Ship Ahoy

Reading English Journey by Beryl Bainbridge - panned when it came out but I like her company and revere her novella called The Birthday Boys - I came across.her account of meeting a man who worked on the first Cunard ship called Queen Elizabeth. He was invited to work on the second but, Bainbridge tells us:

"He couldn't bear the contrast between the old grandeur and the new vulgarity."

What a bolt of recognition I experienced, reading that sentence. What that man felt about the two QEs is what I too often feel about the entire tawdry modern world.

A Time to Be Silent

Making stately progress through a pile of old New Yorkers, I have reached an article about the Spice Girls from 2022. Apparently, Danish researchers concluded in 2014 that the Spice Girls’ first single, Wannabe, was, at least at that time, the catchiest song ever written.

There is so much left unexplained in that piece of data - how did the researchers define “ever”; how did they define “catchy”; above all, why did they bother?

Never mind, Wannabe is a very cheerful piece of music and a delight to hear - occasionally.

The thing though that really did amaze me in the article was the news - or information I suppose; it can’t really be news 28 years later, (although it is to me) - that in 1997 the Spice Girls went to South Africa to perform a concert for charity and, during their visit, they met Nelson Mandela and, when some journalist asked him how he felt about meeting them, Mandela replied:

“You know, these are my heroes. And I don’t want to be emotional but this is one of the greatest moments in my life.”

Of course, I wanted to know in what tone Mandela made this statement - I assumed he was being a little jokey.

I found the video, and the whole event is wonderfully good-humoured, except for one thing. It turns out that the future King of England was also present - 15 kilos ago, at least, by the look of him - and could he keep silent? No, he could not.

And as a result he spoiled things, butting in with a look-at-me intervention that serves no purpose other than to make everyone else there look confused and awkward.

What a pity the young prince didn’t have a quick read of Ecclesiastes as he was driven to the occasion.

You can see the exchange here, starting from about 2 minutes in.

Amusing

 This made me laugh:

What Just Happened?

Years ago Michael Frayn wrote Noises Off, an especially hilarious farce in which the audience views a play as if they are sitting in the wings, seeing what goes on backstage. Looking at yesterday's Oval Office meeting, I felt as if I was watching the 21st century revamped version of Noises Off, played this time as tragedy, not farce. 

As a result, while lots of people have been focussing ever since on what was said during yesterday's meeting, I've been stuck one degree back from the substance of the conversation/discussion/ disagreement/unedifying spectacle/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. The question that has obsessed me - and continues to do so - is why the meeting was held in public, under the media's gaze. 

I vaguely remember reports of Biden having a blazing row with Zelensky at some point - but the news of that was only available because it was leaked; there were no pictures or film of the occasion. Who had the bright idea of conducting delicate international negotiations under a blaze of lights, with cameras recording everything? In what possible way was that ever going to be helpful? 

I am truly baffled.

What I Have Been Reading: The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy

This novel tells the story of one woman's game of cat-and-mouse with a masked man over the course of an evening at a sumptuous ball. The rustle of silk, the sparkle of chandeliers, a scattering of snowflakes, a scrap of black lace, swathes of deep yellow brocade - will they end up in bed together? What do you think? I'm afraid I didn't care. There was nothing at stake. Prettily written, I admit.

What Price Freedom?

I stayed the last two weekends in Vauxhall. On both the Saturdays I was there, at about half past midday, I set off towards points further north in London from a place near Vauxhall Park:

Each time, when I got beyond the park, I started to notice blocked-off streets and large numbers of policemen and police cars and vans. On the first occasion, when I reached Vauxhall Bridge, a tall, dark-bearded policeman crossed in front of me. The policeman was carrying a stack of orange cones. 

"What are you all doing," a man near me asked the policeman. "Preparing for the demonstration," he replied. "What demonstration?" I asked. "The pro-Palestinian one," he said.

When I reached the other end of the bridge, I saw yet more policemen and vehicles. There were more, presumably, deployed all along the march's route. 

In a corner, confined within a mass of temporary fencing, I also saw a crowd of people, many of whom were carrying Israeli flags. They were being prevented from moving about outside of the small fenced area the police had allotted them.

Up until then I had believed the pro-Palestine protests that happen each weekend in London should be allowed, even though since the Ramallah lynching in 2000 I have not supported the Palestinian cause at all. My reason for believing the protests should go ahead was because I did not want freedom to be curtailed. However, seeing the arrangements that the authorities seem to believe are needed in order to allow the protests, I am now wondering about what precisely freedom means in this situation. 

Leaving aside the question of who is being protected from whom, (are the demonstrators dangerously violent when confronted with people who don't agree with them - because, if they are, they forfeit the right to be given free run of the streets to air their views), I began to wonder about the right of Londoners to enjoy their own streets in freedom. In this context, I was struck by how unnecessarily the police were using their power to inconvenience people - they seemed to be relishing insisting that people couldn't cross certain roads nowhere near the route of the march. An elderly couple were told to stagger on up to the next crossing, "only about a hundred and fifty yards further up" and when the couple asked why they couldn't cross where they were, they were told: "It's up to us to decide, and we have decided it is safer for you not to cross here." 

I also wondered about the freedom of ratepayers - have they ever been asked if they mind subsidising the marchers to the tune of the Met's no doubt vast overtime bill each Saturday? And, above all, what about the freedom of those who wish to support Israel? Why aren't Israeli supporters allowed to wander about freely, while Palestine supporters are? 

Of course, the second weekend I witnessed all these preparations, just after the release of the Bibas children's bodies, I also found myself unable to believe the great hordes of Palestine supporters would be out in force again. After having discovered that their own people had strangled in absolute cold blood, quite deliberately, two small boys, placing their hands round their necks and squeezing the life out of them - and then followed up by turning the return of the poor children's bodies into one of the most graceless spectacles ever created - I assumed they would give up and stay at home.

But there they were, streaming down from Westminster and over the bridge as if nothing had happened. It turned out they didn't care at all.

The first Saturday I was in Vauxhall, I should add, my reason for going north was to get to Marylebone Theatre to see a play called What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. At least one big London theatre was too afraid to stage it, in case they were besieged by Palestine supporters who don't like Jews. What price freedom?

At the Theatre: The Merchant of Venice 1936

A new production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is always an interesting prospect, as the play is so puzzling. It contains some of Shakespeare's most beautiful speeches, including probably the most famous discussion of mercy in the English language, but it tells the story of a man's desire to use the law to take revenge on another man, almost certainly killing him, and of the punishment that is meted out to that man for desiring to do such a thing. The fact that the man in question, Shylock, is Jewish only adds to the difficulties, as the play appears on the face of it to be anti-semitic, even though in Shylock's famous "If you prick us, do we not bleed" speech in Act 3, Shakespeare writes with what seems to be complete empathy for the plight of Jews subjected to anti-Semitism.

Perhaps because it is so difficult, the opportunities to see the play are fairly rare. But in 2023 an actress called Tracy Ann Oberman decided to create her own production, in which she would play Shylock, setting the action against the backdrop of the rise of Oswald Mosley and his followers. Having read too much PG Wodehouse as a child I have always equated Mosley with Sir Roderick Spode and consequently underestimated his dangerous influence. Oberman's grandmother was living in the East End of London at the time of Mosley's activities and took part in the Battle of Cable Street, something I knew nothing about before going to this performance. It was an event that seems to have demonstrated that Mosley was not the idiotic figure of fun I'd assumed, and learning of its existence has made me wonder about whether Wodehouse did everyone a disservice by creating Spode, using absurdity to minimise what was a real danger.  

Having been performed to great acclaim in London, the production is now touring Britain and so when it came to Bath while I was staying in Bristol I took the opportunity to go along (this is beginning to sound faintly like the opening to a visit to Julian and Sandy as spoken by Kenneth Horne). The performance I went to was a sell-out and in front of me were over 100 school children, almost overcome with excitement at being in a theatre.

The performance began in what I presume was Hebrew as some kind of Jewish ritual was presented, with Oberman at its centre. Once that was over we galloped into the play itself. A small cast doubled up playing a variety of parts and they were excellent in all of them. The whole thing is full of gusto and energy and Obermann as Shylock is superb. The fact that the character is played as a woman seemed to me to work very well - somehow a woman's suffering at the hands of bullies struck me as something one could feel more sympathy for than a man's, possibly because a man, possibly unfairly, is expected to fight rather than cry. Oberman's performance persuaded me that the arrogance and scorn Shylock is subjected to is more than enough to goad her into wishing to make the leader of her enemies suffer in his turn.

In what to me at first seemed a very clever twist but I later realised was an inevitable result of transforming Shylock into the play's hero, Portia, who I had always thought of as a heroine, is here presented as a really nasty creature, taking delight in grinding a Jew into the dust. While this was a revelation for me, given the over-reach of many in the modern legal profession, i didnt mind at all having a sense of hostility for a lawyer whipped up in my heart.

At the end, Oberman stepped forward and told of her grandmother's experiences in the Battle of Cable Street and then, together with the whole cast, exhorted the audience to show solidarity with their contemporary Jewish neighbours, while raising her fist over and over, in a gesture that, were Elon Musk to have made it, might have been mistaken for a Nazi salute. This seemed a faint sacrilege but I think Shakespeare survived it.

Overall, I enjoyed the performance. Despite many of the schoolchildren complaining as they left about how long the thing had gone on, the play has actually been admirably streamlined (although purists might argue that cutting out bits of Shakespeare can never be admirable). But there is one glaring flaw in the production - tragically, it is already out of date. The enemy faced by people of Jewish origin is no longer the Mosley mob they encountered in Cable Street. Oberman knows this all too well as since October 7, 2023 she has had to be guarded against attack from pro-Palestinians. 

It would have taken a lot of work but the truth is the production needs to be revamped. In place of Blackshirts, the characters opposing Shylock need to be dressed in those dreadful uniforms Hamas members love to parade in as they release hostages. It is not frustrated white men but Islamists who are bent on doing violence to Jews these days  - and we all need to show solidarity with each other as they will be coming for us next.