'Serotonin'

      Well, I've finally finished reading 'Serotonin' by the French novelist Michel Houellebecq - that's one I was reading concurrently with Joseph Conrad's 'Lord Jim'.  Not a thing I would recommend, reading two novels simultaneously, for like having two masters 'either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other'.  Indeed, 'Serotonin' seemed a bit vapid compared to Conrad. It just doesn't have the heft.  Vapid too, compared to Houellebecq's earlier work.  As I wrote in an earlier post on these two book 'Serotonin' doesn't really stand up to say 'Atomised' of 'Platform'.  An opinion that, as you can see, hasn't changed.  At only one point did the novel hold my attention and that was when its focus shifted from navel-gazing to a putative insurrection by a group of well armed farmers.  It was both engaging and, finally, rather moving.  Alas, in a manner that echoed the half-hearted 'evenements' in 'Submission', neither the insurrection or Houellebecq's interest lasted that long, and the novel limped off to its conclusion.

BBC NOW: Back to the Brangwyn

      I feel I have to tread carefully here, and maybe it would be better if I just didn't bother, but I'm up for a challenge.  In any case I so loved the final piece in last night's concert at the Brangwyn Hall that I fell compelled to mark it in some way.  
     So to the programme - it's a good place to start.  There were three pieces: Higgins's 'A Monstrous Little Suite', Weinberg's Concert for Trumpet & Orchestra, and Shostakovich's 6th Symphony.  The conductor was Ryan Bancroft, and the trumpet soloist, Håkan Hardenberger.  Gavin Higgins was also present and, if I may say so, sporting a rather fine beard.  I suppose what connect these three works is a sense that each is haunted (perhaps too strong a word) by the past.

      'A Monstrous Little Suite' Op is a five movement suite based on Higgins's opera 'The Monstrous Child' of 2019.  It was rather like the 'Curate's Egg'.  There was some wonderful orchestration.  I warmed to the slow movements - an interval canon (?) started the 2nd movement but was quickly dropped.  It was all rather like the score to a 50/60s Hollywood thriller, with all that unease that sadly one all too often associates with contemporary Classical Music, but without the images it was all rather inexplicable.

     So to the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, Op 94, by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996).  I like the Violin Concerto (1959), (I'm actually listening to it now) but I think this must be the first time I have attended a concert and actively hated a piece.  The bf wasn't that keen either, but we both opted for the British thing and politely applauded.  Points for 'pushing' the audience, but the first half was pretty much indigestible.

     Things were a good deal more digestible in the second half with Shostakovich 6.  A bit overlooked, I should think, being sandwiched between two mighty works the 5th and 7th symphonies.  The symphony is both, paradoxically, a balanced and unbalanced work.  By which I mean each movement is perfectly balanced of itself, but the entire work is slightly out of kilter, consisting of a mere three movements - adagio, scherzo and presto - of which the first is larger than the other two combined.  In addition the movements seem disconnected - Sibelius inflected Romanticism in the 1st movement to Neo-Classicism in the 3rd. The symphony's brevity, a mere half an hour or so, is not reflected in the music.  Nothing feels rushed; the opening adagio is expansive, solemn and at times mysterious; the other two movements lively, by turns capricious and, sometimes, bombastic.  The whole, for all its 'oddities' is quite compelling. It put a smile on my face.

'Girl Stroke Boy'

      In the last week or so the bf has been watching 'Up Pompeii' and 'Up the Chastity Belt' two films starring Frankie Howerd.  The first is a spin-off from the saucy BBC comedy series (1969-70) and the second is a 'spin-off of a spin-off' being essentially the same as 'Up Pompeii' but set in the Middle Ages.  The cast is largely the same (including several British actors who you might have expected to have known better).  However, I'm not here to be censorious. Both of these films are towards the milder end of the British Sex Comedy of the 1970s - and yes, it is a genre, and yes, we have watched both the 'confessions' series and the 'adventures' series.  I think the worst one we watched was Hazel Adair's 'Keeping it up Downstairs' of 1976. We certainly hit the bottom.*

     Both 'Up Pompeii' and 'Up the Chastity Belt' were directed by Ned Sherrin (1931-2001). Sherrin (aka 'Ned Twinky' re: 'Private Eye') is best remembered for bringing the satire boom of the early 1960s to the small screen with 'That was the Week That Was', and for presenting 'Loose Ends' on BBC Radio4.  His film making tends to be glossed over.  As, maybe, his long standing collaboration with writer and critic Caryl Brahms which resulted in at least nine stage and tv productions.  All of this preamble brings me, in a round about way, to last night's film: 'Girl Stroke Boy' of 1971.  Produced by Ned Sherrin and Terry Glinwood, directed by Bob Kellert.  It is, I suppose, an English version of the 1967 film, 'Guess who's Coming to Dinner'. The cast is pretty special: Joan Greenwood, Michael Horden with Clive Francis and Peter Straker ('Straker' on the publicity etc just to add to the ambiguity). Elizabeth Walsh, Patricia Routledge, Peter Bull, & Rudolph Walker also appear, fleetingly and unexpectedly, in the supporting roles.  It is based on a stage play the 'Girlfriend' written by David Percival.  I have tried, but I can find very little about it or the playwright. It however did not get the critical acclaim claimed on some websites.  It was a flop. Apparently.  Be that as it, may Ned Sherrin and Carol Brahms took it in hand and turned it into a film. One of the changes was to make 'Jo', the girlfriend in question, black.  The plot is simple: young man (Clive Francis) returns home for the weekend with his boyfriend (Straker) who is passed off as his girlfriend.  Chaos ensues.  The result is farcical, bordering on the absurd.  Greenwood and Horden over act wildly.  Sometimes it is very funny, other times cringe inducing.  Some beautiful cinematography, but it cannot quite escape its theatrical origins.  Very much of its time.  The review in 'Gay News', Suki J Pitcher was corrsucating - 'a good idea, which gets swallowed in a mess of theatrical jokes and finally drowns in a confused sea of innuendo.  Why Ned Sherrin thought this script, which flopped on the West End stage, was 'a strange comedy....perfect for the times', remains a mystery....'

     Among the extras on this Indicator cd are a charming interview with Peter Straker and a short film, of 1972, 'A Couple of Beauties' staring Pat Coombs, James Beck, and Bunny Lewis.  Terrible but oddly fascinating. 

Girl Stroke Boy

1971

Director                 Bob Kellat
Cinematogrpahy  Ian Wilson
Producer               Ned Sherrin and Terry Glinwood

*  The spin-off - and the sex- comedy are (perhaps) linked phenomena of the 1970s. There is certainly a blurring of the boundaries.  Both were hugely successful: 'On the Buses' was the 2nd most popular film of 1971, and 'Confessions of a Window Cleaner' the top grossing film of 1974.  But then the 1970s were a nadir for the British film industry, and they weren't that good elsewhere.

St Mary, Pembridge

    We were planning on stopping in Weobley, but a diversion pushed us north into unknown territory.  All, however, was not lost for we ended up on the road to Pembridge, and Pembridge was one of those places on a mental list of places to visit as we journey between the Infernal City and my family in Worcestershire.  For not only has the large parish church have a highly original detached bell-tower/bell-house but the village is filled to the brim with half-timbered buildings.

     The detached bell-house stands just north of the church, and it's quite the sight.  A low octagonal ground floor from which arises a massive spire constructed of timber looking like an upturned funnel.  Visitors have likened it to the timber spires you find in Essex and, further a field, the Scandinavian stave churches and the wooden churches of Eastern Europe.

    The church is built of the local sandstone.  Apart from some fragments of earlier work, and the vaulted north porch (which is later) it is wholly Decorated in style - lengthy nave with aisles and diminutive clearstory, transepts and long(ish) chancel.  Pevsner dates it all to c1320-60.  All the windows, I think, have Reticulated Tracery.  It's the sort of church that would have pleased the Cambridge Camden Society with their desire for correct Middle Pointed.  The exterior of the nave looks indeed like the work of one of their approved architects (like R C Carpenter).

     Sadly the two restorations in the 19th century have left the interior bald, dark and dull. The best 19th century feature is the barrel vaulted chancel ceiling which has a nice cellure over the High Altar.  It should be painted. Some good monuments though, particularly in the chancel, and Medieval & Early Modern wall paintings around the s transept. Jacobean looking pulpit.  Sadly the church is crowded with clutter.

 

Own Work: Pages from a Sketch Book

      Just a few pages from an old sketch book I found this morning while having a sort out. Mostly architectural: some sketches towards finished paintings and finally three architectural daydreams: a design for a street of houses; a reconstruction of the nave of Elgin cathedral, and sketch design for the rebuilding of the choir of the abbey church at Holyrood in best Late Scots Gothic. A bit presumptuous of me really.

Curently reading....

      I am actually reading two novels at once, quite an unusual thing for me to do.  In the past I have occasionally suspended reading one novel to read another, say at Christmas when I might lay the current novel aside to read something more seasonal.  In the past this has included the Christmas books by Dickens, or Dylan Thomas's 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', or as last year the Collected Ghost Stories of M R James.
    The novels in this simultaneous read are 'Lord Jim' by Joseph Conrad and 'Serotonin' by Michel Houellebecq.  And what a difference a hundred years or so makes - from richness and complexity to something much more spare and lean, a observation both general and particular.  But then Houellebecq is a much more polemical, if not downright feral novelist.  Conrad, in comparison, a gentleman.  Really, I can't think of such an illassorted pair.  Amid so many glaring differences, yesterday evening (after I had published this little post) I realised that one of the subtle differences between these two novelists is that Houellebecq is writing in an age of consumerism and Conrad not.  It is enough for a contemporary novelist in attempting to define a character merely throw in a few brands for the reader to have some idea as to the taste, social position and wealth of the person described. (I think it may have Ian Fleming who started this trend.)

     I only started reading Conrad late last year with 'The Secret Agent' and was quite bowled over. I was reminded of Dickens, Dostoevsky and Conrad's contemporary Ford Madox Brown.  He is a great and subtle stylist. 

     I have to confess to being a little disappointed (so far) with 'Serotonin' though.  It lacks the venom, the sheer spite, of say 'Atomised' or 'Platform', or even the elegiac quality of 'The Map and the Territory' and 'Submission'.  Perhaps things will improve.

Old House

   Some pictures of my old house in Lincolnshire, some I posted on insta and others on here, and some have been languishing on a memory stick in my desk.  Can't help regret that the 'project' was never finished.  In retrospect it was, perhaps, one of the most integrated periods of my life.