Bristol Old Vic

My daughter said that if typed my full name, John Graham Jones, on Google search, I would find my website first on the list. Which must make me famous.
But it doesn't. First on the list or not, I don't get many "hits" per week. I don't want to be famous anyway - rich yes, famous no. Unless, of course, if famous meant becoming rich.
Anyway, just below my name was another Graham Jones only this was a hyphenated one: Sebastian Graham-Jones. It was his obituary as printed in The Independent.
I didn't know him but remember seing him in quite a lot of productions many years ago at The Theatre Royal where the Bristol Old Vic used to perform.
The obituary didn't mention that he spent some time there as an actor; it drew more attention to his directing skills.
Last year The Bristol Old Vic died too. But it has resurrected itself and re-opens in November this year.
Glad to hear it. I believe they have refurbished the beautiful old Theatre Royal at which many of our now famous actors began their careers.

The Farmer's Wife

A couple of years ago a friend of mine who deals in old books said he had bought at an auction a batch of books by Eden Phillpotts. "Do you know his work?" he asked.
I told him that my father had read him and, I think, liked what he'd read. I said I had never read a novel by him but had once picked one up in a library, read a few pages, put it back - it was a very thick book with small print and heaps of pages - but I had heard a radio play by him once when I was a kid. It had frightened the living daylights out of me. There was a murderer of children at large and - I remember the final scene well - he was making his way across a field to the farm house of two children with knife in his hand, when the knife's blade glittered in the moon's rays and attracted the attention of the farmer's bull.... You can guess the rest. Hooves running on grass. Boom. Scream. End of the murderer.
Yet I don't think he was that sort of writer generally - I mean of horror stories; he wrote country (Devon) novels about villagers and farmers and the love affairs and so on.
A novel by Phillpotts was turned into a play which ran in London's West End for a long spell. When my father and mother met in London in the twenties they went to see it. And enjoyed it. Later in 1928 it was made into a film, one of Alfred Hitchcock's early silent films.
I see from Google that a theatre group in a place called Tickenham (no, not Twickenham) are staging "The Farmer's Wife" on the 18th of November to the 22nd November this year. Wish Tickenham was bit closer to Cardiff.
I did once see Eden Phillpotts on TV. John Betjeman went down to Devon to interview him. He was then a very old man (he died aged 98); it was obvious that Betjeman admired him tremendously. Maybe because as well as being a popular novelist he was also a recognised poet.
Though most, if not all, of Phillpott's works are now out of print, it is possible to get some on Amazon and other sites for a quid or two. Think I'll get one.

Janacek

I once had, a long time ago when I was a student, a terrible argument with a man who knew more about music than I did and so he won the argument. It was over Janacek's opera "Jenufa".
Now, what I know about opera can be written on a single piece of notepaper but I had been to see the opera and I hadn't liked it. This music professor (something like that) had a great knowledge of the composer and his opera and proceeded to lambast me with arguments, with facts and opinions. Opinions which I could not contest through lack of knowledge.
I had merely said that I thought "Jenufa" was a silly work - the story I meant; the music was to me a bit atonal - "modern".
Ever since that encounter I have had a deep disliking of anything written by Janacek. I sort of refuse to listen to his music, saying to myself, after a few bars, "rubbish".It's as if I am all the time trying to prove that I had been right in my contention that the opera was no good.
The opera is about a young woman, Jenufa, who gets herself pregnant; her mother decides that this shame is unliveable with and she throws the baby into the icy river. The townspeople set upon her (can't remember what happens next) and Jenufa then makes it up with a boyfriend who is decent and kind, nothing like the jerk who made her pregnant.
I hated the story. I hated the mother who killed the baby; I hated ber because I did not believe anyone could, due to shame, do such a thing. I didn't take to Jenufa very much..... It was all a bit Mills and Boonish.
I could go on with my prejudices but I won't because I have just been reading about Janacek and he is a kind of appealing sort of fellow.
I must try him out again. Though there is that fanfare for trumpets, Synfonia? (or whatever it's called) standing between me and him: it's popular - as popular as Jenufa - but I hate it, I detest it.... almost as much as that fanfare for the common man by Aaron Copland. God, what a dreadful bore that is!

K's Bus Journey

I'll call him K (as Kafka does of his central character in "The Trial"). I've known him a long time but hadn't seen him for a few years. So we talked about old times and new times, how the world had changed and how daft some of the politically correct happenings were. How the police made mistakes and didn't answer calls.... There was the woman whose shed was being broken into; she called the police twice but they didn't come, so she called them a third time and told them not to worry about coming now, she'd sort things out herself; she said she'd use her gun. Within three minutes two police cars arrived together with a helicopter hovering over her back garden.
K had his own story to tell involving an official - a bus driver.
After having a few drinks with his friends in the centre of Cardiff he was waiting with, he said, about eight people at the usual stop when the 49 bus, the last bus of the night to Rumney, went straight past them without stopping. What could he do but get a taxi home? So he hailed a taxi and was half way to his destination when he caught sight of the 49 bus which the taxi had evidently overtaken; he jumped out of the taxi and waited for the bus at a stop. This time it did stop to pick him up.
He said to the driver: "You let ten people (the number had increased) standing at the bus stop in Westgate Street."
"I didn't," said the driver.
"You did," said K, fuming. "Fifteen of us (!!!) were left there. I had to get a taxi."
"I stopped," the driver insisted.
K, still fuming, sat down. But the bus didn't move. Suddenly the lights went out and the driver stormed out saying as he went "I've had enough, I'm going."
So there they were, the late night passengers, sitting on the bus, no lights on, with the driver, head in hands, sitting on a wall outside.
A drunk got up and made his way to the front. "I'll drive the xxxxxxx thing," he said.
He was restrained.
Then the passengers turned on K. "It's all your fault.... what did you want to upset him for?" etc.
K said: "There we were, about twenty of us (!!!!!), at the bus stop...."
Then a little, kind old lady - you always get one on a late night bus full of drunks - she got up and went out to speak to the driver who, after a while, got back to his seat and drove everyone home.
K said nothing for the rest of the journey.

Religiosos

Religiosos: religious fanatics who wish to try to convert people. People like me.
I feel I must have that sort of face that attracts them. Maybe they see that there's be a challenge in trying to convert me to their particular faith; or maybe they see an easy one to convert so that it'll knock their "converting points" up for the day. Or maybe because when they smile and say "Hi" I always smile back and say "Hi" to them.
Then I always say "You are going to try and convert me to your faith aren't you?"
"What makes you think that?" they say.
"There's a sparkle in your eyes that tells me that inside that skull of yours there's a burning fire of fanaticism...."
No, I don't say that. I say "Well aren't you?"
"All I want to do is make you aware of...."
That's when I get "the message", "the punch line", "the commercial" so to speak.
I have been approached by Krishna Whatevers, by Mormons, by little old ladies who speak in quiet tones about the world to come and many others.
I always leave with "literature". Which I sometimes read.
This morning I bought some bacon from a young black man in a supermarket. Very nice, friendly guy about twenty three.
"What's the bacon like?" I asked him.
"Good," he said. "So I'm told. I don't eat it."
"Why not?"
"I don't eat pig or black pudding. Blood!"
"Vegetarian?"
"No."
Then a new look came into his eyes. It signalled Religioso.
"Don't," I said, walking away. "I don't want to know."

Golf and Socialism

I used to have a friend who was a socialist. No. Correction. I think he must have been a communist. He must have been since he hated America so deeply. He didn't hate Americans - a bit like Tony Benn there who always said he didn't dislike Americans, after all he married one (which I always thought was a bit of a "get-out") - what he hated was America's policies abroad. He'd say something like "the Americans have broken 25 (or was it a 100?) treaties in the last twenty years...." And if I were to say, back then, that it was a disgrace that the Russians were waging war against the Afghans he would go very quiet indeed.
He would not go to see American films. He would not buy anything associated with America. When he bought a car it was a Swedish one (socialist country don't you know?).
One day we were out having a few drinks and lunch at a pub when he noticed that people were watching golf on the TV. "Golf!" he said scornfully. "Dreadful."
I wondered what he meant.
"Do you like golf?" he asked.
I said no because I was not any good at it. But I had the feeling this was not about if I enjoyed the game or not; I felt the question had deeper connotations.
This morning I read a passage in a book called "Black and White" by Shiva Naipaul (brother of the other Naipaul, the one with the Nobel Prize for literature, the awkward one, the beastly one - though I have to say I have a strange sort of liking for the old curmudgeon); it was about Guyana - Shiva Nailpaul was there investigating the Jonestown massacre.
"The golf course," he wrote, "a relic of the displaced planter regime, was set amidst the fields. Before the sugar estates were nationalised, the road leading to it used to be well maintained. Since then nature had been given a free hand and its deterioration had been swift. Golf and those who played it had no place in a society that was moving inexorably to socialism."
Get it? Golf: clubbish, elitist, played by people with wealth. Socialism: for everyone, fair to everyone, a way of life for everyone to enjoy the benefits of.
Er.... maybe.
Now I think I know what my friend was thinking when he said, so scornfully, "Golf!".

Tossa del Mar

A long time back we had a holiday in Tossa del Mar on the Costa Brava. Not much of a place I thought at first but lively, plenty going on there especially in the evenings. Swim in the clear water in the day and go to a restaurant in the evening: a few drinks, something Spanish to eat, a few more drinks then.... well, a few more drinks.
Across the street from the restaurant was a bar with a few tables and a floor for dancing. A lively but not wild place, no lager louts in those days, a sort of middle-class respectable crowd seemed to gather there. Among them was a group of five or six men, not young, not old, that in between age when, if they were married, they were "settled", and if they weren't they were ready to meet "someone nice", or maybe not so nice.
One of them was a little older than the others, tall, well dressed, handsome with a shock of blonde hair, weighty but, you could see by the way he danced, quite lithe and athletic. He was a real charmer of the ladies, he danced well, talked a lot which seemed to amuse his partners...
What brought this scene back to mind was listening to the Alan Tichmarsh programme, "Memories for You", this evening; he played "Someone to Watch over me" the Gershwin number sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Which brought back the memory that at the bar across the street the music they mostly played over the speakers were records of Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.
It was very pleasant sitting there, my wife and I, watching the goings on in the bar and on the dance floor.
Then suddenly, every evening, the lights would be turned off and a sort of luminous glow would light the place - I think it might have been ultra violet rays. This had the effect of lighting only those parts of the clothing that, I guessed, had been washed in detergent, so that the collars and shirts could be seen moving about though you couldn't see the persons in them. But you could always pick out one of them - the guy I mentioned, the tall, good-looking one, the charmer: he was the only one who must have washed not only his shirt but his hair as well in detergent because there he was, his cuffs showing white at the end of his black jacket, his shirt collar white, and above it, no head, just this mop of persil-white hair.
Incidentally, there's something else I remember about Tossa del Mar: it has a superb art gallery of hundreds (it seemed to me) of paintings and drawings by Salvador Dali. Even those who hate his work I'm sure would be impressed with this collection; it demonstrates what a fantastic craftsman he was - if, maybe, not much else.