Our Dumb Chums

They also serve, who only stand and wait.

Matters Financial

I've had to spend quite a bit of time over the last couple of days sorting through documents, talking on the phone and writing letters and e-mails to deal with a bit of a mess regarding various accounts, policies and payments that have grown up around me over the years. I've hated every minute of it which explains in part why I could never have been a banker. That and the fact that I hate numbers. It also explains why I'll never have any real money - I'm talking golden taps in the bathroom here.

Mind you, I'm quite happy about that. I've never found golden taps all that useful. At least, having never actually experienced them, I can't imagine how they could be.

And I've still got to do my tax return for the year. Oh joy.

Just Wishing

Levon Helm, Lauro Nyro, Hank Williams, the Last Shadow Puppets, Brass Monkey, Bellowhead, Daniel Lanois, Van der Graff Generator - especially the new album, Brahms - especially the 4 symphonies, Holst, the Unthanks, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell.

Question: What do they all have in common - other than the music? Answer: They are all on the little post-it wish-list that resides in the back of my diary. Once they're on they only get off once I've bought some of their stuff or all of their stuff. (Which considering the considerable back catalogues in certain cases would involve a lot of the green stuff and a lot of storage space - assuming I don't join the interesting world of the down-loaders.)

Now how am I going to square this with my recent resolution not to buy too much of the listenables at this time? And this is not to mention a very tasty sounding list residing in my e-mail from nephew Sam who knows his music. Oh the dilemma!!

The Crimson Tide

The fan-boy within awoke with a vengeance this morning as I discovered plans to release a new Crimson album - well not quite. The Frippster appears to classify this as a King Crimson Projekct, but since I've always regarded the Projekcts as ninety percent the real thing that does little to diminish the excitement over what's in store on the part of this audient.

Stoking up the excitement is the personnel for this one. The rhythm section comprises Tony Levin and Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree) so no big surprises there - except that I've never actually heard the drummer play with Crimson, though I know he toured with the last line up. But then Jakko from the 21st Century Schizoid Band is on board - presumably in Adrian Belew mode - and, gasp, gasp, gasp: the mighty Mel Collins!!! Yes, we're back with saxes and that trusty flute. I didn't quite realise just how much I'd missed this aspect of Crimso until listening to the 21st Century Schizoid Band live (also with Ian McDonald, of course) and finding myself wondering why flutes in particular don't seem to feature in bands anymore.

I made the discovery over at those fine people from Burning Shed and I assume I'll be ordering from them, which will be a dangerous first for me. They've got so much utterly funky stuff that once I've started I may not be able to stop. Dangerous but necessary - a bit like life, really.

Man At Work

Spent the day at work having a thoroughly good time. How so? you may well ask. And I answer: when you're doing a bit of drama just for the sake of the drama, and doing it with people who are a pleasure to work with, it isn't work any more. If only every day at work were like this; as it is I'll settle for one a year. And it helps to spend time doing something that actually feels like teaching.

Parroting On

Difficult as it may be to believe, I'm still moving on with Anna Karenina - and enjoying every paragraph. Just reached the bit where Anna & Vronsky living abroad, in sin, as they say, meet the artist chap who paints her. Some of the greatest pages on the nature of art ever written, and I'd completely forgot they were in there. What a blessing it is to have such a lousy memory - now I can enjoy those sections all over again.

The reason reading the greatest novel ever written (well, maybe, maybe not: what about Ulysses?) is taking me so long this time round (apart from the facts I just don't want to rush, and I'm incredibly busy) is that I keep jumping off into other things. Last week I reread Flaubert's Parrot, partly because I'll be teaching La Bovary soon, and partly because it's just so good and, guess what? Yes, it was even better second time round. Why didn't it win the Booker? (Can't remember what did that year, but it must have been something outstanding.) Mind you, perhaps the jury decided it wasn't really a novel - more a sort of critical thesis on steroids. And with heart. Which means it can't really be a critical thesis at all. Hah.

Barnes and Flaubert on literary critics are both highly entertaining, by the way.

Awakening

Elizabeth Taylor playing Rebecca in Ivanhoe and me watching her, aged around ten, on the big screen one Saturday afternoon at the Odeon in Ashton (I think.). That was before she turned into an amiably dotty old lady with too much money and too many health problems (and husbands). That experience sparked a bit of a change in the young me, I reckon, one rather too private to go into too much detail about in this public Place.

So it goes. Rest in peace.

Beyond Belief

Got in this evening to find the film Conspiracy showing, the one with Richard Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth and other stellar actors that gives a chilling account of the meeting that led the way to the grotesque Final Solution. I've seen it a couple of times before but just couldn't stop watching, in a sort of hypnotised horror, yet again. I'd been talking this morning, not terribly coherently I'm afraid, in a lecture about the dangers of language. Should just have showed the movie instead.

More Than A Little Wonderful

Finished Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder the other day. A bit sorry to get to the end, but very happy to have made the acquaintance of the likes of Joseph Banks, William Herschel and Humphry Davy at the hands of such a sympathetic and understanding guide. Davy particularly came across as a startlingly diverse, fascinating character. The risks he ran inhaling various noxious substances in a form of daring empiricism were extraordinary, and the segment on the development of his safety lamp for miners made me want to stand and cheer. The story would make a great film.

Holmes suggests at the end of the book that his biographical approach to the great figures of science would make a good way to teach Science in schools and I'm inclined to agree. It would also be more than a little useful in Literature lessons. I felt my understanding of what was firing the English Romantic poets deepening with each chapter. And Davy was quite a talented poet in his own right, by the way.

Identification

Read Anouilh's Antigone yesterday. First saw the play at university in an amateur production. Spent much of the time then surprised at just how bad the production was and getting increasingly bored. But strangely found I was able to remember a considerable amount of specific detail from it when my memory was jogged by the actual text.

When I first saw it I quite fancied playing the Chorus - great opening speech and then you can relax with a cup of tea backstage for most of the evening. Now I reckon I'd have to play the tyrant Creon since, as far as I can make out, he has all the best arguments and easily the best exit. Identifying so wholeheartedly with the villain of the piece is a bit troubling though.

I notice that neither Creon nor the Chorus gets to die. But then all the deaths are off stage so that doesn't count as a motivating, or de-motivating, factor.