Look back in bemusement....

[wemyss]

Don’t mention the Ashes.

_______________________________

You know, there can be little doubt that one is resolutely in the provinces when the headlines - the headlines, mind you, for the Beeb’s regional coverage page - for one’s county run to, ‘Neighbour hears smoke alarm sound’, and, ‘Girl refuses man’s offer of lift’.  Not that there’s not the

Comments

[shezan]

Those Frank Johnson quotes are utter classics. The Torygraph had some more. The one on Roy Hattersley wasn't 'alf bad.Unsuccessfully, as it will now emerge, I had resolved from the outset that there were two subjects which had received sufficient airing on this page and would not be mentioned further: Wagner and Mr Roy Hattersley.

Concerning the one: nobody in his right mind would deny his capacity for the sublime, his surges of lyricism, his sheer weight and scale, but there is also his torrential prolixity, his essentially outdated nineteenth-century ideological attitude towards his art, his foggy symbolism and an epic tedium which modern audiences should surely not be expected to endure. These are some of the drawbacks of Mr Hattersley.

Indeed yes.

[wemyss]

I'm especially fond of his accounts of Maggie and Ted Heath exchanging glares, which, God knows, was a regular occurrence.

Re: Indeed yes.

[shezan]

Where did you find yours? Are there collections I might get?

Twunt???? (good one...)

[sgt_majorette]

Well, okay. If anyone's authorized to coin words, you certainly are.

Oh, heavens, not mine at all, coined long ago by some folk genius.

[wemyss]

I cannot take credit for it.

Dunbar I'm not.

[bufo_viridis]

Ashes to Ashes!

As for the sandwiches, sandwiches are okay, it's the "fashionable improving" of traditional stuff like Christmas turkey (for you) or fish (for us). Improved tradition, an oxymoron, if I ever know one.