The real Enigma

Mitch and I had a blissful lie in this morning as our wonderful cleaner, Sasha, was due to arrive later than usual. The girls were up at the crack of dawn, as normal, but are now well trained in the art of entertaining each other whilst pretending to be orphans. They can wash and more or less dress themselves in appropriate attire and even stave off hunger by helping themselves to those superb Innocent Smoothies for Kids - effortless nutrition!

Mitch popped down the road for The Telegraph which he insists on reading daily from cover to cover and out slid one of those obligatory 'FREE CDs' which accompanies practically every weekend newspaper (really annoying) that invariable end up as impromptu coasters or sun-catching mobiles (Wonderful for home science activities on light and refraction! How else do you get your children through end of Key Stage science?).

A few weeks ago the Telegraph came up trumps with Dr Seuss' 'The Cat in the Hat and other stories' read by Adrain Edmondson - joy of such joys.Yet more freebies enabling the children to sail through the SATs reading comprehension!
Anyway, this weekend's CD (with another tomorrow) is a masterpiece and I applaud the editor (or whoever was responsible) for his impeccable choice and apparent resolve to whack the PC brigade into touch.

Let's pop back a few days - Thursday in fact - when Mitch was forced to buy The Times (now, that's another story which I promise to tell another time). We were in the Midlands (yes, well, alright...Birmingham) at the time and the early evening news showed a delightful commemorative piece on the 150th anniversary of Sir Edward Elgar's birth. I was amazed to discover that he died without ever receiving full acknowledgement of his genius. A very sad fact.

An even sadder fact was the contents of Stephen Pollard's Notebook entitled, 'An enigmatic insult to Elgar'. He arguably highlights that Elgar was the greatest British composer of the past 250 years and tells the tale of The Elgar Society's insulting rebuff from the Arts Council...yes, THE ARTS COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN!!!!!!!!, when they requested £174,000 to organise a series of concerts for young people around the anniversary of Elgar's birth. It appears that the Arts Council is controlled by numbskulls who are fully intent on satisfying the tastes of this sad celebrity driven and dumb downed society that we are forced to raise our children in.

Yes, Elgar was patriotic - bigoted even - but he was British and he was a great composer and deserves acknowledgement regardless of one's politics.

Pollard went on to say that, 'whilst £174,000 for Elgar is a no-no, commissioning 50 new, specially made ring tones, for all the telephones on the Arts Council system, [which] celebrates the relocation of the south west regional office to Southernhay in Exeter" is a yes-yes.'

The Arts Council say that the Elgar Society's bid failed to meet any of the criteria by which applications are judged but were more than pleased to give £12,000 to an 'artist' in the East Midlands to kick a curry box along a street because it meets its criteria.

In our house this morning, we had breakfast to the sublime tones of Elgar's Enigma Variations along with more fruit Smoothies, egg rolls, marmalade and toast. Happy Birthday Elgar!