We’ve been watching old BBC productions, series they used to know how to make such as DAD’S ARMY and YES MINISTER which is still one of the funniest and wittiest ever produced, brilliant scripts, brilliant performances. I wonder, did it win any prizes? If not, why not? I know I have been out of touch a goodly while but it seems to me, as the old saying has it, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. After all that reality television does anyone in England still know how to produce quality? That might sound cynical but is it all that far off the truth?
Have at last finished reading Richard Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde and fascinating it has been. It seems to have taken forever to get through it but that was only because it has been my bedtime book and so was read a couple or more pages at a time before going to sleep. Was there a streak of madness in the Queensbury family? If Queensbury himself was a most disreputable character, Bosie was equally if not more so; a vain, completely selfish, mendacious, spendthrift, probably as violent in his temper as his father. Well, in order to possibly get a different perspective on the man I’ve ordered a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas and we will see what that has to say about him.
Have also finished the Sophia Tolstoy diaries. Got through that in no time at all and was finding it rather repetitious towards the end. It did paint an interesting picture of their lives in nineteenth century Russia but what a strange woman! At one point she remarks on her full and happy life and the next moment she is suicidal yet again. This suicidal bit happens with alarming frequency. It seems a remedy for it was to go and play the piano for a few hours. I do have the feeling that this obsessive love (if you can call it love?) for Lev Tolstoy wasn’t quite normal and he, in his own way, seems to have been as big a shit as Lord Alfred Douglas.
My loo book has been “So long and thanks for all the fish” by Douglas Adams, described as “the fourth book in the Hitch-Hiker trilogy”. Well, as much as I enjoyed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I simply couldn’t get on the wavelength with this one so I am afraid have given up three quarters of the way through.
We have had ten days of intermittent rain, well more than intermittent actually. Looking out of my window now I see only blue sky but I saw that yesterday for a brief moment before it poured down again and continued through the night with occasional thunderstorms. On Sunday there was a welcome home party for Douglas and it was chucking it down in buckets, so much so I honestly thought no one would come and it would be a complete washout, but they did come, bar three or four. They braved the torrents, arrived dripping wet, and we had a wonderful five hours party. It ended up forty in all. There was plenty of food (Chris had been baking for two days) and drink and it is the custom in Greece when visiting anyone’s home to bring a little something so there was more – cake, biscuits, chocolates, wine, tsigouthia. One Greek couple brought goat which we had for dinner yesterday evening, another brought an enormous bag of oranges and one of mandarins! What are we going to do with them all? And interestingly, an English couple brought two books: hospital reading they said for Douglas who is going back in a couple of day’s time. One, a massive tome, is on Ellen Terry and Henry Irving and the other a book called “The Actor Manager” by Leonard Merrick. A book republished by Bibliobazaar in South Carolina. I don’t know the original publication date but nineteenth century or very early twentieth. I don’t know about hospital reading for Douglas but they will certainly take the place of all the books I’ve just finished.