Life imitates art

 "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life" - Oscar Wilde

Lockdown has so far consisted of nothing much more than sitting around eating Heston Blumenthal's Spiced Mince Pies with a Lemon Twist, perfectly pleasant without being remotely worth the money, and chuntering about Windows 10, the October update of which has disabled a number of features on my laptop. You would not believe how many tickets I had booked for events in November: ranging from Beethoven to Buster Keaton via Alan Bennett. I was even going to see 'Citizen Kane' on the big screen to mark the 75th anniversary of its release. Coincidentally, the following clip has been forwarded to me more than once over the last couple of days; people seem to think it captures the zeitgeist.

Never Judge a Book by its Colour

I've received a couple of questions about William Watson, one of whose poems featured here the other day, mainly along the lines of "Who he?". Well, he is now a somewhat obscure literary figure - deservedly so if the example of his work which I posted is anything to go by - who first came to my notice because he was born in Burley-in-Wharfedale, the village half way between Otley and Ilkley. Sir William, as he apparently was, nearly became Poet Laureate on more than one occasion, but didn't. He did however contribute to The Yellow Book, which is the other reason I had vaguely heard of him. The Yellow Book was a quarterly publication whose contributors included all sorts of fin de siècle luminaries such as Henry James, W.B. Yeats, H.G. Wells and so on; and has cropped up in a number of books that I have read, most recently David Lodge's 'Author, Author' which is about James. It appears that the cover colour and the name was chosen because that was the generic term at the time for salacious French novels - one such features in the story of Dorian Gray's descent into decadence - and they wanted to be cool by association. 

Note the exchange rate

As a bit of research I have dipped into an edition - the one whose cover appears above - and must report that it hasn't aged well. It opens with another terrible poem by Watson - the Lower Wharfe Valley is not to poetry what it is to wargaming - and then moves on to a pretty unreadable essay by James. I am aware that my own prose style is somewhat convoluted, full of ellipses, subordinate clauses and whatnot, but James makes me look like Ernest Hemingway in comparison. On top of that he sprinkles his work with untranslated French phrases in italics; not terribly comme il faut if you ask me.

Their marketing ploy backfired somewhat in the end. Oscar Wilde turned up to one of his trials clutching a racy novel recently arrived from Paris, but the colour of the cover made everyone assume that it was The Yellow Book itself. Given that Wilde was about to go to prison for gross indecency what they found they had actually achieved was to appear débauché by association with him.

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” - Oscar Wilde

Here's a faux French phrase that might have livened up Henry James' article: A woman walks into a pub and asks for a double entendre, so the barman gives her one.

The axe for the frozen sea within

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live." - Gustave Flaubert

I have been thinking about books and how I choose what to read. Despite what the internet seems to think, Oscar Wilde most certainly didn't say "it's the things that you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it"; and in any case I ignore the warning. Like most of us probably do, I always have a non-fiction book to hand: military history of course, but also other subjects that interest me: political economy, mathematics, opera etc. I would be loathe to claim that I ever retain anything when I've finished them, but they at least temporarily make me feel virtuous.

I'm not sure that I can say the same for my recent choice of fiction. What's on my kindle is in part driven by what Amazon and/or the publishers offer at a discount (especially the 99p daily deals), but even when I buy something worthy on the cheap it doesn't always follow that I will actually read it. Indeed I find myself increasingly reading for light relief, often even taking out much of the work of choosing by reading through series of books in order. I have mentioned before that I have been re-reading the Flashman novels (got a bit stuck on Flash for Freedom!, which is somewhat more unpleasant than I remember it) and also working my way through the much longer 87th Precinct series. These latter are proving a bit difficult because not all of them are on kindle and I have therefore been forced to scout around for cheap second hand copies; paying full price being self-evidently not an option. I have reached 'Fuzz', which combines the usual far-fetched main story involving the regulars with a sub-plot about a book being published whose protagonist shares a name with one of the detectives. Presumably there is a sort of metafictional paradox going on; we know that novelists typically avoid using the type of name that one ever comes across in real life.

Going back to how I choose books, it is to some extent a case of Beziehungswahn, with one thing leading to another. I saw the film of 'Journey's End' and tried to get hold of R.C. Sherriff's autobiography. I found that to be rather too expensive for me, but did come across a reasonably priced copy of a book about the battalion in which he served, the 9th East Surrey. It then became apparent that he wasn't the only officer in the unit who went on to literary fame, and my attention was drawn to Gilbert Frankau. He is out of fashion now, but between the wars was apparently a big seller. He turned to writing after being thwarted in his ambition of becoming a Conservative MP; they wouldn't have him because he was divorced. Personally I would have thought that his being a fascist should have been more of a block. And he was; he wrote a newspaper article in 1933 entitled 'As a Jew I am Not Against Hitler'. His extended family has nevertheless, as so often with refugees and migrants, greatly enriched British cultural life; including one of them appearing in every episode of Fawlty Towers. Anyway, back to Gilbert. He wrote of his wartime experiences in fictionalised form, and, having become interested in the 9th East Surrey and the 24th Division as a whole, it seemed logical to seek that out. The book's title: 'Peter Jackson - Cigar Merchant'.


"There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it." - Bertrand Russell

Pot78pouri

So, yet another plea for me not to bother writing about wargaming. It's beginning to seem as if my poorly taken photographs of badly painted plastic figures have failed to elevate me to the ranks of the hobby aristocracy. However, it also looks like actual wargaming is back on the menu in the legendary wargames room of James 'Olicanalad' Roach, who according to one of the comments on his blog a couple of years ago is 'a wargaming demi-god'. I suppose it gives the rest of us something to aim at. Anyway, prior to that let's have some more random, but - according to Google - fascinating, stuff:

Starting with the blog itself, something else I noticed when looking at the stats was that the post with lowest number of hits in the whole five years or so was this recent one, which notwithstanding the title is actually a report on a wargame. Self-evidently I don't have terribly high standards, but even so I thought that post was OK; perhaps wargaming really does put people off.

The rat is back. Or possibly one of his mates, or a distant cousin, or a friend of a friend. Beyond freaking out the cleaners it hasn't done any positive harm yet, but poison seems disappointingly ineffective so all other options, short of getting a cat, are being considered.

I have been for a reiki session, and have to say that whilst my chakras remain much as they ever were it was extremely relaxing; positively enjoyable in fact. I'm not sure I'd pay for it, but for free it was excellent value for money. It came about because a friend is studying to become a reiki master (as an aside there doesn't seem to be any other level of practitioner; I rather assumed with it being Japanese that one would ascend many differently coloured intermediate levels first) and was casting about for volunteers to practice on. Sadly the prospect of more free sessions in the future is slim because the rapprochement  between myself and Coral Laroc - for it was she - didn't last long and we are once again estranged (I didn't send her a birthday card, mistakenly assuming she would prefer the immediacy of a text).

I know you like to keep up with what I'm listening to as I write the blog. This time it's been the Grateful Dead's concert at the Swing Auditorium, San Bernadino, February 26th 1977, but I can't believe that any of you have the amount of free time necessary to join me in that so instead Joan Jett will sing a song especially for our newly discovered French readers:

Pot77pouri

Happy May Day comrades. Another month has passed I see, with absolutely zippo achieved wargaming wise. There haven't even been many games played; the last action was my ultimately futile dash across the bridge for the village in the game specially designed to show off James' new pontoon train. And that, dear readers, is why I've had to pad out the blog with all sorts of other irrelevant stuff, as I shall now proceed to do again.

I have been to a number of things which have not yet made there way into these pages. Musically, many of the acts I had both seen and written about before (e.g. Feast of Fiddles, the Jar Family, the Ale Marys) but Eric Bibb was new to me. He was rather good as befits a multi award winning artiste, although my abiding memory is actually of his drummer who was simply excellent. I wasn't entirely surprised to find that he had played in Nina Simone's band for many years.

In terms of theatre I think I mentioned in passing a trip to see 'Journey's End', a fine play very well performed. As a commentary on both the reality and the futility of the Great War it is head and shoulders above the lame 'Birdsong' which I saw a few weeks ago; but of course R.C. Sherriff was actually there. I also saw 'If I Say Jump', an amusing and entertaining though completely unbelievable piece about a vicar and a handgun. Speaking of the theatre I continue to research Salomé in the hope of understanding why I don't appear to like it. One fact that I gleaned from the opera programme is that the original German premiere of Wilde's play was as a double bill with 'The Importance of Being Earnest'; a juxtaposition which even allowing for the renowned cultural difference in sense of humour seems a tad odd.

Now to really scrape the barrel, I'm going to blog about the blog itself. The lack of walking reports has been commented on, the implication apparently being that I am a fair weather walker who is hiding from the cold and rain. That is in a very real sense a fair cop, but, as it happens, on top of that I have a problem with one of my toes; the big one on the right foot to be precise. Although minor in itself it is precluding me from walking long distances. Sadly, there will be a hiatus in the popular photographic series 'bridges of the Yorkshire dales'; apologies for that.

When James passed a million hits on his blog he said that his biggest audiences came from the UK and the US almost equally. This prompted me to look at mine and I find that apparently more than half of all the hits (which I can confirm still fall significantly short of a million) have come from France. Bonjour mes amis et bienvenus. While I was at it I also checked on the search terms used to find the blog. 'Gay porn' has sadly disappeared from the top ten, but a notable newcomer is 'fascinating stuff'; having read this far down it will be no surprise at all to you that Google sent them straight here. The most frequent search term directed to the blog is 'Epictetus', and one can only assume that there are an awful lot of disappointed and bemused seekers after enlightenment out there.

Only Jokanaan, squire

And so to the opera. I have been to see Opera North's concert staging of Salomé, which I found curiously unengaging for all the technical merits of the performances. Last year I saw the original play and didn’t enjoy that much either so I suspect that my issue is with Wilde rather than Strauss. It’s full of the bad (Herod, Herodias), the deranged (Narraboth, John the Baptist) and those who are both (our title character), which all gets rather wearing after a while, even in operatic form.

The narrative arc – spoilt rich girl insists on getting her own way but then gets her comeuppance as well – is familiar enough. Offsetting it with the Baptist’s moral monomania and misogyny ought to provide more drama than it does. Herod seems to be hedging his bets between appeasing his wife’s anger and not doing anything too extreme in case John’s revelations from God are real; modern audiences will probably just be wondering whereabouts on the autistic scale the soi disant prophet sits.

In this production the dance of the seven veils takes place off stage. Just as it became apparent that was how they were going to do it a chap across the aisle got up and left. Sadly, rather than being a dirty old man storming out because he felt short changed by the lack of nudity, he turned out to only have gone to the toilet and shortly returned.  As Opera North – who have no aversion to their sopranos getting their kit off  – shied away from it, let’s have Ken Russell’s version. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not Strauss’s music and nor is it suitable for viewing at work:

The name of the dance isn’t of course mentioned in the bible and originates with Wilde’s 1891 play. I have recently re-read Umberto Eco’s ‘Name of the Rose’, set in the fourteenth century. William of Baskerville refers while in conversation with Adso of Melk to ‘the dance of the seven veils’ performed by Salomé. Given the author’s vast erudition and sense of irony one must assume that this is a deliberate in-joke rather than a mistake.

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means..." - Umberto Eco

Ha bloody ha

"To the Tories every election must have a bogeyman. If you haven't got a programme, a bogeyman will do." - Nye Bevan

One of the advantages of age is an acknowledgement and acceptance of things that one isn't very good at. The chap at this blog sums up pretty much where I have got to in my thinking, except for the bit about winning money; I don't hold with gambling, or, to be more precise, I don't hold with the possibility of losing money.

As Oscar Wilde would undoubtedly have said were he still with us: "One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at Theresa May".

Wherefore weep you?

I have been to see the live broadcast of the RSC's latest production of The Tempest. The focus is very much on the magic and on forgiveness, of oneself as much as of others. I wasn't convinced that any real remorse was being shown by Antonio, but perhaps that's the point (1).  The magic however was paradoxically realistic. When watching these live broadcasts I am often left with the impression that the cinema goer gets a better deal than those in the live audience. On this occasion that probably isn't the case. The extensive special effects, especially Ariel's motion capture suit, were par for the course on the big screen, but I suspect would have been astonishing when seen on the stage.

 They didn't make much of the political aspects, such as the play as metaphor for colonialism. Perhaps that's a shame. At the time the play was written England (and it was then England and not Britain) was just setting out on establishing a global Empire. And as of today we seem destined to be colonised in our turn. Perhaps a production of Shakespeare's last solo composition in which Caliban represents the English white working class in all their lumpen, unintelligent monstrosity would be very interesting. Subhuman children of the witch indeed (2). For surely what angers Caliban isn't - as it should be - his oppression, but the fact that he is aware - at least subconsciously - of his inadequacies when compared to others, but feels impotent to address them. Oscar Wilde's observation in the preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' has a validity just as relevant to the this century as to his: “The ... dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.”


(1) "Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." - Matthew Chapter 18 Verses 21-22

(2) I'm allowed to say this - I am, by origin and upbringing, as white working class as it is possible to be.

Truth and roses

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship." - Oscar Wilde

Such sweet sorrow

And so to the theatre, and also to the cinema as I've been to another live transmission. The elder Miss Epictetus and I have been to see Kenneth Branagh's Romeo and Juliet. I was a latecomer to these, but,as I think I've mentioned before, I'm very impressed. Far from diminishing the theatrical experience the cinematic aspect is done so well that those watching remotely actually get a better deal. Branagh sets his production in 1950's Italy and augments this theme by relaying it in black and white. For those of us whose mental image of that period of Italian history is based on 'La Dolce Vita' this is absolutely on the button; I'm not entirely sure what the large number of.15 and 16 year old GCSE students in the audience made of it.

The production was excellent, with Lily James outstanding as Juliet.The 'fit bloke from Game of Thrones' looked good, got his lines right and didn't fall over as Romeo, and a mention should be made of Meera Syal as the nurse. However, the star of the show was Sir Derek Jacobi as Mercutio. Branagh, in a pre-show exposition, explained his decision to cast the 77 year old by means of a long anecdote involving Oscar Wilde via D.H. Lawrence, although it might just have been simpler to point out that the text doesn't refer to the character's age. Whatever the justification, Mercutio as flâneur works very well. Indeed I am off to buy a cane (although probably not a swordstick) at the earliest opportunity; I have found a personal style for my retirement years.

Get your kicks

 'Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities' - Oscar Wilde

To Harrogate Theatre to see the Counterfeit Stones who were extremely entertaining. I'd heard they would be funny - which they were - but I was most impressed by their musical abilities. I'd never seen a tribute band before; perhaps both me and Oscar Wilde got it wrong. Anyway recommended both if you like decent covers of decent songs (Gimme Shelter was particularly good) and if your sense of humour is tickled by jokes about bass player Bill Hymen's favourite key being A minor.

"Bye-bye you bum, bye-bye you bum, bye-bye"

I promised exciting news about the wargaming annexe this week. Well the update is that the joiner has done half the work and then buggered off leaving vague promises of returning next week to finish it. Perhaps I should have seen that coming.

Doors and sardines

And so to the theatre. Last night it was 'Noises Off' Michael Frayn's extremely funny farce about a farce. I think the author's stroke of genius is the structure, which enables him to both have his cake and eat it. The play within the play allows him to incorporate scenes of immense cheesiness which, if played straight, would cause embarrassment to both playwright and actors, but which are nonetheless hilarious. The scenes in the 'real' play allow him to mock the concept of farce through its commentaries on the 'pretend' play whilst at the same time delivering, particularly in the second act, a genuine farce of the highest class. 'Nothing On'. the play being performed by the actors that the actors are playing, falls steadily apart across the three acts from a not terribly good start in the first place. One could put forward all sorts of suggestions as to what that disintegration represents, but given Frayn's well known interest in physics, I would suggest that it is no more than the second law of thermodynamics. Although, on reflection, there isn't actually much more than the second law of thermodynamics anyway.

I mentioned in this blog a few days ago that I was prone to superglue accidents. In 'Nothing On' one of the characters superglues one hand to an income tax demand and the other to a plate of sardines. As Oscar Wilde said "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life".

And yes, trousers are dropped.

Anything can happen Thursday

Well! So soon after last night's lop-sided lunacy we have another first: two blog postings on the same day. "Blimey O'Reilly" as Oscar Wilde would have said under the same circumstances. 

I have been to the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds to see the new Robert Filliou exhibition. It's centrepiece (not literally as it is actually off in a side room) is 'Eins.Un.One...', a work dating from 1984.

This consists - and I quote - 'of 16,000 wooden dice bearing the number one on all sides, negating the laws of probability'.

Now, any wargamer will tell you that rolling 16,000 consecutive ones is in fact not just plausible, but has actually happened to them during a game in which their brilliant strategy was otherwise going to guarantee victory.

So I, on behalf of you all, want to say to Filliou (again not literally as he has been dead for 25 years): "We recognise and share your pain."