HOME.
Searching for the net.
We’ve had a bundle of trouble contacting the internet over the past few weeks. Don’t know what we did to upset it but neither I, on my antiquated designer Dell, nor my Leader, on her trendy pale green laptop, was able to garner so much as a ‘hallo,’ ‘goodbye,’ or ‘kiss my connection’ for days at a time. I muttered imprecations and spent even more time watching television and tackling the concise crossword.
My Leader rang talktalk and talked talk about it. They finally concluded that it might be the filter. I wondered what the hell the filter was.
My Leader’s friend Mo, a good pal who knows about such things, said the filter plugs into the phone line and she had recently updated hers. My Leader then procured a modified replacement. It gave us three hours on the internet before zilch! I got a fit of the sighs and a slight twitch under the left eye. My Leader got in touch with the talktalk trouble hunters again. At the conclusion of a considerable confab they concluded it could be the router. I wondered what the hell the router was.
My Leader and her friend Mo both knew what the router was. It sits on my desk next to the 19” Hanns.G LCD monitor and it is fronted by a little line of lights which I have always blissfully ignored. One of them - the one labelled internet - was not working. Talktalk said they would send another router. The following day the failed light lit up. It’s fine right now. Won’t cancel the substitute, though; that might just be wholly reliable.*
And we’ve done quite enough searching for the net, thank you.
*New router arrived a couple of days later (much sooner than expected, bless ‘em)) and so far is working wonderfully well. Thanks, talk talk.
TELEVISION.
The Killing ll. (BBC4)
Sofie Gråbøl.
Back in our good old tuppence-a-book library days my father oft remarked that the writers of thrillers and cowboy yarns had but one original story in them; thereafter they just produced the same thing with a different title. That was 70 years ago. Nothing changes.
If you saw The Killing (Post 164 refers), The Killing 2 was decidedly déjà vu. In The Killing there was one decent local politician in Copenhagen trying to do the right thing and being constantly undermined by the treachery of those about him. A girl was killed. All hell broke loose. Enter Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl). In 2 there was one decent national politician in the whole of Denmark trying to do the right thing and being constantly undermined by the treachery of those about him.
Bring on the female corpse; bring back Sarah Lund and step up the treachery. Same meat, slightly different gravy. You know that Sarah will win and you know she will get no thanks.
Still dark. Still subtitled. Still loved it.
Young James Herriot (BBC1)
Now this was different. Forget tight-fisted Yorkshire farmers and dry-stone walls. This was a naïve but determined young man at a veterinary college in Glasgow in the early thirties. Frankly, it was pretty grim stuff. It was a short series. Don’t know if there will be another. Not sure that I care.
The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff.(BBC2)
A send-up of Dickens who can stand sending up. It was showbiz celebrities doing silly turns in a pantomime way. Celia Imrie (above) was good, but when isn’t she?
The Mentalist. (C5)
So Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) bumps off Red John, is put on trial for murder, talks the jury into finding him not guilty, realises he has not killed the real Red John and off we go again. At least he didn’t come out of the shower having dreamt it all. And he, together with the rest of the team, are still as gloriously unbelievable as ever.
Sherlock. (BBC1)
Another short, mostly enjoyable, series starring an actor with a name that sounds like something off a drug assembly line, Benedict Cumberbatch, and an actor with a name that sounds like a 20th century shoe manufacturer, Martin Freeman. They are perfectly cast as 21st century versions of Holmes and Watson and I imagine the episode entitled Reichenbach Fall has no more brought an end to writer Mark Gatiss’s modern version of the Baker Street sleuth than The Falls did to a disenchanted Conan Doyle’s original.
Series 3 is waiting in the wings.
NCIS (FX)
Series 9 started with a convoluted episode involving yet another sinister fringe agency within an agency so beloved of our more paranoid American cousins. Enough to say that Tony was shot - not dead - just enough to fall on his head and suffer the cliché loss of memory a hero routinely suffers whenever writers want to indulge in flashback storytelling. I think a sinister fringe agency may have been employed to bugger about with the storylines. Don’t know who they are but I wish they’d go away.
NCIS: Los Angeles, (Sky1)
Even with those fine actresses Linda Hunt and Claire Forlani on board, this doesn’t appeal to me. Never has. Oh, it might be Los Angeles but it ain’t NCIS, not now, not ever. Pity, because I’d like to like it.
The Bourne Identity - The True Story. (C5)
This documentary alleged that the CIA, as sinister an agency as any in the world, had brainwashed people into becoming Bourne-type assassins. If that is true - and it certainly came across that way - we have already sunk into Orwellian nightmare and need look no further than America to explain why. Mark you, we must have a fair number of former public schoolboys quite capable of dishing out similar treatment to any aggravating dissident or pleb in this country. We don’t extradite them all, do we?
FILM.
Race to Witch Mountain. (2009)
Why are kids films often better than those produced for adults? In this Disney film a tough cabbie becomes the unexpected protector of two stranded alien children who are trying to reach their rescue spacecraft before they are caught and taken for experimentation by evil American scientists.
It is daft, action-packed, and an easy way to spend 98 minutes of weekend viewing time.
READING.
Bill Bryson.
As mentioned in my last post, I have done no book reading of late, so it was with considerable pleasure that I started on The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bill Bryson has long been one of the writers my family rely on as a safe gift to buy me for birthdays or at Christmas. His Dictionary of Troublesome Words (Penguin Reference, 1984) has been a guest on my desk for many years, but I had forgotten just how funny he can be. The Thunderbolt Kid has had me laughing aloud and I am seldom a mirthful reader. More if he ever grows up and I ever recover my composure.
Ian Dillow.
No, the former PRO of Wessex Regional Health Authority and editor of Link magazine has not, to my knowledge, written a book; though he could and should. Last month, however, in response to my name-dropping his name, (not my description, I thought you could only name-drop the famous) he emailed me his editorial judgment on my fleeting, long past, venture into journalism. It was a funny and extremely kind little note and it gave this old bloke a warm glow that had nothing to do with the Christmas cognac and lasted throughout the entire festive season. Thanks, famous person.
LAST WORD.
When Wiki went AWOL.
Bit late again this month, but at least this will give you, kindly reader, something to read on the day that Wikipedia went absent without leave. AWOL is a court martial offence, Wiki, but we miss you and understand your reasons.
So come back tomorrow and we’ll say no more about it, eh?
Searching for the net.
We’ve had a bundle of trouble contacting the internet over the past few weeks. Don’t know what we did to upset it but neither I, on my antiquated designer Dell, nor my Leader, on her trendy pale green laptop, was able to garner so much as a ‘hallo,’ ‘goodbye,’ or ‘kiss my connection’ for days at a time. I muttered imprecations and spent even more time watching television and tackling the concise crossword.
My Leader rang talktalk and talked talk about it. They finally concluded that it might be the filter. I wondered what the hell the filter was.
My Leader’s friend Mo, a good pal who knows about such things, said the filter plugs into the phone line and she had recently updated hers. My Leader then procured a modified replacement. It gave us three hours on the internet before zilch! I got a fit of the sighs and a slight twitch under the left eye. My Leader got in touch with the talktalk trouble hunters again. At the conclusion of a considerable confab they concluded it could be the router. I wondered what the hell the router was.
My Leader and her friend Mo both knew what the router was. It sits on my desk next to the 19” Hanns.G LCD monitor and it is fronted by a little line of lights which I have always blissfully ignored. One of them - the one labelled internet - was not working. Talktalk said they would send another router. The following day the failed light lit up. It’s fine right now. Won’t cancel the substitute, though; that might just be wholly reliable.*
And we’ve done quite enough searching for the net, thank you.
*New router arrived a couple of days later (much sooner than expected, bless ‘em)) and so far is working wonderfully well. Thanks, talk talk.
TELEVISION.
The Killing ll. (BBC4)
Back in our good old tuppence-a-book library days my father oft remarked that the writers of thrillers and cowboy yarns had but one original story in them; thereafter they just produced the same thing with a different title. That was 70 years ago. Nothing changes.
If you saw The Killing (Post 164 refers), The Killing 2 was decidedly déjà vu. In The Killing there was one decent local politician in Copenhagen trying to do the right thing and being constantly undermined by the treachery of those about him. A girl was killed. All hell broke loose. Enter Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl). In 2 there was one decent national politician in the whole of Denmark trying to do the right thing and being constantly undermined by the treachery of those about him.
Bring on the female corpse; bring back Sarah Lund and step up the treachery. Same meat, slightly different gravy. You know that Sarah will win and you know she will get no thanks.
Still dark. Still subtitled. Still loved it.
Young James Herriot (BBC1)
Now this was different. Forget tight-fisted Yorkshire farmers and dry-stone walls. This was a naïve but determined young man at a veterinary college in Glasgow in the early thirties. Frankly, it was pretty grim stuff. It was a short series. Don’t know if there will be another. Not sure that I care.
The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff.(BBC2)
The Mentalist. (C5)
Sherlock. (BBC1)
Series 3 is waiting in the wings.
NCIS (FX)
Series 9 started with a convoluted episode involving yet another sinister fringe agency within an agency so beloved of our more paranoid American cousins. Enough to say that Tony was shot - not dead - just enough to fall on his head and suffer the cliché loss of memory a hero routinely suffers whenever writers want to indulge in flashback storytelling. I think a sinister fringe agency may have been employed to bugger about with the storylines. Don’t know who they are but I wish they’d go away.
NCIS: Los Angeles, (Sky1)
Even with those fine actresses Linda Hunt and Claire Forlani on board, this doesn’t appeal to me. Never has. Oh, it might be Los Angeles but it ain’t NCIS, not now, not ever. Pity, because I’d like to like it.
The Bourne Identity - The True Story. (C5)
This documentary alleged that the CIA, as sinister an agency as any in the world, had brainwashed people into becoming Bourne-type assassins. If that is true - and it certainly came across that way - we have already sunk into Orwellian nightmare and need look no further than America to explain why. Mark you, we must have a fair number of former public schoolboys quite capable of dishing out similar treatment to any aggravating dissident or pleb in this country. We don’t extradite them all, do we?
FILM.
Race to Witch Mountain. (2009)
Why are kids films often better than those produced for adults? In this Disney film a tough cabbie becomes the unexpected protector of two stranded alien children who are trying to reach their rescue spacecraft before they are caught and taken for experimentation by evil American scientists.
It is daft, action-packed, and an easy way to spend 98 minutes of weekend viewing time.
READING.
Bill Bryson.
As mentioned in my last post, I have done no book reading of late, so it was with considerable pleasure that I started on The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bill Bryson has long been one of the writers my family rely on as a safe gift to buy me for birthdays or at Christmas. His Dictionary of Troublesome Words (Penguin Reference, 1984) has been a guest on my desk for many years, but I had forgotten just how funny he can be. The Thunderbolt Kid has had me laughing aloud and I am seldom a mirthful reader. More if he ever grows up and I ever recover my composure.
Ian Dillow.
No, the former PRO of Wessex Regional Health Authority and editor of Link magazine has not, to my knowledge, written a book; though he could and should. Last month, however, in response to my name-dropping his name, (not my description, I thought you could only name-drop the famous) he emailed me his editorial judgment on my fleeting, long past, venture into journalism. It was a funny and extremely kind little note and it gave this old bloke a warm glow that had nothing to do with the Christmas cognac and lasted throughout the entire festive season. Thanks, famous person.
LAST WORD.
When Wiki went AWOL.
Bit late again this month, but at least this will give you, kindly reader, something to read on the day that Wikipedia went absent without leave. AWOL is a court martial offence, Wiki, but we miss you and understand your reasons.
So come back tomorrow and we’ll say no more about it, eh?
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