2 (16) STILL PLODDING ALONG.

WATCHING. 

What viewers? So far as the sale of our house is concerned, nothing is now likely to happen before Christmas: the last couple of requests to view ended in cancellation only hours before they were due to take place. Seems prospective buyers are discovering (at the very last moment) that money is tight and mortgages almost non-existent. Oh well, the old place has never looked more clean and tidy. It's eerie. 

Facing up to Facebook. Right now my computer Inbox is awash with shared links, updated statuses and new photos. It is lovely that so many nice people want to share their jokes, interests etc. with me and wonderful how the Facebook gurus contrive to let it be known when said interests are on view: I'd make a clever comment on every one if I had the talent or the time. Sadly I don't. Their splendid contributions are much appreciated, though. Thanks, folks. 
TELEVISION. 

The Wright Stuff. (Channel 5) 

There are worse people than Matthew Wright to watch on reality tele (the little unshaven twat who growls: “You've been fired” and the bald headed twat who shouts: “Cooking never got tougher than this”are obvious examples), so I still watch the bikini boy if his guest list includes somebody I think will interest me. A fortnight ago the pair invited to spend an entire week on the panel were the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Dr. David Bull. It was a prospective red rag to a bull situation. (Sorry) 

Mrs. Alibhai-Brown is a British Muslim, a socialist and a republican. Dr. Bull is a Brit who has been a prospective conservative MP. He now spends a great deal of his time in America where he appears regularly on television. 
Their confrontation, when it came, was blunt and brief and neither side was the winner. 'Screechy' (the unseen one who talks in the host's ear) must have been delighted. It was what insiders call 'good tele.' I thought the participants were commendably straightforward. Matthew made conciliatory noises and it might all have ended there. But the next phone-in came from a lady who ventured what seemed to me to be a tongue-in-cheek admonition: panelists, she averred, really should be advised not to squabble in public...it ruined their image...(or something along those lines). 

Tch, tch! Exit Never-on-Monday Matthew, the friendly fisherman with the bad back: Enter How-dare-you-slate-my-guests Matthew, tough television front man, bristling with unrighteous indignation. Nobody, but nobody, climbs on their high horse higher than our Matthew once he starts; he can hover at the edge of outer space. And he did. It was like a warm up for the Jeremy Kyle Show. He finally concluded his dramatic denouncement of the flabbergasted caller with a dismissive wave to signal the lecture was at an end. It had been a promising call, too. 

Ne'er mind, I'll still look in when he has somebody interesting, nice, funny, controversial, likeable (perm any two from five) on the panel. He can be a reasonable enough bloke, too, when he's not being Matt the twat. 

War Horse. Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis and based on a novel by Michael Morpurgo, this epic, set at the time of the first world war, was shown on BBC1 a week or so ago. Did you see it? Or did the Beeb's surfeit of salutes to WW1 finally prove too much for you? I watched. The photography was top class and the acting matched it. My Leader, no fan of war films whatever the war (she believes that the politicians who start wars should be sent out to fight them), watched it with me once she realized it was more Black Beauty than All Quiet On The Western Front. It had an ominous beginning, an action-packed middle and a happy ending, so it pleased those of us who still covet such things.

Peaky Blinders (BBC2). 

The boys from Brum, led by Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), were back for a second villainous, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed series and it looks like they're set for a third. I recorded the entire series and we watched them over a couple of days. Very steamy and violent and a sound reminder that if you're looking for outright chicanery you need only look for the politician. 

George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (Channel 4). George has found an incredible array of quirky dwellings adapted - from a variety of unlikely beginnings - by a host of imaginative and determined enthusiasts. This is a cracking, original little programme. 

Concerto at the BBC Proms (BBC4). Somebody at the Beeb had a bright idea. In the wake of the Proms, why not repeat a few 'notable' concertos performed over the years? So they showed one a week for four weeks and the chosen 'of notes' were: the melodic Mendelssohn Violin Concerto played by Janine Jansen with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Mozart Clarinet played by Julian Bliss, Mozart Piano Concerto number 23 played by Richard Goode and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto number 4 (an extended maze of sophisticated scales and very little else) rattled off by Russian virtuoso Boris Berezovsky accompanied by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Filmed between 2005 and 2008, all four performances seem rather dated now. 

BACK TO BOOKS. 

Talking of dated: I have just finished reading Edmund Crispin's Buried for Pleasure: first published in 1948, it took me right back to the days during the second world war when mate Tony and I used to write (and illustrate) our own detective stories in exercise books for exchange readings. All of that is long gone, but I instinctively knew whodunit in the Crispin story and was smugly pleased when it transpired I was right. Well, in a lively little yarn written when I as about twelve years old, I conjured up a murderer almost identical to the one in Buried for Pleasure: six years before Mister Crispin's pre PC masterpiece, too. My neat nipperpiece was called Pay or Die. 

“So was it ever published?” 
What, written in longhand in a wartime exercise book by an elementary schoolboy? Do behave. 

I finished Sally Green's Half Bad (Penguin books 2014) and concluded it was not at all bad. 

And I have just come to the end of Moving Pictures, the story of how the movies invaded Discworld. Written, directed and produced in glorious technicolor by Sir Terry Pratchett, I nodded and grinned my way through every classic-film-referenced reel of it. What a wonderful writer that man has always been. 

THE DETECTIVES. 

The Dr. Blake Mysteries are back on BBC1 and we are in late 1950s Australia where the crime-busting GP, played by Craig McLachlan, is doing what amateur detectives forever do; testing the patience of his town's friendly constabulary and infuriating the local bigwigs. We like his housekeeper and his Standard motor. 
Body of Proof (Channel 5). 

Megan Hunt, played by Dana Delaney, another doctor who finds the time to poke her nose into things that only armed police officers should be dealing with, is back again and busy poking her nose in...Enjoyable if you like Dana Delaney. We do. 
AND OTHER THINGS. 
Here we go again. “It's less than four weeks to Father Christmas time,” said the cat Shadow. “Have you written any cards yet? Or looked for the decorations? Or put the sprouts on the hob?” 
“Don't nag,” I said. “There's plenty of time and I'm always late anyway.” 
“You're getting worse by the year,” he opined. “I think you'd better wish all the nice folk who read this rubbish the Compliments of the Season before it's too late.” 
“I think you'd better shut up before I put you in Cat's Protection and buy a puppy,” I said. The Festive Season has begun so I'll not print his obscene rejoinder. But in case I am not in print again before the slightly slimmer Santa comes down your chimney this year:
       Have a Happy Christmas 

                       Gawdblessyerwunanall.