Busy Skies

Fans of Jon Shuttleworth (Yamaha-playing singer-songwriter, alter ego of comedian Graham Fellows) will be familiar with his Eurovision-inspired song Pigeons In Flight. A rather sweet, lyrical piece of work, it is second only, among doomed Eurovision entries, to the sublime My Lovely Horse. Shuttleworth's song inevitably sprang into my head this blowy morning as, on my way to the station, I looked up to watch the pigeons tumbling in the wind. Like crows and starlings, London pigeons seem to take a real delight in flying, especially in a strong wind. Squadrons of pigeons were hurling themselves around in it this morning, along with the odd band of starlings and a few passing crows. Busy skies.
Pigeons have more elegant aerial moves too - like the courtship display in which the male claps his wings together over his back and glides downward in a long graceful curve. Wallace Stevens noted the beauty of pigeons' flight in the great closing lines of Sunday Morning - after which there is really nothing to say:
'We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.'

Running Out of Road

I wasn't really listening, but over the New Year period, I couldn't help catching rather a lot of those lookaheads and looks back that pop up on the radio at the turn of every year. All were agreed that it had been a newsy year, one in which a heck of a lot happened - no arguing with that - though some thought 2012 could be the one in which things really kick off. There was much talk of a 'crisis of capitalism', of the 'failure of capitalism', even 'the death of capitalism'. Hang on a moment, I thought - couldn't recent events be equally plausibly interpreted as a crisis of socialism, even its death throes? 'Hard' socialism, on Soviet lines, died with exemplary dispatch 20-plus years ago, but 'soft' socialism survived and no one - until now? - doubted that it would go on and on. By soft socialism I mean the kind that takes money from taxpayers and spends it in a well-intentioned (and at times quite successful) attempt to make the world a better place. Then - because there's no natural end to this project - it runs out of money, so it starts borrowing, then borrowing more, until it's borrowing simply to service its ever-increasing debts, and eventually it runs out of road. That's probably happening now. Europe - at least the Eurozone - is broke, we're broke, America's broke. America owes more than any entity has ever owed in the history of the world. There is no prospect of any of us ever paying off these debts, even if the various attempts at 'austerity' actually rein in spending. What is to be done, beyond whistling Dixie and hoping for the best? I have no idea. The obvious solution - the traditional one - is to let rip with inflation, reducing the worth of those trillions of debt to billions, and the billions to millions, until - hey presto - you owe chickenfeed. However, it may be that human ingenuity will find a less damaging way of wiping out the debts this time, or at least reducing them to a manageable scale. Let's hope so - and meanwhile, buy silver bullion! That's what I'd be doing if I had any sense. But alas I haven't.

Ronald Searle

This blog cannot let the passing of Ronald Searle, who died yesterday at 91, go unmarked. Inevitably, all the obits identified him as 'the creator of St Trinian's' (you could almost hear the Searle sighs from beyond the grave), before going on to acknowledge that it was the creation he least wished to be remembered for, and that he was heartily sick of the St T's phenomenon. He was, as many of the obituaries also acknowledged, one of the finest graphic artists of the past century. His drawings are instantly recognisable, and every mark of his pen is imbued with life, wit and humour. Though hugely prolific, Searle was incapable of producing a lifeless work. And, as any fule kno, he should be remembered not as the creator of St Trinian's but of the glorious pictorial world of St Custards.

There'll Never Be Another

The other day I was seeking out some information about the splendidly named actor A. Bromley Davenport (as one does), when I came across this fine fellow, his brother William Bromley-Davenport (A. dropped the hyphen). As well as that impressive list of initials after his name, William boasts what might well be a unique career description - distinguished soldier, England footballer and prominent Tory politician. If not unique, it's certainly one that will never come around again, not with the 'beautiful game' being what it is these days. It's hard to reconcile that drooping, monocled figure with the centre forward who kicked two past the Welsh keeper...

The New Year

As the new year begins, all seem to be agreed that, peering into the future, they see hard times coming. Well, they may be right, but we should always remember that hard times come but they also go. Happy New Year!

The Year

It was the year of the Wedding - not that Kate and Wills affair (to which, owing to an unaccountable oversight, I wasn't invited) but this one. Technically it was not a wedding but a Blessing - and it certainly worked; first grandchild due in July! It was on the wedding morn that I saw my first swift of the year, the start of an unusually long swift summer, which lasted nearly to the end of August.
A poor butterfly summer though. After a glorious spring, the weather turned mostly dismal and inimical to my flying friends. But it began and ended well - and, thanks to one magical encounter, this year will live in my memory as the Year of the Emperor.
Patrick Barkham's The Butterfly Isles was among the pleasures of another good reading year, in the course of which I journeyed through Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder, read one of the funniest books I've ever come across, marvelled again at John Williams, plunged into Richard Wilbur's poetry, read a strangely wonderful one-off, and- oh - much else...
Other highlights of the Nigeness year were the discovery of this wonder of the blogscape, the birth of a new prose form, and my long delayed discovery of the glories of Purcell. I look forward to hearing more and more Purcell in the new year - and I look forward to another year of blogging about this and that. To all who browse here I wish a very happy 2012 - or I would if that date hadn't been annexed by the London Olympiad junta. Happy New Year!

The Fate of a Humorist

'A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.'
The wise words above - whose truth is daily demonstrated in the blogosphere - were written by Stephen Leacock, economist and humorous writer, born on this day in 1869. In his heyday, the 1910s and Twenties, Leacock was probably the most famous humorist in the world, and one of the most famous writers - indeed it was said that more people had heard of Leacock than had heard of Canada (the country of his birth). But who now has heard of him? It seems Leacock's humour - like most humour - was of the kind that doesn't long outlast its time.
Oddly, I discovered a relic of Leacock's fame while looking through the books left behind by my old English teacher (and friend and mentor) when he died. There was a copy of Leacock's Nonsense Novels, in an edition from the 1920s, already in its umpteenth printing. It was a notably handsome volume, with jolly illustrations (by John Kettelwell), so I took it, but I must confess I haven't even attempted to read it. As Groucho Marx (a Leacock admirer) once wrote to a man who had sent him an unsolicited volume: 'I laughed from the moment I picked it up to the moment I put it down. One day I'll read it.'