Indignation against Lutes and Bacon

Do not read this if you play any strummed or plucked instrument.

Lutes.

This is in reference to the fact that I abhor a plucked string. Yet bowed strings are my principal delight. The difference a bit of horse hair makes is marvellous, iff in the right hands. I use iff in the mathematical sense i.e. to mean if and only if. (see previous post)

Before I start going on about plucked strings I refer you to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CvLpA8EVEo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

specially the first movement.

 

 

A rare example of lute music that I like.

Vivaldi concerto in D for Lute and played here on an archlute which is not something I would advise you to try and get in your hand luggage on an Easyjet flight.

 

 

 

On the whole though I detest pizzicato stuff.

Banjo playing is the ear-borne equivalent of slapstick comedy and we all know how I feel about that. It contains not an iota of sensitivity or musical merit. George Formby can get right out of my life never to be heard of again for all I care. 

The Harry Lime Theme from The 3rd Man film: I learnt to play this on the piano and I thought it was pretty cool. My horror when on seeing the film I heard it played ON A ZITHER knew no bounds. What a waste of a good tune.

Classical Spanish guitar is also insufferable.

Ukeleles: out of the question. Dear God.

HARPS: NO, NO, NO and again NO. I can not abide the affected way the harpists move their hands. I know it's not their fault; I suppose they have to flutter them about in that ludicrous manner to get the sound to come out correctly but why would anyone want to? It's a silly noise. I did hear a harp performance once in which the harpist was brilliant and made it sound as though she was playing a piano, but one thought why on earth didn't she just do that - play a piano?

 

 

OK Everyone may safely read this bit.

Bacon.

I love bacon, it's very palatable and ideal for hangover victims. But I do not like Tesco. This is the audacious scam they pulled on me:

 

 

 

 I selected the choicest pack of streaky bacon just as my son likes it - thus -

 

 

I paid  a tidy sum for it at the checkout, got it home, opened it up, took the top slice out of the packet to put under grill and what did I see? THIS disgraceful sight -

All the other slices were like this. They hid the horrible ones under the only nice one they had left.

Judge for yourself how furious I was - furious enough to gather photographic evidence and to fume over the incident for months (it happened last April).

Tesco are richer than Croesus and have absolutely no need to rip the customers off in this mean way.

They are always doing things like that and their latest idea is the utterly useless "Buy 2 get 1 free" offer on CABBAGES. I ask you. One cabbage in any given month is all that a normal family can stomach.
The Buy 1 get 1 free offers at least represented a 50% discount whereas this new deal gives only 33.3recurring% off, even if you wanted their nasty cabbages.
And their reductions on going-out-of-date stuff are risible. I saw one once that said "REDUCED! NOW £1.10! Usual price £1".  What sort of dolts do they take us for? I can't think why they bother having wares on the shelves; they could just have buckets by the door into which we could all empty our wallets and be done with it.

 

On a more cheerful note 'Lutes' ends and 'Tesco' starts, with the same three letters, which can be useful in crossword clues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lonely torment of the violin pupil

I have been having violin lessons for 10 months, and thanks to a fine teacher I enjoy it very much, but it hasn't been easy; not for me, nor for my family, nearby residents, the local livestock or any unfortunate bystander within earshot. People no longer look me in the eye, and our neighbours have put their house up for sale.

See this for example - from a Menuet for 2 violins : 

To any half-competent musician in the kindergarten this innocent passage would hold no terrors; yet words can not convey the discomfort these 8 bars have wrought in our household. And I only have to play the TOP LINE. My teacher does the other bit. She is very clever. She is also possessed of a level of patience which makes Job himself look quite volatile by comparison.

It is not reasonable, in my opinion, to expect this piece to be playable by normal mortals.

The bow is far too short to accommodate 3 beats, yet look at all those slurs! It's hopeless. The bridge is so flat that it is not possible to play on one string at a time and one constantly scrawnches across adjacent, unauthorised, strings. The human wrist is too inflexible to allow one to contact the fingerboard in the required contortions. I blame Mozart, Stradivarius and God for these shortcomings and they are ALL GUILTY for their untold contribution to human pain which is worse than that made by skool cabbidge, "Jingle Bells" and spiders combined. I accept no responsibility.

My teacher gave me this Menuet light-heartedly at the end of a lesson to play as a treat, thinking it would be easy. How wrong one can be. And if I do master it, she will just give me another one to learn, even harder. She's got a book of 12 of them lying in wait. I've seen it on her bookshelf.

To tell you the truth I find some of the sounds I make highly amusing, sometimes, but others in the house have been heard crying out in actual physical pain. The violin is a wonderful thing, but let it only fall into the wrong hands and... well the less said the better.

Wells:Watchet Twinning Initiative

Wells - enter at your peril...

The City of Wells has launched a crusade in which it will try to have itself twinned with Watchet. In pursuance of this aim certain practices are being undertaken in the borough, designed to repel and alienate visitors. As a result of these I have been obliged to write a letter of complaint to the Lord Bishop concerning the shoddy treatment meted out to me by his underlings on Wednesday. I reprint part of my letter here and need comment no further upon the ugly incident which goaded me to write it.



"Yesterday I visited Wells Cathedral with my husband and we found it very unkind. The Women's Institute Carol Service was in progress and we were directed to sit in one of the rows of seats. Doing so would have involved inconveniencing a number of people already seated, and as we were only able to stay for a short while we said we would rather sit at the back on a bit of stonework which had been put there for the purpose by the builders of the Cathedral 800 years before. This we were told was forbidden. The officials were resolute, so we left, saddened. One of them said it was because of Health and Safety, but there are ways of saying these sorts of thing pleasantly and with a hint of apology that softens them and turns away wrath. Such ways were not in operation at Wells yesterday.

I would point out that I play the hymns every Sunday at Oare in the county of Somerset, and the Revd Colin Burke shall hear of this. You might advise your ladies that it is not expedient to antagonise village organists because they are in short supply."


 

 

 




Visiting violinist forced to play in
inferior busking zone in Wells

Furthermore,


i) a twopenny piece which 'Trenchcoat Man' keeps in a crevice in the stonework at Wells, has been stolen; 

ii) one of their indigenous buskers occupied for hours the prime spot beside the marketplace, depriving Our Boy of considerable income that he would have generated by playing his violin there;

iii) the WI ladies used up all the parking spaces;  

iv) the prices in the charity shops have been embellished so that overcoats are now retailing at £30 to £60 - even moth-eaten ones;

and

v) the seriousness with which they take the campaign of insolence can not be doubted when one sees that they have despoiled the Cathedral Green with this Yuletide Eyesore:
 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the people of Wells have made their intentions clear. They have allied themselves handsomely with Watchet, and their ambitions of a union with those barbarians seem likely to be satisfied very shortly.

 

However... I have some experience of the inhabitants of Watchet and I can warn Wells that it will RUE THE DAY.

 

 

 

 

 

Catalogue of Preferred Flowers

Here is a list of some flowers which I approve of, and commend to you.

 

Honeysuckle. Despite the fact that this plant is described as a shrub - how dare they? - it actually represents one of the pinnacles of God's creation and its fragrant flowers are the envy of Chanel No 5. I defy Mr Darwin and Professor Dawkins to see and sniff one of these things and then suggest who made them? It was God, Gentlemen! It must have been.

Field Scabious. The absolute King of the Teasels.

This stuff just flowers, year after year without anyone doing anything. Some patches of it grow beside the A39 near here and the council come and cut it down just when it's in its prime every summer but it fights back. The operative who has to cut it down must need counselling afterwards. Imagine having to destroy things like these.

 

 

Daisies. These are lowly but friendly little things. Note the satisfying Fibonacci sequence display in the arrangement of the disc florets (yellow bit).

LOOK at these. They are so delicate and pleasing that it is not possible that they could have come about by chance. God must have been WELL CHUFFED* when he had invented these.

  

These pictures are of Upright Hedge Parsley - Paragon of Flowers. 

Cow Parsley is another good one and its flowers peak at the official Best Time of the Year, i.e. the 1st 2 weeks of May (Copyright G-AHLK).

 

 

 

* "well chuffed" : a term used by the street urchins of West Somerset in the late 20th century, and meaning "very content".

Grasses in flower. Rewarding, though often disregarded.
Common Field Speedwell, Flax, Field Bindweed. More fine work, by God.

Clovers and vetch; these are peas. Peas rule.

Meadowsweet. A delightful word for a fragrant, pretty flower. I would have called our daughter Meadowsweet if I could have got away with it but it's too popular as a name for cows. Though I am fond of cows.




                

Harebells

Lady's Smock not Ladies Smock



 

 

 

Wild roses. They should not be called dog roses. The name is insufficiently pleasant. Juliet did not say a dog rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and with good reason. But they are lovely and so is rose hip syrup, if you can be bothered to make it.

Poppies

Wild Pansies

  

       
                                        

Hops. Well, obviously. You can make beer out of hops. Hurrah for beer. And sprays of hops look very nice festooned around the Public Bar.

I have included these because they have charming names: pellitory of the wall, enchanter's nightshade, hemp 
agrimony, restharrow, and tall ramping fumitory.
Though it may interest Juliet to know that "tall ramping fumitory"'s other name is Fumaria bastardii which certainly isn't charming in the least.



 

Further Grudges Held by Me

A clock made by Thomas Tompion.
Tompion clocks always
show Greenwich Mean Time

Pacific Standard Time

Pacific Standard Time I loathe as a symbol of all the irritations involved in using the internet.

When I was struggling among the UNBELIEVABLE hoops they make you go through to set up a thing like this blog it would NOT allow me to be on Greenwich Mean Time as any sane Englishman would wish to be. It insisted on using Pacific Standard Time and no two ways about it. Never mind that I have never been in such a time zone, or that if I ever did go into it I would still work on GMT like any sane Englishman.  I told it repeatedly that I was in Greenwich (a lie actually) but it steadfastly kept to Pacific Standard Time. Eventually my son came home from kindergarten and dealt with it for me and it now permits the use of proper time. But why do they have to make it so difficult that only a child can operate it?

The fact that it is my own incompetence that causes the trouble in NO WAY diminishes my fury.

Slapstick "Humour"

Slapstick humour is not funny; neither is it big, nor clever. It simply does not register to the Smith sense of humour, which is on an altogether more cerebral plane. As my brother says, to hear the phrase Slapstick Humour, is immediately to feel bilious.

The only emotion elicited by displays of slapstick humour is the unedifying and spiteful one of Schadenfreude. We therefore disdain it, and consider it quite worthless.

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells: This piece of so-called music has inflicted considerable suffering on the western world - and probably beyond - since it was written, which dastardly act was perpetrated by James Lord Pierpont who must rank as one of the most irresponsible people in the known universe. It was published in 1857 which means that this is the 256th Christmas that has been ruined by it. 

Everyone knows the noisome song and everyone has it forced on them every time they venture out in public from October onwards. The inane tune and the soppy words combine to make a sickening phenomenon which all shopkeepers seize on and play incessantly, though heaven knows why. One would have thought that the authorities would have addressed the problem as a matter of urgency many years ago.

 

So - why can we not be protected from this aural plague?

The terrible truth is that now that it has been written it cannot be unwritten.

James Lord Pierpont, what have you DONE?

Here is a page from Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for Violin and Piano.
Look on this, J L Pierpont, and weep.



Dulwich : Not Twinned with Watchet

This blog must be being read by GOD since no sooner had I put "Floods" on my list of agreeable items, than the best floods for years occurred. I thank the Lord.

In blog Headquarters in West Somerset London is popularly believed not to exist, but 2 of us went there at the weekend and it was all full of LONDONERS.

Kind Dulwich-dwellers urged us to stay with them because floods were forecast, but we would not be deterred: we must needs drive home through the night of savage downpours, and sure enough we had a SUPERB journey back from London, as there were floods of really generous extent. The roads between Bridgwater and here were uncommonly enjoyable, being all very flooded, and we had to keep turning round to find alternative routes.

This was the first place where the water was too deep for us to get across. The weedy puddle shown here is as NOTHING compared to how it was when we reached it the night before. Giant lorries were being stopped before the might of the torrent.
Unfortunately by the time this picture was taken even Private Light Goods vehicles could be driven through it.

There were magnificent water levels everywhere and we drove through countless new-made fords and along roads that had become riverbeds. The police were completely overwhelmed by the scale of events. Motorists were all helping each other and on the roads a rare camaraderie grew up - unlike the hostile atmosphere in Watchet, where we got trapped. There the inhospitable people closed their doors on us, nursing their pints in their cosy after-hours lock-ins and laughing cruelly as we were turned back out into the everlasting rains. Should a Watchet-person ever find himself trapped in Blog HQ he might reflect on the wisdom of this night's work. 

Having been despised and rejected, we went and dozed in the car for a few hours while we waited for the waters to recede a bit. By a circuitous route we reached home at 6am after 12 marvellous hours on the road.

With some surprise I must say that our Vauxhall Heap did sterling work throughout. This car is 15 yrs old with 1300000000000 miles on the clock and has led a hard life, never being kept in a garage or cleaned or pampered with 10000-mile services or any other such luxuries and every year it is a source of utter astonishment when it gets through its MOT. Yet it did not falter during a journey with which the VW Enzyme of my early driving career would definitely not have coped. Like the enzymes it was named after, that car only worked within a narrow band of physical conditions and packed it in every time they strayed minutely from the required values. pH, atmospheric pressure, humidity, pollen count, temperature, wind direction (easterlies were DEATH to it): all had to be at precisely the right alignment or it would conk out immediately.

Vauxhall! People of Dulwich! We salute you!             Watchet; Volkswagen; - You we do not salute.

Justification for Some Animosities

Today I am going to describe
·         Shrubs
·         Circular tables, and
·         Monkeys and bears
and explain why they can not be tolerated.

Shrubs

A typical shrubbery. Hideous.


Shrubs are dull woody plants, usually found grouped together in 'Shrubberies', the bleakest garden features known to man. Shrubberies are always dank and gloomy, and muddy because no grass can grow beneath the shadow cast by the sombre canopy of evergreen leaves that make up all the decor of these horrid plants for most of the time. For a few days each year you might get a number of unattractive, scentless flowers showing among the dreary foliage. They don't even yield any useful fruit.



Gardeners! Let us stamp out Forsythia, laurel and privet. Away with bougainvilleas and rhododendrons, and let them be no more seen in the gardens of our land.



Behold, I have spake.



Circular Tables

These make my blood boil. What a silly idea they are. Rooms are rectangular, and so should tables be. Anyone with a simple knowledge of geometry can see that the surface area to circumference ratio is wasteful in the extreme. King Arthur set a very dodgy precedent when he tried to make these ridiculous pieces of furniture acceptable. They are NOT acceptable. I will not have one in the house. 

Monkeys and Bears

Lovely? Admirable?  Don't be fooled.

My dislike of monkeys and bears is exacerbated by the fact that everyone else seems to think they are lovely and admirable. They aren't, though. Monkeys eat each other's babies, which is really nasty of them. Chimpanzees are the most revolting grotesque horror-film sort of caricature-humans and I resent being told all the time that I share God knows how high a percentage of my genes with the horrible creatures. All I can say is, the few genes I've got that they haven't, must be my best ones and must exert a disproportionately large influence on my make-up.

Bears annoy me too. People like them just because they are furry. Well so are tarantulas, but no-one likes them, do they? Or rats. Furry perhaps, but lots of bears are vicious and cruel as Mother Nature decrees they must be. Polar bears are complete BRUTES and so are brown bears which don't even look sweet. Both these types of bear are hardened killers who think nothing of slaughtering seal cubs galore and would tear the infant Bambi to pieces as soon as look at him. 

N.B. Pandas do not count as bears. I like them.



Nice vegetarian panda



A herd of baby pandas



In the Dock : Ernest Dowson

Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae       by Ernest Dowson


And well you might look shame-faced, Dowson my boy...

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Anyone who can call for madder music and for stronger wine, must be a good chap in my book; and as for flinging roses riotously, well, which of us hasn't, which of us hasn't? You can see that Ernest here has his heart in the right place in some respects.

But this poem  - technically brilliant though it certainly is, and contain a number of splendid lines though it may  - infuriates me as it should all right-thinking persons, on account of the outrageous sentiments expressed therein.

Namely, that although the poet has been out all night carousing with common harlots, the hapless Cynara is expected to put up with it and forgive him because it's "just his way of being faithful".  He even seems to imply that she ought to be grateful for his peculiar form of loyalty. AND he complains about her spoiling his evening by occupying one of his passing thoughts between the bought red lips and his own. It really is A Bit Much.

If Cynara had spent the weekend romping with the soldiery, and then come home saying "Oh it's OK, I have been faithful to thee, Ernest! in my fashion" would he much care for that? I think not. I think she'd be out on her ear, and serve her jolly well right.

So it's a shame, but with this poem Dowson has overstepped the mark.

He's let Cynara down, he's let us down, and he's let himself down.

Squirrels and Why I Hate Them

Look at this repulsive little thing, pretending to be cute.

Squirrels are anathema to me and here's why.

Red squirrels are FINE, I don't mind them at all, but you never see them; I've only ever seen one and that was in Austria and it might have been due to the WINESTUFFS I had been taking. It's the grey ones I can't stand, frolicking about wetly in parks etc. and stealing all the hazelnuts and birds' eggs.  

They have destroyed more bird-nut-dispensers than you have had hot dinners, on my patch alone. I have long waged a war of wits against them and believe me they are resourceful, determined blighters who WILL NOT GIVE UP. Not content with pinching all the costly peanuts put out expressly for the sole use of long-tailed tits, they feel compelled to rip the bird-nutter orf its moorings and fling it to the ground broken to bits and unmendable.

This happened repeatedly so I tried hanging the new nutter (£3.99) on a long bit of string attached to the guttering hundreds of yards overhead. Events continued as follows: 

1. Tedious squirrel then climbed up onto the windowsill and launched its beastly self towards the £3.99-worth of new equipment.
2. Result: same as before - broken nutter and peanuts all over the place. Gutter now unserviceable. Squirrel VERY pleased with itself.
3. Mended gutter.
4. Affixed new nutter (now £4.59 owing to inflation) on new long bit of string.
5. Placed stick against wall to hold nutter a good distance away from the windowsill. 
6. Squirrels confounded by this development, heh! heh!, but every time I walked past I hit my head on the stupid nutter. Also the freaky construction looked unsightly and made people think I am a loony.

Thus the squirrels remained victorious, if a bit Pyrrhic.

But then... in a brilliant, unanswerable coup, we moved in to a house whose back wall has a RIVER running along it, right against the building. One can therefore hang out a nutter from the guttering with complete impunity.     

Take THAT, Squirrelly Fiends!      Feast in peace, Long-tailed Tits.

 

 

You have got to admit, long-tailed tits are really endearing, and they DESERVE the peanuts, which is more than can be said for the horrid squirrels.

 

How Amiable

Here are some things I do like :-

Here's a violin. Violins are excellent.

• long-tailed tits
• swifts
• floods, puddles, high tides
• fossils
• clocks
• Fibonacci sequence and pi
• umbellifers
• dere little babies
• N Molesworth
• olives
• Beethoven
• full moon rise
• hayfields

for all of which I bless the name of the Lord.
More details will be supplied later.

The View from the High Horse

There are many things that need saying around here and I am the one to say them. So here I am on my High Horse.

I will be addressing subjects including :-

• squirrels
• shrubs

• 

  Charming shot of Porlock Bay

  Pacific Standard Time
• monkeys and bears
• circular tables
• the plucked string 

• "slapstick humour"

• "Jingle Bells"
• Tesco's bacon scam
• inappropriate use of the present tense
• Ernest Dowson's poem Cynara

all of which INCENSE me.

Sometimes I will mention stuff that I do like, in order not to appear a total curmudgeon, and to alleviate the constant ranting.