Post 378. THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL...

IS PROBABLY A NON-STOP EXPRESS TRAIN.

SO TO END A CRAP YEAR this short post is written wishing all who read it A Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2021.
If we missed you out in this year's somewhat diminished festive card bun fight please accept our apologies. My Leader did all that again this year and I sat around looking suitably helpless – a knack I have perfected to a fine art.
Sorry to be so downbeat, but with the new high speed coronavirus on the loose, and Facebookers currently spreading the message HAPPY NEW TIER EVERYONE, next year's prospect looks no better.
I gather we have not been helped over here by those brave locals who (never mind Hands - Face - Space) have declared themselves too independent to keep a sensible distance from others or wear a mask.
Christ!
And we did away with lunatic asylums!
Well, we're all locked indoors, so now what do we do?
INVARIABLY WE TURN TO NETFLIX.

AN IMPROVEMENT ON THE REST, even if it is mostly a load of 'B' movies. I'll not list 'em, or rabbit on about Christmas Tele.
No more negativity this year my dears.
Anyway, this computer is in the extension/conservatory/garden room/whatever and it's bloody cold here right now, so I'm off to a warm living room, at least until next year.
Take care. You're a special person.

Post 377. THERE ARE MORE OUT THAN IN.

AND MOST OF THEM CAME HERE.

TO THIS TIER ONE ISLAND.
They came in their unwanted hordes from near and far to get noisily drunk and show the Isle of Wight what irresponsible twits human beings can be. On Saturday 5th of December our police cells were jampacked with the useless bastards. More of them were in custody here than in any nearby south coast county. It was mayhem. So much for being the only Tier One designated area in the south east.
Since the type of policing that probably prevailed when we came here fifty two years ago is no longer acceptable, it is unlikely that the prime troublemakers were carefully selected, firmly chastised and, bruisedly convinced that future visits to these shores would be highly inadvisable, put on the earliest boat back to the mainland.
So I guess they'll keep returning now until our coronavirus figures go up high enough to force an amendment to the Tier One designation.
Don't imagine I have always welcomed them as summer visitors, either. Since I own neither a hotel nor or a guest house, I have only ever viewed visiting drivers as hazards on our dicey Island roads: much like those slow old locals who kid themselves they're 'safe' behind the wheel (and who were largely responsible for my decision to give up driving).
It's a mad world.
Enough of the grinch stuff.
CHRISTMAS IS UPON US.

Yep. Here we are again. Back to the world of 'Why did we ever take the decorations down?' 'How long have we got left to send a card to Timbuktu?' and, this year: 'How do we price this properly when we no longer have a village post office to take it to?'
Yes, that's our Britain in still-no-deal Brexit 2020.
Happy Christmas my dears.
Stay as safe as you possibly can.

Post 376. LAST INCARCERATED WORDS.

BEFORE LOCKDOWN ENDS

ANOTHER SAD MONTH.
This is going to be brief.
It has not been a happy month.
One of my wife's former workmates, and a friend for close on thirty years, Fiona Elliott, died suddenly. Unable to attend her funeral, we watched the crematorium service on the net. Ah, the wonderful world of technology. It was a surreal experience but one to which we shall become ever more accustomed I fear. Our heartfelt commiserations go to her husband, Barry, and entire family.
We also had starkly realistic news that friend Ian Dillow and nephew Phil Butler cannot yet relax in their respective attempts to best that bloody disease, cancer.
Phil has been back in hospital and Ian is awaiting another appointment.
Dear old pal John Appleton, too, has been going through a particularly rough patch.
I don't have the words to rightly express our concern for them.
It is constant.
AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW.
I have had a swollen, painful, left foot which is just clearing up. Well-wishers have been told that it was gout caused through me being posh and eating too much rich food.
What?
No, I've no idea what it was.

Oh, the illustrations have been put in to cheer things up a bit.
Be lucky.

Post 375. FIRST THINGS FIRST.

HOME.

TWO VERY SPECIAL BIRTHDAYS.
Since my last post two of the leading ladies in my world have celebrated birthdays. Mo (pictured backing British farmers: dunno why, none of them sent her a birthday card) reached the august age of seventy seven on 12 November. She won't mind me disclosing that; she's still thirteen years my junior.
All the family got in touch by any means possible and it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.
Then yesterday we celebrated granddaughter Jess's twenty fifth birthday.
Roz organised a lockdown get-together and quiz that enabled us all to meet on our family laptops. Must have been a dozen of us from half a dozen locations. It all went splendidly and was a triumph of technical ingenuity at a dicey time.
Sadly missing from the proceedings was our artist daughter-in-law, Pauline, who has now been found to be suffering from a form of cancer and is undergoing the onset medical procedures. Neil is doing everything he can for her. We can only wish them the very best. What can one say? That bloody disease.
STILL WANT TO BE A WRITER?

THEN YOU HAVE TO WRITE.
You can't just sit and stare.
I'm no doubt repeating myself here, but one of the prolific crime story writers of yesteryear (John Creasey I think) once asked an audience of ambitious would-be scribblers:
“Are you really set on being writers?”
And in response to their unanimous affirmative said: “Then you shouldn't be here, should you. You should be away...writing!”
Every SAD season for as long as I can remember I have found myself sitting at a keyboard wondering whether I've had enough of me in print and whether perhaps you have, too.
Trouble is, if I gave up writing altogether I'd just sit and stare, and you can't just sit and stare; that would be a totally negative thing to do. So I knock out a few words and hope for the best.
At my time of life I'm not likely to obtain sudden literary fame and now that lockdown is with us again every dubious celebrity in Christendom is turning up on television to advertise a – probably ghost written – book. So even if I produced a saga of should-be best sellers there is scant likelihood they'd make it past first base without the cloying insincerity of (in my case non-existent) television buddies to plug them.
It's a funny old world.
Always has been.
I do sit and stare of course: weak-kneed I know, but still can't resist the box in the living room.
TELEVISION.
We have looked in on Gogglebox (Channel 4) once or twice and reached the conclusion that it is as well we are not among the couples whose programme views are televisually recorded.
The forthrightness and profanity evinced in this house by yours truly alone would have the law at our door even more quickly than they got here when, some years ago, Mo gifted them a batch of her home-made cheese straws.
No, it wasn't bribery, it was repayment for their kindness after her - then relatively new - car gave up the ghost at an awkward location in Newport. What? Yes, she makes very good cheese straws.
And we have some great coppers on this Island.
Now where was I?
Oh...yes....

We recently binged on Justified, a modern day western which ran from 2010 until 2015 and starred Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, Joelle Carter and a host of splendid fellow actors: a most enjoyable medley of mayhem based on stories (mainly Fire in the Hole) by the late Elmore Leonard. To offset that diet of violence we have also been watching episodes of Brokenwood, half a dozen series of nicely observed whodunits from New Zealand starring Neill Rea, Fern Sutherland, Pana Hema Taylor, Nick Sampson and, of course, a host of splendid fellow actors. There's no shortage of talent in the acting world today. Opportunities to perform have always been sparse though, and the cursed Covid must seem like the final straw to more young hopefuls than ever before.
Ah well. Keep learning your lines: and avoid bumping into the furniture.

Post 374. HERE WE GO AGAIN.

NATIONAL LOCKDOWN TWO.

WITH SCHOOLS BACK IN ACTION.
Two of our family (daughter Jac, a teacher, and pupil grandson Ellis) have been required to go back to school. The second lockdown does not apply to schoolchildren and those who teach them.
As you nice people will know, Roz, a LSA at Medina College, resides here. She is in the 'shielded' category, temporarily unable to work at the college, and currently locked down with us. Grandson Ellis, who also lives here, is required to attend that same college every day. Work out the logic of that.
Apparently pandemics cease at school gates.
Perhaps we should simply scrap the slogan Save our NHS.
How about Bugger the Teachers and Anyone Close to the Aged?
Or even...
LET'S EMPTY THE SUPERMARKETS.
Have you ever wondered why, a couple of days before a two day Christmas break, people can be seen pushing trolleys towards supermarket checkouts with maybe a dozen loaves of bread piled atop their festive shopping? Ever thought: they can't all be hoteliers, or guest house owners, or nursing home proprietors: so what the hell is the size of their family? Ever thought: I wonder how much of that load the avaricious bastards will have to throw away?
The moment there came warning of another lockdown they were at it again: only now they were heading towards the checkouts with trolleys laden with enough food and toilet rolls to last right through this year and next.
So much for “We're all in it together.”
We're not. In every group of people there's at least one pain in the arse.
America has just got rid of its most obvious one.
TRUMP IS OUT.
I didn't think they'd get rid of him. Every trigger happy bullshitter in the USA was rooting for him and there are a lot of them.
I guess it was just a case of enough is enough. Replacing a politician with a reality show spin merchant may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the reality soon palls.
In this country we once replaced a royal with a commoner and look where that got us. Charles the First was (like most royals) a waste of space, but Cromwell, an empowered 'man of the people' who replaced him, was a petty dictator.
Best leave palaces to royalty and politics to politicians, no matter your thoughts on those fitting either description.
If it was left to me I'd pull down all the palaces, replace them with affordable housing, and pension off the royals. By the same token, I'd only give politicians ten years in which to do their worst. I'd then present them with a good pension and tell them to piss off.
Anyway, just over half the USA has voted Trump out, so now they'll have much the same atmosphere in their country that we've had in ours since Brexit. Difference is, theirs will be with guns. Good luck with that.
Trump now seems hellbent on earning himself the title “sore loser of all time.” What a dickhead.
AS FOR US.
Maybe we'll even come to realise how tenuous the 'special relationship' we are purported to have with America really is. President-elect Joe Biden Jr. (77), who likes to describe himself as Irish, will have no more time for England than does any of the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish nationalists around us in the British Isles. I think only a handful of Americans are aware the UK exists and those that do see it merely as a quirky provider of visiting entertainment to the USA (e.g. Billy Connolly, Bradley and Barney Walsh, Miriam Margolyes), as a repertory company of television actors prepared to play baddies with an English accent, or as a handy area in Europe wherein to site the nuclear weapons an unfriendly power might attack as a conflict opener.
Let's face it, we're on our own.
And that, with the boy Boris and his bumbling bunch in charge, ain't particularly reassuring.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST.
Old friend Anonymous John has discontinued using his computer. Healthwise he has had a very hard time for a very long time. Our hopes for his complete recovery are constant. He and Sheila have now gifted me his fine Canon PIXMA printer. Mine did need updating.
So thank you, John, I shall try to put it to good use.
You may not be surprised to learn that Roz had to install it for me. Sometimes I wonder how I ever learned to ride a bike.
It's too late for 'soon' but get well, old mate, get well.
You're a one-off and much missed.

Post 373. BACK TO NORMAL THEN.

OR IN MY CASE

MOSTLY CYNICAL.
I have never been a party person. Don't particularly like dinner groups either. Small talk eludes me and I invariably find myself faced with the guy who knows twenty five alternative routes to Slough, or believes he makes the definitive cup of tea, and insists on sharing this joyous knowledge with a captive listener. I no longer drive and if I did there is no way I would be driving to Slough (come friendly bombs), no matter how charming it may now have become and, by the same token, I make most of the tea in this house for my Leader and I (hers 'gnats' - mine 'builders') so require no lengthy diatribe on boiled-not-boiling water, heated teapots, loose leaf or bag, standing time, bone china cups, or whether the milk should go in first or last. I try not to offer people unsolicited advice and would prefer they kept their dubious 'expertise' to themselves. That particularly applies to the plethora of know-alls on television. Ah, yes!
TELEVISION.
I avoid most chat shows now. They have become home to the vaguely journalistic 'broadcaster', failed politicians (which of them isn't?), any television face who has a book to sell, actors flogging their latest project, and people with a grievance about some -ism or other.
God what a pain they all are!
Among the morning offerings, Jeremy Vine (Channel 5) has been devoid of the man himself for the past fortnight (half term I guess). Anne Diamond stood in for him, so I watched it. She was good: the guests were the usual bunch. Nothing to get excited about.
Don't bother much with him since he started bobbing up and down to a blackboard like a demented schoolmaster: give him a schoolmaster's pay for a couple of months, that'd stop him short. He'll be back next week. I'll have something else to do.
TRYING TO ADJUST.
That bloody hour.
So now I'm up at eight a.m. making a morning cuppa. That's a nine o'clock job when you're an oldie. Why do the silly sods do it? Back an hour: forward an hour. Why?
Well the cynic in me says they do it because they can.
They make clocks change time simply to prove that they have the power to bugger the populace about.
But me no buts.
AND FINALLY
Forgive me if all the above has been rather negative. It has been a sad month and a particularly shit final week.
But we in this house are blessed with each other and three lovely animals.

If you're a friend, thanks for being one.
If you're not...well...y'can't please 'em all.

Post 372. A FINAL FAREWELL

TO A LIFELONG FRIEND.

HAROLD CHARLES ELLIOTT.
Shortly before the publication of my last blog post I received a phone call from Doreen and Harold Elliott's daughter, Linda, to say that Harold had died peacefully at home. He was ninety one and we had been firm friends since boyhood.
In the years that he and his younger brother, Brian, spent with my parents and I (Post 160 refers) he became an unofficial, much respected, older brother to me, too.
Never a big lad, but wiry and tough, he was a naval cadet, a fine swimmer and a formidable scrapper. Once, when we were youngsters on a family trip to the beach at Eastney, a bigger boy threw a stone that hit me on the head. Dazed and distressed, I staggered back to our family group. Harold reacted swiftly and decisively. He sought out the boy whose father later came complaining to my father: “Your boy has hit mine and made his nose bleed.” My father, a man not given to high drama, solemnly turned to Harold and said: ”Well done, son.”
It was 1930s England: another world.
Litigation was not a working class word.
After the Portsmouth blitzes we moved to Bognor Regis and Harold gained a place at Chichester High School. It was well deserved: he was the meticulous, brainy one of us.
His time at the high school and at Bognor came to an end when Harold Snr. (Uncle Tosh to me) remarried and the boys moved back to be with him in Portsmouth. We returned there shortly afterwards and lived not too far away from them. I had missed both their company and the second-hand high school education imparted to me by Harold: Thanks to him I can still quote the first few lines of P. B. Shelley's Ozymandias of Egypt and Charles Wolfe's The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna. (When, some years later, I told him that, he said: “Crikey, can you? I can't.”)
Our friendship pretty much took up where it had left off until Harold joined the army as a boy soldier. Apparently the navy, his first choice, would not allow boys as young as fourteen and a half to enlist. So he settled for the army and, no surprise, when his full time in uniform came to an end Sgt. Major H. C. Elliott, REME, was employed for many years as a civilian instructor at Borden Army Camp.
Clearly he was a successful soldier. He was also a contented husband and family man with an irrepressible sense of humour (Earwig O was never far away).
Somehow all three of us boys found the right girl to marry. Doreen was certainly the right girl for Harold and Linda a lovely daughter. Our heartfelt commiserations go to them and their entire family.
I shan't be at your funeral, Harry. Elderly diabetic lockdown precludes attendance at such gatherings. Just as well, perhaps. I can imagine your gently disapproving shake of the head as you perceived this old man sitting there with tears running down his face. Men of our ilk don't cry in public.
RIP dear friend.

Post 371. NINETY YEARS OLD.

AT HOME.

THE BIRTHDAY WENT WELL Thanks to family and friends.
No matter how blasé you may think you are there are times when the good wishes of those who are close to you mean a very great deal. My ninetieth last Sunday was one such. Being feted by all and sundry was very flattering. I'll try not to let it go to my ancient head.
Five days before, on the 22nd September, Mo and I celebrated our 58th Wedding Anniversary: an altogether more important occasion. Couldn't have a knees-up for any of it of course. Confounded coronavirus. But again, family members and staunch friends found ways of expressing their best wishes and we quietly enjoyed the ambience.
“You could have murdered her,” one wit told me, “and been released in thirty years.”
Well...yeah...or she me. It's equal rights in this house.
Anyway, thanks again everybody.
And every good wish to 'Anonymous' John Appleton, Phil Butler and Ian Dillow, good pals who have been going through tough times healthwise for far too long. Good luck and total recovery the three of you.
TELEVISION.
Two short series to remember:
The Third Day (Sky Atlantic) starred Jude Law, Katherine Waterston, and a supporting cast of fine actors (e.g. Paddy Considine). It was a miniseries the viewing of which will be remembered by us as a prime example of time we shall never get back. I trust the actors were well paid.
The Write Offs (Channel 4) starred eight adults wanting to learn how to read and write. They were mentored by the splendid Sandi Toksvig and proved to be a likeable, thoroughly worthwhile, group of individuals who, when I was a boy, would have been banished to the back of the class to be studiously ignored other than for regular canings or having the blackboard cleaner thrown at them.
Nobody questioned it at that time. Nor, apparently, on the evidence of these nice people, for many years after. What a bloody country ours can be. Thank God for a decent Dane and the occasional reminder that not all reality television is utter garbage. This was a heart-warming two-parter that will surely be repeated. Well worth watching.
NO MORE FOR NOW.
A sad, though not unexpected, phone call received here this morning. I'll try to write a little about it next post.

POST 370. RECENTLY LOOKED BACK.

AT MY ORIGINAL BLOG POSTS. e.g.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
24. As a newcomer to this blog lark...
NOTHING CHANGES. Well, not that much it doesn't. I become slightly more intractable and the people for whom I have the least time become slightly more irksome. My first sizeable bunch of blog posts was dated as above. Entries were brief and pictures were noticeably absent. Back then I was using the pseudonym Justin Thyme and, unknowingly (because I have no crystal ball), was just ahead of the rush to the net by increasingly unsaleable national newspapers.
Looking back I find myself scribbling much the same stuff now as I did then. Have no idea what the papers are saying on the net: I read them no more than any of them reads me. Still read the i in print six days a week. Our corner shop delivers it and I pay the full price for it: have never joined the i 'buy in bulk' price reduction scheme and suspect it's only the carefully rich among us who have. It was an innovative idea though.
Now I am pondering yet again whether to keep scribbling or - as I regularly snarl at political pundits on television - give it a fuckin' rest.
Oh, I'll probably just carry on. Nothing changes. Well, not that much. Government advice does: all the time. So, I'm sorry to say, does my twenty first century propensity for foul language.

Keep reading the tablets, eh?

POST 369. STILL LAUGHING AT

THE FAST SHOW.

NICE. This wonderful load of tele nonsense recently came around again and was as zanily likeable as ever. Originally the brain child of Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse (above), the show (which some wit once labelled 'a series of catchphrases') first came our way in 1994. What - or who - brought it up from the archives I'm not sure, but I think it may have something to do with a proposed revival. Everything's being revived now, isn't it. Little of it to its betterment. I can't see The Fast Show protagonists falling into that 'God! Not again!' trap: if they came back it would be to deliver an appropriately sardonic take on the twenty first century. They were always way ahead of their time anyway. POSITIVELY OF THEIR TIME.

MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING is back. And Series 2 is every bit as gently entertaining as its predecessor. Paul's best buddy attempts at furthering Bob's recuperation from 2016 heart surgery and, in the process, make an angler of him, are low-key hilarious. Bob, in his turn, shows a kindness of nature seldom discernible within the ranks of his comedic contemporaries. Mo and I, along with better half of the nation, are well and truly hooked. The scenery is wonderful. too. BUT IF YOU MUST HAVE A REMAKE

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL. To give the lie to my notion that no remake of a television series ever equals the original, this adaptation of James Herriot's vet stories appears, on the evidence of the first episode alone, to be every bit as good as the Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy, Peter Davison BBC original. In the current (Channel 5)version, Nicholas Ralph as James, Rachel Shenton as Helen, Samuel West as Siegfried, Callum Woodhouse as Tristan and Anna Madeley as the excellent Mrs. Hall are perfectly cast as was Dame Diana Rigg as Mrs. Pumphrey.

Dame Diana died on the 10th of September 2020 aged 82. She was the gorgeous Emma Peel in The Avengers, the only Bond girl to marry James Bond (it didn't last), in her later years a formidable presence in an episode of Doctor Who, and an Emmy nominee for her performance in Game of Thrones, She was also a superb stage actress and the tongue-in-cheek arranger of the 'worst ever reviews' book No Turn Unstoned. RIP you lovely lady. And that's it for now. Mind how you go.

POST 368. TIME FOR ANOTHER CHAT.

BEFORE THE MONTH ENDS.

AND WHILE I'M STILL HERE: because you never know.. . So what brought this on? Well, at the beginning of last week I received a newsletter from the Chairman of the 254 Old Boys Association (Southern Chapter), Pat Soward, containing news that two of my best friends in R. Signals Boy's Squadron 1945 - 48, Wally Brown and Nat Preece, died in June and July of this year respectively. They were six months or so younger than me and their names were included in a list of nine old boys who have died since March 2020. In the way of the military we three had not kept in touch, but I knew that Wally had served a full time career in the Signals, even though he could have become a professional footballer, and that when he was stationed in BAOR he played part-time for a German soccer club. Nat, I learned, had left the army to become a Customs and Excise officer in Scotland. Had I not chanced upon their names among the attendees at a 254 OBA meeting reported on the net (I had no previous idea such an association existed), it would never have been my intention to revisit the past. Not much given to nostalgia so far as work is concerned. A job is just a job. But I then decided I really would like to see how they were faring. Thus it came about that Mo and I went (maybe ten years ago) to our first OBA AGM to meet them: in her case, for the first time. Now they are irrevocably gone and, as I later wrote to Pat, though I recognise the inevitability of it, their departure has shocked and deeply saddened me. That, I added, is another problem with growing very old...nobody, even fractionally younger than you, is supposed to die before you do. I really should be used to it, but I’m not... There is little more left to say. Our deepest sympathy goes to Wally's wife, Claire, to Nat's wife, Moira (who is in a care home), and to all those mourning the departure of a name on that list. WE ARE ALL MORTAL.

ANY IMAGININGS OF IMMORTALITY I may have had were further shattered a few nights ago when I suffered a fall in the back garden. The cat Spike, having completed her evening session of beating the bounds, came indoors with a gift for us: a live grass snake. She tends to do that. My Leader gently declines these kind offerings and returns them to their natural habitat. On this occasion she was not immediately available so I, wishing no fuss, lightly brushed the little snake onto a dustpan and went outside with it. It was dark, but the courtesy lights came on as I left the back door and I took off across our substantial car park, confident in my ability to tip the unwanted visitor out of harm's way. I never made it to the fence fronting the sanctuary hedge. Those outside lights ceased to be courteous and I lost my footing on the new concrete path. I went down heavily, just managed to deposit the snake back onto the car park, and struggled to my knees to discover I was never going to regain my feet unaided. Mo eventually found me, Roz and Ellis, by torchlight, got me up and back to the house and between them they cleaned me up. There was plently of blood and I now have a huge bruise on my left hip, but nothing was broken and I soon stopped shaking. All in all it was a bloody silly thing for me to do and I shall be good and sure never to attempt anything like it again. AND FINALLY It was exactly a year ago today that we said our final farewell to the irreplaceable cat Shadow. No other of our treasured feline companions over the years ever climbed into my arms in quite such a proprietorial way. His death has left a void that none of the dear creatures currently with us can ever quite fill, though they do try.

Sorry about the sadness. More media stuff next time. That's always good for a laugh.

POST 367. STILL READING.

KINDLE BOOKS.

THUS NO ADDITION to my bookshelf of thrillers (pictured).

Literary critics (for want of a better description), publishers, and librarians (a dying race), have chosen over the years to pigeonhole authors into convenient categories, rather like the talent-blind blockheads in Hollywood past who lazily typecast many consummate actors with the assurance: 'This is how the public likes to see you,' which was a creeping alternative to the outspoken: 'You stick to what you're good at: it sells.”

So what brought this on?

The two books I have just read on kindle are The Enemy, a Jack Reacher story by Lee Child and In a House of Lies. a John Rebus yarn by Ian Rankin. The crime story label attached to both writers obscures literary talent far beyond that of the whodunnit-cum-whydusanybodyreadit mishmash churned out by purveyors of crime when I was a boy. Both writers depict a world far removed from“There's a body in the library,” or “Leave it to: A.S.P./The Baron/Bulldog Drummond/The Saint/The Toff/1066” etc.etc. There is a chapter In The Enemy where Reacher and his brother go, with some trepidation as to her health, to see their mother in Paris: Lee Child's description of the meeting left me unusually misty eyed. Tight, sensitive prose. Similarly, In a House of Lies shows Rebus (who doesn't see Ken Stott?) as battling, with characteristic stoicism, the indignities of age and of no longer being a recognised police presence. Ian Rankin's tough but empathetic stance on an ageing guy's fight with slower reflexes and enforced retirement is fine novel writing.

TIED TO THE TELEVISION.

LIKE IT OR NOT. And mostly I don't. Be it bombastic presenters or their banal programme producers I have become fed up with television people as a race. Never did cotton to them much.

In the nineteen seventies a tribe of them frequented one of our local pubs. My wife worked there at the time (no way we were ever going to bring up three kids on my NHS E.O.'s salary alone), and those lads regularly crowded the bar, shouting to each other about their programmes and earnings, and roundly dissing absent competitors. “Oh, he can't be picking up any more than 60k a year,” was a typically dismissive jeer that lingers in the mind. My thought then was: So now we all know you're picking up more than that, don't we, you loudmouthed little prick.

Truth to tell, I was not envious. I was bewildered. The majority of them were such conceited dickheads.

Sadly, I don't think that has changed much.

There's a handful of television personalities for whom I have the utmost respect. The rest are of the sort who clearly do not come alive until the camera is on them. They dismiss any competitor's viewing figures less than theirs as: “Only friends and family then.” And they mistakenly see themselves as the most beautiful, handsome, watchable creatures on earth. Of course they aren't. In this house the dog Buddy and the cats Angel and Spike are the most beautiful, handsome, watchable creatures on earth. Most tele presenters are tedious twits who make the gogglebox a lockdown drag. Just thank the gods if you are one of the fortunates able to see Netflix, YouTube and the like, on your viewing machine. You can at least be discriminating about what, or who, you watch.

He is.

POST 366. PARDON ME IF I YAWN.

WHEN I SHOULD BE ALERT.

THE GOVERNMENT'S PANDEMIC PROPAGANDA becomes ever more puerile and prone to pall. The latest voices to wheedle us on air are those of a proclaimed bus driver (maybe an actor) and a proclaimed care home worker (maybe an actress) who implore us not to ignore the wearing of face masks, or social distancing, or some other such act of mutual concern and decency. It makes sense, but don't ask me to explain precisely what it is all about. Like most pandemic propaganda it is voiced in pre-school language and we didn't have pre-school in 1934.

What we did have from 1939 to 1945 and beyond was the ability to laugh at propaganda, the acceptance that we would be unable to go on holiday, and the realization that we could not go sunning ourselves at the seaside. Seafronts at that time were lined with barbed wire and beaches were festooned with mines. Only Bomb Disposal men trod the shoreline. We also learned that selfish people existed in plentiful numbers, that they lived in cloud-cuckoo-land, and that all the appeals in the world would not change their self-serving NIMBY minds about anything they would rather not acknowledge. Common sense was lost on them. They were the sort who would throw a bucket of water over a flaming incendiary bomb. (Look it up.)

Trouble is: they still exist.

Now they are ambling in and out of each other's houses, ignoring social distancing, crowding parks and beaches the moment the sun shines, and declaring with utter conviction: “ It's all over! It's perfectly safe! Why are you still worried?”There is no point in saying to them : “Look at Leicester. Look at Oldham. Look at Barnsley. Look at Manchester.” Common sense? Huh! 

Drop the juvenile propaganda. We don't need it and they don't hear it.

THE HOME CINEMA FLOURISHES.

WE HAVE JUST SEEN The Highwaymen. (Netflix) Originally mooted by Universal as a project for Paul Newman and Robert Redford, the rights were bought by Netflix in 2018. The story was set in the nineteen thirties era of notorious Bonnie and Clyde. 

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were at their lethal peak and had to be brought down. For two years they had impudently outwitted the law. Now they had two reputable names from the disbanded Texas Rangers (played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, both of whom were excellent) on their trail. It ended (just as history tells) with the wipeout to end all wipeouts of that murderous, but uniquely popular, young couple.

Not usually my cup of tea: but I enjoyed every well-acted moment of it. 

FINALLY OUR GARDEN WHICH WAS

IS NOW

WELL DONE OUR ROZ! 

A great end to the month.

POST 365. JUST FOUND ALEXANDER MALOFEEV.

A PIANOFORTE MAESTRO.

ONLY EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE. It would not have happened but, in the way of fortunate happenings, I skimmed along a haphazard video selection seeking a suitable follow-up to Brahms' Intermezzo in A Major (which you'll know, musician or not, if you've ever watched the Jessie Stone series on television) and there was this fair-haired Russian lad (pictured) performing Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 with all the passion and command of a seasoned veteran. A further search and I found him playing Mozart's 20th Piano Concerto, Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No 2, the Rachmaninov Piano No. 3 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. If you are not a lover of classical music none of that will mean a thing to you, but if you're a Classic Fm listener, a Proms supporter or simply, like me, a devotee of concert piano, this young man is a twenty first century pianoforte genius whose presence will, post pandemic, fill concert halls for years to come.

со всеми добрыми пожеланиями, maestro. I hope those who arrange the BBC Proms will have you in their sights for 2021 or 22. If, by that time, they can possibly afford you.

IN THE MEANTIME.

THANK GOODNESS FOR YouTube on television. Its boundaries are truly widespread. In the past fortnight I have listened to star soprano Grace Moore, who died in a plane crash in 1947, performing a duet with fine lyric tenor Joseph Schmidt, who died in 1942 at the age of 38. (Diminutive Herr Schmidt can also be found soaring to the top note of Nessun Dorma.) I have seen famous tenor Richard Tauber (who, bless him, never did quite hit the top note of Nessun Dorma) singing songs by Franz Lehar, with the composer accompanying him on the piano, and I have been transported all the way back to my WW2 Workers' Playtime days to watch Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth (soprano/tenor/married) gather lilacs on behalf of Ivor Novello. Add to that the opportunity to take in recorded appearances by just about any 'turn' I have ever enjoyed over the years and my admiration for those shrewd cookies at Google who bought YouTube goes up by the day. It is slightly tempered, though, by our daughter Jac's news that she still encounters difficulty sending comment to any of my blog posts. Well, Google's a huge employer and I don't know a soul who works there. I just hope things will right themselves. Or that this will catch someone's eye:

  Cheers.

POST 364. LOST TELEVISION RECEPTION.

FOR FOUR NIGHTS.

FOR A SCORE OF PAVING STONES. Well it was a tall van and the television disc is sited on the driveway side of the property. The little guy whose momentary lapse of caution left the disc slightly less receptive than an old cat's whisker radio detector, afterwards wheeled the stones to the car park behind the house. Roz, who had ordered them, later transferred them one at a time to her newly seeded lawn area beyond the car park, and there they are in the picture. Look good, don't they? In time that path may lead to a gazebo: which will cost a bit. So maybe next year.

Meantime, she prays for rain for her grass and an absence of it for her long walks in almost empty countryside with Buddy. Fingers crossed.

AND WHY FOUR NIGHTS? Simple. Reception was lost on a Friday morning, none of us could resite the disc, and the nice guy at Sky (after an unsuccessful try at talking us through the problem} said we would need a Sky engineer; and the first one of them available to us would be next Tuesday. So that was that.

WE WATCHED old recordings and Netflix and YouTube. We now know more about many long departed actors than we know about ourselves. It was at first interesting and at length pointless. Incredibly, I missed BBC news. The Sky engineer was customarily efficient when he got here and I am now back to cursing the giftless somnambulists who produce 'reality' television. Ah well.

THIS IS STARK REALITY. After weeks of encouraging us to get out on our doorsteps and clap NHS staff and other carers (many of them on appallingly poor pay) who have risked, and in far too many cases lost, their lives to Covid 19 for us, the government of England has now decided that, when the pandemic is over, charges for hospital car parking will be reintroduced and managed by the same profiteering shits who have for years been screwing parking fees from those visiting the sick and, worse still, from the hospital staff who work there and tend them. So it will be back to square one.

Just a couple of questions:

(1) Is that the way you and your obsequious underlings repay those who saved your prevaricating, back-stabbing life, Johnson?

(2) Where, you vainglorious buffoon, did the gratitude go?

STILL AT HOME.

A pleasant young guy from our sole remaining hospital came here this morning to take blood from me. A non-fasting test. He wore a mask and told me I didn't need one, which was reassuring.

Whole procedure took no more than twenty minutes. The personal touch has to do with my age and possible vulnerability to the dreaded virus. My GP, a charming lady from somewhere across the seas who I have never met face to face, was not inclined to push a four month lockdown patient straight back into the virus front line.

The latest news on that score (just as the country is being urged back to work) is that recovery from coronavirus may not preclude you from catching it again.

So don't be careless, don't be complacent, and don't be irresponsible. Though why I write that I don't know. If you are reading this you will not be any of those things.

Mind how you go on the pavement: and keep an eye out for any silly sod riding a one-wheeled electric monstrosity – especially if his name is Jeremy.

Enough is enough.

Post 363. GARDENER OR BAKER.

IF YOU AIN'T ONE YOU'RE THE OTHER.

SOMETIMES BOTH. As daughter Roz  has recently proven. A little of her venture into garden restructuring at our humble hovel can be seen above. That border was previously a tangle of tree roots and weeds edging the car park behind the house. Beyond it was a jungle of neglect and neighbouring misuse. Not now. With such outside help as kind family members could give, she set about righting it. 

 New fencing. Ground levelling. Total clearing up job. Voila! 

SHE HAS ALSO boldly embarked on that other staple of the British lockdown prisoner, bread baking. Her first loaf graced our kitchen this week and was an instant success. It was a 'Paul Hollywood's loaf for beginners' recipe which can be found on the net, and the result was well worth a congratulatory handshake. Her great grandfather would have been delighted with her. Granddad's name was Bill Pope and he was probably the only foreman baker in Portsmouth still baking bread after two WW2 blitzes by the Germans in one night wiped out the city's electricity. He knew how to fire up the wood ovens to produce loaves the old-fashioned way and that was what he did.

He would have carefully cut a slice off Roz's loaf, eyed it up, given it an appreciative sniff, and uttered the magic words: “Beautiful texture.” Those two words were his ultimate seal of approval. He would have adored her and she him. Oh, the loaf in the picture, though hers looked very like it, is not the one made by Roz: hers was half devoured before anybody could photograph it. The one above does look good though, doesn't it. Well done Mr. Hollywood. And well done Rosalind Barnden.

 NOT SO WELL DONE.

THE GREAT BRITISH PUBLIC, particularly those of it who, because they could, lethally packed British beaches come the first unfettered glimpse of sunshine.  Despite closed shops, padlocked public toilets, and a plethora of parking tickets, the silly born bastards drove in their droves to the seaside to ignorantly risk furthering the COVID-19 pandemic. Don't ask. I long ago stopped wondering why human beings can be so bloody daft.

Keep far enough apart, dear reader.

Though maybe not that far.

 

Post 362. SOMETHING ORIGINAL?

YOU'RE UNLIKELY TO FIND IT ON TELEVISION.

ORIGINALITY is the programme producer's bête noire. If the coronavirus lockdown in our country has illustrated one negative facet of national television above any other it surely has to be the dogged determination with which the production powers-that-be adhere to the status quo: or amend it to its detriment. Much of today's programming is presented as if the target audience is a class of pre-school children. I watch it briefly, then reach for the 'let's find something other than this rubbish' remote. You have to have some pride. Among my pet hates I would particularly mention the new format of:  

BARGAIN HUNT. Who was it decided that this popular old programme would be improved if you set the contestants a programme presenter's challenge of buying at least one item priced over £70 and/or an item made in a place like Outer Mongolia? Could nobody convince whoever the moron was that you don't spend over £70 for something in a junk shop and make a profit on it in an auction house where the customers (most of whom have only come in to get out of the rain) have absolutely no intention of bidding any more than a tenner for anything no matter where it came from? Did nobody think to mention that the only bargain hunters who ever made a profit at auction were those who spent threepence ha'penny for something that fetched thirty bob or who risked thirty bob on something that magically made them thirty quid (less auction percentage and VAT)? 

For chrissake get back to the timeworn formula. It worked.

POINTS OF VIEW. Let us see the current presenter Tina Daheley on screen. We saw more than enough of Mr. Ubiquitous (Jeremy Vine) for ten years. On each of the last two series I have sent an email complaining about this sexist oversight. Neither approach was heeded. Well, neither complaint started “why oh why oh why...” 

 Do come on though, BBC. Before y'know what you'll be making me pay the licence fee.

AND THERE ARE MORE. But life really is far too short to go over the list of antique twaddle, cooking crap, reality rubbish etc. etc. yet again. As it is:

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING Prime Video series Hanna (too many episodes: half a dozen would be quite enough) and are increasingly drawn to Netflix and YouTube where many of the repeats are so old even I have forgotten how good or bad they originally were. Recently saw Alan Ladd and his son, David, in The Proud Rebel, a film with Olivia deHavilland which I don't think I ever did see before. It was sensitively directed by Michael Curtiz. Was reminded how unkind technicolour was to actors. The acting was good though: David Ladd won a Golden Globe award as “Best Newcomer of 1958” and a special award for “Best Juvenile Actor.” Hard to believe he's 73 now. Ms. de Havilland, bless her, is 103.

Coming back to the twenty first century, we have been chilling out with Jason Statham's blood and thunder offerings on Netflix. Apparently he doesn't like that many of them and very bluntly says so. Well, there are far worse action movies being produced without apology by his competitors. Actors should only utter unscripted lines to those of their nearest and dearest they know they can trust. Not all publicity is good publicity. Even the UK government must have realised that. Hancock's half hour as coronavirus patsy for the PM came to a complete end yesterday evening. The PM took the stand in person. There's a surprise.

AND TO CONCLUDE. The monster garden here at our island home is slowly being licked into shape by one of our nearest and dearest, daughter Roz. She has also spared me the expense of buying a violin by cutting my hair: it had reached a lockdown length of hippy proportions. Now I could take a squad on a drill square again and face not a single questioning eyebrow. That's what I call a haircut.

All for now.

Mix from a sensible distance: don't mingle.

Post 361. EVERYBODY HAS A GRIEVANCE.

HENCE THE THREAT TO PIGEONS' LAVATORIES.

IN A WORLD OF RETRIBUTION SEEKERS.

NOW IT'S STATUES. Throughout my boyhood, and certainly until we moved over here, there was a statue of Queen Victoria in the Guildhall Square, Portsmouth. I never gave it much thought. I'm not a royalist, but I'd rather have them in our palaces than a load of bloody politicians: then again, I'd rather have affordable homes for young people than a load of bloody palaces. I'm no great supporter of privilege: but I can't stop it. 

Anyway, I believe the Queen Vic statue is still there, though I gather it is currently under threat from today's militia of aggrieved zealots who, seeking abject apology for our past misdeeds, are threatening to remove all reminders of sins such as slavery from the world they feel it should now be. Some task.

Not to be left out of any possibility of a ruckus, hordes of moronic football hooligans, bored without opposition supporters to kick into A & E, are determined to “protect our heritage” from those would-be erasers of the more unlaudable events in our history. Oh dear oh dear.

When I was working for the - long defunct - Portsmouth Executive Council (NHS) back in the sixties a senior colleague, shooing the pigeons off his office windowsill for the umpteenth time, remarked to me: “Look at 'em, the useless articles. Good for nothing but fornicating, and defecating.”

I grinned and said: “Old Queen Victoria probably sent them here.” The royal statue was just a few hundred yards away. ”Maybe they'll go cooing back there now and crap on her.”

He liked the sound of that. “Good,” he said. “Serve her bloody right.”

And that was that.

The respected art historian Sir Simon Schama (he of the most gloriously unkempt bookcase in the UK) thinks statues should be relocated to museums. An interesting viewpoint. It would cost a lot of money, but it could save a lot of angst. When you think about it, though, there would not be that much sense in such an evacuation. Most statues are just lavatories for pigeons. The majority of us spend our lives strolling past them without a second glance: they are ignored stone effigies of royals and so-called national heroes left there for the pigeons to shit on. Public toilets have been closed to humans for several months now; don't let's begrudge our feathered friends their simple relief. Leave their loos alone. The retribution seekers will eventually find something else for which to seek retribution. If there's a second pandemic it'll probably be that.

I STILL DO NOT SUBSCRIBE to Twitter, and seldom open my Facebook account. Am extremely wary of social discourse.

J.K. Rowling's recent experience of social media backlash (if you're one of her fans, or a determined detractor, you'll know more about it than I do) has done nothing to allay my cautious outlook on expressing honest opinion nowadays.

This much I do know: if I had been a child actor blessed with wealth and fame by the magical talent of a world famous author and, when I grew up, that author had somehow said or written something with which I had misgivings, I would have waited until I next met her to make my doubts known and seek further enlightenment. 

Publicly I would have kept my big trap shut.

All for now.

Keep your distance, it ain't over yet!