Clive Owen

Someone this week wrote that Clive Owen is a big success in Hollywood; for God's sake, he's just made a film with Julie Roberts - he must be big now! But then the writer said that he might turn out to be the new Cary Grant.
Might. Just might. Might not I think. I doubt if he'll even think of trying because I cannot see Clive Owen playing the sort of sophisticated, looney, sometimes even goofy stuff that Cary Grant could play with a coolness that made the characters almost believeable.
I can't think of a more brilliant opening to a film than the first 20 minutes of "Bringing Up Baby". I can't see Owen in that sort of role (nor Julia Roberts in place of Katherine Hepburn). There is a desperation about Grant that is covered with a desire not to be made a fool of; and there is an almost spiteful grace about Hepburn as she seems intent on netting the professor without ever appearing to be in love with him.
I like Clive Owen and hopes he does go on to make better and better films but, if I were asked to give him a spot of advice, it would be: "Be yourself; don't try to be anyone else and certainly don't try to be Cary Grant or the differences will show like patches in a dress suit."

Birds' Eggs

I had noticed a small bird flitting by the window, over the patio where I have nailed a flat piece of wood to a post for birds to feed off. Today the small bird stopped flying in its hectic, vigorous and fast moving way and clung briefly to the fence. I was able to see that it was a wren. It was about two inches long and about one inch wide. It was brown and looked fat. I couldn't see the eyes, probably too small but saw a small beak.
When I was a child I lived close to a wood where there were all sorts of birds. We did what I suppose is now called "a politically incorrect act" and collected their eggs. I had a small collection of sparrows', blackbirds', thrushes' eggs. I didn't have a robin's. Nor did I have a wren's - though one day I could have.
I found the wren's nest and put my small child's finger through the hole in the front to see if there were any eggs there. There was an unwritten rule about the ethical collection of eggs which was, that since birds could only count to three, you were allowed to take an egg from its nest if there were more than three there. This rule was passed on from generation to generation, I assume, by word of mouth; no one knew where it had originated.
I can't recall how many eggs were in the wren's nest but I had made up my mind, as my finger entered the cosy warm environment of the inner sanctum, that I would not take a single egg. There was something so magical to me about the warmth of that "room" - that home! - I could not bring myself to defile it. Or was I that sensitive? Maybe there'd been just two eggs there.
You don't see many small birds these days. At The Hill, Abergavenny, where adult education classes I attended frequently were held, there had been, twenty odd years back, many small birds. Now there aren't many, if any. But there are plenty of magpies hopping about the grounds.
Of course, they are, these politically correct days, protected.

Translaters

Charles Moore was writing in The Telegraph about a literary festival in Aldeburgh where a certain "veteran translater", Anthea Bell, was giving a talk on her profession.
It made me think: are there more women translaters than men? I can think of two famous women translaters: Constance Garnett who specialised in Russian literature and H.T. Lowe-Porter who specialised in Thomas Mann. While there have been other translaters of Russian works, I don't know of anyone who has translated Mann other than Lowe-Porter (I wonder if anyone would have the time to translate other German authors as well as translate the whole large output of Mann's).
I have tried to read other translations of Russian authors but Constance Garnett remains my favourite; maybe this is because I have got used to her style. I once tried a new translation by Michael R. Katz of "The Devils" by Dostoevski but couldn't get on with it at all.
I suppose there is a certain creative talent to translating; that there is something of the personality of the translater in the work. Maybe I like Garnett best because I like Garnett's style.
As for H.T. Lowe-Porter, there is, to my knowledge, no one to compare her with.
I once knew a professional translater: she translated chiefly medical journals and books. She could speak five languages fluently I believe and was, when I knew her, learning a new one - Welsh. She was a highly intelligent woman, well read, an excellent writer of stories and articles and an autobiography that was immensely colourful and interesting (never published, but never to my knowledge offered). There was one thing I could never understand about her though - she is the only person I have ever met who read and enjoyed Mills and Boon romantic novels.
Somehow I can't see Lowe-Porter enjoying a Mills and Boon.

Spain

We were on a package holiday in the south of Spain (OK, I admit it - a Saga do) when one of the party was taken ill and rushed off to hospital. I enquired of our tour guide what would now happen and she said that it was now out of Saga's hands but in the very reliable hands of the hospital authority.
Reliable? I thought. Spain reliable? I thought. Not in my young days it wasn't. Not while holidaying on the Costa Brava. Then everything had a sort of dirtyness about it. The toilets were abominable, fly infested places. Hotel rooms were dingy. And the police were scary.
"Things have changed," said our guide. "Those days were when Franco was in power. Now it's different. I tell you, I would not be treated in the NHS back home; I get treated here in Spain."
That was the second time I had heard that, the first being the words of Tom Sharpe the novelist who lives in Spain. It was the chief reason he lived there, he said.
Now I read in The Times that 30% of Spain's entire power output is produced by wind and water.
"What is the truth with us in Britain?" Matthew Parris moans. We just sit around complaining that wind power is variable. That is, not reliable.
And there's me thinking that Spain was all dirty toilets, bull fighting, paella and sun, whereas it's clean reliable hospitals, reliable wind power and sun. Yes, and sun! Surely we've got more wind than Spain.
And less sun!

Telling the Truth

When I was a tutor on a creative writing course I used to give a spot of advice about writing that I had picked up somewhere - an article in a magazine on psychology maybe, or from Readers' Digest, or the back of a matchbox possibly. It was this: "If you have a problem then tell it in the form of a story."
At the time it seemed a good idea: many of those would-be writers on the course did just that and, let me tell you, we had plenty of people with problems on those courses.
I had the feeling that we helped solve some of the problems they had. One lady had been a quite successful children's writer but then she'd had a nervous breakdown and suffered "writers' block". After a weekend with us she seemed to break the block because she returned to later courses with new stories to read to us. Whether or not she was successful in publishing them I never found out because I decided to do the decent thing and pack in tutoring there - I'd done enough damage by then!
Budding writers are often advised to "write about what you know". This came back to mind this evening as I was starting to write (re-write, rather) a story about a vicar who finds a pair of knickers and a bra in a drawer in a room of an adult education college where he is attending a course on "Morality, Darwin and The Old Testament" (read the story on my website if you wish). This was not based on what I knew: I had never been a vicar, I had never found a pair of knickers and a bra in a drawer in any room etc etc.
My advice now to would-be writers is "try to write a good story, never mind if it's based on your own experience" because telling the truth, telling it as it really was can prove disastrous.
Think Julie Myerson and her new book on her son, his taking drugs and how she and her husband eventually kicked him out their home. Instead of the book drawing favourable reviews it's had the opposite effect: she has become subject to intense criticism and some mockery. Indeed, she now regets her decision to publish the book.
As her son says: "she is a writer and like a lot of writers she is wrapped up in her own world."
Right on, as they say.

Friday Poem

"Winoes"

Their wizened cheery faces,
Their camaraderie,
Their engrossed talk (philosophy);
They sit on benches in the sun;
They quaff the wine and sherry,
They're as happy as the day is born.
Legless,
Out of their minds,
Sloshed,
They point and grimace, point and lecture,
Point and hold the pose:
A lugubrious ballet pose,
Or ancient Chinese exercise.
Then sad depression for a while
Until a drink rejuvenates.

Salome

Salome is mentioned by name only once in The Bible: in Mark. However, this is not the same Salome as came to be known as the woman who asked Herod for the head of John the Baptist; this one in Mark's book is a faithful follower of Christ who visits the cave where Christ has been incarcerated only to find that the rock has been removed and Christ has gone. That she is with Mary Magdalene may signify something but nothing is specified.
The Salome of legend comes in a story in Matthew but her name is never mentioned, only that the young woman is the daughter of Herodias by her first husband, Herod's brother. The story was made a play in one act by Oscar Wilde and produced in Paris in the 1890's.
This play was used soon after as the basis for an opera by Richard Strauss. It caused a sensation. The composer could not get it performed in Vienna and had it produced in a smaller city to which many of the musical giants of the day, like Puccini, flocked.
I have just seen the opera in Cardiff performed by The Welsh National Opera Company. Musically it is a wonderful work; dramatically it still thrills but there is no doubt that, even now, these days that are as un-Victorian as could be, it is still a shocker. In the final scene when the head of John the Baptist is brought to Salome and she desires to kiss the head's lips, someone behind me actually gasped in sudden shock. It is a most distasteful scene - even now!
There is one scene in the play in which "The Young Syrian" commits suicide that is just not credible dramatically: it comes as it were, out of the blue, no one seems to care that the man has taken his life; not only that but there seems no great reason that he should have. He is carried off at Herod's orders. Yet it has a dramatic link to the later actions for they all are the acts of exceedingly disturbed people consumed, in one way or another, by lust. Even John the Baptist is consumed by a kind of lust, a religious lust, one that is almost maniacal. "All the world's evil has come from woman" he says. And Salome's acts and behaviour from then on seem to prove this to be true.
There is a wonderful recording of the opera with Solti conducting and Bridget Neilson in the role of Salome.
And there are magnificent set of ink drawings by Aubrey Beardsley of scenes from the play which can be seen here and there on the internet.