DESTRUCTIVE DIRECTORS

The function of a director, surely, is to enable a playwright or composer to speak to an audience. Yet so many directors nowadays seem more concerned to caper about before the customers, to the extent of pushing the basic work into the background.

A recent production of Etherege's 'Man of Mode', for example, was transposed into the 21st. century. The excuse for this is generally that such wrenching makes the play more 'relevant'. If an audience cannot see that a great play, speaking of the human condition, has universal relevance, they are unlikely to get much out of a performance at all. Anyway. the thing was done: the only problem for the creative director is that a great deal of the text refers to things and usages that no longer exist. The solution? Oh, very easy - you rewrite bits of the text that don't fit. Since the essence of the play is that it presents in vivid highlight the scandal and malpractice of that age this means that a whole level of reference is muted or destroyed. Still, it's relevant innit? Though to what is not clear.

Shakespeare texts are generally approached with more awe. Can't muck about with the sacred book. So here the technique is to try to cram everything, ancient and modern, into one box. I still remember with distress a production of 'Henry V' in which the embarrassed-looking actors playing the English army were stuffed into battle-dress complete with swords and breastplates.

Why can't they just present the play as it is? 'Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue' and you're nine-tenths of the way there already.

And it's not only plays. Last week I read of a production of 'Dido and Aeneas' which was performed, for no apparent reason, in a swimming-pool. In the actors plunged, fully clothed, and after a bit of floating about came out again, stripped naked in full view of the customers, and dried themselves off. Since they could hardly be expected to sing in these circumstances the vocal part was done by a duplicate (or in some cases triplicate) cast. What on earth was the relevance of all this?

A review of a much-acclaimed film premiered recently endeavoured to outline the action; but the reviewer, necessarily much younger than I, found it so incomprehensible that she gave up. Why does the theatre-going public put up with this rubbish?

After 'making it relevant' the next slogan in importance is 'attracting the young audience'. To this end ITV is screening a compressed version of 'Mansfield Park' in which an ebullient young actress is totally mis-cast as the diffident heroine, and she has been surrounded by a male chorus of pretty young men who but for the fact that they wear different hats are totally indistinguishable one from another. Who will this attract? And what will they think of the pap that they have been offered? Surely, that if this is Jane Austen, what is all the fuss about?

DAME NELLIE MELBA

I am pleased to report that I have been able successfully to produce Melba Toast. The sort that you can buy in packets in Tesco comes all the way from Holland, bearing its national characteristics of unimaginative solidity with it.
But in the past I have been put off making it myself by recipes which involve toasting an ordinary slice of bread and then cutting it in half, sideways. Have you ever tried this? Far less dangerous and exasperating it is to cut thinnish [5mm] slices, shape them in soldiers or triangles, and toast them on a low shelf at very moderate heat, watching and turning as necessary. This produces a deliciously light and crackly accompaniment - just the thing to eat with duck breast pate, don't y' know.
Precise details available on request, as usual.


Incidentally, unkind people have been known to suggest that the chief characteristic of Dame Nellie's voice was its sheer power, rather than any other quality. Very suitable for singing 'Land of Hope & Glory' in large auditoria; or, of course, really getting the stylus wiggling in the days before electric recording. Oh, yes, children, such times did exist.

Personally, I like the homely touch of the handbag.

KING EDWARD'S - LAST OF THE REAL STAMPS?

Musing the other day on Edwardiana -

Is this a thing that you do very often?

No.

I'm relieved to hear it. You are aware that you are living in the twentyfirst century?

All too bitterly at times.

Good. Carry on then.

Thank you. Musing, as I say, on Edwardiana, I remembered my childhood stamp collection. The desirable thing, of course, was to start with a Penny Black of Victoria - usually a very smudged and battered specimen in order to bring it within a reasonable price range.

But my real favourites were the Edwards. And this might seem odd, since they all bore the same somewhat grim head of the late monarch, and apparently derived their gloomy colours from old William Morris wallpapers - ochre, bistre, sepia, sage, mauve, and faded pinks and blues. Yet I felt instinctively that these were real stamps, produced to frank letters or discharge stamp duties. In this they seemed to have an authority denied to the later kinds of stamp that were even then flooding the market, gaudy in colour and designed to be bought up by undiscriminating collectors rather than used in any legitimate postal field. Foremost among these, I recall, were the stamps of Tannu Tuva, a non-existent sort of place with apparently no exports save stamps in odd shapes; triangular, and diamond, but never a simple portrait rectangle.

British stamps have never gone all the way down this path, though there seem to be quite enough commemoratives to display footballers, Father Christmas, and other celebrities. Who is really interested in collecting these things? They have about as much significance as a supermarket voucher. I suppose that is why many serious (?) collectors grub about among mis-prints, sub-standard colours, tete-beche pairs, and so on. And yet there are rumours that some printers are not above introducing deliberate errors in limited runs, hoping that that they can be slipped on to the market, and will achieve scarcity prices. Even the strange hermetic world of collecting, it seems, is not immune to dumbing down.

CONFOUND THEIR POLITICS!

Looking back over this blog, there seems to be an awful lot of political comment.

Are you politically-minded?

No, I am not. It's just that political events keep pushing their way to the front and shouting.

What are you going to do, then?

I'm giving notice that I shan't be making any more political comments for a long time. In the mean time I shall gaze with silent but fascinated horror over the edge of the snake-pit that is Iraq, while Bush pours more bucket-fulls of young American blood into the chaos. I just wonder how much longer the gullible American electorate are prepared to put up with it.

INSULT TO POOH - WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS SIMPERING THING?

Pooh forms a part of an English tradition dating back to the first half of the last century, which has given joy and comfort to generations of children. The stories are, of course, played out against an implied background of solid middle-class status, which may irritate the sociologically twitchy, but I cannot remember that I ever felt excluded from this unattainable world of nannies, and doctors who came at a call, wearing a bed-side manner and pin-stripe trousers, any more than I felt degraded by reading of the exploits of the toffs at Greyfriars.

The basic reason for this, I think, is that Pooh lived in a real world of his own, very like a child's world, in which life is often happy and contented, but where inexplicable events can sometimes impinge, frightening visions appear, and where one is often aware of incomprehension and of sad mistakes being made. Experience gradually fills in the gaps. All this is mirrored in the constantly shifting images of Pooh in a variety of moods, yet always at heart a well-worn stuffed bear, which appear in the original illustrations by E.H.Shepard. In the illustration above, for example, he is having difficulty working out which of them is in the other's house.

I find it very sad to contemplate the enfeebling of all this by the flabby hands of Disney. This plasticated fantasy-factory markets a sanitised fluffy toy, his features wreathed in an inane grin, who goes through life having lots of fun in a pinky landscape, surrounded by grotesque distortions of Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit's-friends-and-relations, and the rest. The wit of the dual relation of the narrator with the child listening and the adult reading aloud seems to be ignored. And what will a child learn from this pap? Nothing but that life ought to be a round of easy play - a lesson that is very hard to unlearn in the real world. Perhaps that is why some adolescents go about with expressions suggesting resentment at having to exist at all.

WHY WE INVADED IRAQ - VERSION 3

1] To root out weapons of mass destruction - only there weren't any. 2] To establish a bastion of democracy in the Middle East - don't make me laugh. 3] Ah, this sounds more like it - to tie up Iraq's oil production in the hands of western companies. So the truth is creeping out at last.
Blair, of course, took advantage of the powerful leverage he exerts by means of the special relationship to propose a trust to hold Iraq's oil revenues for the benefit of the country. Bush smiled benignly, and put it straight in the bin. Still, it's nice to see the facts shyly appearing.

PROOF, IF PROOF WERE NEEDED.

Why are you looking so smug?

You've seen the Chatham House report? That British foreign policy is in disarray, and that it's time Blair stopped snugging up to American neo-cons, and turned his attention properly to co-operating with Europe? Well, remember that you read it here first.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
I don't want to give the impression that I think that everything about the modern world is incorrect, or inferior, or less enjoyable than life used to be in a mythical golden age.
For example, I can hold in the palm of my hand a small mobile which I take with me on any trip away from home. Should we, say, be coming back from Truro in the dark after a concert and the car engine dies somewhere round the back of Probus, I have only to say 'AA' to my mobile and I am instantly connected to reliable breakdown services.
Marvellous! Perhaps only those who have undergone the experience of crawling about in similar circumstances in the days when one's only hope was a well-disposed passing motorist, or the chance of finding a cottage where they were still up and had a phone, can really appreciate what a comfort this is.

Incidentally, this little beauty is a Moto V220, a model that seems to have been getting a bad press lately. I find it excellent - really mobile; and no, I don't use it only rarely; the weather forecast, for example is very useful. 'The screen is small!' - well of course it is, it's a small phone. Only sad nerds who want to spend a lot of time watching videos on a mobile are likely to be put off by this. And all those extra features - are they what most people really need, or do they feel they have to have them simply because they are there? 'Watch soft porn while you're eating a Big Mac' - one of the last things I should ever want to do.

INTRUSIVE EVENTS
This had seemed a good time to allow myself a few personal reflections of an optimistic kind, but the rowdy noise of world events makes it difficult to resist the temptation to insert a few sour comments on them.
Now that the martial figure of Rumsfeld has disappeared down a stage hatch, leaving behind a strong stench of sewage and cordite,it seemed likely that the calm advice of the Iraq Study Group could help the American administration move towards a more studied approach to the problem of Iran. But no, Bush is unwilling to accept the reality of virtual defeat in Iraq, which is what it is, and bleats about agreeing to only some of the Group's report, which, as they point out, is not a viable approach: it will work as a whole or not at all. He seems to be as unable to listen to sane advice as he was when he went to war.

Are you implying that he should have consulted an obscure old man like you?

I'm merely pointing out that had Bush, by some happy miracle, listened to me and many other obscure people he would not now be facing defeat on all fronts, and Blair would not have to be sent on tour to begin the office work for a rapprochment.

And does Bush read nothing? Does he know nothing of history? Does he hear nothing? Has he not learnt from the past that it is pointless launching a full-scale military assault on a fanatic and tribalised country, that it is always unwise to open a war on two fronts, that all conflict eventually ends in negotation, that.....?


So, where does this leave you, then?

It leaves me in the position of being a citizen of a country whose foreign policy is a disaster, fighting and losing a pointless war for which it has neither the man-power nor sufficient equipment, in pursuit of an end which it is impossible to achieve in this way. The generals who have been saddled with this task point out, publicly or privately, that this is so, and have no better strategic plan than to retreat as soon as this can be done without too much loss of face. What I should be able to feel is warm support for our troops in engaging in a just battle, and this the politicians deny me.

Once again I find myself several cogs out of sync with the myth of the special relationship, and it feels odd.

OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THINGS, AND BATTLES LONG AGO.

So Remembrance Day has come and gone once more, and for a few minutes a majority of people have thought about the bitter misery and destruction that war has brought. For some reason I find it more moving to consider the lot of those who suffered and died in the stinking rat-runs of the the first world war than of any other subsequent conflict, including the second, in which, like so many others, I took part, and from which, unlike so many, so many, I emerged unscathed.
We buy a poppy, we watch the ceremonies at the Cenotaph and throughout the land; or, perhaps, if we keep an eye on the clock, we stand silent, in company or alone. What does this mean? One hopes that it is in part an expression of a sense of the futility of war. Whoever was responsible for the outbreak of the two German wars, and the blame does not lie neatly on one side of the line only, nothing has accrued to the benefit of anyone involved. All that we have left is a sense of the superhuman effort needed to salvage something of the shape of the decencies of human existence from the detritus of the whirlwind that nearly engulfed us all.
The bleak hope is that, in Europe at least, people have at last come to realise that the blind pursuit of honour and glory leads to hollow splendour at the best. Elsewhere in the world men have clearly not arrived at this exhausted conclusion, though women, who carry the burdens and clear up the filth, have realised it for centuries.
Most disturbing of all, perhaps, is the realisation that Americans, whose country has never been invaded, are happy to elect a president and his cronies (none of whom has experienced war at first hand) whose only approach to perceived threats of terrorism is to have launched, in defiance of world opinion, a war that had no legal justification, which was from the start ill-planned and under-resourced, which only increased the imminence of terrorism, which has caused unmeasured destruction and bloodshed, and now leaves its political leaders in shame-faced recognition of the fact that, having got in, they they are left with no honourable way of getting out. Their military leaders, by and large, silently realised this before they began.
And in Britain we are left with the problem of jettisoning a leader who, because of his overweening ambition to appear as a world statesman although he lacks the resources to do so, has led us into appearing to the world as poodle to America, and with a precisely quantifiable increase in our chances of becoming the target of increased Islamic terrorism, which, however one may be revolted by it, is at least a comprehensible reaction to the invasion of Iraq.
It is in these conditions that I find myself gazing with an uneasy eye at the marching troops, the military bands, the royal family dressed up in various service uniforms, the bugles and the wreaths, and all the panoply that has become part of what to me is a recall of a black pit in the history of mankind. 'To Our Glorious Dead' is another version of the same comforting myth. We memorialise the horrors of the past by a display of that very braggadocio which led to their existence in the first place.
As distinguished a figure as Jon Snow refuses to wear a poppy in public. I and many others sympathise with him. This is not to say that we are not prepared to contribute generously to the funds to aid those who still suffer as a reult of accumulated conflict. What we dislike, I think, is the smug conformist pressure to display a symbol which may indicate a care for those in misfortune, but comes also with a clutter of paramilitary overtones which we deplore.

Lilies and poppies at Lytes Carey - Frederick

CREATIVE IMAGINATION

Is this going to be yet another display of ill-temper?

No, this is my normal cheerful self.

All right, then - go ahead.

Thank you. I just wanted to record some creative progress. In the kitchen I have at last perfected my recipe for Stuffed Baby Squid as a starter, which is full of seafood flavours, and has met with general approval. Details are available on request - I'm not secretive.

In the studio, I have just completed my first successful watercolour for some time, of lilies and poppies in the garden of Lytes Carey. A tricky subject, since I use only transparent colours, which excludes white pigment, and the lilies are pure white. I haven't even descended to the level of using masking fluid.

So you see that I am really an amiable soul - it's just other people I sometimes find unbearable. Don't you?

HALLOWEEN
This grisly celebration has come and gone, without any noticeable effects in our area, but I notice that police presence throughout the country, especially in deprived areas, was doubled for the occasion, and that many people, especially the elderly or those living alone in such places, were on record as saying that they feared to go out on this evening, and didn't feel all that secure in their own homes.
There is no doubt that this festival, an important part of the pagan year until it was hi-jacked by Christians, has become merely an excuse for high-pressure salesmanship to youngsters, and violence among the empty-headed. The rot set in with the infiltration into Britain of the rather nasty American habit of trick-or-treat, which while it started as a fairly good-humoured encounter between adults and neighbouring children soon deteriorated into a kind of highway robbery, and mixed with the British enthusiasm for brawling has become in many areas merely an excuse for violence. No sane adolescent should go treating, as they do, with eggs, flour, and iron bars.
As for the commercialisation of the festival, it was summed up for me by a big display advertisement in our local Tesco, proclaiming 'Halloween - Dress up as Frankenstein!' - the accompanying costume for sale consisting of a skeleton suit and skull mask. You'd be hard put to it to find so much mis-information in so small a space elsewhere.
And not one child in a hundred will know the meaning of 'hallow' (or '-een', even).

So what do you mean to do about it?

What do you mean,'do'?

Well, you've had your moan - what can be done to improve things?

I don't know. I'm just grumbling. In any case, no-one is likely to read this post.

You're probably right about that.

MELANCHOLIA?

We drive to the little village of Ruan Lanihorne, where the King's Head specialises in fish and seafood straight from the sea. After a lunch of wild mussels and sea-bass we stroll through the village, and out along a lane which doesn't have a destination marked, because it doesn't have a destination.
It wanders along the side of an estuary filled with reeds, and the late October sun shines in a delicate blue sky. No con-trails, no traffic sounds. A pleasant house is tucked away among trees, in an idyllic situation.
In the distance there is a gleam of open water, and the hill of Lamorran Woods rises straight from the water level, like a rampart.
We return to the car, and drive off, feeling that we have had a privileged experience.



It is only later that I remember that the lane does have a road-sign. It reads Road Liable To Flooding. And if that is true now, how much longer, in an era of global warming, is it going to be possible to stroll as we did? And will the pleasant house be cut off? Very minor considerations, when one thinks, for example, of the impending fate of Bangladesh.

But why does it occur to me? Have I developed a habit of melancholy, 'that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries'? Or are we living in times which give particular cause for such thoughts? I must take care that this blog does not dissolve in a pool of tears.

TO THE READER

The Figure that thou seest below,
It doth the gentle Frederick show,
In which the Camera had a strife
With Nature to out-do the life.
His inner thoughts to catalogue
Read not his Picture but his Blog.

The Author

THEOLOGICAL QUIZ

Bush has assured us that he consulted God before the Iraq invasion, and that God advised him to attack. Now Bush is saying that the important thing is to withdraw. Does this mean
(a) That in the first place God advised him not to attack, but that Bush is so spiritually deaf that he mis-heard his orders, or
(b) That God did advise him to attack, but that the war has gone on so long, and so bloodily, that God has had time to change his mind, or
(c) That Bush has decided not to listen to God any more?

Answers on a postcard, please, addressed to GWB, c/o the back door, White House, USA. And mark your entry VOX POPULI VOX DEI.

INFANT CLICHES
Young neighbours bring us their new-born child to see. She is perfection. What is one to think? Any idea that one has is a cliche that thousands have thought before. None the less one thinks it. The plump fingers, each with a miniature nail. The calm acceptance of the whole world....... These things have to be re-thought every time.

At the back of one's mind the old words recite themselves
Come away, O human child
To the water and the wild,
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

One pushes them away.

INTRODUCTION
Old men have to learn not to say,"I told you so". Nevertheless there are so many events which we opposed then and deplore now that one sometimes longs to point this out, and a blog seems a good way of letting off steam.
How's this for starters? If (in Britain) you convert first-rate polytechnics into second-rate universities is it not inevitable that [a] you will create a class-system of universities in which the top ones will regard the bottom ones as a joke, and [b] that a degree will lose both its cachet in society and its value in in the labour market? Discuss.