Post 419. LOCKDOWN IS OVER

SO WE HAD A PUB LUNCH

IN A PACKED PUB.
Not the one above, which  I believe is in London, but at our popular carvery, the Sloop Inn, Wootton Bridge, of which I have been unable to reproduce a picture. It was our first such outing in over a year. Suffice to say the meal was excellent, the staff friendly, helpful and competent, and the atmosphere so relaxed that one could be forgiven for thinking every trace of Covid had long departed the planet. It hasn't, so I have to admit a slight unease as to how many in that vast gathering may have been carrying the virus: but, sod it, you only live once. And our late daughter, Roz, so loved that pub.

Then back to
TELEVISION.
RUSSIA/UKRAINE. Those desperately brave Ukrainians are fighting on, and tens of thousands of their women and children now seek refuge all over the world. I can't imagine how even our self-serving shower in power can ignore them.

THE COURIER. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Greville Wynne, a British businessman lured, at first  unwillingly, into the daft spy business by MI6 and an American CIA woman. Proof were it needed that espionage is just a lethal game played by social misfits.
OLD HENRY. In this western Old Henry (Tim Blake Nelson) gives shelter to a wounded stranger who he finds on his land. Henry is a farmer, a widower, and father of restless teenaged son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis). Three killers, purporting to be lawmen, then arrive seeking the wounded man and the cash he had with him. Dealing with a downbeat dirt farmer will be an easy task. Or will it? Whether or not you believe the explanation for Old Henry's ultimate transformation, this film directed by Potsi Ponciroli is way ahead of your old-fashioned cowboy fare.

All for now.  

Post 418. THIS WILL BE BRIEF.

WE DO NOT NEED ANOTHER WAR.

SO STOP PLAYING SILLY BUGGERS: whoever you are..
It is not yet WW3 and it is not a repeat of the Falklands, so we do not need Boris Johnson trying out his  Winston Thatcher impersonation over this Ukraine business. The three self-satisfied faces in the above end of WW2 picture were clearly convinced that losing millions of lives through conflict was the price countries paid for lasting peace. At the time the picture was taken I believed it, too. But look where we are now.

One war after another since they so smugly sat for their victory celebration.

And at this moment that prize prick Putin is invading Ukraine on the pretext that he is guarding threatened Russians in the country.
Hitler came to a sticky end. So will he.
But it is not our war and to the best of my knowledge there is no archduke or obscure treaty that we can use as an excuse for becoming involved in it. By all means lend oblique support and make noises off, but don't take to the stage unless the power-crazed idiot decides he must step in to guard Russian billionaires in Britain.
Then kick the shit out of him.
That's all for now.  

Post 417. ANOTHER OF THOSE DAYS.

WHEN ALL WAS GOING WELL

THEN I LOST MY BLOG POST.
Yep, Saturday was another of those days when I lost it: a nigh on complete (not badly written if I do say so myself) blog post. It was there until Google inexplicably took me onto a new, blank, page and I found myself unable to retrieve anything that had gone before.
Christ I could do with the help of a teenage IT wizard sometimes!

So here I am today to celebrate St. Valentine's Day, the Exact Middle-of-the-Month Day, and a Den's Feeling Bloody-Minded Day. And I shall reiterate my list of moans rather than just carp on about Google.

I started with the premise that nobody in Britain is worth £125,000 a week for kicking a bloody football about, let alone a cat, and certainly not when there are paramedic staff earning no more than £16,000 a year. I went on to report - in retrospect probably unnecessarily - that I seldom watch The Vine Show on Channel 5 anymore: still look in if Yasmin Alibhai Brown or Owen Jones is a guest, but eschew any former UKIP little Englander or former hack now purporting to be 'a broadcaster,' particularly if he incessantly boasts about his 'penthouse flat in the stockbroker belt' yet seems devoid of the funds to buy a razor. I also wondered how many transmitters broadcasting to a couple of dozen streets from a garage in London there can possibly be.

On the positive side,I played Roy Orbison on the Steepletone and, in response to a recent disclosure by Yasmin A-B that she has undergone 'tests' in hospital, expressed the hope of Mo and I that it would turn out to be nothing too serious.We've never met her, but we like her. She says it the way it is. So do we.
I shall finish now with the item I was starting upon when I was so abruptly Googled.
An open email to radio presenter Alexander Armstrong (Classic FM).
Hi AA,
Would be most grateful if you could play The Scherzo from Litolff's Concerto Symphonique No.4. for me. It was the tuning up piece of an instrumentalist (reputed to be a concert pianist doing his national service) in the band of the Royal Signals circa 1948 and, as the band hut was but a very short distance from the hut where I was supposed to be training as a radio mechanic, probably explains why I eventually became a wireless operator.
E&M was no match for the maestro. Never did learn his name, either.
Love from us on the Isle of Wight.
PS. Could you also send me one of your nice fellows in a peaked hat, yellow uniform, and shiny boots and gaiters, please? Just to look the car over. I never see any of them on the road now and I used to so enjoy being saluted. Cheers

What? That's not you?