London missive - Paxman on M&S underwear

My week in London was punctuated by English eccentricity. When I went round to meet the tenants in the Mare Street flat, they were in the middle of watching a BBC2 documentary called “Wonderland: the man who eats badgers”. It profiled the lives of men (mainly men) who live in the wilds of Bodmin moor, including a retired civil servant whose fridge is full of frozen roadkill: not just the badger of the title, but also squirrel, rabbit, and a ghostly white barn owl. The documentary popped up again when I overheard two people talking about it at the Heathrow departure gate, then again in a New Statesman review I read on the plane. News-wise, Jeremy Paxman had unleashed a great debate by complaining that M&S underwear is not what it used to be. He provoked a flurry of letters agreeing that M&S knicker standards have slipped, and a heartfelt defence by CEO Stuart Rose. And on my birthday, saw a wonderful production at the Haymarket of Edward Bond’s The Sea, a quintessentially English farce – though with philosophical under-currents – in a quintessentially English theatre. Eileen Atkins played the role of Mrs Rafi, clinging by her fingertips to tradition and social mores while the East Anglian town where she lives teeters on the brink of chaos in the wake of a storm.