Look Back in Anger: Context Shapes Content

Billy Howle as Jimmy and Ellora Torchia as Alison in Look Back In Anger at the Almeida Theatre, 2024
Photo: Marc Brenner

I recently saw a fine production of John Osborne’s 1956 play ‘Look Back in Anger.’ (The Almeida, Islington until 30 November) 

There’s a riddle associated with this work. It’s celebrated for precipitating a revolution in British theatre. And yet it’s very rarely staged, and it hasn’t been performed in London for 25 years. Now I think I understand.

 Jimmy: Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm. Just another Sunday evening.

‘Look Back in Anger’ is set in Jimmy and Alison Porter’s shabby one-bedroom flat in a large Midlands town. They have been married for three years. We meet the couple on a gloomy Sunday evening. Alison, wearing an expensive but grubby skirt and one of Jimmy’s shirts, is doing the ironing. Jimmy and his old friend and lodger, the amiable Cliff, are seated in armchairs, drinking tea and reading the newspapers. Jimmy, in tired tweed jacket and flannels, smokes his pipe, while the others puff away at cigarettes.

 Jimmy: God, how I hate Sundays! It’s always so depressing, always the same. We never seem to get any further, do we? Always the same ritual. Reading the papers, drinking tea, ironing. A few more hours, and another week gone. Our youth is slipping away.

Kenneth Haigh (right) as Jimmy Porter, with Helena Hughes, Alan Bates and Mary Ure in the original production of Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court in London in 1956.
Photograph: Charles Hewitt/Getty Images

Jimmy is working-class and university-educated. He practices the jazz trumpet and aspires to become a writer. Having tried a number of jobs (journalism, advertising, selling vacuum cleaners), he now runs a sweet-stall on the market. Reclining in his armchair, he offers cynical commentary on the news stories, laced with references to JB Priestley, Emily Bronte and Vaughan Williams. 

Jimmy: I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. 

Jimmy regards himself as intellectually superior to his friend and wife. He chides them for their lack of spirit, and rages against the inertia in modern British society.

Jimmy: Nobody can be bothered. No one can raise themselves out of their delicious sloth. You two will drive me round the bend soon …Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm – that’s all. I want to hear a warm thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I’m alive!

 Jimmy seems particularly to enjoy taunting Alison, and criticising her family for being upper-class.

Jimmy: You’ve never heard so many well-bred commonplaces come from beneath the same bowler hat. The Platitude from Outer Space – that’s brother Nigel… Nigel is just about as vague as you can get without being actually invisible…And nothing is more vague about Nigel than his knowledge. His knowledge of life and ordinary human beings is so hazy, he really deserves some decoration for it – a medal inscribed ‘For Vaguery in the Field.’

 Jimmy demands total loyalty from his partner (‘Either you’re with me or against me.’). He is also paranoid, suspicious of her motives and anticipating plots. When she leaves the room, he rifles through her handbag and reads her letters.

 Jimmy tries to goad Alison into a response. Eventually he directs his rhetorical guns straight at her.

 Jimmy: All this time, I have been married to this woman, this monument to non-attachment, and suddenly I discover that that there is actually a word that sums her up. Not just an adjective in the English language to describe her with – it’s her name! Pusillanimous!

Jimmy’s insults are getting to Alison. And yet, except for a few muttered complaints, she suffers in silence and carries on ironing. 

 Alison: All I want is a little peace. 

Jimmy is clearly a vile individual. (Alison hypothesizes that he has married her for revenge.) Aggrieved and self-pitying, he justifies his bitterness with the death of his father when he was a child. As if he uniquely understands grief.

Jimmy: Anyone who's never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity. For twelve months, I watched my father dying - when I was ten years old… You see, I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry - angry and helpless. And I can never forget it. I knew more about - love... betrayal... and death, when I was ten years old than you will probably ever know in your life.

 ‘Look Back in Anger’ was an early example of realist ‘kitchen-sink drama’, and Osborne and fellow writers of the time (including Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Arnold Wesker) were referred to as ‘the angry young men.’

Jimmy: The injustice of it is almost perfect! The wrong people going hungry, the wrong people being loved, the wrong people dying!

 The play is famous for sweeping away the sophisticated society dramas of Terrence Rattigan and Noel Coward. Where theatregoers had been accustomed to seeing polite comedies of manners, acted out in elegant middle-class homes and hotels, this work featured genuine working-class characters, facing contemporary problems and articulating raw emotions. 

Jimmy: I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. ...There aren't any good, brave causes left.

‘Look Back in Anger’ was rooted in late ‘50s Britain; in the spirit of lost Empire, economic decline and rising class-consciousness.

It gained its power from its context. In the same way that the radical impact of Impressionism can only be properly understood when set against the stifling conservatism of the Paris Salon; that Pop Art can be viewed as a response to the intellectual purity of Abstract Expressionism; and that Punk can be better appreciated as the antithesis of self-indulgent Prog Rock. The work is the product, not just of an individual’s imagination, but also of the environment.

Context shapes content.

The male critics of the era lionised Jimmy as the voice of disaffected youth, without properly recognising his malice and misogyny. Perhaps class struggle was just more compelling to them than gender equality. Watching ‘Look Back in Anger’ today, the audience does not cheer his sedition. Rather it recoils at his self-absorption and cruelty. The play stands as a striking study in toxic masculinity. And that makes it still relevant.

Helena: Why do you try so hard to be unpleasant?... Do you have to be so offensive?

 In the second act Alison is visited by her father, a retired Colonel who spent much of his life serving in India. He confesses to not really comprehending Jimmy at all. 

 Colonel: Perhaps Jimmy is right. Perhaps I am a – what is it? an old plant left over from the Edwardian Wilderness. And I can’t understand why the sun isn’t shining any more.

Alison observes that her father and Jimmy just have different perspectives on the same world. 

Alison: You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. 

Alison’s point here resonated with me. When I was younger, I felt that society was stuck in its ways; too conservative and conventional; too slow to adopt new ideas. Now I’m older, I worry that everything has moved too quickly; that technology is out of control; that we have lost too much in the upheaval. (And I rather like the plays of Rattigan and Coward.)

 Again, context shapes content. 

 We all need to be mindful that our views are rooted in particular eras; that we regard the world through the prism of our own experience; that our judgements are filtered through our individual assumptions and biases.

 Towards the end of the play, Alison’s friend Helen contends that, far from being a thoroughly contemporary character, Jimmy is a man out of time. I wish that were true.

Helena: Do you know – I have discovered what is wrong with Jimmy? It’s very simple really. He was born out of his time…There’s no place for people like that any longer – in sex, or politics, or anything. That’s why he’s so futile…He doesn’t know where he is, or where he’s going. He’ll never do anything, and he’ll never amount to anything.

'People try to put us d-down, 
Just because we get around. 
Things they do look awful c-c-cold.
I hope I die before I get old. 
This is my generation,
This is my generation, baby.
Why don't you all f-fade away. 
And don't try dig what we all s-s-say.
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation.
I'm just talking about my g-g-generation.
My generation,
This is my generation, baby.’

The Who, ‘My Generation’ (P Townshend)

No. 495

It’s Not Your Fault, But It Is Your Problem: The Price of Leadership is Responsibility

Edvard Munch ‘Vampire ii’

'Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.'`
Sigmund Freud

My mate Steve was a top Account Man. He was personable and practical, creatively supportive and commercially astute. And he brimmed full of optimism and enthusiasm.
 
So, when our financial services clients commissioned an ad featuring a Hollywood Star, they asked Steve to attend the shoot in person, in order to ensure that everything went to plan.

The Hollywood Star was co-operative, easy-going and warm-hearted.

Her Hollywood Agent, however, was more challenging. Brittle and defensive, she was protective of her boss’s time and sceptical of the Director’s talent. At every twist and turn, she criticised and complained. 

As the production reached its climax, the Hollywood Agent demanded that a whole day’s shoot be rearranged to accommodate her client’s social schedule.

Steve tried to reason with her, explaining that the process was carefully constructed and precisely thought through.

At length, the Hollywood Agent tapped her perfectly-presented nails on the table, looked Steve in the eye, and addressed him in her brusque New York brogue.
 
‘Steve, it’s not your fault, but it is your problem. Get it sorted.’

When Steve later reported these events to me, that particular phrase struck home.

When we’re in a jam, we spend a good deal of time disputing narratives, denying fault, attributing blame. But often these debates are irrelevant. They are merely delaying action, postponing resolution.

'The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.'
Joan Didion

In my experience the people who succeed in business, and in life in general perhaps, own the problem and its solution. As the management theorist Peter Drucker observed:

'Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.'

Eventually the scheduling issues were resolved. The Hollywood Star attended her party, the shoot was completed, and the Steve returned home with a decent ad.

The price of leadership is responsibility.

'When they look at me,
What they really see
Is the love you got me feeling,
Like I'm dancing on the ceiling.
I can hardly breathe,
Because you're all I need.
So when they ask me why I'm smiling like a fool,
I blame you,
Oh baby, I blame you.’

Ledisi, ‘I Blame You’ (C Kelly / C Harmon / L Young)

No. 494

Abigail’s Party: Celebrating Suburbia

Omar Malik, Ashna Rabheru, Tamzin Outhwaite and Pandora Colin in Abigail’s Party, © Mark Senior

‘Abigail’s Party’ is a 1977 tragicomedy about suburbia, written by Mike Leigh. (An excellent production has recently been staged at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.)

Beverly: Don't you find shopping boring, though, Ang? Oh, I do - I hate it. He takes me down in the car, and I get me wheely, Tone, and I whizz in, and I grab anything I can see, and I bung it in me wheely, he writes me a cheque, we bung it in the car, bring it home, and it's done for the week, d’you know what I mean?

The drama opens with former beautician Beverly relaxing in her comfortable home at 13 Richmond Road (off Ravensway). She has been preparing to entertain her new neighbours: Angela, a nurse, and Tony, a former Crystal Palace footballer who now works in computers. On the onyx coffee-table she has arranged a tray of crisps and salted nuts, and a couple of cheese and pineapple hedgehogs. She pops her Cosmopolitan magazine in the rack, pours herself a gin-and-tonic, lights a cigarette and cues up Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ 

Angela: Were we meant to wear long?
Beverly: No, no, it’s just informal, you know, so…

When Angela and Tony arrive in their smart outfits, Beverly prompts her husband, overworked estate agent Laurence, to fix the drinks.

 Beverly: Tony would like Bacardi-and-Coke with ice and lemon, Angela would like a gin-and-tonic with ice and lemon, and I’d like a fill-up, okay?
Laurence: Surely.

 The group is completed by another neighbour, Sue, a long-term resident of the street, whose fifteen-year-old daughter Abigail is holding a party at home. 

The assembled guests admire the kitchen equipment, the fridge freezer and rotisserie; the living room furniture, fibre-optic lights and sheepskin rug. 

Beverly: What, the candelabra? Yes, it’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Angela: Yes. Is it real silver?
Beverly: Yeah. Silver plate, yeah.

They move on to discuss cars, foreign holidays and supermarkets. Tony and Angela shop at Sainsbury’s, but Laurence prefers the Co-op because ‘they have a much wider range of goods there.’ 

The class distinctions are subtle, but clear. Divorcee Sue speaks with a Home Counties accent, and her former husband was an architect. She arrives in a blouse and skirt, offering a bottle of Beaujolais and expecting dinner. But the other guests have already had their ‘tea,’ and have correctly anticipated an extended evening of drinks. Angela and Tony are working-class. (Beverly points out that their house is a little smaller than hers.) But they are keen to move up the ladder.

Angela: We’ve just bought a new three-piece suite, but ours isn’t real leather like this – it’s ‘leather look.’

Beverly’s working-class background is revealed by her occasionally coarse language and manners. But through money, property and hard work, she has acquired a certain social status. As Leigh observes of her: 

‘She is totally preoccupied with appearances and received notions of behaviour and taste. A bundle of contradictions, she espouses the idea of people freely enjoying themselves, yet endlessly bullies everybody into what she wrongly thinks they’ll enjoy, or what is good for them.’
Mike Leigh
 
There’s an ambivalence to social change here. On the one hand, the group embraces new freedoms. On the other hand, it seems inherently conservative.

Angela: I think more and more people are getting divorced these days, though.
Beverly: Yeah, definitely, Ang. Mind you, I blame a lot of it on Women’s Lib. I do. And on permissiveness, and all this wife-swapping business. Don’t you, Tone?
 
Through the course of the play, we realise that Beverly and Laurence are unhappily married. They are constantly bickering about mundane household matters; about Laurence placing his executive briefcase on the furniture; about stocking up on lagers and light ales, the appropriate music volume and the desirability of olives. They don’t seem to have much in common. Laurence is proud of his Van Gogh and Lowry prints, and his bound and embossed sets of Shakespeare and Dickens. He proposes they listen to some ‘light classical – just as background.’ James Galway perhaps. Beverly however has more popular tastes.

Beverly: Lawrence, Angela likes Demis Roussos, Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and Sue would like to hear Demis Roussos. So please, do you think we could have Demis Roussos on?

As the drink flows, Beverly begins to flirt with Tony. 

The play brilliantly captures the character of suburban life. The aspiration, materialism and conformity; the subtly calibrated hierarchies; the fear of boredom and the determination to have a good time. There is an underlying suspicion that the real fun is happening off-stage, at maverick teenager Abigail’s party.  
 
‘All my plays and films have, at one level or another, dealt with the tension between conforming or being your true self, between following the rules or breaking them, and with the problem of having to behave the way you think you’re expected to.’
Mike Leigh

‘Abigail’s Party’ also illustrates the central part that brands and consumer goods play in contemporary life; their critical role in marking achievement, belonging and identity. 

The first production of the work, starring Alison Steadman at the Hampstead Theatre, was a huge box office success, and a BBC ‘Play for Today’ version was immediately commissioned. (You can still find it online.) It certainly captured the zeitgeist. Leigh has observed that it distilled the post-war obsession with ‘the done thing’, which, combined with a new ‘aggressive consumerism’, ushered in the era of Margaret Thatcher. 

Still from the original 1977 BBC drama. Pictured L to R: Janine Duvitski, Alison Steadman, Tim Stern, Harriet Reynolds and John Salthouse

Some have criticised Leigh for his ‘disdain for the lower middle classes.’ But his characters are often vulnerable; always sympathetic.
 
‘The play is both a lamentation and a celebration of how we are, but it is not a sneer.’
Mike Leigh

I grew up in suburban Romford. A semi-detached world of mown front lawns, neat flower borders and pebble dashed houses; of shag-pile carpets, rattan furniture and swirly wallpaper; of hi-fidelity separates, LPs and easy listening; of Ford Escorts, Capris and Cortinas; of white socks and cut-down shoes, gold chains and pastel sweaters. I loved Essex, but I was never quite sure it loved me…

Angela: The trouble with old houses is they haven’t got any central heating.

I have often wondered whether suburbia is under-represented in modern media and advertising. Over half of the UK population lives in these outskirts and edgelands. And yet, with the exception of a few sit-coms, our national narrative seems generally to be played out in city apartments and tower blocks; in urban centres and on village greens. 
 
If we ignore the suburbs, we are failing to monitor the frontiers of social change; neglecting the true melting pot of modern mores and cultural values. We are missing out on a critical part of our collective identity.

Beverly: Laurence, we're not here to hold conversations, we are here to enjoy ourselves. And for your information, that racket happens to be the King of Rock’n’Roll.

'Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be the one,
That shines on me like the morning sun.
Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be my spring,
My rainbow's end and the song I sing.
Take me far beyond imagination,
You're my dream come true, my consolation.
Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be my dream
My symphony, my own lover's theme
Ever and ever, forever and ever, my destiny
Will follow you eternally.'

Demis Roussos, ‘Forever and Ever’ (S Vlavianos / R Costandinos)

No. 493

Van Gogh, Painting the Infinite: ‘I’m Attempting Something More Heartbroken and Therefore More Heartbreaking’

Vincent Van Gogh, The Sower (1888)

I recently visited an exhibition of some 60 paintings and drawings created by Vincent Van Gogh in two years towards the end of his life (1888-90). (‘Poets and Lovers’ is at the National Gallery, London until 19 January 2025.)

‘It’s my plan to go to the south for a while, as soon as I can, where there’s even more colour and even more sun.’
Vincent Van Gogh, October 1887

In February 1888, aged 34, Van Gogh left Paris to live and work in the south of France. Settling in Arles, he rented the four-roomed Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine for 15 francs a month. Inspired by the beautiful local scenery and the ravishing light, he embarked on a period of industrious creativity, whilst also nurturing thoughts of establishing an ‘artists' home’, a communal ‘studio of the south.’

‘The painter of the future is a colourist such as there hasn’t been before.’

The Yellow House (The Street) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
(c) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Here’s the Yellow House with its bright green shutters and door, a steam train passing over a bridge in the distance. We step inside and see the painter’s pipe and tobacco sitting on a rustic chair; and his terracotta tiled bedroom with its limewashed walls. In the nearby park, two young lovers walk hand-in-hand under the shade of a spreading fir tree.

Now we regard Arles from across the River Rhone on a starry night. A team of stevedores unload barges laden with coal. In the surrounding countryside a sower is silhouetted against an enormous golden sun. A lone ploughman tills the fields and grape pickers labour in the vineyard.  

‘One can speak poetry just by arranging colours well, just as one can say comforting things in music.’

Van Gogh took real views as a starting point, but chose not to reproduce them faithfully. He freely added imagined figures and buildings; changed angles and viewpoints; intensified colours. He sought to convey meaning rather than actuality.

‘To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun.’

Vincent van Gogh ‘Starry Night Over the Rhône’
Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt

In December 1888 Van Gogh had a breakdown and cut off his left ear. He was admitted to the local hospital a number of times over the following months, and in May he checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy, a former monastery nearly 20 miles from Arles. Allocated two cells with barred windows, he used one of them as a studio. Although experiencing further episodes that summer and winter, he continued to work.  

‘I have a terrible clarity of mind at times, when nature is so lovely these days, and then I’m no longer aware of myself and painting comes to me as if in a dream.’

Van Gogh painted the arcaded courtyard; the overgrown hospital garden with its rows of pines and reddish soil; sinuous tree trunks, covered in dense undergrowth, bathed in dappled light. He painted flowering orchards and fields of bright red poppies; vivid blue irises, pink roses and chrome yellow sunflowers; blooming oleanders in a majolica jug.
 
‘I’m attempting something more heartbroken and therefore more heartbreaking.’

One gets the impression that, despite or perhaps because of his poor mental health, he was experiencing life more intensely; seeing more clearly; feeling more profoundly. His skies were the deepest blue. His sunsets were yellow, ultramarine and mauve. His suns were blazing orange and glowing gold. The wheatfields swayed under the mistral, the mountains and ravines quivered in the searing Provencal heat. The cypresses were aflame, the olive groves swooned, and the clouds rolled in over the hills like breaking waves.  

Vincent Van Gogh ‘Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background’

He achieved these dynamic effects with bold dashes, dots and swirls; with rippling strokes and hatching. It was a kind of magic.

‘I want a far-off thing like a vague memory softened by time.’

Perhaps this is a reminder to us all that we should look for the beauty that surrounds us; that we should regard the world more intensely; that even at our lowest ebb, in our darkest hour, nature provides respite, creativity offers relief.

‘Instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite.’

Sadly for Van Gogh, the respite was short-lived. In May 1890 he left the asylum and returned north to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. In July he shot himself in the chest, dying two days later.

'Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do.
Yeah, they were all yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called yellow.
So then I took my turn.
Oh, what a thing to have done,
And it was all yellow.
Your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful.
And you know, you know I love you so.
You know I love you so.’
Coldplay, ‘Yellow’ (C Martin / G Berryman / W Champion / J Buckland)

No. 492

Suffragette for a Day: The Limitations of Immersive Experiences

Surveillance photographs of suffragettes who had been imprisoned in Holloway.
Crown Copyright, courtesy of The National Archives.

2018 marked 100 years since the UK Government passed the Representation of the People Act, giving the right to vote to 8.4 million women who were over the age of 30 and met minimum property qualifications. It was the first step towards equalizing the franchise. 

I thought it would be interesting to watch a play on the subject, but I could find nothing in the mainstream West End venues. And so I settled instead for a couple of tickets to an immersive theatre event.

Early one bright summer’s evening, my wife and I tentatively made our way down into the basement of the Trocadero shopping centre on Piccadilly. We were met by a group of severe women in long heavy Edwardian skirts and white cotton blouses, and informed that we had travelled back in time to 1912. Taken to an office, the two of us were then formally enlisted to the suffragette cause and warned of the risk of incarceration and the loss of our reputations.  

Next we were sent back out onto the street to perform our first act of protest. Handed a piece of chalk each, we had to write appropriate slogans on the paving stones around the Trocadero.  

This seemed simple enough.  With shoppers and tourists traipsing past on either side, I got down on my knees and scrawled in large capital letters:

'Votes for Women.’

I admired my work for a moment, and then added:  

‘Deeds, not words!’

No one seemed to be paying too much attention. Which was fine, as I was a little concerned that I’d bump into one of my former colleagues, whose offices were close at hand.

After a little while, having written the same lines a few more times (my creativity eluded me), we decided that we’d made our point, and it might be time to return to our basement HQ.

In the tea-room, which was decorated in green, white and purple, some of our fellow conspirators were painting banners, making rosettes and learning a protest song.  

We were briefed on another mission. We were to have a secret rendezvous with a man in a bowler hat by the statue of Eros on Piccadilly Circus.  

Before we set off, our instructor assumed a grave expression.  

’I need to check with you one more time. Are you prepared to break the law for the cause?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’ I nervously replied.  ‘Not a problem.’

Above ground once more, we didn’t have long to wait before we spotted a tall gentleman smartly attired in a sombre suit and a black bowler hat. As we approached, we realised he was holding a couple of large stones.

‘I want you both to take these rocks and throw them through the windows of Lillywhites sporting goods store. It’s just over there.’
‘Of course. Got it. All good.’
 
Not a natural seditionary, I nonetheless steadied myself and took aim at a display of cricket equipment. I had just coiled my arm behind my back, when we were seized by a couple of burly uniformed police officers. We were then separated, taken to some grim underground cells and interrogated.  

My inquisitor was sarcastic, aggressive, belittling, and I was given a hard time for my ‘Fenian name.’ To be fair, he didn’t beat me up. Which I suspect would have been on the cards back in 1912.
 
All in all, my immersive experience was rather unsettling. But what did I learn from my day as a suffragette?

The event was certainly carefully crafted and intelligently scripted. And it did bring home the harsh realities of breaking the law for a cause.
 
But at the same time, I concluded that immersive theatre is not really for me. I’m too awkward and self-conscious. I find it hard to let go. And I’m not sure that a piece of personally involving drama could ever do justice to the horrors of oppression.
 
We’re all aware of the view that experience is the route to proper comprehension.
 
'I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.’
Xunzi
 
But perhaps we need to be mindful that immersion is not appropriate to everything and everyone. Sometimes it’s fine just to show and tell.
 
When my wife and I were reunited, on bail, in the tea-room of the suffragette HQ, we exchanged glances.  

‘Maybe we’ve done enough agitation for one day?’
‘Yes, I think so. Let’s go to dinner.’
 

'Comrades, ye who have dared,
First in the battle to strive and sorrow,
Scorned, spurned, nought have ye cared.
Raising your eyes to a wider morrow.
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary,
Toil and pain by faith ye have borne;
Hail, hail, victors ye stand,
Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!
Life, strife, these two are one,
Nought can ye win but by faith and daring:
On, on that ye have done,
But for the work of today preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance,
(Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)
March, march, many as one.
Shoulder to Shoulder and friend to friend.’
‘The March of the Women’, Ethel Smyth, Cicely Hamilton

No. 491

Big Night: You Don’t Need Words to Express Feelings

Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as Secondo and Primo. Big Night

Pascal: I am a businessman. I am anything I need to be at any time. Tell me, what exactly are you?

‘Big Night’, a 1996 comedy-drama, tells the story of two Italian immigrant brothers struggling to make a success of their restaurant on the Jersey Shore in the late 1950s.

Customer (when her partner is presented with a dish garnished with basil): That looks good. You’ve got leaves with yours.

Co-directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci, the movie stars Tony Shalhoub as older brother Primo, a brilliant, uncompromising chef, and Tucci as younger brother Secondo, the charming restaurant manager trying to balance the books.

Primo: To eat good food is to be close to God.

Paradise is a smart, traditional family restaurant, with tiled floors, white tablecloths and pressed napkins. There is a curved wooden bar, an antique espresso machine and the walls are hung with paintings.

Hitherto the locals have not found the cuisine to their taste.  

Customer: Monsieur, is this what I ordered?
Secondo: Yes, that is a risotto. Is a special recipe that my brother and I bring from Italy. It’s delicious, I promise.
Customer: It took so long, I thought you went all the way back to Italy to get it.

The good citizens of Jersey prefer their Italian food fast and simple, with meatballs and extra cheese on top.

Customer: There are no meatballs with the spaghetti?
Secondo: Sometimes the spaghetti likes to be alone.

Chef Primo is particularly upset when one diner requests a side-order of pasta with her risotto. Secondo pleads for pragmatism.

Secondo: Oh, please, Primo, what are you going to do? Tell the customer what she can eat? Huh? That is what she want. This is what the customer ask for. Make it! Make the pasta, make it, make it, make the pasta! Come on! Let's go!

Secondo has bought into the American Dream and is desperate to make the business a success. Primo, however, pines for a return to Italy. They are endlessly arguing over whether they should make concessions to accommodate local tastes and preferences.  

Primo: If you give people time, they learn.
Secondo: Well, I don’t have time for them to learn. This is a restaurant, not a f**king school.

Situated just across the street from Paradise, Pascal’s is a far more glitzy dining establishment, where the focus is on entertainment and experience rather than cuisine.

Primo: The man should be in a prison for the food he serves.

Pascal’s is a hugely successful business, not least because its slick proprietor has determined to give people what they want.

Pascal: A guy goes out to eat in the evening after a long day in the office or whatever. He don't want on his plate something that he has to look and think, ‘What the f**k is this?’ No, right. What he wants is a steak. ‘This is a steak. I like steak. Mmm. I’m happy!’

Desperate to keep his business afloat, Secondo asks Pascal for a loan, but he is refused. Instead, Pascal repeats a past offer to the brothers to work for him, and he gives Secondo a pep talk.

Secondo: You know everything has just become... too much.
Pascal: Hey, hey, f***ing guy! What this is: ‘too much’? Hey! It is never ‘too much’; it is only ‘not enough’! Bite your teeth into the ass of life and drag it to you!

At length Pascal promises to persuade his friend, the popular singer Louis Prima, to dine at Paradise, thereby attracting some much-needed buzz and publicity.  

On learning of the plan, Primo is sceptical.

Primo: People should come just for the food.
Secondo: I know that, I know. But they don’t.

And so, the brothers set about preparing a lavish dinner for the pop star, inviting some 17 guests to the restaurant, including their respective love interests, Pascal and his wife, a reporter, a car salesman and a Priest.

Secondo: Primo, this dinner tonight is happening. Do you know why?
Primo: No.
Secondo: Because it has to happen. We need it to happen.

The ‘big night’ at Paradise is a truly memorable occasion. There’s decadent drinking, joyous dancing, unrestrained smoking and eccentric party games. And, of course, there’s Primo’s magnificent cooking - including parmesan brodo, tricolore risotto, roasted  fish and suckling pig. The centrepiece of the feast is a timpano, a huge pasta dish with tomato sauce, roasted vegetables and sausage meat, hard-boiled eggs and cheese - all shaped into a dome, covered with dough and then baked.

Pascal: God damn it, I should kill you! This is so f**king good I should kill you!

‘Big Night’ is a fantastic film, filled with great characters, dialogue and drama. It also boasts a splendid supporting cast, including Minnie Driver, Ian Holm, Isabella Rossellini and Allison Janney.  

Big Night

The movie prompts anyone working in commerce to reflect on a common dilemma. Should we stay true to our original vision, or adapt to public tastes? Should we retain our distinctiveness, or adhere to successful conventions? Should we hold our course or bend with the wind? Should we stick or twist?

Primo: You want me to make a sacrifice. If I sacrifice my work, it dies.

Inevitably there’s a spectrum of responses to these questions, and the extremes are the most difficult to sustain. We often end up seeking a middle path.
 
Pascal: Give to people what they want, then later you can give them what you want.

Sadly, the euphoric, indulgent, chaotic ‘big night’ ends in disappointment, tears, truth telling and disputes.

Primo: This place is eating us alive! 

Dawn breaks and the revellers return home. A despondent Secondo enters the kitchen to find young waiter Cristiano asleep on the work surface. Secondo picks up a bowl of eggs.

Secondo: Are you hungry?…
Cristiano rouses himself to help, but is put at ease by Secondo.
Secondo: I’ll do it.

While Cristiano stretches himself awake, Secondo breaks the eggs, then whips and heats them on the stove. Cristiano settles on a counter, chewing a piece of bread, watching.
Secondo takes two plates and forks from the shelves and divides the omelette into thirds. Serving one portion each to Cristiano and himself, he leaves the remainder in the pan. They settle down to eat in silence.

Next Primo enters, hesitantly. Secondo fetches another plate and fork, and gives him the last share of the omelette. As the brothers tuck in, Cristiano leaves. They put their arms on one another's shoulders.
 
This quiet concluding scene, lasting 5 minutes, seems perfectly to sum up brotherly love, comradeship at work, the reluctant resolution that we must ‘get up and do it again.’ 

It leaves us with one final lesson: you don’t need words to express feelings.

'Buona sera, signorina, buona sera,
It is time to say goodnight to Napoli.
Though it's hard for us to whisper, buona sera.
With that old moon above the Mediterranean sea.
In the morning, signorina, we'll go walking,
Where the mountains help the sun come into sight,
And by the little jewellery shop we'll stop and linger,
While I buy a wedding ring for your finger.
In the meantime let me tell you that I love you.
Buona sera, signorina, kiss me goodnight.
Buona sera, signorina, kiss me goodnight.’
Louis Prima,’Buona Sera’ (C Sigman, P de Rose)

No 490

Rickie Lee Jones: ‘If You’re Happy, You See Happy. If You're Sad, You See Sad’

Rickie Lee Jones Photo Kirk West/Getty Images

I recently saw the legendary singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones perform at the Union Chapel, Islington. She’s 69, still full of vim, and it was a treat to catch her at such an intimate venue.

'You can't break the rules until you know how to play the game.'
Rickie Lee Jones

Playing acoustic guitar and piano, accompanied by a percussionist and keyboardist, Jones sings soulfully of love and loss; of drifters and dreamers; of ‘sad-eyed Sinatras,’ and Johnny the King who ‘walks these streets without her in the rain.’ And she relates how Chuck E ‘don’t come and PLP with me’. Her vocals are languid and jazz-inflected. Her stream-of-consciousness narratives are fragmented and impressionistic; conversational and colloquial.  

'I like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies.’

Wearing an embroidered silk jacket, Jones is a luminous presence, a latter-day troubadour, all smiles and charm - spotting a rainbow in the church lights, breaking into spontaneous song, telling stories of feckless boyfriends, New Orleans’ street culture and uncommon courtesy. 

Interviewer: Do you think we’re born musical?
Jones: I don’t know about we. I only know about me.

Jones teaches us to embrace life and all it has to offer, good and bad; to translate our experiences and encounters into our work; to be positively predisposed.

'A long stretch of headlights bend into I9.
They tiptoe into truck stops,
And sleepy diesel eyes.
Volcanoes rumble in the taxi, glow in the dark.
Camels in the driver's seat,
A slow, easy mark.
But you ran out of gas,
Down the road, a piece.
And then the battery went dead,
And now the cable won't reach.
It's your last chance
To check under the hood.
Your last chance,
She ain't soundin' too good.
Your last chance
To trust the man with the star
'Cause you've found the last chance Texaco
The last chance!’
'The Last Chance Texaco’

Jones performs on Saturday Night Live in April 1979. Credit: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Jones was born into a musical family in Chicago in 1954. Her paternal grandfather, Frank ‘Peg Leg’ Jones, was a vaudevillian who sang and danced, played the ukulele and told jokes. Her grandmother was a dancer on the chorus line. Both her parents had been raised in orphanages, and her childhood was marked by upheaval, as her musician father took the family from state to state, trying to make a name for himself.

‘What were they running from? From cities, houses, and eventually, themselves, but they never got away from their difficult childhoods or their love for each other.’

The family settled for a time in Phoenix, Arizona, where Jones roamed the desert, rode horses and had adventures with imaginary friends. As she played games on the street, she sang songs from the hit show West Side Story.  

‘I drew a crowd! Music had built an accidental bridge between me and the world.’

Jones’ teenage years were characterised by recklessness and risk-taking. Ejected from high school, she ran away from home, lived in a cave, hitch-hiked, got arrested, and more besides.

'I spent most of my life in cars, vans and buses… For a long time, my solution to any problem, big or small, was to jump in the car and drive away from it.’

Eventually at 19 she landed up in Venice Beach, California, working menial jobs and singing in local bars and coffee shops to pay the rent. Hanging out with other creative mavericks, like Tom Waits, Lowell George and Dr John, she began to write her own songs.

In 1979 she released her stunning self-titled debut album to critical and commercial acclaim. With her long blond hair, toothy grin and beatnik beret, she was dubbed by Time magazine The Duchess of Coolsville.  

'How come he don't come and PLP with me
Down at the meter no more?
And how come he turn off the TV
And hang that sign on the door?
Well, we call, and we call,
"How come?", we say.
Hey, what could make a boy behave this way?
Well, he learned all of the lines now and every time
He don't, uh, stutter when he talks.
And it's true, it's true,
He sure has acquired this kind of cool and inspired sort of jazz when he walks.
Where's his jacket and his old blue jeans?
If this ain't healthy, it is some kinda clean.
But that means that Chuck E's in love,
Chuck E.'s in love.'
'Chuck E's in Love’

A string of other fine albums followed: ‘Pirates’ (1981), ‘The Magazine’(1984) and ‘Flying Cowboys’ (1989). Her work was at once deeply personal and yet also rooted in observed lives. Critically, she seemed to be addressing the audience directly.

‘I always thought about somebody else. I always wanted to talk to you…I want you to feel what I’m saying.’

Sadly Jones faced issues with addiction in the early part of her career. She also resented being boxed in and categorised by record labels, the press and the public. She needed to evolve in her own way.

‘For me in the first ten years I wanted to define myself and to change – both those things. It was a terrible burden for me.’
 
Having withdrawn from view to raise her daughter, Jones subsequently recorded several albums of sublime covers. She also explored electronica and jazz, and made an angry protest album.

'Some of us are born to live lives on an exaggerated scale.’

From her unstable childhood to her unreliable partners; from her uncomfortable relationship with the music industry to her quest for an independent private life, Jones faced a good many challenges. But she consistently demonstrated a compelling resilience, good humour and optimism.
 
'I’m an optimistic person. In spite of my recklessness and throwing myself on the fire, my nature is to make something good out of what happens.’
 
I was quite taken with this comment, which perhaps sums up her resolutely positive outlook:  

‘You see things out of your eyes. If you are happy, you see happy. If you're sad, you see sad.’

'She was pregnant in May,
Now they're on their way.
Dashing through the snow
To St. John's, here we go.
Well, it could be a boy,
But it's okay if he's girl.
Oh, these things that grow out of
The things that we give.
We should move to the west side
They still believe in things
That give a kid half a chance.’
‘Skeletons'

At the gig I attended, Jones recounted how she was recently introduced to Elton John at an industry event. Somewhat surprised when he kissed her, on the lips, twice, she burst into tears. At first she was confused by her own response - where did that come from? - and then she understood that, in that particular moment, she had been taken back to the inordinate joy that John’s songs had given her as a teenager.  

As Jones told this story, a lump formed in my throat. I realised that I feel the same way about her.

'I say this was no game of chicken.
You were aiming your best friend.
That you wear like a switchblade on a chain around your neck.
I think you picked this up in Mexico from your dad.
Now it's daddy on the booze,
And Brando on the ice.
Now it's Dean in the doorway,
With one more way he can't play this scene twice.
So you drug her down every drag of this forbidden fit of love.
And you told her to stand tall when you kissed her.
But that's not where you were thinking...
How could a Natalie Wood not get sucked
Into a scene so custom tucked?
But now look who shows up
In the same place
In this case
I think it's better
To face it.
We belong together.
We belong together.’
‘We Belong Together’

No. 489

Beware Strategic Myopia: An Incident in Romford Town Centre

Paul Cezanne - Sorrow. 1867

One Saturday afternoon I found myself in Romford Town Centre in floods of tears.  

It was somewhere between Downtown Records and the municipal fountain. I was rubbing my eyes, dabbing my nose, sobbing and snivelling.

Standing nearby, Andy declared in a loud voice: 

‘I’ve told you: it’s over. Why can’t you deal with it?‘

 I could sense that we two teenagers were attracting attention from passers-by. I was hot and bothered and embarrassed.

I continued to weep.

‘Just pull yourself together, Jim. We can’t go on like this. It’s over!’

This story is not as it seems.  

I had recently acquired my first set of gas-permeable contact lenses, and was struggling to get used to them. The slightest speck of dust caused intense irritation.

 It was Andy’s idea of a joke. And to be fair it was quite funny.

It’s no surprise perhaps that research by ophthalmologists shows that our constant screen time is radically changing our eyes. (Adam Popescu, The Guardian, 14 Nov 2021)
 
The human eye is supposed to stop growing after our teens, just like the rest of our bodies. But our endless messaging, speaking on conference calls, reading and writing emails - what experts call ‘near work’ - strains our optic organs. We blink less and our lenses shift, and in time this leads to the elongation of our eyeballs. We then suffer myopia and the gradual loss of the eyes’ ability to focus.

‘The shape of the eye is round like a basketball. When an eye becomes near-sighted, myopic, the eye is longer, like a grape or olive.’
Dr Eric Chow, Miami optometrist

Near-sightedness affects half of young adults in the US, twice as many as 50 years ago, and over 40% of the population.

To address this depressing phenomenon, we are encouraged to take breaks, blink and lubricate; to spend more time outdoors; to embrace the 20-20-20 model.

‘Every 20 minutes, look at a distance 20 feet away, for 20 seconds.’
Dr Luxme Hariharan, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Miami

Some experts have observed that our ancestors spent more time staring at the horizon, scanning the distant panorama for potential risks and rewards. This induced a state of calm when there was nothing going on; and a state of intense focus when there was a threat or opportunity. They suggest that expanding our peripheral vision – ‘horizon gazing’ - may equip us to better concentrate and cope with stress.   

You could argue that excessive screen time does not just cause physical short-sightedness and mental stress. For Planners it also produces Strategic Myopia: reliance on the same widely published data; concentration on the same narrow particulars of the problem; convergence on the same conventional solutions.

'Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.'
Eleanor Roosevelt (after Henry Thomas Buckle)

We should get out more. We need to breathe fresh strategic air; to take in new cultural stimulus; to observe contextual social change. We need to think more broadly; to plan more deeply; to raise our eyes to the horizon. Because the story is not always as it seems.

As the artist Vee Talbott suggests in Tennessee Williams' ‘Orpheus Descending’:

'Appearances are misleading, nothing is what it looks like to the eyes. You got to have vision to see!’


'It's over.
It's over.
It's over.
Summer came and passed away,
Hardly seemed to last a day.
But it's over, and what can I do?
Music playing in the air,
Silence on a darkened stair
'Cause it's over, and what can I do?’
ELO, ‘It’s Over’ (J Lynne)

No. 488

Excellence and Inclusion: Every Business Needs a Youth Strategy

Max Oppenheimer, The Orchestra 

'It takes a very long time to become young.'
Pablo Picasso

Every year the Agency sent a few of its high-fliers to the South by Southwest (SXSW) media festival in Austin, Texas. On their return, I would invite them to give a short debrief of their observations and insights to the Board.  

On one such occasion, a very impressive Young Person gave an excellent presentation, full of vision, wisdom and wit. Acknowledging the warm round of applause that was her due, she promptly headed for the exit with a beaming smile. This had been a job well done.  

Sitting, as was my wont at Board Meetings, on a cabinet by the door, I was keen that she should stay around for a brief Q&A session. And so I raised my hand to stop her as she passed by.  

The Young Person simply gave me a high five and walked briskly out.

Occasionally I am asked what I miss most about working in an Agency. I tell them that it is not the cut and thrust of commerce; nor the intellectual challenge of solving a marketing conundrum; nor even the thrill of witnessing a magnificent creative breakthrough. What I miss most is the youth.  

'Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.'
Franz Kafka

I was recently invited to a BBC Prom concert by the National Youth Orchestra (NYO) at the Royal Albert Hall (Prom 30, 10 August). This splendid ensemble of musicians aged 19 or younger, gave sparkling renditions of works by Wagner, Mahler and Missy Mazzoli. Their playing was full of vim and vigour, technically precise and emotionally compelling.

I was struck by a new piece: the world premiere of Dani Howard’s 'Three, Four AND… ‘ The title was inspired by the anticipation of what’s to come after a conductor’s count-off, and the music was developed by Howard in schools, on social media and on tour, as part of the NYO Inspire scheme.
 
‘NYO Inspire is a musical adventure for teenagers who want to make music a bigger part of their lives, but face barriers and a lack of opportunity to progress.’

At the BBC Prom performance, nearly 100 players from NYO Inspire joined 160 members of the main orchestra - from the choir seats and the upper tiers; from the gallery and the aisles. And periodically the conductor Tess Jackson turned to the auditorium to keep everyone in time.

The piece was beautiful, bursting with rhythm, fizzing with ideas. It was all rather moving.

‘I would not be the musician, nor person, I am today without the opportunities NYO Inspire and the Orchestra have given me, and for this I am incredibly grateful.’
Tara Spencer, Co-Leader, NYO 

I was particularly impressed by the way this NYO initiative integrated inclusion and outreach, with excellence and ambition.

Every business needs a youth strategy: a plan by which it can engage with new generations of talent; a vehicle for listening and learning from a cohort that is full of energy and inspiration; as well as a structure for training and coaching to the highest standards.  

Young people should not be regarded as a cheap resource, but rather as a precious commodity, a window into tomorrow, a means to sustaining future success.

'We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.'
Franklin D. Roosevelt

'I used to think that the day would never come,
I'd see delight in the shade of the morning sun.
My morning sun is the drug that brings me near
To the childhood I lost, replaced by fear.
I used to think that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun.’
New Order, ’True Faith’ (B Sumner / G Gilbert / P Hook / S Hague / S Morris)

No. 487

Still Life: Finding Beauty in Plainness

William Nicholson’s The Silver Casket and Red Leather Box, 1920. Photograph: Private collection

I recently attended an excellent exhibition examining the story of still life in Britain. (‘The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain’ is at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester until 20 October.)

‘Those two words [still life] imply an undercurrent of meaning at once poignant and vital, suggesting objects curiously related to each other, silent, composed, in tranquil, even ominous, association.’
Michael Ayrton

Historically considered to be a lesser form of painting, still life first became popular in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, following the import of Dutch work in the genre. (The English term still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven.)  

Early still life paintings sought to convey the transience of human existence through arrangements of meaningful objects, such as clocks and skulls. They were known as ‘vanitas’ (a reminder of the futility of pursuing material wealth) and ‘memento mori’ (a reminder of our mortality). 

Edwaert Collier’s vanitas of 1694 presents books, a globe and an engraved portrait of Caesar Augustus, alongside a recorder, lute and oboe. The message is that earthly knowledge and power are fleeting. Once an instrument is put down, the music stops.

Symbolism abounds in these works. Playing cards connote pleasure, chance and fate. Grapes, peaches and plums represent fertility and romance. Roses suggest love and the Virgin Mary, and carnations imply resurrection and eternal life.  If you look closely, you’ll notice that some of the rose petals are wilting; the plant's leaves are brown at the edges; and a grape has fallen from the bunch. Beauty, like life itself, does not endure.

In modern times still life has offered artists the opportunity to explore colour, form and materials. Breaking free from a more naturalistic approach, everyday objects could be reduced to abstract blocks of pure pigment. Ben Nicholson painted the striped and spotted jugs, mugs and glassware that he had in his studio, interpreting their forms and patterns in varying degrees of representation and abstraction. 

‘Furniture such as couches, chairs, bookcases and tables… involve planes, horizontal, vertical and inclined, angles, right, acute and obtuse, directions, divisions, dimensions and recessions; contrasts of masses, light and shade, in fact, the basic material for creating the structural harmony.’
Paul Nash

Meredith Frampton, Trial and Error

In the 1920s and ‘30s surrealist artists revealed the strangeness in the ordinary, making arresting arrangements of familiar objects to expose the subconscious. Meredith Frampton precisely painted an artist’s model of a head and placed it on an open sketchbook. There is a pear sitting on a funeral urn; a white carnation in a tea pot; a queen of spades playing card.

Subsequently pop artists blurred the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, drawing our attention to the proliferation of marketing imagery. In Eduardo Paolozzi’s brightly coloured collages, American salespeople jostle with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, White Star Tuna, Coca-Cola and Kool-Aid.  

Over the years still life has evolved into many different forms of expression. But perhaps its enduring appeal resides in its invitation to close observation and contemplation.  

‘There is a place in our lives for small pictures… Looked at in stillness, hidden forms take shape; and forms, like words, have their references, haunted by experience, extending into a half-conscious dream world.’
Valentine Dobrée

Dod Procter (1892–1972)-Black and White. Southampton City Art Gallery

William Nicholson asks us to consider an elegant silver casket sitting on top of a red leather box, the light shimmering on the metal, reflecting the unseen room. Dod Procter paints her shawl, gloves and ermine wrap, perhaps deposited on the hall table after a night on the town. Eric Ravilious depicts a forlorn jug of bracken fronds and cow parsley, casting a melancholy shadow on the tabletop.  

More recently Rachel Whiteread has explored the negative spaces between objects. A white plaster imprint of three bookshelves suggests a lifetime of thought and ideas; of private moments and quiet introspection.  

‘I find beauty in plainness.’ 
William Scott

The themes at the heart of this exhibition may resonate with those of us that work in the world of marketing and communications. Many of us sell ordinary objects, performing modest roles in everyday lives. Too often we exaggerate the value and significance of our brands. We are prone to hyperbole.  

Untitled (For Frank) (1999), Rachel Whiteread. Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. © the artist

Perhaps we would do well to seek instead the beauty in their plainness.

Still life asks us to pause, look and reflect, in the unbroken silence; to find meaning in the mundane. Life may be fragile and fleeting, but it is also beautiful.

'I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick
On the cigarettes there in the ashtray,
Lying cold the way you left them,
But at least your lips caressed them while you packed.
And a lip print on a half-filled cup of coffee
That you poured and didn't drink.
But at least you thought you wanted it.
That's so much more than I can say for me.
It's been a good year for the roses,
Many blooms still linger there.
The lawn could stand another mowing,
Funny, I don't even care.
When you turned and walked away,
And as the door behind you closes,
The only thing I know to say,
It's been a good year for the roses.’
George Jones, 'A Good Year for the Roses’ (J Chesnut)

No. 486