Tring Book Club - "Golden Hill" by Francis Spufford

There is lots to admire in Francis Spufford's first novel. The picture and feel of eighteenth century New York are particularly vivid. Not only is Smith, our hero, but also a different third person narrator are also obviously from this time: "the careful removal, meantimes, from out his conversational reach of all the women except Tabitha". And there is the main disappointment. Tabitha is by far the most interesting character ( we somehow never quite get under the skin of Smith) but she almost disappears after halfway through.

The crux of the story, the thousand pound order presented by Smith on his arrival, takes far too long to be revealed. I'm all for keeping us in suspense, but not until the last pages. Please! Some of the set pieces are nerve jangling but others just seem contrived. The writing is good, especially some of the witty dialogue. But it is New York itself that shines through. And the superb last twist.

P.S. Heather at book club explained that not only was the book written in the style of an eighteenth century novelist, but that the contrivances and the time it takes for the final revelation are also of the period. Now I know.

We now have a new way of choosing books to read in that we take it in turn to come up with a suggestion. We are now at the end of the first batch of books chosen this way and what an amazing cross section they are:

Jenny: “Missing, Presumed” by Susie Steiner

Heather: “The Loney” by Andrew Michael Hurley

Linda: “This Boy” by Alan Johnson

Janet: “Remarkable Creatures” by Tracy Chevalier

Hilary: “Golden Hill” by Francis Spufford

David: “The Talented Mr Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - NT LIve

The only other time I saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was at the Oxford Playhouse in 2005, a production by English Touring Theatre. I thought it was just wonderful so I was looking forward to seeing it again. For me, it has lost none of it's verve. One critic says Stoppard is "the most intellectually dexterous dramatist of our time" and this, one of his earliest plays, is him practicing the art of wordplay. But is R&G more than verbal acrobatics? Google Books have an extract from Act 1 which includes Guildenstern's speech about the law of probability. If you find this boring, this play is not for you. I found it dazzling.

I also think it is very funny. I laughed all the way through, chuckling quietly when even the live audience missed a beat. I never thought I would say this, but most of this was down to Daniel Radcliffe as the hopeless Rosencrantz ( or is that Guildenstern? They can never make up their minds although the script is quite clear.) Or is it that Radcliffe gets all the best lines? His dismay at their not having quizzed Hamlet properly is unforgettable. He is the Eric Morecombe to Joshua McGuire's brilliantly verbose Ernie Wise. (I remember McGuire as being one of the best things in the film About Time).

Then there is David Haig as The Player, the leader of the group of "actors" who perform that play in Hamlet. Haig will always be, in our house, associated with the TV comedy The Thin Blue Line as Detective Inspector Grim. Here he revives the same antics, but this time with Stoppard's words. He almost steals the show.

David Levaux has directed with a flourish and his coaching of the two leads pays dividends. I wasn't sure about how he presented the acting of the actual scenes from Hamlet. Luke Mullins as the Prince is like a third division John Neville. But was that on purpose? As R would say "I don't know?"

P.S. The live showing was from The Old Vic where we saw The Liar in 1990 and The Tempest in 2003. A wonderful theatre, even better with the stage projecting into the audience.

The Maidenhead 10 Mile

This was the fourth time I had run the Maidenhead Easter Ten. According to my post of 23rd April 2014, that was my fastest time so far at just over 1 hour 35 minutes. This year I was not expecting anything so fast, a few days before I tried a training run at race pace but could only manage 10 minute miling.

So when I started of at around 9.20 pace, it was quite a surprise and I thought this would gradually come down. However, after three miles as we left the business park and out onto the fields, I was still at the same pace. I slotted in behind a couple of fifty year old guys who were running the same steady rate and decided to see if I could stay with them. In fact I took a turn at pacing them.

When we hit the footpath on the main road after seven miles they had crept ahead but I didn't lose much distance and by the time we reached the last field I had actually got ahead, still running at around 9.22 cumulative pace. The last mile is back into the business park and a kind of sprint at the end brought me back to 9.20 and a time of 1 hour 33 minutes 26 seconds. I have no idea where that came from, only that the half marathon a few weeks ago must have helped.

Alison was also running but trying not to go too fast as she wanted to save something for her next half marathon in just over 2 weeks, so under 1 hour 39 minutes was excellent. We met up with a few people from Aylesbury parkrun  before heading off to John Lewis in High Wycombe for our usual refreshments.

One notable event on the day. Theresa May had always marshaled at the same spot every year since we have run at Maidenhead, it being her constituency. I had my doubts whether she would be there this year, although Alison was convinced she would be. And she was right.

Well done Prime Minister, I doffed my cap on passing.

Forsythia

This was how the forsythia flowered this year, not so good considering the growth. So a major prune was in store once the flowers were over. The general advice seemed to be that if the shrub was overgrown, ruthless pruning was necessary, even cutting it all back to 4 inches above the ground.

I didn't go quite that mad. Although I did take out some of the oldest and thickest branches, I tried to leave something that covered the fence behind.

It did expose part of the border that was covered by old growth, to which I will now have to give some thought.

The prunings ranged from the large old branches ....

..... to the piles of shrubbery that all had to be bagged and taken to the tip for recycling.

Next up is a major prune on the clematis after that has flowered.

Life, Get Out and Ghost in the Shell

An enjoyable though familiar story, Life is saved by a reasonable script, good performances and clever effects. The alien life form is pretty scary in the first half but less so later. Daniel Espinosa has directed with great competency. Just a shame about the ending.

Get Out is a wonderful movie. Full of ambiguous twists and turns, The auction dressed up as bingo was one such amazing scene. Satirical, thought provoking, scary, funny and well shot, writer and director Jordan Peele has made something intelligent and very watchable. One of those movies that stay with you a long, long time.

The highly stylised city landscape of the distant future in Ghost in the Shell would have been fine if it had not been repeated so may times. It shouted "look at the CGI on which we spent most of the budget". The rest must have been spent on Scarlet Johansson's fee. It had to be a fortune to persuade her to carry this poor action film. The gunfights said it all, totally unimaginative and again far too repetitive.

Amy Macdonald at the Royal Albert Hall

The last time I saw Amy Macdonald live was at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in October 2010. I said in my post of that concert that she had gone up in size of venue. Six years later and now she can fill the Royal Albert Hall.

Her voice seems to have got stronger as she belted out new songs from her latest album Under Stars (note the lights in the following photo) and lots of old favourites. Setlist.fm shows all 21 songs.

Amy was accompanied by a six piece band who were all terrific. The sound was absolutely spot on, just loud enough, and the light show was fine with a superb glitterball. On YouTube there is a recording of a concert in Hamburg earlier in the tour. The audience never seem to move, unlike last night when the uptempo songs brought most to their feet. Particularly the last song of the night which was Lets Start a Band, brilliant.

Somehow I had found an excellent seat in the second row of the stalls, although I have to admit these days I seem to be the eldest there. But as Amy said "Rock and Roll is alive and well" and this is music that takes me back to my youth. Except no band from those days had a cello. Thanks Amy.

P.S. I arrived just in time to see the end of the support act. And I was so glad I did as Newton Faulkner (that cannot be his real name), for his last song, performed a solo acoustic version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Absolutely fantastic.

P.P.S. As I sat waiting for Amy to come on, I thought back to when I first visited the Royal Albert Hall. And then I remembered. It must have been 1953, just after we arrived in London and I was eight years old. At my last school in Alton, Staffs, there had been a collection for one of Princess Margaret's charities. Each school had been invited to send along one pupil to present their collection. So as we were already living in London, my old school thought I might like to go. The main memory from that day is queuing for what seemed like hours in the bowels of the Royal Albert Hall, waiting for my turn and then suddenly bursting into the dazzling light to shake hands with the Princess and hand over the envelope.

It then must have been a few years later that Dad took my bother John and me there to see the London Championship Finals for the ABA. Dad always loved his boxing. He would get up in the middle of the night to listen to world title fights from the USA.

P.P.P.S. This was a first. On entry to the venue they checked my ID with the ticket. A good job I had my photo driving licence with me.

The Garden in March

It's the time of year that I love best. So much is happening in the garden. Apart from the daffodils that have been better than ever, the Magnolia stellata at the front has been nothing less than spectacular.

I'm not sure what these pink bulbs are, but after they finished in some pots last year, I planted them under the Hypericum.

The perennials in the main border are starting their new growth.

The Corylus contorta has never had so many catkins.