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For The Emigre

Around the final Daniel Craig installment, there’s been inevitable talk of who should be the next James Bond. Well, I’ll tell you who it shouldn’t be, and that’s Matthew Goode.

Three years ago, Anthony Horowitz was hired to write Forever and a Day, the umpteenth licensed 007® novel since the death of – and ‘with original material by’ – the master himself. Horowitz’s second outing in fact, FaaD was almost universally well received, a neatly-threaded Double-O origin story for Bond (more assured even than Fleming’s own Casino Royale, perhaps), set ‘just five years after VE Day’, amid the depressed 1950s at home, the distant Korean War abroad, and the CIA starting to interfere in both Europe and SE Asia, its focus on the drugs trade.

Tonally, Horowitz pulls off an atomically-precise emulation of Fleming’s own prose pulse-quickening whenever he talks of wine, women, cars and, here, the Riviera. Content-wise, he is exceedingly familiar with the source material, and has some clever fun with both Bond’s weary tropes and Fleming’s biotrivia.

In short, the book’s a (retro) classic, and I’d strongly recommend it.

Alas, I cannot say the same for Matthew Goode’s recording.

Bond may have been an unblinking British patriot; but he had his creator’s knowledge of, and lust for, all things foreign and exotic – and would have known, for sure, how to pronounce them.

I suppose it’s possible that M might render ‘Scipio’ (bad guy) as ‘Sippio’, and ‘Carbone’ as ‘Car-bone’ (like Churchill mispronouncing ‘Narzis’?); but ‘Unione Siciliana’ is ‘Sichiliana’, surely? The very first restaurant Bond dines in (a real, Swedish one) should not be ‘Catellin’, but ‘Cattelin’. And Soviet cruiser captain Stolypin’s wife would have been ‘Irr-ma’, not ‘Urma’ as though born in Huddersfield.

It’s ‘Taube‘ not ‘Taub’ (German for ‘dove’, a plane, and – perfectly – a deaf person). And ‘Ravens-brook’ (sic) was a notorious concentration camp, not, say, a ringroad garden centre. Kompani Linge, a Norwegian SOE outfit, was named for its commander Martin Linge'(r)’, not, as Goode makes it sound, a prefab waitingroom on a charter airfield. All of this stuff is Google-able, obviously.

Closer to home, Bond’s Scottish housekeeper calls someone a ‘bawheid’ (not a ‘boar-hide’); and the school in Edinburgh is ‘Fett(i)s’, not ‘Fet’. Never has the battle/location in North Africa been called ‘Tobb-ruck’ – least of all by military types just after WW2!

Worst of all, though – the crime de la crime, you might say – is that M. Goode, apparently, cannot speak French.

I don’t mean Radio 3 Style Guide French: no-one expects ‘Paggghree’ or ‘fronnk(s)’. Just your basic Tricolore “pardonnez moi, madame…”.

It’s ‘Rue Fon-say‘ not ‘Rue Foncet[te]’. ‘Fives-Lille’ is not pronounced like the toffs’ handball sport.

‘Citroën’ is not the same as the French word for ‘lemon’. And there’s no Marseillaise pastis drink called ‘Rye-‘ anything.

There are no Ls in ‘Aiguilles Rouges’ (Bond’s parents died there, FFS: he would remember that). Goode’s stab at ‘Rochefoucauld’ sounds like he’s actually halfway through being stabbed. And don’t even ask about ‘Marré-quelle Fock’.

I don’t, admittedly, recall a case of canon Bond being undone by mispronunciation. But a) in this book he’s explicitly credited with ‘fluent French’, and b) brand names and other proper nouns were, famously, Fleming’s stock in trade. Duff notes like this are the equivalent of Bond stirring his drink with a McDonald’s straw.

Lastly – and I do feel unkind noting this – Goode has a slight (if well-masked) speech impediment. That thing that inverts Rs and Ws. So we get ‘hewoin’, ‘Hotel Negwesco’, ‘enemy tewitowy’, ‘twuly desiwable’, ‘neutwality’, ‘Bewetta’, ‘quite an opewator’, ‘Miwabelle‘, ‘Gweat Bwitain’, ‘secuwity’, and… ‘the Secwet Service’.

This could be brilliant for skewering the louche, adulterous, sadistic Ian Fleming. But as James Bond, the uber-man and fantasy projection (a concept openly addressed in FaaD)…? Well, once you’ve heard it, it’s a little hard to take him sewiously.

—
For Perspective magazine

Born in 1926, into Anglo-Welsh upper-middle comfort, James Humphry Morris was educated at Christ Church, Lancing, and Christ Church again, served in the dashing 9^th Queen’s Royal Lancers during WWII, climbed much of Everest and broke the news of Hillary and Tenzing’s successful 1953 ascent, uncovered Franco-Israeli collusion at Suez, and reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Not interested in public life, or really any steady form of employment, he became one of Britain’s greatest writers (of travel, journalism, history, and eventually a novel). And then, in 1972, he went to Morocco, emerging from the Casablanca surgery as ‘Jan’. Conundrum was published only two years later (the first under Morris’s new name), reissued several times, and subsequently hailed as one of the ‘100 Key Books of Our Time’.

In a memoir that’s somehow barely five hours long, she relates the realisation, aged three (under the piano), that she’d been born into the wrong body; summarises the long human fascination with (and indulgence of) the blurry boundaries of sex and gender; mentions suicide as almost a purely-factual alternative; and is disarmingly frank about her sexual reaction to architecture, being kissed by a cabbie, becoming her wife’s ‘sister-in-law’, and a hundred and one other extraordinary situations.

‘Few people understood it’, Morris admits (the Olympics gets a mention, NB), and she’s at pains to note those whose lives have been wrecked by such decisions. But by and large she says she had quite positive reactions. It’s hard not to suspect these findings must be cushioned by class and other kinds of self-sufficiency. A born free-thinker (though not a mere contrarian), it’s fairly clear that Morris keenly maintained, on several levels, her outsider status… and also that she could afford to.

During her lifetime, transsexualism has gone, practically speaking, from ‘virtual inconceivable’ to ‘nearly a commonplace’, and today’s gender activists will no doubt have views on her attitude towards the ‘trendy’ word ‘identity’, statements about the ‘androgenous condition’ disqualifying her from writing fiction, and views on men and women (‘I did not want to be good at reversing cars…’, e.g.) now – in her updated introduction – acknowledged as ‘preposterously obsolete’.

At her death last year, aged 94, Jan Morris had been a woman for more of her life than she was not. It took a while for me to twig Conundrum was read – quite unobtrusively, but still from start to finish – by a man.

—
For Perspective magazine

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‘Remarkably few ‘keepers have become captains; and many of those who have have quickly given up the job.’
— Mike Brearley, The Art of Captaincy

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On strict assurance that he was about to leave the country, the Chairman, Selectors, and Life Members/Platinum Donors Circle of the Rain Men CC collegially thrust the almond-scented chalice of captaincy at your present correspondent, for his final, as it were, run-out. His first act was to press-gang a competent vice captain, N Pool.

This is the East Hants game that Marcus every year says will be played ‘in Bumble’s back garden’; which is completely true, except it’s more like his manorial lands, the whole place is entirely unsignposted and satnav-proof (‘Guy Burgess country’ ©A Doggett-Jones), the ‘garden’ is an impeccably-mown field, off a farm track off a private lane around the corner from a deeply private school (#XMen more like), and hidden even then behind the log piles, garages of classic cars and clubhouse big enough to host wood-burner, hunting trophies, vintage F1 kit, and bespoke toilet poetry. Oh, and said bloke ain’t the actual Bumble. But apart from all that…

We were on time. Almost. And even had a crowd – comprising Marcus, Sam, Amelia and Martha… to say nothing of the dog, who filled in at deep extra cover for the first few overs.

Overwhelmed by the responsibility, the captain promptly lost the toss, but White Hunters agreed to bat first, anyway: the format a match of 70 over total (and you thought you’d seen everything…!), enabling the declaration, draw, and all that jazz, plus local rule of not-out-first-ball which their captain said he was sometimes slightly embarrassed to offer opponents but which Smyth, mindful of how some people get a lot of golden ducks, said would suit us just fine thankyouverymuch.

D Brook, in his first appearance of the year, gamely let himself be volunteered to start the bowling, and plans hatched earlier in the week (gasp!) saw P Reidy stationed at mid-off, to which their opener promptly slapped the first ball. Initially appearing to pouch an absolute sitter, Reidy clearly then recalled the first-ball business, and dismissively allowed the ball to hit the ground.

Thus notified, their No.1 fell anyway to a comfortable catch by D Owen (the only kind he knows, apparently), all part of Brook’s extremely economical 7 overs for just 9 runs. The No.2 went to a sharp run-out (also from Owen). And thus strode to the crease the dark-haired Morgan-Grenville – the first of two or three handsome young spunkers in this team who like to spice things up by playing ‘Name That Tree’ before they heave their 6s into it.

Our would-be-nemesis began despatching it to all parts… and never stopped, Pool and S Sutton manfully absorbing the worst part of the onslaught. Our fielding was actually quite reasonable (above ground, at least), but M-G 1 needed no help to take his opportunities, and by the time he switched to left-hand just to be sure he could hit good clean boundaries that way too, Pool, at what was suddenly mid-off, felt he might as easily admire the strokeplay from the comfort of the grass.

Unbloodied and emphatically unbowed, Morgan-Grenville was graciously recalled to the dressing room on 51 (alas! we shall not see his like again, etc.), whereon one might have thought our luck would start to turn.

At this point, though, the oppo asked what might be ‘sensible’ to aim for, re ‘making a game of it’: 170? 180…? We said 150 might prove quite competitive – but, inexplicably, they did not seem convinced. They also raised the as-yet-undiscussed issue of bowlers being limited to 7 overs, which scoffers, naysayers and milquetoasts of all stripes had feared could pose a problem for us. Sensing our difficulty (ha!), they then withdrew this stipulation; but we agreed the only gentlemanly way though this slight awkwardness was now to demonstrate our veritable smorgasbord of strength in depth.

Step forth gallantly T Russell.
…….“Bowler’s name?”
…….“Russell!”
…….“Russell…?”
…….“As in ‘Bertrand’,” quoth he, rolling his Rs, his eyes, and his sleeves up. He took 3 wickets off his ‘allotted’ 7, including two steeplers which held up in the wind to the advantage of Sutton and a one-handed running grab from Pool at mid-wicket. Russell also took a catch off F Peckham, who was in turn relieved by Doggett-Jones (2 overs for only 7 runs), then joined in the attack (‘…’) by D Fenton, released at last from his grim posting downwind and at the bottom of the slope. He held the line with an extremely creditable 2-0-6-1 (caught behind), while Doggett-Jones relieved himself beneath the conker tree.

Also making his/its season debut, T Russoff’s ‘broad church’ bowling (it’s where he practises?) was, in the circs, unlucky not to claim a wicket. There was the matter, too, of his blown run-out, Owen – having secured his own first, mind – genially offering that the wicketkeeper might have hit the sticks so hard that the ball was not in his gloves at the point of contact (Russoff himself levelly remarking that if the keeper had left the ball entirely alone the Arm of the Lord™ might well have flattened them directly).

At 140-ish for 8 it had seemed possible that we might hold them to a manageable total. Inevitably, though, the remaining gun bats now came in (M-G 2 and Schooler, remembered from his Dulwich College 1st XI kit last year), and proceeded to swash and buckle their way through approx. another 50 runs.

All but one White Hunter having reached double-figures, they declared, amid a few raised eyebrows (and after exactly half the overs), on 195-7. The tea included Skittles – which we chose not to interpret as some pass-agg mindgame.

The captain had but one instruction for his ten Rain Men and true: to smash a six off every first ball – if only, really, to see what might happen.

What happened is that no-one tried it.

Russell was clean-bowled (philosophically) in just the second over, and Doggett-Jones fell shortly after him. Both Davids were now at the crease, though, which boded well, especially once Owen started clipping casual maxima into the woods. His reward, alas, was some debilitating back pain, and he was stumped, most uncharacteristically, and on ‘only’ 29 runs (our second highest), taking a hefty swing at something that was – how to put it? – not there. Brook too was batting fluidly, until a “no-yes-no” mishap, remarkably reminiscent of this same fixture last year, sent him back to the pavilion on an unusually low score.

The Hon. Capt. was welcomed to the crease with a face-height no-ball that he had just enough time and survival instinct to flail over the slips for 4. (The bowler did concede that it was probably a 5.) But, a golden duck having been howsoever Jesuitically avoided, he thus opted for Set Menu B: the familiar series of near-edges, agricultural hoiks, and the essential dropped catch – in this case to the tune of “Oh, bollocks…!” as the ball carved gently and magnetically towards deep backward square… only for the poor fielder to be blinded by the early-evening sun at the right instant.

When Smyth was undone by – natch – a straight ball, we had well over half the runs required, and half our wickets in hand. Or, viewed another way, we had six batsmen left, and perhaps no more than six overs to trouble them.

But Rain Men aren’t renowned for riding out inevitable, boring draws without them getting just a *bit* exciting.

Sutton went for a duck, and Pool followed not long after with an edge to slip. Fenton chose this strategically crucial time to boost his averages, clubbing away a couple of healthy fours before obligingly taking on an unproblematic ball about a yard outside off stump and dinking it to M-G 1 at mid-on. And behold, suddenly blood was in the water, and White Hunters needed two wickets to win.

The opening attack returned – but sadly for them their efforts were, quite literally, misdirected, a dozen immaculate away-swingers coming down like the wolf upon the fold in first slip’s flannels. (If only they had thought to aim, er, at the stumps.) Under a barrage of ‘encouragement’ from the fielding side, Peckham displayed the sang froid of a Victorian statue, and Reidy – under categorically unambiguous direction from his teammate – was obliged to put the willow on the leather just once.

And then, with two balls to go, it was no longer possible for them to win. It’s not the done thing, I’m sure, for the square-leg umpire to be seen punching the air; but there we have it. With Russoff d.n.b., we’d clinched the ‘moral victory’* by a parson’s nose.

We repaired, all in good sporting humour, to the Thos. Lord pub, in West Meon, where, high on the fumes of having locked in a better all-time captaincy record than S Rose, I could have sworn I saw a diorama of dead woodland animals above the bar, playing a cricket match.

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* We came joint second by exactly 60 runs. Or ten 6s, NB, in your old money

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, September 25 1906
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The Earl of Oxford did not write Fleabag.

Hull is other people.

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci chose to stick the with most ridiculous crap name that they could think of.

Failure to yield causes one in five accidents in Ohio.

Justin Trudeau performs yoga.

The Incredible Hulk is better than Cúchulainn.

There are 67 million invented names on Facebook.

Silent and discreet masseuses do not exist in Russia.

Starfish taste very bitter.

The Rifle Volunteers are always ready – but not yet wanted.

The Space Bowl is again closed due to maintenance.

Leonardo da Vinci has a violin made from a horse’s skull, with silver on.

There seems no middle ground with borscht.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 23 1907
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The first pedestrian has been killed by a self-driving car.

Starbucks employees do not capitalise their As.

The sound of the bagpipe fattens the sheep and lambs of all Arabia.

125 academic papers mention Adam Smyth.

At 53 one is too old for Everest.

Moldiv Smooth Skin will make your skin flawless.

Babies learn the practicalities of distance by repeatedly punching themselves in the face.

Gustav Mahler put the word ‘schwer‘ beside certain passages in his musical scores.

In a fundraising speech, American president Donald Trump has said he made up facts during a meeting with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Cutlery should always be kept in the top drawer.

Easter Island – or ‘Rapa Nui’ – belongs to Chile.

Poetry readings are the worst form of entertainment that has ever been invented.

A five-star review is a five-star review.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, September 4 1906
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There is a whale whose voice is too low to communicate with other whales.

Seatbelts do not statistically improve your chances of surviving a car accident.

London’s Mithraic temple is buried deep beneath the new European headquarters of Bloomberg, the financial information company.

Aeneas and Euclid are both in limbo.

The name Lezard is not a Basque name.

One human male ejaculation contains enough sperm to impregnate every fertile female in the Western world.

All traditions must start somewhere.

Bell’s whisky doesn’t make you want to drink Bell’s whisky

Daniel O’Donnell will go live on Facebook from his show in Branson, MO, today.

We have no choice but to believe in free will.

The administration of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi has charged dozens of Burmese civil-society activists under a law that restricts criticism of the government.

The nation is divided over the John Lewis Christmas ad.

Clichés are piss.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, August 28 1906

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Armadillos are incapable of irony.

Greek prostitutes bill their clients in six-minute units.

One of the stars of early-Nineties cult TV show Twin Peaks was called Suburbis Polaski.

It is rarely useful to have studied Latin.

A ‘wineglassful’ is an official unit of measurement among apothecaries.

The youngest woman to achieve the title of Grandmaster of chess was India’s Humpy Koneru. Her first name is a contracted form of ‘champion’.

It is difficult to dry your hair in a Dyson Airblade™.

Children blink about 5 million times a year.

Vegetal, celery-like, ham-like, or soapy flavours are inappropriate.

There are only 25 real tennis courts in the UK, and 45 worldwide.

A car for sale in Nelson, New Zealand, probably won’t be bought after it burst into flames during a test drive.

Call The Midwife‘s Helen used to be afraid of Trevor Nunn.

In China, eggs are cooked in the urine of young boys.

— The Nelson Evening Mail, June 22 1912

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In English maritime law a ship is not ‘wrecked’ if the cat survives.

Ezra Pound heard many performances of the Bellringers’ Guild.

Kale is a winter vegetable.

Napoleon’s troops shot the nose off the Egyptian sphinx for target practice.

If you put a chameleon on tartan it will explode.

You are twice as likely to crash while texting than drink-driving. (So if you need to send an urgent text, put an inebriated friend behind the wheel, instead.)

1% of marmalade sales are to people under 28.

Beauty and the Beast isn’t the first Disney movie for LGBT audiences.

The Welsh character is an interesting study.

John Travolta is 63 years old.

Turtles find it very difficult to look happy.

You never know with clowns.

Canadian passports have images of ice hockey in them.