An Unfortunate Find

Having just finished Penelope Fitzgerald's superb joint biography, The Knox Brothers, I was browsing online seeking to find out a little more about Ronald Knox's own favourite of his books (though oddly unmentioned by PF), Enthusiasm - and so it was that I came across this extraordinary outpouring of bile, written when the poor man was barely cold in his grave. There's the true Xtian spirit if you like - and it would seem my friend the Galway Cyclops is not the only one with firm views on Masons (and, of course, 'their Jewish progenitors')...

Birdsong and Heroes

Having been hit by a thoroughly unpleasant 'cold', I've been awake rather a lot lately in the small hours, and I find that the birds are singing more lustily than ever, kicking off around 2am and keeping going, with occasional pauses, till sunrise. It still seems very odd, but I suppose it will be taken for granted by future generations of town dwellers.
Meanwhile, after reading the obituary of the interesting poet Peter Reading, who died last week, I followed a link and found this altogether extraordinary chap. At a time when members of the armed forces are referred to generically as 'heroes', it's good to be reminded of the real thing. And read to the end for his prophetic words about 'Europe'...

Shakespeare Got There First

I was interested to see this - and to hear the good doctor on the radio early this morning... Was Shakespeare a 'pioneer of psychosomatic research'? Hardly. It's more that - as I've always maintained - all you need to know about being human, about our inward and outward lives, is contained in his works. If you needed to explain to an alien race looking on from some distant galaxy what human beings are, you could do no better than to refer them to those works, which tell far more than any science-based descriptions of us. Science - especially the dubious science of psychology - limps along behind Shakespeare, picking up scraps. He was there first, and he went in deeper than any psychologist.

Over on The Dabbler...

I explain Everything.

Balls Gets Teary

In these lachrymose times, it seems that the defining question interviewers ask of Famous People is becoming 'What makes you cry?' Ed Balls is the latest to reveal to a startled world what tickles his tear ducts, and it seems that Balls, like most thugs, has a sentimental streak. The Sound of Music, he claims, makes him cry - as do those moments on Antiques Roadshow when the expert reveals that the unconsidered trifle bought for a song is in fact a treasure worth a king's ransom. Perhaps this explains the Balls-Brown approach to the nation's economy - all along they were convinced that one day something would turn up in the attic worth so much that they could pay off all those debts. Picture them falling into each other's arms, weeping with helpless joy...
There was a time when the defining question was 'What do you believe?' In her wonderful biography of The Knox Brothers, Penelope Fitzgerald recalls that in the Twenties, a time when the press had a great hunger for celebrities, 'another use for Famous People, so popular that it amounted to mania, was the collection of their opinions about God - 'What I Believe'. Everyone was asked, from Bertrand Russell to the excavators of Tutankhamun's tomb. Eddie [PF's journalist father] contributed to this in Punch by claiming to have interviewed Steve Donoghue, the champion jockey, and getting the reply: 'I have always been conscious, especially at the finish of a race, that Good and Evil are Relative Notions, and Sin is a Mere Negative', while Jack Hobbs is said to have smiled quietly at the scant interest his fellow batsmen took in eschatology...'

'Push, pull, squat, brace...'

I suppose it had to happen - there's a call for mandatory testing in PE (or, as it's inventively called here, 'physical literacy') in all schools. Hmm... In my experience, PE was less a 'subject' than a regime of physical pain and humiliation, overseen by chippy sadists with more or less repressed homosexual urges. My finest hour on the PE front came when, with a friend, I managed to duck under the radar and avoid PE classes for a whole term - no mean feat in a regimented, sport-fixated school. We passed our time agreeably in a nearby cafe, smoking, drinking tea and discussing the profounder meanings embedded in Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde - much healthier pursuits for a growing lad than all that 'push, pull, squat, brace, rotate, accelerate and change of direction'. Our absence was eventually noticed, and I was summoned to the deputy head's office for a telling-off, but as I peered through the fog of tobacco smoke and observed his impressively yellowed fingers, I could tell that his heart wasn't really in it...
If schools want to teach 'physical literacy', they should switch to Pilates and yoga.

Picking

I think these chaps are rather amazing... Cahalen puts me in mind of The Band's Garth Hudson in the early days (miniaturised of course). And I love the affectionate rapport between them. Enjoy!