Top Tip

 A soft-boiled egg can be improved in flavour by the addition of a tiny drop of soy sauce. You're welcome.

Felon 47

Being accused of being 'a terrible leader' by the Mango Mussolini is rather like being criticized for slouching by Quasimodo. 

Pictures At An Exhibition

 There is a fine exhibition of self-portraits by John Bellany at the City Art Gallery, Edinburgh, running until September. My son and I paid it a visit in June and were very impressed. I was in Edinburgh on Monday for the 12.20 pm mass at Old Saint Paul's so I took the opportunity of paying it a second visit. There were several paintings which I wanted to see again and to which I wanted to give more time. I spent a good fifteen minutes sitting in front of his massive triptych, 'Homage to John Knox.' [Sadly, I'm unable to put up a photograph for copyright reasons.] Should you be in the capital do not miss this exhibition.

'Amid Laughter And Merriment'

 In 1962 or so, aged 13, I first heard 'Poisoning The Pigeons In The Park' on an LP belonging to the older brother of a schoolfriend. It was love at first hearing; not since listening to my grandfather's 78 rpm records of Gilbert and Sullivan had I heard such witty wordplay. The 'quickenin'/strychnine' rhyme was a delight for a start. Soon there was a little Lehrer fan club at school, a group which also relished the rather amateurishly printed early copies of 'Private Eye.' A year or so later another American giant of wordplay swam into my ken, introduced to me by R. M. Melville, my English teacher: S. J. Perelman. Anyone who could write of his determination to avoid painful visits to the dentist as 'cuspid's last stand' appealed strongly [and he still does after all these years.] I'm sad to hear of Lehrer's death but enormously grateful for the keen delight he gave me by his logodaedalism. May his memory be a blessing.

IYKYK

 

Thought For The Day

 "There is no surfeiting on gall. Nothing keeps so well as a decoction of spleen."

Hazlitt.

Ist Dies Etwa Der Tod?

During my weekly video call with my family in Aotearoa I learned that my not-quite-five-year-old grandson's new words this week are 'tundra' and 'Golem.' Don't ask. I also learned that as he has begun asking about D**th his parents have started that conversation, including the fact that 'Grandpa is sick.' I tuned into BBC Sounds immediately afterwards and last night's 'Through The Night' began with Strauss's 'Four Last Songs.' Jungian synchronicity at work.  Anyway, here is where Grandpa is just now as far as he can tell.

De-Press-ing

 Baudelaire, writing in 1863. For 'newspaper' read all the invasive means of communication of the Digital Age:

"Every newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors. War, crime, rapine, shamelessness, torture, the crimes of princes, the crimes of nations, the crimes of individuals, a delirium of universal atrocity. And it is with this revolting aperitif that the civilized man starts his morning meal every day....I cannot comprehend how clean hands could touch a newspaper without a convulsion of disgust."

On The Dry

 At the end of this month I will have been off the grog for six months. At the start of the year my health problems were added to by trouble with balance and a series of falls, five between January and the end of April. After the first signs of this difficulty, back in January, I decided that carrying on with even moderate drinking was simply throwing petrol on a bonfire. I was a lover of real ale and am still [handy for Christmas gifts] a member of The Wine Society but I doubt if, in what time I have left, I'll return to the real enjoyment I derived from beer and wine and, indeed, single malt whisky [Islay for preference.] I have tried many 0% alcohol drinks, including gin and Guinness, and found them enjoyable but use them only on rare visits to a pub. The renunciation of what had been one of the major pleasures of life has not been as demanding as I had anticipated: I have never felt desperate for a dram or a pint, thank God. 'Has it made any difference?' I was asked by a doctor in the Falls Clinic. 'Not really, still having dizzy moments,' I replied. 'Well, you might enjoy a pint now and then,' was his suggestion. For some reason [centuries of Calvinist ancestors glowering down at me, perhaps] I have not taken him up on that suggestion. Memorable moments in my bibulous history remain to be savoured, though, including this splendid farewell dinner for a colleague nearly thirty years ago.

Half Way Through 1321 Pages

 I began reading 'Miss MacIntosh, My Darling' shortly before my diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer and events overtook that particular project. I returned to the book a few weeks ago and am reading steadily on at a chapter per day, savouring the writing carefully. At its best the prose has an incantatory and almost hallucinogenic property. This is entirely appropriate for the opium dream in which the narrator's mother exists:

"He might well have been, he must admit, among my mother's irresponsible hallucinations, only another of the the luminous and metamorphic dead she entertained, a bearded Russian bishop or an iridescent lighthouse keeper, perhaps the Antarctic Queen Maud Mountains with her snow-capped mountain peaks and white umbrellas and lace capes and great snow owls with horn-rimmed spectacles and human faces, perhaps Queen Charlotte Islands in a storm or a moon-face duchess with rustling silken skirts an many brown-eyed lap-dogs barking, many music boxes tinkling old-fashioned waltzes, many astral voices, bird cries, insect whirrings, perhaps the headless horseman fording a brook, the flowers turning into serpents."

Wild Strawberries

 Not another nod to Nordic cinema but the real thing. Yesterday morning I had my annual eye-test and needed a new set of lenses which, I'm happy to say, my optician can fit into my previous frames. They are tortoise-shell and give, I fondly hope, the effect of a 1950s Ivy League academic crossing Harvard Yard. At the end of the walk back to my flat through distinctly humid conditions, hirpling rather than walking, relying more than usual on my stick, I passed my local supermarket. It is noted for the worst 'landscaping' of any that I've seen. You'd look at it for a long time before the names of Le Notre or Gertrude Jekyll came to your mind. Among the milk thistles and fireweed, however, there is a clump of wild strawberries and I pick and eat one every time I pass. Small, sharp and with a hint of sweetness, it brought a spot of delight at the end of a long, sticky stumble from the bus-stop.

Clarification, y'all

 Anent yesterday's post: both churches 'attended' by me online are Anglican, The Episcopal Church [United States] on weekdays and the Scottish Episcopal Church on Sundays. Live streaming of eucharists  was an essential during lock-down and continued to be so after it was lifted because of a serious cancer diagnosis* that I received about 18 months ago. The 'y'all' is to provide a clue to the part of the United States where my weekday masses take place, each with a brief homily. I used to think that unless you were wearing a Panama hat and a white linen suit, fanning yourself with a palmetto leaf and sipping a mint julep you had no right to that 'y'all' but I've grown quite fond of it. I still feel that unless you are Toshiro Mifune in kimono and wielding a katana then you should not wear a man-bun or top-knot, however. I hope that makes things plain.

* Hence the still from a favourite film that adorns my profile. So far my Ruy Lopez has had no success.

A Sea of Green

 We have done with dogma and divinity

Easter and Whitsun past,

The long, long Sundays after Trinity

Are with us at last;

The passionless Sundays after Trinity,

Neither feast-day nor fast.

From a poem by J. Meade Falkner, better known for his prose writing, and, yes, the sea of green vestments stretches a long way ahead but 'passionless'? The Episcopal church whose sermons I find on YouTube could not be accused of lacking passion. The Edinburgh church I attend online does a fine line in sermons of a more cerebral nature but occasionally I like something more of a ferverino. And the idiom! Today's gem was 'I think Martha gets a bad rap.'  Perfectly expressed.