Post 451. NO TIME FOR ADVERTS.

EVEN AS AN OVALTINEY

I IGNORED THE HYPE
Still do. My mother enlisted me into the Ovaltineys in the mid nineteen thirties just after they started on Radio Luxembourg. I cannot recall welcoming the experience. Even as a small boy I did not hanker to be part of a team or have more than one or two friends at a time. 'We are the Ovaltineys little girls and boys'  sounded like gang intimidation to me: I think my membership lasted little longer than it took them to sing their welcoming words. I didn't join the Boy Scouts, either. God alone knows why, aged 14, I went into the Royal (Corps of) Signals. It certainly wasn't by dint of any advert other than the glowing testimony of an older cousin who had joined Boys' Training Company two years before and loved it. In the end it did me no great harm to escape my mother's apron strings and get the soft edges roughened up a bit. But I never accepted shouting at people and OTT bullshit as an imperative to discipline, so I spent twelve years repressing the desire to openly opine: 'the bigger the mouth the smaller the brain,' and got out of uniform.
There followed all those years at the NHS: no shortage of pointless big mouths there, either.
So I still ignore hype from whatever source. Have no time for adverts (watch commercial television only after I have recorded it so I can run the adverts on), think PR is BS, and would cheerfully join the lynch party that disposed of whoever orders the annual buggering about with our clocks. Yeah, back again last thing Saturday night. No time for it!

THE ALAN RICKMAN DIARIES.
Have reached 2005 and the Harry Potter films are well underway. Alan Rickman writes glowingly of  HP3 - The Prisoner of Azkaban - directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and bluntly about the pressure put on the directors of all the Potter films by the corporate calculating machine that is Warner Brothers Pictures. I was pleased AR thought well of The Prisoner though. It was my favourite.

NO MORE THIS MONTH.
What?

I'm an hour adrift!     

Post 450. WHEN SOMEONE SAYS ARTISAN

THEY MEAN PRICEY

SAYS MY WORLDLY WIFE.
That's Mo (pictured wearing the artisan head paws) being thoroughly down-to-earth again.
We were watching Alan Titchmarsh's Love Your Weekend (ITV) on Sunday morning. It's the  usual chat showy mixture of forgettable information and celebrity guests advertising their latest book, play, film, TV series, something-to-sell etc., but ol' Titchy does it well and we don't feel the need to dress up like we would if we went to church. I think our presenter was introducing one of his forgettable information experts when he described her particular goods as artisan.
Mo shook her head: "I think he means pricey," she said.

Two minds with a single thought. No wonder we're still together.
THE ALAN RICKMAN DIARIES.

Now into 1995 I am becoming acutely aware that, no matter how universal the fame, an actor's life is routinely more worrying than glamorous. And this intelligent actor was far too principled to waste much time sitting on the fence.

LASTLY: LAST SATURDAY..

It was our lovely Hans' twenty second birthday last Saturday. Here she is with Ben, who we have yet to meet: I think she may wisely be shielding him from us.

Many Many Happy Returns, Little Buddy xx.

That's it again.     

     

Post 449. BACK AT THE COMPUTER.

 THIS IS WHAT YOU GIVE

A MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING.
For a man who has everything's birthday this year it was Stephen Hough's Dream Album CD and Madly Deeply the Alan Rickman Diaries: it was also, right out of the blue and our mad son's imagination, a fascinating Apollo Flexible Wooden Arm Sofa Tray that I never realized I needed. What? Oh, I still don't, but it makes me smile. For years I have been telling the family I am a man who has everything and neither needs nor expects birthday presents. It's nice they then spoil me with gifts I shall treasure. Mo will always remember from whom I received them, too. My memory doesn't stretch that far. Even old photographs can have me baffled. Who was that?
So how good is the Stephen Hough CD? Very good if you like beautifully played piano music. 
My late father, a decent pianist in the mould of Charlie Kunz, always said it was all down to 'light and shade' and I hope Stephen Hough would not be offended when I say I detected that touch in several of the tracks on this album (e.g. Songs My Mother Taught Me and Blow The Wind Southerly) and was transported right back to the days when I would say: "Go on, play Man In A Coffin, Dad." And he would smile and gently drift into Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor.
My respect for the acting prowess of the late Alan Rickman was first recorded in this blog way back in 2006 (Post 5) when I wrote: How can anyone help but admire a man who, in 1988, had Bruce Willis running barefoot through broken glass and in 1991 cancelled Christmas. What a worthwhile chap. If he'd never done anything else I'd still like him.

He did so much else in his acting career, both nuanced and bold, and I never stopped liking him.

So, following the news that his diaries were to be published in October, I cheekily hinted that I would rather like them as a belated birthday present this year. I got them.

I have just reached the end of 1993. Forget the fame and glamour, Christ didn't he work!
Would like to have met him, but doubt I would have found the courage to speak to him.

He was a star.

And that's it for now.    

Post 448. AN INCARCERATED CELL PHONE

LOCKED IN THE LIVING ROOM.

MY MOBILE STAYS IMMOBILE.
Like me it is very old and, like me most of the time, not switched on. As those good folk who sometimes check up on my meanderings will know, I annually resolve to open it up every day and regularly forget to do so. As those good folk etc. will also know, I don't much like telephones: spent too many NHS desk jockey years putting up with unwanted calls from irate health professionals to now regard a phone as anything other than a device with which to impart/import information. So, in the typical way of most blokes, I neither shop nor phone for fun.
THE JOY OF NOT BEING FAMOUS.
If you treasure your personal privacy, being famous must often be a thoroughgoing nuisance.
It is said that total strangers may regard you as their friend and some even feel they own you. Since I have never been and will never be famous, you may wonder why I now broach the matter. But the reason is a simple one: I am drawn to it by the recent step-backs from their workday world of such famous figures as concert pianist Philip Fowke, broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and, only today, the musical icon Daniel Barenboim. For such famous people, the realization that age and/or illness will determine an end to their customary high standard of performance, and thus mean their departure from it, must be pretty damned depressing. No matter how accustomed to public appearance they may be, making an announcement about it must be a daunting prospect. 

When I retired only the next guy down the ladder cared, He got my office. 

That's the joy of not being famous.

TO CONCLUDE.

IT IS TEACHERS' DAY 2022.
According to Google and I doubt they will be wrong.

Pity they were not able to add that teachers' pay will now go up worldwide. It won't, will it
But thanks for the info, Google.

Cheers one and all. Especially teachers.