HOME.
Welcome visitors.
The Isle of Wight is a visitor magnet which attracts both short-stay tourists to hotels and guest houses and long stay guests to H.M. prisons Albany, Camp Hill and Parkhurst.
My Leader and I have always avoided the holiday business, but it was lovely to welcome our friend Anne (followed later in the week by husband Peter) from Cornwall for a brief stay recently. Their house at Mylor, Falmouth, (Post 84: Back from abroad…) is now completed and they and the cat Thomas are nicely settled in. Thomas is a roughneck double of our Shadow, so they do have one reminder of home when they are here. Our tall, skinny little town house otherwise bears not the slightest likeness to their grand design. They have modernity and large rooms and wonderful views and several loos. We have antiquity and little rooms and hundreds of books and dozens of handy shops and a solitary bathroom incorporating the solitary loo..
Anne is a gentle live wire. I doubt anybody else would have persuaded us to attend a concert of trumpet and organ music at Newport St. Thomas’s Minster, even one in aid of the Island RSPCA, but she did. Maureen and I smiled resignedly and went along and were duly entranced.
Richard Hall (organ) and Joel Newsome (trumpet) are two very talented musicians who deserve every success: the entire concert (from Charpentier to Langlais via Bach, Purcell et al) was a revelation.
I don’t think either of the young men can be found on YouTube yet, but give them time.
(Light-hearted note: The relatively modern organ installed at Newport Minster is situated a considerable distance from the organ pipes. When I asked Richard Hall what affect this has on the organist he said: “Well, you hear the note fractionally after you strike the key. Makes it good fun to play, though.”
Sort of in the round organ playing. Bet it’s a hoot for anyone tackling Bach’s Toccata & Fugue.
All burnt up over painting.
A couple of weeks ago my Leader was stricken with the spring cleaning bug. It happens once a year and nothing inside or out is immune. I make sure I don’t stand still too long. Best way to ensure exemption is to join in, so I repainted the outside railings. Did not properly consider the strength of the sun. Finished up with neatly painted railings and nicely sunburnt feet.
What?
Yes, it was daft and no, there is no bloody justice.
Bone-idleness.
My brush with DIY provided the scribbler’s excuse not to scribble and now I am finding re-motivation a difficulty. Have the same trouble with my infrequent forays into the world of water colour. I try not to be too high flown about it: I don’t think of it as writer’s block or painter’s daub or anything that pretentious. I recognise it for what it is: bone idleness.
Think I’ll go and make a cup of coffee.
MUSIC.
Nilsson.
In Post 146: Votes for all…I included videos of A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night which had been discovered by our son Neil and can be found on YouTube. A few days ago he gifted me A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night & More, a nice 19 track CD produced by BMG Campden and obtainable from Amazon.
Superbly presented and, so far as I am concerned, forever enjoyable.
Andrea Bocelli.
I have just been listening to Viaggio italiano, subtitled A tribute to Italian emigration in the world; an 18 track CD, produced by Phillips, featuring Andrea Bocelli and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. It starts with Puccini’s Nessun dorma and ends with Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers’ Duet in which Bocelli is joined by the Welsh bass - baritone Bryn Terfel.
My Leader loves The Pearl Fishers and this is a rendition to match that of my own favourites, Nicolai Gedda and Ernest Blanc (who recorded it back when she was but eighteen years of age).
It’s still great and so is she.
TELEVISION.
Sherlock. (BBC1)
Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and John (Martin Freeman) are updated versions of Holmes and Dr. Watson in this very clever tribute to the Conan Doyle stories. Already looks as though the series, written and produced by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt, could become as popular as Dr. Who. Seems there was initially talk of Matt Smith as Watson. He would have been good: Martin Freeman is excellent.
Only a short series I believe.
Deserves longer next time.
Rev. (BBC2)
If you missed the entire series, Tom Hollander is the Rev. Adam Smallbone, a C. of E. vicar newly appointed to a run down inner-city church. His beat is a basket-fronted bicycle journey away from anything experienced by The Vicar of Dibley or those dear old souls in All Gas and Gaiters.
He smokes, drinks, swears (sans dog collar), is loyally supported by his solicitor wife (Olivia Colman), battles the undermining input of his ambitious lay reader (Miles Jupp) and hopelessly struggles to make a go of things no matter how dismissive the attitude of detestable Archdeacon Robert (Simon McBurney)..
I think it somehow falls between two pulpits: neither comedy nor drama.
But I hope it will be back.
Liked it.
Undercover Boss (Channel 4)
Living as I do in an area where the council employs one overpaid top office tosser after another, Kevan Collins, the chief executive of Tower Hamlets, came across as an immensely caring and impressively candid modern boss. So, too, did Marija Simovic, the new head of Harry Ramsden’s.
That having been said, I cannot but wonder why so few of the local managers or heads of department in both their organizations, given supervision of a ’trainee’ for a day, did not question the new employee’s validity or show the slightest concern that a television company was to follow them throughout the exercise.
I am concerned, too, at the morality of such a deception.
Bosses masquerading as workers? Bit too much like Beggar King management to suit my taste, But I never did like public participation in television and, in the end, this is just another reality show.
It would be interesting to discover what reaction each of the bosses would have to a request to check on the protagonists’ fortunes a couple of years from now. Providing, of course, that the two bosses are still the bosses a couple of years from now. Faced with television cameras everybody was on their best behaviour. Thus we were denied the opportunity of listening in as a boss was bluntly put to rights with the words:: “Christ knows who’s in charge up there, but whoever it is they’re fucking clueless!”
Never mind.
At least this way nobody got fired...yet.
Five Daughters. (BBC1)
At first I thought I had tuned in to a Harry Potter cast reunion. There was Ian Hart (Professor Quirrell in The Philosopher’s Stone) as chief of detectives DCS Stewart Gull, and dear old David Bradley (Caretaker of Hogwarts) as Patrick, a drug rehabilitation worker
This was a play about the girls murdered by the Ipswich serial killer in 2006 and the tragic affect this had on their families and friends. That the girls were drug addicts, driven by their addiction to become prostitutes, somehow made their end the more deplorable.
What drove the lunatic who killed them is beyond comprehension.
Leading roles were played by Sarah Lancashire, Jaime Winstone and Juliet Aubre. The play was written by Stephen Butchard and directed by Philippa Lowthorpe. If you saw it I doubt you will ever forget it.
I certainly won’t.
READING.
M.C. Beaton.
No apologies for returning to Mrs. Agatha Raisin. It was bound to happen. Bearing in mind my ‘easy reading’ verdict on Kissing Christmas Goodbye (Post 146) my Leader bought me Ms. Beaton’s first ten novels about the amateur sleuth. I have just finished Quiche of Death, which tells how Agatha sold her P,R. business and set out to become a happy countrywoman in the village of Carsely in the Cotswolds. Nice combination of believable characters, easy plot and tourist guide. Took me straight on to book two, Vicious Vet. Same main characters, same easy plotting, more touring the Cotswolds.
Lovely stuff.
Have a lot of reading to do.
I must get back to it now.
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