2 (7) Yet more catching up to do.

WATCHING.

A sort of clock watching.

The trouble with setting oneself time limits (in this case, once a month) to produce a few printed words, is that a sort of clock watching process becomes the norm and invariably culminates in a last minute dash to meet one's needlessly set deadline.

It thus came as some surprise to me last month when I finished Beware saying...a couple of days early and cheerfully published it.

Blame that confounded election. It left...

Yet more catching up to do.

For a start I must send greetings to Anonymous J.A. and say how pleased we were to hear that he and his driveway were well on the mend. Sheila and Mo keep in touch on the ipaddy-touch-type-telephone-thingies, 'tis true, but your occasional blog comment is still very welcome, John.

Then I must say hello to Jac's friend, Zoe Farndon (how long has it been?) and a thanks for your nice little note. The cat Shadow still thinks yours is the only name that rhymes with Barnden – it is if you say it quickly. And Botleigh Grange, eh? What a small world. We've still not met; but one day, who knows? All the very best, Zoe.

READING.

Alex Grecian.

I finished The Yard (Penguin fiction) and it was a damn good read so I went on to the second of the Murder Squad yarns, The Black Country, which was as good, if not better. Mr. Grecian is an American who, occasional slips in dialogue and period apart, clearly has an affinity with Jack The Ripper's England. Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the first ever (and seemingly self-appointed) forensic pathologist, together with his clever daughter, Fiona, and his trustworthy factotum, Henry Mayhew, do the scientific stuff and a fledgling band of Scotland Yard detectives, Inspector Walter Day and Sgt. Nevil Hammersmith prominent among them, do the investigating. The whodunit appears in italics from the outset, so the stories are stronger on action than on plot: but they are high, wide and hansom (cab) page turners: well worth adding to your crime library.
Robert B. Parker.
In Post 2 (5), I pleaded for the return of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe to the crime novel scene.                               Now I have to admit, shamefacedly, that for many years my reading has too often given way to an idle fixation with the television screen. Robert B. Parker's books thus went by unnoticed and he wrote exactly the sort of yarn I thought no longer existed. I have just finished Night Passage, the first Jesse Stone novel (No Exit Press); great stuff if the majority of your boyhood reading consisted of tough detectives and westerns.                                                                               All very American but reassuringly familiar to a Brit who was a fan of the old b/w B pictures where Jerome Cowan was Sam Campbell and Chester Morris was Boston Blackie. Mr. Parker, who also wrote the hard-boiled detective series Spenser, died at his desk in 2010. He was 77. A gilt-edged professional writer. Unusual marriage arrangements. Fascinating. (See Google.) 
Terry Pratchett. 

I conclude this section, appropriately, with a gilt edged British writer. My Leader and I are still laughing over our joint favourite recent read, Mort. (Corgi Books) If you have read Terry Pratchett's work you will probably know the true magic of Discworld. If you have not, what's stopping you? All you need is a sense of humour and the resolve to, for a start, borrow or buy the witches and wizards stories: you'll never regret it. In this one, Mort becomes Death's apprentice. DEATH TALKS LIKE THIS and has a horse called Binky. Mort, a simple lad, whose body “appeared to have been built out of knees” learns more about life from Death than he would ever have learnt from life.

By the time I had finished this tale it was my hope (and I wish this for Sir Terry, too) that when my time does come, Death himself – or a subcontractor who looks startlingly like Mort - might appear beside me and say: TIME TO GO, OLD BOY, TIME TO GO.

And I shall go, smiling, all the way to wherever.

TELEVISION.
Happy Valley.
Sarah Lancashire's portrayal of police sergeant Catherin Cawood, as written by Sally

Wainwright, Last Tango in Halifax/Scott and Bailey etc., 

should see her among the TV award winners next year.

The climax to Happy Valley, where only the tough survived,

was one of the most violently satisfying this peace loving old geezer has seen for years. The story had a beginning, a middle and an end, too. Excellent.

Anyway, I'll watch anything with Sarah Lancashire or Lesley Sharp in it. They play the sort of woman I married fifty two years ago.

Jack Taylor.

If you have watched any of these you will know they are set in Ireland and Iain Glen plays private eye (former garda) Jack Taylor. If you haven't watched it, Jack is a boozer and a womaniser who looks as though he has been pulled through a hedge backwards. He gets beaten up in every episode. His young buddy was shot by a madwoman but, pay negotiations willing, will recover for the next series. Jack has a heart of gold and anyone who likes Iain Glen will like him. I do.

That's about it.

Quirke.
I gather this short series hung about somewhere in the Beeb's
Lost and Reluctantly Found department for nigh on a couple

of years before somebody presumably thought it would be 

better than another bloody cookery show. Well, it is. But only just.The story is set in Ireland where Quirke (Gabriel Byrne) is chief pathologist in the Dublin city Morgue.
Our hero is a boozer and a womaniser and looks as though he

has been dressed by a mortician. He gets beaten up in the first episode. By the end of the series, the love of his life has died, his father is on the critical list and his daughter is thinking of going abroad. Incidentally, he has a heart of gold and anyone who likes Gabriel Byrne will like him. I do.
And that's about that.

Eggheads.
So dear old Daphne Fowler, the smiling assassin, has left

Eggheads. She became a member of the team at its inception in 2003 and has decided, at the age of seventy five, that enough is enough. Good for her. On current form, Chris Hughes (some eight years her junior) should do likewise.

My Leader still follows the programme. I can take it or (mostly) leave it. To my mind, any team that takes on a new boy whose name is preceded with the words “tremendous knowledge” has been well dumbed down. And as I said somewhere way back, now that the entire world knows the weakest head-to-head subject of every egghead, any decent pub quiz team can beat them; and that's doubly sure if Kevin is on the team and cooking is on the question list.

Happy retirement, Daphne. Put your feet up, girl.

Have also been watching...Castle, Coast Australia, Fargo, Game of Thrones, Grimm, Rizzoli and Isles, and Wallander, to name a few. 

I really do need to get out more, don't I?

LAST THOUGHTS.

Daft dress.
Breakfast on BBC1 recently sent reporter Steph to interview fisher folk and a whisky producer at a Scottish port. She and they stood, quayside, to talk. She and they – presumably at the whim of some health and safety fanatic - wore white overall coats and white mesh trilbies. Steph and her fishery interviewee then moved on to the fish storehouse: a vast shed full of fish-filled stalls. People wandered to and fro around and between the stalls, most of them hatless and all dressed in their everyday garb: clearly nobody owned a white overall or a white mesh trilby.
Suddenly our broadcasters looked a bit overdressed.

Later, as is the way with Breakfast, the interviews were

repeated: by that time, Steph and her quayside companions had lost their whiter than white h/s gear and were suitably attired in warm, sensible mufti.

I'd love to have heard what was said in the interim.

AND DEEDS.

Facebook.

My Leader is a regular follower of the Facebook outpourings of family and friends and has spent a considerable time trying to persuade me to look in on their – often very funny – exchanges.

Thus it was that, the other day, I allowed myself, with considerable misgivings, to finally join this popular social network. Mo did the signing up stuff for me. I don't do admin. Haven't done since 1989.

I did fill in my personal page, though. That resulted in me being listed as living in Isle of Wight, Virginia where, it seems, a couple of hundred people were pleased to hear it, over a hundred talked about it and a couple of thousand didn't give a toss. I'll never be able to afford a visit to I.W. Virginia, but I shall take the opportunity to look in at a few nice people's Facebook offerings. Doubt I'll become a very active participant. I do, as I pointed out to nephew Kelvin, have enough writing and washing up to do already. His response was to call me a grumpy old sod; an impudent (albeit accurate) description. So to

The Queen's Birthday Parade.

BBC Television screened the customary Trooping of the Colour at this year's birthday parade for H.M. Queen Elizabeth II (gawdblesserintshewonnerful) who was celebrating one or other of her two birthdays: don't know why she gets two but think it may be the reason she describes herself as “we.”

The Coldstream Guards Trooped the Colour

 and were magnificent. I would be very happy if that, together with ceremonial guard/escort duties were to be their sole task nowadays.

We are not officially at war unless, behind my back, somebody has decided otherwise, so we should not be sending troops to Afghanistan, or anywhere else, at the whim of some inflated politico, be it a Blair, a Cameron, or an American “ally.” Even the most inflexibly martial moron must secretly realise that going gung ho into the Middle East was an appalling mistake and remaining there has been an exercise in life-wasting futility. Our involvement has cost far too much in human misery and appears to have been of benefit only to American oil firms, international arms dealers and the scum who deal in illicit drugs.

Where was I? Oh...yes...the birthday parade was customarily well orchestrated. H.M., sadly, looked less than happy. Prince Philip managed a dutiful wave or so to the cheering crowd. The royal children proved they can still sit on horses and, in timeworn fashion, the family finally adorned the balcony of Buckingham Palace to acknowledge the adoration of that meticulously regimented throng in The Mall.

A flyover of planes, ancient and modern, brought the proceedings to a satisfactory conclusion.

They (and we) are still pretty good at the pomp lark.

I.W. Music Festival 2014.
Last weekend it was Isle of Wight Music Festival time again.

Some of our bunch went to see Red Hot Chili Peppers who were the stars (good, I'm told) on Saturday. Kings of Leon topped the bill on Sunday. The musical cat Shadow heard it all from next door's kitchen roof. (He said he prefers Biffy Clyro.)

My Leader and I didn't go. Well, she drove me past the site on Father's Day, but I think that was just to teach me a lesson. None of it appeals to me. But from outside our front door we were treated to a display of aerobatics by the Red Arrows on the last day. They, like the Guards, were magnificent.

SO TO LAST LAST THOUGHTS.
Scotland with Douglas.

Son Neil and his wife, Pauline, have been on holiday north of 

the border. They have been accompanied by Douglas, a travelling hamster who first joined them in America and now goes everywhere with them. He has taken to Scotland like a caber, has been seen on Facebook in a kilt and a hamoshanter and has been photographed with two Castle Douglas guides.

Don't ask me where such lunacy comes from, but I'll try and get a picture for the next post.