1935 Map of the Somerset and Dorset Railway

No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Moretehoe
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
We won’t be meeting again
On the slow train.

I used to live near Blandford Forum, and for the past forty-three years have had some reason to pass through regularly or visit.  My grandmother was born there; my aunt and her husband ran a market garden from Blandford St Mary (it fed the town for two generations at least); my wedding reception was held there. But in the past 12 months it has ceased to be a node in my life.

I remember when they tore up the line, because it ran behind our home (see map).  It was part of the Somerset and Dorset Railway, the “Slow and Dirty” as it was  known colloquially.  I got into trouble for accepting a short ride between Charlton Marshall and Spetisbury from the workmen on their tractor and trailer.  My mother banished me to my room in disgrace, without any tea.  I was only four.

A few weeks ago, when I heard Joe Stilgoe’s version (right mouse-click open in new window, play track) of the Flanders and Swann classic Slow Train, my ears pricked up. This sounded special. The song is about the controversial closure of the local British railway network in the 1960s, of which the S&D formed a resonant part.  Where the original song is light opera, the cover is all cool jazz ballad.  Joe’s management put it up on Myspace especially for us.  Enjoy.

There’s an argument — should it become necessary to mobilize a vast army of unemployed — to rebuild the railways.  If I put on my counterfactual-tinted spectacles, this network would never have been closed had the Brompton Folding Bicycle been invented earlier.   And there might not be a huge car industry now to drag us all into an even deeper crisis.  Just a thought.

Photo credit: Brompton Danny McL

What has the French Horn to do with the science of uncertainty? The Economist review of journalist Jasper Rees’s book I Found My Horn may have nailed it.  The book chronicles Rees’s mid-life crisis in which he picked up his childhood instrument rather than running a marathon .  It’s now being published in the US as A Devil to Play: One Man’s Year-Long Quest to Master the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument.  More pertinently, a play starring co-writer Jonathan Guy Lewis opens this very night on the London stage.

What makes the horn quite so hard to play is the length of tubing necessary to produce its tonal range; despite three valves, it is very easy to hit the wrong note, or fall off the right one. There’s a level of doubt about each outcome that does not trouble other musicians to quite the same degree.  Even professional orchestral players are more exposed than most to public musical catastrophe, because of the horn’s expressive value to composers.  For this, among other reasons, horn players are considered a breed apart.  This is how Simon Rattle puts it:-

You never eyeball a horn player. You just don’t. They’re stuntmen. You don’t eyeball stuntmen when they’re about to dice with death.”

Given the Knackered Hack’s quest for antidotes to hubris, perhaps mastery of the horn (if that is not a contradiction in terms) should be considered an essential qualification for public or corporate office?  I’ve noticed that this website seems to attract a disproportionate number of horn players (at least two).  Perhaps there’s a connection? You can purchase a CD by one of those readers below.

[By way of full disclosure, the Knackered Hack was placed first in the under 12s brass section of the Harrogate Festival in 1976, performing the second movement of Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto K495, cough... ]

Photo credit: vtengr4047

Jake Thackray was a Yorkshireman and troubadour (no, really), inspired by Georges Brassens. Good hunter-gatherers should be in bed early, but because of a journalistic (if not civic) duty to watch the US election coverage, allied with a bit of US jet-lag, I was accidentally around when the BBC aired a late night documentary on Thackray last Monday. I remember him from my childhood, when he did a regular turn on a consumer rights/light entertainment show called That’s Life, famous for finding dogs that could say “sausages”: the lolcats of its day.

A fortnight ago, the BBC’s highest paid presenter (Jonathan Ross) was suspended, and one of its rising stars (Russell Brand) fired, for an offensive prank phone call to ageing Faulty Towers comedy actor Andrew Sachs concerning the night-time activities of his granddaughter. One defence, I think from a BBC type, suggested that their misdemeanour was perhaps an inevitable part of a risk-taking comedy culture. Despite a Facebook support group set up to defend the two overpaid scallywags’ human rights, and despite the fact that some of my Twitter chums think what happened to the two is a travesty, I am a bit more hard-nosed. Watching Jonathan Ross’s performances over the years, it seemed increasingly likely that there would be a blow-up at some stage, which is now unfortunately squandering BBC goodwill just as it tries to defend its public service remit.

Ironically, self-deprecating Thackray offers a perfect lesson to managers in general, managers of “The Talent” in particular, and the talent itself in this wonderful song entitled The Bull. There might even be a message in there for bankers, central and otherwise. The contrast between the talent of Thackray and Brand/Ross looks quite stark, when it comes to pushing the boundaries of taste and decency for comedic effect.The clip has a slight hiatus, so hang on in there.

And if you’re wondering what that missing verse contains, curiously, I can’t find a CD including this song.  However, a boxed set of Thackray is available below (with a number entitled Black Swan – I wonder what that’s about? ).