Wayne Shorter - 'Emanon'

My latest blog for KindofJazz.

It was 35 years ago today

This poster adorns the wall of my office. It was rolled up in a tube for 34 years, but now it's in pride of place.
    This was the world premiere of The Style Council live in 1983. The tour began in Zurich and went around several of Europe's largest cities.
    My role as sax player was a tiny one, but we went on to record the sublime Café Bleu, which was largely slated at the time.
    Little did I know that I'd still be looking back on that time with fondness, some three decades later.

'Not About Heroes' - a century since the end of the war to end all wars

Everyone should read the poetry of Wilfred Owen. His war poems should be required reading for every politician before they are elected.

The current touring production of Stephen Macdonald's magnificent play Not About Heroes is a moving and deeply emotional portrayal of the relationship between Owen and fellow war poet and campaigner Siegfried Sassoon.

There was one moment - as Sassoon (Daniel Llewellyn Williams) sweeps a pile of poems and letters off his desk and onto the stage - when you could hear a pin drop in Letchworth's Broadway Theatre. It was one of those pieces of physical action that is a metaphor for the pointless destruction of life that is at the heart of the play. And, indeed, at the heart of both Sassoon and Owen's poetry.

Owen himself (played brilliantly by Owain Gwynn) is a man driven by the need to experience war in order to tell of its brutality. The entire poem slips between poetry and letters, with the relationship between the men themselves depicted in their own words.

We are approaching the centenary of Owen's death a year after he was released from Craiglockhart War Hospital and a week before the end of the war. It's fitting that Not About Heroes is touring the country now, and I suspect the performance in London on 4 November will be a particularly difficult one for the two actors.

A pure woman and a flawed author

Telling the story of a stage production of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Thomas Hardy’s friendship  with its leading lady, the stage play A Pure Woman is a brilliant evocation of the era and the writer.

    Throughout the play, Hardy is writing poetry, some of it love poems to his friend or mistress, a young woman six decades his junior and half the age of his second wife. The moment Florence Hardy discovers these poems on her husband’s desk is heartbreaking. There’s no evidence that the affair was anything more than inappropriate infatuation on Hardy’s part, but even the suspicion of it is sad.
    The three actors told the story beautifully, shedding light on the man who created one of English literature’s finest novels.
    Flawed authors are often as interesting as flawed characters. Tess’s flaws are largely imposed on her by others’ actions or inactions - Joan Durbeyfield has a lot to answer for, in failing to prepare her daughter for the potentially disastrous attentions of men like Alec d’Urberville. That doesn’t mean they’re any less tragic.
    Watching an elderly man (the actor was significantly younger than Hardy’s 84 years) pursue a young woman whose only intention is to follow her dreams on stage was also somewhat tragic, although with very different results.

A new weekend read

The newly redesigned Guardian Weekly has become my weekend reading material. Somehow, being a magazine format makes the words and photographs work better, especially in my down-time.

    There's always been the right balance of brief articles that allow the reader to catch up on the previous week's events and opinions, together with longer features bringing the in-depth analysis done so well in both the Guardian and Observer.
    Even when they're small - like the faces on page 7 of former Interpol chief Meng Hongwei and Nobel prize winners Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad - the photographs are of the same high standard one has come to expect from the Guardian stable. Writ large, they're even better. The AP shot of Dewayne Johnson on page 24 shows the character of the man, etched into every painful line of the man whose cancer has been proved to be caused by Monsanto products.
    I've rediscovered the Guardian Weekly this week and I'm glad I have. My subscription is in the post.

A tale of two libraries

I spent most of Thursday afternoon and evening in two of London's finest libraries.
Firstly, at the British Library, where I wrote for a couple of hours while enjoying delicious peppermint tea.

Then, I went to an event at the London Library in St James'. A very different environment for a social event as part of my membership of the Society of Authors. It was a delight to meet several other writers and an illustrator.

The surroundings in both libraries are conducive to writing and when I am bored of my various writing haunts in Hitchin, I know where to head.

A beautiful, tactile new skill

You're never too late to learn a new skill. This is proof that I'm making progress in learning chess for the first time.

After just a few days, I won a game!

That was starting from scratch, with some online learning at the weekend, before I bought my own (child's) chess set.

This is one of the most beautiful and tactile items I've ever owned.

Now I've started learning online and with the set in front of me. It's amazing how quickly you can learn the fundamental rules of the game, especially with the help of an online friend.

When I won this game, I could not have been happier. Chess is something I'll now be practising - sometimes online and most often in real life.