Drones

Paddy Ashdown, writing in The Times last week, was in favour of the use of drone missiles by the Americans for what I thought were very good reasons. This is war that is being fought after all and these drones are used sparingly to target terrorists though, unfortunately, civilians are also killed. But, he argued, they are not killed in great numbers and we must understand that in all wars people who are non-combatants do get killed. They have, he went on, been very effective in getting rid of some of the most "important" leaders of the various groups that come under the name of Al Queda.
You get the feeling from the article that this is the only effective way of dealing with such abominable people who kill indiscrinately in great numbers - indeed, the greater the number of civilians that they can eliminate, the better they like it.
But there are dangers. One is specified in a letter to Time magazine this week. Faroud Rahman, writing from Karachi puts the case that " a good number of innocent and unarmed civilians have lost their precious lives, yet the relentless attacks continue. The US is indirectly creating more militants after each bombing that does not wipe out its intended target. Please stop the heinous act; halt the carnage."
Another danger, closer to home perhaps is expressed in another letter to Time."Drone technology is spreading fast worldwide and one never knows when or how it will land in the wrong hands." (The inference is that it is temporarily in the right hands.) "The consequence could be dreadful..... Imagine what extremists could do if they managed to possess or control a fleet of armed drones.... Is there any pre-empting measure to contain proliferation?"

The News

I have to agree with a writer in yesterday's Times that she experienced great pleasure a few days ago when there was a strike of journalists at the BBC; it meant that many news programmes were cancelled or shortened. She nostalgically looked back to the times (of her youth no doubt) when there only a few news broadcasts compared to today when there are many. Not only many on regular terrestial channels but on others, not to mention the 24 hour news channels. I can look back further to a time when there was no TV at all: we had radio only and my memory informs me that there were even fewer news broadcasts. I recall one fifteen minute item at mid-day and one in the early evening and one at nine o'clock at night. I too am nostalgic about those times for I feel there's just too much news on TV; and not only is it on all, or most, channels but it is virtually the same news. One might, rarely, have a scoop but it's soon picked up by the rest.
The nine o'clock news to me was a time of a great treat: I think it lasted five minutes or so and it was followed by a serial version of "Les Miserables". We, my brother and I, would wait for the beginning after the news had finished with baited breath. It was always the same beginning: a voice - "My name is Jean Valjean...." It was the wonderfully sonorous voice of Henry Ainley. That's all I recall of the serial, Ainley's voice and the first few words, every Sunday evening for weeks on end. I have just read Wickipedia about Henry Ainlee: married three times (or more), five children (or more) two of them by a woman who was not a wife. Also, he seemed to have had a passion for the young Laurence Olivier which was not, according to Olivier's son, reciprocated.
I believe he liked his drink quite a lot and, if memory serves me right, his acting career's end was the subject of a play by Emlyn Williams.

Beethoven

I used to know a man who had a friend who "collected performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony". That is, he attended every performance of the work he could. I used to feel this way about Beethoven's Third Symphony and once thought: "that's what I'll do, collect performances of The Third." I never did. For one thing there weren't all that many performances in my neck of the woods; especially then, some twenty or thirty years ago when the nearest concert hall was in Bristol - in Cardiff there'd sometimes be a concert in The New Theatre (wholly inadequate) and occasionally they'd use The Sophia Gardens Pavilion (more inadequate); it wasn't until they built St David's Hall that good quality concerts came to Cardiff.
Anyway, Beethoven's Third was my favourite then. It isn't now: I prefer The Seventh. But I like them all. I think you could call me a Beethoven freak.
So it came as quite a shock to hear Howard Goodall's comment about Beethoven on Desert Island Discs a couple of months ago.
Now Howard Goodall is presently giving a series of  TV programmes on music: "Howard Goodall's Story of Music" and James Delingpole in The Spectator last week wrote this about it: "Let's not beat about the bush: Howard Goodall's Story of Music is landmark television, a documentary series that deserves to rank with such unimpeachable classics as Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation"......
As you may have gathered, I enjoy classical music.... some classical music.... not all. Not Berg or Webern or Stockhausen but Bach, Mozart and, most of all Beethoven.
So, as I said, it came as something of a shock to hear Howard Goodall on Desert Island Discs say what he did. When asked if there was any composer he didn't like, he said: "Well I'm not too keen on Beethoven." Or it might have been stronger than that: "I don't much like Beethoven." Why didn't he come out with what he really meant and say "I hate Beethoven" because that's how I interpreted his remark.
He doesn't like Beethoven! I can't listen to someone talking about music who doesn't like Beethoven.
Which is why I didn't even start to watch his series.

Valley of Song

Yesterday I went to see a film that was made in 1953 but which I felt gave the impression that it was set much earlier - about 1927. It was about a small town in the South Wales valleys which had a choir that was about to embark, as they did every year, on a performance of "The Messiah". But the choirmaster had recently died,. However, conveniently, a former inhabitant of the town was retiring from London to become the insurance agent and who had had experience with conducting London choirs. Why not conduct ours? asked the local Minister of the chapel. He seemed reluctant until the Minister mentioned the words "The Messiah" when his eyes lit up: of course he would be thrilled to come to their aid. However, one of his first duties was to distribute solo parts to four members of the choir and he made a fatal error of not choosing Mrs Lloyd for the contralto soloist, choosing instead a Mrs Davies. Feelings were hurt, quarrels began, and eventually turmoil: the whole village separated into two tribes: either you were for the Lloyd's or the Davies's.
I remember not this film but the radio play on which it was based: "Choir Practice". I also recall it being described as "a storm in a Welsh teacup".
I enjoyed the film a lot: heaps of homely fun and some fine singing from the London Welsh choir (incidentally my wife's uncle was a member at that time). It was no masterpiece but as we all know, some masterpieces can be difficult to take, especially film masterpieces - I am thinking particularly of those from Sweden some fifty or so years ago. No, it was not a masterpiece; it had no depth, it was rather silly at times and it depicted the Welsh as comic people which, I suppose, could be regarded as "condescending". But I ignored all that deep thought and sat back and enjoyed it like one does a cream cake.
It brought to mind a matter which we had to solve when putting on a panto at the college I worked in. I always wrote the script and a chap called Dave produced it. We did "Cinderella" one year and "Jack and the beanstalk" and "Sleeping Beauty" and so on. And every year the boss's secretary played the female lead because she could act a bit, sing a bit and, most required quality of all, she was pretty. But prettiness fades with age. And now we were going to do "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs". "Who'll play Snow White?" I asked Dave. He thought deeply about for it about two seconds and said "there's a girl in the new intake who'll be ideal." I said "What about the boss's sec.? She'll have to be told." "I'll tell her," he said. But I knew he wouldn't. He couldn't. No one could, it would be too unkind. So no one told her. But it must have been "in the air"; she must have realised herself that she was too old for the part. She came to us one day and said she'd like to play The Queen. "No, you can't do that, Snow White surely" we said. "I insist," she said.
Problem solved. No Lloyds versus Davies's. Peace. Panto on with six male members of staff on their knees singing "Hi, ho, hi, ho ....." Big success. OK, little success.