Day of the Triffids

Dunno where they got all the extras from. The St Neots Second XI Darts League Knitting Circle, at a guess. Choreography of crowd scenes straight out of The Muppets.

Those of us whose childhood was chilled by John Wyndham's Kraken and the one with the blond kids with glassy eyes, not to mention Nigel Kneale's Quatermasses in black and white, the ones with the wobbly cardboard sets, are completely baffled by tonight's genetic modification of the Triffids book. It was obviously made for the X-Box, X-Factor generation for plot is completely subservient to action and SFX.

It must have cost a fortune to make, but, like Wicker Man, it's going to become a cult classic of pure ham and misjudgement.

Can't wait to see the concluding part tomorrow - of Hamlet on Ice - the Musical.

The O Antiphons

If we were having Vespers this evening, we would be saying or singing the first of the seven O Antiphons, O Sapientia, just before the Magnificat, today being 17 December, the first day within the octave of Christmas. Tomorrow it's O Adonai. The texts are of twofold importance - the opening of each antiphon is a title for the Messiah, and all are taken from the prophecies of Isaiah. The hymn O come, O come, Emmanuel is a poetic expression of the antiphons.

The sequence was cunningly arranged by the Benedictines, so that the first letter of the second word of each, taken in reverse order, spells out 'Ero cras' (tomorrow I will come).

More on that symbolism here:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0374.html

We don't make so much of the O Antiphons in the CofE, although we did once add an eighth, O Virgo virginum, to form the acrostic 'Vero cras' (truly, tomorrow), though that one was ditched in 2000 with the publication of Common Worship.

A pity, though, that in translation the acrostic doesn't work any more. Perhaps nobody had noticed.

Where the bee sucks

Now I do have to reverse the uninformed opinions of 30 years or so, and say unequivocally that if Gordon Sumner happens to be passing through Knotty End (especially if Mrs Sumner is with him) there is a chilled bottle of Moët waiting (we've had it years - hope it hasn't gorn orf), a prawn curry with all the trimmings, and an unreserved apology for once calling him a 'bloody pop singer.'

Gordon is contemptuous of humiliation-TV (specifically, the X-Factor), and the appalling state of musical education for youngsters in the UK, where expectations of what children can actually do are so cringeingly low. Egad - we are of like mind!

Tell you what, Gordon - I'll buy another copy of your Dowland CD to replace the one I broke by accidentally stamping it to death, and I promise this time to listen to it with a more open mind, if you'll persuade Mrs S. not to bring the camel when you drop by. Well, fair's fair.

The evangelising Christian Institute, not a body which you could ever accuse of being non-fundamentalist, is cock-a-hoop because two hoteliers have been 'cleared' of offences with which they had been charged under legislation normally used to dole out ASBOs - offences against public order.

The fact that this case was ever brought to court, and under this particular bit of legislation, is a disgrace. It was not a clash of faiths, but of personalities, and hoteliers who want to stay in business need to remember that the paying guest is always right.

The baying mob of placard-waving hirelings demonstrating outside the court do no service to Christianity, but serve only to further the twin causes of secularism and barbarism, which thoughtful Muslims as well as thoughtful Christians and Jews - people of the great Abrahamic faiths - fear and despise.

So once again the zealots have handed a great story to an increasingly secular and sneering press. Well, jolly well done, CI. Where did you all go to school? Little Rock?

For 'secular and sneering' I slightly misquote Richard Morrison, Times columnist and music critic, but his piece today is well worth reading.

Trailers in books

"I say, Jeeves. Look at this!"

"Sir?"

"In this bally book I'm reading, Jeeves. Curve the spine, lower the optics, and take a hook of the proverbial butcher."

"Yes, Sir. It appears to be Page 1 of a novelette, Sir, or so I infer from the presence of the numeral 1 at the bottom of the page."

"Yes, but dash it, Jeeves. I've just read the bally book, and pretty spiffing it was too, but there's a bit of another book here, yet the publishers, no doubt on the advice of their attorneys or their accountants, have only given the first chapter."

"Indeed Sir. If I might elucidate?"

"Pray do, old chap. If there's one thing about you, Jeeves, it's the old grey matter. Never been known to fail, what? My ear is at your disposal. Out with it, then. Agog is what I am all, not to mention at the bit champing."

"You are too kind, Sir. It would appear that your eye has stumbled across what is known in the lower echelons of the publishing trade as a Tizer."

"A what, Jeeves. What's orange pop got to do with this stuff at the end of my book? Elucidate on, there's a good chap."

"A Tizer, Sir. A regrettable contraction of the noun 'appetiser', or possibly 'enticer' - scholars are divided upon the precise derivation. If I might put it in plain words - fearing that its readers might desert to more reputable houses, the publisher in question has adopted a device more commonly encountered in the Television; the, ahem, Trailer."

"Well, dash it all, Jeeves, I mean to say. I bet that chap you're always on about, that Shakespeare chappie, didn't blot the last page of Romeo and Juliet and then think 'I'll just bung in a chunk of Julius Caesar for good measure.' I mean, when all's said and done, when is a book not a book? Who said that, Jeeves?"

"I believe that you are the first to put it in that particular nutshell, Sir. Rem, as I have so frequently had course to remark, acu tetigisti. And if I might say so, you have turned a phrase that verges upon the sublimely epigrammatic."

"Gosh. Well, if you say so, Jeeves. Sublimely epigrammatic, what? Must write that down. Meanwhile, my faithful old retainer, what do you think I should do with this book?

"It is hardly for me to say, Sir, but Cook has been complaining that the kitchen fire has been proving recalcitrant in the ignition phase of late. If you would allow me, Sir...?"

"What, burn it? Burn a book, Jeeves? Never thought I'd hear those words from your learned fish and chips."

"But as you so neatly put it, Sir, When is a book not a book? This object, I venture to suggest, is, without argument, a non-book, and as such it has no place upon the Wooster shelves."

"You win, Jeeves. Daresay you're right, as usual. Here you are then. Take it away and do with it what you will."

"Indeed Sir. And thank you Sir. Generations of future bibliophiles will undoubtedly be indebted to you, as will Cook."

"Bibbly-what? Oh never mind. Right then, toddle off and do the dastardly deed. Oh, and Jeeves..."

"Sir?"

"About that hat. The one with the purple feathers. You might as well take that to Cook, as well."

"A very wise decision, Sir, if I might say so."

"You might, Jeeves. You jolly well might, at that."

Novus Ordo, geetars, and RC bling

I just couldn't resist this one - Damian Thompson at his wittiest.

But just listen to the baying of cousin Francis's hounds in the Responses - and start worrying.

Parish Mag, December

Valiant readers in such far-away place as Hamilton (Scotland, not Bermuda) and Valparaiso (a parish a bit west of Betwys-y-Coed) are always complaining that our parish mag doesn't always reach them, and remind me that this blog was started to accommodate the stuff that tickled them under the kilt (or poncho) but which my (highly esteemed) editor frequently sees fit to spike, even though many parishioners claim it is only thing which helps them survive four sermons. (Well, OK then, two parishioners, but it's a start.)

Amazingly, this piece made it into the December mag, while other far more worthy pieces didn't.

By the time you read this I am going to be heartily sick of Christmas carols, or at least the sort of stuff that shops start blaring out at you from about the week after Easter. In fact the sooner someone invents a carol-cancelling ear-muff for shoppers the better, as far as I am concerned.

The reason you become a grumpy old git is that you’ve been around long enough for things to get on your wick, like for instance greengrocers apostrophe’s, income tax returns, anything to do with the NHS, the adulation of blokes who kick balls round fields for a living, and, worst of all, syrupy versions of Little perishing Donkey blasted out of tinny speakers in shop doorways when you are unfortunate enough to have had to to nip out to purchase a seasonal cabbage or something for your tea.

It is therefore always a joy (to this GOG, anyway) to discover a carol you haven’t already heard and sung 93 trillion times before, and so I have made it my life’s work to track down those elusive carols, or at least carols unknown in the English-speaking world, which don’t ever use the words Wenceslas, Herald, or Figgy Pudding.

The carols of a nation tell you something about the national character. Austrian carols sound like an oompah band. Scandinavian carols are extremely serious and can give you frostbite. French carols are un peu gamin and flirty, and I imagine carols as a genre are frooned on a wee bittie in the Ooter Hebrides. Heaven only knows if they have carols in Wales, but if they do they’ll be written in the style of Handel for a choir of a thousand (and there’ll be lots of repeats.)

My favourites, actually, are Polish carols. We sing one in England, Infant Holy, although the original is even more ambiguous about where the musical stresses should be, and the better for it.

In choirs in England we’re quite used to new harmonisations of traditional carols, and the melody is always left strictly alone. But the curious thing about Polish carols is that the tune is often changed as well as the harmony, though the essential character of every koleda is always retained. A friend at the University of Warsaw, who was very knowledgeable about the old language still used in the texts of some traditional Polish carols, warned me that these texts are pretty much untranslatable. They also use a couple of characters from old Church Slavonic which don’t appear in the fonts your home computer comes equipped with (even in Poland), so preparing performing editions for an English choir was a nightmare, but between us we did it. Two carols made their English debut at a service in West Yorkshire in 199-something, and I thought the choir made a pretty good job of the phonetic language Anna and I had worked out between us. A Polish lady in the congregation was greatly moved by the music of her familiar old carols. But she thought the choir had sung them in Welsh.

Oh, and but. As well as having the best carols in the world, Poland has the best strawberries. Or so lovely Anna says, in her impeccable English.

Intravenous positivism and other stories

It is always a joy, after a busy week being a member (baptised, confirmed, committed, and staying) of the Anglican communion of the Christian Church, to read Damian Thompson's Daily Telegraph blog, where his few but vociferous responders still evidently believe that camels pass through the eyes of needles and angels dance on points. Damian can't help being an intravenous Roman Catholic any more than DT readers can help being intravenous Tories, but you could never accuse him of being timid in the fray.

The divisions between the Christian churches have more to do with ecclesiology than with theology, as Dr Rowan Williams didn't quite say last week, and when the Vatican has to support its Anglicanorum coetibus with new translations of its law and doctrines that conveniently assert, even consolidate, its view of its own primacy, it is perhaps time to examine the ecclesiology of Rome more closely, as Charles Sherlock did in a piece which is almost guaranteed to summon the ironclads of the Inquisition to the palatial lawns of Bendigo.

As always in this age of spin, the detail is concealed in the small print.

3D calendar puzzles (again)

It has been great fun working again this summer and autumn with the only mildly eccentric ex-pedagogue Sirius, inventor of the 3D crossword and tireless fund-raiser for children with visual impairments. Sirius himself is partially sighted, which makes his 3D crossword website and his 3D crossword calendars even more remarkable. We have worked together for two years and we haven't met yet, but we have agreed that when we do meet at Coventry station I'll be the little bald bloke waving a CD of the Financial Times and Eric will be disguised as Patrick Moore.

This year there are two calendars, not one - a calendar of quickie 3D puzzles that we wrote between us, under the wise and knowledgeable guidance of the big bullies in the publications department of the RNIB, who know everything about design and typography and have no compunctions about telling you that your clues are too long, the rotters, and a second calendar of more challenging cryptic puzzles from a host of the best crossword compilers in the land, as well as me and Sirius himself.

Sirius's Milliganesque genius (and his refusal to take no for an answer) last year won over a highly significant moral partner in this venture, Sarah Montague, of Radio 4's Today programme, and the knot was tied with the BBC's Children in Need appeal. This year Sarah Montague took her personal support to a new practical level - she persuaded her Today colleagues to join her in making sound recordings of every crossword in the 'big' calendar to make life easier for solvers who are at a disadvantage by not being able to see very well. Sarah's name, and those of her colleagues, are on the front of the calendar, so I can name them here for a huge round of applause and a chorus of 'jolly good fellow' - Evan Davis, John Humphrys, Rory Morrison, Jenni Murray, James Naughtie, Paddy O'Connell, Susan Rae, Gary Richardson and John Waite.

So can you do anything to help build a grand new school?

Well, yes.

You could pass on the flier at the top of this post to someone you think might be interested (click it for a full-size jpg), either in buying a calendar as a present for a partially-sighted friend or just in spreading the word.

The RNIB calendar is best ordered by visiting Sirius's website and following the link to the RNIB website.

The RNIB calendar is £6.99; the 'big' cryptic one £9.99.

Ta. Locum.

Do we need a Doorstep Preference Scheme?

8:20pm, busy working. What I was doing involved a train of thought now lost for ever because of an uninvited intrusion into the peace and quiet of my home, this peace and quiet being something which my wise local authority tells me I am entitled to enjoy.

A knock on the door. Two young men with lapel badges being very earnest about premature babies. I didn't wait to find out where they were from, or what they wanted, but I did ask them what they thought they were up to knocking doors at this time of night, because I know that several of our neighbours are elderly women living alone whom these night-knockers probably frighten half to death. "We're licensed by the local authority until 8:30", one replied, defensively yet belligerently.

Oh, so that's OK then. They are licensed by the same local authority which says that we are entitled to enjoy the peace and quiet of our homes to frighten old ladies by banging on their doors until 20:30 hours.

And it isn't that I'm against premature babies - far from it. In 1968 the first of our two boys was born six weeks early, and it was a nerve-wracking time for both of us, particularly as the hospital in which our baby was in intensive care was 12 miles from where we lived, and his mother was at home recovering, and expressing milk twice a day for me to race off with to the hospital on my Lambretta. My wife didn't hold the baby until he was six weeks old.

So please don't tell me that I am prejudiced against premature babies, or, for that matter, Lambrettas.

But allow me to be prejudiced against any brace of tough-looking young men who bang on my door at 8:20pm when dark night is well advanced, whatever their excuse, and whatever their lapel badge might say. Heavens, I could make you a laminated lapel badge saying whatever you wanted it to say in five minutes, and so could anybody with a computer, a printer and a cheap laminater. They are no longer worth the plastic they're sealed in.

There is a particularly nasty form of moral blackmail that the outfits who send people to knock uninvited on people's doors use, and it's of the "have you stopped beating your wife?" variety. They play tricks with your fears, and they play tricks with your guilt. They make beggars out of perfectly decent young people with disabilities, and you give them money so that they will go away. If the cunning people who send people out on door-knocking missions were legitimate outfits, they would have more sense, because their tactics are inevitably counterproductive. These night-knockers taint what might be inherently a worthy cause with the stink of corruption, because people are inherently suspicious about causes which have to do their business skulking in the dark, whether or not such skulking is sanctioned by their local authority.

In our area residents are being advised by the police and, yes, the inevitable local authority, to put up signs saying "no carol singers." Funnily enough, I am actually solidly behind the police and the local authority on this one, but in the interests of the carol-singer, for if they dare to venture into this house with their squeaky two lines of figgy pudding, I promise you they will not emerge until they are capable of singing in the best Bach choir in the land. But I don't think that's quite what the police (and the local authority) have in mind.

It is quite obvious that if the authorities regard carol singers as a dangerous and threatening nuisance, they should also regard trick-or-treaters and opportunistic drive-renewers and collecting-tin wavers as inhabiting the same category. And while they're at it, political canvassers. After all, we can block rude intrusions into the peace and quiet of our homes by phone by signing up to the Telephone Preference Scheme, so why shouldn't we also be able to protect our front doors from intrusive knockers?

So here is something you can do for yourself, quite legally.

Made a small poster with something like the following words on:

THIS IS A SELF-EMPLOYED HOUSEHOLD

Cold-callers are welcome, but please have your ID and VAT registration number ready for checking.

Our rates are £50 for ID and VAT confirmation, then £25 for the first minute of doorstep consultation, and £10 per minute thereafter.

Please ensure that you have sufficient money (cash only) to meet your obligations before you ring the bell.

You never know, it might just work.

Anglicanorum coetibus - 4

While Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury are skirmishing over the fine print of faith, a firm of solicitors in Ulverston appears to have outmanoeuvred them both and set up a direct line with the Almighty:

Words...

Came across this by chance on another blog:

Fascinating anecdote. Such people, while probably well-intentioned, give Christianity a bad name and alienate not only those whom they prosthelytise but mainstream Christians like me.

What's that then: to provide replacement body parts by preaching?

Anglicanorum coetibus - 3

It's perhaps a small matter, and someone more qualified than I is bound to mention it sooner or later, but why is a Roman Catholic priest who has converted to Anglicanism denied re-entry to Mother's bosom, while one who denies that 6,000,000 Jews died in in the Holocaust is welcomed home after a short period of exile?

Anglicanorum coetibus - 2

There are those in the fanatical fringes of a certain Church who still use words like "priestess" and "bishopess" as terms of scorn.

It would be an act of great charity if, say, Watch, would send them as a special Christmass present a copy of Dale Spender's Man Made Language.

They won't read it of course. When you know you're Lords of the Earth because you possess a willy, you go both blind and deaf.

Anglicanorum coetibus - 1

The Vatican has now published its Anglican Constitution, the 'Anglicanorum coetibus', which can be read here.

But this, from the press release accompanying the document*, caught my eye:

Contemporary Catholic worship leaves a lot to be desired. The current translation of the Latin Missal for much of the English-speaking world is a flat, awkward, unpoetical, and often inaccurate translation done in American English, which shows little love for the language and its nuances. Liturgical music nowadays is being driven by music publishers, who promote novelty for its own sake and who charge money for the right to perform their music during the Mass.

On the contrary, many versions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer show a great command of the English language and a love for it in service of the Gospel; these no doubt can be adapted for Catholic worship. Likewise, the Anglicans' long experience with the use of the vernacular in liturgy leaves us a great body of works that are free of royalty payments to publishers.

Coeli! I had no idea that they read Choirstalls in Rome.

CORRECTION 12 Nov 2009

My error. The extract is from the website of a priest in Missouri to the Coetibus, not from the Vatican press release. And it's odd, but I have the distinct impression that a couple of days ago there was rather more there than there is now...

It hasn't been a good week if you're a dead soldier, because the new God, Retail, isn't interested in you, for obvious reasons, you being dead and no longer spending. The people who are unfortunate enough to have to work in Retail still have minds and consciences, however, and occasionally one of them does something highly offensive to this god, and wears a poppy at work to say that dead soldiers will never be forgotten, despite their failure to contribute to the corporate coffers

Causing offence to anybody is, of course, the new sin, and this new god is a jealous god, whose minions are instructed to seek out all infidels who threaten to reduce the annual profits by wickedly demonstrating their loyalty to a cause, whether that cause be Greenpeace, Michael Jackson, the Conservative Party or dead soldiers.

People don't give offence - offence is something which other people take because they happen not to live by the same set of values. The danger of trying not to "cause" offence is that you end up hiding your own beliefs instead of proclaiming them and letting them be tested in open debate.

It is for these reasons that I find quite repellent the squirming volte-face of a retail chain which found its profits threatened by a hostile public reaction when it banned one of its staff from wearing a poppy at work.

"We are happy to change our policy and allow our members of staff to continue wearing their poppies. As our policy has always been intended to ensure that we do not cause offence to anyone, we hope we have not done so and sincerely apologise if that has been the unintended effect."

So that's that, then, Bodycare. You can sit back now and watch the shekels rolling in, as before.

Or, of course, not.

Sorry, God, but we think we're doing our best

Yet another of those curious joint services for our three parishes this evening that are an absolute guarantee that a poorly maintained organ will survive for three bars of the first hymn, then die with an asthmatic wheeze and sigh (it did.) I know exactly how it felt.

We should drop the United Waterside Parishes label for these events and call them United Waterside Church Wardens and Choirs services, for apart from clergy that was virtually the entire ensemble.

Mind you, I can't blame people for staying at home. The prospect of listening to an (amplified) 'music group' trying to do American accents in stuff that even Moody & Sankey would have regarded as sentimental drivel, and then having to listen to a scratch robed choir attempting to sing something they'd never seen before, must be enough to put anyone off.

But the good thing for the CofE is that our congregations in the Waterside parishes will never go over to Rome.

They don't even go over the road to their own churches.

La Bohème en banlieue - more on YouTube

The Bohème from Bern is now generating unofficial clips such as this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LEMmnooPZg

and a few more like it.

The DVD is (apparently) due out tomorrow, 1 November. Serial number is 5106-951, cost 35SFr (about £21).

Order direct from

http://www.tsrboutique.ch/-p-821/boheme-banlieue.html

Church Unity?

Amid all the kerfuffle following Pope Benedict’s apparently generous olive branch to the “beloved sister” (yer wok?), what seems to have rattled the Vatican most was the observation by (the excommunicated) Hans Küng (Guardian 27 October) that all a Roman Catholic priest desirous of connubial bliss had to do now was come across the Tiber to the Anglican church, get married, and go back, for the following press release was issued today:

CLARIFICATION BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE HOLY SEE PRESS OFFICE, FR. FEDERICO LOMBARDI, S.J., ON SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE CELIBACY ISSUE IN THE ANNOUNCED APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION REGARDING PERSONAL ORDINARIATES FOR ANGLICAN ENTERING INTO FULL COMMUNION WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

There has been widespread speculation, based on supposedly knowledgeable remarks by an Italian correspondent Andrea Tornielli, that the delay in publication of the Apostolic Constitution regarding Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church, announced on October 20, 2009, by Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is due to more than “technical” reasons. According to this speculation, there is a serious substantial issue at the basis of the delay, namely, disagreement about whether celibacy will be the norm for the future clergy of the Provision.

Cardinal Levada offered the following comments on this speculation: “Had I been asked I would happily have clarified any doubt about my remarks at the press conference. There is no substance to such speculation. No one at the Vatican has mentioned any such issue to me. The delay is purely technical in the sense of ensuring consistency in canonical language and references. The translation issues are secondary; the decision not to delay publication in order to wait for the ‘official’ Latin text to be published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis was made some time ago.

The drafts prepared by the working group, and submitted for study and approval through the usual process followed by the Congregation, have all included the following statement, currently Article VI of the Constitution:

§1 Those who ministered as Anglican deacons, priests, or bishops, and who fulfill the requisites established by canon law and are not impeded by irregularities or other impediments may be accepted by the Ordinary as candidates for Holy Orders in the Catholic Church. In the case of married ministers, the norms established in the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI Sacerdotalis coelibatus, n. 42 and in the Statement “In June” are to be observed. Unmarried ministers must submit to the norm of clerical celibacy of CIC can. 277, §1.

§2. The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.

This article is to be understood as consistent with the current practice of the Church, in which married former Anglican ministers may be admitted to priestly ministry in the Catholic Church on a case by case basis. With regard to future seminarians, it was considered purely speculative whether there might be some cases in which a dispensation from the celibacy rule might be petitioned. For this reason, objective criteria about any such possibilities (e.g. married seminarians already in preparation) are to be developed jointly by the Personal Ordinariate and the Episcopal Conference, and submitted for approval of the Holy See.”

Cardinal Levada said he anticipates the technical work on the Constitution and Norms will be completed by the end of the first week of November.

Another sister church sister

A small piece in Church Times today:

New head of EKD elected

BISHOP Margot Kässman was elected as the leader of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at its synod in Ulm, Germany, on Wednesday. She has been Lutheran Bishop of Hanover since 1999, is 51, and divorced.

It couldn't happen here, of course - a woman, at the head of the established church?

Church Times online

The on-line archives of Church Times, a priceless resource for those interested in churchy things of an Anglican nature, have hitherto been denied to those of us who get the paper from our newsagent unless we coughed up another sub, which on principle we have refused to do.

Then a few weeks ago, worried no doubt by the impact on its direct subscribers of the postal strikes, CT offered them free access to the online version and the archives, in what appeared to be a temporary measure.

It seems that this offer has become permanent.

At £65 a subscription is exactly the same price as 52 issues at £1.25 from the newsagent, with access to the archives thrown in, as well as access to the online CT (in case the paper copy gets lost in a corner of a little red van.)

Our subscription form is already in the post.

La Bohème en banlieue - still on Arte [outdated post with non-functional links]]

The stunning production of Bohème live from the streets of Bern last month was only supposed to be viewable online for seven days, but one is delighted to report that it's still there,

at

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Echappees-culturelles/La-Boheme-en-banlieue/Revoir-l-opera/2851048.html

Even if you don't think you're interested in opera, give it a try (the opera starts eight minutes into the 151-minute programme.) The last scene, at about 131 minutes, is intensely moving. And yes, the Endstation bus was hired for the production (probably the biggest prop ever), but the principals mainly used scheduled bus services to move from location to location. The block of flats whose interior and exterior were used as locations is regarded locally as a ghetto block, but that didn't stop a couple of dozen of the residents from being given walk-on roles. The orchestra played in a shopping centre while the cast moved from location to location (usually by scheduled bus services or trams) and sang with headphones and mikes. Each principal had her or his own sound technician just off-camera, and between them they had worked out codes of gestures for such messages as "give me more orchestra", or "give me more me". What was almost unbelievable, considering the technical and human complexity of the production, was that it all went off without a single (noticeable) hitch.

Once or twice in my life telly has done something that spectacularly justifies its existence, and this production - which went out live on Arte, SF and other channels to Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria and Italy, and to the rest of the world as streaming video - elevated the wretched goggle-box to a height of new respectability and worthiness.

The DVD is due out in November. It will have a programme about the making of the show (in two versions - German and French) as well as the opera itself. It will probably be available online from Arte.

More information when I have more details de source sûre; di fonti secura; aus erste Hand; ex ore equi. (Dunno the Greek.)

Also worth a look: the announcement of this joint Arte-SF production from Maya Boog's (ie Mimi's) agent.

http://www.imt-agency.com/pages/gb-maya-boog-schweizer-fernsehen-la-boheme-29-septembre-2009.html

Nasty neologisms

Well, we lost the battle over flammable, didn't we? It was predicted at the time (early 1970s) that sooner or later some unlettered PR person for a children's nightie manufacturer would coin the word inflammable, believing that it meant "No, it won't burst into flame if little Nathan (or, as it might be, Victoria) stands too close to the electric fire." And now I have seen the word applied to sofas. Usage that denies etymology is fraught with perils.

Not so dangerous, but equally unpleasant, is the now ubiquitous adjective homophobic. It is used to describe people who hate, or even just dislike, homosexual people, but both elements derive from the Greek (phobos, fear, and homos, same), so all that silly word means is "fear of the same". It would be a useful adjective to apply to those worthy people who get a fit of the wobbles when the programme they are watching on the telly turns out to be a repeat after all, but that is not how it is used.

The language could certainly do with a word that clearly meant "hatred of people who are sexually attracted to people of their own sex", but homophobia simply doesn't do the job. It, and its adjective, are not words. They are labels, which come with a whole set of prejudices inherent in the gum on the back which save anyone actually having to think.

Words like homophobia and flammable do not come into the language spontaneously. They are invented words which sound and look right to tabloid journalists and advertisers. They creep into our brains like viruses, because they are the product of people whose sole job is to manipulate our minds by their cunning use of language. And they are succeeding, to the extent that some of us can no longer distinguish paedophiles from paediatricians.

I used to be a child, which is why I am worried. Without language, whom should I trust?

checkout operators

I can hardly believe it, but checkout people in our supermarkets are the new untouchables, the lowest of the low. They have to take every insult but smile back, because the new ethos of our secular society is that the customer is always right, and it's perfectly OK to bully checkout operators if you are a customer. They don't have any comeback, and don't we know it?

A French woman wrote a book about the insults she had had to put up with in her time behind the tills, and it became a best-seller (among whom, you might ask. Other checkout operators?) Here's a BBC report:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7984859.stm

It came home to me today, when some wizened scrote of a male said something nasty to the woman in charge of our till, and she was visibly shaken. She asked us if she could refuse to serve offensive customers. Sad to say, but she can't. She has to sit there and take it.

This was in Sainsbury's. I have to ask Sainsbury's what you are doing to protect your checkout operators from bullying by customers, whom you consider always to be in the right.

Could some of your personnel people perhaps read this book by a French woman, and make your supermarkets a safer and nicer place for the good people who run your tills and rake in your loot?

And possibly even sell the book, for the sake of your staff?

Choirstalls column Nov 09, n't

[This article should have been appearing in the November parish mag, but there isn't enough space. At least, that's the editor's excuse]

I don’t like driving. My imagination is far too vivid to allow me to be a happy, contented driver. I was all right until I was nearly killed by a sheep. The sheep wasn’t driving, don’t get me wrong. It was lurking behind a small boulder on the high moorland road between Owdham and Huddersfield, just waiting for a motorist to pass with his mind on other things, and I was doing 69.9 mph when it took it into its head to leap (or bound) forth in order to savour the grass on the other side of the A62. And I’m sure, in that moment of panic braking, that I caught a malevolent gleam in its eye – “Go on, hit me, sunshine, and it’s a £400 fine and three points. Oh, and a new car. If you’re spared. Meeeeee-ehr.”

I have been extremely wary of sheep ever since, and have been trying to reduce their numbers by a process known as eating.

So when my beloved intimated that a nice self-catering holiday in St Oswald’s land would make a change from the usual G-Line jaunt I smelt a rat, and my right leg (the one with the foot on the end that I use to press the accelerator pedal) starting playing up, as it does when it senses danger.

Now I’m all in favour of visiting those bits of Northumberland within an easy bus journey from the temporary pied-à-terre, but it was evident from the determined expression on beloved’s face that I was in for a lot, and I mean a lot, of driving.

We had bought a satnav thing at my insistence (well, I wanted one, because it’s a gadget, and male choirpersons love gadgets because they’re something to play with during the sermon, and beloved grudgingly agreed.) Emily is wonderful! She’s got a tremendous sense of direction, and she isn’t fazed by anything: “You have driven over a cliff. Make a U-turn as soon as possible”, she says, and I just love her to bits.

Emily, I had hoped, would make even the A1 bearable. The A1, if you don’t know it, is a road that you can’t avoid if you are aiming for St Oswald’s land, and it is populated by self-propelled suicide vehicles whose sole aim, dodgems-like, is to take you out, and themselves with you. And what did Emily of the soothing voice say? “A1. Continue 40 miles...” The A1 gives me nightmares. It is far, far worse than the A588, a road also populated by murderous missiles weighing a ton and travelling at 69.9 mph.

En route we stopped off at Hexham (I am getting to the point, honest) and bought some books, including one about Interesting Churches. It is the sort of book that chaps who collect stamps and go train-spotting and hang net curtains with scalloped hems in the windows of their garden sheds write. Any book about Interesting Churches that mentions Grace Darling as “Grace Darling, the heroine” without supporting information demands, like the Orange Brick, intense scrutiny by a choirperson with a thick notebook and a sharp pencil to hand. And yes, this questionable tome, for which I forked out the price of a bottle of Gordons, was obviously written by a train-spotter and/or stamp collector, for it is all about buildings and bits of buildings. Now church buildings are very useful things for keeping congregations dry when it’s chucking it down or for hanging bells at the top of the towers of, but that’s where their function ceases (unless you’re a trainspotter, architect, antique dealer, or beneficiary of the Pevsner estate). An Interesting Church, surely, is a church with a congregation of 500, a Sunday School with 150 children, a choir of 1,000 and a thumping great five-manual organ to go with it, and a parish share of 49p. Oh, and a few clergy here and there to remind us of what it’s all about.

The most Interesting Church I ever saw was the one Holy Noely, the young priest who assisted at our wedding, had when he moved to Australia. It was the Church in the Carport, for it was in a carport that services were held while the interesting church building was going up. If you saw the Alan Whicker programme with the green tree frog climbing up the parson’s vestments, that was Holy Noely (The Rev’d Noel Allen, who sadly Entered Immortality a couple of years ago, and what a cracking expression that is, Gromit. From Evita, I believe.)

But to move on. Evensong seems to be catching on once more. It must worry the telly people no end, the church poaching their viewers, because they’ve responded by running the Forsyte Saga again. Broughton has an Evensong, Morecambe has one, and now Cockerham is trying it out, with some early signs of success (tip: announce at the family service that the raffle prizes will be awarded after evensong, and any not claimed will be distributed among the congregation present. It worked a treat at Cockerham – there must have been 50 people in the congregation and 20 in the choir.)

There was an extra evensong at Morecambe a few Saturdays ago with the children and young people who’d had another day of singing and fun with the infectious Rachael thingy and Marilyn what's-it from our branch of the Royal School of Church Music. We dropped in on our way back from Northumberland and stayed for the service. It was good to see four of our young people from Snozzies there. There was an impossible amount of music for youngsters, some of them only eight, to learn in a day, but they rose to the occasion like seasoned professionals, to the delight of a tiny congregation and the amazement of the new Rector. Our youngsters are so important. They, not interesting buildings, are the future of our living church.

And they even made the 40 miles of the dreaded A1 a distant memory.

Diwali

If you were born into one of the monotheistic Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) then you probably won't be celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, which has just started.

A sneaky confession here - my favourite Hindu god is Ganesh, the elephant-god. You do not muck about with Ganesh, or you're in serious trouble.

Hindu gods, unlike our monotheistic gods, have a habit of dropping in for a chat or a quick trample, and, although venerated, they are approachable if you have the right gifts to offer.

It isn't quite C of E, of course, and Hindus don't do Evensong, as far as I'm aware, but wouldn't it be wonderful to share the festival of light with other people of faith?

PS

That was going to be it, but writing it has sparked off an old memory, viz, sc., and to wit:

Years ago an Indian classical musician from Rochdale was invited to give a 'recital' as part of the season of monthly concerts that ran for many years in Heptonstall parish church. It was a wonderful evening. There was incense, there were rags, and before each rag he explained the scale that was to be used, and how scale and the subdivision of the beat was employed, and I was agog at this glimpse this wonderful musician had given me of music from a completely different culture.

The following week the PCC resigned en masse because a non-Christian had been playing heathen music in church.

That is us. And that is how others see us.

Heroes

Chums know what I think about the telly, or soma, as a real writer and thinker presaged it. But just occasionally something on that huge box in the corner catches your attention, will-ye, nill-ye, and tonight it was John and Pauline Prescott and Brian Sewell. Brian Sewell is outrageous, but only because telly has made him so, and he loves the limelight, and I bet he's never given a yobbo a good thump in his life, but before telly made him a class-hate figure he was a very sound art critic, and that is what he still is.

Telly loves people who are outrageous, and it turns them into entertainers and celebs, and I do wish sometimes that people who are really interesting would do a Prescott or a Cantona when telly people grope them up, and smack them one in the gob. Cantona did it to a yobbo, and John Prescott did, too, and that is why they are on my hypothetical Christmas card list, because we desperately need people who do daft, wrong things for the very best of reasons - most important of which is defeating yobbism. It is wonderfully un-PC, and what better could anyone say than that?

La Bohème-en-Banlieue v. Evita at Blackpool

Lots of food for thought this week, music-drama-wise.

The production of Bohème from Bern on Tuesday marked a whole new direction for opera, even more than did the Traviata in Zurich last year. Both productions broke out of the confines of the opera house and took to the streets, and after these two pioneering productions (and the experiments in live broadcasting of stage productions in London to giant screens in public places) the future of opera is assured, thanks to new technologies and, much more importantly, people in theatreland who are excited by their vast potential of possibilities.

Meanwhile, in Blackpool, there has been a short run of Evita, and we had booked for the matinee, today being our 43rd wedding anniversary. I have been sneering at Andrew Lloyd Webber for years, aided and abetted by knowledgeable barytons familiers anglais des scènes européennes, whose musical education we had to eat bread and cheese for for 15 years to fund, but the score for Evita is quite Puccini-like in many respects, such as in the use of little leitmotives which serve to give thematic unity.

There was nobody famous in the cast. Eva (Rachael Wooding) comes from Doncaster; Perón (Mark Heenehan) from New Jersey; and Magaldi (James Waud) from nowhere, this being his first professional role (where has he been?) Che (Seamus Cullen) is a seasoned performer of, er, rather pop-py stuff and Gospel, but boy, can he act! He has the gift of attracting the audience's attention before the spotlight finds him.

Any production of Evita has to fight the echoes of the film (possibly the best thing Madonna ever did), and you see the similarities in the costumes and the hairstyles - not because this production copied the film, but because both it and the film strove for authenticity in the detail and arrived in the same place. But film is film, and stage is stage, and creating the illusion within the confines of a small box without a front, in real time, is what makes theatre more demanding, and, I think, more satisfying.

Rachael Wooding's Eva was a tremendous piece of character acting, at least equal to Madonna's Eva. The ambiguities in Maria Eva Duarte's life as Evita (were her concerns for the poor and for women's suffrage genuine, or was she a cynical manipulator?) are important to the drama, and an actor has less than two hours to create a compelling picture of a poor girl with ambition who rose to be the darling of a troubled nation. Ms Wooding pulled it off. Madonna didn't, quite.

To start with the only negative comment: the Latin sung by the ensemble sounded terribly English, what with all those un-Italian diphthongs, but in all other respects they were terrific, with a precision in their movement which many an opera chorus could learn from (these people have to dance and act as well as sing).

Robin is far too young (and snobby) to have noticed the close connections between ALW and Puccini, and he won't discuss it, because he knows best (of course. And why? Because that's how he was brought up to think.) He says ALW is worthless. I say ALW is doing exactly what Puccini did -stagecraft, melody, heightened emotions, music theatre, the rest.

La Bohème en banlieue

Last night's Swiss TV/Arte production of Bohème, live using different locations in Bern, was amazing - a new genre in, what, opera verismo. It can be watched for the next seven days on Arte7.

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Echappees-culturelles/La-Boheme-en-banlieue/2790004.html

It is well worth watching, even if you're not the father of the Marcello!

Duruflé Requiem

The village choral society is bravely attempting the Duruflé Requiem, in a programme that also includes the four Handel Coronation Anthems. The Handel can be quickly passed over, for about the only musically interesting bits are the occasional hemiolas, Handel being a composer, or should I say having been a composer, who wrote far, far too much. GF's greatest sin, other than that of giving far too many top Ds (or worse) to basses, was to bequeath a certain way of writing hymn tunes to a myriad amateur hymn-tune writers, mainly from Yorkshire or Wales, with which we are still saddled in some quires and places where they sing. ('Ee, we allus sing Albert Snatterthwaite's tune for While Shepherds Watched 'ere. The tune come into 'is 'ead when 'e were muckin' out t'pigs, Albert used to say. He said it were Divine Intervention after he'd bin to see t'Halifax Choral do Messiah. He din't know nowt about music, Albert din't, but that din't stop 'im thinkin' up' that tune. Choirmaster rit it owt forrim, and wim sung it air since. Just at Christmas, like.')

But that is by the by.

The Duruflé is a rather different animal, ball-game, or kettle of fish, though. It is always a surprise to a choir when orchestra or organ get involved, usually at dress rehearsal, and launch into what sounds like a completely different work. A whole choral society's collective hair has been known to turn white in the space of 20 minutes.

Three skills are required of a choir person attempting this work -

1) the ability to count (though only up to nine)

2) the ability, and the desire, to see the conductor

3) the ability to go selectively deaf

I would add a fourth skill - sight-reading - but for some reason amateur groups have always placed sight-reading skills (or even being in possession of a usable voice) well down in the table of priorities, far below an aptitude for chair-stacking, tea-brewing or being on a Committee. And as for an ability to count, see the conductor or blank out disruptive aural influences, well, we didn't expect to have to work when we joined this choir, did we Mildred?

Mind you, if everybody in a choral society was an expert sight-reader the number of rehearsals needed for the next concert could be counted on the thumbs of one hand, and that would destroy the whole point of a local choral society, which is primarily social.

Duruflé's big mistake was to write his Requiem in Latin. It is a fact well known that no English person is capable, without years of tuition, of singing in Latin, especially if he (or she) learned about puellae in herba longa with pueri and that old viperas, which used to give us such delight in 2A when viperas was pronounced in the classic English tradition. The English tradition is not the tradition of church Latin, as Pope Pius X had to remind the unruly French in about 19-dot. Duruflé may have taken notice, but generations of English choral societies have carried on singing per-pet-chewer without benefit of clergy.

Still - and this is the unanswerable argument of your average choral society - the audience won't know any different.

But it's just such a shame for Duruflé, or Do Roughly, as I shall fondly think of him henceforth.

PS

Years ago I was drafted in at the final rehearsal to augment the basses in what was predominantly a school performance of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, a work which I had not sung before and have not since, more's the pity. There was grudging respect from a few young 'erberts when I, an old git even then by their standards, managed the Hebrew text and complex rhythms at sight. albeit with most of my fingers crossed.

On that occasion the choir was well prepared, but the organist wasn't, and I think he must have been horrified at the complexity of the organ part, which he hadn't bothered to look at beforehand, being a teacher and therefore omniscient. The only things I remember about the concert is a splendid performance by a young alto soloist which rescued a most unholy mess-up, and falling gratefully into the pub-next-the-church afterwards in order to obliterate all other memories.

Ste Thérèse de Lisieux

It's easy to sneer at the RCs for queuing up to gawp at a few bits of a dead saint, but on the other side of the fence relics are considered to be extremely holy and objects of veneration in their own right. That we outside Roman Catholicism don't understand it is no excuse for sectarian sniping, which we can safely leave to the new religion of Atheism. Dr John Sentamu evidently has some reason for opening the doors of York Minster to Ste Thérèse, and that is good enough for me.

Mocking is easy. Respecting the practices of different belief systems is a lot harder.

The Beautiful Game (yer wo'k?)

I am belatedly coming to realise that what divides clergy from laity, vicar from curate, organist from choirmaster and bishop from dean is not doctrine or the role of women in the ministry or whether Amazing Grace should ever be sung in church at all, but something far more fundamental - the doings of football teams.

(Football, in case there are readers of this blog on the planet Uranus, is a game in which a lot of people, usually grown men, kick a ball around a field and try to get it to pass between two sticks with a lid on while somebody else tries to stop them from doing so. There are a few more rules, but that is the general idea.)

Now I have searched for any reference to this activity in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament, which is more up-to-date, but in vain. The tribes of Israel might, in their wanderings, have dropped in on a game of buzkashi ...

(Buzkashi, dear Uranian reader, is a precursor of football played in Central Asia, either on horseback or yakback, the aim of which is to pick up the carcass of a headless goat or sheep and deposit it in a designated place. It is a jolly interesting game, unless you are a goat or, for that matter, a sheep)

... but, if so, there is no record of it. And certainly there is no record of their ever having played football. For one thing, they were far too busy avoiding being persecuted, enslaved or exterminated to have the time to spend on such trivial pursuits.

So, if there is no biblical precedent for it, why is it the dominant topic of conversation in any place where men foregather, such as the choir vestry?

Child Protection

I know this is a delicate subject, and one which nobody dare say anything about in case of reprisals from the Government's Department of Lunacy, but the latest proposals from Nanny should be enough to strike fear into the hearts of every parent. Not fear of perverts doing nasty things with our children, but fear of the fear of it, which is now setting us one against another, and making us not only suspicious of each other, but suspicious of ourselves. The vast majority of fathers (and mothers, for we should never forget Myra Hindley), whether of boy children or of girl children, are as protective of the children of other mothers and fathers as they are or were of their own, and the networks of parental friendships and trusts are something which binds us together as friends and even co-parents (in the sense that when you entrust your child to us we behave as we think you would, so that they are comfortable and trusting wth us.)

None of the protective measures which have been set up at enormous cost has made, is making, or will make, a ha'porth of difference. The sort of people who want to prey upon children don't behave in ways that governnments can legislate against. They will control their urges until they've got clearance, and then they will have a field day, with an entree into any youth group that takes their fancy. They are, as our bumbling Minister for Children admits, very clever at getting what they want.

They can spin their words as much as they like, these nannies of our alarmist State, but the fact remains that for possibly the first time in this country a lot of us adults - 11,000,000 or so - are presumed guilty until the electronic apparatus of the State says we're innocent.

It is an awful fact that about one in ten children will have been abused in one way or another by the time they reach puberty. But it is also a very relevant fact that the majority of such abuses are committed by family members or other children, and they are not covered by this massively expensive grabnet. So this draconian measure isn't going to do much for them.

What I fear is that it will be a golden opportunity for nasty neighbours to make malicious complaints about people, and have those complaints recorded and used to blacken someone's record. This isn't hypothetical, for last year someone falsely accused me and my wife (and two other families) of persecuting him because he is gay, and we were all hauled up before the local 'Safety Partnership' to explain ourselves. And there will be no redress for victims of false accusations under the ISA scheme, for the information about you will be kept secret and the basis of a bureaucrat's - not a court's - decision not to allow you anywhere near a child will also be kept a secret.

Sensible adults, even those who have been CRB checked, make sure that they are never alone with a child, and not only for the child's protection but their own, for far too many people's lives have been damaged by false accusations.

The ISA was set up in the wake of the Soham murders. Matthew Parris, writing in The Times, had this to say:

Those murders would almost certainly never have happened were it not for the incompetence of the police, social services and education authorities. The result is that in consequence of the failure of three state authorities, a fourth state authority has been set up.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article6831413.ece

And today Libby Purves picks up the baton:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article6832993.ece

What can we do? Well, we can stop electing halfwits, for a start, especially when they might be daft enough to become government ministers.

Local restauRANTS - I

I was a bit bothered when I saw, in the foyer of a much-lauded local restaurant, a hastily pinned-up A4 sheet bearing the slogan "We no longer accept cheques for under £100" (and I probably paraphrase), and only mildly reassured to learn that the North West Development Agency had been involved in funding a pretty serious refurbishment, because the true test of a restaurant, as opposed to a caterer, is not the ambience but the taste of the food, but we'll come to that later.

The best eatery that ever assaulted my plastic and flirted with my palate was, without any doubt, my old friend Rob Moss's little bistro (or brasserie) in New Hey. Rob, who had worked for far too long for the sake of his soul and his happiness in insurance, and had hated every minute of it, eventually gave up the soul-sickening graft of conning people out of their loot and opened this little bistro in a converted terraced house to share his love of northern French cuisine with local punters, only about 16 of whom could be accommodated in his nosh-house at any one time. I don't know whether Rob ever had a commis chef - I think his kitchen was too small for more than one person at any one time - but with so few covers he could cope on his own and the place was always nearly full. We used to go with our friends Kim and Bill about once a month (both of them mean cooks) for the two years that the place was there, then Rob was called to higher things and became a postman on a Scottish island where his wife Carol ("Brain") got a job teaching deaf children.

I mention this because there is a point, measured by the number of mouths to be fed and the competence of the chef, where cuisine stops being cuisine and becomes catering.

And at this much-lauded local restaurant that is what we got - catering (plus a barney about whether or not we had ordered chocolates to go with our coffee, which, by the way, tasted of acorns.) But the barney was about a couple of quids'-worth of choccies (most of which were consumed anyway by the Vicar's wife, who is a connoisseuse of such things), which in the light of takings of something like £500 from our party, plus the profit from the bar and the wine list, is mere chicken-feed unless you are an accountant by trade, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The starters were fine - my smoked salmon was delicate enough to let the taste of the prawns get through, and the dill sauce was subtle, and it all worked beautifully together.

But the best thing I can say about the entrées is that they were bland enough not to frighten the taste-buds of your average Daily Mail reader. Ann's lump of lamb was huge, but too fatty, and with no hint of rosemary or even oregano to give the occasional morsel of lean meat a bit of a lift. My chicken breast was tough, and pink in the middle, which with chicken is always a bit of a worry, for it suggests that it has been cookd on too high a heat for safety. And the veg! The promised cauliflower cheese was strong in cauliflower, but wet with cauliflower cooking juice in which floated a few blobs of something yellow which might have been cheese, but which didn't taste of anything. Cauliflower al dente is delicious, but we all know what the cooking liquid smells like, and we don't really want that stuff swimming around on our plates.

Desserts were all right. My pancake (oh, all right, crêpe) was limp and soggy, and flopped slimily like a jellyfish over the ice-cream. A touch of buckwheat flour might have put some lead in its pencil, but nobody had thought of it. And everything was swimming in the juice of the black cherries so it was sloppy. Ann passed me her dessert to finish, but the toffee lattice was burnt and bitter.

But the coffee! It was truly awful. I have never tasted anything so disgusting since a Mormon friend gave me a cup of Caro. If you have to cheat and use instant, at least use something that smells a bit like like coffee, even if tastes like acorns. And anyway, who in their right mind would finish an evening meal with coffee (even what English people think is coffee) and risk nightmares on top of indigestion?

Oh, and another thing. This restaurant - refurbished (with the help of the NWDA) in something approaching Art Deco style - thinks it perfectly acceptable to blare incongruous Karen Carpenter songs at you so loudly than you cannot have a conversation at your table. That they turn the volume down when you ask is no excuse - their sin is to assume that you want OAP muzak in the first place. Loud muzak is about as acceptable in a public restaurant as Lynx aftershave or foot odour.

Michael Winner - I hope you are reading this.

OVERALL MARKS

ambience - 8/10

service - 9/10

food - 4/10

wines - 7/10

VFM - 6/10