ABROAD.
Emma Thompson.
This fine actress was recently awarded the 2,416th Star of Fame outside the Pig 'n' Whistle pub in Hollywood. Well deserved. She’s magic. Hugh Laurie and other famous friends attended the ceremony. It is unlikely that any of the bitchy writers who so readily pour scorn on her were present. Now she talks of taking a year off work to concentrate on family life. Good for her: though the harpy hacks will doubtless sniff at that, too.
Meantime, my Leader and I will watch our Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang DVD with extra pleasure and make doubly sure we do not miss her appearances in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Heck, after that she’ll be back. And, who knows? More Nanny McPhee?
Meantime, my Leader and I will watch our Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang DVD with extra pleasure and make doubly sure we do not miss her appearances in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Heck, after that she’ll be back. And, who knows? More Nanny McPhee?
HOME.
Granddaughter Jess.
Jess is at that early teens stage of life when adulthood is just around the corner but there are still a few steps to go.
Thanks to a glorious sense of the ridiculous she mostly avoids teenage angst. Among her recent zany offerings this one particularly appealed to me:
“I was wondering…if you tied a slice of bread and butter, butter side up, to a cat’s back and dropped the cat off the kitchen hardtop…how would it land? On its paws? Or flat on its back on the butter?”
She’ll do.
Emails.
Nice people still keep forwarding emails in droves, many of them hardy annuals. This week I have had the one about the impertinent young man being verbally floored by the dry old ’un: “You’re right son, we didn’t have the things you’ve got when we were young…so we invented them…”
Then there has been the glorious picture of ‘my fishing buddy, Sam, with the two trout we caught’…they still really are a nice pair of trout, too…and finally there has been the one about Mujibar, now working at a call centre in India, who famously made the following sentence with the words yellow, pink and green: “The telephone goes green green, I pink it up and say: ’yellow, this is Mujibar.’
If you are on my mailing list and haven’t received any of them from me it will be because, though I can still remember them from way back, I can completely forget to forward them this week.
It’s an age thing.
Jess is at that early teens stage of life when adulthood is just around the corner but there are still a few steps to go.
Thanks to a glorious sense of the ridiculous she mostly avoids teenage angst. Among her recent zany offerings this one particularly appealed to me:
“I was wondering…if you tied a slice of bread and butter, butter side up, to a cat’s back and dropped the cat off the kitchen hardtop…how would it land? On its paws? Or flat on its back on the butter?”
She’ll do.
Emails.
Nice people still keep forwarding emails in droves, many of them hardy annuals. This week I have had the one about the impertinent young man being verbally floored by the dry old ’un: “You’re right son, we didn’t have the things you’ve got when we were young…so we invented them…”
Then there has been the glorious picture of ‘my fishing buddy, Sam, with the two trout we caught’…they still really are a nice pair of trout, too…and finally there has been the one about Mujibar, now working at a call centre in India, who famously made the following sentence with the words yellow, pink and green: “The telephone goes green green, I pink it up and say: ’yellow, this is Mujibar.’
If you are on my mailing list and haven’t received any of them from me it will be because, though I can still remember them from way back, I can completely forget to forward them this week.
It’s an age thing.
TELEVISION.
The Silence. (BBC1)
We recorded this four part thriller and watched it in one long session. It tells of 18-year-old Amelia, a profoundly deaf young woman, who witnesses a brutal murder. Her hearing problem, the struggle she is having with new cochlear implants and, among other things, the fact that she is staying with her Uncle Jim (Douglas Henshall) and Aunt Maggie (Dervla Kirwan) initially makes for difficulty in reporting what she has seen, even though workaholic Jim is a senior police detective.
Gina McKee plays Amelia’s concerned, overprotective mother, Annie, and Hugh Bonneville plays her father, Chris, wearily resigned to his wife’s constant apprehension. Genevieve Barr (profoundly deaf in real life) is excellent in the leading role.
With such a cast The Silence should be beyond negative criticism.
But sadly it was too slow and it went on too long.
Would have made a great two parter.
Identity. (ITV1)
Here we have yet another elite police unit (yawn) headed by yet another paragon female (Keeley Hawes) who is in ill-concealed love with yet another maverick cop (Aidan Gillen), who is heartily disliked by yet another distrusting departmental colleague (Shaun Parkes) who is deeply suspicious of our hero’s authenticity. (For template see Dexter.) It was well acted and, like Luther (Post 150), will probably be back.
And again I don’t really care.
The One Show. (BBC1)
Jason Manford and Alex Jones are the current hosts on this load of fluff, the premise of which appears to be that viewers are incapable of concentration beyond a couple of minutes at a time.
Guest stars come along to be given the two minute interview if they’re lucky - twenty seconds if they’re not - and a chance to publicise their latest project. They are routinely set aside by a small band of regulars who provide snippets designed to whet the appetite without taxing the brain.
This week’s guests included Tommy Steele, Whoopi Goldberg, Pamela Anderson and Celia Imrie and ‘regular’ John Sergeant told a story about thousands of pets being destroyed at the outset of WW2. There was also an item about black rats on the Shiant Isles, though none were seen.
Oh, Tommy is to tour again in Scrooge the musical, Pamela Anderson is to appear in Aladdin, Whoopi Goldberg is back with Sister Act and Celia Imrie will be in Hay Fever by Noel Coward.
I shan’t be seeing any of them but it was nice to know.
Getting On. (BBC2)
This little hospital series is written by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan who also appear in it. I assume all have been nurses. Jo certainly has; it shows.
There is a nice line in indifference and buck passing from the top echelon. There is a lot of bad language and balls to P.C, And there is more than I care to remember about my NHS days.
Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1)
Never mind the credit squeeze, celebs are still touring the world at the Beeb’s expense seeking to discover their antecedents. In most cases who, apart from them, is all that bothered?
The Deep. (BBC1)
Still don’t quite know what to make of this one. So far nothing much has come of it except the realisation that, no matter how tiresome his offstage persona, James Nesbitt is a bloody good actor.
We recorded this four part thriller and watched it in one long session. It tells of 18-year-old Amelia, a profoundly deaf young woman, who witnesses a brutal murder. Her hearing problem, the struggle she is having with new cochlear implants and, among other things, the fact that she is staying with her Uncle Jim (Douglas Henshall) and Aunt Maggie (Dervla Kirwan) initially makes for difficulty in reporting what she has seen, even though workaholic Jim is a senior police detective.
Gina McKee plays Amelia’s concerned, overprotective mother, Annie, and Hugh Bonneville plays her father, Chris, wearily resigned to his wife’s constant apprehension. Genevieve Barr (profoundly deaf in real life) is excellent in the leading role.
With such a cast The Silence should be beyond negative criticism.
But sadly it was too slow and it went on too long.
Would have made a great two parter.
Identity. (ITV1)
Here we have yet another elite police unit (yawn) headed by yet another paragon female (Keeley Hawes) who is in ill-concealed love with yet another maverick cop (Aidan Gillen), who is heartily disliked by yet another distrusting departmental colleague (Shaun Parkes) who is deeply suspicious of our hero’s authenticity. (For template see Dexter.) It was well acted and, like Luther (Post 150), will probably be back.
And again I don’t really care.
The One Show. (BBC1)
Jason Manford and Alex Jones are the current hosts on this load of fluff, the premise of which appears to be that viewers are incapable of concentration beyond a couple of minutes at a time.
Guest stars come along to be given the two minute interview if they’re lucky - twenty seconds if they’re not - and a chance to publicise their latest project. They are routinely set aside by a small band of regulars who provide snippets designed to whet the appetite without taxing the brain.
This week’s guests included Tommy Steele, Whoopi Goldberg, Pamela Anderson and Celia Imrie and ‘regular’ John Sergeant told a story about thousands of pets being destroyed at the outset of WW2. There was also an item about black rats on the Shiant Isles, though none were seen.
Oh, Tommy is to tour again in Scrooge the musical, Pamela Anderson is to appear in Aladdin, Whoopi Goldberg is back with Sister Act and Celia Imrie will be in Hay Fever by Noel Coward.
I shan’t be seeing any of them but it was nice to know.
Getting On. (BBC2)
This little hospital series is written by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan who also appear in it. I assume all have been nurses. Jo certainly has; it shows.
There is a nice line in indifference and buck passing from the top echelon. There is a lot of bad language and balls to P.C, And there is more than I care to remember about my NHS days.
Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1)
Never mind the credit squeeze, celebs are still touring the world at the Beeb’s expense seeking to discover their antecedents. In most cases who, apart from them, is all that bothered?
The Deep. (BBC1)
Still don’t quite know what to make of this one. So far nothing much has come of it except the realisation that, no matter how tiresome his offstage persona, James Nesbitt is a bloody good actor.
READING.
M.C.Beaton.
I finished Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (another easy read) and passed it on to my Leader who was well into the Quiche of Death. She has been spending a few days with her sister Marg in Alverstoke; both are avid readers so the books won’t go unread while she is there. Meantime, back at the ranch I have taken a short break from Mrs. Raisin to read the Pompey cop yarn my Leader had just finished and recommended to me, Angels Passing...
I finished Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (another easy read) and passed it on to my Leader who was well into the Quiche of Death. She has been spending a few days with her sister Marg in Alverstoke; both are avid readers so the books won’t go unread while she is there. Meantime, back at the ranch I have taken a short break from Mrs. Raisin to read the Pompey cop yarn my Leader had just finished and recommended to me, Angels Passing...
Graham Hurley.
DI Joe Faraday is as far from Mrs. Raisin as the Cotswolds is from Portsmouth and Angels Passing shows a side of the city which many of its citizens would sooner not know about. Whether the author writes from fact or imagination I have no idea, but this police procedural certainly has a Scenes of Crime ring of authenticity about it.
I am hooked, as was my Leader. Both of us know (or know of) the places where it is set. Makes it that much more real.
Report pending.
DI Joe Faraday is as far from Mrs. Raisin as the Cotswolds is from Portsmouth and Angels Passing shows a side of the city which many of its citizens would sooner not know about. Whether the author writes from fact or imagination I have no idea, but this police procedural certainly has a Scenes of Crime ring of authenticity about it.
I am hooked, as was my Leader. Both of us know (or know of) the places where it is set. Makes it that much more real.
Report pending.
AND AS FOR YOU…
Thanks for looking in.
More anon.
More anon.
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