We’ve never made much of our wedding anniversary. Though I think that four years ago we flew back from Kyiv very early in the morning, after a truncated night. And I offered to buy Susie an anniversary breakfast in the airport at Frankfurt, with lots of Bavarian sausages and scrambled eggs. But she didn’t feel up for it.
This year we did better. We went out to tea at The Ivy in St Andrew Square. With a voucher that was a gift last year from Felicity and Ian. It was a damp, grey afternoon. But we sat among profusion of plants, and enjoyed a trio of savoury dishes, including a smoked salmon and cream cheese bun, some excellent scones with cream and strawberry jam. And some more exotic stuff, including a creme brulée. Much to my annoyance my MacBook has just gone all bolshy about providing the appropriate accents. The tea was preceded by a glass of champagne and was all round excellent. An afternoon mug of tea and a digestive biscuit will never be quite the same again.
New Year resolutions
I’ve never made much of New Year resolutions either. Not since primary school days, when I may have written these January good intentions into my Schoolboy’s Diary. Setting down on paper good resolutions seems a bit like a hostage to fortune. Romans 7:19 comes to mind: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing”.
That said, I am a bit challenged by two things. First, I was given last year a rather forbidding NHS hand-out on How to prepare for hip surgery. Which I dutifully filed, and then put away for a rainy days. As I already have some exercises prescribed by our local [very good] physio. And I find those hard enough. But now that a hip replacement may almost be in sight, and trying to learn from Susie’s surgery in Lithuania at the end of October, I realise that I need to get myself into the best shape possible before any hip replacement. If I am going to profit from it. So – one resolution, posted here in full view, is a commitment to looking at the worksheet. And doing it !
Sort of relatedly, we watched a television programme last night in which a life coach, a would-be Michael Mosley replacement, and his Asian doctor colleague looked at the health and the diet, and the refrigerator, of a couple in their sixties. Both were determined to see their grand-children grow up. But both were a bit overweight, and a bit casual about their diet. In the course of the programme the couple were weaned off their addiction to severely processed foods, had much of the contents of their fridge thrown out, were switching to a vegetable heavy and fermented food diet; and were losing kilograms of weight and inches from their waistlines. Biscuits, it is clear, are as addictive as tobacco. Which we all know in our heads. But a significant change of diet is as difficult as giving up smoking. [Which I dd aged 45.] Yes, it’s a great idea. But no, preferably not today.
The Night Manager
Talking of television, we are now several episodes into The Night Manager. The new series has been very heavily plugged since before Christmas as a return of the much-praised first season eight years on. And which again stars Tom Hiddleston as the former hotel manager turned British intelligence operator Jonathan Pine. Who is again fighting an urgent battle against a conspiracy to destabilise a nation. And who, as in the first series, does not know who he can trust. [ I react badly to films and series that are over-promoted. I may be the only person of my generation who never saw The Sound of Music. Even though it was on for three years in Oxford. And I’ve taken against The Traitors which is publicised by the BBC morning, noon, and night.]
Is The Night Manager any good ? Well, up to a point.There are a series of glossy locations, which purport to be [and may actually be] Colombia. And there is tension and episode-ending cliffhangers. But the two most charismatic characters from the earlier series, Hugh Laurie as Dickie Roper and Tom Hollander as Major ‘Corky’, Roper’s right-hand man, are both absent from the early episodes of the new series. As is Olivia Colman, of the Foreign Office’s Enforcement Agency. As is Elizabeth Debicki, as Jed, Roper’s [six foot tall] girlfriend and Pine’s love interest. Which places an enormous burden in the new series on Tom Hiddleston, again playing Jonathan Pine, now known as Alex Goodwin, a low-level MI6 surveillance officer. In truth I think that they are just milking the John le Carré connection [two of his sons are named in the credits], building a series around a two-dimensional character. Who is more like James Bond than George Smiley.
For my money the best screen adaptations of le Carre’s books are the 7-part 1979 BBC series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, directed by John Irvin, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley, supported by an all-star cast. And the six-part follow-up Smiley’s People, shown by the BBC in 1982, directed by Simon Langton. Again starring Alec Guinness with Anthony Bate, Bernard Hepton, Beryl Reid, and Siân Phillips. With an honourable mention for A Perfect Spy,.broadcast by the BBC in 1987, directed by Peter Smith, with Peter Egan playing the title character. And an honourable mention too for the 1965 film, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, directed by Martin Ritt, and starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. Shot in black and white. Arguably the only le Carré film that was a [deserved] box office success.
Looking Ahead
A recent call to the NHS Appointments Office suggested that hip surgery will/should be ‘within 6-9 months of your appointment with the consultant’. Which was on October 7th last year. It starts to seem like a long wait. Though it could be a few weeks earlier if I am prepared to go to Kirkcaldy. Or possibly to the Outer Hebrides.
Meanwhile there is the Six Nations rugby on the horizon in a week or so. And I am going to finish [re-]reading Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. His twelve-volume series that tracks a collection of upper class English acquaintances and friends through a series of encounters between 1914 and 1970. And often compared to Proust.
And I want to read The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger, a German Jewish writer, a novel about a German family in Berlin in the early 1930s, written at the time when Hitler and the Nazis were coming to power in the Weimar Republic. Which I was given by my friend Pete after his last visit to Edinburgh.
And when we are both mobile again I want to go back to Biarritz. Sadly a bit too late for its Edwardian heyday. But conveniently accessible on a direct flight from Edinburgh. And also to the Orkneys. And possibly to the Shetlands. And possibly to a new-to-us Mediterranean island. Maybe Malta. Or Cyprus. Or Crete. This starts to sound like a Bucket [and Spade] List.
January 2026
Through a glass darkly 