2 (21) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY II.

ADOLESCENT MEMORIES. 

The Forties. 

After a couple of years Harold and Brian's father, Harold Snr., remarried and the boys went back to Portsmouth to live with him. My father, now an overseer of wartime brick shelter building in Pompey, was still working there and commuting from Bognor; so a short time later we, too, moved back. The two families remained close. Enemy planes had been augmented by pilotless V -1 buzz bombs which flew until they dropped and exploded. They were meant to demoralize the nation, London in particular: they didn't. 

Every male seemed to be in uniform back then so, one by one, when we reached the age of fourteen and a half, we three boys joined the army: Harold finished up in REME, I joined the Royal (Corps of) Signals and Brian went into the Royal Engineers. They both made a career of it (Harold going on to become a civilian instructor at Borden); I came out after twelve years. Suffice to say that by the end of the nineteen forties, with the war over, we were all 'old' soldiers and Pompey had the finest football team in the country. 

In 1949 I went to Cyprus to begin a three year term as a special wireless operator. Troopship first to Egypt. (The Empress of Australia)

Nobody went, or came home, by plane in those days. You got there and there you stayed. Shift work. Never mind the sunshine, sometimes it seemed like a long three years. 

More in next post. 

HOME. 

Fascinating. A viewer came last weekend. Apparently flew down from Aberdeen. Seemed to like the place (according to the estate agent) and has gone back to deliberate. 
Another world with the plane now, ain't it? 
THE DETECTIVES. 

Just the two. 

Fortitude: Have you looked in? Gawd! Ennit gory?
Person of Interest: Still as unbelievable as ever and still as watchable. 
AND OTHERS. 

Indian Summers. Julie Walters and colleagues are still cleverly showing us why, as a nation, we are universally detested. How glad India and the rest must have been to see the back of us. 

Four in a bed. My Leader watches this. I look in only occasionally - and shudder. Just in case you, like me, are no follower of reality television, this is a series in which guest house keepers visit rival establishments to make snide comments, find a pubic hair or two and knock a few quid off the price of their room. I invariably finish up determined never stay at another B&B in my entire life. 

Tom Felton meets the superfans. 

This documentary is currently showing on iPlayer. Directed by and starring Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter fame), it takes a fascinating and sympathetic look at what drives people to become obsessive fans. 

Tom talks to fellow Potter actors, to J.K. Rowling and to several of the most persistent fans: his interviewing technique is open, cheerful, friendly and so un-Draco that you cannot help but marvel at what a bloody good actor he is. When he's being himself he's obviously a charming bloke. 

But I write as one who is too old and sceptical to be anybody's fan. I admire the personable and the talented objectively. In the unlikely event I should ever meet any of 'em, I doubt we would become friends. 

From the tone of this programme, though, there's not much harm in most of those dedicated fans who like to think they are the friends of celebrities. 

If it makes them feel good, why not?

Have a good Easter. 

By the time it is over I may even have stopped muttering about that effing hour on the clocks

2 (20) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY.

 BOYHOOD MEMORIES.

The Thirties.

In 1930, the year I was born, aviatrix Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. She flew in a Gipsy Moth biplane and it took her 21 days: nowadays a flight from London to Darwin takes around eighteen and a half hours. That, you might say, is progress. I remember, as a small boy, the magic of sitting on a fender box watching my mother toast crumpets before an open fire. I recollect how, for a short time, my father dabbled with a cat's whisker radio, later replacing it with the valve operated wireless set which for years was our staple entertainment. 

The BBC produced a steady stream of news and popular listening on the old wireless. Children's Hour and In Town Tonight were firm favourites as were songs sung by Gracie Fields, Flanagan and Allen and (with a hefty helping of banjolele and double entendre) George Formby. 
My father was a carpenter and joiner: thirty bob (£1.50) a week and nothing when it rained. Mother was a housewife with aspiration (or father may forever have remained a carpenter and joiner on thirty bob a week...but that's another story). 

Throughout the nineteen thirties our little family moved three times from rented house to rented house, finishing up at Eastney, Portsmouth. To the best of my knowledge we were not particularly moved by the abdication of King Edward V111 in 1936 but, along with the rest of the country, were much moved by the arrival of the Second World War in 1939. By then my parents had acquired a pair of unofficial foster brothers for me in the form of the two lads next door whose mother had inexplicably departed. The older, Harold, was eighteen months my senior; his brother, Brian, a year or so my junior. Came the evacuation (entire school to the Isle of Wight), the 'Phoney War,' the early return of we three to the blitzes on Portsmouth and then, blitzes over, the relocation of the entire family to Bognor Regis, where we were to be bombed only by the occasional hit and run raider. 

The aeroplane was proving to be a dubious blessing. More in next post. 

HOME. 

Our house. A request came for a viewing to take place last Friday. On the Monday we were having a chat with a nice young woman (NYW) from the estate agents when we had a phone call from her office asking if a further viewing, on Wednesday, would be OK. We said 'fine' and agreed with the NYW that with Spring coming the market might soon buck up: that was that. On Wednesday, as is our wont, we made ready to leave the house to the NYW and client/s. The phone rang. It was the NYW's office. They had just been informed that the Friday viewers were now 'suited,' so would we please cancel that viewing. We said OK and off we went. When we got back there was a message from the NYW on the answerphone. The Wednesday clients had duly turned up. Mother and daughter. They had been surprised to discover that the house was on three floors, had not realized that the bathroom was on the first floor and mother, who had recently undergone a hip operation, would never be able to manage the stairs. The place was perfect in every other way. “Perhaps,”added the NYW, “the viewing on Friday will be more successful.” 

Highly unlikely, we thought, highly unlikely. 

THE DETECTIVES. 

Just a quick run through. Fortitude becomes increasingly bizarre and horribly compelling. 

Murder in the First Degree featured Tom Felton as Erich Blunt, an adult Draco Malfoy. He was predictably splendid. I hope they'll soon find a nice guy role for this nice guy. 

The Mentalist is cruising through what is alleged to be the last series. It is still watchable. 

Grimm ploughs on with only leading cast members aware that the world is packed with weird creature-people of lethal disposition. 

NCIS, normally a hive of foreign invasion paranoia, is currently flitting from one character's personal crisis to another. They are such good actors you forgive them all the tosh. 

Person of Interest comes back tonight. I have given up trying to analyse it, but they are such good actors...

As for the Brits, DCI Banks is with us again. 

A suitably taciturn Stephen Tomkinson heads the usual good cast. Still very watchable. 

AND OTHER THINGS. 

Idiots. They make a bit of headway in life and it goes to their heads. Remember when Mrs. Thatcher, perhaps unsurprisingly, started to act as if she was the Queen? The end was nigh. 

Recently, four judges were accused of watching porn on the IT equipment in their offices: it was in no way connected with their court cases, but the powers that be concluded it was not acceptable behaviour. One of them resigned, the other three were sacked. 

Then along came Jeremy Clarkson - again: this time, it seems, he punched a producer of Top Gear in a dispute regarding the absence of a meal (after a day filming that popular boys' toys programme). Consequently he is under suspension. Whether he will be sacked is apparently more important than who wins the next election. Media heavyweights are convinced he is indispensable. He's not. Nobody is. But this is a storm on a dinner plate which should have terminated with the producer casually kicking him in the double de-clutch. Say no more. 

THE BOOK WORLD.

I finished reading Small Gods by Terry Pratchett and, while I was still smiling my appreciation and nodding my agreement, learned of the author's death. It was good to read that he died peacefully, surrounded by family and with his cat asleep on the bed beside him. Death surely will have said, in kindly capital letters: “COME ON THEN, OLD FRIEND, YOU KNOW THE DRILL.” 

Words galore have been - and will be - written about this fine author. I was introduced to his work quite recently, so have a lot of catching up to do. There will be much chuckling and murmurs of approval as, again and again, I inhabit Discworld with the Librarian, the Luggage, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, various heroes, anti-heroes, witches, wizards of varied competency and arch villains of Machiavellian complexity. 

Like millions of others who never met him, I shall very much miss this brave, talented, irrepressibly humorous man. 

RIP Sir Terence David John “Terry” Pratchett OBE.
(For a lengthier tribute you might like to Google “Terry Pratchett: above all, he was funny” by Nick Harkaway.) 
AND FINALLY. 
254 OBA. Southern Chapter members of the Royal Signals Old Boys Association, together with wives and guests, were back at Botleigh Grange Hotel for the annual reunion last weekend. The arrangements (still impeccably orchestrated by Chairman Pat Soward and his wife, Maureen), were little changed from last year. The gathering, other than being a year older, was reassuringly similar to that of last year and the hotel (sans last year's Indian wedding) appears not to have changed anything but the bedclothes. Good food, good staff, good company and a good ambience. What more can you ask?
We thoroughly enjoyed it. 
Cheers!