Hello everyone.

It's Rob's birthday.

I always feel I am a little bit flattered by the widely quoted idea that one should judge someone by the quality of their friends. Assuming, for the moment, that it might be roughly true however, one could extend the hypothesis by suggesting that those friends who are constant despite great distance are the best of all to judge by. I do not see Rob for the vast majority of each year, though modern technology has been responsible not only for our own introduction but for the consolidation of our friendship. On the occasions where we do meet, we seem to be able to pick up a deep and life-affirming friendship with no breath. It is marvellous.

There is no need for a New York cosmopolitan to keep up with me. The fact that he does makes him a true friend and an honour (with a 'u') to know.

Many happy returns of the day.

TCH

I've nearly missed Scroll's birthday, although considering Scroll!time is Toronto time, I'm going to let myself off.

Scroll remains one of the kindest people I have ever met, is a tremendous organiser, (see: The Toronto Meet), a fantastic roommate, a very fair and patient arbiter between Rob and me in our sillier and angrier of moods (NB: I have not eaten a single dog since Toronto ;-) ), and tremendous in every other way. I'm lucky to know her: doubly so since the meeting was in a place as intangible and new as cyberspace.

Have a wonderful evening, and many happy returns of the day!

TCH

Hello everyone and Happy New Year.

No, I haven't posted in weeks, and yes, I am a bad man. Yes, I am crawling back for the irresistible ode to nostalgia that is a year end entry, and no, I don't expect you to indulge me. But for those who fancy it, let's start by rolling through the ten films I enjoyed most this year.

I should remind you that living in Britain I see even more films nominated for 200x in 200x+1 than an American cinemagoer who is perplexed that they sneak a film out to one screen in New York on New Year's eve for conclusion. Since this list is essentially personal in every other way, I see no reason to tidy it up for calendar reasons. So you may notice some films you'd thought were 2006's. I also miss out on lateish opening films like 'I'm not there', the Dylan-inspired Todd Haynes film which I'm very much looking forward to catching this weekend, and which KdS mentioned in his review.

Also, this year I haven't seen quite a lot of films I think I would have liked, and even more that a real buff 'should' watch for context, so I don't feel the list gives anything other than a scattershot list of things that might interest someone, along with a quick stab at why. Quite a lot of the films, by the standards of my generally rather American-leaning yearly litanies, have a European bent this year, which is a nice change. I shall comment on a few films which didn't make the cut cursorily at the end.

So then, in customary reverse order:

10 The Golden Compass

I start with two of the years bustiest blockbusters. The Golden Compass is a confusing film to put in here, particularly in a year where I've seen a record 21 films in the cinema and therefore have precious little reason to include films sheerly for having seen them. It is, I think, to be absolutely fair, a very good film which is also a very misguided adaptation. Inevitably perhaps. I was discussing the paradox of the making of the film with a really good friend of mine: that only an indie company could really capture the spirit of the book and not be censored, but that only a really big company could convincingly pull off the animation or get the number of screens required. The film is a very good adventure story; I have to say that Northern Lights appealed to me partly for its simple narrative dazzle, a way in which it outstrips its two successors. Northern Lights is gently and subversively philosophical in a way that The Amber Spyglass cannot, by its nature, be. And I was fond of that. For this reason, I think the story holds up rather well stripped of any but the most peripheral ('Gracious God') or veiled ('Against t/T he a/A uthority' - 'It's about free will') ideas about religion and theology. That said, one of the most intriguing things to see is how they can possibly make the two sequels having neither allowed the first one to climax as the book does nor having set up the deeply revolutionary undertones in the novel. When Asriel tells a curious Lyra 'Dust is none of your business!', the audience is not yet aware quite how literally Weitz (quite possibly strongly leashed in) follows the order to the audience. I await the bowdlerisation of the second and third parts with interest, believing them to be doomed to be much lesser films than the first: a poor adaptation but good fun with bears, witches, gyptians, a gorgeous Nicole Kidman and that most beautiful panorama of alternative London.

9 Harry Potter V

A taut psychological thriller, the first hour of this film is more or less perfect. Nothing is allowed to settle or get complacent, bits which are unimportant or work in a rambling novelistic setting better are cut and the actors all remember to act rather than remind us that they're famous. Umbridge is absolutely tremendous, Dumbledore's Army genuinely moving, and the two styles of teaching between Harry and Umbridge perfectly representative of an oppressive regime and a Vichy-light rebellion. Eventually, again, the film isn't the book, and whereas 'Goblet of Fire' benefits from Newell's butchering of its tedious first half, I maintain that the vast 'Phoenix' needs all those pages to become the truly superb book it is, and therefore that any adaptation was bound to failure. That said, the new writer Rosenberg is a tremendous replacement for Steve Kloves and I think David Yates does almost as well as he could possibly have done with the source material. I look forward to his take on the notably shorter and more personal 'Half-Blood Prince', which could well be a fine film to rival the superb 'Prisoner of Azkaban'.
One semi-serious gripe: Michael Gambon does a good job of ruining everyone's favourite character in each film, but he hits a new and farcial low in his line reading in this one. If you haven't noticed, listen to the way he says 'Professor Grubbly-Plan will be taking care of Magical Creatures', rather than 'taking Care of Magical Creatures', and realise how little he understands or cares about half the world's favourite obsession. It's peculiar, because he is routinely a superb actor, (I love him in Poliakoff adaptations), but here he doesn't believe acting is necessary and lazes.

8 Ratatouille

The first film on the list to make me cry as the bone-dry critic is reminded of his joyful upbringing in rustic France and the snow queen's heart melts. These Brad Bird films (for example, The Incredibles), are sometimes curates' eggs for me, and this one didn't quite manage to balance its plotlines, teetering like waiters on roller-skates. But its heart was there and the friendship between the two main characters palpable. And more importantly, the point about delighting in high art done by anyone who has talent in any medium, most of all the one least associate with your apparent species of character, is one to take home.

7 Death Proof

Thusfar I could watch all these with Paul. And no further. Death Proof is a bizarre film, torn out of the huge double-feature experiment 'Grindhouse' as released in America and repackaged on its own right for the Tarantinophiles. Lots of wittertainment by the critics about how self-indulgent it is, but I still find Tarantino's sensibility rather exciting: his camera still shows me a romanticised America I still half believes exists over there after three visits. Texas looks stunning here, and the stylised characters are tremendous. I don't think you can see the second set of girls as any more morally righteous than the first, which defeats any arguments about it being a ill-conceived Vengeance is Necessary film. It's more complicated and unentanglable than that. But it's nice to be a part of the women's conversations, even as a mute.

6 Inland Empire

The only film in the top ten I really couldn't claim to have enjoyed much. To be honest, I almost walked out after fifty minutes because I was finding this so very disturbing, and including Ellen Page's terrifying castration film 'Hard Candy' last year, it is still the most unsettling experience I've ever had inside a cinema. It is not a film for people who wanted to tidy up Mulholland Dr round the edges- this film is much less linear and doesn't have an answer to the puzzle hidden miragely just under the surface. What is so scary is how it appears that the fractured narrative corresponds to the fractured mind of someone who cannot get her frame of reality quite sorted. Sometimes you think she might be a life-sized rabbit, sometimes a thespian and sometimes a prostitute. In its most terrifying moments, the film raises the prospect, (never , with great strength, confirmed), that the whole thing is a nightmare delirium of an abused woman. After three hours, it will infuriate or induce a visceral negative reaction in a lot of people, and started to in me. But Lynch remains one of the great visionaries and originals of cinema, and to feel as uncomfortable as I did, even if it wasn't pleasant, was a testament to the strength of his connection to me through his abstractions.

5 Atonement

I'm now done with films without European resonances: from here on in we're British all the way after a quick veneration of the Gods Tarantino and Lynch. And Atonement has the same problem as entries 10 and 9: it's a very, very good book so that it's more or less impossible to adapt without losing the essence of the book. Joe Wright does a tremendous job directing a subtly differently emphasised story here, and I feel he does very well. The semi-vision scene, (so successfully hyperreal because it is in fact only Bryony's made-up version of Dunkirk, not the real thing, and yet imbued with the real pathos of a good writer), where the music swells up and into that paragon of sad, English hymns 'O Lord and father of mankind', and where the camera travels on and on through the carnage hoping for redemption, is a great piece of cinema in its own right and, in its originality, shows the braveness of the director. He knows he has one of the great novels of this millennium and he doesn't mind putting in his own little trademark whilst losing some other sections.

What it lost was the brightness of its explicit meta, which is totally impossible in film without making Bryony a filmmaker, and hence making the cuntry house section absurd. Vanessa Redgrave does a fine job, though, just as in Venus where she is gorgeous, trying to reconcile us to this third, finally real, Bryony. The flashbacks from a flash of interception and espyal by Bryony to the longer, languourouser and more dull scenes experienced by the young adults is also a superb filmic device to show a difference in perception of the same acts. All in all a fine film and as good a failure of an adaptation that could have been made whilst remaining faithful.

4 Hot Fuzz

What I like about this even more than 'Shaun of the Dead' which was a tremendous film in its own right, and as much as the terrific 'Spaced', is that here PC Angel is such a dreadfully unlikable character. He is such a pedant that the audience's affection to him is not such a gimme as with gormless Shaun. The small-town atmospheres, while usually much more harmless than implied by the film, are plausibly exaggerated, and the lovely cineliterate references and delight in playing with language remain. Thoughtful whilst still, as Pegg's films will hopefully always be, an intelligent romp.

3 Eastern Promises

Mr Cronenberg, a pleasure again. 'A History of Violence' amazed me for being a film which went up to The Godfather, stood up to its own height and, elegantly, blew a raspberry in its face. Such a change from so many films that cower in its endless, Brando-filled shadow. Here the masterly director takes on the confusing cosmopolitan mulch of London and the idea of honour inherent in Russian criminal life to tease out ideas about love, motherhood, (particularly how motherhood can overlap with childhood), prejudice, and, inevitably, sex and violence. The last scene, a companion piece to the equally ambiguous one at the end of the Western type Promises, elevates it to stand beside his previous film. Viggo Mortensen continues his assault on immortality.

2 Paris, je t’aime

My number two films in the year often seem to be a bit leftfield, which is not intentional. This year a film which made me deeply happy as a patchwork examination of how a city works. In this case, Paris, although the points it made transfer easily to other huge, swaggering cities like London or New York. In each of the twenty arrondissements a director takes a few actors and tells a five minute tale. The tales form a ridiculously clashing montage that is only acceptable because it so brilliantly depicts all the brash self-contradiction of city life. Some of the sections are truly beautiful, some daft, and one or two maddening- (noone Really likes mime, I'm afraid). Cuaron does a lovely one-shotter with a very clever punchline, although Natalie Portman's story was the clincher for me. The whole thing, sitting with olives and wine, made me feel very glad to be alive and living in a city, with holidays in which to go to more.

1 Notes on a Scandal

The only word is outstanding. This is truly outstanding cinema. I'd never really believed Bill Nighy could act much. Here, in a performance completely overrun by his two female co-stars, he is absolutely fantastic. Except that Cate Blanchett, prone to wiping leading men off the screen without a second glance in films like Babel, is there, the indisputable queen of the world. And then, rising even higher, in her first really interesting screen role in a long time, comes Dame Judi in a role so creepy and unpleasant and pathetic and strong and unctuous and lonely that it's impossible to know what to think. No punches are pulled: the line mocking the way the family interact with their disabled son, the spiteful, impossible line, remains. The incidents which occur are completely secondary to the relationships between the grown up characters and their dependencies. And the whole thing is exactly why cinema is worthwhile to see. Grown up, revelatory, uncomfortable, mind-expanding, spirit-uplifting, (in that oddly exultant way that one gets from seeing someone accurately capture even a feeling or character which is unpleasant), and finally exhilarating. The best film of last year.

For reference, the others of the year, from 11 on down:

11 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford- highly lauded and derided here in equal measure, it was eventually too slow for me, though I appreciated the artistry and the consideration of fame won through dubious exploits, (Big Brother).

12 Babel- a messy mangle done by a very talented genius, but not his best.

13 Venus- confusing, (because confused) young woman, old man drama, but O'Toole and Redgrave are both distractingly beautiful and rather lovely together.

14 Sleuth- thoughtful but anachronistic and really not needing to be remade by this point.

15 The Simpsons Movie- like a long Simpsons episode, which could be taken either way. I mean it as a compliment in that it's fun, and an insult in that it doesn't make itself Event Cinema, thereby failing to justify its own existence.

16 Michael Clayton- A film which I admire without really liking: I can see the bravery and heroism and I certainly admire the rugged, unshaven optimism, but I still found the first half hour tiresome.

17- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End- I found the first one well-nigh unwatchable and avoided the second, so in the end the third was consolatory: possibly most interesting because I could play the game of working out what must have happened in the middle third.

18- The Illusionist. A dull version of The Prestige that doesn't learn the lesson of the latter film- that a trick, as much as a piece of art, needs layers. The trick itself is clever but empty, and reveals itself in a mind-bending two minutes of great cinema at the end which would be more fun if the audience hadn't spent the previous 90 falling asleep. Beautifully shot though.

19- The Pursuit of Happyness- An film about how if you try hard in trying circumstance for long enough you might succeed. Very heavy weather.

20- Shrek III. I watched this after flying from Birmingham to New York and then having the pleasure of Rob's company for lunch for the first time in a long while, so it's not surprising it became a chance for some shuteye very quickly. I felt this franchise had run out after the first film, if I'm being brutal.

21- Spiderman III. A year when Spiderman III is the worst film you see in the cinema is by no means a bad year. This was a shame because it had tweventy zillion plot lines and no real central character (which is an odd thing to say about a superhero film). The first film is great which makes this even more of a disappointment than Shrek, but it wouldn't get into the bottom five of most years' film lists. I think it may be more that I've started to become discerning than that it's been a good year though.

Thanks for reading. Happy 2008. I'll be back at the weekend with something a bit more personal than last year. Rest assured it ended with some kissing and other excitingness in Lincolnshire at the last minute, and there is plenty to tell.

TCH

Happy birthday KdS- golly it's been a while: can I maybe suggest a meet in London in the boring January time? Since Narmada's now back in London the onus is back on me to sort this stuff out!

I hope you have a wonderful day and many happy returns.

TCH

Well, the disguise, not so much. The meme, yes.

...list ten things that have recently made you happy, then tag ten people to do the same.

This is one of Rob's.

Pleasingly, I've just had four days of lovely, and mostly simple and innocent, pleasures, and so can do this without digging too much into the deeper parts of my psyche...

1. Jonathan Coe's 'The Rain Before It Falls'. Coe started off as a real mess of young writer, and is steadily improving. There are still a couple of things in here which seem a bit insincere and gauche, (the anecdote that leads to the novel's title seems implausible, and a couple of the plot twists are needlessly contrived), but the vast majority of this book, and all of the things which really matter, are excellent. There is a good taut plot, a clever command of narrative timeframes, several characters who are likable and several more who are interesting and sad and deep and a clever, conceit structure which doesn't impinge on the natural sweep of the story. This, as well as deeply enjoyable in its own right, is the novel which makes me think Coe will write a really super one soon. Given I've trudged through the fun but silly and vacuous, this is rather lovely.

2. Reading said book outside a deli in Exeter in no rush to be anywhere, with the sun shining in a perfect autumnal way, drinking tea and eating cake.

3. Meeting up with a friend of mine who is at Exeter university doing English literature. She is one of those people, (at least a couple on my friends list are similar in having this characteristic) who is inspiring by their simple presence and the way they live their life, quite apart from anything to do with her specific friendship with me. She lives with such energy and excitement and enthusiasm, that it's difficult not to be a bit swept up in it all. Interpret this as you will...;-)

4. Playing sport with my little brother. We managed to play a bit of cricket, but also played about half an hour of football. It amazed me how unfit I was to start with, but I was glad to be able to run through a period about ten minutes in where I thought my lungs were about to explode and still just about provide adequate competition for him. Given he's thirteen in a couple of weeks, I'm quite proud of this. I'm not sure his habit of random rugby tackles in the house is quite so much to be pleased about, however.

5. Walking the cliffs with my younger, (other) brother. We went along the coast path from Salcombe to Inner Hope in Devon, a walk of about eight miles. It was beautiful, staggeringly so. Robin was saying that essentially the crags and sweep of the land were of the same kind of beauty as the Himalayas, in which he's also walked. I was thinking that it was as pretty as anywhere I'd been in my more prosaic travels, and more excitingly that it was wonderful how deserted it was- how beautifully preserved. One resolution I have little intention of keeping, but would be a nice one to do, would be to walk that coast path from end to end. Certainly worth doing, but we'll see.

6. The anticipation of Henry V at Stratford. It is St Crispin's day tomorrow, and Geoffrey Streathfield takes on the most popular, (probably) of the history cycle double quadrology that the brilliant company are doing down at Stratford. I'm not sure I could possibly love this as much as Richard II, but I'm looking forward to concluding the first batch of four- before hopefully returning next year to see the three parts of Henry VI and ultimately Richard III.

7. The anticipation of 'Eastern Promises', given a glowing review by ponygirl. 'A History of Violence' has to be one of the very best films of the century so far, and I'm very excited to see what this companion piece will do, using the same actor in Viggo Mortensen, but now with bonus Naomi Watts. Exciting!

8. Bronowski's 'The Ascent of Man'. A group of us are having viewings of this beast week by week in the choir. I borrowed it off a guy 18 months ago and watched the whole thing, and we have been raving to anyone who'll listen since, resulting in a very unusual twist on a conventional movie night. I love the way that Bronowski uses opinions, not marshalled facts, and the way he uses culture to delineate his points, not technical detail. His command of ideas in disparate fields, and more crucially the link between them, is astounding.

9. Carol Ann Duffy's edited 'Answering Back'. A fun anthology in which 50 living poets write replies a poem of their choice. They are then displayed side by side. Duffy's own response to 'If' is lovely and cutting, and otherwise it's simply an interesting collection in that it encourages a poet to show how they read other poets, rather than simply writing themselves. You learn a lot about how some respond vituperatively, some with a meditation of their own, some using similar metrical structure, and so forth.

10. England playing exactly as well in the World Cup as they possibly could have played, and being beaten by a palpably better team playing a laudable and impressive game. English defeats in major tournaments seem usually to have a mandatory consequence of making us think we haven't fulfilled our potential or alternatively shouting about how the officialing was unfair and that fate unfairly denied us. On this occasion, a team clearly worse than that of four years ago did a super job to reach a World Cup Final and went down fighting, (and, pleasingly, neither to the Australians or the French. I can't be completely grown up about things like this!)

This one doesn't specifically tell me I can't just tag everybody if I want to. So, if you want to, you're tagged.

Thanks for reading!

TCH

It's easy to complain about World Cups. For example, the Cricket World Cup this year managed the impossible of being a foregone conclusion and being knocked off balance by upsets that knocked out teams which would have made the tournament more interesting. It was too long, ended with a farce of a final, and didn't well represent the glories of cricket.

Similarly, the last two football World Cups, whilst with enough incident to keep people happy, were pale shadows of some of the great cups of the past, (I'm thinking of 1998, 1990, 1978, 1970 and so forth). One major problem which blighted the Japan and South Korea tournament was the injuries and underperformance of its great players. It was a good thing that small teams played well, but a shame they didn't often rightfully beat the more established nations, who simply looked knackered. It's the outcome of a (very exciting) European club-based system where every last penny of money is wrung out of the athletes' bodies.

So it's easy to complain. So let me not. The Rugby World Cup 2007, continuing in France this weekend, has been a more or less perfect tournament. It has been wonderful from the outset, with a tremendous physical game between France and Argentina ending in an upset, and improved from there. Superb matches went on between established smaller nations and upcoming countries for second place in groups, (Wales v Fiji, Scotland v Italy, England v Tonga), whilst in the remaining group Argentina, (as predicted by chickenfeet), put in two more bravura physical performances to eliminate Ireland and then went on to beat Scotland, (although one wonders what would have happened had Scotland used their backs as they did in desperation in the last quarter of an hour).

The other three quarter-finals were tremendous for several reasons. They delivered two context-heavy shocks. On paper, it wasn't impossible that England could beat Australia or France New Zealand. It was just England's abject, admittedly injury-affected performance against South Africa, which was as bad as their performance against France in 2006. This lot really can blow hot and cold. And France's defeat by an apparent minnow, though they are now starting to look pretty sharkish.

But also, the two matches were close, and full of good bruising forward play as well as moments of quicksilver legs. Australia looked as if they could have written poetry with their running if only they had the ball, but their scrummage folded in a way so unAustralian it left me breathless. Of course, because of the Australian nation's great sporting spirit, they still almost managed to win. England will need a better performance both handling and kicking from Jonny Wilkinson in the semi-final. This was about England's physical dominance in the scrum, but our half back play was only not shown as being sloppy because Gregan's at the back of a demoralised eight was even worse.

The France New Zealand match was lovely and slightly predictable. It must be so frustrating being an All Black fan: for three years and fifty weeks of each quadrenary they look colossal. France played well but were helped out by a controversial sin-binning for an obstruction: once the French were given a little space, they looked very dangerous, and Michallak may yet make up for his disappointment in 2003 by putting England to the sword on Saturday.

I'd love to know what the odds were on England France last Friday: very, very unlikely, probably the fourth most likely of the four possibilities. But now, England have three things working in their favour:
-No injuries
-France's golden rule of following defeating the best side in the tournament by losing to a much weaker one, (see also, 1999)
-Experience

In the other side of the draw, I do really believe Argentina will give South Africa a match. South Africa unlike England and France have been gradually cooling off through the tournament, and at the moment they look to me like the archetypal semi-final favourites who are beaten by a bit of magic and poetry. But I shouldn't dismiss them. They looked shaky against a beautiful Fiji team though: the South Sea islanders are always a joy, and it was well-deserved that they were represented in the quarter finals, (for the first time since Western Samoa?)

And what would that poetry be? Well, in a truly great tournament, and this one is heading there, there is always some kind of symmetry about the final- it's already meant something. So there are two options for this. Firstly, it could be France Argentina, with France overcoming the valiant Pumas at the second attempt to lift their first World Cup, (the last of the big five to do so). Or, and wouldn't it be glorious for an Englishman, it could be an England South Africa rematch, with a story about one team going downhill whilst the other one, against all expectations, realise they are still world champions after all.

So my prediction: two of France, Argentina, England and South Africa will make the final...

;-)

Thanks for reading.

TCH

Instructions:
List seven facts/habits/quirks about yourself
Tag seven other people to do the same.
Do not tag the person who tagged you, or say that you just tag "whoever wants to do this".

Goodness, that's bossy.

OK, the good news about this is that I have basically no script and so can ramble as I see fit. The bad news is that given these are facts, quirks and habits, I really, for the sake of posterity, want to put some stuff down that someone who had read this journal religiously for the last four years wouldn't know. And that might be trickier. So let's see.

1. In the Cuisine For Idiots category: I on Monday night made, for the first time in several years, a roux. I've been a bit obsessed with tomato-y dressings for the last few years, and have tended to neglect the most versatile of sauces. It worked out quite well given I didn't really measure anything- I was worried I'd put in too much flour and it would be lumpy, but it turned out rather nicely. I'm almost tempted to try a lasagne next after a rather successful bolognese sauce on Wednesday, but I suspect my impatience and the fact I can get a lasagne rather cheap and well done at a pub might militate against this.

2. I am attempting to develop an intense fondness for Maximo Park. They are a North-Eastern melancholy indie-ish combo who insist on using long words they don't quite understand when shorter, pointier ones would do. There are some interesting ideas in their words, were they not so studied. I am going to see them at a gig in Manchester a week tomorrow, and am hopeful that I'll get caught up in the enjoyably downbeat chord sequences and various teenage bodies jumping about. I'm not convinced yet, but we'll see.

3. The history of my fingernails is confusing. When I was old enough to start being responsible for cutting them myself, they would get rather long. I had no real problem with this, and used to cut them about once a week at maximum. At some point, and for some combination of an enjoyment of cutting them and dislike of having them long, I quite dramatically changed to the other extreme. Now I have a tendency to want to cut my nails much more often than I allow myself to- two or three times a week seems a tad excessive, but when my superego is feeling weak I sometimes give in.

4. I am a great fan of private solitary nudity. Amongst the relatively few people with whom I think it's appropriate to discuss such matters, there seems to be quite a wide range of views on this - from those people who seem uncomfortable being naked regardless of their aloneness and solitude, to those who think that clothes are an empty ostentation which they adorn themselves with only for petty social reasons. At the risk of sounding voyeuristic, I would be interested to read your views on this subject. I think, particularly in my flat which is modern and keeps the heat in surprisingly well, that a relaxing day of nudity can be very pleasant.

5. On my piano, as it has been for most of the year since I got the instrument, is the book 'Hours with the Masters'. The music in it is probably ABRSM Grade 5 standard at best, (ie music for an intermediate person who can entertain good friends but would be advised to shut up on public occasions). I have found myself growing fond of old, grouchy music by the likes of William Byrd and J S Bach. I am more fond of music that plays within its own structure subverting it implicitly, than music that tears the walls down to get its point across. For this reason, I have to be in an exceptionally calm and indulgent mood to enjoy Beethoven. At the moment I'm trying to tidy up a little Sonatina, (that 'little' is redundant really, isn't it?) by Clementi, and get my fingers round a rather lovely set of variations on a Minuet by Haydn.

6. Upon my bookshelf is a lovely postcard from my brother. He left it in my house on the really sad occasion in April when he couldn't come to Rome with me because of his passport. On the front are two bizarrely spheroid people having a conversation of four panels.

A: What's for dinner?
B: Potatoes
A: I'm bored of potatoes. Can't we have something else?
B: No

Above and beyond its surface brilliance, it amuses me that character B doesn't use full stops, whereas A's punctuation is very accurate. I had a baked potato for lunch today and giggled to myself once again.

7. Currently next to my bed is a pile of poetry books by maybe three of the five greatest English poets of the last 150 years: Larkin, Auden and Hopkins, (I will add to that list Hardy and Eliot, and enjoy the squeals as many others are excluded). It's my exam next Tuesday, and around exam time I tend to read more poetry and fewer novels than usual. I suspect that this is because I am less in need of a project or something to occupy, and more in need of something to inspire me in short bursts. That said, the poetry has been distracting me from my exams quite a bit recently. Since the exam is Communications, I'm trying to convince myself that reading some of the greatest British communicators is a form of preparation, but without much success. I fear that the markers and moderators may not be overly impressed if my reply to a faux query from a policyholder who doesn't understand annuity rates is written as a terse, Larkinesque diatribe.

Argh, the rules say I have to tag people! And I can't remember who's already done this.
OK, so, um: d'H, Rah, Scroll, KdS, fresne, shadowkat, radiantfracture. If you've already done it or have no intention of doing it, that's fine by me. Take that, 'Instructions'!

Thanks for reading.

TCH

1. David Tennant to play Hamlet with Patrick Stewart as Claudius. It's a lie! It's idle fantasy! It's happening at the RSC between July and November next year! Smugness, thy name is TCH. I shouldn't be smug of course: I haven't got a ticket yet. But the facts that it's just down the road and that plans are afoot are good enough for me.

2. On my rather workaday ten mile walk to and from Dudley yesterday, I nevertheless saw two more British staples: herons, almost marshaling the banks of the canal- there are so many of them nowadays it's almost miraculous, given how scarce they were about forty years ago; and blackberries, which I was lucky enough to have the time to pick many of from the bramble. Lovely. That on the way back I got deluged in yet another of the summer's liquid surprises, and that my radio which had talked to me through the afternoon of England losing a cricket match started playing the rather ominous Mahler 7, did a little to dampen my enthusiasm, but it was still a nice experience.

3. I'm finally going to see Spamalot- this Thursday, in London. It's both significantly cheaper and much easier to get tickets here than on Broadway, somewhat to my surprise. So that should be a nice evening. This succeeds the first choir of a new Season tomorrow. We're doing Baroque stuff, which should be nice enough. How the pub goes later is a mystery to me, but should be very good fun one way or another.

In the meanwhile, I'm off to see 'Paris, je t'aime' at the Electric Cinema. A short of Cuaron directing is enough for me.

TCH

There's a (fairly well-known) service in the UK nowadays whereby one can pay a pound and ask any question via text message, receiving an answer in a matter of a couple of minutes. This seems unnecessary to me since my livejournal can do the same for free, and with good humour.

However, this might be a slightly tricky one- for those cosmopolitans amongst you...

What is the best way to get from Charles de Gaulles airport to Paris St Lazare station? I'm thinking about being ripped off and getting one of those shuttle car things or a taxi, but I'm wondering whether it would be possible to do this using a sensible combination of RER and Metro. My web-browsing, however, is inconclusive. i have a transferable train ticket from Paris to Rouen, so it doesn't matter if I'm a bit late, but ideally I'd like to do the transfer in somewhere around two hours.

Your thoughts appreciated.

TCH

Hello everyone.

I'm a bad friend for failing punctually to celebrate the birthday of someone without whom I'd still be stuck in Toronto: which although it sounds good when you put it like that, would actually have been a little expensive and stressful. So happy birthday to Jane: the empathetic, thoughtful and fun matriarch of the AtPo gatherings.

Also a very happy birthday to Jeanie: hope all is well with you.

Right.

So, walking through the fields at the Latitude festival, (at which I saw, in three days, Bill Bailey, Dylan Moran, Simon Armitage, Roger McGough, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Arcade Fire, Damon Albarn, Damien Rice and Jarvis Cocker: I Win!) it occurred to me what the correct ending of the Harry Potter series is. Y'know, correct in the way that sometimes someone's fanfic understands a character (usually Draco or Snape), in a way with which J K Rowling, the fool, cannot compete. I was excited for hours afterwards. I feel the need to note it down now, in case it's right. It won't be right, which means I can talk about it for years afterwards, but if it were right, I wouldn't want not to have the proof that I guessed it ( Unspoiled speculation, which is vague and thematic, not detailed )

Hello everyone.

I decided this afternoon to get a set-top box, something I'd been resisting doing for a long time because I felt that the utility I'd actually get out of the thing compared to its cost was improbably high. Now they appear to cost around £30, however, and after my exam results, which will lead to a pleasant pay rise at some point, and having missed and forgotten to record Doctor Who last night after Rob spent rather a long time helping me catch up with the (hitherto very good) third season, I decided it was time for me to move into the 21st century. I'm quite excited to have FilmFour, BBC Parliament, BBC Four and UKTV History, although I'm not convinced I'll be using much else: I may pop onto ITV2 occasionally to see if I can spot a couple more episodes of Supernatural.

On my way back from the electronics shop, I passed the Birmingham Peace Garden. I always forget it's there. I actually went there on my second day resident in Birmingham back in August 2005, and remember being quite moved. It appears to be more or less permanently deserted, though presumably there are occasional services there. It is built in the ruins of St Thomas' church, which had for the previous one hundred years been a large parish church with more than 2000 parishioners. After its partial demolition during the Blitz of 1940, (where the church clock stopped at twenty five past seven as the building took a direct hit), it was reworked first as a garden to celebrate the coronation of Elizabeth in 1953, and secondly as a peace garden. Messages of peace and hope from various countries, religions and organisations are written onto plaques on the remaining walls of the church, with the rest of the site devoted to flowers and trees, including eight planted by Clinton, Chretien, Prodi, Blair, Chirac, Yeltsin, Kohl and the Japanese prime minister of the time (my apologies that the name for the moment eludes me), at the G8 summit of 1998.

I read the plaques again and spent a little time sitting on one of the benches. It is a peaceful place because, I suppose like a church, it is designed to be peaceful, even though the garden itself is on a busy main road and is therefore by no means quiet. This was the second time this week that I'd had a little time to simply think in a place of peace, after the lovely experience of singing and listening to organ music in the 900 year old nave of Tewkesbury abbey the day before.

I was particularly pleased by the Swedish message in the peace garden, which read as follows:

When all people in the world are free to think, to travel, to be friends and to live where they want, the leaders cannot declare war against each other, without declaring war against their own people.

There is no road, but if many start walking there will be a road.

As well as being I think a very accurate reflection on the mood in Britain in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq by British forces, that somehow the people in charge had disregarded British opinion so badly that it was almost as if they were engaged in a conflict with their own populace, the idea of free thought and travel, and of being friends for me is one of the most important points of the board meet, and the board meet itself helps to achieve these ends in a powerful and important way. It is our own spiderweb to build- let others decide how much or how little to restrict it.

Rewind then. Yesterday the beauty of Tewkesbury abbey and Britten, Bruckner, (whose own place of worship and work and Linz has a reverberation even longer than the Abbey, where the large gaps in Bruckner's work between phrases began to make sense to me), and Mendelssohn. The day before I spent most of the day sleeping and playing online, with a short break to meet up with work colleagues to celebrate my exam results. It was a slightly weird results day, since unusually only three people were doing any earlier stage exams. One failed all of his and so was in no mood to celebrate, another passed both but is Muslim and so was spending his lunch hour praying, and so only I was actually ready to mark the occasion, although many of my colleagues who were either not taking exams or taking more advanced ones were kind enough to join me in the pub.

On Thursday I repeated my tactic of last autumn and went out before the exam results to take my mind off it. We went to Symphony Hall where a rather disappointing conductor (Volkov, who apparently conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, who on this performance I feel a little sorry for), didn't entirely sap the life from the magnificent Shostakovich X, Prokofiev's second piano concerto and a short symphony by Aaron Copland.

I spent most of Wednesday recovering from what was nonetheless a very good flight home. Weather over New Jersey meant we took off a little over an hour late, and the first few hours were enlivened by sightings of forked lightning to the left side of the plane. After that, however, I did manage to get a little sleep.

On Tuesday Rob and I spent our last few hours together watching much Doctor Who: I am a huge fan of the run of four episodes between the Doctor turning into a human being in 1913 the end of 'Utopia': the momentum is superb. On the Monday the end of our journey back from Canada was very enjoyable indeed. I was pleased and surprised to have got through customs at Niagara so easily, and we hardly listened to any music, (except a little in the background), at any point, as we indulged in one of the longest uninterrupted conversations I remember having ever. (One could in many senses argue that it was actually pretty much a conversation of nine days with the odd break, but I'll leave that to the pedants). It's fairly extraordinary that I never seem to run out of things to say to Rob, and that I can take as much time in his company in my stride. This is not intended as a sleight at him (well, maybe a teeny bit, just for the craic, y'know), just that I usually need significant portions of alone time, and that with Rob it seems possible to omit this ritual. We stopped at the Italian restaurant we had earlier (though later in this entry, obviously), eaten at on the way here, where this time a much less pleasant hostess demanded that we have vast amounts of food without us having much say in the matter, (a dozen rock sized garlic knots were a particular highlights). And then we braved on into the blue of the night, knotting round Syracuse, and heading back towards the Pearl in the south.

Our journey to Canada instigated the tradition, which would be followed later as Rob's battery died, of setting out a little later than planned. On this occasion we followed some eccentric directions to the DMV, (Rob's Mum: Well it was the fourth traffic light not the seventh when I used to drive it), only to find that some probably logical but still irritating regulation meant that Leah had to pay for the new license in any case. We set out just after midday and had good fun. The set-up was that Rob should drive and I would navigate. As Andrew suggested later, this was certainly the more sensible way round, and we had no major mishaps after my obsession with buying a road map ended us up with a very good one of New York state the previous day.

My map geekery didn't spoil our second day in the city the previous day (we're now on Tuesday 12th June if anyone's still counting backwards). Before the map we went up to the Bronx zoo, where I realised the zoos, like beaches, picnics, barbecues and singing, are things that people only say they grow out of. It was nice to be in another of the five boroughs, (I now just need to go to Staten Island for the slam), and the zoo was amazing. We started off on a monorail which showed us rhinoceroses, lions, firefoxes, tapirs and various other very endangered species, impressively quickly and almost at anxiety-makingly close quarters. We then took the cable car over to the other side for some dinner before seeing gorillas, giraffes, the World of Darkness, (eyes adjust eventually), polar bears, cheetahs and finally a load of birds including my favourites, the birds of prey- just majestic in every sense. Obviously they didn't leave enough of an impression on me that I could tell a vulture from an eagle the next day, but I tried my best.

After buying the map we segued from Barnes and Noble to the Strand, my favourite bookstore in the world. I very nearly bought a Philip Roth book but managed barely to restrained myself, and then we went up forty blocks, (the last twenty in intermittent heavy rain) to 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee'. This was a treat: a show, as Rob summarised to me at the time, about a group of freaks brought together by an eccentric passion, (fill in the joke). The music is technically complex without being obstreperous or overshadowing the flow of the cleverly intricate lyrics or the excellent characters. Cleverly the first half involves several audience members actually participating within the bee, and the fact that the cast cannot know when a contestant will get a spelling wrong, (implausibly a member at our show misspelt 'Mexicans'...), means that it's a test of nerve to make sure the right scene goes in the right place.

Talking of Mexicans, (not a great link, admittedly), we afterwards went to a Mexican chain restaurant where it was lovely to finally meet Justin, who went to considerable effort to come downtown to see us. We spent an interesting hour rambling about various ephemera of our life before heading home by bus.

The bus, along with morning bagels, was a staple of the few days in New York. On the Tuesday we got bagels in Manhattan itself so that we could stand in a non-existent queue for just over an hour to get the rush tickets for the Bee. This was an amusing experience- about seven people turned up in the end but there was a long period where we were literally the only people there.

On the Monday we had had quite a quiet day in Manhattan ending in Rob taking me to his favourite ever Broadway show, (in fact, like many past contenders, I think at the moment Spring Awakening may actually be Rob's 'Favourite. Thing. Ever'). The alternative rock is slightly less redolent for me of my own idiosynracies, but I admired the show's departure from Sondheim-dominated intricacy, thought the cast and particularly the crew were superb, and was honoured to have seen the first performance after the show had, the previous night won 8 Tonys. One thing I could do without, albeit in context I could almost excuse it, was the applause for the leads before they'd actually done anything on stage. I understand from various interviews that this is an increasing tendency, but I think, particularly in a show like Spring Awakening where serious subject matter is addressed, it's a shame since it completely shatters any suspension of disbelief that is supposed to be going on almost before it's started, and makes the audience see the person on stage as the actor and not the character.

The main trick in Spring Awakening is that of anachronism. It takes a Victorian story, (originally from a banned play), and populates the thoughts of the teenagers using modern rock. This is quite jarring, but the effect is deliberate and very interesting. For example, there are genuine questions to be asked about whether the society in which teens lived in 19th century Germany would even have allowed them to have the rebel spirit, (even in thought), represented by rock, originally the youth subversion movement's music. I had a complicated reaction to this, then, and I still can't quite agree with Rob's paroxysms of glee, but I certainly thought it was an interesting and thought-riddled show.

Before this we'd eaten expensive Oreo-type cakes and talked of Harry Potter.

The previous day I arrived and got very tired, before seeing Shrek III whilst virtually asleep from the 24 hours of awakeness. I needed a little sleep before the whole adventure would begin...see above

And that was New York, Canada, Tewkesbury and the peace garden. All part of the same thing, of course. Let's make our road.

And now, Doctor Who...yay!

TCH

Hello everyone,

Little Bit's completely accurate post has stung me into action; it slightly disturbs me that that would be the only record of my doings in Canada, so I think I'd better prattle about some other stuff we also did.

Rob and I arrived in Canada around 9pm last Wednesday, having been just in time for a soul-shaking sunset and dusk over the outskirts of Buffalo and the Niagara river. We stopped in an attempt to purloin sirloin, (or something similar, the rhyme distracted me), at which point Rob slightly lost it for the moment. To the untrained foreigner's eye, Canada looks almost exactly like the USA, but the slight changes of text on the signs and the ABM machine (huh?) were enough to hotwire, at least briefly, Rob's American Brain. Bless him. I was slightly confused by it all also, particularly after seeing the creepy trolls and malformed animals that Ontarians and others seem to think are appropriate for their twenty dollar notes: (I should apologise, as I did at the time, for this insult to my sovereign).

Only shadows of Lake Ontario were visible as we took the Queen Elizabeth (all hail) Way, the Gardiner Expressway, Jarvis Street and Charles Street West to reach the hotel without a single wrong turn. We did have to go round the block once more to find a parking place, but all in all the trip, which had started from Rockland County just outside New York ten and a half hours earlier and had continued with the strains of Spring Awakening, Spelling Bee and Les Miserables, (does anyone suspect that Rob is gay?), was a navigational triumph, with only our occasional compulsion to jink (Rob: Do we turn off here? Toby: Yes Rob: Here? Toby (too calmly): Yes Rob: Oh, too late) preventing a perfect journey.

After a lengthy and amusingly relaxed conversation with the man at reception, whilst Rob cheerily blocked the parking garage, we arrived and found our room, in which already ensconced were Dave and Scroll. The former headed for an early night whilst the Troika, reunited for the third year- (Three years, three nationalities, three people, ah the poetry), went to see whether Toronto closed early. Our early findings suggested it did, though we eventually found a pub (they have pubs in Canada, I can't tell you how heartily I approve), where I had some good fish and chips and a glass of serviceable wine. Oh and tax. Lots of tax. It appears the Canadians have like, a welfare state or something. Seems a bit last century to me after New York, but, as they say in Toronto, whatever.

On Thursday morning I was a little disorient(ta)ted since I had developed a coping mechanism for North America along the lines of "If the sun is low and rising, eat bagels", and this didn't seem to be such a formality away from Rob's hunting ground. So the three of us and Dave, who had rejoined our ranks, scooted somewhere where I ate something breakfasty (note how the accuracy of description makes this recollection vivid), and then went to Chapter's for the first chapter, (heh, better and better, isn't it?) of our Lampman hunt. Before that particular obsession I spent a while reading an interesting book on wild North American birds. My bird-ometer was reading 'Entranced by feathers', since earlier in the week at the Bronx Zoo I had seen Andean condors, golden and bald-headed eagles, and several kinds of particularly ugly vultures. It interests me how our aesthetic perceptions make certain things ugly. I don't believe I find vultures ugly simply because they are carrion eaters, but then, I couldn't exactly explain why else you can see a golden eagle and then a vulture and have such a different visceral reaction. Is it to do with human's personal safety? On our road trip (New York to Toronto is 485 miles, baby...OK, I'll stop using 'baby' like that), golden eagles intermittently hovered over the undulating road and I kept being excited. I think Rob needed some persuasion this was actually interesting, but he was slightly pleased by a heron on our way back, which I take to be progress.

We continued downtown into Toronto past various impressive looking buildings and a statue of Winston Churchill (Scroll: The English probably gave it to us whether we wanted it or not), and then down to the harbour front, the only short period I spent actually in view of Lake Ontario except a short period on the way home, and amusingly not a view of its full majesty since Toronto island makes the lake look as if it has a visible other side. We also marvelled at the familiarly phallic majesty of the CN Tower: one day they'll stop having a complex, probably when women take over, although it amused me sitting inside the Skydome at how vaginal the place looked alongside the Tower.

Heading back, with my first introduction to subway tokens and the mysteriously pointless transfer tickets (Scroll: You won't need this. Take it.) I then spent most of the afternoon and evening in Bit's room, having given she and Lynne a hearty welcome. Occasionally my lack of stamina requires that I escape from these lustrous occasions, and in this incidence Rob and I went to eat at Toby's, a very mediocre diner on Yonge. Pleasingly the burger only cost 99c, however, and at that value, who's going to argue.

We then began to welcome various returning friends and a couple of new (to me), faces. Scroll had a couple of friends come to meet us after she returned from dinner, which amused me since the introductions pretty much went "I'm from Washington" "I'm from Alberta" "I'm from Michigan" "I'm from New York" "And I'm from Birmingham in England". Hehe. Shortly afterwards Arethusa arrived. It is always a sincere pleasure to see her, and in her case the two year break made being reunited all the sweeter. She also regaled us with an absolutely laceratingly funny monologue on her travel woes, breaking only for a quick 'I realise I'm monopolising the conversation' at the most perfect moment. We soon after welcomed Masq and ann, who had flown the last section together, and the always perky fresne, and after dinner at Tim Horton's (apparently more like Dunkin' Donuts than Starbucks, whatever that means), Jane and Ninerva turned up. It was lovely to see Jane again, and particularly amusing to meet nin more than three thousand miles from our mutual home for the first time- I think I shall try to meet up without leaving the country next time, if that works for you!

Thursday was the evening of wine drinking (that may be implicit in fresne's arrival above), which was pleasing. On Friday, our television room became available and we luxuriated in the 746th annual screening of 'Welcome to the Hellmouth'. It's got to the point where I'm looking about seventeen layers under the surface of what I'd usually see with this episode, by now. I even made a comment relating to fashion, I think, though possibly I was possessed at that point. It did occur to me that the first scene between Darla and the unnamed boy holds in microcosm not merely the subversion inherent in the whole show, (the woman being the one in charge), but it also encapsulates the first two parter. In 'Hellmouth', men insistently woo women, (in many different ways). Giles and Xander and Angel woo Buffy. Jessie woos Cordelia. The Master woos Darla. The vampire woos Willow. In all these situations, it turns out to be the female character who eventually ends up stronger, (with the exception of Darla who will need a few more seasons to move out from under the Master's shadow). There's still stuff in there. Though I suspect fresh meat may be required at some point. And I could do without seeing Fungus-Shirt!Xander ever again.

I spent much of Friday oscillating between the room where we watched more Buffy and some Supernatural (the first episode of which was truly excellent, a meditation on angels, forgiveness, faith, afterlife and vengeance), and Second Cup, a Starbuckian Canadian experience that Rob and I made our own over the week. Somewhat unexpectedly, they make a perfectly serviceable cup of tea, which made my presence whilst Rob drank his 79th large skinny vanilla bean latte with ice virtually pleasant. In the evening d'Herblay arrived, to complement starryniteshade and the Darbys, and we had made it essentially to full strength. The sixteen of us pranced off to Irwin St where we ate some magnificent Ethiopian food. The very idea of injera bread scooping up meats and sauces pleases me, and the restaurant stood up well to its counterpart in Spanish Harlem which we frequented two years ago. Even better than this, Rob and I didn't get lost afterwards. In the evening I read some of the Lampman book I'd bought earlier in the day and saw some Doctor Who, (with which I'm now up to date- the last four episodes so far are stellar and the season end looks to be a cracker in waiting). Late at night I insisted that Scroll tell me of Canadian politics and history, which was engrossing and took us up to 5am. Like the good old days.

On Saturday we went to the Royal Ontario Museum, which was semi-closed but still had some interesting exhibits. Amongst them was a bowl inscribed with Hebrew, which made me inspired to ask Rob to teach me the Hebrew alphabet and some of the dotty things that idiots need to work out which vowel is being implied. I got there very, very slowly, but I did make a little progress. Ponygirl and chickenfeet, (how farmyard that sounds), popped in as we ate some rather dodgy pizza, (but it's traDItion!), and then a bold troop of us sortied to find a comedy troupe down closer to the lake. We took the subway down and walked back. The comedy was marvellously good- it was a sketch show, but was intelligent enough to keep me interested and was fairly family friendly the majority of the time, (the sex stuff was used sparingly for effect, rather than incessantly and graphically to shock as had been my experience in my previous attempt to see comedy, in Birmingham). I was particularly pleased by the accidentally excellent art critic, the potted history of Afghanistan, (and before that the marvellous Santa Claus joke), the three men at the retreat, the woman in the pharmacy, and, of course, the panda sex.

In the evening I saw a minimal amount of Angel (just the end of 'Release', I think), and then retreated to my room, where I appear to have rather effortlessly had a six hour conversation with Rob, then d'H and finally Scroll, plumbing at last into the depths of our psyches on such emotive subjects as eating pets, and, with a kind of entranced but fatigued fascination, the consequences of faith. I can not say enough about how these three dudes (gender-neutral!) enrich my life. I was saying to Rob on the way back home that it seems rather surreal that minimal contact over virtually the whole year (particularly with my lax updating habits recently), can give way to a relationship of such pleasure and depth of feeling when we meet in person, but it routinely does for everyone I meet from year to year. As my surrogate older brother and my triplet siblings, Andrew, Rob and Eva endlessly reaffirm my love of North America, science fiction, AtPo, faith, art, love and life. And that's not to be sneezed at.

On Sunday came what was probably the activity highlight of my time in Toronto (not to be confused with the personal highlight the evening before)- the Blue Jays Nationals game at the Skydome. Implausibly we sat in incredibly beautiful seats right behind home plate and were actually waited on, which was certainly a step up from a grimy matinee at Shea stadium on a grizzly Wednesday afternoon in 2005. I really enjoyed what was a tight-fought and somewhat frustrating game. The Nationals and Blue Jays traded home runs early on and a few other scores left Washington 4-2 up by the middle of the fifth. From this point onward, the Jay's superb defense (credit to their starting pitcher Towers), kept restricting the Nationals at the top of the inning, only for the Nationals to do the same as a rather callow batting line-up (even Rios had an off day), failed to capitalise. The match finished in an extremely brisk two hours.

This allowed us time to visit the remnants of the Art Gallery of Ontario, which was undergoing various refurbishments but still had an excellent tiny collection, (it was almost like it had been distilled, the collection in fact- it only took three quarters of an hour to do but it was an excellent time). Amongst the joys were Henry Moore, Hans Holbein, an early Picasso, a really fascinating art installation (Wall to Wall?) with an almost completely symmetrical room with the asymmetry being the key to the narrative, and a very arresting piece by Augustus John.

We then went back round to Chinatown and had a superb Chinese meal, on Scroll. Not to be too sappy, (I am British after all and I've already emoted once in this bumble), but Scroll's kindness and gentle organisational tenacity throughout the meet was extraordinary. Her ability to get people to do things without being remotely aggressive or over-bearing was magisterial, and the location of the hotel and the fun I had is down more to her than anyone else. Just sayin'. I ate most stuff with chopsticks (I'm verging on acceptable, unbelievably), and afterwards we bought some Chinese sweet stuff before rambling back to the hotel. I seemed in the later days to leave quite a few people to subway cars, but I'm ever so fond of walking in cities. Perhaps one of my favourite moments of my holiday this year was walking between to of my favourite places in New York, The Strand off Washington Square Park and Broadway, almost forty blocks up Fifth and of the Americas (!) Avenue, where halfway through we got deluged by rain. It was completely worth it. Walks back from Second City and Chinatown were equally lovely.

On the Sunday night, devoid of Yorkville, I actually spent some time with the group in the hotel (woo!), and in Bit's room the Troika provided most of the lines in Bit's previous post. I shouldn't spoil the beauty of that post, so let me just simply add that it involved ties and tying, and a power triangle. That's probably more than enough. The group left slowly slimmed until late at night.

The next morning we gathered for the final time, and then, as Rob and I attempted to leave, it became clear that we had left the lights on in Rob's car (note the inclusive plural here!), and that the car had a totally dead battery. My thanks to people of extreme competence and generosity, (Jane and the dude from the CAA), for getting us back on track with very little stress. In the mean-time, calamities appeared to start raining down upon us: Scroll left something in our room, and then to cap it all Masq got stuck in the lift. It seemed like all our comeuppance came at once, but luckily there were easy enough remedies for all of these things.

I got slightly and completely unjustifiably stressed about the length of the journey on the way back as we got stuck in traffic jams and home seemed a million miles away (we eventually reached Pearl River just after 2am), but looking back am intensely glad that Rob held firm in his intention to go to Niagara. It was pretty much the last thing we did in Canada before tripping easily back over the border, (peculiarly they didn't even ask me to fill in another Visa waiver form), and I am left with Rob's description of the Horseshoe Falls as very relaxing. At the moment he said it, with tonnes and tonnes of water heading off a cliff for ever and ever and making a tremendous, (though notably not at all raucous) roar of a sound, I didn't quite know what he meant, but within five minutes I had become hypnotised. It was lovely to leave Canada in one of its most famous locations, (crossing the Rainbow Bridge), certain, as I was for the rest of my sojourn, that far from being a disappointment or something, as seems so often the case, which requires an apology for its existence, Canada is a country much better than its countrypeople let on.

I suspect they like it that way, though. If you're a mole sleeping next to a lion, it's best to sleep quietly.

Thanks for reading. I shall be back with the final instalment of this slightly inside out travelogue, covering Birmingham to New York and New York to Birmingham, and my fun in the Giant Raspberry (or whatever it's called), at some point in the next week.

TCH

Erm, so I passed all three of the exams that I took in April (I find that distinctly difficult to believe, but it's true), so along with the Business Awareness Module I did in a course down in London in the middle of May, I'm now 9 exams out of 9. Wonderful stuff. Just six left. It seems a little good to be true. But it is. Bring on the gin.

TCH

Father









Gentleness

Blind multitudes that jar confusedly
At strife, earth's children, will ye never rest
From toils made hateful here, and dawns distressed
With ravelling self-engendered misery?
And will ye never know, till sleep shall see
Your graves, how dreadful and how dark indeed
Are pride, self-will, and blind-voiced anger, greed,
And malice with its subtle cruelty?

How beautiful is gentleness, whose face
Like April sunshine, or the summer rain,
Swells everywhere the buds of generous thought,
So easy, and so sweet it is; the grace
Smoothes out so soon the tangled knots of pain.
Can ye not learn it? will ye not be taught?

Archibald Lampman

In her introduction to Canadian poetry, Margaret Atwood suggests: "Those who do not like Victorian poetry will not like Canadian Victorian poetry any better; but those prepared to accept its conventions may find much to interest them". I tend to agree with this summary. My interest in Lampman came from a wall in Chapter's in Toronto proclaiming heartily 'The World Needs More Canada'. Amongst five or six ( ;-) ) familiar names there were scores of people neither I nor Rob had never heard of. Picking one at random for his super name, I asked Scroll about Archibald Lampman. She knew nothing of him- it turned out from my later exhaustive questioning that no other Canadian (or indeed anyone else), had heard of him either.

Lampman was not on the shelves in Chapter's, so I rather abrasively let anyone who would listen know that I planned to go to the Toronto library to hunt him down. At this point, Lady Starlight stepped in with her honed librarian skills to help me sort out his Dewey number and so forth. A surprisingly large group of us went up to the (beautiful) Toronto Reference Library and tracked him down. The library is extraordinary, with lots of shifting perspectives at different levels and indoor pools and waterfalls- truly worth visiting. Inside, I copied down 'Gentleness' by hand, and then Lynne went with me to photocopy a biography of Lampman. It turns out he died at 37 of pneumonia in 1899, with many of his best years perhaps still ahead of him. Fascinatingly, it appears that in 1895 and 6 he was attracted to a mystery woman named 'Kate', and quite possibly was in the throes of an affair. Lampman's children were cold towards possible suspects from then onwards, though it is rumoured that Kate herself used to stop at Lampman's grave for years after his death to pray.

The photocopying was rather more exciting than one might have expected.We were waiting behind a woman who appeared to be photocopying the entire Bible. After a minute or so, she said "I'm going to be using this for a long time, you know". I took this (foolishly) as an apology, and we said we didn't mind waiting. After a minute or two more, she said "Look, do you have to stand there? You're making me really nervous, and it's quite rude. Go and do something else. I'll come and track you down when I'm done" Both Lynne and I were quite taken aback by this, and so we backed off a little, before deciding to go to use the photocopier in the basement. After this, in base terror at the prospect of being tracked down by the crazy woman, we gathered our crew and left the library as quickly as possible.

In an Indigo downtown, I found The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English, which had several Lampman poems that I have since read. I'm still not convinced that he's a great writer, although I was very taken by the sonnet that ann found in the reference library. I bought the anthology, however, and later that day, after watching Doctor Who with ann, ninerva, Scroll and Rob, found the following beauty later in the collection.

and son

Considerations

Any country is only a way of failing,
and nationality is an accident of time,
like love.
             That I was born
in Toronto in an April snowstorm
makes nothing certain.
                                           That I remember
ducks flying in the winter twilight
of Lake Ontario means only this,
that I was there, and I remember it.

Still, to have a country is to have
a way to encounter history in the streets
of a burning city whose fire is our own.
That we have less killing, more absurdities,
some luck, a bit of time,
and memories like those winter ducks
is about as much as a man can ask for,
a place to start.

1972, David Helwig

Isn't that beautiful? I particularly love how it mentions Toronto and Lake Ontario, since it made the whole poem feel so live and germane. One of the many wonders of my holiday, about which more later.

TCH

The online me still exists and is in Canada.

Happy birthday Rahael! I hope you manage a day of great relaxation, food, fashion and alcohol. Also, I'm sorry I've been so rubbish at trying to meet up recently: if some miracle coordinates a blank in our diaries shortly, we should fill the gap. :-) Many happy returns of the day, also from Scroll, Ann, Rob and the rest of the gathering. It's no exaggeration to say that I probably wouldn't be here with such an entertaining group of people if it wasn't for your welcome on the Voyboard what seems like an eternity ago, and your perceptive and articulate posts, now replicated on livejournal, are a great joy to me. There is also, despite my complete lameness, nothing more pleasant than an evening of food, wine and gossip in your company.

Happy Bloomsday everyone.

TCH

PS: Secret note to gathering- the Archibald Lampman report follows later: fear not.

And so, finally, to Rome.

It's an unusual city, in that it not only has historic buildings, but it has various layers of historic buildings. Sites which are famous because Mussolini did things there. Sites which are famous because they symbolise the unification of Italy in the late 19th century. Sites which are famous because of Rome as a powerful city state. Sites famous for being the first stirrings or the high peak of the Renaissance. Then a bit of a gap. Rome, like so many cities in Europe, was devastated by the plague and at one time shrunk to a mere 15,000 people, just a tad larger than my little parochial home town back in Wiltshire. And then way, way back to Constantine's triumpg arch and column, Hadrian and his castle, and the post-Nero Colosseum and way back to originall Egyptian obelisks.

It's not all about the buildings though. I arrived on Friday lunchtime. I was a little peeved on the flight, because, having originally planned to be accompanied by my brother for the weekend, his passport was rejected at the airport. It was in a state of disrepair such that you could theoretically take out the photo ID and put in a replacement photo, thereby invalidating the passport, although I have to say that it's at times like these that the apparent freedom of movement that the EU is supposed to confer upon its citizens seems like a distant pipe-dream. So in any case, I struck out alone. We reached Ciampino airport on a dry (both in terms of the lack of rain and the lack of humidity) day with the temperatures in the mid 20's celsius, a perfect temperature for me. We then got driven in true Italian fashion to the centre of Rome, cut rather dangerously, (I thought) round the Piazza Barberini, and headed up the Via Veneto (home of La Dolce Vita) to our hotel, the Majestic. It was an extraordinary and unexpected luxury to be there- even more so with what was essentially a double room to myself. Everything was beautifully prepared, the location was astounding and the weather was beautiful. Any grumbles I had were instantly dispersed.

In the afternoon, having repeatedly been told by the locals to go out of the hotel and turn right, I, contrarily as ever, went out of the hotel and turned left, armed only with a few Euros and a copy of my trusty Dostoyevsky. This turned out to be a good choice, since I soon reached the Villa Borghese, a giant park not dissimilar to Victoria Park in Bath. I wondered in dappled light through this most beautiful place, and past a very imposing statue of Goethe, before heading down a widish boulevard called Viale d. Magnolie. Here I couldn't resist sitting down and reading from a while as odd falling pieces of blossom dropped around me and, at one point, a ludicrously beautiful woman came up to me to, it turned out offer me a leaflet about shopping. I took it- it would have seemed churlish not to.

After the short hiatus I wondered through the Villa grounds and then down to the huge Piazza del Popolo, where an apparently ubiquitous obelisk stands. I continued out west to the Tiber, (or Tevere as its rightly called), and then bumbled down its banks as far as the huge department of justice. Here I crossed the bridge and arrived back near to the Renaissance part of Italy- passing the Pantheon, the Trevi fountain (really extraordinary, that), and arriving at the Spanish Steps just in time to pop into the Keats Shelley museum.

Rather in the manner of Pembrokeshire, this little place seems to be a little England beyond Italy. The door was closed 'because of the rain' (I didn't see any and the museum is up several flights of stairs, but whatever), so I buzzed the museum and tried to explain in a few stumbling words of half-baked Italian. A laconic English student's voice spoke back at me, the door buzzed and I entered. Inside, all the exhibits and the curators appear to be English.

This was the room in which Keats died, and there's a really peculiar feeling of duality about it. Outside, as Italy prepared itself for the Labour Day weekend, the centre of Rome was buzzing and the sun was shining. Inside it was dingy and introspective, and full of the memory of death. A little English library, almost. The most moving things I saw, except perhaps the very modest sign in one of the rooms saying 'In this room on 23 February 1821 died John Keats'), were a letter from Shelley upbraiding a friend of his for shunning the beauties of Italy to stay in 'over-sophisticated' France (this made me giggle), and a transcription of a poem by Hardy explaining the resting place of Keats, in a graveyard with a huge pyramid, as follows:


Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats (1887)

Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word
Of anything he did;
For me he is a man who died and was interred
To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest
Not with its first design,
Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest
Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,
Slew, breathed out threatening;
I know not. This I know: in death all silently
He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet
With marble finger high
To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,
Those matchless singers lie . . .

--Say, then, he lived and died
That stones which bear his name
Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;
It is an ample fame.

A gorgeously thoughtful yet emotional piece, I thought.

On the Friday evening, we were bussed through Rome and out South beyond the walls and past some of the catacombs to the Restaurant L'Archeologia. It was a good choice- not a very expensive place, but with an al fresco feel. We drank (I, perhaps slightly too much) champagne and I mingled with some of the other head office staff who were there (none from my department of course, but some good people who I made friends with over the weekend). The meal was alright but the stroke of genius was the house band, six men playing accordion, guitar, trumpet and saxophone and singing, a good selection of oldish jazz and swing classics, with Delilah probably their most modern number. At one point they came over and asked for requests, and in response to a thought of mine they did a veyr passable 'Moon River' at very little notice.

I slept deeply on the Friday night away from any hassle of home or concern whatsoever. I then had a long, long bath on the Saturday morning, a luxury since I don't have a bath at my flat at home, and read the (Friday) Guardian, doing both the crossword and the sudoku (indulgent, I know).

I had Saturday to myself, and wandered through the Piazza Barberini with Bernini's immense Neptune (although I have to say I think the way he carves the ripples of fabric out of stone will be my lasting memory- it's quite staggering), and up to the Palazza Barberini. This palace is set back considerably from the road, and appeared to me to be completely closed when I first went up to it- there was no suggestion of where one was supposed to go to see the artwork within. I was glad I persevered though, since I found inside the most extraordinary set of Caravaggio and Caravaggiesque art from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The Caravaggios themselves are stark and extraordinary, put into context beautifully by pieces like Raphael's La Forinara in the previous galleries, where everything lusts after heaven. Caravaggio, it seems for the first time, has seen hell, and the darkness that enters into his chiaroscuro's, both literally with the black and metaphorically, with a girl, lauded as a hero slicing off a man's head so that Tarantino spurts of blood assault the eye, are, if this isn't mixing metaphors, very visceral.

I had lunch in a pizzeria just off the Piazza, which perhaps was less perfect than I'd hoped- I suspect I was ripped off without really getting authentic Italian cooking, but one has to try. In the afternoon I took the metro (one euro for one ride!) to the Collosseum, and went round but not in, before heading back through the ruins of the forums to the Via Nazionale, off which I found a little Irish pub which showed me the first ten overs of Australia playing Sri Lanka in the world cup final (ah, emigrants, how I love thee), and then back to the hotel for the Gala Dinner.

This may have been the period in which I most missed my brother, since due to a rather prescriptive seating plan I was placed with four financial consultants and their wives. They were very polite to start with, but as wine overcame them, they started throwing rather complicated actuarial questions at me and expecting one sentence answers. Bless them. I think I managed to escape with most of my dignity intact. I ended up at the hotel bar at 1am talking with the FCs to the chief executive, which I admit was a rather high-risk activity, but, (and perhaps here I say this with no more accuracy than Mr Fawlty), I think I got away with it.

The next morning, we were guided round Hadrian's extraordinary Castel Sant-Angelo, before heading to St Peter's square for the Papal blessing at midday. This was an extraordinary occasion. Although to be honest I couldn't have picked the Pope from Lenny Henry at the distance he was from his window, the booming loudspeakers allowed us to hear him speak and bless in Latin, French, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Italian, an impressive feat. As pilgrims from various places were mentioned, (Barcelona being the most raucous, to continue the Fawlty theme), they cheered as if at a football match. It was most surreal, but strangely I didn't leave feeling that it was an empty experience, so much as trying to think about how the Pope and Catholicism in general, the desire for a supreme pontiff, a panjandrum, the need for ex cathedra, fits into modern life.

Then we went for coffee and cake at a restaurant and flew home to Bristol- one of the most beautiful sites of the whole weekend being the sunset as we crossed under Bristol suspension bridge. Which of course goes to show that one should never assume that beauty is confined to certain moments and areas.

A gorgeous weekend.

TCH

The Glory That Is Rome

Eternal City, here since evermore,
Where Hadrian, where Mussolini fell,
Time turns to dust those stones which were, before,
Arch forms of man, God, heaven, earth and hell.
Decayed within your walls, like echoed power,
Like Ozymandias and like despair,
Stand wrecks that testify god is an Hour,
And man declines and falls a stumbling stair.
Yet still thou goest on: an endless Bann
Of marriage to the hourglass figure Time,
You never boasted one immortal man,
Or of one square unchanged from rime to rhyme,
You love and fight with Years, until such day
As all man's patient virtue ebbs away.


Castel Sant'Angelo, 29/04/2007
With thanks to the Keats and Shelley Museum, Rome,
and to ann.

(Full holiday report to come).
TCH

April in English literature immediately conjurs up the suggestion of a beginning. This isn't only because of what people say about April, but also because of where it's used. Although my reading of the English canon is fairly scanty and my memory is not as good as it used to be, it's pretty easy to summon up three examples of April in the first few words of great works: "Whanne that April with his shoures sote", at the beginning of Chaucer's argument that people like to go on pilgrimages in spring, (I tend to side with Tolkien actually that autumn is when my feet and mind get itchy); "April is the cruellest month" at the beginning of the most ubiquitous poem of the 20th century, T S Eliot's 'The Waste Land', at the beginning of his summation of the dead land in prologue to his fantastic discursion into the nature of human society and people being many-as-one and the idea of rebirth; "It was a cold bright day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen", which is always examined for its brilliance in the sense that it has a double layer- thirteen is both unlucky and literal, in the sense that Winston's life goes on with the strikes of a twenty-four hour clock, but is also clever in that in again introduces Chaucer's and perhaps Eliot's spring in reference to the idea of a beginning. (Longest sentence ever!)

I had always thought of April about being restarting rather than simply starting, for three perhaps equally obvious reasons. Firstly, it's the time of Easter, which means resurrection. Secondly, and this is something that so many sermons I listened to went into when I sang in my choir that it became a cliche in my head, the rebirth which goes on in nature at Easter time is a kind of metaphor for Christ rising from the dead, (I saw it the other way round, but then I was always difficult). But yes, it is about rebirth: 'Their yearly trick of looking new/ Is written down in rings of grain', and all. Thirdly, April tends to be the beginning of the summer term- at school the last of the academic year and the nicest; at university, the shortest of the year and the most stressful, due to exams. But neither at school nor at university does April feel like a fresh start, (not so much as either September, a real starting point, or January, which has the dubious 'New Year's Day' thing going for it). It feels like a return, a restarting.

This all occurred to me because April now I'm in work does, for the first time, feel like a time for starting. That's because I have in some sense a more keen interest in the seasons. This in turn comes, I think, from the fact that working all year doesn't give you any obvious pattern of holiday, so that you tend to judge where you are in the year more from weather than you do when you're at school or university, where you're always in the seventh week of the Michaelmas term, or whatever, (no, OK, nowhere I've ever been taught ever had a Michaelmas term. But I like to dream). But also because, due to the exam system, April is now the time of exams, and after the exam comes some down time where I can start over and enjoy the early months of the summer. The joy that I get from not being in the middle of exams in May and June, as is always the case at school and university, is unspeakably vast. That late-spring, early summer time, up to around my birthday in the first week of June, is the most magical time of the whole year, if I had to pick only one. Not also having GCSEs, A-levels or finals is a great blessing, but feels earned after the work one has to put in through the dark months of January, February and March.

And the exams this time were a mixed bag, (much as I perceived last April's, of course, though this time I'm certain I've failed one). I did papers in financial economics, contingencies, (essentially an introduction to life and pensions insurance), and statistical methods, (largely an introduction to general insurance). The financial economics paper, which I half-expected to have to resit in September anyway, was hideous, and I'm fairly certain it will earn me my first fail in the actuarial exams. This isn't by any means a great disaster: I've started off passing exams at a notably fast rate, (noone else in the department passed as many as the five I did last year)- and financial economics is the hardest of the first group of nine exams, so I had thought to have two shots at it anyway. It was a shame the exam was quite as ill-suited to the bits of the course I did know well as it was, but I know where to go from here to September, which is helpful. The statistical methods paper was better suited and was always going to be an easier paper anyway, and I'd be disappointed to fail it, since I felt it went well. The contingencies paper is going to be the closest call, since I didn't feel the questions in the exam were hard, it was just a very long paper, and doing it all in three hours seemed faintly implausible. Assuming this is true and it wasn't just me being under-prepared I should be OK. So...three out of three would shock me, two seems possible and I'd be completely happy, one would be disappointing but could happen.

Interesting little cricket match in Barbados- parochial matters only, of course, since neither West Indies and England could qualify for the semi-finals, but it was very interesting in the way that cricket always is at bringing up little sub-plots aside from the main thrust, (which in this case will hopefully be a brilliant Australia Sri Lanka final next Saturday). England clearly did want to win for Duncan Fletcher, and West Indies for Brian Lara. Why both of them seemed more fired up by these ultimate irrelevancies than by the prospect of winning a world cup is debatable, but the truth is probably that neither of these teams were as good as the top four, (the closest either came to getting anywhere near was England's hitherto only good performance against Sri Lanka), and so they had no chance no matter how hard they treid. As a play-off for fifth best one-day team, however, it was very exciting and had a good and I think fair ending (I do think all in all England are the fifth best in the Super Eights, though had India and Pakistan got through the story may well have been different).

But little stories:
-Collingwood announcing himself again as a contender for captaincy with an insanely brilliant catch.
-Vaughan striking back with the best bowling performance and second best batting performance of the day. Since when did he become the side's best all-rounder? This may just save his one-day position, although it's highly debatable.
-Pietersen being beautiful again.
-Lara retiring. What a great batsman. Though a mediocre captain, the Englishmen's guard of honour was deserved and charming.
-The excitement of Stuart Broad.
-Nixon's crazy genius at the end.

So all good fun. Tomorrow I'm going to go and walk through the hopefully still-present April sunshine and contemplate new beginnings, and then settle in with a dozen or so friends of mine to watch Kenneth Branagh's 'Hamlet'. Which should be lovely.

And then, and this is why I was a bit concerned when Masq pointed out how close Toronto is in terms of time I have: my trip to Rome next weekend on company's money (yay!), the end of Year End celebrations at work, the May Bank holiday with family, going to see 'Hysteria' at the Rep, singing in three concerts of Elgar's 'The Music Makers', 'The Apostles' and 'The Kingdom', my CT9 residential course, McKellen doing Lear in Stratford and some possible flat-hunting, along with full-time work, before I head off to New York. The early summer, a time for starting and restarting. And a joyous one.

Thanks for reading.

TCH