Critic Cal

Neo: "I know Kung-Fu" Morpheus: "Show me" Classic. (Shame I can't link to a legitimately-uploaded clip...) When I first got a Kindle and began happily filling it with everything I'd ever had half a mind to read (fortunately my taste for old stuff means much of this is free) there was that inevitable moment where I thought "if only I could cut out the middle man -- wire my brain up and download direct", y'know, like in The Matrix . Now, I'm most certainly not disputing the pleasure of reading -- I'd save a choice selection to linger over the old-fashioned slow way. But there's so much information out there, and so little of it in my head! My computer screen, as well as my Kindle, bears testament to this frustrated greed for "knowledge" -- layer-upon-layer of browser windows, each packed to the edges with tabs, tracing a meandering, tenuously-linked train of thought through history, philosophy, literature, current affai...

August Bank Holiday weekend saw me, for once -- twice, even -- successfully coaxed substantial-ish distances away from home. In part this was due to some uncomfortable lunch-room conversations on the importance of disturbing one's routine in order to develop emotional intelligence. But the prospect of theatre helped; local summer offerings have lacked appeal (I am really, really glad that the ageing cast members of ' The Good Life ' are so comfortably provided for by the interminable stream of Alan Ayckbourn at the Bath Theatre Royal -- but I don't feel the need to witness it first-hand). So we were Saturday in Stratford-upon-Avon, for the current RSC production of ' King John ', and Monday in York, for the ' York Mystery Plays '. These two had in common a certain irreverence in their treatment of the original texts. In the case of the first this bothered me very little -- 'King John' is hardly beloved even amongst Shakespeare die-hards, and ...

Here's a poem I love, by Ted Hughes: Hawk Roosting   I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this. There are days -- or perhaps, moments every day -...