The Reader

A stay at home Saturday, but at least had this excellent film to watch which surpassed all expectations, although I thought that David Kross should have got an Oscar rather than KT who was good, but not a role that lead the film
8/10

Stanley Plumly

Stanley Plumly is an American poet, professor of English and co-director of University of Maryland’s creative writing program. Plumley's work has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Paris Review, among others.

Alerted to this Stanley on Nigeness's blog, looks rather Kris Kristofferson(ish)

A Serious Man

A film maker's film, full of odd detail, held moments, European in flavour and for me, showing up the sheer fallacy of religion, although others will take away the film's general bleak message about life. Populated with snatches of comedy, and not a known main stream actor (apart from Richard Kind) in sight, left us thinking about it on the way home. A long way from the recent biopics.
8/10

My neighbour on the train this morning was reading the Daily Mail and out of the corner of my eye....well you just can't stare...were these two photos. Full marks to the photographer and well done the camera.

Stanley Matthews

Sir Stanley Matthews, CBE (1 February 1915 – 23 February 2000) is. often regarded as one of the greats of the English game. He is the only player to have been knighted while still playing, as well as being the first winner of both the European Footballer of the Year and the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year awards. His nicknames included The Wizard of the Dribble and The Magician. A vegetarian teetotaler, he kept fit enough to play at the top level until he was 50 years old, the oldest player ever to play in England's top football division. He played his final competitive game in 1970, at the age of 55, for Hibernians in Malta, which team he also coached at the time. Matthews was also an inaugural inductee to the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002 to honour his contribution to the English game.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

This is a film that you either love...or don't. I loved it, ending was a bit weak, but throughout you just did not how it was going end. Clooney impresses me more everytime I see him. Spacey was just weird, Bridges looked very old and the casting of McGregor was a joke in itself. The one revelation to most who were watching was the use of a certain substance in warfare as I had read way back in the very early 70's that its use was being advocated then.
And yet another BBC Films production, how do they do it?
5 or in my case 7.999 /10

Sun Inn, Leintwardine.

Sun Inn Leintwardine is the last surviving “five-star” entry in an obscure list of Classic Basic Unspoilt Pubs of Great Britain and Camra’s Good Beer Guide describes it as a “pub of outstanding national interest”, and has been saved by two locals following the death of its owner Florence 'Flossie' Lane.
As one of the last remaining 'parlour' pubs, the 200-year-old pub in Leintwardine near Ludlow does not have a conventional bar or counter and is more like entering an old-fashioned living room - apart from the beer barrels. At most there is room for 10 drinkers to gather around a table in the 'best room' whilst the barrels are kept under the stairs in Flossie's old living room. Just help yourself, put the money in an open tray above the barrels, and thats about it. A gem and I must go and visit.

"The Classic Basic Unspoilt Pubs of Great Britain"

This list forms part of the 100 best, whether they are open still, I do not know.

One star

Derbyshire	Kirk Ireton	Barley Mow
Dorset	Worth Matravers	Square & Compass
Dyfed	Llandovery	Red Lion
East Sussex	Hadlow Down	New
	Herstmonceux	Welcome Stranger
Hampshire	Fritham	Royal Oak
Hertfordshire	High Wych	Rising Sun
Kent	Snargate	Red Lion
Oxfordshire	Checkendon	Black Horse
	Steventon	North Star
	Stoke Talmage	Red Lion
Somerset	Faulkland	Tuckers Grave
	Witham Friary	Seymour Arms
Suffolk	Brent Eleigh	Cock

Two stars

Durham	Cornsay Colliery	Fir Tree
Gloucestershire	Cheltenham	Bath Tavern
Hereford & Worcestershire	Kington	Olde Tavern
Humberside	Skerne	Eagle
Norfolk	Burnham Thorpe	Lord Nelson
Northumberland	Netherton	Star

Three stars

Devonshire	Drewsteington	Drewe Arms
Dyfed	Meidrim	Maenllwyd
	Ponfaen	Dyffryn Arms
Gloucestershire	Ampney St Peter	Red Lion
Hereford & Worcestershire	Risbury	Hop Pole
Kent	Cowden	Queens Arms
North Yorkshire	Beck Hole	Birch Hall
Powys	Llanfihnangel-Yng-Ngwfyna	Goat

Four stars

Devonshire	Luppitt	Luppitt
Gloucestershire	Duntisbourne Abbots	Five Mile House
Shropshire	Halfway House	Seven Stars

Five stars (and, thus, probably the best pub in Great Britain)

Hereford & Worcestershire

Leintwardine

Sun

Archie

Thanks to the excellent Saturday Live on Radio4 on Saturday morning with the also excellent Fi Glover, did managed to hear an interview with Alan Emtage this weekend.
Who he?
Well he's the guy that invented the world's first search engine, which was called ARCHIE whilst he was still a student at McGill Uni in Montreal back in 1990 when google was just a twinkling in Larry Page and Sergey Brin's eyes some eight years later. (also while they were students).
So pioneering was the work that the entire 'internet' in Canada had the bandwidth of next to nothing, and they were taking half of it.

Bright Star

Not my cup of tea, a bit too girlie, but a very good film, well crafted, but again like An Education last week, a biopic than you know Keats dies at a tender young age. Thought the very last shot was truncated far to early, the poem Bright Star hardly finished when the credits rolled. But never before have I witnessed an audience stay to the very end of the credits, two or three of a sold out audience left but the rest remained seated.
8/10

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

Cultural Oxford

The Ashmolean Museum, a fine building by the Architect Charles Cockerall was reopened to the public today after 3 years of extensive building and refurbishment to a design by the Architect, Rick Mather.
Had a quick stroll around this afternoon as it was very busy, skirting my way around the new central atrium on all four levels. Appears simple and discreet in execution although I did note that the execution of some of the finishes was not quite up to the mark which was a surprise given its £60M price tag.
Nevertheless, along with the University Museum and the Pitt Rivers, three world class museums within a half mile of each other that will reward you on repeated visits.

Just along from the Ashmolean, is Broad Street, and now placed on the roof of Blackwell's Art Shop is 'Iron Man' by Anthony Gormley, a striking new gargoyle addition to the skyline.


And finally, the Isis was awash with first year students practicing their rowing, a scene repeated for sometime now.

Happy Birthday Joni

66 today, OMG
The greatest female singer/songwriter that there has ever been, and inspiration to us all. Saw her once, at Wembley back in the early eighties, we were near the back, who was in that band then?

Alerted to her birthday by Zoe Ball this morning on the radio who played 'Case of You' from her Blue lp. The song contains two of the best put down lines I know of.

Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star
And I said, constantly in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar

On the back of a carton coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
With your face sketched on it twice

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood you're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

Apollo Theatre Oxford

I read twice today that the Apollo Theatre in George Street Oxford has been taken over by Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire of the Ambassador Theatre Group. Two articles, The Telegraph and the now free Evening Standard alerted me. Yes it is a flea pit, looks dreadful from the outside, no foyer to speak of, you could fit it into the area taken by one bar in the Barbican, and Oxford deserves better, lets hope they give us one.

Stanley Unwin

Stanley Unwin was born in South Africa and sometimes billed as Professor Stanley Unwin, was a comedian and comic writer, and the inventor of his own language, "Unwinese," referred to in the film Carry On Regardless as "gobbledegook".
Unwinese was a mangled form of English in which many of the words were corrupted in playful and humorous ways, as in its description of Elvis Presley and his contemporaries as being "wasp-waist and swivel-hippy". Unwin claimed his gift came from his mother, who once told him that on the way home she had "falolloped over and grazed her kneeclabbers".
Unwinese, also known as "Basic Engly Twentyfido" - probably a reference to Charles Kay Ogden's 1930 work "Basic English", which strips the language down to 8509 words, was a special, ornamented and mangled form of English in which many of the words were corrupted in a playful and humorous way. Unwin’s performances could be hilarious yet disorienting although the meaning and context were always conveyed in a disguised and picturesque style. Unwinese was very poetic in the way it alluded to its subject and it was often punctuated with moments of clarity and directness to accentuate the ‘nonsense’ – e.g. ‘Deep joy!’ ‘Oh yes’.
Unwin claimed his gift came from his mother, who once told him that on the way home she had "falolloped over and grazed her kneeclabbers". This phrase eventually turned up in one of Unwin's monologues, Goldiloppers and the Three Bearloders.
Unwinese might also be traceable back to Lewis Carroll's 1871 poem, "Jabberwocky."
In 1968 he had a speaking part on "Happiness Stan" on side two of The Small Faces'
LP “Ogden's Nut Gone Flake”.

Jabberwocky

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird,
and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Steve Earle

Very rushed getting to the Barbican through rush hour traffic and Arse supporters going to their European Cup game at the Emirates. The Barbican's car park provided a superb position to park up and guessed we were sitting only 50 metres away. The place was busy, very busy and it felt as if all London's nightlife had gathered in the foyer. Whether they were there for Steve Earle or any off the other events going on it was hard to tell, but it had a good vibrancy to the place although the decor felt very dated. Spatially it works very well, even the sloping floors but someone tell the City of London to give it a make over. Anyway Steve Earle.

A Good Man

Disappointed as soon as we entered the auditorium to realise that it was to be a solo performance, no band and whilst for a hour and half he held the stage just by his sheer presence and songs and talks between the numbers, it could have done with a bit of light and shade that a backing band would have provided. I really enjoyed his rap like introduction to his song cycle tribute to Townes Van Zandt which dominated the show, although Emmylou Harris's Poncho and Lefty is still the definitive version. Three songs in the encore, including Guitar Town and Copperhead Road, followed by a standing ovation and a bow to the audience the length of which I have never seen at a gig. Really warmed to him, and as I said before,

A Good Man

There is a party game which asks the question, who would you like to have at your dinner party? Well I certainly would have Steve Earle.

An Education

Rather good but not exceptional with Nick Hornby's screenplay the biggest winner. Like all biopics, you know how it ends...Lynn Barber gets to Oxford.
6.75/10