Wilde

I have been reading the first part of "The Importance of Being Earnest" and what a funny play it is with its clever, witty lines. But are they replete with meaning? I don't think so. I can't help comparing Wilde's sayings with those of George Bernard Shaw. Shaw strikes me as a deeper thinker than Wilde so his "sayings" are much more meaningful.
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibilty!" (Wilde)
"Liberty means responsibilty. That is why most men dread it." (Shaw)
"When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people." (Wilde)
"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity." (Shaw)
But when Lady Bracknell arrives on the scene who cares about meaningfulness?
"I'm sorry we are a little late, Algernon, but I was obliged to call on Lady Harbury. I hadn't seen her since her husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger." (Wilde)

Script Editors (sods)

You have to be careful when inserting a quote from a great writer in your work. I used a passage from "A View from the Bridge" in a play of mine but when I sent the play off to the BBC (it was turned down) I was told I should be aware that using others' words could infringe copyright - you are aloud to use only short passages (I don't know how long).
Another thing is that sometimes the passages you use are so good in comparision with the stuff you yourself have written, they make your words sound banal. This is true especially of using Shakesperean passages.
I wrote a play a long time ago and used a line of a Philip Larkin poem in it: a character quoted it to express his state of mind. "Why should I let this toad, Work, squat on my life."
Needless to say, when the play was duly returned (from ITV or BBC) the script editor wrote that the play was not something they were looking for at that present time (a sign, by the way, that they may be thinking of pinching the idea/story to use themselves) but thanks for sending it etc etc. Then - I knew it was coming - the bloke added "There is one very good line in your play though - the trouble is it's the one by Larkin."
The sod.

It's my job

I was on a cruise holiday a few years ago and there was a pianist who entertained the holiday crowd with songs, mainly standard stuff of old and some modern numbers. He could play and sing any song you requested. I was staggered by his ability to remember so much and just before the holdiday ended, I asked him how he was able to do that.
I was hoping for an illuminating answer but all I got was "It's my job."
Later, back on firm ground, I was at the funeral of my aunt and the vicar conducting the service showed a knowledge of my her that astounded me. When I was leaving at the end of the service I made a point of shaking the vicar's hand and saying "I was very impressed by your knowledge of the life of my aunt."
"It's my job," he said.

Drinking

Years ago there was a place in Monmouthshire where you could drink beer pretty well all day (not many people drank anything else - wine? never heard of it - whisky? that's for alcoholics). The reason for this was that certain pubs in one part of the town were in one county, certain others were in another, and they opened at different times to accomodate the miners finishing work at different times.... something like that.
In those days Wales was "dry" on Sundays. So what were all those Cardiff drinkers to do? Well they could (and would) walk to Rumney which was then in Monmouthshire and which was not dry (can't recall why - was it in England?). Lloyd George said Rumney, on a Sunday evening, was a den of iniquity and drunkeness (or words to that effect).
In other towns and cities of Wales on "dry Sundays" people - men I mean since women did not habituate pubs in those days - would , if they wished to drink, join clubs which were not "dry".
So in many ways it was no different then than now when, it seems, there is so much binge drinking. What is different however, is that then girls, young women did not, unless they were beyond shame, go out drinking as they do now. Blokes always did and now do, so they say, though I don't believe it, drink to excess. They always did.
I remember a young man who had snow white hair, big frame, pit worker, who'd come off his shift and go straight to the pub to sink about 16 pints of ale. He'd go home, sleep it off and be up the next morning (about six o'clock) for work. Every day, year in year out.
Yeah, good old "Snowy White", the Falstaff of Pontllanfraith!

St David's Day

Every year on the 1st of March, St David's Day, the grammar school I attended held a mini Eisteddfod, the maxi version of which is held in a town or city of Wales where competitions are held - solo singing, choirs, poetry competitions and so on. The big feature of the Eisteddfod is the chairing of the bard, that is the celebration of the writer of the best poem in which he sits in a magnificently carved chair and, with a sword held over his head, he is "chaired" - the exact meaning of what takes place has always been a mystery to me, one reason being that it is all conducted in Welsh and I don't speak the language coming as I do from Gwent (or Monmouthshire) in the east of Wales where few people speak Welsh.
I was surprised when I won the chair poem in our school's mini version of the Eisteddfod (all conducted in English); and as it happened one of the teachers at the school was the actual sword bearer at the big Eisteddfod function. So when I was "chaired" I was given, as they say these days, "the full monty" - the sword held above my head and the official recitation of the words spoken when the poet is chaired properly.
It was an experience that has stayed in my memory ever since, not least because whenever I am asked, rarely now, to give a talk on writing I always tell the audience this story of how I was "chaired" by Trefin.
And then I always add this comment about my writing career since then: "From there it's been down-hill all the way."

Hamlet - the ballet

Many years ago I saw Robert Helpman in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" at Stratford on Avon; I can't remember much about it except that his performance was characterised by excessive balletic leaps and skillful sword fighting. Which is not surprising since he was primarilly a ballet dancer.
Now I read that he once adapted the play into a ballet. How on earth can that be done successfully when the play relies so much on the spoken word?
Or, as was written in a review in the Telegraph this week about a new version of "Hamlet - the ballet":
"On paper, isn't there something bizarre about adapting Shakespeare - the greatest linguistic genius - for the wordless medium of ballet? It's like investing in, say, a 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, tipping the contents down the sink, and keeping the empty bottle."
Agreed.

100 Best Films

In last week's Sunday Telegraph someone made a list of their 100 best films under headings: Drama, Thriller/Action, Comedy, Animation, Horror, Romance, Kids, Musicals, Documentary, World Cinema.
No Westerns?
No "Shane" or "The Searchers" or "The Big Country" or "Stagecoach"?
No Chaplin?
No Welles?
Someone asked us all, in a group of holiday makers a few years ago, what were our favourite films. I said, without much thought, "Casablanca". But in retrospect I feel I should have chosen - with all its faults and it has many, and with its shovel-fulls (or should that be shovels-full?) of sentimentality - Chaplin's "City Lights".
I always marvel at the organisation of the plot and the choreography of the silent comedy routines. And there are scenes in it when I am swept away by the sheer brilliance of the details: the first time Chaplin meets the blind girl is superb because it is so well organised and so moving and so funny too; the end of the film when the girl has had her sight restored and sees, for the first time, the man - the down-at-heel, ill kempt tramp who'd paid for the operation (his having gone to prison for theft to pay for it) and realising he was not after all the rich, Rolls Royce owner she thought he was from an earlier scene. And when she offers him a coin which he first refuses but then accepts and on touching his hand she knows who he is.... and Chaplin's musical accompaniment rises to Puccini-like heights of rapture....
Pass the handkerchief please.

Literature and Mathematics

I had never heard of Julien Gracq until today when a friend sent me Gracq's obituary in The Independent newspaper. He was a famous French novelist, a private man who did not meet up with other authors or accept prizes; he even turned down the Prix Goncourt.
He wrote a sentence that struck me as interesting if not inspired. "Literature was the last of the arts to make its appearance. It will be the first to disappear."
Strange that I am at this present time reading a book by David Leavitt called "The Indian Clerk" about the mathematician G.H.Hardy's relationship with the Indian self-taught mathematician Ramanujan in which there is this quote from Hardy: "Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. 'Immortality' may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean."

Breakfasts

Today I had breakfast in Debenhams in Cardiff. It was really rather good for £3.15. A freshly fried egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, hash potatoe, tomatoes (from a tin) and toast. All nicely cooked and tasty.
Compared to that served in Asda it was fit for a King. It's not that the food is poor, it's that it has been lying around on warmish trays for a long time so that the bacon, in particular, is never hot, often cold; and the presentation is much to be desired - they dump the stuff on the plates so that the egg is often floating in beans, the bacon is under the tomatoes and the black pudding is simply nowhere to be seen.
I used to breakfast in town quite often. Here are some features of the places I went:
In Wimpey's everything is circular because, probably everything is cooked in circular metal dishes. Ok, you expect the sliced tomatoe to be round, but the bacon too? Amazing!
British Home Stores did good quality breakfasts, well presented, a cheap one and a slightly dearer one. I went there with my daughter a few years ago, I had the standard breakfast while she, being vegetarian, wanted just a few items, an egg, tomatoe, toast etc. When I came to pay the bill they'd charged her much more than me yet my meal had been twice the size. They explained: "we serve the standard breakfasts to attract people here to buy other things whereas if you buy single items you are charged separately for them."
I see!
The best breakfast in town is in a small cafe in Quay Street where the food is cooked freshly as you order it. And it's cheap.

Food experts

Paul Johnson in the Spectator a few weeks ago wrote about the wonderful foods of his youth. A letter a week later felt he had missed one food in particular, the glorious chip butty - chips laid on two slices of well buttered bread.
Which took me back to an interview Cliff Michelmore conducted on his "Tonight" programme about forty years ago.
A food expert was saying how dangerous it was to eat potatoes (I lie not). When Cliff said "what about the famous chip butty?" the expert replied briefly with the words "Certain death".
Time passes. The potatoe evolves in the "expert" mind such that it becomes practically a necessity for it to be eaten for reasons of health.
Perhaps it's time for "health/food experts" to go the way of dinosaurs. Or maybe to be placed on two slices of well buttered bread and consumed.

Film Errors

In this week's Spectator the film review mentions a note being torn up in the film "The Bucket List" only for the same note to appear intact later.
It is a wonder that mistakes like this can occur what with all the attention to detail involved in film making.
The film "Roman Hoiliday" has a scene with the stars, Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, in a square in Rome with a clock showing a certain time; seconds later in film time the clock shows a time hours different from that. Where was the continuity expert?
The craziest thing I have seen was in the local fleapit of a cinema I used to go to when I was a kid. A Hopalong Cassidy western was being shown. Back then the film was shown in three or four reels. Since the film didn't have much of a story, a lot of chasing villains and shooting, I wonder if many people noticed that the horseshoe they were looking for in reel number 3 had already been found in reel number 2.
Some projectionists there were then!
But it didn't seem to matter; the audience enjoyed the film, there was the big shoot-out at the end, the hero got his man and the young male lead got the young female lead.
Hopalong wasn't much interested in women. Nor was his side-kick, rough, beared old Gabby Hayes. The film always ended happily with Gabby saying something daft and Hopalong and the others laughing.
Including the horses.

Hamlet

There's an article in The Times today in which Benedict Nightingale chooses his "best Hamlet". Simon Russell Beale came first. I saw his performance a couple of years ago and was not impressed; he spoke the words intelligently and musically, the trouble was he simply did not look the part. Neither did Dereck Jacobi who, again, spoke well but pranced about the stage.
Hamlet should be very male I think, not macho but forceful, direct, commanding.
One of the best I heard (on radio) was Michael Redgrave and one of the worst, if not the worst, (again on radio) was Kenneth Griffiths.
Laurence Olivier in the film version is of course excellent in every way, good looking, robust, intelligent, manly. I am told by a famous actress that the best Hamlet she ever saw was a Russian in a Russian film made, O, fifty years ago?
I saw Robert Helpmann in Stratford, very athletic, throwing himself about balletically (he was of course, a ballet dancer primarilly) but giving a sound performance. And Peter O'Toole as a young man in Bristol was well received and well reviewed.
Was Horatio more than just a good friend to Hamlet? was a question someone asked in The Times a few years ago. Was Horatio married? Letters followed argueing this and that but the best was one that "confirmed" Horatio's marriage status, for does not Hamlet say to him in his final words just before he dies: "If thou dids't ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from Felicity awhile...."

The Lodger

Saturday's Times in its section "Knowledge" had a list of all Hitchcock's films: 53 of them. I have seen 35 of them.
The only silent one of his I have seen is "The Lodger", an interesting study of a man who may be Jack the Ripper. Even then Hitch could maintain exciting suspense.
But the actor playing the lodger was Ivor Novello who was then, in 1926, what was called a "matinee idol". So there was no chance of him portraying a guilty man - it would, he thought, have ruined his reputation as "the most elligible bachelor in England". So, Hitchcock did not for once have his way, the end was changed and the lodger was proved to be innocent.
He looked guilty to me.

Squirrels

We were having our roof repaired a few weeks ago; on the sloping roof was one the roofers scampering with a squirrel's agility. The strange thing was that when he came down he turned out to "have a thing" about squirrels. When I spoke to him about scuffling noises in the attic and the possibility of mice there, he came up close and whispered in my ear: "it's not mice,squire, it's squirrels. See that ivy," he said. "They climb up that and get into your attic."
When I told him I had never seen a squirrel in the neighbourhood, he sloped away; I thought he looked rather hurt.
He was probably one of those people (and there seem to be many about these days) who have such a revulsion of grey squirrels that they suspect them of being practically everywhere.
I met a bloke some years ago who had written a novel about a war between red and grey squirrels; he had at first published it himself but later found a publisher - it proved to be quite successful. Needless to say the "heroes" were the reds and the villains were the greys. I don't know which ones were triumphant in the end but it was probably the reds.
Not like real life at all.

Unsolvable Problems

A couple of years ago I popped into my local and met a friend who said "Well, what've you been doing this week?" I said "For the past few days I've been trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem." He said: "People have been trying to do that for 4 to 5 hundred years; you don't imagine you are going to do that in a couple of days do you?"
No I didn't.
And yet....
It's one of those problems that appear so simple that you'd think anyone with a smattering of Maths could do it, until you come to try it yourself.
Another one is Goldbach's Conjecture.
Both seem capable of being solved but no one ever has.
Yet mathematicians keep receiving "proofs" of these theorems from other mathematicians, non-mathematicians, lunatics, fools.
In David Leavitt's novel "The Indian Clerk", based on real people and events, the mathematician G. H. Hardy receives a letter from an Indian clerk concerning certain mathematical formulae he has worked out. Here we go again, Hardy thought, another crank with big ideas - the letter he had received had "left a curious smell on Hardy's fingers which may have been of curry."
How could it be that a simple clerk working in India with no training in mathematics would be able to produce quality work in a very difficult field that contended for comparision with the greatest brains of the time - Hardy, Russell, Littlewood, Whithead....?
Ramanujan, the Indian clerk, came to Cambridge and proved to be an outstanding mathematician.
Fermat's Last Theorem has been proved using computers; back in the 1600's there were no computers. And Fermat had written that he possessed "a marvellous proof" but died before he demonstrated it.
That's why people keep trying to solve it in a simple way without the use of elaborate calculations on computers.
So here goes: why are the only values of n that actually work, in the equation x to the power of n plus y to the power of n equals z to the power of n, the numbers 1 and 2?
Let me see now: try 3.... No, doesn't work.... Try 4 then..... No.....
Dammit, what's Goldbach's Conjecture - that may be easier?

Modern Poetry

I have the feeling that poetry today is not written for the public at large, or even for a large educated group of readers, but for a small elite group of people - other poets. Poets send their work off to magazines that are published by poets that know them; the magazine publishers, who are also poets, send their works off to other magazines whose publishers know them. And so on. It's a circular thing. It boils down to "you publish my poems and I'll publish yours". Or "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."
Dana Gioia, the American poet wrote: "To regain poetry's readership one must begin by meeting William Carlos Williams's challenge to find 'what concerns many men' not simply what concerns poets."

Nixon

It was a bit surprising that my father, well to the left politically, admired Richard Nixon, but it had to do with that period to the end of his presidency when he showed a lot of guts in trying to stay in office.
Two other men are admirers of Nixon, both of whom are as unlike my father as chalk is to cheese, or as left is to right: Jonathan Aitken and Lord Black both of whom have written biographies of Nixon, and both of whom have been convicted of crimes, one having already served his sentence, the other probably about to.
I never liked the guy. Yet I felt a kindling of admiration when I read the following report on Nixon reminiscing at San Clemente shortly after his resignation:
"What starts the process really are the laughs and snubs and slights you get when you are a kid. Sometimes it's because you're poor or Irish or Jewish or ugly, or simply that you are skinny. But if you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance, while those who have everything are sitting on their fat buts....
When you get to the top you find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it because it is part of you and you need it as much as you do an arm or a leg. So you are lean and mean and resourceful and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance."
The reporter who wrote this added: "With Nixon, the anger ran so deep it never left him. He was the angriest American president."

Roy Scheider

Why was I so fond of Roy Schieder? I saw him in only three or four films. He was no Nicholas Cage who seems to make a film every week or so. The thing was that after "Jaws" and "Marathon Man" he wasn't offered much work. I can't understand why.
He made "Jaws" credible; he played a man who had a conscience yet had to do a job of work that tested it. In "Marathon Man" he played a devoted brother who led a secret life.
He was so good at playing roles where he was a man with a mission but had moral unease about it.
"Marathon Man" was I think his best film though he wasn't in it for long (killed off by Olivier as a German dentist with a Nazi past). There was an intensity about his performance, both mental and physical, that made it profoundly exciting.
He will be missed.
Incidentally, the director wanted someone "more German" than Olivier the be cast but the producer insisted on Olivier. He was right: there was no one more German than Olivier. Or more Jewish in another film. Or more English in others.

Drop Goal

The drop goal in rugby football is a beautiful feature of the game: the player, usually from a distance of twenty to forty metres, eyes the space between the posts, stops running, drops the ball to the ground and just after it bounces, he kicks it, trying to send it between the posts. Some men are experts at it, others sometimes succeed, some can't do it at all.
Probably the most famous drop goal which won England the match against Australia in the World Cup a couple of years back and, indeed, won them the World Cup, was that executed by Jonny Wilkinson. From about thirty metres he drop-kicked the ball between the posts and the match ended soon after with a win for England. It was one of those never-to-be-forgotten moments, shown over and over on TV.
I heard a story about Wilfred Wooller who played rugby for Cardiff and Wales before WW2. As he was going on the field a supporter said to him: "Do you know that you have never dropped a goal?" Wooller said: "You're right." Then he said: "If I do one this game, will you give me your umbrella?" "Of course," replied the man. Well, in the course of the game Wooller had the ball and was hareing for the score line when he suddenly remembered the drop goal and the umbrella, so he stopped and dropped a goal instead of scoring a try (which to his captain must have seemed crazy, the try with conversion scoring higher than the drop goal); he then ran to the touch line and grabbed the umbrella off the man. "Thank you," he said. "You're welcome," the man said.
When the outside half playing for South Africa in a World Cup match years ago dropped five goals (four maybe?) to win the game and put England out of the tournament, he said, after the game, "The Lord was on my side."
I used to meet a man on a bus stop every Friday evening on our way into Cardiff. I told him what the South African had said and added: "I didn't know God was a drop-goal specialist."
He didn't smile even. He was an ardent church goer I found out later.
I must learn to be more tactful.

Short Stories

Who writes short stories these days? Well, there are those people who go on writing courses and there are those who join writing courses advertised in newspapers and there are, I suppose, those who write them because they want to write them, not to get published or broadcast.
There are not many writers who write short stories for money because there aren't many openings "out there". Of course, certain writers of prominence are occasionally commissioned to write short stories for a magazines because the magazines (or rarely newspapers) use their names to sell their mags. And there are some literary mags that publish short stories but they usually get grants from "the public purse". And there are some mags that publish romance stories for young women, but they are usually written "in house".
Short stories are dead and gone. What has taken their place? People once thought TV had killed them off with their plays, but not now: TV doesn't broadcast plays any more , only series and soaps.
No, what has taken their place is blogs.

E. Eynon Evans

E. Eynon Evans the playwright went out of fashion long before died. He wrote comic Welsh plays (in English): "Bless this House", "The Wishing Well", "A New Leaf".
He was a bus driver in Caerphilly I believe who did some amateur acting and some playwriting for his amateur company.
BBC Wales got interested in him and used him as an actor and, later, as a playwright.
His plays were exceedingly popular in Wales particularly but also in Britain and abroad.
But as he got older interest waned and he found it difficult to write anything acceptable to the BBC or anyone else.
When I reviewed theatre for a national newspaper I asked my features editor if he would like a review of "Bless This House" which was on a tour of Wales done by a professional group.
There was a silence before he said "I don't think so," in a tone of voice that implied that E. Eynon Evans's work was a bit below the kind of plays they liked reviewed. Which, I thought, was a pity because while he could write an entertaining piece that made audiences laugh out loud (Welsh audiences paricularly) there was, too, a serious theme underlying the comedy.
"Bless This House" is a play about an ageing woman who visits her three offspring in turn to find out which of them she would prefer to spend the rest of her days with. It's a serious matter for some old people and often more serious for their sons and daughters; for E. Eynon Evans to make problem as palatable as he did in a broad comic form I thought was an achievement. (It's a similar story to the one in the great Japanese film "Tokyo Story")
I knew one of the cast, a man in his late fifties and spoke to him after the show. He said he had been acting all his adult life but had never had such success as this play gave him. "It has played to packed houses all over Wales," he said.
Pity E. Eynon Evans wasn't alive then to enjoy the success.

Playwrights

I can't remember the exact quote but Graham Greene once said, apropos the writing of plays, that certain people had the ability to write convincing sounding dialogue without being necessarilly good playwrights. They could write dialogue but had nothing worth saying - the plays they wrote were without substance.
I once was a reader of plays for the BBC in Cardiff; they'd send me a batch of six plays sent in by hopeful playwrights, I'd read them and write comments on them. I was paid little and, of course, it made life easier for the script editors. Most of the plays were not much good. Then I came across a writer who really knew how to entertain with his snappy, witty dialogue. I wrote a quite long appreciation of the man's work though I felt then that there wasn't much in the play.
The BBC took him up, as they say. They met up with him, helped him along to write something for them - something serious. He did. The play was broadacast but was quite poor. He was trying to write an in depth work but really he had nothing to say.
He doesn't write for the BBC now; he set up his own company and writes solely for it. Also he acts in his productions - yes he produces them to.
He is very, very successful.

The dreaded F word

Well, not so dreaded these days. After all, it's used frequently on TV shows and plays: Gordon Ramsay cannot finish a sentence without using it at least once; characters in plays use it often; people in reality shows like to use it to give themselves "street cred" I think.
Last week I put a play in for a competition; it was called "On the Street" and was about six young people who lived rough, were homeless. Some of my plays feature young people - my most popular play features six young women, girls really, about to leave school, who dream of the sort of lives they are going to live though we know they are never going to fulfill their desires; they are dreaming and the play was called "Dreamjobs". Now there was no need for me to use "four letter words" in their case though in real life they would probably have used them. I did not think of them as quite so "street-wise" as the characters in "On the Street". Here were a tougher bunch of young people all together with one character, Rick, an out and out scoundrel if not a killer. I had to give him and one other lad who is influenced by him a reality that included the sort of language that young men like them would adopt so I had them using the F word a few times. Not all the time which would have been more real but would have been boring, as people always are who sprinkle the F word willy nilly throughout their speech. Without the F word the two characters, I feel, would have lacked credibilty.
I did not use the word for its "audience effectiveness" (I know from seeing many plays that its use more often than not works) but for the sake of making the characters more believeable.
We shall see.

Expenses

In yesterday's Telegraph, apropos "expenses", there is an account of how one MP had "a huge row with the Commons authorities when he tried to submit a full set of receipts with his expenses. He was told he would be setting a dangerous precedent for his colleagues."
Which brought to mind a story a friend of mine told me about when as a young man he had just started work for a big, well-known finance company. He was called before his boss who had in front of him my friend's expenses for the last month.
"Your expenses...." said the boss.
Before he could continue my friend said: "I'm sorry sir, perhaps I could have cut them down a bit."
"Cut them down!" exclaimed the boss. "Lift them up, rather; you're going to make the rest of us look bloody greedy."
So from then on, he told me, it was: "Waiter, another bottle of that delightful champagne if you please."

Philosophy

My father who was not an academic philosopher but an amateur studyer of the subject, towards the end of his life wrote an article which he sent to MIND. It was accepted.
Later I was speaking to the professor of philosophy in Cardiff University, Dr Evans, who told me that if you were a teacher of philosophy in America you did your damndest to get an article in MIND because if you were successful "they'd make you straight away a professor".
Well done Dad.

Restaurants

Having seen some of the restaurants that Gordon Ramsay in his TV show does his best to improve I wonder how many "out there" are in the sort of state Ramsay found some of them in; and these are not supposed to be the very worst of the bunch - they serve so-called quality food and wish to attract high earners.
Some of the kitchens are so disgusting that one wonders what most second rate places are like.
Quite frankly the sight of some of these places has put me right off going out to eat.
But last week I went to Shampers in Cardiff because I was meeting an old friend from London. It has a good reputation; I have been there many times before and always found the food good. This time however I was disappointed. The wild mushroom soup was excellent but the dish to follow was not at all a pleasure to eat or look at: a leg of duck placed on a mound of mashed potatoes with some gravy poured over it. Hardly any meat on the duck and enough potatoe to feed a platoon.
But the food is cooked where you can see it being cooked and the place is clean and tidy and welcoming so I'll probably return some time hoping things have got better.
For other Cardiff restaurants I'm afraid I will ask to see the kitchen before I chance it. Which means I won't be going anywhere else.

Plays v Novels

I was surprised at some info I read about the publishing business recently: of 200,000 books sold last year, 190,000 sold fewer than 3,500 copies. Also, of 85,933 new books published, as many as 58,325 sold an average of just 18 copies.
My play "Dreamjobs" has sold, over about thirty or so years, about 10,000 copies.
So what does that say about writing plays and novels? Well, J.B.Priestley always maintained he made more money from writing plays than novels because they lasted longer. It's certainly true in his case for who reads his novels now yet his plays keep being performed everywhere in the world.

Ray Gravell

Last night on BBC Wales TV there was a programme about Ray Gravell who played rugby for Wales and The British Lions and who later became a sports commentator, an interviewer, not just of sportsmen, and an actor. There had, a few years back, been a slim possibility of my meeting him.
A play I written for a competition (it won first prize, by the way), "Horseplay", attracted the attention of an actor/director who thought he might turn it into a film. We re-wrote the work as a film script and he began looking for people to invest money in the project of filming it. It never happened. But one day in conversation with the actor/director he mentioned Ray Gravell's name: he said he was a friend of his and that he might be interested in playing a part in the film.
"I didn't know he acted," I said. "O yes, he's a very good actor," he said.
I had seen him play rugby years ago and had seen him doing work on TV and I got to see that yes, indeed, he was a very good actor. Also he would have been wonderful in the main role of the play, a rugby club secretary devoted to his players who gradually loses patience with their extremely base behaviour, especially when three are accused of rape, and who sides with the rape victim against "the boys" to bring them to justice.
Well, the film never got made and recently, after serious illnesses and operations, Ray Gravell died.
I couldn't help feeling that I wished he had live just a bit longer to see, today, Wales beat England in an electrifying game. He'd have been on his feet yelling with glee and bear-hugging everyone near him - including English supporters.

Writing Courses

I just read that Miles Kington died yesterday. He will be missed by many, especially those who like humorous writing at its cleverest, sophisticated and best.
The Times published an article he had written some time ago: on being a reporter. Or, rather, in his case, on not being a reporter. People often asked him how they could become reporters and he didn't know - he wasn't one. He couldn't give them advice on the subject.
There are, however, plenty of people "out there" running "writers' courses" who seem to know the answer to the question: "How can I become a reporter?" Or "How can I write plays?" Or "How can I write a best-selling novel?" You pay the money and they will tell you how to do these things.
Don't you believe it.
I heard of a man who attended a writing group who, I was told, "could not write at all". He was just plain hopeless. But he signed up to one of the writing courses advertised in The Press and followed the instructions, sent in his "homework" and so on. But he never succeeded in having anything published. And the course material had specified that anyone doing the course would at the end of it, if they were still unpublished, get their money back.
So he asked for his money back. But he was told "we have no doubt you will be successful if only you do a few more exercises free of charge."
But he wanted his money back. But they kept putting him off with various offers to extend his course until....
"I want my money back as stated in the rules."
They would not pay.
Many of us, at this stage, would have given up and not wasted any more time over it.
Not him. He took them to court and they settled; they gave him his money back.
I admire him a lot. If he never was able to write anything publishable he certainly knew how not to suffer fools gladly.
Perhaps he himself should start a course. How to beat the system. How to never let the bastards grind you down.