etnobofin

Benjamin Britten – For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry – from Rejoice in the Lamb, Op. 30
Choir of King’s College Cambridge/Britten – Choral Works [Buy]

Random play is great. Was walking up the hill today from Edgbaston to the Moseley shops, listening to the iPod, on random as usual.

During a quiet gap between streams of traffic, the iPod hits on Benjamin Britten‘s arrangement of For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey, a poem by Christopher Smart, an 18th century poet whose apparent mental illness also inspired his great Jubilate Agno series, written while he was imprisoned in an asylum in London.

For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry
Christopher Smart (1722-1771)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.

For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthy he goes in quest of food.

For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.

For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.

For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacous of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Savior.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord’s poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually–Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master’s bosom.

For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon rat, very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God’s light about him both wax and fire.
For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.

For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb are two comedians who are hard to avoid in Britain today. Mitchell in particular is carving out a niche on the panel show circuit, appearing on Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week and several Radio 4 shows.

Mitchell and Webb’s best work as a double act is on Channel 4′s Peep Show (which is actually written by others), but occasionally their own sketch comedy approaches genius. This is a scene from That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC2:

Four views of Merton College Chapel…

April 9th, 2006 (the morning after my arrival in Oxford)

December 22nd, 2006 – in winter fog

April 8th, 2007 – another spring

April 6th, 2008 – after snowfall

September 21st, 2008 (the afternoon I left Oxford)

The Discovery of France, by Graham Robb,
Picador, 2007 [Buy]

The Gorges du Tarn (Photo: Patrick Giraud)

The Gorges du Tarn in southern France are the largest canyon system in Europe, up to 500 metres deep and up to 1500 metres wide, cutting through the heart of the Cévennes. Yet the most amazing fact about this rather large piece of geology is that it was entirely unknown to the French government until 1905.

Until the 19th Century, vast expanses of France remained unexplored, inhabited by a peasant population strongly attached to their local pays, speaking myriad dialects and leading lives mostly independent of the elite minority ruling from Paris.

Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France describes how modern France began to coalesce into a coherent geographical, political and economic unit following the French Revolution. The story told by Robb is necessarily circuitous and complex, with many diversions into curious sub-plots that will suprise most Anglo-Saxon readers, (and probably many French readers too).

Robb is concerned to evoke the experience of the ‘everyday’ French citizen outside Paris, and illustrate how the new France (whether Napoleonic Empire or paternal République) not only brought enormous progress but also erased many lines of custom, territory and language that could be traced back 2 millenia to the time of the Roman Empire.

Shepherds on stilts in the Landes, southwest France

The Industrial Revolution arrived late in France, and witchcraft and Catholicism cohabited in the rural hinterland well into the late 19th century. In many places the village priest (always an outsider) was tolerated only because he was the sole person in the district who could read  – or speak – French.

During this slow emergence into the modern world, a majority of French citizens spoke languages other than French – including hundreds of dialects of Breton, Basque, Franco-Provençal, Alsatian and Occitan.  The introduction of a universal national education system in the mid-1800s was as much concerned with imposing the ‘civilised’ language of Paris on the population and elminating local patois as it was about implementing the republican ideals of equal opportunity.

The advance towards a unified nation occured in fits and starts, with many of the supposed agents of “progress” actually proving counter-productive. For example the building of new national roads and railways promoted growth of towns along their route, but actually served to impoverish and further isolate some regions, such as the Auvergne, which happened to be bypassed by the grand transport schemes launched from Paris.

Illustration from Francois Guizot’s Histoire de la civilisation en France (1830)

It is perhaps appropriate that it should be an English author who writes this story, for the English have for a long time had a complicated love affair with France. In fact many of the best source texts for descriptions of French landscape and society in the 18th and 19th centuries come from English explorers and writers.

Graham Robb accomplished his own exploration of France by bicycle, and he followed up his travels with 4 years of research. Despite 30+ pages of footnotes, the book remains incredibly readable.  As a specialist in 19th century French literature, Robb has written biographies of Victor Hugo, Rimbaud and Balzac (and wrote his Oxford doctorate in the field), but his writing is never laden by excessively academic concerns.

In some ways the entire book resembles a leisurely but thoughtful bicycle journey. Plenty of scope is allowed for detours to admire incidental details or episodes. Anecdotes and sideways leaps into ethnography, linguistics and cartography add spice to Robb’s storytelling. History is rarely linear, and when presented like this, it’s invariably fascinating.

After reading The Discovery of France, I was left feeling just slightly jealous, because Graham Robb has pretty much written exactly the sort of book that I’d love to write if I had the talent, time and brains.

Bilingual French/Breton road signs in Vannes

Just for fun… a video of the Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band playing I Can’t Dance, I Got Ants in my Pants, the Nat Gonella classic from 1934.

Filmed at the Jericho Tavern (see the recent Oxford pub guide) on a Friday night with a near-sellout crowd. The trumpet solo is a bit boring, but it was late in the evening and the trumpet player was getting tired….

Not many people these days, even in Britain, have heard of Nat Gonella. In the 1920s, he was the first British musician to take jazz out of the hotel salons and play it to a working class audience in the music halls of London… it was a quiet revolution that changed popular entertainment in Britain forever.

Gonella’s style of jazz was raucous, populist and sing-a-long: a far cry from most of the jazz we hear today. I hope the performance above recaptures some of that spirit – if it doesn’t, here’s Nat Gonella’s band in the mid-1930s in a clip filmed by Pathé:

The teams on the BBC’s Mock the Week take on Sarah Palin… the jokes are mostly ad hominem (ad feminem?), but very funny…

“It’s a sad state of affairs when you make George W. Bush look like an informed progressive.”
- Andy Parsons

Alongside Radio 4 and Simon Amstell, a weekend afternoon ale (or cider) with mates at a pub is one of the great delights of living in this country. Pubs form such an important part of British life and you can’t (and shouldn’t) avoid them.

Somebody told me that Oxford boasts something like 100 pubs inside the ring road.  It’s amazing how many of them you can manage to visit over a couple of years without really trying.  So the pubs listed below are just the ones I like, or they’re at least notorious enough to merit their own wikipedia entries…

The Eagle and Child : (aka “The Bird and Baby” or “The Fowl and Foetus”) on St Giles. This is where C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein used to hang out. Not my favourite, but the snugs by the front door are the perfect venue for a friendly argument on a winter evening.

The Bear: Serving beer to thirsty students since 1242, the Bear is notable mostly for its age (old even by Oxford standards), a framed collection of 5000 ties and its inconceivably small size.

The Hollybush Inn: situated on Osney Island, this unpretentious local pub is where Radiohead (and the Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band) played their first gig.

The Head of the River: at Folly Bridge, by the Isis in the centre of town. Chow down on a good solid pub lunch while watching tourists fall out of their punts.

The Hobgoblin: one of the only pubs I can remember on Cowley Road (after an evening on Cowley Road many people don’t remember much). Sponsored by Oxfordshire’s Wychwood Brewery, it’s one of the few places in the city you can rely on getting a pint of Hobgoblin. Yum.

The Jolly Boatman: another waterside pub on the Oxford Canal near Kidlington. Good but not outstanding food and a reasonable beer selection. The real attraction of this pub is that it’s an easy 7 mile cycle trip up the canal path from the city – the perfect activity on a cool summer’s day.

The Trout Inn: a nice 30min walk up the Isis to Godstow brings you to rightly famous Trout Inn (mentioned in Brideshead Revisited). Popular, and hard to get a table. In summer, the Aspalls Organic Suffolk Cyder is highly recommended. In winter, try their venison hotpot.

The White Hart: A good alternative to the Trout, in the nearby village of Wytham. Fantastic menu. In summer, you can play the traditional Oxfordshire pub game “Aunt Sally “

Jude the Obscure: A late contender for best pub in Jericho, without the chi-chi atmosphere of some of the other Jericho bars. Revolving selection of ales.

The Turf Tavern: Nestled down an alley between Hertford College and New College, the Turf is impossible to find for Oxford n00bs, but worth the effort. It’s good fun elbowing your way past the crowds of undergrads to access the bar and its exceptional rotating menu of real ales.

The Lamb and Flag: owned by St John’s College, but don’t let that stop you. It’s cosy and unpretentious, and empty out of term. Try the Lamb and Flag special ale if it’s in season.

The Kings Arms: at the far end of the Broad, this pub is all-student, all the time, and most of the leading politicians, lawyers, writers and scientists of the realm have propped up its bar at some point.  It’s old, uncomplicated and most of the really serious work of the university takes place here.

The Wheatsheaf: Wheatsheaf Passage, just off the High near Carfax. Lots of bands, good jazz nights on Thursdays with rotating UK/international artists. Go for the music, not the beer.

The Jericho Tavern: Walton Street, Jericho. Local bands play here, and it’s where Radiohead and Supergrass first gained a following in the early 90′s. Ridiculously popular on Friday nights. Unless you’re a Jericho resident, you’re likely to only ever come here if you want to hear the music.

Which are the best of these? Well, if you had just one day in Oxford, I’d definitely take you to the Turf. Unless you were a favourite aunt or a parent, in which case I’d reserve a table at The Trout or the White Hart for dinner.  For a quiet everyday pint away from the tourists and students, Jude the Obscure ticks most boxes in terms of atmosphere and drinks selection.

Remind me again, why the heck am I leaving Oxford?

*This blog supports responsible drinking. Respect alcohol, respect yourself. Enjoy local pubs in moderation.

If you avoid the 16 licensed kebab vans that appear nightly in the centre of town, there are some really good places to eat out in Oxford. Before I move to another city and forget them all, here’s a list of favoruite Oxford restaurants, mostly for my future reference, but it may be useful to any readers who visit sometime:

Al- Shami: an unusual location for a Lebanese restaurant – opposite the synagogue, in a residential street in Jericho. Great food, reasonable prices, lots of vegetarian options, always full.

Aziz: Beside Folly Bridge. Upper range dishes from the subcontinent, with a terrace overlooking the Isis

Chiang Mai Kitchen: Kemp Hall Passage, off the High. If you think that eating Thai food in 16th century Elizabethan townhouse is too bizarre, you’ll be won over by the food. Book to ensure a table!

Chutneys: Cnr New Inn Hall Street and St Michael’s Street. Good Indian place with great vegetarian options, although it often seems overrun by students from St Peters and Brasenose Annexe.

Edamame: Of all Oxford’s secret corners, Edamame is one worth discovering! By far the best Japanese restaurant in the city, Edamame also has the strangest opening hours. So count yourself lucky if you manage to arrive when it’s open and when there’s a table free.  Go on Thursdays out of term for sushi night – delicious!

Jamie’s Italian: George Street. Jamie Oliver’s new Italian restaurant. Excellent Italian food at very good prices. No reservations – turn up and queue. The perfect venue for a thirtieth birthday party!

Qumins: St Clements. Hands down the best Indian place in town, a short walk south of Magdalen Bridge. Great place to burn the tongues off American visitors.

The Gardener’s Arms: Plantation Road in Jericho. Down-to-earth pub that also happens to be Oxford’s best vegetarian restaurant, but long waits for service on Sunday afternoons.

GBK: George Street. A little slice of Aotearoa. They serve Mac’s Gold and burgers, kiwis-style. This is all you need to know.

Mortons: Great takeaway sandwiches. They have three outlets in town, in the Covered Markets, on New Inn Hall Street and on the Broad opposite Trinity College

Noodle Bar: Gloucester Green. Cheapest good eating in town. Fast service, and always full of everybody.

Anchor Inn:  unpretentious pub restaurant at the north end of Jericho, at the end of a nice evening walk up the canal – very popular and good food.

Next post: The Pub Guide

Update 13.9.2008: Added Edamame after Mari pointed out that I had missed it out!

(Or: Towards a Recontextualisation of Art based on a Sliding Scale of Badly Drawn Monsters)

Donny Hathaway – Love, Love, Love
From Extensions of a Man [Buy] [iTunes]

The morning after a fun Friday night out in London, dodging raindrops between pubs and engaging in some good conversations with people I don’t see enough of, the iPod alarm clock woke me with a randomly selected tune, which just happened to be Donny Hathaway’s Love,Love,Love. Normally waking up is not particularly fun, especially on Saturdays, but this was one of those moments when the tune completely fitted with the good memories of the previous evening.

Which got me thinking – was the appreciation of that particular moment and that particular song enhanced by knowledge of Donny Hathaway’s career and his tragically short life?

Does enjoyment of art increase with familiarity? Or can our engagement with art be inhibited by too much knowledge about the context of its creation? And how does our knowledge interact with the specificity of the moment in which the art is consumed/observed/heard?

A music geek or an academic might argue that one’s enjoyment and appreciation of any given musical performance is enhanced by extensive study or obsessive fandom. When this relationship is expressed in a graph, the Appreciation Curve rises proportionally as one’s knowledge (Ka) of an artist/artform/genre increases, and as a function of specificity of the moment in which the music is heard (Sc).

Fig. 1

For example – in Figure 1, the anonymous elevator music heard on the way to work would lie near the bottom left side of the Appreciation Curve, whereas for a jazz fan, hearing Coltrane’s A Love Supreme at the funeral of a close friend or family member might rank very high to the right hand side on the curve.

However, this neat Unified Theory falls down rapidly when tested against real world experience. For example, Maurice Ravel‘s String Quartet in F Major can hit you between the ears with the same force of beauty, whether you’re hearing Ravel for the first time or for the 1,000th. And speaking personally, my irrational love of Senorita by Justin Timberlake is completely out of proportion to any instinct for good taste or indeed my knowledge of Mr Timberlake’s career, which is rather limited.

So knowledge and context interact in far more intricate ways than we might expect. Therefore the graph must be modified somewhat to illustrate a rather more complex reality, as in Figure 2:

Fig. 2

The implications of this revised model of music appreciation, which we might call the “Ball of String Theory” are quite startling, and are twofold:

1. Sometimes you really should stay in bed on Saturday mornings

2. Clever theories will come back and bite you on the arse, as demonstrated in Figure 3:

Fig. 3

In a couple of weeks I leave Oxford for another English city … Oxford’s provided a special place and time in my life, and I’ll be taking many memories on board (hopefully along with a few bottles of Wychwood Hobgoblin) when I drive north up the M40. So I made a Youtube “photo essay” as a tribute to the place.

The aim was to make a montage of a ‘different’ Oxford from what the tourists see, but it turned out I took most of my best photos in the historic centre of town (I live near the city centre anyway). Hopefully video still gives a flavour of what it’s been like to actually live in a city like Oxford with its traditions, water meadows, river walks and all the lovely people I’ve met here.

The music is by a local Oxford band, Danny and the Champions. Their self-titled album is available through Amazon UK or iTunes.