147. None of them would vote for me...

HOME.

A family view.
Grandson Ellis and I were sprawled in my armchair watching Cbeebies Grandpa In My Pocket.

Of a sudden he asked: “Why has Jason Mason got curly hair?”
“I expect that’s how it grows,” I ventured. ”When I was your age I had fair curly hair.” He peered at me like a predatory nit nurse. “Hmm… now you’re grey, aren‘t you…” he said…“and spiky”
Keeps your feet on the ground, don’t it?
The expected unexpected.
I care not what the ITV people say to the contrary, their adverts are louder than their programmes; I am constantly reducing the sound to avoid being deafened as well as brainwashed. There are frequent frantic searches for the remote.
Recently I was halfway through a British Gas advert boasting how they are committed to ringing ahead so that you don’t wait in all day when, unexpectedly, the doorbell rang.
It was a man to read the gas meter.
Music.
Following up on the treats to be found on YouTube I came across one that combined my fondness for the Harry Potter films with my favourite track from Michael Bolton’s Vintage CD. The scenes are from Potter films and the song is called If I Could. If you would like to give it a try, go to you tube - harry potter/if i could.
Incidentally, for those who hate Draco Malfoy, you may also find a young man called Tom Felton playing the guitar and singing If You Could Be Anywhere. He looks a bit like Draco but is clearly a much nicer chap. I like him.
I bet he’s a good actor, too.

TELEVISION.

Goodbye Mr. Chips.
This television film, originally released over Christmas 2002, was one my Leader and I missed at the time. It was well worth the repeat showing.
Martin Clunes is splendid as Chips and Victoria Hamilton excellent as the freethinking wife who, in life and after her early death, is responsible for his transformation from retiring Latin teacher to respected Headmaster.
Our enjoyment owed as much to the moving story as to the fine acting.
Neither of us was privately educated (family finances scarcely ran to public schools) but we did see Roedean from the car - several times - and were favourably impressed without being at all envious.
Perhaps we should have had more ambition.
Nah.
Who wants to rule the country or study Latin?
We didn’t and still don‘t.
ora pro nobis.
Lewis. (ITV1)
Reliable Kevin Whately is back with laconic Laurence Fox to investigate donnish dark deeds and masterly murders. [I really must stop listening to Tim Wonnacott!]
The casting is extremely good and the plots give a reassuring nod towards an absent Colin Dexter. I think it meets the Morse code. All it needs now is a background tune playing ditdahditdit dit ditdahdah ditdit ditditdit and ol’ Robbie Lewis will be home and dry.
Luther. (BBC1)
New cop on the block is DCI John Luther, played by Idris Elba. He is a coppers’ copper; a loose cannon; a top office nightmare; a hopeless husband, an adoring father; a door-demolishing, table-overturning, friend-testing basket case.
Actually, he’s every cliché in the book.
And so is everything else about this dark psychological thriller - including that description of it.
I’ll not stop watching, but I do hope it will become less predictable.
Outnumbered. (BBC1)
Series three and to my detriment I have only just become a regular viewer of this all-too-close-to-home family romp.
As the parents, Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner cope splendidly with every actor’s biggest nightmare - apart from somebody whistling in the dressing room or naming Macbeth - working with children and animals.
These parents simply play along. They have to. They are out-talked, outwitted and upstaged at every turn (by children Karen and Ben in particular) but they maintain moderate control and their sanity by the constant employment of gentle reproof and dry asides..
W.C. Fields once said: “Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad.” He died in 1946, 55 years before Karen (Ramona Marquez) was born.
He would have loved her. And she would have made mincemeat of him.
The Mentalist. (Five)
My Leader and I recently caught up on a backlog of Mentalist recordings and found we were hooked again. It is daffy and unbelievable and inclined towards the “let’s get rid of a few characters” shock technique, but Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) have a clear rapport and everything else is incidental.
In a country full of people who seem to act first and think later, I have stopped counting the number of times the insufferably clever and good-looking Jane would have finished up flat on his back and toothless.
You just have to go with the flow,
It’s quirkily watchable.
Doctors. (BBC1)
Just as nobody without the death wish would choose to live in Cabot Cove or Midsomer, so nobody (unless suffering from latrophobia) would choose to be a patient of any other practice than this.
My Leader, who once worked for a GP, regards it as a sitcom; a daily dose of pseudo A.J. Cronin; a farce.
Did you ever find practice nurses, receptionists. managers, accountants, a couple of doctors and the local police sergeant rushing to your home to reassure you that not only would your panic attack not kill you, but neither would your child’s teddy bear - no matter how threatening it looked?
If your answer is “yes” you had better start looking for Alice; you are clearly in Wonderland.
It’s the sort of thing that only happens on Doctors. Ne’er mind, it gives employment to a bunch of actors and technicians and encourages me to have an afternoon doze without feeling guilty.

POLITICAL HANGOVER.

Election post mortem.
That’s it, then. All over for as long as the courting couple stay together.
Who can say how long that will be?
Gordon the jaw-dropping-Scot gained more sympathy in his last appearance as PM, heading with family away from No.10, than he managed to muster from public or colleagues at any other time throughout his tenure.
Blair-clone-Cameron now has to show himself to be something other than a Morecambe and Wise double act with his Lib-Dem-double, Clegg.
As John Laurie oft lamented: “We‘re doomed. We‘re all doomed.”.
So did I vote?
Gosh no.
None of them would vote for me.
Anyway, a wet plank could win an election over here if it was wearing a blue rosette.
One did this time.
Again.