken aback by the relative cheapness of the service - a particular contrast with the London outposts of our property empire, that is to say the flats belonging to Daughters One and Two.

DN2 trained it up to Anglesey to join us for weekend and a jolly nice time was had by all in pleasant temperatures. An appetite-stimulating walk on the beach at Newborough was followed by an appetite-satisfying dinner at the Tavern on the Bay at Red Wharf Bay. Black pudding starter, fish stew and cheese board for the Big Fat Pig. Sirloin steak for the Groupie, swordfish for DN2. All highly commendable and washed down with Chablis. Good times.

There are plenty of worse places to eat

DN2 accompanied us back to home and left early for London this morning. We had come back from the island early enough for one of the Pig's signature barbecues. Barbecue is possibly my only marketable life skill.

Molinari celebrates landing Pig's online bet

Sorry I didn't share my hot tip for the Open golf. Pig has remotely trousered his winnings on the phlegmatic Signor Molinari. Just occasionally I get these things right.   

Football's Gone Away

It was all rather lovely whilst it lasted but now it's official - we're not going to win the World Cup. Statistically speaking it must be highly unlikely that we will reach another semi-final in my lifetime. Oh well, back to the day job - oh yes that's right I haven't got one - lazy Pig.

The positives: Southgate has the team playing a possession based game, or rather he did have until the second half of the Croatia match. All credit to the Croats who deployed a high pressing game and eventually condemned England to having Pickford lump long balls up the pitch. Harry Kane had a poor match - had he taken one of those chances when we were still 1-0 up you have to doubt that Croatia could have recovered. Another positive - so far as one can tell our hooligans never made it to Russia or if they did they decided (wisely) that Putin's police were best not provoked. Kieran Trippier and Harry Maguire also huge positives. Biggest of the lot, Gareth Southgate himself - a decent bloke not (yet) brought to his knees by the job. So now attention can turn quite properly to the best sporting event north of Cheltenham - the Open golf next week.

Big Fat Pig has lost a few pounds and is still managing to get some exercise notwithstanding the oppressive weather (my poor old lawn). Yesterday he did an hour on the Precious Bike including two unlikely ascents of Mont Worcester. He is girding his loins in readiness for attempts on the Col de Hillwood Common and, most daunting of all, Mont Hillwood. This morning he ran for over four miles. He's coming home, he's coming home, Fat Pig's coming home - try it, this actually fits the tune.

So what do you do in the immediate aftermath of the last semi-final you expect to live to see your country grace? Easy you slosh yourself a glass of sauvignon blanc (ripe and fruity) and watch an episode of the brilliantly bonkers Toast of London. And yes I can hear you Clem Fandango.