Reading, Drinking and Gambling

Books

I have just re-read “Little Man – What now?”, a story about a young couple struggling to make a living in Germany in the early 1930, prior to the Nazis taking over. There are no jobs around, the bosses are in charge, and the Nazis and communists are having punch-ups everywhere. This is a different, newer translation from the one I read before, and seems to be more modern in attitude, and is more liberal as to what is included. It was probably very shocking in 1932! There is an interesting moment when the man’s girlfriend tells him that her brother and everyone at her school always told her that she was unattractive – and he thinks she’s very beautiful, but this makes him think. Perhaps, no matter what we may say to the contrary, we are, to some extent, influenced by other people’s views? He also quotes a “silly expression” which is used by the people in his cold windy part of Germany, “It’s good that houses are hollow, otherwise we would not be able to live in them.” In fact, it was just so silly that it made me laugh. :)

I have also recently read “The Crossroads” by Niccolo Ammanti, a strange story of three alcoholic lowlifes and one of them’s 13 year old boy in a small Italian town earlier this century. Apart from the boy, none of the characters are sympathetic and the novel was rather violent, drunken and very depressing. I seem to have read several books involving heavy drinking recently, including the classic “The Lost Weekend”, “The Drinker” by Hans Fallada and “The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce”, which I actually bothered to review on Amazon and started, “I rather enjoyed the early parts of this story with Wilberforce's casual acceptance of ordering a bottle of wine worth £3,000 and knocking out the restaurant staff with his casual acceptance of this figure, plus a few additions of other "minor" wines. I was further impressed with his easy calculation of the number of units of alcohol he was consuming, when questioned, based on his four bottles of wine per day consumption.”

The Drinker? Well, he drank quite a lot too.. I also very much enjoyed reading Hans Fallada’s “All Alone in Berlin”, when the Nazis were actually in power, a frightening story. Not many people drank too much in that.

Politics

Just can’t keep away from ‘em! I just emailed Vince Cable to congratulate him on today’s remarks about “nauseating businessman”, “Brown kowtowing to the City”, etc. Excellent stuff! Of course, we’re now kowtowing to the credit rating agencies too- the guys who gave AAA ratings to bundled sub-prime loans!

Summer has officially arrived!

Today is the first day since last September that I’ve worn my lightweight jacket over my T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms down to the gym instead of my heavyweight black anorak! :) Heavyweight black anorak? Probably Mike Tyson with his pigeons.

Golf

Crikey! US Masters has now gone completely mad with two English blokes in front, neither of whom is old or fat! (Although Lee Westwood used to be quite rotund.)

Grand National on BBC and other gambling

3.45: Clare Balding has just said that “this year there are just so many good stories about the Grand National”. Just a pity, Clare, that you don’t seem to have any of them.

4.30: Four horses backed and none of them in the first four! Bugger! I made a profit of over 100 quid at the Cheltenham Festival.

Honestly, it’s not sour grapes, but why did the commentators have to shout their way right through the race. Surely, the first three miles (!) aren’t that exciting? Those fences look pretty horrendous though. They looked pretty bad at Wolverhampton when I was playing hockey at the racecourse there many years ago. To be fair, I’m not sure whether anything actually looks good in Wolverhampton.

Anyway, why should I care? Yesterday I won £5.50 in the Euro Millions (?) Lottery from just a £10 investment. More annoyingly, I had the first two out of the hat, out of the bag, electronically indicated, ball rolled, or whatever it is. Oh, the agony. 44 and 23, since you ask. Which, coincidentally, happen to be the same ages of me and my second wife when I got married again.