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.