Hurrah for Pooh! (tiddlely-pom)

Auntie Phyllis gave me A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner for Christmas 1941, and the thing is that it's as entrancing and funny in 2015 as it was when I was nine. It is, after all, the best children's book ever written - and pretty nearly the best book for adults. It radiates humour - good humour - and joy, and captures childhood on the page as no other book does - and re-reading it rejuvenates the oldest reader. Much of the delight of course is in the characters: the ultimate pessimist, Eeyore, the simple, charming Alan Bennett-like Piglet, the brash, bouncy Tigger, the Wise Owl, Wol, and of course Pooh himself, the resident Bear with a poem for every occasion: (sometimes dropping into vers libre):

'I could spend a happy morning
   Seeing Piglet.
And I couldn't spend a happy morning
   Not seeing Piglet.
And it doesn't seem to matter
If I don't see Owl and Eeyore (or any of the others),
And I'm not going to see Owl or Eeyore (or any of the others)
   Or Christopher Robin.'

Scene after scene is etched in the memory - Pooh's encounter with the Horrible Heffalump was the first piece of prose which, read to me, reduced me to helpless hysterical laughing. But every scene in the book has its own laughter, as when Eeyor first encounters Tigger:

'Hallo, Eeyore,' said Pooh. 'This is Tigger.'
'What is?' said Eeyore.
'This,' said Pooh and Pioglet together, and Tigger smiled his happiest smile and said nothing.
Eeyore walked all round Tigger one way, and then turned and walked all around him the other way.
'What did you say it was?' he asked.
'Tigger.'
'Ah!' said Eeyore.
'He's just come,' explained Piglet.
'Ah!' said Eeyore again.
He thought for a long time and then said:
'When is he going?'

I don't think I could love anyone who doesn't love The House at Poor Corner.

Hi, Pluto! - where's Mickey?

Well, it's all very extraordinary, and I'm sure scientists will be poring over all the new information they'll be receiving about Pluto as a result of the fly-past. My problem is that I don't really believe that Pluto is there. Of course I know that it's there, just as I know the other planets are there, and that there is an infinite number of platenary systems elsewhere in space as the great vacancy goes on towards infinity. The trouble is, I con't accept it, emotionally. I look up at the sky, and it's very pretty, and obviously considerable time and trouble has been expended in setting all the lights out and moving them around for our pleasure - but as for them all being actual physical places - oh, come on, pull the other one.
I don't mean to give comfort to those who still believe that the Moon landing was an exercise carefully contrived by the US government and filmed in a studio just south of Disneyland, or that the earth is flat (obvious though that is the case: just look at the horizon, and planes diving over it). But, actually, I can see where they're coming from - they share my own difficulty in believing that man could have stood on the face of the Moon, the problem being that they don't accept, as I do, that actual fact, as suppoorted by rational evidence - just the same as the evidence that proves that Goofie, I mean Pluto, does exict. And where's Mickey, may I ask? Now him, I do believe in.

Cocktails at six

It was said a while ago that younger people were beginning again to drink cocktails, out of fashion for some time. Certainly long lists of sometimes very peculiar brews can be found in most pubs and restaurants, but I rarely see anyone drinking them. Julia and I for many years now have enjoyed a cocktail at six in the evening - a pleasant signal that the day's work is done. Well mixed, they can both give you a lift and/or prepare you for a relaxing evening.
The classic dry martini goes without saying (but not without drinking): a measure of gin and the merest glimpse of a dry vermouth - the old story was that the perfect martini consisted of allowing the sunlight to pass through a bottle of vermouth onto the surtface of a glass of ice-cold gin. Ourt favurite cocktail at the moment however is the Bartender: 20 ml dry vermouth, 20 ml sweet vermouth, 20 ml gin, 20 ml dry sherry, 5 ml Grand Marnier -  maybe a touch sweet for some palates, but a gorgeous effect.
We're fond too of the Sidecar - 60 ml brandy, 7 ml Cointreau, 7 ml lemon juice. Actually, there are several good cocktails with Cointreau, including the Kamilkaze (30 ml vodka, 30 ml Cointreau, 30 ml fresh lemon juice, 5 ml lime cordial) and the simple Sidecar (60 ml brandy, 7 ml Cointreau, 7 ml lemon juice). Even simpler, the gimlet - just a measure of gin with a splash of lime juice - the good old gin-and-lime, with plenty of ice.
Oh, dear - 9:05 a.m., and I feel like a . . . no, no - only nine hours to wait.
P.S. - my own invention (names for it welcome) is 60 ml vodka, 20 ml blue curacao, 20 ml sweet vermouth and a splash of lime juice. Maybe just the SixOclock?

A message from Saint Augustine

Idly turning the pages of St Augustine's De Civitate Dei (as is my wont) I come across the following:
'There are those who can move their ears, one or both, as they please; there are those that can move all their hair towards their forehead, and back again, and never move their heads. There are those that can counterfeit the voices of birds and of other men, cunningly; and there are thiose that can break wind backward continually, that you would think they sang.'
This is clearly an important message to the faithful; I am not personally sure of its application.

The so-called 'martyrs'

Thinking about the bombing atrocity in London a decade ago - and also of the more recent atrocities of IS - it seems to me an insult to civilisation describe the silly young men (and indeed women and children) who strap bombs to themselves and detonate them among their brothers and sisters as 'martyrs'. The suicide bombers, and those who machine-gun shoppers in supermarkets and holidaymakers relaxing on beaches are themselves innocents persuaded to kill themselves for the mythical god of a religion (including, in the past, Christianity) created by the wicked to prey on their fellows. The IS 'martyrs' in particular go happily to their deaths because they have been persuaded that they find themselves in a happy land of milk and honey where naked virgins will wait upon them to provide every delight they have rejected on earth. The tragedy - though perhaps it is for them a happy chance - is that they will never know that they are in fact going to simple black oblivion, having thrown away, it seems, every pleasure less gullible people get out of life.
Even worse, it seems that they have been taught that their main pleasure and accomplishment in life should be the elimination of anyone who does not worship their particular god - it is the Old Testament view of religion, that anyone who does not subscribe to My idea of god is not worthy to live. Simple and undiluted idiocy - and profoundly anti-Life. An attitude which has of course appeared from time to time in almost every civilisations, from ancient Rome to 17th century England and the Puritans. Nothing is new. But that the phenomenon of IS has appeared and proved so forceful makes any optimism about the progress of mankind towards genuine civilisation extremely difficult to summon.

No, no, f-secure

It seems that the more successful a company is the less likely you are to be able to get any help from them when something goes wrong. At least, on-line. They have taken to refusing to give you an email address which you can contact, but instead put on-line a long, long list of things thast might have gone wrong, not one of which (of course) applies to you. There may well be a system by which you can talk to 'one of our experienced engineers'. This means that you click on a contact button and get a message telling you that an engineer will be on-line to you 'as soon as possible.' This morning, I hung on to one of those messages for over half an hour, with no response whatsoever. (The guilty firm in this case was f-secure, a very highly regarded company that keeps your compouter secure from anyone wanting to barge in on you). There is of course the telephone option, but this means that you find yourself either talking to someone whose accent (all too often Indian or Pakistani) is so thick you cannot understand him/her and he/she cannot understand you - or the telephone connection is so tenuous you might be spoeaking, for all you know, to a Martian with a severe head cold.
All right: I've vented my spleen. I shall now put on a recording of 'No, no, Nanette' (see a past blog) and try to calm down.

Tea for Two

One of the two or three best evenings we ever spent in the theatre – competing with, say, Fonteyn and Nureyev in Giselle and Olivier’s Otehllo - was, you may think ludicrously, a revival of the 1920s musical No, No, Nanette!

 It was the producer Harry Rigby who conceived the idea of reviving this very popular show, over half a century after its first production in New York in 1924. All that audiences of the early 1970s knew of it was the awful 1950 film starring  Doris Day – and that was retitled Tea for Two, with most of the numbers cut. The show was considered rather scandalous when it was first produced; Rigby excised any suspicion of slease, and the evening was simply the best possible example of a good night out in the musical theatre. Julia and I were fortunate enough to get seats during the first week or two of the show, and from the first notes of the overture (a huge orchestra, with grand pianos to left and to right) it was a riot. The production was by Busby Berkeley, probably the greatest of directors of stage musicals (53 of them, from Whoopee in 1930 to Rose Marie in 1954). He came out of retirement to direct and choreograph No, No, Nanette! and whatever the degree of his participation (it’s said he actually did little of the work) the magic rubbed off. The other great star of film musicals who leaped lithely onto the stage was of course Ruby Keeler, who came out of retirement to play the lead, and who at the age of 71 did two tap numbers - in ‘I want to be happy’ and ‘Take a little one-step’, and having finished the latter, came on to ringing applause and did it again! Bobby Van was remarkable in ‘Call of the Sea’ and Helen Gallagher’s ‘You can dance with any man you like’ brought the house down about her ears and properly won her several awards - as did the show itself.

Alas, as far as I know there is no visual record of the show, though the original cast recording is excellent (and four DVDs have been worn out in our house). The real joy of the evening was that sublime silliness which no modern musical embraces – thirty chorus boys coming on dancing and playing ukuleles – and the wonderful idiocy of the whole thing. You can keep your Miserables and Phantoms and the rest of the productions which seem to emanate from a production company entitled Gloom Inc. Where’s all the pleasure gone?