May 15th - May 21st 2006
Sunday Wapping
Saturday Takes you down
Friday Wapping
Thursday Martha
Wednesday Wapping
Tuesday West Wung
Monday Wapping
Sunday 21st May
Wapping, Spring 2006
Saturday 20th May
There's little so dispiriting as when someone you despise suddenly pipes up in defence of an artist you've long idolised in the face of other people's ignorance.
It's even worse when your despisee gets it just about right.
As in Prince Charles describing Leonard Cohen:
He's a remarkable man and he has this incredibly laid-back, gravelly voice. It's terrific stuff.
Thankfully, there's still some space left for those of us who have been defending Cohen all these years to stick their oar in, most notably in contesting the continuing perception of the Canadian poet as an arch-miserabilist.
True, his early albums, and the songs with which he initially made his name, are not exactly up-beat. I seem to recall myself describing them as 'Songs for Would-be Suicides' (Suzanne takes you down, indeed).
But as Cohen relaxed into maturity, he unveiled an acerbic wit that's rarely been bettered: great tunes but, above all, great attitude.
If you doubt me, rush to listen to, as an example, Closing Time from his 1992 album 'The Future':
Friday 19th May
Wapping, Spring 2006
Thursday 18th May
Martha Freud was a paragon among wives.
There is nothing more liberating from domestic drudgery and the guilt that comes of avoiding it than having a cleaning lady who loves cleaning, a child-carer who's content with child-care, a homebody who wants nothing more than to be at home. And Martha Freud was all those things.
Quite why she was those things is something that her husband might have been the very person to investigate, but Freud was nobody's fool and knew when to leave well alone in the murkier regions of his personal life - especially that dark continent in his mind concerning women...
While Freud was making his experiments with cocaine, he sent several vials of it to his fiancée extolling its effect on vitality, with instructions on how to divide the doses and administer it.
Martha wrote and thanked him, saying that although she didn't think she needed it, she would take some as he suggested. She reported back to her fiancé that she found it helpful in moments of emotional strain.
From time to time, Behling says, Martha 'enhanced her sense of well-being with an invigorating pinch of cocaine'.
For how long she continued to do this is unknown, but it does suggest an altogether different way of viewing the devoted, domestically driven Martha Freud, who for half a century went about her frantically busy daily round of cleaning, caring, tidying, managing and arranging all the minute details of her husband's life with a fixed and unfaltering smile.
- Jenny Diski sticks it to Sigmund in a recent issue of The London Review of Books
Wednesday 17th May
Wapping, Spring 2006
Tuesday 16th May
This Sunday saw the screening, in America, of the final episode of The West Wing.
But British fans (a steadily declining caucus since the giddy heights of series four) will have to wait a while for answers to questions such as:
By the time the outgoing President looks out of his limousine window and murmurs the last sententious word ("Tomorrow"), who has just been inaugurated?
Who is his Vice-President? (Not an obvious answer)
Who is his Secretary for State? (An even less obvious answer)
Which West Wing staffers have finally gotten it on? (No, not Lord John Marbury and Charlie Young. Thankfully.)
Which West Wing staffer has made a surprise return after a lengthy absence? (No, not Mrs Landingham. Sadly.)
Which West Wing staffer faces time in jail? (No, not Deborah Fiderer. Surprisingly.)
Which West Wing staffer died of a heart attack? (No, not Jed Bartlett. Unsurprisingly.)
That's all, folks. Roll on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Monday 15th May
Wapping, Spring 2006
......previous week
