Hasta la Vista!

Just a quick reflection as Colonel Gadaffi says "Hasta la vista!" and goes the way of Batista: until a few months before he started making his way - well maybe down here, come to think of it - he had been a valued customer of British arms' dealers and (surprise, surprise, folks!) he used the arms to crush the early stages of rebellion against his dictatorship. Now Britain (according to the provincial croak of the man Maggie Thatcher called "Little Willy" Hague), is firmly behind the calls for the Colonel to be tried for crimes against humanity. Maybe, those who sold (or, Little Willy, authorized the sale), to this nutter of these arms should be called to account as accessories; after all, if you knowingly hand a madman an axe, you would normally be held to be responsible for the shambles that follows.

Overall, modern Britain, you make me sicker all the time to think of what you once were.

Some Favourite Meals

I have been recalling and producing, for home consumption, some of my favourite meals from my childhood. One of these is a simple beef casserole with a mixture of mashed potato and mashed carrot and is something that my paternal grandmother used to make for me, as an especial favourite. However, just as people' houses always have their distinctive individual scents, I can never make this dish exactly as my grandmother made it and I am not entirely sure that I want to.

Other meals such as the big breakfast cannot even come close: there are all the components except hog's pudding which, so far as I know, is a peculiarly Cornish speciality (about the same dimensions as black pudding, which I detest) and absolutely delicious sliced into thick slices and fried on each side. Without this component the Brazilian Big Breakfast is wanting and I have just given myself a great yearning for something that I have traded in for a place in the sun. At least we certainly have that here today, whereas Cornwall, I hear, is cold and damp...

Style Icon LXIV: Muhammed Ali

In a portrait by Karsh: "Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee!"

True Style

From a 1939 advertisement.

Jesus Christ and Buddha are two famous proponents of True Style, which needs to be beneficently directed outwards, and neither was a clothes-horse or a 'performer'. Anybody with enough cash can be well clothed; being well dressed is something more but being well dressed is never more than a slight clue to the style within. Even as a slight clue it is an uncertain one at that because a well dressed man might just be a popinjay or a dissembler or even totally obnoxious and there are many brilliant and good-hearted scruffs. Moreover, I dare say that Lucifer himself is resplendent in a purple satin-lined opera cloak and Lincoln Bennett opera hat; at least, he was the last time he dropped by.

Pygmalion 1938

The 1964 musical film of My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, is the first cinematic production of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion that springs to most minds but the 1938 film, directed by Anthony Asquith, and starring Leslie Howard and the great Wendy Hiller (as a superb Liza Doolittle, with all the authenticity of a proper little cockney sparrah) and Wilfred Lawson, miraculous as  Alfred P Doolittle, is a tremendous film adaptation and should be shown more often. Today's picture is of Howard and Hiller in a still from the film.

It is a Question of Degree

Surely the greatest examples of true style are to be found in such as Buddha and Jesus Christ. The essence of their message seems to me to be self-denial, even self-abnegation; certainly the practice of putting the interests of others first; of perceiving need and meeting it quietly and, preferably, anonymously. We know nothing (so far as I know) about the clothes makers for Buddha and Jesus Christ but I dare say that they were, for their times, conventionally and neatly turned out. Being well dressed is no certain indicator of the possession of true, deep style and I have the feeling that Lucifer is better dressed than any Archangels left standing up above. Many of the best people that I know are incredibly scruffy, because clothes just hold no interest for them. I am rather on their side than the side of those who think that we should dress as an end in itself and flash our clothes and watches and wallets and so forth about in an attempt to impress others with our so-called 'style', which is really bumptiousness: there is too much bumptiousness in this world and far too many clowns and bullies controlling mankind: 'Colonel' Gadaffi is only one of the bullies. There are plenty of others; as indeed there are plenty of clowns: starting with the leaders of the current British government, and that nasty little twister Berlusconi.

It seems to me that the world has lost its way, along with its faith in any Creator and too often substitutes an 'appreciation' of the faux style peddled by  miserable, pig-ignorant 'celebrities' for an appreciation of true style.

Connie Francis

When I was a student, sometimes we used to stand on the benches, after dinner, and sing Strangers in The Night. For a long time, I thought that Frank Sinatra gave the world the best rendering of this song. Then I heard Nancy Sinatra's rendering - and realized that I was wrong. However, recently, I heard Connie Francis, singing it in Spanish, and realized that I was wrong twice. Please listen and revel in it. It's on YouTube but I cannot create a link, for some reason.