Preparations have been made for The Clash between the Blaugrana and the Reds. A barbecue has been decreed and I am determined to get in (“augment” would be a more accurate word) stocks of Cava to celebrate what would be a most notable win in a season which has had its ups and downs.
It is very difficult for an outsider to take the bone deep hatred that exists between Barça and Real Madrid seriously. Reasoned discussion is impossible when referring to the games between the two and any non-partisan approach is seen as traitorous by one side or the other. I have learned to keep my disinterested thoughts about the progress of any game severely to myself!
Wembley has a certain nostalgic magic to it for Barça fans, as it was in that stadium that they won their first Champions Cup. I myself have traipsed round the shuttered wreck of the old stadium building in the company of a Catalan as an act of homage to the sacred turf! I did, admittedly, feel like a total fraud during this circumnavigation and was heard to mutter imprecations to the gods about the futility of the walk, but I was firmly ignored and eventually accepted my pilgrim state with good grace! At least it wasn’t as demanding (and demeaning) as the Camino Santiago which seems to attract such jolly, sincere and dedicated walkers who positively welcome the privations that such a pilgrimage demands.
Talking of dedication I have finally posted the application for tickets for the opera for the next season. A great chunk of money will be invested in some fairly obscure musical works in the next academic year. I do have membership of the Caixa Forum in Barcelona which has (I hope) an extensive collection of CDs which are borrowable and which will I hope allow me to do my musical homework so that the odder operas do not strike my ears for the first time when I am sitting in my pricey seat!
In previous years I have used the new operas as an excuse to purchase CDs of the operas, but I am determined to be a little more sensible this year; after all how often would you sit down and listen to a Donizetti opera in cold blood? Borrowing is a much more sensible solution.
There are some Catalan composers in the list as well and I am assuming that La Caixa will have made a real effort to include those in its collection. As you can tell, I am building myself up to a pose of outraged disappointment, as I am frustrated in my financially conservative approach!
The hunt is on for a comparable gastronomic meal in Barcelona and area to compete with The Crown at Whitebrook. The flying saucer in Hospitalet designed by Richard Rogers tops the Hesperia Tower and contains under its domed crystal roof a restaurant which has a taster menu which looks promising – I have always wanted to try sea urchin and sea cucumber, so this is my chance! At least it is worth considering - and it is gratifyingly expensive!
My arriving home was to discover a wealth of goodies: two copies of The Week (my newspaper drug of choice) together with the copy of The Collected Poems of John Betjeman ordered through Amazon second hand in an edition from 1968 and unopened. In 1968 it cost 7s 6d, seven and six, 7/6 – what a trip down memory lane writing those sums of money out was! I have just opened the book at random and found a passage where Betjeman rhymes “Wembley” with “trembly” and that somehow sums up his work: twee but engaging.
The major book waiting for me was “Austerity Britain 1945-1951” by David Kynaston. I have only read a couple of pages and I have found that the use of voices from the past very evocative. The opening of the second chapter deserves to be quoted at length, so I will:
Britain in 1945. No supermarkets, no motorways no teabags, no sliced break, no frozen food, no flavoured crisps, no lager, no microwaves, no dishwashers, no Formica, no vinyl, no CDs, no computers, no mobiles, no duvets, no Pill, no trainers, no hoodies, no Starbucks. Four Indian restaurants. Shops on every corner, pubs on every corner, cinemas in ever High street, red telephone boxes, Lyons Corner Houses, trams, trolley-buses, steam trains. Woodbines, Craven ‘A’, Senior Service, smoke, smog, Vapex inhalant. No laundrettes, no automatic washing machines, wash day every Monday, clothes boiled in a tub, scrubbed on the draining board, rinsed in the sink, put through a mangle, hung out to dry. Central heating rare, coke boilers, water geysers the coal fire, the hearth, the home, chilblains common. Abortion illegal, homosexual relationships illegal, suicide illegal, capital punishment legal. White faces everywhere. Back-to-backs, narrow cobbled streets, Victorian terraces, no high-rises. Arterial roads, suburban semis the march of the pylon. Austin Sevens Ford Eights, no seat belts, Triumph motorcycles with sidecars. A Bakelite wireless in the home, Housewives’ Choice or Workers’ Playtime or ITMA on the air, televisions almost unknown, no programmes to watch, the family eating together. Milk of Magnesia, Vic Vapour Rub, Friar’s Balsam, Fynnon Salts, Eno’s, Germolene. Suits and hats, dresses and hats, cloth caps and mufflers, no leisurewear, no ‘teenagers’. Heavy coins, heavy shoes, heavy suitcases, heavy tweed coats, heavy leather footballs, no unbearable lightness of being. Meat rationed, butter rationed, lard rationed, margarine rationed, sugar rationed, tea rationed, cheese rationed, jam rationed, eggs rationed, sweets rationed, soap rationed, clothes rationed. Make do and mend.
This is something approaching a prose poem to a lost time that could have been written by Dylan Thomas: he discovered the magic of listing the mundane to create powerful effects. I think that the passage I have quoted is superb. The only thing I question is Vapex inhalant, my family only used Vic. And I still do. And he should have mentioned TCP and Savlon – or am I giving these products an age they do not deserve?
Not only all these delights, but also the latest issue of the BBC Music Magazine with the disc containing The Firebird and Tarmara played by the Scottish and Welsh BBC orchestras.
I still remember the first time I heard The Firebird in a free lunchtime concert in the City Hall Assembly Rooms played by whatever the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was calling itself in those distant days before I went to university. They were nothing like as accomplished as they are today and I remember a performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony when I would quite cheerfully have terminated the horn players with extreme prejudice. But what they lacked in subtlety they more than made up for in volume. So the triple fortissimo chord in The Firebird was played with gusto and the entire audience jerked backwards as if physically smitten!
I went out and bought the mfp record at once – and was duly disappointed by the lack of oomph! at the chord moment. And have been in every subsequent performance I have heard. But I live in hope!
Reading and listening for the weekend is sorted out as long as I can restrain myself until then!
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