HOME.
Rediscovering school.
My Leader and I were recently involved in a family learning course held at Ellis’s school on Thursday mornings. We were accepted as student stand-ins for his working mother and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
The lessons included an outside search for interesting insects, an analysis of Goldilocks and The Three Bears and an in depth appreciation of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.
Did you know that woodlice are crustaceans, not insects? Were you cognizant of the fact that they have fourteen jointed limbs, or that they do not pee but do eat their own poo?
Were you aware that worms have five hearts and no eyes?
Did you care? (No? Shame on you!)
The course ran for five weeks at the conclusion of which we each received a certificate of attendance. As my Leader cheerfully put it: “We have finally been certified.”
Ribald remarks will be ignored. If there’s a next time, we’ll go again.
Traffic control: you have to admire the logic.
One of the recent forays into Never-Never Land taken by those responsible for controlling the traffic over here has been the imposition of a one-way traffic order on a road which took traffic from Sandown and Shanklin across the outskirts of Newport to the village of Carisbrooke and beyond. The road was perfectly adequate for two-way traffic throughout, but somebody - probably a councillor - saw a way of reducing the flow of vehicles past his house and that was that. The upshot has been the, now legally established, closure of that road to uphill traffic at a junction halfway along it, and a diversion taking said traffic back into Newport and out past two (one of them primary) schools. This, it seems, is what the planners (surely a contradiction in terms) call planning.
Waste of time writing to them I am reliably informed: they answer not.
Waste of time phoning them, too: they heed not.
Their maxim seems to be: ignore the buggers and they’ll go away.
You have to admire the logic, don’t you?
TELEVISION.
Game of Thrones. (Sky Atlantic)
Nobody plays tough but honourable better than Sean Bean. He was tough but honourable Richard Sharpe (a hero of the Napoleonic Wars) from 1993 to 2008 and here he is tough but honourable Ned Stark (hero of a medieval fantasy). It is clear that Ned can come to no good. A fair-minded man is at a distinct disadvantage when all about him are downright medieval.
There is a shortage of likeable characters in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire fantasies and heroes are killed off before you have chance to know them. It is bloodthirsty but compelling.
I might have found it disturbing, but I am old enough to remember John Creasey bumping off the heroes in his Department Z stories whenever he appeared to tire of them.
And that was before Mr. Martin was born.
There’s nothing new in the world of fiction.
Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood. (BBC2)
Paul Merton is a fan of old Hollywood and it shows in every reel of this short series.
As would be expected of a regular on HIGNFY he is quick and funny; he is also refreshingly outspoken at times. The film director D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which was largely responsible for the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, gets a particularly sober mention, as does the public humiliation of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.
We learned, we laughed, we pondered, we enjoyed.
Can’t ask more than that of a documentary.
Prince Philip at 90. (ITV1)One of the recent forays into Never-Never Land taken by those responsible for controlling the traffic over here has been the imposition of a one-way traffic order on a road which took traffic from Sandown and Shanklin across the outskirts of Newport to the village of Carisbrooke and beyond. The road was perfectly adequate for two-way traffic throughout, but somebody - probably a councillor - saw a way of reducing the flow of vehicles past his house and that was that. The upshot has been the, now legally established, closure of that road to uphill traffic at a junction halfway along it, and a diversion taking said traffic back into Newport and out past two (one of them primary) schools. This, it seems, is what the planners (surely a contradiction in terms) call planning.
Waste of time writing to them I am reliably informed: they answer not.
Waste of time phoning them, too: they heed not.
Their maxim seems to be: ignore the buggers and they’ll go away.
You have to admire the logic, don’t you?
TELEVISION.
Game of Thrones. (Sky Atlantic)
Nobody plays tough but honourable better than Sean Bean. He was tough but honourable Richard Sharpe (a hero of the Napoleonic Wars) from 1993 to 2008 and here he is tough but honourable Ned Stark (hero of a medieval fantasy). It is clear that Ned can come to no good. A fair-minded man is at a distinct disadvantage when all about him are downright medieval.
There is a shortage of likeable characters in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire fantasies and heroes are killed off before you have chance to know them. It is bloodthirsty but compelling.
I might have found it disturbing, but I am old enough to remember John Creasey bumping off the heroes in his Department Z stories whenever he appeared to tire of them.
And that was before Mr. Martin was born.
There’s nothing new in the world of fiction.
Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood. (BBC2)
Paul Merton is a fan of old Hollywood and it shows in every reel of this short series.
As would be expected of a regular on HIGNFY he is quick and funny; he is also refreshingly outspoken at times. The film director D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which was largely responsible for the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, gets a particularly sober mention, as does the public humiliation of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.
We learned, we laughed, we pondered, we enjoyed.
Can’t ask more than that of a documentary.
Alan Titchmarsh (still wearing his posh suit for RHS Chelsea Flower Show) made a further bid for the knighthood with this, suitably deferential, probe into the life of the longest-serving royal consort in British history.
Once, when she was about twelve years old, my future wife hurtled down Market Hill, Cowes, on a bicycle and screeched to a halt barely inches from HRH and his old friend Uffa Fox. Had the ground been wet (and it inevitably rains during Cowes Week) she would have brought down not only a promenading prince and his companion but probably the whole of Special Branch.
It was the closest either of us has ever been to royalty.
Prince Philip saw the funny side. Well, he was over fifty years younger then and no harm had been done.
Ol’ Titchy didn’t find out much more than we already know about the royal personage.
At his best the old boy charms attractive females who catch his eye and testily suffers unattractive males who walk on broken glass around him.
At his worst he is a pain in the arse.
Aren’t we all?
Classic Brit Awards (ITV1)
I usually avoid these fawning get-togethers, too, but this one was rather good. Myleene Klass’s presentation was faultless.
Il Divo opened the show in fine style: Alfie Boe and the cast of Les Miserables were absolute magic; a splendid selection of solo performers followed and, to round it all off, Dame Shirley Bassey took to the stage to perform John Barry’s Bond theme Goldfinger with the London Chamber Orchestra.
Nobody spent too long thanking their mother, father and the tortoise at the end of the garden,
Yes, it really was rather good.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. (Series 11) (C5)
This, on the other hand, has become rather bad. A dreadful load of tosh.
I don’t know whether the actors are privy to future story lines, but would never be surprised the learn that William Petersen had some inkling of what the future held in store and bolted for freedom before the compulsory serial killer could be brought in to make a daft ’go it alone’ idiot of him. Lawrence Fishburne surely had no idea and has my sympathy.I suppose it is inevitable that a country where forty percent of the population own guns will have a neurotic fixation on mass murderers, but in America the serial killer has become as much a lazy scriptwriter’s plot stand-by as has the omnipresent turbaned terrorist.
How many writers contribute to this cliched crap?
No matter.
Just give it a rest, will you?
Martina Cole’s The Runaway. (Sky 1)
Recorded this and watched all six episodes over a couple of days.
Apart from the drag queens, led by Desrae (Alan Cumming) the characters made the Game of Thrones crowd look like something out of Beatrix Potter.
Medieval minds would know no better; but this was London in the sixties. Not for the faint hearted.
Made you proud not to be a Londoner.
READING.
Alexander McCall Smith.
The Full Cupboard of Life is Botswana’s No.1 Ladies’ Detective agency again.
Mma Ramotswe continues gently to wrestle with her own problems and with those of her clients. I have only reached chapter five and am totally hooked. Will Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni make the parachute jump?
More next time.
