142. Melina who?

HOME.

That window.
Happy with the window. Content to pay the bill even if it was more than double the original price of the house. Far from happy with the V.A.T demanded by a grasping treasury. Don’t mind paying those who do it all. Very much mind paying those who do fuck all.
Mini Cooper Y 438 CBL.
And while I am about it, let me express my displeasure with the owner of the above numbered Mini. Last Saturday morning this idiot parked on the hard standing directly in front of our garage door. My wife, prevented from using the family car, was made twenty five minutes late for an assignment.
She left a note on the windscreen of the Mini inviting the owner to call at the front door and apologise.
Fat chance.
As secretly as it had been left, the car was removed. Presumably the owner thought possession of Island Residents Permit IRP 38836 - 01 meant he or she had permission to park anywhere.
I am assuming whoever it was cannot read - there is a No Parking sign above the garage door - so if you know him or her perhaps you would be good enough to pass on this message:
DO
NOT
DO
THAT
AGAIN
YOU
DICK
HEAD.
Thank you for your co-operation.

TELEVISION.

DVDs.
We have started to pile up the recordings again. Don’t remember when Mo was screened, but we watched it last weekend.
Julie Walters was excellent as former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam who finally brought peace to Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement.
The credit for her success was hijacked by P.M. Tony Blair and his creepy henchman Peter Mandelson.
Trust politicians?
The News.
Accusations of Bullying.
Don’t care where they are. In the school playground, the workplace, or at 10 Downing Street; bullies are scum. Now the jaw-dropping Scot is accused of bullying staff at No.10. His creepy henchman Peter Mandelson (yes, that little bugger again) hurried to his defence, as did Britain’s prize model of self-control John Prescott. They were followed by Ed (talking) Balls.
With an election in the offing, who the hell knows who to believe.
But I ask you…
Trust politicians?
CSI: NY.
CSI Detective Third Grade Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) is walking again. I presume he finally accepted this season’s pay offer. His disablement provided a reasonable sub plot based around his will to recover. Meantime, he kept working. Hell, if Melina Kanakarides had been on the staff in my office I’d have kept working if I had to walk there on my hands.
Lark Rise To Candleford.
Ruraltania trotted out its disabled character sub plot when Robert Timmins (Brendan Coyle), distracted by the chatter of Minnie Mude (Ruby Bentall), fell off his ladder. The fall left him in agony, Ivy. (That’s one for the older reader.) Guess it is not too much of a spoiler to say he got over it. There was a fleeting visit from the lady of the manor and a gloriously daffy St. George and the Dragon play. There were fine performances again from Linda Bassett, Karl Johnson and the rest of the cast. You can tell when a series is doing well: it attracts stars like Tom Conti, who appeared the week before last as a concert pianist. He is another Scottish actor, like Ken Stott, who only has to be on the screen to steal the scene. He was gently written in and out and we were all left smiling through the tears.
CSI Trilogy.
This was a good gimmick enabling Laurence Fishburne to fully establish his grip on the CSI scene while reminding the stars of NY and Miami that, in the acting world as in every other business, nobody is indispensable.
NCIS.
There has to be an exception to every rule and Mark Harmon is such an exception. So far as I can see, in what has become close to a cult show, he is indispensable.

READING.

I have just read Lost for Words by John Humphrys. (Hodder and Stoughton). Good book about the mangling and manipulating of the English language. Made me re-read some of my blog posts and think: bloody hell, did I write that? I then recalled the advice given to me years ago by the novelist George Woodman: “It is good that you can admire another person's writing, but never let it undermine your opinion of your own work.” So I shall not dwell too long on the done and dusted.
I am still reading and enjoying Where Was I ?! The World According to Terry Wogan. Not sure about his new show on Radio 2, though. I was never all that happy with Parkinson’s weekly tribute to Frank Sinatra, so a weekly dollop of obsequious TOGs could be a fawn too far. Sunday lunchtime has never been the same since the Billy Cotton Band Show disappeared.
My reading may be further put on hold: Simon’s Cat, the promised book of cartoons by Simon Tofield, has just been presented to me by my Leader.
Not a Christmas or a birthday present: just a present because she knew I wanted it.
Melina who?

141. Sky High with Toad of Toad Hall

　
TELEVISION.

The Sky High story.
We finally did it.
In common with millions of fellow goggle box watchers we decided we would have to throw more money Murdoch’s way and have a Sky dish installed. It had less to do with programme satisfaction than with the erratic reception of freeview obtained via the standard aerial. Our fun began with the news that adjacent buildings precluded any simple siting of a dish. Only a topmost site would do. Ordinary pop-up-a-ladder lads checked their insurance policies and ran for cover.
We spoke to a nice Scottish woman on the telephone. She said it sounded like a job for their high aerial installers. We needed the Sky High boys.
She arranged it.
They came, they saw, they debated, they said they could do it, but not that day: that day somebody else on the firm was using the requisite ladders. They would return later in the week. They departed.
Next day it snowed. Semi Arctic conditions prevailed for the following fortnight.
When the freeze was over we rang again.
Another couple of Sky Highers came. They debated and decided the work would take more time than the allocated time slot allowed them. They left promising that we would be visited again later in the week.
They were true to their word.
Later in the week the original pair arrived. There had been several dry days. On the morning of their arrival it was raining.
They were polite and efficient. Impervious to the weather they set about the task. In one and a half hours they had sited the aerial, installed the box, polished off the standard cuppa, shown me the basics of the remote control and departed again.
Now I only have to digest the instruction manual, pick up on all I didn’t immediately take in about the remote control, re-install my freeview box elsewhere to watch all the unseen recorded stuff contained therein (never a problem when recordings were on old fashioned video cassettes) and add my monthly subscription to ol’ Rupert’s billions.
It’s got to be worth it.
Hell, in only the last couple of days I could have seen James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase (1945): would have done, too, had I not seen them when they were first released (and probably half a dozen times since).
And if I had been even half sure how to record them.
Lark Rise to Candleford.
To coincide with the collection of the harvest, Ruraltania was hit by measles. Little Man got it and Alf’s little brother got it and only one of ’em survived it and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Unreality television, but real entertainment.
NCIS (Heartland).
Ralph Waite, down off Walton’s Mountain, was discovered to be Gibbs’s father. I am still trying to puzzle out whether that makes Gibbs the half brother of John-Boy Walton.
Lovely episode: beautifully acted.
Arena: Harold Pinter - a Celebration.
It is to my eternal discredit that I never could see the point of Pinter‘s plays. By the end of the evening I didn’t care whose birthday party it was or why anybody came to take him away. I was equally Philistine (despite our son’s singular success in a school production of Krapp’s Last Tape) about the works of Samuel Beckett. Long before David Caruso’s acting sunglasses Mark Harmon’s acting haircut and Michael Kitchen‘s acting trilby, Beckett invented the acting banana. I remember getting the humour but missing the point. There just didn’t seem to be one.
Nonetheless, this Arena programme showcasing the work of Harold Pinter was a fascinating tribute to a unique talent and contained contributions from many of my favourite performers including David Bradley, Kenneth Cranham, Lynsay Duncan, Colin Firth, Douglas Hodge, Jeremy Irons, Jude Law, Roger Lloyd Pack, Gina McKee, Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Samuel West and Penelope Wilton, along with students from LAMDA.
Obviously they all thought he was worth it.
I enjoyed most of it.
Still missed the point, though.

READING.

Corduroy Mansions.
I meandered a bit pointlessly through Alexander McCall Smith’s crumbling mansion block in Pimlico, too. Didn’t so much lose the plot as have difficulty in finding it.
Perhaps I should have hired the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

HOME.

That Window.
Whisper it very softly. No fuss, no fanfare, it’s in. A like-for-like wooden replacement window. My Leader spoke to Tammany Hall in her customary reasonable fashion and obtained a surprisingly kindly response. The only time I spoke was to say hallo to a return caller and pass the phone over to her. The window looks good and well in keeping.
Say no more - I hope.
Living with minor fame.
The cat Shadow leapt onto his choice chair in the computer room and struck the pose I know all too well.
“You must have a poem,” I said unenthusiastically.
“Live with it, mate,” he replied, and was orating before I could blink:

Shadow the Blogger’s Model.

Now you’ve seen me in the fur,
Glistening eyes and fit to purr,
If you’re honest you’ll concur
I’m something of a blinder.

Much too smart for dog or flea,
No mouse puts one over me,
Even a bird up in a tree,
Knows I’ll surely find her.

As models go I’m a natural mog,
Made for posing on a blog,
Quite as cute as the cutest dog:
(I can’t say anything kinder.)

And one day maybe I’ll be seen
On the front of a national magazine.
Escorting a female cat, pristine:
If only as her minder.

He had the usual wash before asking: “Well, what do you think?”
“Pure Toad of Toad Hall” I said. “Right up ‘til the last line..”
“Knew you’d like it,” he said.