Post 396. MOSTLY TOO MUCH TELEVISION.

BUT IN A MORE DISCERNING WAY.

GOGGLEBOX (Channel 4).
I have again concluded that I could never have been a participant on Gogglebox. 
That said, I do like many of those we see watching it, no matter how inexplicable I may find their positive responses to the abundance of trash they are required to watch. Whatever their recompense, most of them are value for it. My invective-laden outlook would immediately rule me out.
Never mind Aristotle's 'Give me the child until he is 7 and I will show you the man,' this man's 7 year old recollections include Noddy and Big Ears, Mr. Plod the Policeman, the Ovaltineys (and their bloody awful theme tune), Gracie Fields singing Little Old Lady and Flanagan & Allen singing Underneath the Arches. There was also an Australian crooner called Brian Lawrance who my mother quite liked and my father insisted was 'a sissy' (quite why I do not know as, to the best of my knowledge, he never ever met the man): but my father could sometimes be very English.
In our house there were little tin seats at either end of a fender box where small children could sit and be taught how to toast crumpets over an open fire. There was a deal of boring adults-only conversation about family and work and the politics of the day, and there was the mantra 'children should be seen and not heard,' and there was all the palaver about King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.
Of more importance to our family in 1936, my father gained second prize in an All England Amateur Bass Singer competition held at one of those Palaces in London (Crystal or Alexandra): I believe he sang a piece from Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (probably Onaway Awake Beloved) and was told by the judge that he forfeited first prize because he held his rolled up sheet of music in his hand and Hiawatha wouldn't have done that.
My father, afterwards, was his usual phlegmatic self.
“I doubt Hiawatha would have worn a monkey jacket and a bow tie, either,” he said. “But they'll have needed a reason not to split the first prize.”
I know I keep saying it was a different world, but it really was.
The small boy who was taken to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 (totally unaware that the dwarfs should have been called 'persons of limited size') was a long, long way away from the old man who has recently watched and enjoyed Ian Rankin talking about Muriel Spark (Sky), Katie Derham (the most elegantly feminine wearer of trainers in the entire world) discussing The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra with Moritz Gnann and the BBC Orchestra of Wales (BBC FOUR), and finally, because nothing can follow it, absolutely any subject presented by delightful Dame Mary Beard (pictured – with apologies for the impudence) on whatever channel she may have appeared.

And I think she would agree with my
THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH:
Only an ignorant yob boos another country's national anthem.

Post 395. NEVER GIVE UP.

WHATEVER ELSE.

TODAY IS FATHER'S DAY.
Or, as my realistically-minded children might describe it: another commercially contrived celebration day invented by the Americans.
Jac and Mike arrived yesterday with a dad's day dinner: 'lamb shanks with roasted vegetables and all the trimmings.' A lovely gift.
And I am writing with Jac's further present, the Freddie De Tommaso CD Passione, playing in the background. Nice disc, but his producers should have excluded Cara Mia from the line-up: if you are not going to finish on the David Whitfield top note, don't do it.
A week or so ago Neil gave me a self-winding (for an active tennis player which, of course, I am not) watch. It stopped in a few days and, despite his careful instructions when he gave it to me, neither Mo nor I can restart it. It has a great name, though, and looks nice. He'll start it again when next he is here. Meantime, I smile every time I look at it: it is the ideal unfather's day bonus and will be cherished right up until I kick the bucket.
THAT'S ABOUT ALL FOR NOW.

Ellis stayed overnight at his father's home to be there for today: he'll be back here later on. Glad to say he continues to confidently walk the bass guitar road, to the approval of the music master of his former school.
Jess's little house is starting to look great, We have seen it, and her recently acquired kitten, now. The kitten was given the name Atlas before it was discovered to be a girl.
In this family some oversights just keep repeating: remember the girl named Spike and the boy called Angel? They've never seemed to be bothered.
Anyway, this is Atlas.

Cute or what?

Post 394. STILL AVOIDING.

AWARDS CEREMONIES AND...

MOST COMPETITIVE CRAP,
Any doubts that I was becoming my old self again were quickly dispelled once the 2021 awards season began. I do not care who, or what, wins or has won anything this, last, or any other year. I cannot be having with jubilant games winners who hang all over each other in flagrant disregard of pandemic rules, and I long ago tired of award- winning actors winsomely playing the mock modesty role.
To my jaundiced eye, none of it has been helped this year by the racism lobby. Y'know I really don't give a toss what colour, creed, race, or gender an arts/sports person is. I try to maintain good manners to all and deplore discourtesy under whatever guise it may appear. As a consequence I am disconcerted by the intensity of current racial disharmony. I would no more boo a footballer for taking the knee than I would have booed Smith for 'mooning' at the borstal governors in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. The England footballers who were booed recently had a point to make (and so did Smith). I respect that: Pity the feeble-minds who don't.
I also think freedom of speech should not apply only to those with whom you agree: if you dislike what a speaker has to say, don't refuse them the right to say it: just ignore them.
Same goes for picture hanging. Whether Magdalen College, Oxford, takes down or hangs up a picture of the Queen, or any other monarch, is none of my bloody business.
It's no good calling me woke. Woke is 'the past tense of wake' to me.
And don't try labelling me with the 'privileged white Englishman' tag. I was born white, English, working class, and innately bolshie. Went to half a dozen elementary schools between 1935 and 1945, then into the army for close on twelve years, then clerking in the NHS (1957 - 89). Never seemed privileged. Always had somebody to answer to. Was not blessed with the mindset to focus beyond the confines of my own world.
Still find it difficult.
Never mind. All the old farts like me, and that dwindling number who saw action in WW2, will soon be gone.
England will become a fully multiracial nation. Scotland will, too, but all of them will wear the kilt. In Wales they will all sing. Every Welshman can sing: even those who can't (it was the same in Liverpool after The Beatles.became famous).
Ireland and Northern Ireland will probably become the fifty first state of the USA and feel they have more to sing about than any of the Brexiteers ever will.
What?
I know.
How Can You Buy Killarney?

Toodle pip.