Psalm 121

I can no longer remain silent on the subject of the Catholic translation of the Psalms currently in use.  Last weekend it was 'the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C' so at Mass we had the excruciating version of what they call Psalm 120. It is from the Grail Psalter, which I dislike. Firstly: I was brought up with the Prayer Book (Book of Common Prayer) and therefore with the Coverdale Psalms which use the Hebrew (Masoretic) numbering and so I consider the number for this Psalm to be 121. It is known as Psalm 121 by English people and is familiar to everyone -  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. See - you recognise it don't you and you would NOT call it number 120. Now Myles (Coverdale) did a fine job as was his wont when he translated this one.

 

Levavi oculos with admirable chant by J Turle :

Copyright information: this is from the Parish Psalter SH Nicholson publ 1932

I don't like the pointing in verse 6 here, but apart from that the whole thing is splendid. ["So that the sun shall not burn / thee by / day : nei/ther the / moon by / night",  it ought to be. I know best.]


And here's what we get at the Sacred Heart (God bless it). No chant neither.


from the Grail Psalms copyright 1963 The Grail

 

This one completely lacks the poetry of the Coverdale one. Which is more charming -

Behold he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

or

No, he sleeps not nor slumbers, Israel's guard.?

This is very poor grammar, apart from anything else. It's practically slang. Compare "Yeah, I'm well 'ard, me." The syntax is identical. 

 
I defy you not to wince at hearing       May he never allow you to stumble!
with its superfluous exclamation mark, when you could have

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.

The meaning may be similar, but that Grail one puts it in such a childish patronising way that it is far less uplifting than it might be eg. as it is in the Prayer Book translation.
 
Whoever wrote these Grail ones had a tin ear, that's for sure.
 

The Lord will guide your going and coming.

What on earth was the thinking behind that? No-one says 'going and coming', even in ordinary speech. They say 'coming and going'. Coverdale on the other hand, by using

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in

gets the message across faultlessly : i) 'shall' conveys more definite confidence than 'will'; ii) preserving is more useful than guiding, thanks; iii) going OUT and coming IN is more expressive and makes the phrasing sound better. Going out and coming in are actually things people do, with a purpose. 'Coming and going' is a cliché meaning milling about achieving nothing and it's not much good God guiding us when we're doing that. He should send us off to do something constructive instead.

 
I love the Psalms and find comfort in them but this would never have happened if I had not had the Prayer Book version forced upon me in my younger years. It is unhelpful, nay, wicked, to make people use these silly other translations because they will then never bother to look at the Prayer Book Psalms or the King James Bible ones and thus will deprive themselves of a marvellous gift. Everyday language is no use to me when I want major serious help in spiritual matters. 

 
Therefore these are the final scores  :  Coverdale  1,  Vatican  nil.

Bureaucratic Interference in Birthdays

In view of the high concentration of birthdays at this time of year the Government's Birthday Guidelines are shown below. A typical Government issue if I may say so.




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Needless to say I will not be complying with the Govt.'s patronising suggestion.

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Health Guidance : contains Infinity% of your recommended daily amount of Fatuous Input.

 

 

 

Horseboxes: A Scourge.

I forgot to include the following useful advice in the directive about Hooting. Sorry about the omission and thanks to friends who pointed it out.

 



On the way to the Gymkhana.
This excellent horse regrets the extension to your journey time
but is completely at the mercy of its masters and
is therefore not to blame.

Second only to tractors in the canon of vehicles which cause the motorist's heart to sink, are cars towing HORSEBOXES. These go along at a v leisurely pace and the people driving them think they are very important because "Clarissa must get to her Gymkhana" and this gives them (they think) full rights to be as slow as they jolly well please. It is not possible to hoot at these as it may freak the horses out and cause them to injure you or themselves. The action to take in this situation is to flash your lights constantly, wind down your window and lean out shaking your fist so the horseowner thinks you are indicating that their horse is in difficulties. Soon he will stop to see what the matter is, and you will be able to get past. This only works if you are in the car directly behind the horsebox; thus if you are at the head of a queue of traffic caught in the wake of a horsebox it is your Civic Duty to do it, for the good of all road users. Furthermore, any over-courteous driver who stops to allow a horsebox or other cumbersome vehicle out in front of him, renders himself if not a legitimate military target at least a worthy recipient for all the V-signs, thumb-biting and other abusive hand-signals those following him might care to offer.



Clarissa doing Dressage.

She is quite oblivious to all the people she has caused to be late for their appointments.







 

A Number of Significant Campaigns

Several areas of public life have been identified as requiring improvement. I have decided that campaigns are needed for the following: More Hooting; Children to have Better Manners; and Prevention of Plastic Windows. Details below.

1. More Hooting.


Apply hand or fist to hooter.
Press firmly. Hold in place as necessary.

All motorists in England should hoot more. We are too accepting of other road users' many ineptitudes.

The most serious areas for attention are
 

i) at traffic lights. When the light at last goes green you may be assured that the driver of the car in front of you will

• take considerable time to notice that light has gone green
• wonder what to do next
• turn on car
• stall
• try again
• move off at zero mph ensuring that you are prevented from getting through as light returns to red.

Hooting at him the instant the light goes amber (i.e. pre-green) will go some way to speeding up the first and second of these laborious processes. Traffic queue etiquette ought to direct that we should all aim to move off at the same time. This would save HOURS on the roads. The average driver spends 336 hrs, i.e. two solid weeks,  per year waiting at traffic lights. Actually I just made that up, but I bet it's true.
 

ii) when following a tractor. Tractors and all other people who want to go slowly impeding the traffic flow and delaying legitimate road users who have serious stuff to do, hymns to play etc. should be obliged by law on pain of death to pull over every 100 yds to let the queue behind them get past. Hooting continuously from the time when you are first stuck behind them would alert them to your presence of which they usually feign ignorance.  
Tractors should be forbidden the use of the roads at rush hour, school run time and 10.30am on Sundays when important organists are trying to get to Mattins.

If car manufacturers included among the controls an on-off hooter switch this would facilitate implementing the hooting initiative. However, holding the horn button down for long periods can be very satisfying particularly if done in a spirit of admonishment and reproach so this option should remain available in addition. Of course what one would like to do when trapped behind an annoying vehicle, is smash repeatedly into the back of it; however this is inadvisable unless one has unlimited funds. 
 

Sub-campaign 1a : Banning of unnecessary traffic lights.

Workmen wishing to implement traffic lights round their roadworks should be forced to submit an application to ME, explaining why they think they should be allowed to have the traffic lights. My decision will be final and I will refuse any requests for lights where one can see the other end. The fact is, o panickers of the Transport Ministry, that believe it or not we motorists know it is silly to crash our cars into each other and will avoid doing so where possible. Thus if we can see there is another car coming towards us past the road works we will wait till it has gone by. On the whole people are reasonable and generous so traffic will continue to move smoothly despite lack of  intervention. It makes us VERY ANNOYED if we have to wait ages at a red light when we can see perfectly well that there is nothing coming the other way. Worse still is waiting at red light when you can see that the light is red at the other end too, because the stream of vehicles has obediently stopped as their light became red. The law should be changed to override the mindless dictates of the traffic light in this situation. Also, applications for three-way control lights will automatically be refused. Work which would require this will just have to be cancelled. The End. There will be no recourse to appeal.
 

It is imperative that we stop being docile on the roads because we are only making life difficult for ourselves and for future generations. So hoot please and write to your MP asking him to get the traffic light nonsense stopped; thank you.

2. Children to be have Better Manners.
It has come to my notice as I go about the district that the children I encounter often return insolent glares for my salutations. They have been taught by their parents that all adults probably have wicked designs upon their person. The children have learnt to state clearly, using body language alone, "Get away from me you sick pervert". Now this is offensive. I'm not a pervert, and nor is almost anyone else, so why should we all have to bear such incivility? It saddens the offended adult and diminishes the child, adding unnecessarily to the sum of human misery. It is not necessary for a child to be rude for it to be wary. These children could put their non-verbal communication skills to better use in making respectful gestures such as curtseying (girls) and touching their caps (boys); and they may address me as 'Madam'. Bidding someone Good Day is not going to make the child ANY more likely to be attacked.


Charming little girl ready to curtsey.
No pictures of boys doffing their caps
are available as the custom has died out.

If children are rude because they are shy, then tough, I'm afraid. They must be taught not to be shy, and to greet people politely. I was.  My parents would have cuffed me one, and rightly too (this was expected in those days. I am very old), if I refused to say Good Morning to someone, just because I felt shy. 


In contrast to their less courteous counterparts, children who have attained social graces are an asset to society and it is a pleasure to associate with them. I have a whole herd of exemplary and well-mannered nephews and nieces who enjoy the esteem of the community and have the happiness of knowing that they are A Credit To Their Parents.  Such children are a very good thing and make life better for everyone.

3. Prevention of Plastic Windows.
Evil operatives are at work across England replacing traditional windows by execrable substitutes in the form of uPVC windows. These bear no resemblance to real windows. They look horrible and while that is of no consequence in cases where the building on which they are inflicted is vile anyway, the uPVC firms have no compunction about targeting decent houses as well. No residence, be it mansion or shack, is safe. The outcome for the overall aspect of an old house blighted in this way is, without fail, catastrophic. Windows have a significant impact on the character and appearance of a building; and the uPVC windows are crudely detailed with great thick out-of-proportion frames, the material's shiny finish is out of keeping with older materials, and the glass they use has a uniform, flat appearance and none of the charm lent by the imperfections characteristic of old crown or cylinder glass. Furthermore where windows have glazing bars, these should form part of the structure of the window - application of false glazing bars to the surface of the window is a Kindergarten technique widely used by uPVC companies, the effect of which is historically incorrect and not in the least convincing. They fool no-one.
If you want to see what I mean, you might go to Merriott (Somerset). Terrible things have been done there. It was once a beautiful village of ham stone cottages but now they have utterly despoiled it with inappropriate windows galore. 

 

A fine delightful window





No captions required


The firms tell their prey that uPVC windows will free him of the costly maintenance appertaining to wooden windows. In fact the plastic ones, always hideous, soon look shabby as well anyway : a lose-lose situation. And we all suffer - not just the house-owners but everyone who has to look at their horrid-windowed properties. The only concern of the window firm is to get the victim to agree to have his house ruined, to do the work and take the money before moving on to cozen the next innocent householder. They care nothing for aesthetics, truth or the welfare of the nation in general.
They should be stopped immediately and imprisoned, before they do any more damage. Their money should be forfeit and given to the unfortunate people of Merriott and elsewhere to help them to pay for proper windows. There must be FORTUNES to be made by honest carpenters willing to put right the wrongs done. Would that I had the skill, energy, or initiative required. Alas I have not; but I freely give this idea for a total moneymaking dead cert to anyone who wishes to do it and they will have my thanks and those of the wider public for their pains, yea unto their children's children and for ever more.

 

The Uneven Distribution of Beauty in the Community. My annoyance at this.

You can tell this isn't me, by the
flawless bone structure, and necklace. 
This is a Fishwife.

This isn't me either. I wish I did look like this.
Shrew.

Look at these beautiful women! (L, and R) I don't know who they are, but I strongly resent them, and the whole population of pretty girls. This is because I am hideous - too tall, with big feet, a hefty nose, dull hair, horrible unblue eyes, and nasty thin lips, which attributes I team with gauche demeanour and inelegant posture. I have always been hideous since time began. It is very unfair.
I have no idea how to apply make-up to remedy matters and when I try to have dress sense it just makes me look even worse. I can't be bothered to take exercise and there is no self-control or willpower available so I can't go on diets. I have only to LOOK at a crisp to eat it, and then all its friends.

What I object to is the fact that everyone (every man, at least) seems to think pretty girls are terribly clever for being pretty, when really the little minxes should be forever praising God and thanking him for blessing them in this way. It is just LUCK, dears, and you are fortunate. You are not clever*. You should be grateful, not smug. You bags. I suppose it was clever of them to have learnt dress sense, make-up artistry and self control. But mostly they are just lucky.

*although such girls are always also Captain of Lax, Leader of the School Orchestra, in the top set for maths and winners of the Mrs Joyful Prize for Raffia Work.

 

If you look at pictures of these girls when they were babies you can see that they were always good-looking right from the start. When people like me are born the midwife has to warn the father to "Brace yourself, Sir. It's the ugliest baby I've ever seen," and things continue from there without improvement.

 

This brute is Cross Baby from Private Eye Magazine,
with whom I have a lot in common,
though I think I was more scrofulous than he is.

Here is a little ANGEL
which is obviously going to grow up to be A Beauty.
Strumpet.

A typical pretty girl is one of my predecessors as my husband's consort. He often calls me by her name and I have schooled myself to take this as a compliment. She (as I am constantly reminded by him and his various friends) is petite and ravishing, her feet are tiny, her nose is retroussé and she is able to get away with wearing a mini-kilt, which item of clothing could not feature in even the most deluded of my wardrobe fantasies. When I saw her in that mini-kilt it was the last straw. 
'Alas!' I said, and knew myself to be forever excluded from the rare aesthetic air inhabited by her and her kind.


Some pretty girls are ok - the ones who are funny and do not consider themselves superior on account of having their blonde hair blue eyes etc. I was at Nursing School with one like that, and despite being stunning she did not just sit around expecting to be admired and made much of, but larked about merrily in a most entertaining way along with us less attractive folk. Her cheerful disposition endeared her to everyone; and her glamorousness meant that although she didn't mean to, whenever she came to stay she used to upset all the relationship dynamics among the youth of the village, and one Saturday night there was an actual riot in the neighbouring town because of her. My father to his dying day treasured the memory of an occasion when she had lost a contact lens on the bathroom floor and he was allowed to help her look for it. She had a tiny towel wrapped round her at the time. A really excellent girl who remains a byword in our family as the feminine ideal.

The trouble is that the world benefits, overall, by having these pretty girls - the men LOVE them - so I suppose I will have to put up with them. I just wanted to put it on record that I don't like it, though.


 

Photography Tutorial 2

"Art Galleries refuse to show my photographs as art," said poor old Martin Parr in yesterday's Times.  Look at this picture, and see if you can tell why.



Taken by Martin Parr at New Brighton, Merseyside in the 1980s

Now why would an art gallery not put that up on its wall? The reason is this : it's horrible! People want to look at pleasant things of beauty at the art gallery. They can see scenes like this - not that they enjoy the sight - in their own homes any morning when the housework needs doing and the rubbish taking out. This picture is a total failure. Again he has missed most of one of the subjects (the baby's mother at the left hand side); he didn't bother to clear up any of that litter; there's a frightful pillar with a dust bin on it, cutting the picture nearly in two; people should NOT be photographed when they're eating; and the woman on the right seems to have a lamppost or something dangling from her wrist. I CAN NOT understand how anyone could deem this art. It's just a horrid picture of an unpleasant tableau. Mr Parr said disapprovingly in the Times' article, that people fill their photo albums with pictures of people looking smiley in nice locations. Well well! That's because we prefer to see NICE THINGS! Think on this, Parr-y baby.

 

To show that I am not unreasonable I am putting in this picture, 'Hebden Bridge (1976)'. Surprisingly, Martin Parr  took this one as well, and I think it's jolly good. It's of an intriguing incident, and he managed to get the main subject in the centre for once (although I would have moved the doorway slightly down and to the left, for perfection). There's no complicated background, the wall and doorframe enhance rather than distract, and the pavement and road surface are lovely. It shows that even M Parr can take a decent photo sometimes. He simply needs to use more discernment in choosing which ones to discard - that Merseyside one above for instance. Do a bit (a lot actually) of judicious editing Mr Parr, and then see whether the art galleries are more interested.

 

Dispute with Film Critic

BAMBI 

'Bambi' is one of the world's most emetic films and a typical Walt Disney production.

The protagonist, Bambi, is a cervine version of Fotherington-Thomas i.e. utterly wet and a weed. The word "Bambi" itself is ridiculous and pronounced 'Bay-um-bee' and what hope was there for him saddled with a name like that? It makes him sound like a call-girl or trapeze artiste and is not appropriate for someone who aspires to be Monarch o' the Glen.

The film is peppered with phrases like "Man was in the forest" (pronounced 'May-un was in the far-rest' - explanation for a forest fire, or some such catastrophe) from which we are supposed to infer that Walt Disney was a lovely, kind, politically-correct person of great compassion who unlike the horrid men in the film would never have started a far-rest fire, dear me no. He was too busy making stomach-turning films and propping up the price of shares in the Maxolon factory.

Here is what Barry Norman, a deluded film critic, had to say about 'The Darkness of Disney's re-released Classic'. I have put in a few pointers for him for next time, in red writing.
 



Bambi - an insult to proper deers everywhere.

The most tragic sequence in cinema is, without doubt, the death of Bambi's mother. This is A LIE. Even the scene when Withnail has run out of wine is tragicker than this feeble bit of 1-dimensional emotion-tweaking. Good riddance to Bambi's sickening mother. Remember the scene? The meadow; Bambi and Mother grazing on fresh spring grass; the hint of danger; her urgent call - "Run, Bayumbee, run!"; the shots ringing out; Bambi looking for his mother, only to be told by his father, the Great Prince of the Forest, "your mother cannot be with you any more." Once seen, never forgotten. I first saw the film when I was about 8, and never before or after have I wept so copiously in a cinema. Well then Mr Norman you are a total wimp. I hope your mother quickly sent you off to one of our rougher boarding schools to be made a man of. Having read the rest of this article, though, I fear she did not.

For me, and for generations of children since, it brought the first realisation - unwelcome, perhaps, but necessary - that tragedy as well as happiness can lurk around any corner. Until that moment it had been the charming, charming? superbly animated, superbly animated? story of a deer from his birth to his first gawky steps, his friendship with cute cute? woodland creatures such as the shy skunk Flower Anthropomorphism Overload. You should not condone this, Norman. and the toothy rabbit Thumper, and his attraction (ugh) to the young doe Faline. Oh spare us the maudlin sentiments... Admit it, man - the whole thing is NAUSEATING. Bambi is an absolute SISSY and so are all the other inhabitants of the forest.

And then this horror. Too much? I don't think so. Not enough, more like. One of the great strengths of many of Disney's animated features is an insistence on telling it like it is, "as it is" please, in not talking down to children. In Bambi this means showing the relentlessness of the human hunters, the perils of living in the wild - a horrifying forest fire - and Nature itself, red in tooth and claw.

At one point Bambi has to confront another young buck for Faline's favours and this, unambiguously, is shown as a fight to the death. There's no copping out, no humorous conclusion with the rival buck slinking off, tail between his legs. This is for real, Do not use the phrase "for real". Do not use it EVER. You mean "this is serious". Anyway it isn't real it's a cartoon. as is a later scene in which Bambi and Faline are pursued by terrifying, salivating hunting dogs, the hounds from hell, in fact you could hunt a milksop like Bambi with a pack of effeminate lapdogs. 'Ware STAG! Let us call in the Devon and Somerset Stag Chihuahuas! and he has to round on and confront them, again to the death.

This may not sound like an ideal film for kids "children". They are CHILDREN. Allow them some dignity. and yet that is what it is. The fear and the tears of grief Dear oh dear what sort of namby-pamby crowd do you run with? are soon replaced by tears of mirth as Disney works his comic magic. Oh yeah? Not on MY turf he doesn't. MY children have senses of humour. But, as I know from my experience, the youthful audience leaves the film contented, yes, but a little shaken and somehow wiser about the ways of the world. Only the pathetic ones. Any decent child would leave the film in paroxysms of disgust and outrage. And that is no bad thing.

Of course there's a happy ending. One would expect no less from a Disney feature. But there is still the memory of Bambi's mother and her death and that, as anyone will tell you, is always with us. Yes! Like the Death of Little Nell! Thank heavens! It brightens many a dark hour; it cheers the afflicted, strengthens the faint-hearted and supports the weak. Sorry B Norman but YOU ARE A FOOL.

 

Copyright B Norman (black bits) and G-AHLK (red bits)

 

A proper deer