Monday to Friday of last week was almost perfect summer weather. Pleasantly warm, blue skies, majestic cumulonimbus clouds and sunshine. Realizing that this summer has been very hit and miss and may well continue to be so - it has rained for the last three days - I decided to walk to Hampstead Heath. I make this delightful five mile round trip fairly regularly but I hadn’t for a while so off I went. Hampstead Heath is a jewel in the crown of North London. London has many fantastic wild spaces, Richmond Park, Sydenham Hill Wood and Barnes Common for example, but ‘the heath’ is my favourite. It has a unique vibe and romance, as painters including John Constable, since time immemorial, would attest. It has the views, the historical pub, The Spaniards Inn, the glorious Georgian masterpiece Kenwood house. It has it all. A natural space which remains pleasantly wild, you can look across at the vast concrete and steel jungle that is contemporary London, from high up on the heath, whilst simultaneously watching bees feed on plants which have grown in this very spot for thousands of years. It's a beautiful juxtaposition. St Paul’s Cathedral, the London eye, the Shard… London is a feast for the senses and this view is one I never tire of looking at. In all seasons too. The lushness of the trees at the moment and the hum of insects is most welcome and perhaps this is my favourite time of all. The crickets in August are pretty good too, chirping away. 

My plan was to see butterflies and I wasn’t disappointed: the meadow brown with its eye-like wing spot being the most prominent. There were also a cabbage white or two, a red admiral, a small blue one I couldn't identify, and several amusingly-named 'gatekeepers'. I’d have no doubt seen more if I’d spent more time or explored a bit more but I’m too lazy and impatient to be a true aficionado. Nature isn’t bothered with whether we spot it or not. It doesn’t have the ‘look at me’ narcissism of humans. It’s not there purely for our pleasure. Sometimes you just need to sit it out but I don’t tend to. I did see a dragonfly too, almost certainly an emperor due to its size but it wasn’t hanging about so neither was I. This is not to talk down my experience, short as it was, it was truly delightful. Bees and butterflies may not have the power of a golden eagle or the breathtaking presence of a dolphin but they are amongst my favorite things in the natural world.

A bee on a flower, in particular, has me spellbound. Butterflies have the beauty and the fragility but bees really are the work horses. They are quaker like in their unwillingness to waste a second of time. Completely focussed on what they have to do, they work with calm precision and dedication to their task. A bee on lavender is my contribution to the “still life” movement 2020 style. And they don’t fight either. If they find themselves around a flower with another bee they just move to the next one. Busy as a bee indeed. As a human I like down-time, leisure time. A pleasure which seems to be denied to bees, but if I do take inspiration from them it's to cherish the short time in which we share their lives with them over the summer months. If you have a garden or a park nearby go have a look. You might find a Bumblebee - the most prominent bee both in terms of size and noise. Or a Honey Bee, the classic bee we all know due to their eponymous product. You might even come across a solitary bee - much smaller than honey bees, they don’t form colonies, hence the name. Look out for them. Let’s not forget that these pollinators, as well as the hover flies - which are common too - are vital to our food supplies. Bees deserve to be cherished and nurtured as we do our children. This is no exaggeration, without bees we won’t eat. They like Lavender and Buddleia amongst other plants if you're lucky enough to have a garden and want to help. But the best thing to do is go to the garden centre and see where the bees are landing. They also like bramble, if you have any growing wild, and my wild hydrangea is proving popular too.

And as summer moves swiftly on have you seen or heard the swifts? They’ll probably be gone in a couple of weeks. Back to Africa. A highlight for me this year was walking on a warm still night at dusk a few weeks ago and suddenly a ‘screech’ of about twenty swifts sped by against the pale blue and red sky. It’s normally more like three or four that fly together so this was particularly spectacular. Look out for them, you know by now, the half crescent moon shape, the screech and the extraordinary speed and agility. They’re a wonder. Have a look above your head, though you’re more likely to hear them before you see them.

 

    

Arrivederci Ennio Morricone, Composer extraordinaire...

              A cinema great passed away last week. A true great, perhaps the greatest of his genre, certainly amongst the most inspiring and influential. Ennio Morricone, the legendary film composer whose magic dust was sprinkled over 400 films and television shows across several decades, was ninety-one. Indeed, he was still working till his late eighties, conducting concerts of his film scores, not to mention winning an Oscar for the Hateful Eight aged eighty-seven. He died on the sixth of July, my grandmother’s birthday. She loved her movies, particularly the old Hollywood classics. I’d like to think they’re having a chat right now about some of the great films from that golden age of cinema. Drinking cocktails and laughing.  

                Born in Rome in 1928 to a musical family, Ennio started composing as young as six. The name may or may not ring a bell, but I can guarantee you’ll know his music, or some of it at least. Perhaps only rivalled in recognizability by James Barry’s ‘James Bond’ theme, is there any more famous and atmospheric theme in cinema than that of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ from 1968?

'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' is the third in the trilogy - after 'A Fistful of Dollars' and 'For a Few Dollars More' - of Sergio Leone’s collaboration with Morricone, starring Clint Eastwood as the "man with no name". All masterpieces thanks in large part to Morricone’s unique, innovative and provocative scores. The opening track to the first in the series, ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, tells you all you need to know. Clearly it has a Western feel but with a range of less conventional sound effects, such as the whistling, the sound of gunfire and something resembling a bird call combined with male vocal harmonies – a little less rigid than the traditional “manly” singing of the American Westerns – as well as strings, guitar and so on. He has created a truly unique vibe even before we’ve seen anything on the screen. In fact, it was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. Budget restrictions limited his access to a full orchestra leading him to improvise, which by accident or design added extra contrast to the style of Western normally seen in Hollywood. The other main contrast of course being Leone’s shooting style and techniques but’s that another discussion. An interesting aside is the irony that it was an Italian director in a European collaboration that made Clint Eastwood’s name. Clint wasn't Leone's first choice but when James Coburn proved too expensive he got the job. Eastwood's TV contract at the time forbade him from doing American Westerns but lucky for him and us that there was no issue with Europe. Sergio, Ennio and Clint created a new genre, "The Spaghetti Western". It was Leone’s respect for Morricone and his estimation for the importance of the soundtrack, that allowed Morricone the freedom to create such iconic music. Some creative partnerships really are meant to be.

                Another of my favourite soundtracks and favourite films with a Morricone score is a French film, ‘Le Clan Des Siciliens’, a classic heist adventure from 1969 with Alain Delon, Lino Ventura and Jean Gabin. Delon plays an escaped convict planning a jewel robbery in Rome with Gabin’s Parisian/Sicilian gangster. Ventura is the cop chasing them.  Within seconds of the film opening we are taken into that world. A melancholy whistling from the mesmerising Curro Savoy  - whom we also hear in 'The Good, Bad and Ugly' - combined with a metallic sounding Jew’s harp effect creates a sense of stillness and menace and leads to haunting guitar chords as Delon exits a police van in cuffs. And it feels like Italy but I’m not sure why. Is it the instruments? Not especially. Is it the mood? I can’t say. Subliminally he does that to you. This was part of Morricone’s genius; to suggest or illustrate but in a non-clichéd way. Incidentally, the film opens in Paris, so that feeling is even more interesting. But I suggest you watch it and see if you agree. In fact while you’re at it watch the whole film, it’s magnificent.

                In the summer of 1999, I was in London visiting a girl – well, a woman – that I knew. It was getting late on a lovely, warm and still summer evening. My memories have that vagueness that the tipsiness from the specific moment in time brings, but I’ll never forget the feeling. From the other room, she put on a song. I heard these lovely, slightly off beat piano chords leading to this truly beautiful and moving melody. I rushed through wondering what it was. It was the main theme to ‘Cinema Paradiso’ which became one of my favourite films. Again, it was the work of the great Ennio. How grateful I was for that discovery. She also introduced me to Withnail And I. She had good taste in films, perhaps less so in music (I do remember a John Farnham – he of “You’re the Voice” fame – cassette). Though she was Australian so I suppose it can be forgiven. Anyway, I was hooked though I didn’t actually see ‘Cinema Paradiso’ till a year or two later.  Made in 1988, it is essentially the story of  Salvatore (Toto), a successful film maker living in Rome, who returns to Sicily – Sicily again, what a place – having left thirty years before and never returned, for the funeral of Alfredo, played by the legendary French actor, Phillipe Noiret. Going to a flashback, we move to just after WW2. Alfredo is the Camera Projectionist at the Cinema Paradiso in town, and he befriends the young Toto, becoming his mentor and surrogate father. The cinema becomes a refuge for the boy and the movies a place of escape; his home life being difficult due to his mother’s depression - his father, her husband, having been killed in the war. The metaphor of the cinema as an escape, as it was particularly in those days before television, is one of the other keys to the film. It very much evokes the joy and nostalgia for things past and the magic of old black and white movies; the power that cinema held and still does. But it is much more than that: A political history, a story of love, friendship and humanity. Mr Morricone’s contribution, as always, is sublime. Being a little more classic in its instrumentation, using pianos, cellos and violins, for example, to help evoke the sense of nostalgia. There’s a certain sadness, a certain fragility to the music but also a certain warmth. And of course, a certain beauty.

                1982’s The Thing is an altogether different type of film that also benefited from Morricone’s talents. A tense and atmospheric Sci-Fi horror about a shape-shifting alien that can take the form of any animal it gets its tentacles into, including humans, it is truly exceptional. The creature having been accidently released from the ice after thousands of years creates havoc in an Antarctic research station and kills most of the men in it. A sort of Ridley Scott’s Alien-type film but set on Earth rather than Space, though it might as well be Space. Morricone himself was a bit of a shape shifter in his ability to put his talents to so many different types of movies. Directed by John Carpenter, he of ‘Halloween’ and ‘The Fog’ fame, the music has an electronic, minimalist and sombre style, befitting the era and style of the film. A sense of foreboding and terror is around every corner as the men get more and more paranoid about which one of them is the monster. Widely panned by the critics at the time for reasons best known to themselves, it is a truly wondrous piece of filmmaking, the theatricality and horror of the beast contrasting with the stillness and chill of the mood and harsh landscape. Morricone’s music, of course, helps build and support the sense of foreboding and isolation. Highly recommended unless you don’t like being scared out of your wits, of course. Even then, it’s worth it. As Carpenter himself said, Morricone had an innate feeling for mood and how to enhance it beyond the expectation of the director.

                Sergio Leone’s final film, ‘Once Upon A Time in America’, of course scored by Morricone is also highly recommended, if you have a couple of days to spare. Leone was actually offered the Godfather, but he turned it down as he already had the project in mind for what would become this film ten years later. Released in 1984, the film received a rapturous applause on its screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Sadly, the American distributors, terrified by its running time of almost four hours, cut in by half and re-edited it without Leone’s permission. This shocking form of censorship had the opposite effect intended. The film was a critical failure and it took years for its reputation to be restored. If you can watch it get the Director’s cut. Funnily a similar thing happened with ‘Cinema Paradiso’. Damn those meddling money men. Starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Joe Pesci and Elizabeth McGovern amongst others, it is a masterpiece. Covering more than half a century from the early 1900’s to the 60’s it is an epic story of violence, crime, revenge, love, friendship and so on. The usual stuff for the genre. The Godfather films have, understandably, a great reputation. As does 'Goodfellas'. This is a different beast, a little more theatrical dare I say, more Italian in its wide sweeping shots, it's almost baroque framing and of course with Morricone’s astonishingly evocative and beautiful music. In a French interview in 1988, Leone explained that for this film, he often had Morricone compose the music before he shot the scene. There existed, in other words, “une complicité totale” between the two. A great director like Leone actually shooting a scene with the music already written is perhaps the greatest testimony that could be paid to Morricone. Genius is an exception and we and future generations are blessed to have access to his legendary works. Have a look at his filmography. I’ve just mentioned a few, there are hundreds more. Search for his name on YouTube. There are numerous gems to get you started or to remind you. His work with Leone may be his best. Certainly their symbiosis seemed to bring the best out of them. Stanley Kubrick once said to Leone that the only music of Morricone he liked was in Leone’s films. Leone replied that he hated the composer Richard Strauss except in that famous scene in Kubrick’s 2001 ‘A Space Odyssey’ with the apes and the spaceship. The marriage of the music to these great directors’ visuals is a match made in cinematic heaven - nothing more, nothing less. 

Some thoughts on a tennis tournament from the olden days...

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."

L.P. Hartley.

No, not J. R. Hartley. 

“Flaming” June has been a bit of a damp squib. A three-day heat wave aside, last week, it’s been pretty poor much of the time. From thirty-three degrees to fifteen. The weather has been as extreme as the political situation. That said, the grey skies make the blue ones so much more pleasant when they do arrive. May being so sunny, June has just seemed most disappointing, particularly as it can be so delightful. Each of the summer months has its own particular joy. June for me has the magic of the summer solstice and it was sunny this year - it’s not so magic when it’s raining - often the first real heat and tennis of course. Well, except in times like this when the world has been shut down.

 June was always tennis month for me. If May was about the cup final, June was Queen’s Club and then Wimbledon. Queen’s Club, in Baron’s Court, West London, was known as the Stella Artois tournament in the 80’s when I first got into tennis. The pre-cursor to Wimbledon and beginning of the brief joy that is the grass court season. Much smaller in scale than Wimbledon but favoured by many of the top players as it gave them a chance to warm their heels and get a feel for the speedy, often slippery grass courts before the main event in leafy SW11. A surface for cows as Ivan Lendl once said. That didn’t stop him trying his best to win the thing. Wimbledon that is. He won Queen’s Club twice but never Wimbledon. I was happy about this. I was a Stefan Edberg fan, one of the best volleyers of all time, impeccably polite and with a stunningly elegant backhand. This takes nothing away from Lendl’s achievements. He was a brilliant player. His brutal power game from the back of the court just didn’t really suit my tastes. Looking back now, his game doesn’t seem so brutal. Racquets have changed the game beyond belief and he actually did serve and volley at times and he used a single-handed backhand. Modern tennis is exceptional but the double-handed backhand - which is almost ubiquitous, a few notable exceptions aside: Federer, Wawrinka and Gasquet, for example - is a classic example of beauty being sacrificed for efficiency.
            I look back with affection to those pleasant days in stark contrast to today’s globalized banality, irrational hysteria and general ‘look at me, look at me' show-offery. Something about the whole atmosphere calmed my soul. I love tennis on all surfaces but those grass courts in the June sunshine were magic. They still are, of course. The tennis has changed a bit, for the better overall, I’d say. That’s a fact that nostalgia cannot alter. There’s not so much serve and volley these days which is a bit of a pity, there’s the better racquets giving greater power and control and there’s better haircuts; Christo Van Rensberg anyone? It is, of course, no longer sponsored by Stella either. It’s hard to imagine a top tennis tournament taking the name of a beer in 2020. Especially one whose nickname is “wife beater”. It's sponsored by Fever Tree these days, in fact. How gentrified we've all become. In all fairness it probably has a better ring to it than 'sponsored by Schweppes'.

The other pre-cursor grass event to Wimbledon is in Halle, Western Germany. A quaint, low-key event nestling among the rolling, green hills of Westphalia, it couldn’t be further in style from the Pimm’s brigade and corporate hospitality of Queen’s. I’ve been lucky to attend it twice with a tennis chum and it’s a delight. A low-key, mostly German crowd of all ages, magnificent ice-cold pilsner, bratwurst, chips and industrial mayonnaise is the order of the day. And you drink the beer from a glass. Not the plastic nonsense you get elsewhere. Standing next to a crowd of small, plump, elderly frauleins - drinking their pilsner in the sunshine - is a memory I’ll cherish for ever. As is the tennis. There are some serious players there. Roger Federer has won most of them and we saw him. Once you’ve seen Federer play on grass, well, there’s no-where to go but down really, although just thinking about it, I remain high in the clouds above. Adding to the amusement, there is actually a fashion show with a little catwalk too. I believe the man who created the event has something to do with that particular industry. Anyway, it’s all rather wunderbar.

And not to diss the modern world entirely, there may be no tennis currently playing - which is a wee shame, as a Scottish person once said - but it is possible to watch tennis of all types, from all eras, online, thanks to that world-wide web. I’ve always felt the Internet is great if you’re not insane, depressed or a moron. So go on, fill your boots. Tennis is the greatest. Whoever invented it must themselves have been a little insane. No normal person could create a game of such eccentric and random genius. 'Fifteen-Love'! If you say so. Incidentally, thirty years ago, Stefan Edberg won his second and last Wimbledon final, beating Boris Becker in a five-set epic. He reached his last grand slam final at twenty-seven years old. Quite a contrast from today's top players who have all won multiple slams in their thirties. Interesting. I'll need to ask them their secret. 

Some nature notes from May inspired by Paul McCartney and a singing blackbird.

Paul McCartney once wrote a song about a blackbird singing in the dead of night, apparently after a trip to India. This may or may not be accurate. I’ve never been to India, but in Britain blackbirds don’t sing in the dead of night. They do, however, at the moment, sing at any time between dawn and dusk. Chances are that if you hear a bird singing today it will be a blackbird, in the city, at least. Its languid yet rich and melodious tones are an indelible symbol of early summer. They’ll probably stop quite soon, so listen out. I’ve also heard a thrush singing recently and my local dunnock which sounds like it's on speed, but not much else. Singing that is, not just the regular bird calls. You'll hear plenty of other birds, but less are actually singing now. Keep your ears tuned in.

 The blackbirds have been performing for quite a while now but another sound that symbolizes summer, came just a couple of weeks ago, as it suddenly turned warm. Walking down a quiet street in my neighbourhood, my peace was suddenly interrupted by the screech of three swifts speeding past above my head, piercing the blue summer sky like feathered red arrows. I was delighted for the interruption. This is a special moment because they’ve been away for around nine months so inevitably their welcome return tends to take you by surprise. Out of sight, out of mind. Swifts should be appreciated as they’re only with us for three or four months from May till early August before heading back to Africa. They’ll be loving these blue skies and the warmth. Plenty of insects to eat. Spectacular athletes of the air, they like cities. Well, not all cities. Cities with older buildings in which they can nest. It’s nothing to do with liking the company of humans. Swallows and martins, similarly speedy summer visitors though more vocal and gregarious, tend to prefer the countryside. Wherever you are, look out for one of these species; swifts are larger, faster and darker with half-crescent wings and have that idiosyncratic screech. Not as beautiful as a swallow or a house martin but when you can fly like that who cares. As Billy Connolly once said, “F*ck handsome, rich wins”.

                No-one seems to be talking about the weather, distracted by all the circus of horrors that is unfolding, but looking back on it, it may be seen as equally extraordinary (for different reasons, of course) as the supposedly more ‘newsworthy’ happenings. It’s barely rained in three months. Blue skies have ruled the roost. This, after the wettest February on record. This is not normal. Ultimately the lack of rain will become a problem if it continues but it has been astonishing. Pleasant as it is, however, nature needs and expects water in this country. It’s not the Costa Del Sol. Birds, obviously but also the soil and its inhabitants such as earthworms (sign of a healthy ecosystem) need rain. As do snails, frogs and hedgehogs in our gardens etc. and the plants, of course.

                It has been interesting to observe the changing colours as May has progressed. Early in the month it was mostly blues, purples and pinks: delightful bluebells, purple chive flowers and lavender; the delightful pink campion, a flower of wastelands but also gardens if you let it. Then around mid-month an extraordinary red dahlia-like flower briefly appeared. Yellow, in keeping with the recent hot sunshine, is beginning to appear in the rose bush, and an exotic tree in the garden whose yellow pineapple type flowers prove extremely popular with bees. If you have blackberry (or bramble) bushes, keep an eye out for their pretty white flowers which are currently blooming and are also attractive to bees. Funny that no-one on the press wants to talk about bees or nature in general and its importance to human life. Not remotely funny, actually, it’s despicable. Our culture encourages (as we should) us to cherish and appreciate our mothers, but it’s most unfortunate how badly we treat Mother Nature, both individually and collectively. ‘Mother’s Day’ is a big money spinner, ‘Mother Nature Day’ isn’t. We’re all consumers and therefore all polluters. Individually, we can a make difference in our habits, the products we use and so on. Don’t wait for big business or governments to get involved. There’re unlikely to as long as the priority is profit and shareholders. But let’s not let that discourage us from taking action.