HOME.
Isle of Wight Festival.
Yeah, it's that time again. Granddaughter Jess has gone with one of her friends and the requisite adult accompaniment to be entertained by a host of assorted musical talent at the 8th IW Festival.
Who is appearing?
No, not The Who, that was last year.
Among those I recognise are The Charlatans, Neil Young, Stereophonics, McFly, Razorlight and Will Young.
Then there are groups like The Prodigy and Pixies of whom I know little and, finally, there will be a host of bands with names like The Bitch, The Botch, The Kitsch and The Crotch of whom I know nothing.
They will all be very loud and very good after ten cans of lager.
Yesterday those of us in the area who have not joined the festival audience were able to stand outside our houses and watch The Red Arrows give another fantastic display over the site.
My Leader and I must have seen them half a dozen times in the past few years.
They are sheer magic.
Long may they reign.
READING
The Independent.
Perhaps surprisingly for a retired old bloke I scarcely found time to read much last week.
On Monday I managed a look at Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column.
She was decrying women who flee the political battlefield: at least, I think that's what it was, I could be wrong, a week is a long time in political journalism.
Then, on Friday, Johann Hari warned that we are filling space with trash, much of it orbiting earth at thousands of miles an hour.
That really was dire news.
I always thought all the trash in space was beamed back by satellite to become reality television.
Both of these journalists are fine writers.
I bet they cheer up sometimes, too.
TELEVISION
I'm Running Sainsbury's (C4).
At a time of economic downturn the chief executive of Sainsbury's, Justin King, one of those charming blokes born to sail through interviews, had the brilliant idea - well, lays claim to the brilliant idea - that shop floor workers (now called colleagues would you believe?) should be invited to submit their proposals for the better running of the company.
The idea is not entirely new: every sharp company in the country must have experimented with a staff suggestion box from which it hoped to garner a few good ideas for as little money as possible.
But the Sainsbury's idea had a twist: four of the proposals would be taken up for a trial period in selected stores under the direction of the proposer.
Of the first two, one suffered setbacks and has not worked out - sad, because it was a nice idea - and the other has been given an extended trial in twenty shops.
When I go into a supermarket only two things really concern me:-
(1) why have they shifted every-goddam-thing around again? and:-
(2) how long is the queue at the checkout going to be?
I have loathed and avoided standing in queues ever since the war: still remember ration books and people lining up outside the butcher's shop.
So far as my involvement in the process of shopping is concerned, I do not try the free samples offered by free sample offerers, I do not bother with anything said over the Tannoy and I do expect to lose my wife inside twenty minutes somewhere between wines and spirits and pet food.
For the next half hour she ceases to be my Leader and becomes: "Where the hell is Maureen?"
What?
Well of course it's my fault.
Life (ITV3).
That pleasant English actor Damian Lewis is back for what is apparently the last series of this amiable American cop drama. Sarah Shahi co-stars as his likeable, down-to-earth partner.
It is a well scripted, well acted, easy to follow show; which means - in televison production terms - it is absolutely right for the axe.
I shall be sorry to see it go.
Robin Hood (BBC1).
Talk is that Jonas Armstrong, arguably the best Robin in this load of supreme tosh since Jason Connery, is to be replaced by an Errol Flynn lookalike called Clive Standen who has suddenly appeared in the role of Archer, half-brother of Robin and Gisborne (don't ask).
We are close to the end of series three which started off with the casting department choosing David Harewood (an actor for whom I have the utmost respect) as a black Friar Tuck.
This chap blithely wanders into Nottingham and York unnoticed by the colour-blind townsfolk.
Well, with abject apologies to Yasmin A-B, neither my imagination nor my political correctness stretches quite that far.
Friar Tuck was Eugene Pallette (1938) and James Hayter (1952).
He was a fat old white bloke, not a well-built young black bloke.
Still, looking back I was opposed to the casting of Ben Kingsley as Gandhi and of Alec Guinness as Indian mystic Godbole and Arab leader Prince Feisal, too.
Does that make me a racist?
Do I care?
BBC Cardiff Singer of The World 2009.
A great week and a wonderful final from which the Russian soprano Ekaterina Shcherbachenko emerged a deserved winner.
(Dame Joan Sutherland, frail but indomitable, presented the trophy.)
The popular People's Favourite prize went to tenor Giordano Luca from Italy and the toughest competitor to beat in the competiton, undoubtedly, was an amazing countertenor, Yuriy Mynenko, from the Ukraine.
Well done the BBC and well done Wales!
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