ASDA be improved!

ASDA: I bought a case of wine on Thursday - it was to be delivered on Friday - Yodel didn't deliver, so I had to check their website.  Yodel said it had been "damaged" (is that delivery-speak for redistributed and drunk?).  The explanation said ASDA would contact me. They hadn't by Saturday morning, so  I emailed ASDA - no reply. 

Today they call, saying that they cannot let me collect a replacement case from the shop, as I had suggested. 

Why not?

 " We can't change a delivery to click and collect".

 Oh, so I have to cancel my order and do it again? 

"Yes, we can offer you a refund and the money will be in your account in 3-5 days." 

I pointed out that if I went into the supermarket and paid them £52 I would not expect to wait 4 days for my groceries, and then another 5 days while they organised the refund, so why was this different? 

Apparently they have refunded me, but if I could buy that wine anywhere else, I wouldn't be using ASDA - and I will certainly avoid Yodel again at all costs - last time they were involved in a delivery it was the M&S Mother's day snarl-up.

 

THIS AFTERNOON's EPISODE OF "YOU & YOURS" WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTER A. 

Here endeth the rant!.

Measure for Measure at the Globe - Shakespeare & Dante

It's so long since I saw a Shakespeare play. I realise I've probably seen more Mozart operas in the last 20 years than I've seen Shakespeare plays - in fact, I can only remember seeing one - a delightful outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the grounds of a castle in the Lot in France.  Most of the audience were ex pat Brits and Hollanders.   I never managed to go to the Globe before, and it was a pretty good experience.  We sat in a box beside the stage, so saw the performance from the rear, but it was excellent acoustically and we didn't really miss much.

MfM is a play I've never studied, but I saw it in the 80s at the NT in an all black production, with lots of then famous black actors like Norman Beaton and Rudolph Walker in it, and Bertice Redding as well as Frank Singuineau, who was my special friend when I worked there.  I began to read it on the train and I realised how dense the language in the first scene is - it was a bit like reading Latin, I got the gist of it, but I had to pay great attention to actually "translate" it.  Later on it's easier, but the first scene is off-putting for a child like Finn (18 next week) who has only read one Shakespeare play before.   I find this hard, he is at a grammar school, I was at a grammar school, but we used to read  one or 2 Shakespeare plays a year, I can almost remember what they all were.  Roughly, from Y7 onwards we read: MSND, Julius C, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Twelfth Night, something else and Romeo & Juliet.  This meant by the time we approached public exams we had a great deal of Shakespeare under our belts, and were familiar with the language.   Poor Finn finds this very difficult, but then again, because he doesn't read he doesn't know words like "rebuttal" and "exonorate", which at his stage in the Upper 6th I was probably using regularly in essays.  What can I say?  He's just not that interested.  It's not his thing, I was under the illusion that because his intellectual mechanism worked like mine, that he would want to use it to create a vast world view, but he doesn't.

So, back to MfM - it is full of good things, like all Shakespeare.  The text was a bit chopped about, and it isn't as full of familiar phrases as some of them are.  One thing I particularly noticed was in Claudio's speech to Isabella when he tells her how much he fears the afterlife.  (Act 111, Sc. 1)

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!

These images seem to have been whipped from Dante - some at least of the punishments of the variously damned in the Inferno.   Which led me to ask, did Shakespeare know Dante?  He presumably knew Boccacio, because I think some of his plays are based on stories from the Decameron, and perhaps knew Petrarch because of his influence on the sonnet, but Dante?  If one even asks if Shakespeare knew Italian, 1000s of people will start hurling aspersions and claims around, so I won't think of that.   I also suppose that Dante's images of hell probably weren't entirely original (in fact that idea of an icy hell is meant to be some kind of racial memory of the last Ice Age).  A lot of them may have been derived from theological writers.  It does suggest though, how well entrenched Catholic theology still was in the culture.   And if makes one think tantalisingly about that theory that WS was in fact a secret Catholic.  

MfM is set in Vienna, which has a Duke.  I am not totally sure, but I associate 16thC Vienna with being the centre of the Holy Roman Empire in this period, it has certainly always been a very Catholic city, and remains so.  Therefore Catholicism is suggested throughout the play - Friars etc. of course.  The issues of damnation and punishment in the afterlife are very present, and one is reminded forcibly, how people lived in greater fear of eternal punishment than anything that could be inflicted on earth.  

Another thought occurs, WS uses friars a good deal in the comedies, but less often does he use regular clergy.  Of course there are lot of political clerics (bishops, etc.) in his history plays, and I think there may be a priest in one of the comedies, but in fact he steers well away from the regular clergy.  This is just slightly interesting in an era when Catholic clergy had to hide in England, and where the Anglican clergy were perhaps not as firmly established as the State would have liked.  If it is true that WS was a secret Catholic, you can see that tension in there - "don't mention the priests!"... but friars are a different matter.  While they later developed a terrible reputation for lechery (even I have once had my hand over-squeezed by a Capuchin), they were, despite their commitment to the poor and the marginalised (the prison visiting in the play) also, to some extent, figures of fun.  It is quite a clever thing, turning the Duke into a friar.  He subverts the secular power of the Duke, reducing him to insignificance and poverty, while at the same time, by taking on the role of a religious, the Duke is able to bless people, and his wisdom is somehow divinely sanctioned.  There is thus a sense that he is almost a theocratic ruler.  This could have been conveyed better, had Dominic Dromgoole (the director) not decided to camp the Duke up quite a lot.  But there's a lot of that.  

Because I am an insanely humourless old trout I rather wished for less vulgarity.  There is plenty in the play - but it was very much played for laughs.  Yes, it is a comedy - but... I had tears in my eyes during the final scene when Isabella pleads for Angelo... this is divine forgiveness in human form.  It was wonderful. 

Leon Brittan - choose a belief.

I guess one has a vested interest in believing what one believes.  I've been thinking about the Leon Brittan issue for years.  I always believed that he was a paedophile, because someone trustworthy told me.  One hears a lot of things, particularly if you are, or mix with, journalists.  Some of them are clearly rubbish, conspiracy theories etc.  Some of them are feasible, but one questions them.  Somethings have the "ping" of truth about them.  That was certainly what I got when I heard about Jimmy Savile, even though the man who told me was in PR.  He worked for charities and had to know who to steer clear of, who was too risky, who might besmirch his clients' good names.  I think he also told me about Leon Brittan - or was  it someone else?  For whatever reason, I always believed it was true about Leon Brittan, whereas I never believed the same story about Gordon Brown.

Tonight Panorama broadcast a programme discussing how LB was probably gravely maligned by a terminally confused lad, and that chap Chris, the former social worker, who has been on the trail of this Establishment vice ring for years.  Chris always seemed very plausible when I've seen him interviewed, but now it is revealed that he's done time for fraud.  So, while this doesn't mean he isn't telling the truth, it certainly casts a lot of doubt.  Various former victims' evidence was found to be suspect ranging to fantasy.  It all becomes a question of belief.  They have come to believe this, even though people like Harvey Proctor stoutly deny it happened.  HP had a terrible reputation in the past, and Private Eye made various comments about him; some gay man I worked with also told me something about him which I cannot remember, but the gist of which was that he was not a strictly vanilla person - it was probably some S&M thing - which in those days was frowned on but now seems to be every other modern person's quirky habit.

Children in homes, traumatised and obviously being given unpleasant times, often by staff, are probably liable to create false memories.  The worst thing was a  man who had been interrogated by the police about his miserable past, and who said that it had destroyed all his defences against his bad memories, and left him more vulnerable.  He was a very credible, sensible witness, who seemed to lack a lot of the (not unreasonable) self-pity of a lot of these former child victims.

The fact is, like the police, I know nothing - I believe what I was told years ago, and now wonder about it.  I could say "it's all a conspiracy"  - the Establishment are undermining the credibility of these victims and their spokesman to protect themselves - but why protect them?  Half of them are dead anyway - why shouldn't these individuals be prosecuted?  It's certainly convenient for them that these questions are being asked.  I do find the police modus operandi in these cases very odd.  But it was so long ago, a lot of people are dead now, it's hard to find evidence.  It is never going to be proved one way or another.  It remains a matter of belief.

Not exactly Quotidian...

--- not even hebdomadal just at present.  I don't know why the blog has slacked off, probably spending too many hours dulling my senses with computer games.  Sigh.  Last week felt like a week of achievement, since I started by taking up the gauntlet with The Ash Grove/Conscience  and worked very hard on beginning the edit/re-write of that. Mark went off to Cambridge on Tuesday and I did a lot of washing and cleaning and housework, and sorting things out during the rest of the week.  I also continued to work on the book, but have only got as far as p.60.  I had quite a social time too, the evening occasional book group, and then the day time book group both gathered here, so there has been a lot of literary chit-chat.  We were reading Maugham's Cakes and Ale, which I enjoyed enormously.  A new member of the group had heard (through Whitstable grapevine) that Maugham "hated women".  I told them how he had visited Elfie and Arthur (M's grandparents) in Malaysia and had been pretty unpleasant.  Someone commented that the Graham Sutherland portrait told you all you needed to know about him.

The other thing that happened, on Wednesday, was, having struggled to do something serious about weight loss since about April, I finally arrived in the "zone".  I joined WW online and bought some new superior scales.  I then set about dieting.  I am trying to keep this reasonable, but weirdly, I must have clicked, since I am barely eating my allocation of food, let alone all the extras you are allowed.  This was a struggle last time - but as I am drinking far less now, it's all become a lot easier.  Finn and I ate simple meals and chatted a bit.  Must sort out his driving lessons.  I went shopping and bought food for the Salvation Army food bank.  What else?  Dunno - there was Labour Party stuff and Facebook stuff.  It was not an especially exciting week, but it felt like I was "getting somewhere".

Spent the weekend catching up with Tara at the Vinyl Head cafe, where I saw they were selling one of my Miles Davis LPs for £35 - I suppose eventually I will have to sell these, perhaps should do this now while it's still fashionable.  We had a good chat mostly about work, and what our plans were. We are both trying to work in a more structured way.  Not quite 9-5, but I think to work solidly in the mornings, say 8.30 to 1.30 would get things going.  The trouble is, I really ought to be working on a lot of different projects, rather than just one at a time.  I will start a script version of TMOF.  I have also been putting the finishing touches to the spare room, which now - repainted and re carpeted looks absolutely fab.  Sod's law we won't have any visitors for 4 months!    We have now, finally, begun to sort out the "lobby".  This is effectively a doorless cupboard that occurs just before the kitchen.  It was once a narrow passage that led to the "conservatory" and I suspect if I ever get housebound and have the money, it will become my loo/wetroom... but for the last 12 years it has been a sort of broom cupboard.  It is tongue and grooved,but in varnished red pine, not original.  The ceiling was crumbly plasterboard.  I suggested we just brush it down and stick up lining paper.  It looks wonderful already.

 Mark did all this, I was in the garden struggling with this year's crop of perennial weeds.   Jack by the hedge and nasty little geums are taking a hold, and the vinca alba is a nightmare.  I moved around the cephalaria gigantea, which is getting a bit overwhelmed by the rose Mme Alfred Carriere.  I was wearing a tight skirt, and had to take frequent breaks from bending.  It was beautiful warm day, sunny, and very, very still.  We were going to go for a walk at Reculver, but things took too long.  I failed to defrost the supper in time (our microwave went phut a while back and we haven't been keen to replace it) so we had evil fish and chips, and watched telly where a "self-taught archaeologist" was searching for Cleopatra's tomb.  Underwhelming evidence for it.  Or rather, a lot of circumstantial evidence that would have been equally true of any Isidaeum in Egypt at that period.  There may well be something there, but probably not Cleopatra.

I should have gone out to see some avant-garde films, but I didn't.  Not in the mood.

There, that's a brief review of my everyday life - thrilling isn't it?  Housewife dilettante just about sums it up.

Jeremy Corbyn is a Quaker

This is my conclusion since he will not wear formal or expensive clothes, but enjoys simplicity in dress; he is a pacifist and the child of pacifists; and he will not bend the knee to anyone - not the Queen for example.  This sounds suspiciously like a secret Quaker.

Not that being a "Quaker" in this sense, implies religious belief or anything like that.  It's more a state of mind that certain people adopt.  A non-conformity to the Establishment and its values.  This gets up the Establishment's nose more than anything.  They don't mind satirists sneering at them, because when people are slagging them off, it means they matter. But these "quakers" are just ignoring them, and going their own way.  Establishment values clearly do not matter in the least to JC.

What not to wear to the Cenotaph.

Chris Mullin described him as being "rather saintly".  I think that's going a bit far, probably, what JC is, is unworldly.  The world laughs at the unworldly, and not kindly.  He is in trouble with the media, with the formerly important members of the party, with the terminally stuffy who, sadly, still seem to be in charge of a lot of things.   I would never want him to change his beliefs (unless he was convinced of the truth of another position), but I think for his own sake, it might be best to do some superficial conformity.  We don't want endless media nit-picking about unimportant matters, like what he wears to the Cenotaph.  Let him get a nice dark Crombie style overcoat - nothing flamboyant about that - and a dark suit and a "sensible" tie - not one covered with teddy bears or golf balls - and let him wear that at the Cenotaph.  Perhaps he could wear a red and a white poppy.  I don't think a red poppy means you are an active militarist does it? I hope he's got some good advice somewhere.  I hope he isn't stubborn about small, unecessary things.

What we admire about Quakers is the commitment to speak truth to power.  If he's cut down before he gets a chance, it won't be much good.  I suppose the reason why ordinary people laugh at the beard and sandals simplicity of people like JC is that they are slightly incredulous.  Why does a man who apparently had a private education (only to a prep school, than a state grammar school) and has been to university (for a year!) wander round on a bike, spend time on his allotment and generally appear to have that sort of old hippy lifestyle (in his spare time at least).  Surely a man with his advantages ought to be out running industry or working in a merchant bank or rolling in money.  People who have been brought up unhappily poor find it hard to understand this elective simplicity.  Many people have been taught that only money will make them happy, and what's the point of having money if you aren't flaunting it?   I don't suppose JC has a great deal of money.  If he lives in London his house must be worth a bit, but he's got his MP's salary, and his earnings for the odd bit of speaking and consultancy - that's more than probably your average Sun or Daily Mail reader.  If they had his money they would have a new car, a new kitchen, flash holidays.  Why isn't he like that?  What's wrong with him?  Couldn't he at least get a new bike?

He's a dissenter, a non-conformist (he said that his beard was "a form of dissent" against New Labour) - and there are a lot of us like that, who, for whatever reasons, don't like the idea that we must behave in a certain way.  That's who he represents, he probably isn't going to lure the Daily Mail readers away from their sense of security.  Those of us who want to feel we are doing the "right thing" socially will not really "get" him.  The question is, are the dissenters in the majority?  Or will a combination of the conformists and the apathetic defeat Labour again next time?  Time will tell, but for a while, we dissenters can bask in the happiness of having a quakerish, Ghandian, pacifist with integrity and socialist values leading the Labour party.

More bad things

After the first 3 bad things, there were 3 more - Ned missed his plane back from LA - an extra £350 required - and then our hot water failed (not good for our AirBnB visitors), then finally - on 24th August, Ned had a terrible accident.  He was jet-lagged, had had 2 beers and a bit of weed, and felt light headed - he says he passed out - and fell over face forward onto a window which smashed, lacerating his nose, his upper lip, two places on his cheek and forehead and losing teeth (debateable how many).   Once I had recovered from the shock of seeing flesh hanging off his face (again - his eyebrow, when he was 7), and the whole trauma of going to A&E in Ashford, we began to recover slowly.,   He had about 50-60 stitches - as well as a load of soluble ones inside his nose and lips.  He spent two nights in hospital.

It was a night mare.  I am pleased to report that he is healing, and it could have been much, much worse.  He is going back to UEA for his final year this Thursday and life will begin to return to normal.

I think the horror of the accident may have put things into perspective for him a bit.  Anyway, he seems calmer now that the pain is over, the stitches are out and the healing is beginning.  He has two lymph filled pouches on his face and forehead - but these will go eventually.  Just hoping that things will carry on improving.  He's getting serious about his work again, and his music - so I am just praying that he, and Finn will knuckle down to work this year, and perhaps next summer we will have something to celebrate!

Mme de Sevigny and the nuclear powered wine

In Britain when there is an accident at a power station, we re-name the power stations, in France they do things differently.

Last Christmas we got a lovely case of wine from Polly & James and last week we were drinking a bottle of it.  It was a very nice fruity, southern number called Grignan les Adhemar .  I was particularly taken with it, because many of Mme de Sevigny's letters were addressed to her beloved daughter Mme La Marquise de Grignan.  I don't recall whether Adhemar was part of her title, it does ring a bell, so perhaps it was.  The Grignans, rather unusually, did not live at Versailles in the great rookery with the rest of the French aristocracy.  They lived on their estates in Southern France, much toMme de S's distress.  I did not know they had vineyards, or whether this wine came from their estate, but I thought I would order some more, if it wasn't too expensive, and went online.

I soon found that Grignan les Adhemar was a bit too expensive for ordinary drinking - but then I saw that ASDA has it on offer - half price, so I promptly bought half a dozen, thinking if it was only terribly ordinaire it wouldn't be bad at that price.  Actually, it was very good and so I've just bought another half dozen bottles, a snip at £4.37!

Then I saw another Google entry about the wine and discovered that it was not a new wine, or an undiscovered zone - "they" had decided to rename the area called "Coteaux de Tricastin".  So actually I was just drinking good old C d T under another name.   Why had they changed the name?  Why the urgent need to re-brand a perfectly respectable wine area.   Tricastin - true, I hadn't seen any for ages... and why did that name ring such a bell?.

I suddenly recalled when we were on holiday in the Lot in 2008, reading in one of the local papers all about a power station accident which had resulted in an undiscovered leak in the waste system for some months.  This was all the more distressing since the power station (or centre nucleaire) was on a river, in the South, in a wine-growing and agricultural area (yes, that could be almost anywhere in southern France) but this power station was called Tricastin.  Suddenly one just never saw the wine any more.  A NY Times article in 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/dining/26iht-wine26.html?_r=0) pointed out that Tricastin was not the only wine area affected, the power station was on the Rhone after all.  However, Tricastin was the only wine area that shared the power station name.   Sales crashed, and in 2011 the wine growers applied to change the name of their appellation (an appellation that had only existed since 1973 apparently) and after that, the rest was history.

I am assuming that all the wine has a geiger counter passed over it - and that the warm glow I feel when I drink it, doesn't owe too much to the plutonium.

And so, adiieu to Coteaux du Tricastin!  We shall not see its label again.