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.