pumpkinstrokemarrow

More serious, they have done rather a vicious job on cutting back some of the path side hedges with a tractor mounted flail. I dare say the hedge will grow back but it looks a right mess at the moment. Why could they not leave the underbrush alone and take a bit more time to cut the hedges neatly with a hedge trimmer, or maybe even by hand?

Back to another round of slow cook oxtail. 16 hours again at 90C with some onions and mushrooms added for the last 4 of the hours. Very good it was too, the onions and mushroom providing a good bit of garnish. Served with mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts.

In the evening, to Bath's Theatre Royal's presentation of West Yorkshire's Playhouse's production of Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys' at Kingston (upon Thames)'s Rose Theatre. My previous experience of Bennett had been limited to going to the flics to see 'The Madness of King George' and a quick flick through the relevant chapter of Bennett's memoirs. As a former scholarship boy (failed) myself, I thought there might be something here; bit of nostalgia even. Started off rather badly; none of the actors seemed to be pitching their voices right. Then rather put off by the amount of bad language; a fact of life in secondary schools these days, I dare say, but I don't need to have my nose rubbed in it. Scenes interspersed with song and dance routines. Setting seemed to be a curious muddle of everything from the 50's of the last century to the present. Things got much better in the second half. Good use of the revolving stage. But the overall impression was that this was a light piece, and a piece which was much more about the trials and torments of the school life of gays in general and Alan Bennett in particular, than it was about the trials and torments of scholarships. More a series of sketches than a narrative, perhaps reflecting Bennett's early work with the likes of Dudley Moore on 'Beyond the Fringe'. Maybe the idea always was that the thing would be a film. Which is, perhaps, the next stop.

Followed by a check with 'Les particules élémentaires', which I had thought I would have a go at following 'La Carte et le territoire' (see, for example, January 7). To my mind, much inferior, despite winning various prizes. Some of the same things come through. The neat insights into contemporary life. The insight into the lives of contemporaries with unusual private lives. The preoccupation with death, decay and reproductive plumbing. But awash with pretentious porno.. Porno. which is dreary and depressing rather than arousing. Perhaps that is his point, but it does not make for a very cheerful read. Maybe my French is not up for porno.. Some space is given over to Aldous Huxley, his 'Brave New World' and 'Island', but without Houellebecq appearing to have read either very carefully and without appearing to have any appreciation of the qualities of other books, such as 'Point Counter Point'. I gave up about half way through the 300 pages. Organised, incidentally, in the same unusual way as the more successful effort read previously (twice).

Much more fun with M. le Comte d'Herisson, mentioned on 1 February. I share a snippet. It seems that at the time of the restoration after Napoleon, there was much speculation about the survival of the son of Louis XVI, who would have been around 10 at the time that his father was executed. Speculation which was interesting because if the pretender was who he pretended to be, the then current incumbent of the throne, Louis XVIII would have had to step aside, something it seems he was rather loath to do, despite not being much good at this kinging business. Loath to the point of tampering with the evidence and suborning of witnesses. The pretender did not make it.

Presumably because of issues of this sort, it seems that giving birth, if you were anywhere near the throne, was a fairly public affair. The world had to be satisfied that the new egg was indeed hatched by the queen. One could not, of course, be completely sure that the new egg was indeed a royal egg: that had to wait for the invention of DNA. But at least one could be reasonably sure than the new child had the right numbers of arms, legs and so forth and that a proletarian child with the right numbers of such things had not been substituted for a royal one with the wrong numbers.