Tom Roper's Weblog

The Elysian Fields

As I drove from one training session to another through the coastal suburbs of West Sussex, I was startled to come upon some new houses being built, called the Elysian Fields. I wish I had taken a photograph, for no one will believe me. The houses themselves were in that nondescript modern idiom so widespread, walls in primary colours like a child's pairing of a house, flimsy, impermanent materials, sited thoughtlessly on a busy roundabout.

Apart from the vaingloriousness of the name, do the developers suppose that people will not remember that to inhabit the Elysian Fields, you had to be dead? Or, if they were to grasp the Parisian reference, might they not make unfavourable comparisons between a dirty road on the south coast of Sussex and the avenue down which the French armed forces parade on le quatorze juillet?

The second Brighton LibTeachMeet

There's to be a second Brighton LibTeachMeet! Melanie Davies and Joseph Norwood, aka @DreamingEntity, whose presentation at the first #btnlibtm is still talked about in the Sussex cafés and bars that the intelligensia of the profession frequent, have taken over the baton. CILIP Sussex has thrown its weight behind the venture.The TeachMeet will be on the theme of outreach, marketing and promotion, on Tuesday 20 March, at 5.30 p.m.

See the blog for more details, and sign up on Eventbrite.

Master of the Tweets

We learnt English in an unusual way at my school, the Perse. In a system devised by H. Caldwell Cook before the First World War, and described in his book, the Play Way, boys were divided into companies, such as the King's Men, for productions, at first of tableaux, for example, the assassination of Julius Caesar, and then of whole scenes from Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists.

In these companies all boys had something to do. The director was the Master of the Revels. Those without Thespian skills or ambitions could be in charge of lights, or music or costumes, each being known as Master of the Lights, of the Music or of the Tiring House. I tended to be Master of the Music, searching the extensive library of 78 r.p.m records something fitting to the action on stage, and trying to drop the needle onto the spinning disk at just the right moment.

I mention all this as, for the first time since I was twelve years old, I am once more Master of something. I am delighted to say that I have been asked by the Frogmore Press, publishers of the Frogmore Papers and the online poetry magazine, Morphrog, to be the Master of the Tweets, with assistance from Rachel Playforth, aka @archelina. Do follow us: https://twitter.com/#!/FrogmorePress/ and read the blog at http://frogmore-jp.blogspot.com/

 

Ascot and Haydock

52 days to Cheltenham.
Haydock 145: Celestial Halo
Ascot 205: Violin Davis
Ascot 235: Shoreacres
Ascot 310: Al Ferof
Haydock 330: Bold Ransom
Ascot 345: Hector's Choice

Puncheston, Kempton and Warwick

225 Puncheston: Ut De Sivola
250 Kempton: Swincombe Flame
305 Warwick: Highland Lodge
340 Warwick: Neptune Equester

 

Tolworth Hurdle day

205 Sandown: Rileyev
235 Sandown: Colour Squadron
250 Wincanton: Ashfield's Dream
310 Sandown: Hold On Julio

Newbury and Punchestown

The idea of a trip to Plumpton on Monday for Sussex National day has been mooted. Until then:

Punchestown 135: Mikael d'Haugenet
Punchestown 240: That'll Do Me
Newbury 305: Fingal Bay
Newbury 340: Tenor Nivernais

Welsh National

To my eternal regret, I missed Kauto Star's fifth King George victory yesterday. Today's selections:

Chepstow 130: Quincy Des Pictons
Chepstow 210: As De Fer
Kempton 240: Finian's Rainbow
Chepstow 245: Hollow Tree

Slasher Ron: the decline of hospital barbering

Thinking of my time as a hospital porter, I remember the hospital barber, a neatly-moustachioed man named Ron who, when not on the wards attending to patients, would sit in a corner of the porters' room cleaning and oiling his razors, joining in the conversation now and then with well-judged remarks. He wore a green nylon jacket to distinguish himself from the porters; ours were grey. On his lapel he wore a COHSE badge, the Confederation of Health Service Employees, which merged with NUPE and NALGO in 1991 to form Unison.

In the ironic tradition of nick-naming which attributes to someone the precise quality they lack, Ron was known to us all as Slasher. His chief duty was pre-operative shaving, a living link with the days of the barber-surgeon, but he would also shave male patients unable to do so themselves and, for a small sum, would attend to any porter who wanted a cheap haircut at work. Hospital barbers no longer exist: the last time I went into hospital for an operation, I was handed a razor and told to prepare myself for the surgeon.

Cheltenham

I missed yesterday's cross-country race, when seven of the field, not for the first time, took a wrong turning. The winner, Garde Champetre, knows the course so well he could race it blindfolded.
For today, all at Cheltenham:
120: Tanks for That
155: Rev It Up
230: Salut Flo
305: Grandouet
335: Oscar Whisky