Rural life

I find myself chided for not posting for a while.  This is miraculous: it suggests someone actually reads this blog. What can I say? My life is uninteresting. There's creeping buttercup in the top paddock and a tree fell down on the stockyard - will that suffice? - It didn't do me the courtesy of wiping out a few creeping buttercups but it's July and the buttercups don't creep in winter. - If you know that creeping buttercups are Ranunculus repens I can date you because everyone had to do it for biology o-level and judging by the age of school textbooks I'd estimate an English Education, sixties or seventies.  What they didn't teach was that nobody likes creeping buttercup.  Sheep don't and horses don't and cattle don't and our fences aren't up to deer and the wild pigs are a farm away in the forest and goats are immune to fences and we don't have donkeys. We don't have any animals actually, so Matt the builder lent us six sheep but they're in the bottom paddock where there are no buttercups.  As far as we know.  We never go in the bottom paddock. Actually he lent us five sheep and they multiplied last year reaching the dizzying total of ten but alas, one escaped and died when Matt chased it round Gavin's field for two hours, his idea of shepherding consisting of throwing a log at it and shouting "G'wan, yer fucken bitch".  Another abruptly lay down and died, and a third fell ill and Matt took it off and gave it whatever random medicine he found in his shed and it too died (an argument for veterinary surgeons' long years of study) and I forget what happened to the fourth.

This, alas, illustrates my ignorance of rural life.  A pompous soul would claim to be cultured instead, but this would necessitate me knowing things like why Schubert came to a full stop. There he is, strumming happily along (Unfinished of course. What other Schubert does anybody know?), and he gets to bar 60, and thinks whadda I do now? And there's a complete and utter bar's rest while everyone incl. even the oboist wonders why he stopped right then.  And then there's a great big din and everybody plays what the fuck they like and the second violins (my fave, natch) have a field day because nobody can hear what they're playing so it doesn't matter if it's sharp or flat or even the right note or key or instrument, so you know Schubert has said it to himself - Fuck, whadda I do now? So for four bars he just shouts Fuck, and then gets in a rage and goes shooting up to the ceiling.  And don't say there's some kind of subtle musical rationalisation because there isn't.  He just had these lovely themes - da da, de da-didaaa, de da-dida da da da da, daaa, and he didn't know how to join 'em up.  And that's the truth. I bet old Nigel Osborne or some other music professor would say it's unfinished because the last movement's missing but it isn't.  It's because he couldn't think up a twiddly bit.

Also, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no 1.  Honestly, why bother with the middle movement? Nobody knows it and nobody likes it.  Furthermore there are heaps of bits in the first movement which are flagrantly wrong.  That first bit comes to a fullstop just as badly as Schubert's. And later even when you've got a tune going, suddenly you shut the orchestra down completely and you let the pianist play some twiddlies that don't belong anywhere and have neither melody nor the other thing.  What was he thinking? There's just heaps that Tchaikovsky could have improved upon if only he'd had an editor or a competent critic, like me, f'rinstance. Can I claim to be a judge of music? Nope, and nor can the judge who played in the Sat'd'y Morning Orchestra when we were Youths.  He played in the Sat'd'y Morning Orchestra and he played in the First Eleven, though the latter was only because his mother had already bought him white flannels though he couldn't bat and he couldn't bowl and he couldn't field. He used to go out with Janey and when Janey played wossname in Yeoman of the Guard and I played in the orchestra for it (second violins, natch) and she came to the front of the stage and wept and I took out a hanky from my dinner jacket pocket and put it on the tip of my bow and held it up for her and she said Thank You, the entire audience collapsed with laughter.  - My proudest moment. What d'you expect from a second violinist? - He wasn't a judge then of course, and I will forego the pleasure of saying who he is since it's unwise to vex judges in case you ever find yourself at their disposal. Which is most unlikely, since he judges in England where I don't live any longer.