The Old Un’s Notes
How to buy The Oldie during
the lockdown The Old Un is afraid that many W H Smith shops and some independent newsagents have closed – so buying individual copies of The Oldie may not be easy. There are three ways of getting round this:
1. Order a print edition for £4.75 (free p & p within the UK) at: www.magsdirect.co.uk.
2. Order a digital edition at www.pocketmags.com for £2.99; scroll down to the Special Issues section.
3. Buy a 12-issue print subscription for just £47.50 and receive a free book – see page 47. And if you want to buy a 12-issue subscription for friends for as little as £8, see our special offer on page 7. Sign up for The Oldie e-newsletter and Barry Cryer’s jokes
During the lockdown, the Old Un is producing extra pieces every day on The Oldie website, including Barry Cryer’s jokes. Every Friday, we send a newsletter with the best pieces. Go to www. theoldie.co.uk and, at the top right of the home page, enter your email address in the white box, above which is written ‘ Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter’.
What happens when Oscar Wilde collides with an American rock star?
You can find out in the new Folio Society edition of De Profundis – Oscar Wilde’s heart-stopping letter from Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas.
It’s introduced by pop singer Patti Smith, who turns out to be a huge Wilde fan. Smith visited Wilde’s cell in the now closed Reading Gaol, which campaigners are trying to turn into an arts centre.
‘I noted the cell number, C.3.3, the age of Christ at his crucifixion,’ Smith writes. ‘This missive to you was written on the Rue des Beaux Arts where, wedded to poverty, you breathed your last, in the year 1900.’
Smith has admired Wilde since she was ‘an adoring schoolgirl’. You sense that Oscar, something of a Victorian rock star himself, would have liked the tribute.
On learning that Sam Mendes plans to film John Fowles’s Greek island epic, The Magus, the Old Un recalled the author’s jaundiced view of the previous film, made in 1968, starring Michael Caine.
Fowles told Granta that he liked Caine when they met on the set: ‘His behaviour between takes, when he is endlessly bothered by autographs and snapshots, is exemplary.’
But Caine’s performance was another matter. On seeing the rough cut, Fowles described Caine as being ‘excruciatingly bad, totally incredible as an English graduate, however proletarian in origin … he seems to have no notion of how to react, let alone act.’
Fowles, who wrote the script, did not absolve himself, but thought the director, Guy Green, was largely to blame: ‘I understand now why he wanted all the literary lines cut: he simply doesn’t know how to direct them.’
Taking his regulated exercise in Waterloo Place, London, the Old Un bumped into the Guards Crimean War Memorial.
Its granite plinth carries the statue of Victory and three guardsmen made from the bronze of Russian cannon captured in the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-55).
Up the road in Burlington Arcade is the family-run jeweller Hancocks, which has been making Victoria Cross medals since the end of the Crimean War in 1856. Until recently, it was believed the VCS were cast from the same captured weaponry, although it now transpires the metal originates from Chinese guns and not Russian cannon at all.
Founded in 1849, Hancocks is known for its rings, bracelets and pendants. Its reputation for fine silverwork first led the
Secretary of State for War to commission the company to manufacture Britain’s highest award for valour, and it has continued to be its sole supplier.
When more VCS are required, Hancocks puts in an order for a sliver of the precious metal stored in a high-security vault at the Central Ordnance Depot in Donnington. Once delivered, the bronze is melted, poured into a mould and cast. Since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert introduced the idea, 1,358 VCS have been awarded; none has yet gone to a woman.
The Old Un, an utter scaredy-cat, won’t be in the running for the 1,359th.
Retired Oxford don John Davie was much taken with The Oldie’s motto, ‘The only way forwards is backwards’. He’s now done the decent thing – translated it into Latin: ‘ Tantum retro proceditur.’ If only the Old Un had a coat of arms, he’d slap the Latin motto on it pronto.
Davie was reminded of a letter Verdi wrote to his librettist Boito about their next subject for an opera: ‘ Torniamo al antico: sarà un progresso’ (‘Let’s go back to antiquity: it will be a step forward’).
Lockdown is nothing new to prisoners but, still, they’ve had a rough time with coronavirus. One of the effects is they’re finding it more difficult to get hold of books.
Prison libraries are almost all closed. No non-prison staff are allowed on site; so, in most prisons, there are no library staff on duty. In some prisons, there are book trolleys on the wings and prisoners can take a book when they collect their hot meal of the day.
The charity Give a Book is doing its best to get more books into prisons and to prisoners. If you’d like to help Give a Book, see their website: giveabook.org.uk.
Under lockdown, there has been lots of time for all of us – not just prisoners – for contemplation. The Old Un’s friend Susan Schwarz from New York has compiled a list of some strange things that start emerging in later life:
Feet are further down the legs. Doctors start practising at the age of 12. Sofas are deeper. Names are less memorable. Keys, glasses and books disappear. Shoe soles are more slippery. Driving is more demanding. Elusive hairs sprout on female lips and chins.
Jar lids are tighter. Shopping is heavier. Noses drip. Being called dear isn’t as complimentary as it once was.
In the May issue, Gyles Brandreth wrote about how John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was rendered in Japanese as The Angry Raisins.
The Old Un was reminded of the garbling of a line from Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, ‘Who watered the wicket at Melbourne?’ (a reference to allegations of cheating during the ’54/’55 Ashes series). In German, this became ‘Who pissed on the city gates of Melbourne?’
Necessity is the mother of invention. And the lockdown is the mother of rooftop hairdressers, as John Bowling, The Oldie’s Art Editor, discovered this month, staring out of his window in Marylebone, London.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of that brilliant invention the Etch-a-sketch, which went on sale in July 1960.
Before Photoshop was a glint in Adobe’s digital eye, Etch-a-sketch seemed like a miracle.
‘The ease of wiping out every scrap of evidence of terrible scribbles was so satisfying,’ recalls Oldie reader Jacqueline Green. ‘Pity you couldn’t do that with emotional trauma in real life.’
‘Sixty years later, I have a similar situation as my memory seems to implement its own slider, wiping entire events out.’
Jost Haas is Britain’s last glass-eye maker. Now in his 80s, Haas works from his home on the edge of London. Patients spend hours with him while he crafts and paints their eye in front of them.
Unless he finds someone to whom he can pass on his know-how, patients will have to travel to Europe if they wish to have a glass (rather than plastic) prosthetic. It’s not too late, though – the position of apprentice remains open.
The Old Un’s fave new word is ‘Thomasson’. It’s a strange architectural remain with missing parts and no viable function, like half a staircase leading nowhere.
The word was first used in 1972 by Japanese artist Genpei Akasegawa. He came across a staircase that went up and down with no door at the top. Oddly, though, the railing on the staircase had been recently fixed. Akasegawa took to recording kindred curiosities, first in a magazine and then in a 1985 book Thomassons. To qualify as a Thomasson, an object had to be both useless and looked after.
The word owes its origins to Gary Thomasson, an American baseball player sold to Tokyo’s Yomiuri Giants. Thomasson was paid a lot but was often kept on the bench thanks to his poor performance. In other words, he was both ‘useless’ and ‘maintained’. The Old Un has often felt a bit of a Thomasson in these dark virus days.