Firstly, until this morning I never knew about this entrancing sculpture The Jockey of Artemision, made in approx 140 BC and part of the collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Secondly, what if Keir Starmer had accepted free tickets to see Cosi fan Tutte at Glyndebourne three times, rather than Taylor Swift? Would I be as shocked and disgusted? I fear I wouldn't. Incidentally, if you want an insight into Starmer, I found the episode of Giles Brandreth's Rosebud podcast series in which Brandreth interviewed Starmer very revealing. Not in a good way.
I should point out that the Rosebud podcasts are entertaining, apart from the Starmer episode - and even that one is worth listening to, if you want to try to understand who Britain's new Prime Minister is. We particularly liked the episode involving Rob Brydon and the one devoted to John Cleese, who seems still to nurse a faint melancholy about never having been appointed a prefect.
After listening to the Cleese episode, since we were in roughly the right part of England to do so, my husband insisted on making a detour to look at John Cleese's childhood house in Weston-super-Mare. I wouldn't bother, if you were thinking of following suit. I can send you one of the pictures my husband took and you will probably then recognise that it is not a worthwhile use of time.
Speaking of Weston-super-Mare, we ended up there again, several times, shortly after that first Cleese-inspired visit. One of our children was doing some work down by the sea and so we did some grand-parenting while she was busy.
What is it about British seaside towns? Why do so many of them feel like sets for films about the collapse of civilisation or the world after almost everyone has left to live on Mars?
There is a great deal of faded splendour in Weston-super-Mare, huge old buildings probably mostly Edwardian, all built with apparent confidence and energy and optimism and now unkempt, often with a superstore or carpark plonked right next to them. Somehow the attempts at grace expressed in the details of the older buildings seem almost laughable, as well as poignant, when viewed beside something made with an almost aggressive lack of regard for aesthetics.
There is a huge sandy beach at Weston-super-Mare, which ought to be attractive to visitors, surely. There are even still donkey rides available on it - when I saw that, I felt I'd gone back in time not just to my childhood but to before the war, as I don't remember donkey rides in my childhood, except in books. There is a fine municipal fountain, but only enormous seagulls frequent it. Perhaps the seagulls eat anyone who comes near, hence their size.
What has happened? Why has so much of coastal Britain - oh all right, so much of Britain generally -' descended into scruffiness? It's more than just poverty; it feels as if there's an almost universal lack of faith that things can be better. And who decided buildings should never aspire to anything beyond function?
I should point out that, once you ignore the groups of drunk men urging you to bring your grandchild over to pat their bull mastiffs who definitely won't bite, and the overweight heavily pierced young people marching about wearing various styles of cheap clothing and coloured hair intended to make them look individual but mostly managing to make them look unoriginal, you can have a nice time. We found a new cafe started up only the week before by some brave and optimistic souls, and a nice little restaurant that is part of a chain but manages to seem individual. I can't remember the name of the chain but each of its outlets is furnished with lots of old wooden tables and chairs and leather sofas, almost certainly bought in country auctions, with the walls absolutely covered with a blizzard of paintings, presumably bought in bulk from the same kinds of places.
The cumulative effect is rather charming, even though almost all the paintings are really bad - mostly still lives and portraits, with the odd landscape mixed in. Furthermore, sometimes, among all the cheerful tat, one painting shines out at you, obviously better than the rest. In Weston-super-Mare, for example, there was a portrait that seemed to me almost good - and, as it was signed, I was able to look up the artist. His name was Victor Dolphyn and he was Belgian. On the Internet I found that this still life of his sold not too long ago. If I'd had the money and known about the auction, I would have been very happy to buy it for the 800 euros it seems to have gone for:
