Thursday, June 28, 2012
Rebirth
From time to time I have commented on the failure of my tequila bottle garden to bloom, see for example March 9th. But this morning, I decided that enough was enough and that there must be something persistent and toxic in the bottle to stop anything other rather elementary mould from growing, not even algae on the exposed and sunlit glass. So mainly black contents swilled out into the compost dustbin, revealing, incidentally, some quite long roots. So something did succeed in putting down roots at some point, but which then died and failed to decay. All most odd.
Put about two inches of purish rain water from our rain water butt into the bottle and added an ounce of dried sunflower seeds. We will see what happens this time over the coming months. Will there be a greening?
There was a rebirth of a different sort the other night when the flow of ITV3 repeats of Christie and Christie like whodunnits dried up and we were pushed over to BBC to watch a film of the RSC black production of 'Julius Ceasar', a play which I do not remember seeing live (although I dare say I have), and which I last took seriously more than 50 years ago - in parallel with taking the commentaries of the hero seriously. A quirk of the timetable.
Quick refresh in the trusty Arden, after which I thought, having mistakenly thought that the film was a South African affair, that the play might be a lot closer to South Africans than it is to us. That their political culture had a lot more in common with that of the late republican Romans and the late Tudors than ours did. We might go in for conspiracies, corruption and demagoguery, but without quite the same verve as the ancient Romans or the modern South Africans. We no longer give the losers in the great game the chop, my understanding being that the last occasion on which this happened here was in the reign of Good Queen Anne, more than 300 years ago. Then I twigged that while the production might have involved some South Africans, it was put together by true Brits.
I also learned that on or about the day of Caesar's assassination, it was the custom for naked young noblemen to run a course through the city, carrying leather thongs. And if they happened, on their way, to catch a matron with a thong, that matron was guaranteed to be cured from the curse of sterility. And Antony, a senior general, was among the number of said noblemen. See line 6, Scene II, Act I. Can one imagine Messrs. Cameron and Osborne streaking down Whitehall to the cheers and hoots of heaps of young conservative ladies with the hots in their jodphurs?
But when was all said and done, I watched something over half of the film and thought it rather good, with 'modern dress' not being anything like as intrusive & irritating as it sometimes is. Antony, in particular, was able to bring to the part a power that is usually entirely missing from such roles at the Globe. He really got me going by the time that he got to 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war'. I only learn afterwards that the drill used to be that when a duly anointed king got properly worked up in battle he could shout 'havoc' which was the signal for no quarter, or 'take no prisoners' as we would say now. In this case, naked revenge on everything in sight and never mind the consequences.
PS: interested to read over breakfast that one of the small countries (Jersey) which has grown rich by helping the even richer avoid pay their fair share in tax is getting grumpy because we, amongst others, are limbering up to do something about it. Free ride over. At least it would be if the policy wonks at the Treasury came up with a wheeze which grabbed a decent share of all those profits which presently roam around the small countries of the world, more or less untaxed and more or less under the control of their accountants. Maybe a turnover tax? If you are a profit making multinational which turns over a lot of dosh in the UK, sucks a lot of dosh out of the UK, then failure to pay a sensible amount of corporation tax results in a swingeing fine based on turnover. Think Amazon or Microsoft. We should try to avoid opening up cracks for lawyers to climb into, so the meaning of sensible should be entirely in the gift of well meaning and more or less unaccountable civil servants and not subject to judicial review. Prerogative of Her Majesty..
Put about two inches of purish rain water from our rain water butt into the bottle and added an ounce of dried sunflower seeds. We will see what happens this time over the coming months. Will there be a greening?
There was a rebirth of a different sort the other night when the flow of ITV3 repeats of Christie and Christie like whodunnits dried up and we were pushed over to BBC to watch a film of the RSC black production of 'Julius Ceasar', a play which I do not remember seeing live (although I dare say I have), and which I last took seriously more than 50 years ago - in parallel with taking the commentaries of the hero seriously. A quirk of the timetable.
Quick refresh in the trusty Arden, after which I thought, having mistakenly thought that the film was a South African affair, that the play might be a lot closer to South Africans than it is to us. That their political culture had a lot more in common with that of the late republican Romans and the late Tudors than ours did. We might go in for conspiracies, corruption and demagoguery, but without quite the same verve as the ancient Romans or the modern South Africans. We no longer give the losers in the great game the chop, my understanding being that the last occasion on which this happened here was in the reign of Good Queen Anne, more than 300 years ago. Then I twigged that while the production might have involved some South Africans, it was put together by true Brits.
I also learned that on or about the day of Caesar's assassination, it was the custom for naked young noblemen to run a course through the city, carrying leather thongs. And if they happened, on their way, to catch a matron with a thong, that matron was guaranteed to be cured from the curse of sterility. And Antony, a senior general, was among the number of said noblemen. See line 6, Scene II, Act I. Can one imagine Messrs. Cameron and Osborne streaking down Whitehall to the cheers and hoots of heaps of young conservative ladies with the hots in their jodphurs?
But when was all said and done, I watched something over half of the film and thought it rather good, with 'modern dress' not being anything like as intrusive & irritating as it sometimes is. Antony, in particular, was able to bring to the part a power that is usually entirely missing from such roles at the Globe. He really got me going by the time that he got to 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war'. I only learn afterwards that the drill used to be that when a duly anointed king got properly worked up in battle he could shout 'havoc' which was the signal for no quarter, or 'take no prisoners' as we would say now. In this case, naked revenge on everything in sight and never mind the consequences.
PS: interested to read over breakfast that one of the small countries (Jersey) which has grown rich by helping the even richer avoid pay their fair share in tax is getting grumpy because we, amongst others, are limbering up to do something about it. Free ride over. At least it would be if the policy wonks at the Treasury came up with a wheeze which grabbed a decent share of all those profits which presently roam around the small countries of the world, more or less untaxed and more or less under the control of their accountants. Maybe a turnover tax? If you are a profit making multinational which turns over a lot of dosh in the UK, sucks a lot of dosh out of the UK, then failure to pay a sensible amount of corporation tax results in a swingeing fine based on turnover. Think Amazon or Microsoft. We should try to avoid opening up cracks for lawyers to climb into, so the meaning of sensible should be entirely in the gift of well meaning and more or less unaccountable civil servants and not subject to judicial review. Prerogative of Her Majesty..
# posted by Jim @ 1:52 AM 
