PotCXXIIpouri

I have had Covid again. That's the second time this year, which seems a little self-indulgent for a man my age. I seem to have picked it up at a university reunion, along with more than half of those attending, demonstrating once again the truth of the adage that one should never go back. Prior to testing positive I went to a Fairport Convention gig in Settle; I can only hope that I didn't act as a super-spreader among the, let's face it, rather elderly audience. Now I think about it, that was also the second time I'd seen Fairport this year. Coincidence? Or something more sinister?

Actually, there's been a bit of illness about, causing a pause in the Peninsular campaign. Prior to that occurring I found myself as stand-in commander of - checks notes - O'Donnell's force defending Tarragona against French assault. It was a highly entertaining game, with the final outcome only decided on the very last roll of the very last action on the very last card turned. However, in my opinion although not necessarily that of others, this was entirely down to luck being very much skewed in favour of the Spanish rather than being a positive reflection on the way the campaign rules handle such scenarios. Some changes have been mooted and we shall have to wait to see what effect they have. 

Returning to Fairport, they, playing as four-piece because their drummer Gerry Conway has retired (*), were as excellent as one would expect. Also excellent was Lauren Housley and the Northern Cowboys who I had seen a couple of days earlier whilst I was still bursting with health. Ms Housley mainly performs her own material, but included a couple of covers: Little Feat's "Willin'" and John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery". However, I'm going to include this Fairport Convention song, which they also included in their own set:

* His retirement is of a kind which will not, I expect, prevent him from appearing onstage at a gig which, viruses willing, I intend seeing in a week or so.

The de Brécy Tondo

 Last summer the National Gallery in London held a major exhibition covering the whole of Raphael's career, featuring works loaned by museums such as the Louvre, Prado and Uffizi. Being the cultured man-about-town that I am, I naturally went. Being the slapdash, half-arsed blogger that I am, I naturally never bothered to mention it here. I was reminded of it today, when I went to see the de Brécy Tondo, which has just been authenticated after decades of research as being 'by Raphael', and not merely 'after Raphael'. 

It has first been exhibited, perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, at Cartwright Hall in Bradford, the connection being the part played by the University of Bradford in the scientific evaluations which resulted in the authentication. The de Brécy Trust website linked to above gives a reasonable amount of detail regarding spectroscopic analysis carried out on the paint used, which I found comprehensible and believable. It is less forthcoming about the AI led facial recognition analysis, which the signage at Cartwright Hall went into rather more. I must say that, like most things AI related, I couldn't understand a word of what they were on about. Perhaps recognising the likelihood of this there was a little ballot box in which one could post a green slip of paper if one was prepared to believe that a computer could properly authenticate a work of art, and a red slip if one didn't. I never voted; let's be honest with ourselves, the computers have already taken over and it's too late to pretend otherwise. It's a nice painting though.

Kern I Get A Witness

 What joy, there would appear to be a multitude of 'kern' puns out there. I think I vaguely promised to talk about the RedBox and Tumbling Dice kern figures that I had bought, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

Or it would be if it was lit better. I'll take another one when they've been undercoated. They are compatible in size and look fairly similar apart from the haircuts, as in the chap on the right has had one and the chap on the left hasn't. In fact the Tumbling Dice figure (that's the metal one) rather reminds me of a good friend of mine from university days back in the 1970s; one just needs to imagine that instead of throwing a javelin he is energetically playing pinball and is just about to bring that right hand down for some mean flipper action. So, where are the javelins, or darts as the Test of Resolve authors would have it? Those supplied are soft metal so I shall be replacing them with stiff wire. Prepare yourselves for details of how difficult it is to do that. I think my modelling skills are reasonable; they are certainly better than my painting skills, I'll say that before anyone else does. However, I have have a blind spot when it comes to superglue, so there could be problems ahead.

And yes that is the Financial Times protecting the table.

Ian Beesley

 I was ill for part of last week. Just a heavy cold I think, although to be honest every time I have taken a self-administered Covid test over the last couple of years I have seriously wondered whether I was doing the bloody thing properly. I eased myself back into the land of the living by going to an exhibition of photographs and I shall be easing myself back into the land of blogging by writing about it.

Bradford-born Ian Beesley is currently the subject of a career retrospective exhibition at Salt's Mill. That career started at the same time as I was doing my first degree at Bradford University in the mid 1970s and there was much to bring back memories of the time. I was fortunate enough to be guided round the exhibition by the photographer himself and the background information he provided added greatly to the whole experience. As I'm taking things slowly I shall mention just one of his stories.

In 1997 to celebrate the centenary of becoming a city, Bradford council commissioned Beesley to take portraits of one hundred Bradfordians ranging in age from the newborn to the very old. He went to visit one chap of 104 in a nursing home and the manager said that she was pleased he was there as the individual in question had only had two other visitors all year and they were both foreign gentlemen and so didn't really count as far as she was concerned. After taking the photograph Beesley asked about the other visitors. "Well," came the reply "Bert always visits me when he's in the country". Upon questioning it came out that the old chap had been on the ground staff at Maine Road, and that the Bert in question was Bert Trautmann, the German POW who became Man City goalkeeper and played much of the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck. Rather impressed, Beesely then asked about the other visitor. He, it turned out, had been from the French embassy. The old chap had served on the Western Front and his visitor had come to present him with the Légion d'honneur. I think that story - and the manager's part in it - neatly sums up what's wrong with the attitude of the British to the rest of the world. I'd like to be able to say that things have improved in the last twenty-five years, but we all know that the opposite is true.

Anyway, it's an excellent exhibition, and there's a rather fine Hockney piece currently on the display in the next room as well.

Peace Studies

A number of people seem to have assumed that I was being metaphorical yesterday when I described my film going companion as having a degree in Peace Studies. But no, not so, she was awarded a B.A. Peace Studies by the University of Bradford. It used to be a unique course, in the UK at least, although I don't know if that still obtains. There is a department of War Studies at Kings College, London; the two used to hold an annual football match, maybe they still do. It was a widely held view amongst students reading other subjects at the university in the 1970s that Peace Studies wasn't what one might think of as a 'proper course'. Indeed it was universally accepted that the only timetabled activity that they had each week was a requirement to spend an hour or so one afternoon in the department, lounging on bean bags and drinking herbal tea. My acquaintance, who I only met a few weeks ago, demurred when I put this to her, but she studied in the 1980s, so maybe things had changed a bit by then. I do know a number of excellent stories about one Peace Studies student contemporary of mine - I shall call him Raif - and will perhaps return to them in another post. One of my favourite memories is of him putting theory into practice by attempting to convince two sets of angry football supporters (of Bolton Wanderers and Tottenham Hotspur as it happens) that they should refrain from aggression towards each other because they had more in common than they had differences. Fortunately we managed to rescue him in time.

My new friend is plugged in to the circle of Bradford graduates who remained in the city after graduation and we have discovered that among them are some that I knew back in the day. Very sadly one of those died between Christmas and New Year, before I got a chance to renew our acquaintance. It's a salutary reminder that life is short and getting shorter.

Going back to Peace Studies, as far as I am aware the course hasn't produced any notable politicians. There are however two alumni of the wider university in reasonably prominent positions in the UK at the moment. The first, Clive Lewis, is standing for the leadership of the Labour Party. His flagship policy seems to be the abolition of the monarchy. Whilst I'm all for that, I'm also well aware that it isn't a vote winner; indeed it isn't going to win my vote as a party member for him. The second has appeared in this blog before. At one point the two main parties seemed to be competing as to which had the worst MP named Williamson, and the Tory entry was Gavin, also an ex-student in the Wool City. In the topsy-turvey, Alice in Wonderland world of British politics he, despite being both useless and a self-serving toad, was actually fired as Defence Secretary for being on the right side of an argument. Still, you can't keep a bad man down and he is currently Secretary of State for Education.

Dr Feelgood

Hearing Be Bop Deluxe the other day set me thinking about pub rock. A post on the subject from a few weeks ago currently has the honour of having the fewest viewers of any post in all the years I've been doing this, so it's clearly a subject of no interest to anyone other than me. What better reason to write some more about it? Or indeed what better reason to ask a rhetorical question?

So, let's have something from the unrivalled masters of the genre, Dr Feelgood:

I have always regretted never having seen this classic line up: Wilko Johnson, Lee Brilleaux, John B. Sparks and The Big Figure. I was therefore somewhat surprised when, at a university reunion last year, someone claimed that not only had we seen them (at Huddersfield Poly apparently), but that I had written a review of the gig for the student newspaper. Funny thing, memory.

Foosball

"Table Football is a combination of Soccer and Shish Kebabs." - Mitch Hedberg

It is my practice to every now and then publish a photograph of a bunch of grizzled old men with no accompanying explanation. Here is another one:

There are herein a couple of coincidences of the type much celebrated by your bloggist, but of no interest whatsoever to anyone else. Firstly, did you know that table football - a game that I really love playing by the way - was invented in its current form in Spain during the civil war, a topic in which I have obviously been immersed for the last couple of weeks while I was there (*). Secondly, one of the chaps in the photo spontaneously and with no prompting brought up (**) the subject of the Gong concert about which I blogged a few weeks ago. He claimed to have 'looked after' me at the time and added a lot of spurious, and - given the length of time that has passed - obviously unreliable, detail about just how unwell I was.


*   There will be no Spanish Civil War project in the annexe; should any Spanish speaking rebels ever appear on the table they will be Mexicans.

** Pun intended.

No dice

"It is the nature of every person to err, but only the fool perseveres in error" - Marcus Tullius Cicero

Did anyone else spot the flaw in the C&C scenario I published the other day? Consider the problems a 3 stand Russian infantry unit (rolling three dice in melee) might have when attacking uphill (minus one dice) against a town (minus two dice). It could be a frustrating night for one of the players.

Back to the drawing board.

While I'm pondering that issue, here's some music from No Dice, a band that always reminds me of late 1977 and the fight that started in the Paradise curry house, subsequently continued outside in a snowy Morley Street, and resulted in Honours Ron receiving a well deserved black eye.

Progress Industry Humanity

The town in which I live is part of Leeds and for the most part that's where I go for entertainment and intellectual stimulation. However, I live on the border with Bradford and this weekend has seen me attend events celebrating two of its most distinguished sons.

On Saturday I made one of my infrequent returns to the University of Bradford, the place where I took my first degree, on this occasion for a talk on the time theories of J.B. Priestley. I won't attempt to reproduce what was discussed, which you would be correct in interpreting to mean that I didn't fully understand it. There were names bandied about that I'd never heard of (J.W. Dunne, Ouspensky), haven't read (Proust - shameful but true) or regard as complete charlatans (Myers and Briggs). Still, the main point at issue was that Priestley was a first rate writer, is unjustly overlooked and was ahead of his time. His influence can clearly be seen on novelists such as Borges and Burgess and on playwrights like Stoppard and Ayckbourn, and he was an early explorer of concepts later seen in works as diverse as E.T., Catch-22, Groundhog Day, Sliding Doors and The Purple Rose of Cairo to name just a few. The speakers recommended a range of works which apparently illustrate his interest in the possible circularity of time, but I have chosen to buy 'The 31st of June' on the basis that the panel said it was very funny. I shall report back. I also have to mention that I rather regret not having also been to the session before ours, which featured lots of brightly clothed Nigerians playing drums.

Today saw celebrations to mark the 80th birthday of David Hockney. The weather was nice, a big crowd turned up, there was a wide choice of food (I went for Tilapia and Jollof rice, perhaps still regretting missing out on the Nigerian drumming) and loud music; judging by the playlist DH is a fervent disco fan. There was even a large birthday cake representing his large work Le Plongeur, which is the cornerstone of the excellent new Hockney Gallery at Bradford's Cartwright Hall.

The other notable feature was a Hockneyfication Station where those with a more frivolous nature than your bloggist could be transformed into lookalikes of the great man.

Time misspent in youth...

"The wine of youth does not always clear with advancing years; sometimes it grows turbid." 

- Carl Jung

“Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.” 

- Alexander Pope

I Have To Go

Geoffrey Brindley, R.I.P.

I would like to put on record how saddened I was to hear of the passing of the Bradford Jesus Man, Geoffrey Brindley. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Bradford in the mid-1970s and at that point he had already been walking through the streets for more than a decade. Unbelievably, until a week or so ago, in his late eighties, he was still at it; a seemingly permanent feature who one was never surprised to see anywhere across the district.

And now, sadly, he will walk no more.

The past is never where you think you left it

"Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven" So said Igor Stravinsky, thereby begging the question as to what happens if they never are. I am drawn to this philosophical question by, well, by a sad event, by my solipsistic reaction to it and by the resultant memories of stuff that happened forty years ago that you don't need to know about.

The simple things you see are all complicated

So, watch this video - very evocative for me although I suspect not for anyone else who was there - and note the irony that the lyrics contain the phrase "Can't keep the ghosts away".

We eat and drink, we come and go 
(The sunlight dies upon the open sea). 
I speak in riddles. Is it so? 
My riddles need not mar your glee; 
 For I will neither bid you share 
My thoughts, nor will I bid you shun, 
Though I should see in yonder chair 
Th' Egyptian's muffled skeleton. 
One toast with me your glasses fill, 
Aye, fill them level with the brim, 
De mortuis, nisi bonum, nil! 
The lights are growing dim.

                       - Adam Lindsay Gordon

We a no warrior..

...But we a conqueror 

Jah loves u man

I have been to see The Abyssinians. The mighty, mighty, Abyssinians. Looking as if they had stepped straight from 1960s Kingston, Jamaica - except for all being about a hundred years old - the kings of roots reggae were, basically, mighty.

I hadn't seen a reggae band live since the two sevens clashed (cries of "Shame, shame") and one interesting point was that the between song banter had not evolved one bit. It still consists of random and seemingly meaningless combinations of the words and phrases 'Jah', 'Rastafari', 'I and I', 'Natty Dread' and 'Trenchtown'. But communication problems aside it was a great concert; mighty even. And what a mixed audience, containing every possible combination of race and age, although possibly not that many UKIP voters. One other noticeable  absence was the fragrant smell that used to be associated with such events. The smoking ban isn't all good news.

The last reggae act that I saw live was the Cimarons  who supported Tom Robinson at a Rock against Racism gig in the University of Bradford Staff-Student Communal Building, although the students union - being hideously white and middle class - had never heard of them and promoted them as the Limarons. The evening was full of drama including the arrival of what was assumed to be the NF turning out to actually be the SWP. However the bit that sticks in my mind was when BUSWAG (the Bradford University Socialist Women's Action Group just in case you weren't already on top of that one) caused uproar when poor old Tom played 'A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle' and demanded the right of reply on behalf of womankind. Tom, being Tom, graciously agreed and called for a spokesperson to step forward to the microphone. The dungareed ones put their hands together and nominated Roland Rance, who everyone in the room couldn't help noticing was a man himself.

He used to have a beard

Roland is famous/notorious in some quarters these days although I suspect not to anyone reading this. One of his online biographies states that as a young man he attended the University of Bradford. I would like to put the record straight. He certainly attended the university, but he was never, at any point, a young man.