He was full of bugs, he said, when we saw him last, at the house of some friends who had invited us for the evening. Only just recovered from flu or something.
\nHis friends couldn\u2019t help pulling his leg about the medication he had probably had. He must have been not only full of bugs, but full of\u2026that trace element which according to him practically everybody is short of and the administration of which works wonders with a malfunctioning nervous, metabolic and any other system. He has no hesitation to prescribe it from a distance to anybody suffering from depression. One case unfortunately was terminal cancer. Of course, he couldn\u2019t know that. No harm in trying.<\/p>\n
He told us they had been to a concert and forced to listen to Henze\u2019s 7th symphony. How outrageous. And there were people applauding. He was totally out of sympathy and called them cranks. That wasn\u2019t music. There was no harmony. Had it been called \u201cchaos\u201d he would have understood. But there wasn\u2019t even a name to it. The first movement was supposed to be a dance. There had been no trace of rhythm in it. Just as there are no tunes in Wagner\u2019s works which send him to sleep.<\/p>\n
What is music, somebody asked. The definition given by the OED was read aloud.<\/p>\n
How about Benjamin Britten, somebody challenged Aldous, knowing full well that Aldous loathed this composer. The answer was surprizing: Benjamin Britten is heaven!! Is it all relative then, was the next question. He answered there was absolutely nothing aesthetically pleasing in Henze. A cacophony of weird sounds. Hurtful more than anything, so hurtful, he couldn\u2019t have borne it much longer. Is \u201caesthetically pleasing\u201d part of the definition of music? Personally I have no idea. It might be a subject for an interesting discussion. In a larger context. Art in general\u2026 For Aldous things were clear. He knew what music was. Anybody with a different view, like those applauding youngsters, must be an idiot. He looked determined and we dropped the subject.<\/p>\n
Aldous\u2019 wife passed onto the Royal Wedding. Asked for my opinion, I told them it had made me laugh, because everybody had taken it so seriously. Aldous\u2019 wife certainly remained serious, saying with rapture it was the most beautiful bride she had ever seen! Having discussed the Bride\u2019s dress and one or two others, we passed on to the real people. What a wonderful Royal Family we have! Not terribly academically inclined, I learned. They did have one son in Cambridge at the moment, however, people say\u2026 There was a tactful silence. Somebody asked: \u201cNot very intelligent \u2013 is that what it means?\u201d Nobody answered the question. Aldous and his wife thought \u201cacademic inclination\u201d is not even desirable for them. In their job, I heard, they want to be down to earth, relate with the people.<\/p>\n
Aldous\u2019 wife made a few patronising remarks about the groom united with the previously mentioned beautiful bride. She obviously didn\u2019t care too much for him, but put this in a nice English way. To me the person in question looked like a monkey. His younger brother, Aldous\u2019 wife said, looks nice. And his elder brother! Aren\u2019t we lucky to have such a marvellous future king. So serious. So involved. Making known his ideas. He had pleased Aldous very much by criticizing the proposed extension of the National Gallery. \u201cA hideous place of architecture,\u201d Aldous complained. Apparently nothing pleasing about it at all. The Prince had prevented these plans from being carried out. Good for him. A good man. I reminded Aldous that the Prince was also into organic agriculture and alternative medicine. Did he still approve of him? Aldous made no comment.<\/p>\n
Instead he professed his lasting disgust of the new address for ladies : Ms.
\nThis had been in use for some time and most people have accepted it, because used to it by now. Not so Aldous. He refuses to bow to habit when he doesn\u2019t like it. What about the new pound coins then? People had accepted them in the end. He said he wanted the pound notes back, looking at me invitingly. But I didn\u2019t take the bait. Somebody commented it wasn\u2019t juicy enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He was full of bugs, he said, when we saw him last, at the house of some friends who had invited us for the evening. Only just recovered from flu or something. His friends couldn\u2019t help pulling his leg about the medication he had probably had. He must have been not only full of bugs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-aloud"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}