Critic Cal

Mr W. and myself have been unanimous, this week, in our delight at the long-awaited start of the season. We have not, however, been quite so unanimous as to the which of the said season. He seems to think it is the Premier League lays rightful claim to our delight; I'm pretty sure it is the Great British Bake Off . However, my attempts to reason with him have fallen on deaf ears. "I honestly don't understand what's gotten everybody so ridiculously hyped," he marvels disdainfully. "It's not even real." Well, he's right about the hype. My Facebook newsfeed is testament to that. And it doesn't seem to be peculiar to my online peers: 9.3 million tuned in for the opener; 2 million more than the equivalent figures for last year. The Telegraph even provided a live text update  of the first episode, football match-style, for people (I guess?) who were unavoidably away from their TV screens between the hours of 8 and 9 last Wednesday evening b...

Ever since I started trying to write poetry in earnest, looking back has generally been nauseating. How can it be that lines I am so proud of at the time of writing always seem so ... so ... well, so earnest (at best) six months later? Here's an early sonnet that I do still harbour some residual affection for. It is one of the less irksome outputs of a training exercise I set myself, to poetically connect passages in Acts with personal experience. The poem itself doesn't really rise above the status of 'exercise piece' but the process was a thought-provoking and prayerful one: Felix reminds me of a number of people I care about. HAPPY NOW Your head is full of knowledge, and your heart Of reticence. These strange ideas alarm — How they alarm! From time to time you start The Conversation: tap me on the arm, And take a seat, and sound me out. Until: “I’m hearing ‘righteousness’, and ‘temperance’ — What is this? ‘Judgement’ too — I’ve had my fill; Spar...

Better to remain offline and be thought a fool than to tweet and remove all doubt. A lesson learned too late by the official England Football Twitter Team during the celebrations following the 2015 Women's World Cup, in which England placed third: "Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title -- heroes." *Sigh*. England Football have 1.2 million followers; you'd think they'd run you through some basic information superhighway safety checks before handing you the keys to their authorised social media machine. The pile - up behind this particular remark was ... unsurprising . "Patronising" ... "demeaning" ... "backwards" ... "inaccurate." Sexism in the world of sport is rife, it seems, but generally reviled -- it tends to get 'called out' at least. Sexism in the world of music, on the other hand, is apparently not just tolerated but rewarded, which ne...

There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening—and he was among the victors! He lived on Park Avenue, the street of dreams! He worked on Wall Street, fifty floors up, for the legendary Pierce & Pierce, overlooking the world! He was at the wheel of a $48,000 roadster with one of the most beautiful women in New York—no Comp. Lit. scholar, perhaps, but gorgeous—beside him! A frisky young animal! He was of that breed whose natural destiny it was…to have what they wanted! ( Tom Wolfe , The Bonfire of the Vanities ,  ch.4, p.100) Sherman McCoy is (at least, at the start of Wolfe's 'quintessential novel of the 1980s') a Master of the Universe. The realisation dawns on him "one fine day, in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a $5...

patriarchy , n .  Pronunciation:  Brit. /ˈpeɪtrɪɑːki/ , /ˈpatrɪɑːki/ , U.S. /ˈpeɪtriˌɑrki/ Forms:  15 patriarchie , 16– patriarchy .  1.  A term used by feminists, to blame men for all their problems.  Jane: "Why have we ran out of bread?"  Gill: "Because of the patriarchy."   Ooh, those cheeky  Urban Lexicographers ! Still ... they kinda got a point, right? It does  seem a fair amount of feminist fuss about nothing. Women these days ... I mean, career advancement can be slow for those insisting on the whole 'time off to play with babies' thing, but we've got jobs ... the vote ... I'm pretty sure the Spice Girls never would've happened if Patriarchy. Not to mention Buffy. Work hard, make smart choices, quit complaining ... you'll do fine, ladies! Worked for me. Well done me. Well done for being white, Western, wealthy, heterosexual, educated, childless .... Hmm. Thing is, see (I'm starting to, a bit, I think) -- this is...

There's few songs quite like Pulp's Common People  to jeopardise one's vocal cords. It came on in the car on the way to church the other day, and away we went, belting it out full volume leaving little in reserve for the song-sermon-sandwich that awaited. And oh! did we sing it with feeling. I can hardly begin to tell you how much I really meant it , y'know? She would never understand  -- how could she? How could she have any idea  how it feels ? y'know? to live one's life with no  meaning  ... no  control . Sure, she could go through the motions -- rent a run-down little flat above a chemist, spend her days behind the counter in MacDonalds, acquire a taste for Benson and Hedge's finest, make a name for herself at the local pool hall, shrug her high-brow education off like a sharp suit jacket in a sports bar ... But at the end of the day, lying there weary in bed, still smelling of chip fat, and $%*!-it there's another cockroach --maybe she'd stic...

In early March, the builders finally returned our door keys at the end of a "four week job" that started in November ... We'd got them in to fit us a new bathroom, before the old one rotted or important bits snapped off or water, water everywhere or some other hypnogogic horror realised itself before our eyes. And also to stop it raining in our kitchen because, well, that particular original feature was starting to seem rather worn. And they did an admirable job and charmingly to boot, and there are many very sound (but miserable and boring) reasons why it took so exhaustingly much longer than estimated, so we would confidently pass their contact details on to anybody looking for a builder. But ... it was a long "four weeks" ... to have people around all the time when I'm so greedy for solitude; to have plastic sheeting three-quarters through the house; to have a functionless cave where the amenities used to be (downstairs toilet + gym membership = much...