2 (6) Beware saying without thinking!

WATCHING.

Shadowland again.

“How about making it a hat trick?” suggested the cat Shadow, casually. I ignored him. He's just trying to engineer another cute cat appearance, I thought, and it ain't going to happen.

Ever get the feeling you can't win?

Home improvements.

With considerable assistance, from Roz and Nick, my Leader has set about redecorating the unstately pile. Granddaughter Jess's gloriously shambolic pied-a-terre has become a pristine guest bedroom and the facade has been given sympathetic updating. My contribution has sensibly taken the form of positive encouragement and negative involvement. I'm too old to be a decorator and, truth to tell, never was any good at it. Anyway, by the time they're through I may not know the old place. Intriguing prospect, that.

Beware saying without thinking!

My Leader hurriedly hushed me in Marks and Sparks the other day. She didn't threaten divorce or tell me she'd 'have to let me go' (doesn't anybody ever get 'the sack' or 'their cards' or 'fired' any more?) but she was clearly discombobulated and that's not like her. I was almost hushed.

So what, you may ask, had I done to warrant the application of a hurried hush? Had I loudly broken wind, or belched, or introduced foul language into the sacrosanct world of men's cardies and ladies' undies?

Well...not exactly...but almost; what I'd done, in all innocence, was put into words my preferred colour for a v-neck jumper to go with light brown slacks.

“These primary colours are all well and fine,” I said, “but what I'm really looking for is nigger brown. Don't they do that now?” 

Well, you must forgive me, I have never wittingly insulted a foreign person (of whatever colour) and I was a trifle taken aback at Mo's sudden hushing, let alone the embarrassed air of resignation with which she delivered it. I had, it seems, committed the latest in an ever increasing list of English mortal sins. I had spoken aloud a taboo word and it wasn't brown.

But, you see, right through my childhood and teens in the nineteen thirties and forties, a rich, dark shade of brown was exactly what n-word brown was: I held many skeins of wool in that very colour on my outstretched hands while my mother rolled it into balls for knitting; it was a colour I rather liked and, to the best of my knowledge, neither it nor I hurt a soul.

So, American rednecks and South African bigots apart, what happened to suddenly make the word so unspeakable that it brought the television presenter Jeremy Clarkson – strangely cowed without car - to our screens, begging forgiveness lest he lose his job?

For that matter, what damned silliness prompted the BBC to force the resignation of Radio Devon broadcaster David Lowe (a 'veteran DJ' who some unwell wisher has probably been seeking to remove for years) for playing an ancient version of The Sun Has Got His Hat On which, unbeknown to him, contained said word?

It does sometimes seem that Big Brother is alive and well and buggering about not only with the English language but with everyone born to speak it.

OK, so I will probably never say the offending word aloud again – well, not in public anyway. Nor will my descendants. They've been well advised.

Perversely, though, I do wonder how long it will be before words like yellow and slanted and homely are outlawed because they may offend people of the Orient, or those of even slightly craven disposition, or those with almond - shaped eyes, or those who are not exactly Helen of Troy or Adonis.

Where will it all end?

Who knows? 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise' no longer applies. The PC contingent and educated outsiders expect better of 21st Century Britain than blissful ignorance excused by freedom of speech: given their way the dungeons will be full of free speakers (a few of whom may even remember what colour n-word brown was).

So if, by some weird cosmic miracle, my spirit comes back here at the end of the century, I'll not expect to understand a word anyone says. It won't matter. Nobody will be talking face to face anyway. They'll all be nattering into their mobile phones and secretly doing the dirt on each other for grammatical/political slips of the tongue. 

lol that, eh?

THE DETECTIVES.

When is a detective?

You can't really call Finch and Reese detectives or Person of Interest a murder mystery yarn. If you have ever watched it you will know what I mean and if you have seen any of the last three episodes you will fully understand my contention that it should be retitled Person of Perplexity. Another series over and we must wait until next year to face the bewilderment all over again.

Another series of The Mentalist completed, too. 

Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) finally got it together and that could well have been that. But I gather there will be a final series next year. Pleasant, daft and always watchable.

Hinterland, set in Wales, is very Welsh and, at times, seems very long. In a north country sort of way, pet, the same goes for Vera. Not even Brenda Blethyn can solve that. An hour and a half is about fifteen minutes too long for most cop stuff: in some cases, two hours can be three too many.

Most established American crime dramas are made in series of twenty or more episodes. The current way of dealing with this on British television (apparently unhappy beyond four – or, at best, six – episodes a series) is to lose patience halfway through and start screening episodes two at a time; this is done without warning and, for those smart enough to pre-record (i.e. make sure they can fast forward the adverts), evokes a situation where entire episodes can be missed due to non-planning or because they clash with other plans.

Castle, NCIS, CSI and many others have endured this cavalier treatment after a series or two. Makes you wonder who bought them and why.

LAST BUT BY ALL MEANS LEAST.

That Election.

I never trusted Harold Wilson with his pipe and his Gannex raincoat: I thought he was a total con man. By the same token, I deeply distrusted the insincere grin that was Tony Blair; a man who feathered his own nest all the way from his WMD 'friendship' with George Bush to his hate hate agreement with that humourless careerist Gordon Brown.

Southern Television now tells us that, at the recent EU elections, the Isle of Wight had the biggest UKIP turnaround in the South. So Nigel Farage, a prick with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, has become the man of the moment and the Island, always an area of high unemployment, has taken yet another backward step in its search for a saviour.

Me? I wouldn't buy a used car from the bloke or lend the slightest support to his pure-blood-wizards' party; but I was born in Portsmouth, so over here I'm just another foreigner who took a job that could have been given to an Islander: I kept it for 21 years, too.
Some people have no shame.

Back next month, age and slips of the tongue willing.