2014 — 30 December: Tuesday
If there's a better musical accompaniment1 than Bach's Partita for violin solo number 2 (BWV 1004) in D minor, 5. Chaconne then somebody needs to tell me what it is. I didn't initially catch the name of the lady (Isabelle Faust) who was dragging the involved tail of the horse across the committed gut of the cat... Later today I shall formally re-enter polite society by taking lunch with a chum. But not before the frost has melted.
Meanwhile...
... a mere 30 years after the event, we can finally learn that it was that terribly nice then Tory policy advisor Oliver Letwin (who he?) who urged the only semi-divine La Thatch to "press ahead" with the poll tax, using Scotland as a testing ground. Sowing the initial seeds of that excellent lady's political destruction. His "swansong" memo to her ticked her off for failure in education policy, too. Golly.
I had a vague idea that Rowan Williams was no longer the UK's top arch-bish, but I had no idea he now had a gig writing about books in that left-wing rag I subscribed to for a couple of decades.
I can't claim he isn't well-qualified. As was the professor atop Christa's department in Royal Holloway College back in 1973/4 who recycled all his decades-old notes on German fairy tales each year for the edification of the students she was trying to give 'conversation' tutorials to. She complained to me that they were a remarkably dopey set of (mostly) young women.
Reading...
... John Pilger is always enlightening, and often depressing. Usually at the same time, of course. Monitus es. (Link.)
And who knew there was such a thing as "ancient Hollywood wisdom"? (Link.)
The final story...
... in this Eric Frank Russell collection is an early 1950s gem called "Diabologic".
It's one of his series featuring various interstellar-trotters "boldly seeking out new worlds" yada, yada. His game plan is to soften up alien races, using the guiding principles outlined in a book called "Diabologic: the science of driving people nuts". He would have done just as well to use my Hughes and Brecht collection.
Back from lunch...
... before sunset, and another drop in the temperature. Waiting for me were a card from Big Bro "and the tribe", a card from Mr Postie about something too big (it doesn't take much) for my letter box, and the first six inches or more from the next annual round of daffodils popping (cropping?) up in the front 'garden' bit. Peter's g/f tied the moribund ones from the last round up in neat bundles last Spring and they've obviously gained a new lease of something or other. You can't keep a good flower down in Christa's garden.
Though I watched...
... some (largely forgotten) "Westerns" in earlier years, I was more a fan of (say) "Alias Smith and Jones" than of the style of this afternoon's as-yet unseen (gift) acquisition:
It brings my Peckinpah title total to two, he tooted. Thanks, Len.