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.