Number Seventy News

Just to acknowledge the best performances of Shakespeare’s tragic heros that I’ve seen:

David Warner as  Hamlet in Peter Hall’s production for the RSC at the Aldwych back in the 60s - the tortured scholar.

Olivier as Othello at the Old Vic, also, I think, in the 60s - possibly early 70s.  The athleticism of the man !

Timothy West as Lear in the English Stage Co production a few years ago - which came to the York Theatre Royal - it moved me to tears.

And Patrick Stewart’s Stalinesque dictator Macbeth at the Gielgud last year -chilling.

A privilege to have seen them.

Some while ago someone wrote to the Guardian’s “Notes and Queries” to ask why roadies never acknowledged other cyclists.  My (unpublished) reply is below:

Dear Notes and Queries,

The poseurs with their fancy gear do not acknowledge fellow cyclists for one simple reason - embarrassment at being improperly dressed.      The correct wear for cycling in the countryside is a flat tweed cap, a cotton shirt, perhaps with a woven wool tie, a sleeveless pullover, a tweed jacket, matching tweed plus twos, argyll socks, and brogues. Lycra is mere underwear.

Well, actually, “Brrr  Paris”,  in that there was an extraordinarily chilly little wind whistling up the Seine and round the Tuileries and up and down the steps of the Metro (of which more anon).

Eurostar did its bit very nicely and on time - I must say St Pancras beats Gare du Nord for facilities, though both seem to think that Eurostar travellers have capacious bladders, in spite of all the on-station opportunities provided to fill them. Oh, and at Gare Du Nord, you just walk off the train and into Paris, while arriving at St. P you follow a circuitous route past passport desks (unpersoned) and customs (ditto).  I suspect it’s a way to make sure you pass the shops on your way out.

The Paris Metro has what seem to be quaintly old fashioned stock on some lines, though now all in smart green and grey livery, and a number of lines have the stock with supplementary rubber-tyred wheels.  I have always assumed these are for faster acceleration and deceleration - happy to have this confirmed if anyone knows for certain.  Cité Station, on the Île de la Cité is a gem - big globe lights on elegantly curved brackets, and then the access to platforms is down stairs in a huge circular, lined with steel, hole in the ground - the guts more on display than usual.

What did we do ?  Went up the Eiffel Tower at dusk - right to the top.  Main feature of Eiffel tower apart from the view is the queues.  But worth it. Feels a bit like clambering up the inside of the Forth Bridge must feel like - though the steel is a different section.

Good restaurants. “Au Roi du Pot au Feu” in Rue Vignon - huge hot pot.  “Au Lys d’Agent” on Rue St Louis en L’Isle”  - excellent lunch-type meals inc crêpes, and “Au Petit Bistrot” on the Rue Mouffetard - again, excellent food on a fixed price menu.  One other place we ate provided adequate food but it didn’t seem to bear a close resemblance to what we had ordered - but by that time we were desperate due to the time spent queuing at the Tour Eiffel.  (Did you know, by the way, that the Eiffel Tower comes out in sparkly very bright lights every half hour or so ? - it’s presumably to titillate the palate jaded by mere floodlighting).

As we know, there are shops for everything - there’s an Elvis shop in Paris, and in a shop called “La Droguerie” you can get a million and one different kinds of …..      wool !

There’s an absolutely huge record shop called FNAC in the Les Halles shopping centre - but Dussman in Berlin is better, to my mind.  From the -3 floor of the Halles shopping you go UP a couple of storeys to the Underground.

Oh, and Monet’s waterlilies in the Orangerie are just stunning.

The Portland Street pedestrians have completed their winter programme, apart from the final stroll, where we play away. Northallerton, this year.  Missed a few outings, but there were some highlights and lowlights to record on the ones I managed.

Lowlights first. As ever, the Groves have little to recommend them, both the Independent and the Castle Howard Ox seeming to find customers quite a surprise, not quite sure what to do with them, and how do you keep this beer stuff anyway ?  Over on North Street, the First Hussar, if that’s what it’s currently called, had installed a huge shiny chrome dispenser of fizzy lagers in its back bar, though real beer could be brought through from the front.  I hadn’t been in the King’s Arms for about 20 years, and shan’t do so again until old age has made me forget how awful it is.  The Fox on Holgate Road used to be quite smart, just after its redesignation as a heritage pub, but it badly needs refurbishing again.

Highlights ?  Well, I had the best pint of the season in the Bay Horse on Blossom Street, Deuchars, but somehow even better there than it usually is.  The Maltings is always worth a visit , though I’ve known comfier seating. Bizarrely, we found the Three Cranes a real treat - a few dedicated elderly locals shifting their pints - just a cosy sort of spot, and with the sort of 60s music you could sing along to as you were leaving.  So different from the Hansom CAb where most of us were 40 years older than most of them.

Thursday night is hazardous - it’s a popular one for pub quizzes. We escaped from the Brigadier Gerard just in time but hit the one at the Trafalgar Bay fair and square. As it turned out, we would have won it if we had entered.

And we finished, washed up and weary, in the York Arms, with a coal fire on a warm evening - we just couldn’t summon the energy to cross the road to the Three Legged Mare.

So we’ll have to start there next year !

We had the pond cleared out.  “Watch out for the fish,” we said.  There were no fish.  Sometime in the autumn they must have given up their fishy souls to the great aquarium in the sky - or possibly ended their days in the beak of a great heron in the sky, or the paws of a small hungry cat.  I enjoyed counting them, but I’ve been advised not to acquire any more fish till the pond can be improved - more sunlight, more oxygen, more circulating water.  A solar powered water feature is surely the answer.

Excellent evening listening to Don Walls read his poetry and David Ward Maclean sing his own songs.  Don’s current work is looking back to his childhood in the thirties - evocative poems about growing up in York - with great affection for his family and a sharp eye for what was going on down the lane. And some, too, of the poems which have made him York pubs favourite bard - quirky and amusing, and love poems too.

David Ward Maclean plays a lovely guitar, and writes tender and reflective songs, and with a bite too.  And they make a great duo.

A friend in Norway recently asked me to explain what D.H. Lawrence  might have envisaged when he mentioned a tram conductor “swinging round the pole”.  No, it was not what all the jolly boys and girls did in “Summer Holiday”, when Cliff Richard and chums took a London bus - the sort with an open platform, divided by a pole, at the back, to Athens, singing as they swung,  but the need to swing the pole which collected the electricity from the overhead wire to face the other way when the tram reversed at the terminus.  I was, of course, happy to oblige, pointing out on the way that Lawrence had conflated two ideas about tram termini, as he mentioned the tram “sidling round the loop” which, if true, would have obviated the need to swing round the pole, as the loop turned the whole tram.  Realising that here was a possible whole new area of interest in Lawrence scholarship, my friend turned to the tram museum in Oslo for confirmation of my interpretation.  All confirmed, and the Oslo expert referred to me as a “ferrovial friend”, an appelation I accept with pride.

Incidentally, speaking of ferrovial non-sequiturs, the folk-song, “City of New Orleans”, about the through train from Chicago to New Orleans, talks of “nighttime on the City of New Orleans, changing cars in Memphis Tennessee”.  Who or what is changing cars. Not the passengers, surely, this was a through train. Probably adding or subtracting coaches from the consist. But there - a crux!