Plebgate

Andrew Mitchell strikes me as someone stuffed up with a sense of his own importance. I don't suppose people who are chosen as Chief Whips are ever your pleasant guy with good manners and a beguiling attitude to life. They have to impose discipline on the party and they must get to feel proud with having such power. I can't say I took to the man. Nor did I feel sorry for him over the Plebgate affair since he sort of brought it on himself.
What would I have done if a policeman had curteously asked me to use another, smaller gate to take my bike through. I might have mumbled some disapproval but I think I'd have said "OK officer, and mind how you go..... Sir." Not turn angrilly around and make for the smaller gate saying "fucking plebs" as I went.
OK, he maintains he didn't use the word plebs but admits that he used the expletive. For which he appologised. Let me tell you that if little me had used the word he used to that copper, or for that matter, any copper, I'd have been arrested on the spot and quite rightly so.
But, of course, he was an important guy in the government and coppers can't go about arresting right honourable gentlemen.
So he wasn't arrested for swearing at the policeman as he should have been.
We'll let that go. Let's concentrate on not what was said but what was not said, or rather on what might have been said. Mitchell did use the word fucking as an adjective rather than a noun; so he must have followed it with a noun. Whether it was pleb or not we'll never know but it was something. Maybe "pigs". Maybe "arseholes". Maybe "angels". We don't know but he certainly called them something and I can't believe it was anything pleasant or complimentary.
I'm not surprised that the police invented evidence or told lies or, maybe, planted dope at his residence because that's what they've always done.
There are no good eggs in this story and of the whole cast of bad ones Andrew Mtichell, in my opinion, doesn't come near the top for best behaviour.
I also think the matter shouldn't be called Plebgate because it isn't known that he said it; it should be about the exit he was to take - the gate. It should be called Gategate.

The bad and the beautiful.

Last week I saw one of the worst films I have ever seen and.... well, probably not one of the best but certainly a great film. "Only God forgives" is a dreadful film. I was expecting something good from the director and his star of "Drive", Ryan Hoskins, but it wasn't to be. It had nothing going for it unless you like heaps of violence of the nastiest kind - eye-gouging, sword eviscerating, guns galore etc. Left halfway through and don't know why I waited so long. On the way out I said to the usherette "Can I have my money back please?" She said that many people had left the film early in the past week; some had come to see Christin Scott Thomas believing a film with her in it must be good. Not so. She played the part of a criminal mother of two sons one of whom is killed.... But it doesn't matter because the story was just plain uninteresting, slow and boring.
The other film was one of Carl Dreyer's early films, a silent one in fact: "The Passion of Joan of Arc". Piano accompaniment with it. A slow-burning film culminating in a death scene that made one shiver with dread. The film concentrated on facial expressions at the trial of Joan of Arc. Most of the action took place in a single room. There was little dialogue but it wasn't needed, the expressions said it all.
I don't think it's as good as "Day of Wrath" which I saw on Film 4 a few months ago but compared to "Only God Forgives" it was masterly.

Robert Preston

Sitting here musing, the other night, over why many people think Berg's violin concerto is wonderful and yet I find it pretty awful, I suddenly wanted to hear Robert Preston singing "I won't send your roses". So I found it on You tube and lay back in exstasy to listen to it.
What a wonderful interpreter of some popular songs he was; not having a great singing voice like Sinatra he gave them the colour of sentiment, maybe some sentimentality.
What a fine actor too! Never a star because, I suppose, he didn't have the looks they wanted for heart-throbs. But while he was no Cary Grant or Gregory Peck he could play the sort of roles in which a guy from a small town almost makes it to the top. The mention of Gregory Peck brings to mind a quintessential role of Preston's: "The Macomber Affair", taken from Hemingway's great short story "The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber, he played the part of Macomber whose marriage was falling apart and whose courage was not what he felt it should have been. There was Greg, The White Hunter, for his wife to compare him with. So Robert Preston has to be the guy you put down, the failure who will never attain the heights where he can feel proud. And, of course, he finds the courage to take on a charging bull, standing and shooting but not running, not stepping aside but meeting the creature head on. He could do that sort of part better than anyone in Hollywood.
But he could also do comedy. "The Music Man" he had played on Broadway but when it came to the film the producer wanted Cary Grant. Grant said: "If you don't let Robert play the part I won't even go and see it."
Looking up Hemingway on the web I came across a story by him of only six words: "For Sale: Baby Shoes; never worn."

Cliff Morgan

There was no one like Cliff Morgan playing at outside half. I first saw him when he played for the Welsh schoolboys team. I had heard something about him, how fast he was off the mark, how he could jink his way through gaps "that weren't there" but none of this talk prepared me for the real thing. At first he just passed the ball to his centres, not showing any style or brilliance, a mere pivot. Then suddenly he was off, breaking away from his team, cutting his way through the opposition. This he did many times. In short he was virtually unstoppable.
But the big games were ahead of him: playing for Cardiff after Billy Cleaver who was very popular (in East Wales that is, not so in the West where they always complained about there being too many players from Cardiff in the Welsh team) and one wondered if he would cope - he wasn't very big, stocky yes but meat for wing forwards maybe? Not at all. He was brilliant. Only once can I recall him having as poor match; that was against a strong South African team with wing forwards the size of trucks and fast with it. One was a man called Van Wyck who gave Morgan a torrid time, hitting him hard every time he received the ball. While he survived the crunching tackles -he was a stocky ball of muscle who could have survived a house falling on him - he changed his game to a kicking game and, in his own words, lost the match. He had his revenge in South Africa playing for the Lions when he left Van Wyck standing a few times, one to score himself.
He worked on the next bench to me when we did Intermediate Chemistry. He was always surrounded by lecturers and other fans and I don't recall exchanging any conversation with him. Outside lectures one day I had to pleasure of meeting him, introduced by a mutual friend, and he was a joy to know, talking without ceasing, his languagfe not without the odd - ok, the many - expletives.
The BBC smoothed his rough edges later on and he became a great broadcaster.
When he played his first game for Wales against Ireland, Jackie Kyle, his opposite number, came up to him before the start, put an arm roung his shoulders and said: "Have a wonderful, wonderful game, Cliffie, my boy." Cliff said he never forgot that.
A close friend of his was another Irishman, Tony O'Reilly who, when paying a tribute to him on his death recently, said; "I have often been asked if he would have been any good in the modern game and the answer is yes, certainly, absolutely."

Institutions

Charles Moore, writing in The Daily Telegraph: "From its inception the NHS has been a nationalised industry. All nationalised industries put those who run them first, their trade unions second and their customers nowhere. They are by nature indifferent to human need and so their effect, whatever the intention, is cruel. Until this is acknowledged, nothing much will change."
He has a point but I think his focus on nationalised industries is too narrow: I think what he says applies to pretty well all institutions. After some time, when good intentions start to be eroded by the necessity of maintaining effective efficiency, something happens to the system: it seems that it becomes necessary in the minds of those who run the institutions that efficiency of operation is more important than whatever were the good intentions at the start of the process.
Charles Moore is a Catholic: isn't he aware that the institution of the Roman Catholic Church is too concsious of the mechanism of its own set-up to notice the sinful behaviour of some of its priests as regards their paedophilia, or, if aware, then too anxious to cover up their wrong-doings by moving them to other parishes?
It isn't only nationalised industries which are guilty of these malpractices. The trouble is, I believe, that someone comes along with an idea which seems brilliant - e.g. comprehensive education. It is untried and an experiment but believed to be the right thing to implement. After a while the brilliant idea is found not to work to the degree of satisfaction previously desired but instead of the idea being abandoned, it is made to work. Or an attempt to make it work is operated. Then it seems to work because those operating it think it is working: they operate it for their own benefit because they cannot believe their "brilliant idea|" lacks credibility. Once it appears to be working then everyone is satisfied - except those, the children, who are being so-called educated.

Wine

Rory Sutherland writing in The Spectator a week or so ago maintained that "most wine is actually rubbish". He thought people liked to talk about wine but didn't really know much about it or even like it. What about some wines having astronomical high prices while others are quite cheap: isn't there are difference in the quality? He says: "One winemaker sent the same wine to a competition under three different labels. One was rejected by the judges as 'undrinkable', another won a double gold award".
I have to say I'm in some agreement with Sutherland. In the past twenty years or so of drinking wine, mainly red wine, I have to say I have had only two bottles where I have said: "Mmm, yes, this is very good." One was a Chateau neuf de Pape given to me by a friend, the other I bought for a special occasion in a wine shop in Cardiff - don't remember what it was. Mostly the wine I drink seems much the same. I take no notice of what it says on the bottle - matured in brandy barrels etc - I just drink it. Sometimes it's quite palatable, sometimes just bearable but mostly it's very ordinary with no great 'lift to it except, of course, the lift that comes from the alcohol in it.

Mud

Jeff Nichols, writer and director of the film "Mud", when asked by a reporter on the New York Times what the film was about, replied "It's Sam Peckinpah meets Mark Twain". It isn't. In many reviews Mark Twain is mentioned with particular reference to "Huckleberry Finn" (no other mention of Sam Peckinpah) but the film has only a passing similarity to the novel: it's set in Mississippi, on a river, yes, and is about a boy who makes friends with an outlaw,yes, but it's theme is not of the world of Twain. Again, a critic wrote in today's newspaper, summing up the film with four stars: "Down on the MIssissippi, two boys discover Mud (Matthew McConaughey) in an adventure of the Hucklberry Finn kind".
It's all a bit troubling since this film is of a superior kind to most movies and its story has very little resemblance to Twain's book.
While on the surface it is an adventure - a boy of 14, Ellis, and his friend, Neckbone, meet an odd guy living rough on an island; he has shot a man over a woman and he is being chased by a gang recruited by the dead man's father and brother, two rather frightening people; he's also being chased by the police, in league with the father; the boys decide to help Mud because Ellis feels that Mud's devotion to the woman he loved, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) is so genuine, greater for example than that of his own mother and father who are breaking up etc. - but while it is an adventure, it is also a study of a boy's beginning of an understanding of what adult love is, how chancy and unstable it is: Ellis finds he is surrounded by deceit and game-playing - even Mud's and Juniper's affection is not the deeply held love Ellis felt it was.
Great performance by the boys and by McConaughey.
But the film's too long by at least half an hour.