MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Yes, it's Christmas again and our little house is alive with goodwill and greetings cards and (mostly Father Christmas) decorations. If you're passing, pop in; if you're not, let me take this opportunity to say
MERRY CHRISTMAS, DEAR FRIENDS, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
READING.
Alan Bennet.
I finished Alan Bennett's Untold Stories with mixed feelings.
Heartened yet faintly saddened best sums it up.
Can't say why.
Greatly respect the man. He impresses as a decent human being. He is well regarded; an intellectual; a talented playwright; a man who has twice been offered a knighthood and who, deep down, probably regrets at least one of his principled decisions to decline it.
My mixed feelings about the book were not helped when a friend enthused that she had read it twice and enjoyed it even more the second time because she had then picked up on things she seemed to have missed earlier.
Once was enough for me.
Don't think I could take all those churches and graveyards and encounters with celebrities a second time around.
Perhaps I'm just too godless.
J.K.Rowling.
Maybe it is the mood of the moment but I finished reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard with mixed feelings, too.
I can, and doubtless shall, read it a second - even third - time.
It's tiny enough.
But somehow I came out of the first encounter wondering whether these little tales served any other purpose than as a collection box for the Children's High Level Group charity.
Doesn't really matter.
It is obviously a very worthwhile charity and it is still the J.K.Rowling who, so far as I am concerned, can walk on water.
I just feel she may have got her feet a little wet this time.
HEALTH.
That magical damn cold.
I have had that damn cold again.
Coughing and oozing and thinking of applying for the number of handkerchiefs I could fill in one day to be added to the Guinness Book of Records.
So how did I come by it this time?
Wasn't difficult.
Grandson Ellis, who carried it around for a few weeks, decided the time had come to pass it on. At the same time he discovered the CD game Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to be played on my computer with me as his assistant.
He simply said: "Expelliarmus!" and my immune system was disarmed.
Cough and cold transference was effortless.
Perhaps I should have said "Specialis Revelio!" to identify the ingredients or enchantments in his potion, but I didn't.
I didn't think to say "Finite Incantatum," which stops any current spells, either.
What? Oh, if it bothers you just look up Harry Potter - Spells: Veritaserum Book 7 on Google.
TELEVISION.
Maigret.
Have been watching the French Maigret, Bruno Cremer: very good in a Rupert Davies sort of way.
Georges Simenon was such a superb writer of detective fiction and to be given the chance to play his main character must be an actor's dream equalled only, I would suspect, with being offered the role of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell was the definitive) or Leslie Charteris's The Saint (George Sanders was never bettered).
Incidentally, Michael Gambon has played both Maigret and Philip Marlowe, but his Marlowe was the Dennis Potter version (Marlow) in The Singing Detective.
European detectives have been the vogue on British television of late starting with:-
Wallander.
A Swedish Maigret character played in a recent three part English tv series by Kenneth Branagh who looked, for the most part, as though he had just woken up and had slept in his clothes.
The unwashed, unshaven, tangle-haired look did quite suit him though.
Henning Mankell wrote the books and proved to be an interesting interviewee in a subsidiary documentary.
Simultaneously the BBC screened two Wallander films from Sweden good enough to make me forget I was reading subtitles. Swedish actor Krister Henriksson was a much less dishevilled version of the detective.
I enjoyed both depictions and will now buy the books which, I have to confess, had so far eluded me: the Swedish representation in my elderly library of thrillers runs to just a couple by Sjowall and Wahloo. Time to correct that.
Time, too, to look for Andrea Camilleri's books about:-
Montalbano.
Inspector Montalbano is a fictional Italian detective based in Sicily.
Played by Luca Zingaretti he swam onto our screens in Excursion To Tindari (BBC4) and immediately established himself as a thoroughly decent Maigret type and worthy bookshelf companion for Wallander.
I really must increase my crime library - though not so loudly as to alert my Leader of my intentions.
There's never enough shelf space for the books we already have!
DANCE.
Strictly Come Dancing.
I nearly gave this a miss. Not the programme (which surely had millions hooked) but writing about it.
You should never read the observations of someone like Carrie Dunn (Organ Grinder Blog) before you do your own thing. She will be way ahead of you.
Not only that...she'll be right. Dreadful girl!
At the risk of losing friends, here is an excerpt from my computer diary of the 20th December:-
In the evening we watched Simply Come Dancing - the final - which was won by an actor called Tom Chambers from the Holby City Hospital programme.
Second, and the better dancer, was singer Rachel Stevens.
Third was model and television presenter Lisa Snowdon (also a better dancer) who lost the viewers' sympathy early on with a tendency to tears which clearly disconcerted her professional partner, the talented but touchy New Zealander Brendan Cole.
So, by whatever means it was fixed, the tossers with telephones finally had their way.
Tom came across as a nice enough lad, though, and his final dance was quite a show stopper.
I just wish ol' Forsyth and the rest of 'em had refrained from comparing him and Camilla Dallerup with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
The artistry of the latter pair will never be matched and they must be pirouetting in their graves!
LAST WORD.
Apologies.
If this year is to be remembered for anything much it will have to be for the number of apologies bandied about, mostly by the police and the BBC, in the (surely mistaken) belief that by saying sorry and admitting you were wrong you will probably be forgiven.
Latest - and hopefully last - grovel this year was at the weekend when Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was required to retract comments he had made that the Conservative Party tried to undermine a Whitehall leaks enquiry.
I know nothing of A,C, Quick's private life. His wife's business affairs are no concern of mine and, since I don't read the office boy press, I shall remain blissfully unaware of them.
But if he says that any politician, of whatever party, is a corrupt rascal, he will be but telling the truth.
There should be no need to apologise for that.
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