Prior engagement
was explaining to a farming friend that actuaries are now classified into four categories. He, in turn, informed me of the four official wheat groups as determined by NABIM (the National Association of British and Irish Millers.) Group 1 are hard-milling varieties likely to gain a full bread-making premium. Group 2 consists of hard endosperm varieties that have some milling potential but are not suited for all grists. Some are suited for specialist flours. Group 3 (at this point my ears pricked up) are soft milling varieties best suited to biscuit and cake flours. Group 4 are all other varieties. These are unlikely to command a premium and frequently will be used for animal feed, eg chickens and pigs! Perhaps the profession might have adopted colour-coding in preference to numbers. Either way, it’s good to know that my position, for the present, is one better than chicken feed and I wish joy to the real bread-makers.
Bucolic funThe July weather in England’s southern counties was encouragement to explore the nooks and crannies of our heritage. The most memorable meal for many a day was partaken at the Buckland Manor Hotel near Broadway. It’s an oasis of pure pleasure in deepest Gloucestershire with a wine list of epic proportions. Not far away is Snowshill Manor, a National Trust property housing Charles Paget Wade’s eccentric and amazing collection of Japanese armour, bicycles, etc. Leaving the village and entering the property by a door in the wall is like travelling back in time, and the property is cloaked in the suffocating, perfumed air of history. Moving south to Wiltshire, another NT site, Stourhead, opens its gardens each July for a fête champêtre. This year the theme was ‘A Night with the Stars’, which led to several thousand people picnicking by the lake in fancy dress listening to diverse music of variable quality. There were more Marilyn Monroes than holes in a subway grating and a surplus of Chaplins. My prize for bravery went to the lady, probably the ‘wrong’ side of 40, who came as Lara Croft. A fund-raising recital at Hinton St Mary in Dorset, the home of the lord lieutenant and her husband, showed off the talents of Flora McIntosh, a mezzo with highly developed acting skills and a pleasing voice.
ChichesterThese excursions were sandwiched between two visits to Sussex. The Worshipful Company of Actuaries spent an afternoon at the theatre in Chichester and I have rekindled my love of the place. The cathedral in late afternoon sunlight has much to recommend it and is very fully used. On the day I called by, choral evensong was taking place, a lecture was about to start in one of the adjacent buildings, Verdi’s requiem was being performed later that evening, and the refectory in the Bell Rooms served a perfect cup of coffee. The Minerva theatre matinée was Rattigan’s penultimate play In Praise of Love, first produced in 1973. As ever with his works the messages were often subliminal but the emotional climax of the play occurs when Sebastian says, ‘Do you know what le vice Anglais – the English vice – really is?… It’s our refusal to admit to our emotions. We think they demean us, I suppose’. His wife is dying; both know it but never discuss it with each other. What we have perceived earlier as the cruel callousness of Sebastian to his wife is, in fact, the mechanism by which each will cope with the tragedy. We may muse whether society and emotional control is different 30 years on because the stiff upper lip is more flaccid these days, especially after a penalty shoot-out.
GlyndebourneAt the end of the month on a perfect summer’s afternoon I noted several other actuaries in the Glyndebourne audience for the opening of Prokofiev’s opera Betrothal in a Monastery. It is adapted from Sheridan’s play, The Duenna, and has a labyrinthine plot involving much mistaken identity. I enjoyed it enormously, especially the character acting of star Viacheslav Voynarovskiy as Don Jerome. The largely Russian cast knew what they were about and I rapidly adapted to their mood and to the fascinating score which Vladimir Jurowski conducted with brilliance. The only downside for me was the lack of any sustained solo singing and it seemed that every time a singer was about to burst forth into a lyrical piece of soul-searching, Prokofiev moved on immediately. The impetus was continuous, the orchestration was inventive, but there was no introspection and this was explained in the programme as a consequence of Prokofiev being influenced by the episodic structure of his recent film scores. On the other hand, perhaps this reflected Russian paranoia in the early 1940s. Like Sebastian, they too would not admit to their emotions. On this occasion because they knew Stalin was watching.
