Bluebell Time
4 May

All of a sudden, the bluebells are out in bloom and it feels more like spring.

Ross and I have been setting out our stall in the garden in preparation for the summer. We've been pricking out (and let me assure that this is a technical term). Into various points in the garden have gone Night Scented Stock and Wallflowers. The Wallflowers, of course, we shan't get the benefit of until next year but they will provide some green cover.

There's a couple of things have come up recently about racism which seem to me to show a change in received attitudes.

Ron Atkinson was sacked from a commentator's job for making an off-the-cuff remark which was racist in tone. That's not surprising. What has been is the reaction of some significant members of the black community. Ron Atkinson has actually done more than most to promote the cause of multi-cultural football.

However, he is a man of a certain age and certain stock phrases come all too readily to the tongue from a more racist time. I know myself that schoolboy phrases such as "wogging off" to mean playing truant or "wogging off with" something meaning to steal it occasionally re-surface in my head. Now I do not believe that all black men are feckless; nor do I believe that all black men are thieves. However, I am quite capable of demonstrating my residual racism by using of one those phrases without thinking.

And that's the conclusion that the editor of The Voice came to concerning Ron Atkinson - not racist per se but uttering racist remarks which came from the long forgotten racist context of his upbringing. And it feels a quite adult recognition by both men.

Around the same time, members of the Commission for Racial Equality issued a statement saying the integration was not necessarily best served by Local Authorities spending money to send young girls of Asian heritage to school in India so that they could get in touch with their roots. Identity is a much more complex issue than that and the money could be better spent elsewhere. That feels quite adult in its perspective also. Maybe we are seeing the beginning of a sea change in the way that the minority community sees itself.

As an escape from such deep thoughts, I've been listening to a lot of operetta recently. EMI have just reissued a bunch of classic recordings in English hailing from the glory days of Sadler's Wells Opera as it was before it became English National Opera. The whole tone of these recordings is one of well-crafted fun; the sort of thing which we find almost impossible in these ironic post-modern days. It's the sort of thing that less august opera companies get right (like Buxton Festival with Offenbach's La Périchole, the Carl Rosa Opera Company with Sullivan's The Gondoliers and Opera della Luna with Offenbach's La Belle Hélène) whilst the world leaders get it hopelessly wrong (like Welsh National Opera with Strauss's Die Fledermaus).

Ross and I also took ourselves off to Tate Liverpool. My main reason for going was to see Field by Antony Gormley. Though I've encountered this work before in other guises, it is always a treat to stand in front of that sea of pottery faces mutedly looking up at you. Always a four star experience.

We also happened upon a small side gallery containing work by a sculpture I had never heard of before, Ronald Moody. I liked the shapes, textures and materials and the references to other cultures. The piece opposite (called Jokaanan) is a good example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Good for three, I think.

There's been a couple of DVDs as well.

I was much taken with Finding Nemo. The problem with most animations these days (just as with the rash of CGI action films) is that the emphasis is on the technical process rather than the simple virtue of story telling. This had both and it helped for me that the story of a dad protecting his son played right into my personal material. I thought it was excellent.

Less good by far was Bright Young Things, directed by Stephen Fry and starring a bright bunch of young actors supported by a roll call of theatre land's great and good, including a coke snorting Sir John Mills. But it was vapid. Just two stars, I feel.