I was really glad to be able to watch the World Cup final yesterday in a cafe in Cormatin, Burgundy, with Anne, F and my sister who lives nearby.
The clouds were threatening, and we did get sprinkled at one point.
But the atmosphere was fantastic with local fans of all ages watching intently.
Sometimes you make the most of what you’ve got.
It was probably the most exciting World Cup final of my lifetime; my family, none of them particularly football fans, came along to humour me and were captivated. And for our fellow customers, the result was the right one.
Speaking of results, I can now reveal the final scores for my predictions contest:
Congrats to , , and who all acquitted themselves well.
There were seven matches where nobody predicted the result: Iran/Morocco, Portugal/Spain, Iceland/Argentina, Brazil/Switzerland, Senegal/Poland, Saudi Arabia/Egypt and Spain/Morocco.
was the only person to predict that Switzerland would beat Serbia, pseudomantid was the only one to predict that Nigeria would beat Iceland, was the only one to predict that Iran would draw with Portugal, was the only one to predict that Switzerland would draw with Costa Rica, and was alone in predicting that Russia would beat Spain.
Thanks to all of you for participating. Livejournal is not yet dead! Though it is worth noting that when I did this in 2010, I had 281 participants rather than 31.
Current The Æneid, by Virgil (translations by John Dryden and Robert Fagles, plus Seamus Heaney’s translation of Book VI) Maigret Loses His Temper, by Georges Simenon
Last books finished Doctor Who Quiz Book of Dinosaurs, by Michael Holt Anno Mortis, by Rebecca Levene
“Slow Sculpture”, by Theodore Sturgeon A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters Wit, Wisdom and Timey-Wimey Stuff, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon The Man Within My Head, by Pico Iyer Under the Pendulum Sun (extract), by Jeannette Ng The Two Jasons, by Dave Stone
Next books Up Jim River, by Michael Flynn The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England, by Ian Mortimer
Sun, 17:00: I have only once previously in my life watched the World Cup final while in the country of one of the finalists – G… https://t.co/vWX3ggK6RW
Sun, 17:09: This graphic showing whether a majority of people in each country are supporting France or Croatia may not be compl… https://t.co/HEP8CIFNls
Sun, 17:48: As far as I can tell, the last time three goals were scored in the first half of a World Cup final was 1958, Brazil… https://t.co/60rArcX7rC
I grabbed the chance of a half-day during a work visit to London last week to go to Oxford and see the Tolkien exhibition in the Bodleian (strictly speaking the Weston building). It runs until the end of September, and it is free, though you would be well advised to book ahead. I am only going to hit on the highlights here; Robin Reid, who is actually a professional Tolkien scholar, has done a longer write-up for File 770.
The whole thing is one big room, with a strong emphasis on Tolkien’s art. I have read a lot about and by Tolkien over the years, but had never quite grasped how fundamental his visual imagination was to his creativity – you really need a display like this to appreciate it. He drew all the time, all his life – we have childhood drawings of his family, and doodles on the Times crosswords from his old age. Some of the illustrations were familiar to me, others less so. The exhibit that really blew my mind was Tolkien’s three carefully constructed pages from the Book of Mazarbul, which he had prepared for the original publication of The Lord of the Rings, only for the publisher to decline to use them on the (understandable) grounds of cost. I think I knew that these existed, but had no idea of how elaborate they are. Here is the third one:
‘It is grim reading,’ [Gandalf] said. ‘I fear their end was cruel. Listen! We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall. Frár and Lóni and Náli fell there. Then there are four lines smeared so that I can only read went 5 days ago. The last lines run the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took Óin. We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep. I wonder what that means. The last thing written is in a trailing scrawl of elf-letters: they are coming. There is nothing more.’
One other picture that I knew, but that somehow acquired new life for me when I saw the original, is the original conversation between the invisible Bilbo and Smaug. There is something very interesting in Smaug’s face and posture – he has some fox in him, as well as reptile.
There are a lot of other personal letters and documents which fill out Tolkien’s background, including the report from the sub-rector at Exeter College that he was “v. lazy” and warned that he might lose his scholarship, and then that he was “much improved”.
And there are fan letters too, including from President Johnson’s daughter, from Princess (now Queen) Margarethe of Denmark, and (this one really grabbed me) a 19-year-old Terry Pratchett.
The whole thing is great. My one niggle is that the internal layout didn’t seem very clear – each section is fine, but I didn’t understand the overall plan. Of course, with so much material, it’s nice just to see it all.
Sun, 09:11: RT @FrancesLievens: 32 years ago Belgium came 4th place in the World Cup. I remember the images of 1000s of fans on Brussels’ Grand Place.…
Sun, 10:45: RT @badgermcbadger: @GNRailUK excelled yourself today. Needed 728 train, cancelled without warning. 754 said on time until 756 when you sud…
Going My Way was the highest earning film of 1944 in the American market; it won Best Motion Picture (the first tme that title was used for the award) and got another nine nominations and six awards, Barry Fitzgerald losing to Bing Crosby for Best Actor but winning Best Supporting Actor, Leo McCarey winning for Best Director and Best Original Motion Picture Story, Frank Butler and Frank Cavett winning for Best Writing, Screenplay and “Swinging on a Star” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke winning Best Song. The other Best Motion Picture nominees were Double Indemnity, Gaslight, Since You Went Away and Wilson. The only one of those I have seen, oddly enough, is Wilson; the one other film from that year that I am sure I have seen is Arsenic and Old Lace, which did not get a single nomination in any Oscar category, but has definitely stood the test of time better.
Both IMDB ratings of films released that year put Arsenic and Old Lace second, after either The Conspirators or Double Indemnity, with Going My Way failing to make the top ten of either list (17th and 11th place respectively). Other films that outrank Going My Way on both lists include Laura, To Have and Have Not, Gaslight, Lifeboat, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Woman in the Window and Disney’s The Three Caballeros. Here’s a trailer from after the Oscars (which for some reason says it won eight rather than seven):
I honestly don’t think I had seen any of Bing Crosby’s films before, so this was a new one on me. Bing plays a youngish priest assigned to a New York parish to take the reins from a much older priest (played by Barry Fitzgerald, who we last saw as the boxing trainer in How Green Was My Valley). He wins the hearts of all through his musical talents, and saves the church from a rapacious mortgage owner by selling a hit song with the help of the church choir (who he has recruited from the ranks of the local delinquent teenagers) and his opera-singer ex-girlfriend. Alas, the church then burns down. And then he moves on to another parish.
It’s harmless stuff, and I guess the wartime mood was such in 1944 that this kind of feelgood escapism went down well with the public for reasons that we can understand. I didn’t find any of it awful, but I didn’t find any of it terribly memorable either. It’s pretty episodic, and you can tell in advance which way each of the episodes is going to go – apart from the destruction of the church at the end, which is a bit gratuitous.
The core is the relationship between the two lead male roles, both of whom played by actors of at least ten years’ difference in age with their characters – Bing Crosby was 41, but his ex-girlfriend from just before he became a priest is played by a 31-year-old; Barry Fitzgerald was 56, but his character has been a priest for 45 years. But they are mostly very convincing, and the chemistry develops well from suspicion to trust.
Crosby was already one of America’s favourite performers at this stage. “White Christmas” having come out several years earlier, and he does a nice warm unthreatening pastor, with a gift for music which is always used in context in the film – the songs are just songs, carrying little narrative burden.
Fitzgerald’s character actually has an arc, and the script successfully turns him from grumpy spoiler to humble patriarch.
The other performance that stood out for me was Risë Stevens as the opera singer, who does an electrifying Carmen half way through (and the following year actually did perform Carmen at the Met).
The choir actually includes one whole black kid.
I hesitated about whether to put this above or below How Green Was My Valley in my overall ranking. In the end I am putting it just below, due to its comparative lack of ambition.
Next up: The Lost Weekend, which I understand is about alcoholism.
Second frames of the third pages of Book I and Book II (here published as a single volume):
This is a brilliant comic book about being at the sharp edge of diplomacy. Arthur Vlaminck is plucked from his almost-completed PhD to become speech-writer for the French Foreign Minister (the original title of the series is Quai d'Orsay, the location of the foreign ministry in Paris). The set-up is a very thinly disguised version of the 2002-04 period when the (barely pseudonymous) author was in fact speech-writer to the then French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. There are a couple of characters who I think I recognise from their real-life counterparts.
The fictional Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a monstrous figure, convinced of his own greatness (and convincing to those around him as well), and perpetually reaching for meaningless phrases from ancient Greek philosophers to buttress his jumbled but passionate rhetoric. Vlaminck must rewrite every speech at least twice in response to ministerial whim, and the rest of his life gets put on hold. My sense is that de Villepin is much less monstrous, but I have met enough people of that seniority to recognise that Taillard de Vorms is a credible amalgam of the extremes of personality who gravitate to the political top. And even putting that aside, the depiction of a group of different individuals, including both bureaucrats and political appointees, reacting to crisis after crisis (sometimes self-inflicted) is very realistic. The drumbeat of politics is leavened by references to Tolkien, Star Wars and Metallica, and the whole thing is carried off very well. I am recommending it to senior diplomatic contacts. You can get it here.
This was my top unread comic in English. Next up is The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, by Bryan Talbot and Mary M. Talbot.
Thu, 15:58: J.R.R. Tolkien’s facsimile of the last page of the Book of Mazarbul, submitted to the publisher but sadly not inclu… https://t.co/vP7WZx1sGp
Thu, 19:48: RT @JenniferMerode: If the British government wanted to undermine all the positive messaging of the white paper – ‘serious proposals, respe…
Thu, 20:48: RT @PietEeckhout: The Brexit White Paper turns cherry-picking into a form of international relations art. I cannot see how the EU could acc…
Second paragraph of third section (actually page 6):
“Whalesongs are probably no different from birdsongs, except they are longer,” Rueff says. “After all, whales have much bigger lungs.”
A standard choose-your-own-adventure book; there are moments where you can make a good choice or a bad choice, and moments where the capriciousness of the author pushes you down one track rather than another. Not sure why I picked it up, but you can get it here.
This was the most popular book in my unread pile that I acquired in 2013. Next on that list is Missile Gap, by Charles Stross.
Wed, 12:01: RT @RichyCraven: Being Irish during the whole Brexit thing is like being the neighbour of that guy who was building his own rocket to prove…
Wed, 13:44: RT @UKPoliticalNews: President Trump might think the UK is in “turmoil” but Theresa May has only lost 10 frontbench ministers since Novembe…
Wed, 15:15: My interview from earlier this week with CGTV’s World Insight (NB there were problems with the Brussels feed so I j… https://t.co/Ssu9i5mJpy
Thu, 10:45: RT @GresselGustav: One month ago, 48% of the German electorate supported higher defence spending. After relentless @realDonaldTrump insults…
What makes a cold planet?
To create an ice age the first thing you need is continents at the poles. Geologists have run simple climate models to demonstrate this idea, showing that if you put all the continents around the Equator – the so-called tropical ring world – the temperature gradient between the poles and the Equator is about 30°C (54°F). This is due to a trick of both the atmosphere and the oceans. The fundamental rule of climate is that hot air rises and cold air drops; this is why in the tropics the land heats up and the air rises, resulting in towering cloud formations developing as the moisture in the air cools and condenses. At the poles it is cold so the opposite happens – the air falls, pushing outwards away from the pole as it hits the ground. So although ice forms at the pole when the sea water freezes, this ice is blown away from the pole towards warmerwater where it melts. This maintains the balance and prevents the temperature of the pole falling below 0°C (32°F). If, however, there is land on the pole or even around the pole, ice can form permanently, and the Equator-pole temperature gradient is much greater – over 65°C (117°F). This is exactly what we have today in the Southern Hemisphere. In contrast, if you consider the Northern Hemisphere, the continents are not actually positioned over the pole, but surround it, so instead of a single huge ice sheet as we have on Antarctica, there is a smaller one on Greenland, and the continents act like a fence keeping all the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The Equator-pole temperature gradient of the Northern Hemisphere, therefore, is somewhere between the extremes of an ice-locked Antarctica and a land-free pole: about 50°C (90°F).
Nicely put together and gorgeously illustrated, a set of essays about our knowledge of ice ages (at least as of 2010; things may have moved on since then). I had not realised that the current period of ice ages (since 2.6 million years ago) is actually a rather rare situation in global history; in general the Earth has had a warmer temperature than now, rising to 8°C above today’s average at about 55.5 million years ago. The book looks at how continental drift and changing ocean currents have created (and sometimes failed to create) the conditions for an ice age to happen, and also at the impact of ice ages on human prehistory, going quite deep into hominins and Neanderthals. All quite fascinating. You can get it here.
This was the shortest book on my unread pile acquired in 2010, after the Doctor Who comic The Flood which I couldn’t find. Next on that list (if I still can’t find The Flood) is Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization, by Laura Raynolds, Douglas Murray and John Wilkinson.
Yesterday’s match occupied almost precisely the time it took me to travel from Paddington to Oxford. Clearly Belgium only lost because I was not yelling at the screen to encourage them, instead getting updates from the Guardian and the FIFA app. Ah well, next weekend we’ll be in France for Bastille Day on Saturday and then the final on Sunday.
I seem to have had a lot of Belgium sympathisers participating in the last poll. Those who correctly predicted France to win were , , , , , and .
Tue, 12:56: RT @DanielBShapiro: 1. I don’t think we are fully grappling with the possibility that we could be on the on the cusp of a completely new er…
She craned her neck to investigate the possibilities of a clump of bushes to the right and then withdrew farther to obtain a better angle for viewing its dark recesses. The quiet was profound except for the incessant buzzing of insects and the occasional chirrup of some hardy bird, braving the midday sun.
As with the companion anthology, Robot Dreams, this included a lot of stories which I had fairly recently returned to in The Complete Robot and did not especially like; a smaller number of stories which were new to me and which I generally liked a bit more; and some lovely illustrations by Ralph McQuarry. It also ends with a number of essays on robots by Asimov, most of which are about how clever he was to have invented the Three Laws. What really struck me was how little adaptation he felt he needed to make to the changing times; Alan Turing completed his PhD in 1938, just before Asimov started publishing, and in real life artificial intelligence has followed Turing’s path and never come close to Asimov’s. Likewise, the ethical and even political dilemmas faced by Asimov’s characters seem rather pale now; I don’t see much reference, even implicit, to John Rawls (who in fairness published A Theory of Justice only in 1971, almost three decades after the Laws of Robotics). Anyway, if you want, you can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2016. Next on that pile is Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink.
Mon, 16:44: RT @eucopresident: Politicians come and go but the problems they have created for people remain. I can only regret that the idea of #Brexit…
Mon, 16:44: RT @damonwake: Brussels wind-up merchant in chief @JunckerEU on the Boris and Davis resignations: “This clearly proves that at Chequers the…
Mon, 18:01: Trying to track down when in 1979 (or earlier) two cabinet ministers resigned in 24 hours, reshuffles aside, and n… https://t.co/E9ZHyjP9g6
Mon, 18:31: RT @heald_j: @nwbrux Carrington and Nott both tendered their resignations in 1981 after the Falklands invasion. Nott’s offer was declined.…
Mon, 18:31: RT @heald_j: @nwbrux April 1951 Nye Bevan (NHS + Labour) + Harold Wilson (Trade) resigned over introduction of NHS charges to help pay for…
Mon, 18:35: RT @benjaminhaddad: Boris Johnson resigns on the day of a summit organized to show the U.K. can be a reliable partner to the EU on security…
Mon, 18:36: RT @AlbertoNardelli: UK insisted on hosting the Western Balkans summit despite reservations of some countries due to Brexit. Hosting the su…
Current Anno Mortis, by Rebecca Levene Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters
Last books finished Weapons of Mass Diplomacy, by Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain Newry Bridge, or Ireland in 1887 (Anonymous) The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden The Way By Swann’s, by Marcel Proust
Next books
“Slow Sculpture”, by Theodore Sturgeon The Man Within My Head, by Pico Iyer
Sun, 16:05: RT @jasonomahony: Let’s be honest: it says something that the EU can keep 27 countries broadly in step on #Brexit whilst a single party in…
Sun, 20:48: RT @garvanwalshe: Chequers thread. “We have the freedom to win freedom” was how Michael Collins sold the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 to tir…
Mon, 08:30: RT @liliebayer: Our report is being censored in #Hungary’s state media and a number of Hungarian right-wing and left-wing outlets under Orb…
A few months ago I discovered RTÉ’s archived news reports of Ireland’s switch to decimal currency – when the UK switched from pounds of twenty shillings and 240 pence to pounds of 100 new pence in 1972, Ireland was compelled to follow suit, as the Irish pound had always been pegged to sterling. (Scots and others please note – this was unilaterally done by the Irish with facilitation after the fact from the Bank of England.) My grandfather was the Chairman of Ireland’s Decimal Currency Board, and the RTÉ report includes what I suspect may be the only video footage of him in existence. The first thirty seconds of the news clip are soundless, but the very first shot is of my grandfather grinning at the camera while the Minister of Finance fiddles with the new money.
The report ends with a few seconds of soundbite from my grandfather, where I can recognise his twitching of his eyebrows behind his glasses as something I share.
This is me on the BBC election broadcast last year (at 0:14:44; 0:42:25; 1:22:13; 2:17:42; 2:42:45; 3:43:46; and 4:15:25); what do you think?
For comparison purposes, here is my cousin being interviewed; does he share any of our grandfather’s tics? (Incidentally our grandfather died in 1976, several years before Brian was born.)
And for further comparison, from our mothers’ generation, an interview with our aunt:
I can see some similarities between the four of us, I must admit.
A few more people called both England and Croatia to win yesterday. I was not among them. The foresighted four were , , and . I watched the first match from the airport bar in Sofia, and followed the penalty shoot-out on the bus between plane and terminal in Brussels.
Sat, 16:05: RT @ChrChristensen: Having lived for over 10 years in both England and Sweden, and in anticipation of many myths and opinions that will flo…
Sat, 23:48: RT @MitchellSt: @sundersays Two teams from same group in semis happened in 1954 (*2), 1962, 1970, 1982, 1994 and 2002. There were no semis…
Sun, 10:45: RT @thehistoryguy: In 1814 the British Army broke into the White House, ate the President’s dinner, emptied his wine cellar and then torche…
Hi Rose. I'm Christine.
I'm Sidonie. Do you know where you are staying?
A bande dessinée that I picked up in Paris a year or so ago, script by Gilles Schlesser who has written a number of non-graphic novels set in Paris and a literary guide-book to the city that has been translated into English. Young Rose comes to the city from Brittany in 1925, and ends up mixing with lots of people including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, who she briefly dates; meanwhile her other boyfriend is involved with a complex conspiracy involving his boss's involvement in the drugs trade. I didn't feel this was completely successful as a book – the sepia hue was intended to give a nice period feel to the story, but it gets rather old rather quickly, and both illustrations and plot are very busy. As one reviewer commented, Rose ends up at every remarkable event of the period while pursuing a complicated love life. You can get it here.
This was top of my unread non-English comics pile. Next I think are the final two volumes of Aliénor: La Légende Noire.
Well, I wish I had allowed my heart rather than my head to determine my predictions for yesterday. As it was, congrats to , and for calling both France and Belgium to win. If I may say so, hooray!
Fri, 13:54: RT @EP_President: Bulgaria’s first-ever European Council Presidency punched above its weight. Congratulations @BoykoBorissov on your work a…
Fri, 13:55: RT @ayubsumbal: Bulgaria Backs New Chinese ‘Smart City’ Near Sofia, The Saint Sofia project, a huge, high-tech entertainment, retail, hotel…
Fri, 13:58: RT @OrientedR: “EU upholds democracy and multiculturalism. Withouth EU there is no globalisation” Li Keqiang, China’s PM at #16+1Summit in…
Fri, 20:48: National Gallery buys Artemisia Gentileschi masterpiece for �3.6m https://t.co/vIJ2ZhbFZ8 Fascinating and terrible story.
Fri, 22:59: RT @SamCoatesTimes: Theresa May has today agreed the following 3 page Brexit deal with her cabinet for the softest possible Brexit -…
Fri, 23:45: RT @MalmstromEU: Excellent news – EU Member States just gave their green light for the trade agreement between the EU and Japan, so it can…
Sat, 06:54: Weirdly after two days in Bulgaria, my phone is now working again and notifying me of missed calls and SMS’s. Been… https://t.co/iIo6PvyMFQ
Sat, 07:02: There is a real tendency for commentators to treat statements of the obvious (“talks *might* be extended *if necess… https://t.co/LpqsoWthfG
Sat, 10:45: RT @AndrewDuffEU: Cancel all vacation. The Chequers agreement is a good one, and pushes forward towards a decent Brexit deal and a sane and…
Le théâtre représente une salle du château appelée salle du trône, et servant de salle d’audience, ayant sur le côté une impériale en dais, et, dessous, le portrait du Roi.
Scène I
LE COMTE; PÉDRILLE, en veste, botté, tenant un paquet cacheté.
LE COMTE, vite: M’as-tu bien entendu ?
PÉDRILLE: Excellence, oui.
(Il sort.)
Scène II
LE COMTE, seul, criant: Pédrille ?
ACT THREE
A room in the castle known as the Throne Room which serves as an audience chamber. On one side there is a dais surmounted by a throne. Above it there is a picture of the King.
Scene I
Enter the COUNT and PEDRILLO, dressed for riding and holding a sealed package.
THE COUNT [sharply]: Did you hear what I said?
PEDRILLO: Yes, Your Excellency.
(He exits)
Scene II
THE COUNT (alone, shouting): Pedrillo?
I confess I have never got further into Mozart’s opera than playing the overture with the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra, and Voi che sapete as a clarinet exam piece, so came to the original Beaumarchais play without any particular expectations. I discovered fairly rapidly that my French wasn’t really up to the original and found a couple of helpful English translations, as well as this 2010 BBC Radio Three adaptation from 2010 starring Rupert Degas and Joannah Tincey.
It shows I guess how times change. This was a huge hit in 1778, and it depends on the humour of improbable deceptions and misunderstandings. Two different characters hide behind the same chair in Act I. In Act II, the Count breaks into his wife’s dressing room while his page jumps out the window and Figaro pretends it was him. In Act III, Figaro is about to be forcibly married to an older woman when it dramatically turns out that she is his long-lost mother. I really got lost in Act IV. In Act V the Countess and Figaro’s girlfriend Suzanne pretend to be each other, with hilarious consequences (at one point the Count aims to hit the Countess, who he thinks is Suzanne, but accidentally hits Figaro instead without noticing). It would require some very ingenious staging to make the various antics of the cast appear in any way realistic, and even then the humour depends a lot on swallowing and digesting eighteenth-century norms of the regulation of sex. Still, I’ve always liked Mozart and maybe I’ll give the opera a go some time. The better English translation is this one.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on that pile is Kim Newman’s Dracula Cha Cha Cha.
