I have been suffering a gnawing guilt over the paucity of
postings this year and Lists are, in my opinion, the last refuge of the
blogging scoundrel. Nonetheless, an interminable rail journey over a recent
weekend, complete with rampaging screaming children and crackly bulletins of official misinformation, provided a good
deal of unlooked for spare time that would have otherwise been spent staring
bleakly out of the window at the turnip fields that stretched away to the
drizzle-grey horizon. Here, therefore, is
the fruit of that unexpected leisure in the unimaginative form of a list of
things that I Like Very Much.
Frith’s Derby Day
painting, in Tate Britain
Richard Dadd’s The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, likewise
Van Gogh’s Starry Night
Rembrandt’s The NightWatch
Van Eyck’s Arnolfini
portrait
Turner’s FightingTemeraire
Charles Sheeler’s American Landscape
Ansel Adams’ Yosemite photographs
The view over the Thames from Richmond Hill
Trevor Howard’s leather raincoat in The Third Man
Vali striding past Joseph Cotton at the end of The Third Man, without so much of asideways glance
Orson Welles’ cuckoo-clock speech in the Third Man
Bernstein’s recollection of the Jersey Ferry in Citizen Kane
The sense of close knit (criminal) community in Goodfellas
The set in Rear Window
The aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation in In Which We Serve
The Italian Job
(1969)
The tear provoking La Marseillaise in Casablanca
Claude Rains in Casablanca
Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon
Early-mid period Woody Allen
The Golden Age of the TV box-set: The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men
The uneasy onset of middle age and responsibilities in The Likely Lads
The wit and wisdom of Geoffrey Boycott (and here)
The glorious simplicity of Italian cooking
The relaxed anarchy of Italy
Coffee
A fine curry and just enough lager
Tapas
Goats cheese, Manchego cheese
The amazing sense of virtuousness and well-being that comes
from baking a cake
Real ale
Pubs with good conversation and without televisions, fruit
machines or music
New York bars
Martinis, Negronis, Old Fashioneds
Bagels
Bacon sandwiches
A good strong cup of tea
George Orwell
Orwell’s essay A NiceCup of Tea
Orwell’s Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
Part 1 of Orwell’s England,Your England
The works of Lou Reed (R.I.P) and The Velvet Underground
James Young’s book SongsThey Never Play on the Radio
The Stones’ four great albums (Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed,
Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street)
Stanley Booth’s book TheTrue Life Adventures of the Rolling Stones
The mighty Fall
Bob Dylan’s Halloween 1964 concert
The “I thought about you last night” step-change in The
Smiths’ Reel Around the Fountain
Jackie Wilson’s Higherand Higher
Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens
Cannonball Adderley’s Autumn Leaves
Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool
Robert Johnson’s King of the Delta Blues Singers, which still sounds utterly unearthly
Another Girl Another Planet by The Only Ones
Human Fly by the
Cramps
Captain Beefheart’s Trout
Mask Replica
Nirvana Unplugged
– the sensitive bastard
The goose-bump inducing “Right Now…” opening to Anarchy in the UK
The marvellous immorality of Balzac’s Cousin Bette
The grim humour of a man trapped in the grip of vast
impersonal forces in Catch 22
Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time
Hunter S Thompson at his savage best
Philip K Dick at his paranoid best
Asimov’s first Foundation
trilogy
The Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
Edith Wharton’s Age of
Innocence and Scorcese’s movie of the same
Joseph Conrad, with a special mention for Nostromo
The Dulwich boys: Raymond Chandler and PG Wodehouse
The Royal Naval College, Greenwich
Scott’s Midland Hotel, St Pancras and Barlow’s train shed
Cubitt’s newly restored Kings Cross
The Pantheon
N.A.M. Rodger’s histories of the Royal Navy
Shelby Foote’s histories of The Civil War
Simon Schama’s Citizens
John Kenneth Galbraith’s The
Great Crash
The Great Gatsby
Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation
Sid Meier’s Civilization
Robert Hughes’ TheShock of the New
Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn
