155. Comings and goings and an anniversary.

HOME.

The Bestival.
Last week the monthly lunch club I attend visited the Jolly Sailor at Old Bursledon, a pleasant pub situated along the River Hamble. Upon our return on the Red Jet from Southampton we were met by two police persons and a dear little spaniel dog. They stood halfway along the tunnel leading to and from the jetty at Cowes and their interest was entirely focussed on those disembarking. The police persons maintained an alert look while the little spaniel sniffed methodically. It ended in an anticlimax. None of us attracted special attention.
“They’ll be on the lookout for drugs,” said one of my companions sagely. “It’s the Bestival.“
The Bestival is the final musical event of the season over here. Lasts for four days. Attracts some great groups and some foul weather. Many of the audience are too stoned to know much about either. Granddaughter Jess, a non-smoker, reckons the way to avoid getting high is to avoid low flying clouds. She and her parents - also non-smokers - went, as they always do, for the music and the fun. They were not disappointed. It was a gloriously musical, fun-filled, mud-wallowing occasion and they had a great time.
So where was the little spaniel? I wondered. Did it give up sniffing after its lack of success at Cowes? Well, apparently not. It was on site sniffing the selected. Not everybody. Just enough suspected junkies and recognised pushers to justify its employment.
All sounds very civilized to me.
The Case of the Frozen Ipod.
Few weeks back Maureen bought an Ipod. She obtained a selection of games to play on it and set about hurling exploding birds at pigs in tin hats etc. All went well until she connected it to my computer to do some sort of update or other; I’ve no idea what. Don’t understand any of it. But the contraption froze. Nothing moved,
She went through set procedures; pressed all the advised buttons; sought the guidance of the manufacturer and of family and friends; finally disconnected it and tried again the following day. Nothing moved.
She then took it to the local retailer to say: “Repair or replace, please.”
“Have you tried doing…(blah blah blah)?” said the manager.
“Yes. that doesn’t work.”
“How about…(blah blah blah)?”
“That doesn’t work, either.”
“If you take it to Currys,” said the senior salesman, clearly unaware that he was walking on quicksand, “ they might be able to restart…”
Mild Maureen departed. My Leader emerged. “Never mind Currys,” she interrupted gently: “I bought it from you and I expect you to deal with it. Repair or replace.”
“It’s a 3 megabyte model,” said the manager. “We don’t have any in stock at the moment: we could replace with the 8 megabyte, but that’s £50 more.”
My Leader shook her head. “Can’t afford that. Repair this or replace it.”
The manager fiddled with the controls, got nowhere, asked if he might keep it overnight for further examination.
“Yes, but don’t go breaking into it and invalidating my guarantee,” said the now implacable Leader.
There was, he promised, no fear of that happening.
The next day only the senior salesman was in evidence. The bad news was that they had been unable to unfreeze Maureen’s Ipod. On a shelf behind the counter there was an Ipod with a lead wrapped around it.
“That will be my no cost replacement then,” said my Leader.
The salesman floundered. It was an 8 megabyte job, he would have to phone the manager for confirmation. The manager confirmed. Replacement on shelf. No charge.
“Thank you,” said Maureen.
Eat your heart out Dominic Littlewood.
The Case of the Great Britain Run.
“It’s the Great North Run on Sunday,” I said.
“I know,” said my Leader. “Heather and one of her daughters are doing it.”
(Heather is a friend who lives a short distance from us.)
“They must be keen if they’re going all the way up to Newcastle,.” I said.
“I think they’re doing it in Portsmouth,” she said.
“That’s a helluva long run to the starting line,“ I said.

AND AWAY.

The Pope.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Pope Benedict XVI (an elderly man who has done me no harm) has been here. His visit started in Scotland, where he met HM Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip (an elderly couple who have done me neither harm nor favour), plus the customary coterie of dedicated creeps and devoted ring-kissers. He was then driven off in his popemobile to face the hoped-for crowds.
In Princes Street, surrounded by thickset security men,. he received an enthusiastic welcome from Edinburgh’s cosmopolitan populace. He sensibly had a tartan scarf - which I took to be McPontiff - draped over his shoulders. Coach loads of children, brimming with day-out excitement, were in attendance from Catholic schools.
I guess his visit will go down as a resounding success. Nothing was said to suggest that Catholic priests known to have offended against children will in future be defrocked. No lessening of the intransigent stance on abortion and contraception was detectable.
But most Roman Catholics will be happy that he came and I don’t suppose the bill will be anything like the one for the 2012 Olympics.
I believe in none of it, but live and let live.
The Press and the Internet.
And when it comes to live and let live, is it my imagination or has the web finally driven the entire world of journalism into a state of paranoia?
I can understand professional writers becoming irritated at the tidal wave of advice, gossip and (frequently worthless) opinion freely available to those prepared to spend their lives surfing the net for it; but I find difficulty in understanding why proud, hard-boiled journalists should become quite so fearful and indignant at the mere mention of blogland. I thought only the acting profession was that insecure..
A couple of weeks back my favourite tilter at windmills, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of The Independent, devoted her column to castigating the alleged instigator of those Sunday-rag-like rumours about William Hague which may have drifted past you on television news programmes. In an article headed. The stench from the blogosphere she placed the blame for this, and every other tawdry, spiteful act of minor celebrity defamation, squarely on the shoulders of irresponsible bloggers in general, and one chap (whose name I forget but it’s a pseudonym anyway) in particular.
Short of closing the web completely, or electing a dictatorship dedicated to the imprisonment of internet rabble rousers, I can see no solution to the concern felt by those who see cyberspace as a growing threat to conventional news coverage and our way of life. Change is inevitable and seldom for the better. Newspaper people are no strangers to it.. You just have to swim with the tide. If you don’t, you drown.
William Hague will soon recover.
Many jobless miners never will..

TELEVISION.

Merlin. (BBC1)
Hooray! Merlin (Colin Morgan) is back in a thirteen part package of magic and mayhem.
Brave, thick Prince Arthur (Bradley James), who will eventually take credit for inventing the round table, has still not realized that his put-upon manservant is a master magician. King Uther Pendragon (Anthony Head) is suffering from the unwell wishes of his ward Morgana (Katie McGrath); and Gaius (Richard Wilson) continues to keep a benevolent eye on our hero as does the talking dragon which sounds remarkably like John Hurt.
Stories, locations, special effects are great: acting is excellent.
Love it.
Grandma‘s House. (BBC2)
Beware a series written - or even partly written - by the star. Simon Amstell co-wrote this throwaway little piece and it was none the better for it. Geoffrey Hutchings as Grandpa had the best lines and made the most of them.
But it finished up like a weak, Jewish version of The Royle Family.
Shame: we rather like Amstell.
Joe Maddison’s War. (ITV1)
This lovely old-fashioned play was written by the late Alan Plater and was completed shortly before he died. It was written as a one-off for Kevin Whately, was set on Tyneside in the Second World War, and was perfectly played by the star and a splendid line-up of co-stars including Melanie Hill, Robson Green, Derek Jacobi and John Woodvine.
Loved every moment of it, but I’m an old-fashioned bloke so for me Plater could do no wrong. His Beiderbecke trilogy was a work of genius and he will be much missed.
Goodbye, definitive playwright.
Spooks. (BBC1)
Harry, Ruth, Lucas and Tariq started off at Ros’s funeral. After that I found myself, literally and mentally, all at sea.
Series 9 of this murderous, twisting, treacherous spy romp, is going to be every bit as lunatic as its predecessors. I shall watch and wonder and absorb at least one useful snippet from each of the eight episodes.
Lesson 1: Beware of Spooks bearing booze.

READING.

Graham Hurley.
Finished Angels Passing and am now a confirmed Hurley follower. I know many former police detectives and DI Joe Faraday is so real he could be any one of them.
Must get back to M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin now. I know nobody like her.

FOOTNOTE.

Anniversary.
Maureen and I celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary today. A long time? Yes. WE ARE A VERY STUBBORN COUPLE.
(Helps a bit if you love each other too.)

154. A couple of farewells and a pair of trout.

Sam.
In my last post I wrote of an email I had received from an old boy who mentioned “my fishing buddy Sam with the two trout we caught.”
I had intended to include Sam’s picture at the time but my technical know-how proved to be gloriously inept (as it often does) and I chose instead to stay with the solitary, rather nice, picture of Emma Thompson.
However, just in case you have not seen the email and are curious (the old boy’s spouse forbade him fishing again after she had seen it) this is his fishing buddy Sam with as fine a pair of trout as you might see anywhere. I cannot imagine what the spouse’s objection was.

HOME.

Edinburgh Fringe.
It’s the time of year when every has-been, wannabe, will be, won’t be and loony in the world of acting and comedy descends on Edinburgh to be discovered, rediscovered, vaguely remembered or hastily forgotten.
There are a few regal offerings and a fair amount of …king rubbish; but it’s a good place to be at this time of year.
Come to think of it, it’s a good place to be at any time of year.
Summer‘s over.
The Fringe runs throughout the last three weeks in August and the first week of September. Don’t know how festival and other event people quite manage it, but when it comes to attracting inappropriate weather they do have a considerable knack: it follows most of them around. Surprisingly not so bad at Wimbledon and Cowes this year, but did you see the pictures from Reading?
In the past couple of weeks we have had pounding rain, gale force winds and enough leaves and other people’s bloody rubbish in our garden to keep a troop of bob-a-job lads (remember them?) going for a month.
And it ain’t even autumn yet.
Summer’s over.
But this is England so you never know…
Our space.
We moved here about ten years ago from a nice flat, looking out to sea in Ventnor. We have never regretted the move. When you live in a flat you never really own the place; not even if you’re freehold. This is our space and, within the sometimes irritating constraints of Listed, we are our own masters. This year my Leader filled the front garden and the courtyard at the back with potted flowers, mostly geraniums and petunias she tells me: I don’t know one flower from another. They are just going off now, but the whole place has been a glorious blaze of colour and I have loved it.
Thank you my Mo.

AND ABROAD.

Much ado about nothing - again.
Crikey, no sooner had Emma Thompson announced her intention of taking a year off work than there she was in America advertising The Return of Nanny McPhee (we know it as Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, so I assume a big bang means something other than a loud explosion in the US). Apparently all went well over there until she appeared on a chat show where she casually offended every sensitive soul on the Isle of Wight (not a difficult undertaking) by joking about Islanders stoning, flogging, shooting or torturing everyone they perceived as undesirable: .
My instant reaction was hearty laughter; and if those who purport to represent us had even the slightest sense of humour, theirs would have been the same. When asked for quotes they could have replied along the lines of: “Tell her she’d be quite safe over here. Not as Sybil Trelawney or Nanny McPhee of course. We still burn witches.”
They chose instead to be affronted by her jocular effrontery…waxed sadly indignant to press reporters…clearly welcomed the opportunity to be mentioned on the same page as an international celebrity…and will now be basking in their brief brush with fame.
She must surely be experiencing a touch of déjà vu. In 1994 she won an Evening Standard British Film Award (Best Actress) for Much Ado About Nothing.
Can there be any more ado about nothing than this?
She should be nominated for another award.
How about Best Bundle of Mischief 2010?
I’d vote for her.
With a great big grin on my face.

TELEVISION.

The Deep. (BBC1)
My earliest memory of Minnie Driver is as Ellie in the 1995 television series My Good Friend with George Cole and Richard Pearson. She was in her mid-twenties, easily kept pace with her experienced co-stars and took off when the first series ended to find further fame and eventually to live in America. In common with most showbiz folk, her private life has been even more erratic than her career, but I liked her in 1995 and I still like her now. I certainly like her far more than I liked The Deep.
Put it down to water on the brain if you will but, just as I didn’t know what to make of it in Post 153, the final episode of this wet series simply left me doing the dog paddle. I couldn’t get to grips with the Russian presence, the possible Chinese intervention, the deadly viruses, the alternative power source malarkey or the big business involvement. I’ll go no further than that; you may have recorded it and I do not intend to launch SS Spoilers for you.
Suffice to say that despite buoyant performances by Minnie, James Nesbitt, Goran Visnjic and the rest of a strong cast, for me it went down like a depth charge threatened submarine.
Dive! Dive! Dive!
BBC Proms 2010. (BBC2)
Rodgers and Hammerstein. I was about to start moaning again at the dearth of tuneful, romantic offerings at the Proms when along came this wonderful evening of much loved music from the mid twentieth century.
In a concert performance arranged and conducted by John Wilson (who masterminded last year’s MGM musicals Prom) we were treated to songs from Carousel, Oklahoma, The King and I, The Sound of Music, South Pacific etc. and we thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
The orchestra consisted of dance-band and classical musicians, hand-picked by the conductor: the Maida Vale Singers provided chorus numbers. Soloists on the night were Sierra Boggess, Anna Jane Casey, Kim Criswell, Rod Gilfry, Julian Ovenden and (off stage) Maureen and Dennis Barnden.
So far no complaints from the neighbours.
The Bill. (ITV1)
So Sun Hill has hung up its truncheon at last. Not a lot to say. I’m sure it will be missed by many; it had been going for 27 years. Lost interest myself just after Bob Cryer (Eric Richard) departed the scene and that was way back in 2001. After that too many know-it-all directors, executive producers or whatever took it in turns to change the format until it went from cop show to just another soap. I believe it had now tried to reverse that trend, but by the time it it was marked for the axe viewing figures had reached a point beyond recapture. The two part final story was well acted and tensely told.
Ah well…
Last of the Summer Wine. (BBC1)
And another goodbye. After 37 years running to 295 episodes we have had to bid a final farewell to Cleggy and Co. I shall miss them. Roy Clarke OBE, the writer, comes across as somewhat humourless in interviews. It has to be a façade. How can a man who has written Open All Hours and Keeping Up Appearances, as well as every single episode of Last of the Summer Wine, be other than full of humour? I doubt he’d thank a body for saying so though. No matter. I wish him good health and continued success. He’s eight months older than me and with any luck he’ll produce a few more comedy classics for me to blog about before either of us kicks the bucket.

READING.

Graham Hurley.
Still reading Angels Passing. My reading is slow but that has nothing to do with the story which I find moves me to despair. After watching the final episode of The Bill, this warts and all depiction of violent Pompey is a timely reminder that vicious drug criminals are everywhere and far closer to home than most of us imagine. Compulsively written and wincingly accurate..
Final report in the pipeline.

SOCCER.

England v. Bulgaria.
“England - Bulgaria at Wembley tonight.” I said to the cat Shadow, “Reckon England to win?”
“Is it a friendly?” he asked.
“Euro 2012 qualifier,” I said. “We did quite well against Hungary, though.”
“That was a friendly,” he said. “I assume this one’s for real.”
“Well…yes, but I think Fabio’s feeling quite confident about it,” I said.
“I think Fabio was feeling quite confident about South Africa,” he said.
I didn’t have an answer to that so I didn’t try to reply.