To be strictly accurate, Peter and I got it right about Southgate's sense of caution. The starting line-up was what we predicted and, sort of, dreaded. But on the night it was the right way to go.
Lovely to see Sterling get on the scoresheet yet again. Wonder how those tabloid journalists who have given him such a hard time in the past feel about this? Doubt that they've got the self-awareness to bother about what they feel (or why they feel it.)
Sort of regretting not having access to the Euro 2020 games after last night's two free-scoring games. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd be up to the stress of watching England vs Germany live tonight.
Nattering over the possible outcomes over a cuppa in the SAC Peter and I agreed that on paper we should go through. But we also had a feeling that Southgate would opt for two defensive midfielders and a surfeit of caution. Not sure that will work against the Germans. We're just hoping that we'll be proved very, very wrong.
Got back to the old routine today and generally the day went well, but around about 10.00 in the morning I experienced one of those moments when my little world seemed particularly shaky. Fortunately it was just a moment but it was a striking reminder of my fragility.
What happened was this. I'd just completed a round of examination invigilation and was on my way back to the staffroom with a colleague with whom I needed to discuss something. The discussion itself was fine, but I became aware in its course of my voice becoming increasingly croaky. By the time we wound things up I was barely able to speak, but needed a quick word with someone else, who commented on just how sore my throat sounded. The really worrying thing was that some twenty or so years back I completely lost my voice several times when teaching for periods of a couple of days and I had a strong sense that the same thing was about to happen again. I was trying to figure out a way to cope with the week's work if this were to happen as I went to my desk and it was very difficult indeed to reach any workable conclusions.
My next task was checking the numerous emails I'd received whilst invigilating. One or two took a bit of sorting out, as expected, but the last one managed to intensely worry me as I completely misread it. There was a perfectly innocent reference in it to an administrative procedure which needed to be done but for some reason I thought it was talking about a similar procedure I should have carried out earlier in the year but had somehow completely forgotten about. Again I found my brain racing trying to figure out what to do about this with a very distinct sense of panic.
Some fifteen minutes later I figured out that I had carried out the procedure in question, back in early April, but in my dotage had completely forgotten all the details. The email was actually referring, quite sensibly, to something that needed to be done as a follow-up to an exam tomorrow, which was easy to arrange. And then, coincidentally, I managed a conversation some five minutes later and found a stronger version of my voice under all the croaking.
So that was it: two-pronged panic over and all was well. It's not much of a story, is it? All a bit pathetic. But the relief was very real and very welcome and I'm happy to think about it. Some colleagues seem to think of me as a reasonably calm sort of chap. If only they knew...
Got to the gym in the early afternoon for the first time in a couple of months. Struggled. Started to feel more tired than usual after 25 minutes and by 35 minutes was seriously considering stopping. I assume I had badly misjudged my pace in the initial stages when things didn't feel so bad and had gone far too quickly in the excitement, I suppose, of being back on the machine. I'm further guessing that I set the resistance I was peddling against too high - although nowhere near the highest possible.
For the final 25 minutes it was a matter of slowing down so I didn't feel sweatily like throwing up and somehow keeping peddling, which I managed to do to get the full hour in. I was mildly pleased with myself for completing what I'd intended but also mildly annoyed at being so out of condition and misjudging my efforts so badly. I suppose the fact that I've recently managed some longish walks without difficulty lulled me into a false sense of security.
Oddly enough, psychologically it helped that Noi and I had been out for an excellent dinner the previous evening. This was a delayed birthday treat - and treat it was at a very nice place called Royz et Vous out at Telok Ayer Street, opposite the Chinese temple there. I mention the name as the place was very quiet for a Saturday night, I suppose business not having picked up since the recent closure, and they deserve plentiful custom given the quality of food and service provided. Anyway, thoughts of just how good the mushroom soup and roast duck had been spurred me on, convincing me that I would have the energy to finish my stint on the machine.
Am now feeling tired, but quite nicely so, which is a good sign, I suppose. In fact, we've just come back from doing some weekend shopping - which is an indication that I did have something left in the old batteries despite what my body was telling me around quarter past two.
I've been watching a bit more telly than I'm normally used to this last week or so. Noi was keen to view a few more of the good murders offered by the BBC, after we finished the White House Farm episodes, and so we gobbled up The Pembrokeshire Murders over a couple of evenings and then went on to the first series of Killing Eve. We'd watched the first episode a few weeks ago and been impressed but hadn't found the time to follow up. Now we're five episodes in and completely gripped.
Of course, it's utter tosh (unlike the real life murders watched earlier which had impressive weight) but it's excellent tosh and has had the Missus screaming in excitement a couple of times already. Must be a good thing!
Found myself gob-struck and ferociously excited late last night when I realised that that nice Mr Fripp has arranged for the whole of King Crimson Live in Mexico City, July 2017 to be accessible from YouTube. I mean, Blimey!
Now listening to a stunning Fracture, so no time to write.
We took the car this afternoon to a Vicom Centre for one of those statutory checks ahead of renewing the road tax and getting it insured for another year. Happily it passed the test in a suitably straightforward manner and we were soon off to the Aiman Café some way down the road to enjoy some of our favourite comestibles. (They do a little sardine puff which really does the business, and then some.) Sitting there, basking in the late-afternoon sun, with a potential problem having proved supremely unproblematic, it struck me that I felt as far from melancholy as a man can reasonably get.
But I was also half-aware that it was only this morning I came across this plangent reminder in Robert Burton's magnum opus on those prone to melancholy: Now go and brag of thy present happiness, whosoever thou art, brag of thy temperature, of thy good parts, insult, triumph, and boast; thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayest be dejected, how many several ways, by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent, an ague, etc.; how many sudden accidents may procure thy ruin, what a small tenure of happiness thou hast in this life, how weak and silly a creature thou art. Now RB may be a miserable soul, but he's right, of course.
But in a way an awareness of our weakness and silliness adds to the piquant delight of those moments when everything seems so well, no?
Now I come to think about it, having re-shelved his novel, the most memorable aspect of Stoker's writing in Dracula for this reader was the amount of non-standard dialect he attempts to render. This begins with the thick Yorkshire dialect of an old man in Whitby, but we get something similar from lower-class characters in London as well. It's intensely patronising in its way, but also seems to reflect a genuine enjoyment of the vigour of their language. It struck me as theatrical, as though Stoker is thinking of these characters entertaining us on stage, and I couldn't help but think of Stoker's own experience of the theatre in relation to this.
In fact, there's something very theatrical about much of the novel and this explains, I think, one of its obvious technical flaws. The various personal narratives that make up the text in something close to epistolary fashion work well in terms of providing different perspectives on the action but never convince for one moment in terms of suggesting genuinely differentiated voices, and the idea that the writers somehow manage to capture verbatim the extended speeches of other characters, like the old chap in Whitby, is risible. But if we read the novel as something close to a theatrical script with the speeches as enjoyable set pieces then there's a kind of logic to which we are prepared to surrender just to enter the world of the novel.
The extended speech of the maniac Renfield, when he attempts to convince the others of his regained sanity, is the best example of this. It manages to be sinister, pathetic and funny all at the same time, and it's easy to imagine a fine actor (like Irving, whom Stoker served as dresser) making this work wonderfully on stage. Similarly, imagining Van Helsing as a theatrical performance rather than a character makes him a good deal easier to put up with.
I wonder if this the fundamental reason that Dracula has served so well as an ur-text for so much vampire fiction. Film-makers particularly seem to have drawn from all that is stage-worthy in the novel, but the dark power of the Un-Dead is just a thrilling add-on, not central to the work in any sincerely disturbing manner. It's all surface, highly entertaining in its way, but nothing to keep one awake or colour one's dreams.
Finished reading Bram Stoker's Dracula this morning. I realised the other week that I've had a copy of it tucked away on my shelves for a long time - in a Pelican paperback, intended for younger readers, though unabridged. I'm not someone who can readily be accused of what the Japanese term tsundoku, the hoarding of unread books, since pretty much every book I own has been read cover to cover, or very heavily perused, assuming it isn't something intended for reference purposes. But there are one or two exceptions that feature on a list I've been steadily reducing in number over the last four years or so. Strangely the copy of Dracula didn't get to feature on the list, and I'm not sure why. Possibly I regarded it as somehow beneath my dignity to include something intended for kids, but this makes little sense since the novel itself isn't children's literature and almost qualifies as a 'classic'.
Anyway, I've now read Stoker's novel and I don't think it can be meaningfully seen as a work of distinct importance regardless of how vampire stories have come to comprise a thriving genre of their own. That isn't to say it's a poor novel - it has enough craft about it to be seen as a sturdy, workmanlike piece. But it lacks the mythic power of Frankenstein, which is a surprise given the inherent power of the vampire archetype. Yes, it exploits that power to some effect, but it's easy to imagine this being done better. That explains, I think, why movies with their roots in Stoker's novel invariably make major structural alterations to the storyline.
The thing that irritated throughout my reading was the wearisome insistence of each narrator on the virtues of their various friends and loved ones. I suppose this can be related in potentially interesting ways to the transgressive aspects of the text: I'm thinking here of the undercurrent of sexuality in the direct encounters of Jonathan, Mina and Lucy with the Un-Dead. These are extremely brief in terms of actual descriptive text devoted to them (essentially one or two paragraphs for each) but the implications in terms of the moral schema of the novel are fascinating. I sense the anxieties generated are reflected in the growing and vaguely off-putting religiosity of the text. Unfortunately, though, Stoker fails to handle those anxieties with any subtlety and the relentlessly drab equivalent of current day virtue-signalling gets more than a bit much.
Noi and I spent the morning happily wandering around the Botanic Gardens. After a few days of rain we had perfect weather for meandering without purpose and took full advantage. If you check on the website for the location it seems there a number of things you can do there, but we successfully avoided doing anything and did it very well.
And we managed to get the cuppa we were looking forward to in the afternoon at our favourite branch of Ya Kun. Sadly the girl we're used to seeing there, an expert at handling the queues that have featured since the seating was cut down due to the regulations relating to the pandemic, has gone back to Myanmar according to the owner. Noi was chatting with him as she was being served and it seems the authorities weren't prepared to renew the young lady's work pass (this after six years here, as an obviously excellent worker) since the concern is with ensuring jobs are available for locals in these trying times. We're guessing she would have been unhappy to leave. Coming across an article relating to the covid outbreak in her nation as we were sitting slurping added to our helpless sense of concern.
It's salutary to be reminded that we're very much the exceptions in remaining relatively untroubled by the events of the last year or so. When we were chatting to our guests on Saturday I mentioned that I couldn't immediately think of anyone personally who'd been badly hit over the last few months and wondered if it were the same for them. It wasn't. They were able to supply a disconcertingly long list of those they knew in deep trouble.
