The Spur in the Dish Warns the Border Chief that the Larder Needs Replenishing

 Well, another month nearly finished and not many posts, but let's see if we can squeeze one more in before September starts. In any event I continue to attract thousands of views a day without bothering to write anything. The blog's stats page tells me that the most popular article yesterday was that from a few weeks ago complaining about the constant trawling by AI. Coincidence? I think not; these LLMs seem to be as vain as one of the blog's previous, and much missed, followers, who had a strict policy of only reading posts in which she featured.

And speaking of coincidences... I have been in Northumberland for a few days and finding myself in Alnwick I obviously popped in to Barter Books. I didn't stay long as it was hot and crowded, but I did buy a book almost at random just to show willing: "The Adventures of Speedfall" by John Fuller, which I didn't enjoy and don't recommend. I would describe it as a mediocre mashup between P.G. Wodehouse's Mr Mulliner and Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and, having put it to one side, I found the latter of those on my Kobo (*) and started to re-read it. I quickly came on a passage in which one character, as part of a diatribe against the feckless working class, mentions a painting that he once saw in which a wife served her husband a spur on a plate rather than the dinner which he was expecting. That struck a chord with me because I had myself seen that very painting - it's by William Bell Scott - the day before at Wallington. Also seen there, and of somewhat more relevance to the blog, were these:

As well as the Napoleonic figures there were what looked to be some units from the Risorgimento. Unfortunately the hand written labels seen in the first photo were all the information displayed, so I don't know how old they are. In terms of scale I would judge that they were in height a small 20mm, think Irregular or Tumbling Dice, but they were very slender. Let's end with a photo of Dunstanburgh Castle as approached from Craster:

No kippers were harmed in the taking of this picture.

* I have, not before time, kicked Amazon into touch.

Proverbs Chapter 21 Verse 19

 "In dealing with a disgruntled popsy the wise man waits till she has simmered down a bit." 

- P.G. Wodehouse

I have been asked why my game of Kelp: Shark vs Octopus was fraught. The game, which is quite highly rated and with the design of which I was mostly very impressed, is asymmetric. The two players do completely different things on their turns: the shark player is bag-building and placing dice out on the board, the octopus player is deck-building and manipulating tiles in an effort to bluff her opponent. The shark wins by finding and eating the octopus; the octopus wins by hiding and not being eaten.

It subsequently transpired that my companion had interpreted the term 'asymmetric game' to mean one in which the same side always wins. I am not clear how she reconciled that with the concept of it being a game in the first place, but by the time I was in a position to raise that question I decided that it was probably safer to change the subject. Before we started playing I had attempted to explain the details of how each side operated, but was silenced with a peremptory gesture. She was, she told me sternly, an experiential learner; we should just get stuck in. By the end the main learning experience for me was that Kelp is not a game that one should play with stroppy women who refuse to learn the rules. That also was something which I chose not to share with her.

For the record, she won as the octopus. A fuller review may follow should I find someone more amenable to play with.

2024

 "When affairs get into a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy." 

- P. G. Wodehouse

It's review of the year time. I didn't do one last year because the illness that has plagued me on and off in 2024 started with unlooked for precision on 29th December 2023. That's bad news for posterity, because I had a lot to write about and would no doubt have done so most entertainingly. This year has seen a much reduced programme of activities. Apart from funerals; I don't think I've ever been to so many in such a short space of time.  I won't write about those.

Opera: I've only seen sixteen operas this year. The clear best among them was the Hallé's 1857 'Simon Boccanegra', with a nod to 'Aleko'. Of those I've not bothered to mention here before my favourites would include 'The Sign of Four', apparently the first opera ever written about Sherlock Holmes, Albert Herring, and Peter Brook's take on Carmen at the Buxton Opera Festival.

Theatre: Only twelve plays, so another drop year on year. Best was 'My Fair Lady' of all things. Even more surprising was my enjoyment of  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at York Theatre Royal, with a genuine circus clown as Bottom. This blog normally has a strict 'clowns are not funny' policy. Perhaps as another sign of change I went to two comedy gigs for the first time in decades. 

Music: I saw eighteen gigs, so maybe that's why I couldn't find time to go to the theatre. Best were the mighty Southern River Band, but also excellent were Mississippi Macdonald, Brave Rival, the Milkmen, Errol Linton, the Zombies and others too numerous to mention; except that I am contractually obliged to mention both Martin Simpson and Fairport Convention.

Film: I only saw five films, must try harder in 2025. I think Conclave was the pick.

Talks: I attended nineteen talks this year, the shortfall being in part because I fell out with one of the groups whose talks I used to attend. I should probably do an annual award for which organisation I have had the biggest row with that year. The best talk was on the subject of J. B. Priestley, which is obviously a good thing, with a special mention for one on the somewhat more obscure subject of Washington Phillips.

Exhibitions: I've seen a few, too few to mention. I would strongly recommend both the Silk Road at the British Museum and the Van Gogh at the National Gallery.

Your bloggist buckles his swash

Books: Obviously, if one can't go out then one stays in and reads, consequently I have read 128 books this year. Too many. My favourite fiction was probably 'Scaramouche' by Rafael Sabatini; I do like a swashbuckler. The best that wasn't a century old was 'Gabriel's Moon', a spy thriller from the ever-dependable William Boyd. From the non-fiction, Bruce Springsteen's autobiography was very good. I'm not sure why I was surprised that he can write. I read lots of perfectly adequate military history, but nothing so outstanding that I'm going to highlight it here.

Boardgames: 168 plays of 91 different games. My current favourite is definitely Dune Imperium, which is one that I would have thought might to appeal to most wargamers.

Wargames: Which, after all, is what it's all about. The most memorable was Wellington vs Sault during our Peninsular campaign, for all sorts of reasons.

So, UK election result aside, it wasn't a very good year really. I think we all know that globally it is going to be even worse next year. I suggest we approach it stoically.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” - Epictetus

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

The lack of posting recently has of course been caused by lack of inspiration. Luckily several complaints have been received here at the Casa Epictetus, which gives me something write about.

Firstly, Don has taken offence at my suggestion that he hasn't aged well. I withdraw that comment absolutely; Don is still the svelte young man that he used to be. Indeed, I can go further: he is at least twice the svelte young man that he used to be.

Secondly, I have had an email from Peter in which he refutes the suggestion that he fell off his horse and hurt his keg (sic). I am very pleased to hear that; no one knows better than your bloggist how one's social life can be affected by a less than fully functional barrel. It was of course James who originated the story in his blog, but nevertheless I am happy to make it clear that Peter was at all times in control of what he was doing.

Peter also mentioned seeing the BBC documentary on Persian history, which makes me think that I may have been searching in the wrong place for the other two episodes and so I shall take another look. Nundanket (and apologies for the capital letter) asks about the reference in Wodehouse to Jamshyd. It is in a passage in 'Summer Lightning' - one of the Blandings novels -about Hugo Carmody (a minor character then acting as secretary to the Earl of Emsworth) and is an allusion to FitzGerald's 'translation' of the Rubaiyat. Perhaps had it been found in Wodehouse's other well-known series of books, it would have come from the mouth of the erudite Jeeves rather than that of his young master.

1 Corinthians 15:26

There's an interesting post at the Ragged Soldier blog (which by the way is one of those blogs whose url is completely different to its name) about books. The challenge is to name two different books - one fiction and one non-fiction - that bring the past alive for you; I think that it's implicit that it's military history that we are referring to. The two fiction books recommended therein - which I know is not what I just said - have been downloaded to my kindle and only await the satisfactory conclusion to the current adventures of either the Earl of Emsworth or Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, whichever comes first, before being read.

David pinched the idea from someone else, so my first thought was that I would pinch it from him in turn. My second thought was that given my current struggle for inspiration I would spin the thing out by doing a different such post for each of a number of historical periods. My third thought is that I will probably find great difficulty in keeping that going and it will fizzle out embarrassingly quickly. Despite the third thought almost certainly being accurate I am nevertheless going to go with thought number two, and shall start with the Second World War.

As my non-fiction book I have picked a memoir: 'The Last Enemy' by Richard Hillary. Notwithstanding the cover pictured above, it's about far more than flying in combat. As others have observed, Hillary was a writer who flew, not a flyer who wrote.

Clearly the best fiction written with World War II as its setting is 'Catch-22', but as powerful as that novel's exposure of the futility of war is, I don't think it really speaks to the objective of bringing alive a time and place. So I am going to choose Evelyn Waugh's finest work 'The Sword of Honour' trilogy, which is based on the author's own experiences in the army, but also documents the home front and the changing nature of society during the war years.

Light relief

"This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers." - P.G. Wodehouse

And also, I would suggest, suited to whatever emotional and psychological state in which we find ourselves. I myself have retreated to the Blandings novels of Wodehouse, from the first of which that quote is taken. I do still read the newspaper, of necessity concentrating on the bits about the various incompetent, delusional and self-obsessed leaders in whose hands we find ourselves, and the not unrelated fact that we're all going to die. However, I also actively seek out those few articles which offer a complete distraction from current worries, and so was extremely pleased to find the story in today's Guardian about Amanda Liberty.

The piece reported that Ms Liberty, a young lady from Leeds who is engaged to a chandelier, had failed in her complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation after being nominated for a Dagenham Award by a columnist in one of the tabloids. (For those not familiar with the London Underground, Dagenham is three stops past Barking) It would seem that while the media are forbidden to mock people because of their sexuality, that only applies when the object of the their affection is a person and not, well, an object.

This is all very amusing - except possibly for any innocent light fittings in her vicinity - but what really grabbed my attention was the dawning realisation that I had met the lady in question, and indeed had recorded the event in this very blog. It would seem that she adopted her current surname whilst in a previous relationship with the Statue of Liberty, a period when, as I saw with my own eyes, she would go about her everyday business dressed up as her beloved. The people of Yorkshire are, as they are always pointing out to anyone who will listen, not quite the same as those from elsewhere.

My name is Jeeves, Reginald Jeeves

The comment by nundanket (I have never been sure why there is no capital letter in that name) about Fry and Laurie being the definitive Jeeves and Wooster raises a couple of questions in my mind.

The first is that as this list appears to be getting longer, do we have any rules as to what qualifications character and actor need in order to be on it. I would suggest the following:

• The original character needs to have appeared in a book or books which have subsequently been adapted for radio, television or film.
• Several different adaptations need to have been made featuring different actors in the role.
• One actor needs to stand out from the others to such an extent that when one reads the original literary work it is that actor whom one sees in ones mind's eye.

So, even though he clearly qualifies for the last point no one would claim that Ian McKellen is the definitive Gandalf, because let's be honest he's the only Gandalf; ditto Daniel Radcliffe et al. Colin Firth might well make the list as Mr Darcy, as we all know there have been many adaptations even if we don't know who was in them, but I'm going to disallow Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. I also won't include any of the Bonds, James Bonds because even if one has a favourite (Sean Connery obviously) the books and films are so different that visualising actor from printed page isn't by any means automatic.

That issue - congruence between book and adaptation - was raised by David Suchet when he spoke about being offered the role of Poirot in the first place. After mentioning that his brother advised him not to touch it with a barge pole, he said that his own reaction was that although it had been interpreted many times before (and rather bizarrely Suchet once played Inspector Japp to Peter Ustinov's Poirot) no one had ever really portrayed the Belgian detective as Agatha Christie wrote him; and so that's what he set out to do. Indeed it was that which caused him to decline to appear in dramatisations of those Poirot novels commissioned in the last few years by Christie's estate and written by Sophie Hannah. 

What Fry and Laurie's Jeeves and Wooster shares with Suchet's Poirot, Brett's Holmes etc is fidelity to the character even when the transfer to a different medium requires the plot to be messed about somewhat. So do I concur with nundanket's view that they are also definitive? No, and the reason is because I am so very old. I have fond memories of listening to the 1970's Radio 4 dramatisations featuring Richard Briars and Sir Michael Horden and so, despite Fry having been a much more appropriate age to have played Jeeves than Horden, it is Horden's voice I hear when I read P.G. Wodehouse.

And being as old as I am, the black and white television Wooster of my youth was Ian Carmichael (with Dennis Price as Jeeves), which reminds me of another entry for my list: Ian Carmichael is the definitive Lord Peter Wimsey.

Do trousers matter? - slight return

                    "The four stages of acceptance:

                         1. This is worthless nonsense.

                         2. This an interesting, but perverse, point of view.

                         3. This is true, but quite unimportant.

                         4. I always said so."

                                      - J.B.S. Haldane

Yesterday's post went off - perhaps appropriately given its subject - a bit half-cock. I had meant to also note that I had bought a copy of the January edition of Miniature Wargames. You may recall that I eschewed purchasing the December issue because it had a picture of an elf on the cover. They still dedicate far too many pages to hobbitses for my liking, but issue 429 also contains a report on Fiasco, which is illustrated with three nice photos of the Ravenna game that we (i.e. James) put on. The reason that I was going to mention it becomes apparent if you study the main picture (on page 14 should you have a copy to hand). The principal figure shown, seated in the white shirt, is Bob, my fellow commander and let's face it pretty much the sole reason for our dismal failure in the refight; if you look carefully you can see him using his left hand to surreptitiously drop a D8 into his bag. But if you scan across to the left hand side of the page you can just make out above the marsh which runs to the table edge the very abductor muscle that has been causing all the problems at the Casa Epictetus. Or at least you could if I hadn't been wearing trousers at the time. Now, you might think that the concept of not having one's strides on at a wargames show is a bit, how can we put this?, odd. But I have actually written a blog post putting forward the suggestion before - here, albeit that it did not catch on either at the time or in the five years since. Perhaps revisiting the proposal is overdue; allow me, if you will, to do so now and to further develop my thinking.

"Do you wear trousers, Fozzie?"
"Why would I? I'd still have bear legs."

There are many different approaches as to what constitutes a sport and what doesn't. Various authorities would automatically eliminate anything that involves music; or petrol; or animals; or subjective evaluation of artistic impression, technical difficulty or some other nebulous term; and so on. I myself have always favoured the view that a sport is anything for which one is required to change one's shoes. Were a similar logic to be applied to hobbies we would find that they naturally fall into two categories: those which are carried out in trousers; and those where participants go without. The latter, and I am thinking primarily of course of the Finnish pastime of kalsarikännit, seem to be rather hip and happening at the moment. If wargaming wishes to hitch itself to this bandwagon then it is clear that a bare legs policy is imperative. This insight is my Christmas gift to the hobby and, once again, you are all welcome. But we need to be quick, other hobbies are beating us to it:

In the meantime I shall be off pursuing one of my other great interests, reading poetry. But first I need to get ready:

                                           "Shall I part my hair behind?
                                             Do I dare to eat a peach?"

Forever Forwards

And so to the theatre. I have been to see 'Dare Devil Rides to Jarama', a play which speaks not just to my love of theatre, but also to my interest in military history, socialism, walking and speedway. I accept that the last of those might not have featured too much in this blog to date. Indeed it is an interest that might accurately be described as dormant, but nevertheless it's there. Despite (or perhaps because of) mon vrai nom it's the only motor sport that I've ever had any time for and I used to go to watch the Wembley Lions during their brief reappearance in the early 1970s.

The play was put on by Townsend Productions whose 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' and 'We Will Be Free!' - the latter about the Tolpuddle Martyrs - I had both seen and enjoyed. With only a cast of two they recreated everything from dirt track racing, the wall of death and the mass trespass on Kinder Scout through to Franco's advance on Madrid, with the audience providing appropriate sound effects when required through the use of those rattles that one sees in old film of football matches. The one point where the audience participation fell a little flat was when we were invited to jeer at the leader of the blackshirts; I obviously can't have been the only one to find the portrayal more Spode than Mosley.

The story is that of Clem Beckett, champion rider, union organiser, rambler, and anti-fascist who, as member of the British Battalion of the International Brigades, was killed on the first day of the Battle of Jarama. Sadly the telling of it matches up neither to its inspirational subject matter nor the theatrical verve and skill with which it is presented. The play just isn't particularly well-written and despite the acting and the design - both very good - it fails to engage the emotions. Beckett himself came across as rather selfish, which for a man who gave his life for someone else's cause is a real own goal by the author.

However, I'm glad that I went and look forward to their next production, which will be about Grunwicks, something I saw at first hand.

I think sexual intercourse is in order, Gilbert.

And so to the theatre. Readers may recall the film 'A Private Function' from thirty odd years ago, featuring a pig-napping of the sort which often appear in P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings novels. The film has particular resonance with this blog because the screenplay was written by one of our heroes, the thankfully still very much alive Alan Bennett; because much of it was filmed in Ilkley, the epicentre of wargaming in lower Wharfedale; and because the most sympathetic character, played by another of our heroes, the sadly no longer with us Richard Griffiths, is an accountant. I have now been to see the stage musical version, 'Betty Blue Eyes'.

I'm not really, despite what the lady in the kitchen shop may think, much of a fan of musical theatre, but I have to say that I enjoyed it enormously. In translation from the big screen to the stage and from comedy to musical some things have been added and some lost. It's a while since I have seen the film, but I don't recall dancing girls (and I mean full-on Moulin Rouge style dancing girls) appearing in anyone's front room, nor indeed cameo appearances from Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.  And, spoiler alert, the fate of the pig has been, how shall we say, made more suitable for family audiences. But it all hurtles along nicely, there are still references to Lady Macbeth for the the intellectually inclined and fart jokes for everyone else, and the cast gave it their all.

Star of the show is the animatronic pig - how could it be otherwise - which is better behaved than one assumes a real one would be. Indeed there are stories of Dame Maggie Smith being chased round a kitchen by one of those used in the film. The pretend pig followed the script perfectly until right at the end when, after taking its bow, it suddenly careered into the scenery and knocked one of its ears off. They should have stuck to that old showbiz rule: never work with children or radio-controlled animals.

Pot53pouri

The hunt for za'atar is over. The bearded hipsters of Otley have transferred their attention to something else for long enough for Waitrose to be able to restock their shelves. It's time for some baked eggs, or perhaps some flatbread, or possibly both. That is obviously the highlight of the week, but there has been other news. I saw a goldcrest in the garden, and given that previous live fauna spotted there was a rat, it was rather wonderful.

I mentioned in the context of the 600th anniversary of Agincourt that I had taken a very interesting online course about it. I've watched a few more since on a variety of subjects and have always found them worthwhile, although the one on gravity was pretty heavy going. Anyway, there's another potentially relevant one starting next week called England in the Time of King Richard III, which among other things promises to look at the soldier's experience in battle during the Wars of the Roses. It can be found here.

I've struggled with my WWI reading, and not just because Osprey find printing on both sides of the page to be too challenging. I gave up - at least temporarily - on Wyndham Lewis because I didn't warm to him at all; he seems to be attempting to give pretentiousness a bad name, which is my job thank you very much. I turned with relief to the next in the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain only to find that was no bloody good either. I shall persevere with the series because I've enjoyed the others so much, but I hope they buck up soon. In the meantime I can feel some P. G. Wodehouse coming on; he won't disappoint.

And finally, I have been meaning to post this link about unbalanced dice ever since it appeared on the Piquet mailing list. It certainly explains a lot. As my old mucker Sophocles put it: "The dice of Zeus will always fall luckily."

Pot42pouri

I awoke this morning to find that my computer had taken it upon itself to start using Windows 10. On the plus side my copy of Office, which had stopped working completely a month or so ago necessitating workarounds with OpenOffice, has burst back into life. On the minus side, using Bluetooth now seems to require about twenty steps and all my default programmes have been reset to, guess what, Microsoft's own version. Such is progress. While I'm chuntering on I am also pretty pissed off with BT who have tried to charge me £5 per month for BT Sport which I neither ordered nor want. I have complained to Ofcom in a futile gesture, which will achieve nothing and doesn't even make me feel better.

It  is a tradition of this blog to occasionally include a photograph of your bloggist on top of one of the high points along the Wharfe Valley surrounded by women of a certain age. In an unwelcome development the following - taken on Hare Head - also seems to include a fair number of men.

As was pointed out to Bertie by his gentleman's gentleman in 'Thank You, Jeeves': Physical exercise is a recognised palliative when the heart is aching.

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Cilla Black, but, let's be honest, she couldn't sing so here instead is some Yusuf.

Do trousers matter?

And so to the theatre. "Perfect Nonsense: Jeeves and Wooster" is on tour at the moment and I went to see it in Harrogate, accompanied by my elder daughter who claimed never to have seen the Fry and Laurie version, nor to be familiar with any of Wodehouse's work whatsoever. I blame the parents.

A pig who takes things as they come

The conceit of the play is that Bertie, having seen a couple of shows, decides that acting is easy and that he will therefore recount his latest adventures in this way, assisted only by Jeeves, his gentleman's gentleman, and Stebbings, his Aunt Dahlia's butler. The latter two are called upon to play a host of characters, wherein lies much of the humour. Because interestingly, while the dialogue of the play within the play is lifted directly from the source material (The Code of the Woosters to be precise) the laughs mainly come from the physical theatre.

The small, multi-tasking cast and the creative design of the staging immediately reminded me of the Peepolykus version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and, unusually for me, I was right because one third of the cast - playing Jeeves, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Sir Watkin Basset, his daughter Madeleine and his niece Stiffy Byng - was Jason Thorpe who starred in that production. Robert Webb had the somewhat easier role of Wooster. He was good, but perhaps his television experience was the cause of not speaking quite loud enough for the theatre.

The Cool Person

The third member of the cast - playing Stebbings, Aunt Dahlia, Constable Oates and most memorably Sir Roderick Spode - illustrates once again that this blog is not just thrown together, but follows a carefully plotted narrative arc. Having been steered in the direction of Robert Morley by well-known Scottish mug designer MS Foy, we have travelled via that actor's portrayal of Hamilton Black to 'The Young Ones' film. We now arrive at Christopher Ryan, here giving us a would-be fascist dictator in black footer bags, but perhaps best known as Mike in 'The Young Ones' television programme. No applause is necessary.