FILMS
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Most of the usual cast are back for the sixth - and darkest to date - episode of this popular film series.
Five of us went to see it: four enjoyed it, the other one went to sleep.
Well...it ain't a film for a four year old.
My enjoyment was slightly tempered by some glaring departures from the J.K. Rowling original.
Slimy accountants apart, why did film director David Yates choose to make substantial alterations to a bestselling author's work?
I would put it down to him being an arrogant bugger, but I believe he speaks highly of me.
A couple of weeks ago the often irksome Jonathan Ross interviewed Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and behaved himself sufficiently not to ask too many lewd questions about her private life.
She has changed little over the Potter years, is still brightly intelligent, blessed with innate common sense - the two don't always go together - and seems destined for a succesful life long after the curtain has fallen on the final Potter film.
Meantime, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being imaginatively split into Part 1 and Part 2, we should be seeing her on screen until at least 2011: later than that if Warner Brothers play the same daft release game they played with The Half-Blood Prince.
Collateral.
I like Tom Cruise (no matter what weird religion he may espouse) and this 2004 film proved again what a fine actor he is. Good guy or villain he delivers the works.
Here he is the villain; Vincent, a contract killer. The hero is cab driver Max, perfectly played by James Foxx, who is forced to take part in the killer's plan to make several hits around L.A. in one night.
The result is a thriller on a par with The Long Kiss Goodnight.
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
TELEVISION.
New Tricks.
The same reliable crew (Redman, Armstrong, Bolam and Waterman) are halfway through series six and show no sign of flagging. So far we have had stories about a murderous monk, a duplicitous American airforce chief and a cunning control-freak husband.
All have been totally watchable .
Shows what can be done with regular airing, reasonable story lines and fine actors.
Wimbledon.
I found the cat Shadow asleep and when I woke him he was devoid of poem.
"That's not like you," I said. "Once the heavy servers and the ball boys...girls...children...whatever...have done their stuff you're usually full of rhyme."
"Well it was Federer again, wasn't it," he grumbled. "OK, so there was the big serving much improved Andy Roddick and a final that went on forever, but in the end Federer won and he doesn't rhyme with anything.
"I talked it over with the boys on the roof: none of us could find a rhyme for Federer or Roddick."
"Didn't the Centre Court's new retractable roof come to mind?" I asked.
"Nothing rhymes with roof, either, other than goof, hoof and poof," he said sourly. "Anyway, I lost the muse."
I might have commiserated had he not immediately gone back to sleep.
Golf.
He seemed to be sleeping again when the British Open finished at Turnberry.
Eventually Tom Watson was beaten by Stewart Cink.
(Praise be, not one newspaper carried the headline Cink Sinks Watson.)
Suddenly I became aware that a Shadow eye had opened.
"Ol' Tom didn't manage it then," he said.
"I thought you were asleep," I said.
He stretched: "Na-a-ah, I was just giving me eyes a rest. I heard Peter Alliss and the rest of 'em rabbiting on."
He thought for a few seconds. "How old are you?" he asked.
"Seventy eight, " I replied.
"Just think," he said, "If you'd been a professional golfer the whole bloody world would have been told that a thousand times between the 16th and the 19th of July."
He really had been awake.
Columbo.
When it comes to a thousand times, I'm sure Peter Falk's Columbo repeats must well exceed that number. Today it was Janet Leigh and John Payne in the 1975 episode Forgotten Lady. She played Grace Wheeler Willis, a former star of musicals, much admired by Columbo's wife.
According to Columbo, in their early days together Mrs. Columbo dragged him to see all of Grace's films.
Halfway through, the thought struck me that Mrs. Columbo must hate her husband with a passion.
Everybody she admires he eventually arrests for murder.
No wonder she refuses to be seen with him.
Single-Handed.
A new police kid on the block, this time a Garda one, Sgt. Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) working in western Ireland.
Last night we saw the first of a three parter and it was uncomfortable viewing.
I was reminded of a friend of mine who, some years ago, was offered a police job on one of the Channel Islands: he declined when it turned out that outside the holiday season he would be expected to turn a blind eye to certain (locally regarded as minor) law infringements.
Jack Driscoll finds himself in something of the same predicament. He has taken up the post of senior police officer in the area where he was brought up.
His conscientious approach to the job is hampered by the fact that his father, the popular previous holder of the post, was an 'us and them' copper quite prepared to ignore anything that might embarrass his cronies.
There is a disturbingly insular and faintly incestuous atmosphere about it all.
Damned good television though.
HOME.
A reasonable reason for a late post.
At the beginning of the second week in July I was stricken with the squits; easier to spell than diarrhoea.
I know it sounds like an old bloke's attempt to outdo the advert where a red-haired woman with strange eyes tells her mates she's passing hard lumps - (Could that be why she has strange eyes, d'you think? No matter.) - but this attack put me in bed for a couple of days, took a couple of weeks to clear and was caused by the food poisoning bacteria Campylobacter.
Don't know how I came by it. Could have been from a portion of fish and chips. Never will know now. Didn't care to gather evidence.
One thing is for sure: I have never had it before and I never want it again.
ps. At the risk of an indelicate reply, where is that advert coming from?
Unsolicited e-mails.
Lately my Inbox has been the casual target of people writing in Arabic. At least, I assume it's Arabic. No idea what they want.
They could be trying to sell me a carpet.
They could be attempting to recruit me into al Qaeda.
They could even be proclaiming a fatwa against me.
Normally I just delete such stuff and empty the deleted items folder, but two have appeared again this morning and for the first time I have opened them.
As you may have gathered, they didn't explode.
One was a short message from Святослав Панфилов which I did not keep and the other was from Новикова Лида which I thought I might publish but the attempt went haywire.
(Monitored by that contradiction in terms, an Intelligence Agency?)
Needless to say I have not the slightest idea what any of it is about.
I would rather not be responsible for somebody in the Middle East having their hands, head, or unmentionables chopped off but, what the hell, how many fundamentalists read this?
So if anybody else out there gets unsolicited Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad messages and can translate them into English, even if it's very rude, please let me know what they say.
Oh, if the senders are seeking support for the young woman who could be flogged for wearing trousers, they need look no further. I am on her side.
Religious bigotry is crap and its perpetrators are crap artists.
Whatever their religion.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
129. After Ascot a few more departures.
HOME.
Hmm - Hmm.
The cat Shadow was hovering.
"You're hovering," I remarked. "What is it, food again?"
"Do try to curb the negative attitude," he said. "As a matter of fact it's Royal Ascot." He struck his poetic pose and my heart sank.
"Don't tell me: you have a poem."
"Too right, mate, listen to this..."
And before I could so much as close the stable door he was emoting to a tune reasonably close to the Richard Rodgers classic My Favourite Things:
"Most Favoured Mascot."
Girls in posh dresses and millinery monstrosities,
Blokes in grey toppers and hired suit pomposities.
Look at me, I am a right royal mascot
Perched on the back of a posh coach at Ascot.
Hmm - Hmm
Owners and trainers and horses in blinkers,
Brightly clad jockeys and tipsters and tinkers
Odds on the favourite's not going to win
Best back a horse owned by a Sheik Yadust Bin.
Hmm - Hmm
Race talking Claire Balding has got all the patter,
She can talk the hind leg off a horse that don't matter.
But the prize little waffler, no doubt about that
Is little Willie Carson in a bloody great hat.
When the chosen horse
Does just half the course
When I'm blowing a gasket
I simply imagine I'm perched on a posh coach,
The most favoured royal mascot.
[Repeat all verses]
"That's it," he said. "Repeat all verses."
I smiled: "Maybe later."
"D'you think they'd like it?" he asked after a while. "Rodgers and Hammerstein?"
"If they weren't dead I think it'd kill 'em," I said.
He thought about that for a moment.
"You're having a josh with me," he said.
"Sure," I replied. "But more Gifford than Ackland."
BBC Radio 2.
I still listen every weekday morning to Wake Up To Wogan, [On line, on digital and on 88 to 91 FM.]
I shake my head as he talks over the beginning or the end (sometimes both) of every track he plays to make sure nobody will illegally record it: I mutter when he forgets to credit the performer and when he inexplicably drops his voice at crucial moments: I smile indulgently when he wheezes with laughter at the least funny Janet and John sketch and I growl impatiently as he introduces yet another contribution from the TOG repertory company led by its tiresome retired actor manager.
I love it.
The unscripted banter of the broadcasters, the way Traffic Totty Lynn Bowles talks about "north bahnd and sahth bahnd" traffic and once even announced that there were "hold ups to sahth bahnd traffic at the rahnd abaht."
I like Deadly and Johnny and Charlie and the seldom-heard-never-seen Barrowlands Boyd.
I wouldn't change a minute of it. It's not the same with anyone else, not even Johnny Walker, who I also like.
It's just not a normal morning without ol' Tel.
This week he's away on a holiday break. It will probably last no more than a fortnight and it happens every three or four weeks.
Sure there's more important things than snorkers and broadcasting.
Like what?
Like golf.
And grouting.
TELEVISION (CONTAINS SPOILERS).
Robin Hood.
Robin (Jonas Armstrong) bade a fitting farewell to Nottingham by blowing his enemies and half the town to smithereens.
He then succumbed to the poison on a dagger wielded by Gisborne's sister.
Well. at least there is the nucleus of a cast left for the next series.
One interest in series three has been the casting of Alun Armstrong's son Joe as Alan a Dale (bumped off last week) and of David Troughton's son, Sam, as Much.
(Grandfather Patrick Troughton was in the first television series of Robin Hood.)
Fascinating family likenesses.
CSI: NY.
The end of series five was a master class in actor management.
Faced by the inevitable clamour from actors' agents for their clients' salaries to increase in proportion to the increased popularity of a show, the cunning executive will gather the entire cast together in a bar and quietly ease a black sedan into position outside.
A window will roll down...a machine gun will appear...
Care to guess who will still be around for series six?
Hmm - Hmm.
The cat Shadow was hovering.
"You're hovering," I remarked. "What is it, food again?"
"Do try to curb the negative attitude," he said. "As a matter of fact it's Royal Ascot." He struck his poetic pose and my heart sank.
"Don't tell me: you have a poem."
"Too right, mate, listen to this..."
And before I could so much as close the stable door he was emoting to a tune reasonably close to the Richard Rodgers classic My Favourite Things:
"Most Favoured Mascot."
Girls in posh dresses and millinery monstrosities,
Blokes in grey toppers and hired suit pomposities.
Look at me, I am a right royal mascot
Perched on the back of a posh coach at Ascot.
Hmm - Hmm
Owners and trainers and horses in blinkers,
Brightly clad jockeys and tipsters and tinkers
Odds on the favourite's not going to win
Best back a horse owned by a Sheik Yadust Bin.
Hmm - Hmm
Race talking Claire Balding has got all the patter,
She can talk the hind leg off a horse that don't matter.
But the prize little waffler, no doubt about that
Is little Willie Carson in a bloody great hat.
When the chosen horse
Does just half the course
When I'm blowing a gasket
I simply imagine I'm perched on a posh coach,
The most favoured royal mascot.
[Repeat all verses]
"That's it," he said. "Repeat all verses."
I smiled: "Maybe later."
"D'you think they'd like it?" he asked after a while. "Rodgers and Hammerstein?"
"If they weren't dead I think it'd kill 'em," I said.
He thought about that for a moment.
"You're having a josh with me," he said.
"Sure," I replied. "But more Gifford than Ackland."
BBC Radio 2.
I still listen every weekday morning to Wake Up To Wogan, [On line, on digital and on 88 to 91 FM.]
I shake my head as he talks over the beginning or the end (sometimes both) of every track he plays to make sure nobody will illegally record it: I mutter when he forgets to credit the performer and when he inexplicably drops his voice at crucial moments: I smile indulgently when he wheezes with laughter at the least funny Janet and John sketch and I growl impatiently as he introduces yet another contribution from the TOG repertory company led by its tiresome retired actor manager.
I love it.
The unscripted banter of the broadcasters, the way Traffic Totty Lynn Bowles talks about "north bahnd and sahth bahnd" traffic and once even announced that there were "hold ups to sahth bahnd traffic at the rahnd abaht."
I like Deadly and Johnny and Charlie and the seldom-heard-never-seen Barrowlands Boyd.
I wouldn't change a minute of it. It's not the same with anyone else, not even Johnny Walker, who I also like.
It's just not a normal morning without ol' Tel.
This week he's away on a holiday break. It will probably last no more than a fortnight and it happens every three or four weeks.
Sure there's more important things than snorkers and broadcasting.
Like what?
Like golf.
And grouting.
TELEVISION (CONTAINS SPOILERS).
Robin Hood.
Robin (Jonas Armstrong) bade a fitting farewell to Nottingham by blowing his enemies and half the town to smithereens.
He then succumbed to the poison on a dagger wielded by Gisborne's sister.
Well. at least there is the nucleus of a cast left for the next series.
One interest in series three has been the casting of Alun Armstrong's son Joe as Alan a Dale (bumped off last week) and of David Troughton's son, Sam, as Much.
(Grandfather Patrick Troughton was in the first television series of Robin Hood.)
Fascinating family likenesses.
CSI: NY.
The end of series five was a master class in actor management.
Faced by the inevitable clamour from actors' agents for their clients' salaries to increase in proportion to the increased popularity of a show, the cunning executive will gather the entire cast together in a bar and quietly ease a black sedan into position outside.
A window will roll down...a machine gun will appear...
Care to guess who will still be around for series six?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
128. From I o W to Cardiff - music all ways.
HOME.
Isle of Wight Festival.
Yeah, it's that time again. Granddaughter Jess has gone with one of her friends and the requisite adult accompaniment to be entertained by a host of assorted musical talent at the 8th IW Festival.
Who is appearing?
No, not The Who, that was last year.
Among those I recognise are The Charlatans, Neil Young, Stereophonics, McFly, Razorlight and Will Young.
Then there are groups like The Prodigy and Pixies of whom I know little and, finally, there will be a host of bands with names like The Bitch, The Botch, The Kitsch and The Crotch of whom I know nothing.
They will all be very loud and very good after ten cans of lager.
Yesterday those of us in the area who have not joined the festival audience were able to stand outside our houses and watch The Red Arrows give another fantastic display over the site.
My Leader and I must have seen them half a dozen times in the past few years.
They are sheer magic.
Long may they reign.
READING
The Independent.
Perhaps surprisingly for a retired old bloke I scarcely found time to read much last week.
On Monday I managed a look at Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column.
She was decrying women who flee the political battlefield: at least, I think that's what it was, I could be wrong, a week is a long time in political journalism.
Then, on Friday, Johann Hari warned that we are filling space with trash, much of it orbiting earth at thousands of miles an hour.
That really was dire news.
I always thought all the trash in space was beamed back by satellite to become reality television.
Both of these journalists are fine writers.
I bet they cheer up sometimes, too.
TELEVISION
I'm Running Sainsbury's (C4).
At a time of economic downturn the chief executive of Sainsbury's, Justin King, one of those charming blokes born to sail through interviews, had the brilliant idea - well, lays claim to the brilliant idea - that shop floor workers (now called colleagues would you believe?) should be invited to submit their proposals for the better running of the company.
The idea is not entirely new: every sharp company in the country must have experimented with a staff suggestion box from which it hoped to garner a few good ideas for as little money as possible.
But the Sainsbury's idea had a twist: four of the proposals would be taken up for a trial period in selected stores under the direction of the proposer.
Of the first two, one suffered setbacks and has not worked out - sad, because it was a nice idea - and the other has been given an extended trial in twenty shops.
When I go into a supermarket only two things really concern me:-
(1) why have they shifted every-goddam-thing around again? and:-
(2) how long is the queue at the checkout going to be?
I have loathed and avoided standing in queues ever since the war: still remember ration books and people lining up outside the butcher's shop.
So far as my involvement in the process of shopping is concerned, I do not try the free samples offered by free sample offerers, I do not bother with anything said over the Tannoy and I do expect to lose my wife inside twenty minutes somewhere between wines and spirits and pet food.
For the next half hour she ceases to be my Leader and becomes: "Where the hell is Maureen?"
What?
Well of course it's my fault.
Life (ITV3).
That pleasant English actor Damian Lewis is back for what is apparently the last series of this amiable American cop drama. Sarah Shahi co-stars as his likeable, down-to-earth partner.
It is a well scripted, well acted, easy to follow show; which means - in televison production terms - it is absolutely right for the axe.
I shall be sorry to see it go.
Robin Hood (BBC1).
Talk is that Jonas Armstrong, arguably the best Robin in this load of supreme tosh since Jason Connery, is to be replaced by an Errol Flynn lookalike called Clive Standen who has suddenly appeared in the role of Archer, half-brother of Robin and Gisborne (don't ask).
We are close to the end of series three which started off with the casting department choosing David Harewood (an actor for whom I have the utmost respect) as a black Friar Tuck.
This chap blithely wanders into Nottingham and York unnoticed by the colour-blind townsfolk.
Well, with abject apologies to Yasmin A-B, neither my imagination nor my political correctness stretches quite that far.
Friar Tuck was Eugene Pallette (1938) and James Hayter (1952).
He was a fat old white bloke, not a well-built young black bloke.
Still, looking back I was opposed to the casting of Ben Kingsley as Gandhi and of Alec Guinness as Indian mystic Godbole and Arab leader Prince Feisal, too.
Does that make me a racist?
Do I care?
BBC Cardiff Singer of The World 2009.
A great week and a wonderful final from which the Russian soprano Ekaterina Shcherbachenko emerged a deserved winner.
(Dame Joan Sutherland, frail but indomitable, presented the trophy.)
The popular People's Favourite prize went to tenor Giordano Luca from Italy and the toughest competitor to beat in the competiton, undoubtedly, was an amazing countertenor, Yuriy Mynenko, from the Ukraine.
Well done the BBC and well done Wales!
Isle of Wight Festival.
Yeah, it's that time again. Granddaughter Jess has gone with one of her friends and the requisite adult accompaniment to be entertained by a host of assorted musical talent at the 8th IW Festival.
Who is appearing?
No, not The Who, that was last year.
Among those I recognise are The Charlatans, Neil Young, Stereophonics, McFly, Razorlight and Will Young.
Then there are groups like The Prodigy and Pixies of whom I know little and, finally, there will be a host of bands with names like The Bitch, The Botch, The Kitsch and The Crotch of whom I know nothing.
They will all be very loud and very good after ten cans of lager.
Yesterday those of us in the area who have not joined the festival audience were able to stand outside our houses and watch The Red Arrows give another fantastic display over the site.
My Leader and I must have seen them half a dozen times in the past few years.
They are sheer magic.
Long may they reign.
READING
The Independent.
Perhaps surprisingly for a retired old bloke I scarcely found time to read much last week.
On Monday I managed a look at Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column.
She was decrying women who flee the political battlefield: at least, I think that's what it was, I could be wrong, a week is a long time in political journalism.
Then, on Friday, Johann Hari warned that we are filling space with trash, much of it orbiting earth at thousands of miles an hour.
That really was dire news.
I always thought all the trash in space was beamed back by satellite to become reality television.
Both of these journalists are fine writers.
I bet they cheer up sometimes, too.
TELEVISION
I'm Running Sainsbury's (C4).
At a time of economic downturn the chief executive of Sainsbury's, Justin King, one of those charming blokes born to sail through interviews, had the brilliant idea - well, lays claim to the brilliant idea - that shop floor workers (now called colleagues would you believe?) should be invited to submit their proposals for the better running of the company.
The idea is not entirely new: every sharp company in the country must have experimented with a staff suggestion box from which it hoped to garner a few good ideas for as little money as possible.
But the Sainsbury's idea had a twist: four of the proposals would be taken up for a trial period in selected stores under the direction of the proposer.
Of the first two, one suffered setbacks and has not worked out - sad, because it was a nice idea - and the other has been given an extended trial in twenty shops.
When I go into a supermarket only two things really concern me:-
(1) why have they shifted every-goddam-thing around again? and:-
(2) how long is the queue at the checkout going to be?
I have loathed and avoided standing in queues ever since the war: still remember ration books and people lining up outside the butcher's shop.
So far as my involvement in the process of shopping is concerned, I do not try the free samples offered by free sample offerers, I do not bother with anything said over the Tannoy and I do expect to lose my wife inside twenty minutes somewhere between wines and spirits and pet food.
For the next half hour she ceases to be my Leader and becomes: "Where the hell is Maureen?"
What?
Well of course it's my fault.
Life (ITV3).
That pleasant English actor Damian Lewis is back for what is apparently the last series of this amiable American cop drama. Sarah Shahi co-stars as his likeable, down-to-earth partner.
It is a well scripted, well acted, easy to follow show; which means - in televison production terms - it is absolutely right for the axe.
I shall be sorry to see it go.
Robin Hood (BBC1).
Talk is that Jonas Armstrong, arguably the best Robin in this load of supreme tosh since Jason Connery, is to be replaced by an Errol Flynn lookalike called Clive Standen who has suddenly appeared in the role of Archer, half-brother of Robin and Gisborne (don't ask).
We are close to the end of series three which started off with the casting department choosing David Harewood (an actor for whom I have the utmost respect) as a black Friar Tuck.
This chap blithely wanders into Nottingham and York unnoticed by the colour-blind townsfolk.
Well, with abject apologies to Yasmin A-B, neither my imagination nor my political correctness stretches quite that far.
Friar Tuck was Eugene Pallette (1938) and James Hayter (1952).
He was a fat old white bloke, not a well-built young black bloke.
Still, looking back I was opposed to the casting of Ben Kingsley as Gandhi and of Alec Guinness as Indian mystic Godbole and Arab leader Prince Feisal, too.
Does that make me a racist?
Do I care?
BBC Cardiff Singer of The World 2009.
A great week and a wonderful final from which the Russian soprano Ekaterina Shcherbachenko emerged a deserved winner.
(Dame Joan Sutherland, frail but indomitable, presented the trophy.)
The popular People's Favourite prize went to tenor Giordano Luca from Italy and the toughest competitor to beat in the competiton, undoubtedly, was an amazing countertenor, Yuriy Mynenko, from the Ukraine.
Well done the BBC and well done Wales!
Monday, June 08, 2009
127. Home and Away - with music.
HOME.
Music.
The weather has been glorious so I have been sitting here doing less than I should and not giving a tinker's cuss.
In the background my old aiwa digital audio system (posh description for an inexpensive stereo) is helping lull me from the slog of extemporaneous composition.
Randy Crawford is halfway through the fascinating One Day I'll Fly Away; Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes will shortly be telling me that they are Up Where We Belong, then it will be Still Magic with Peter Skellern and then still more magic with Peggy Lee's You Can Sing A Rainbow: Mick Hucknall will follow to remind me how he feels Every Time We Say Goodbye and after that the duet from The Pearl Fishers will be sung in French by Nicolai Gedda and Ernest Blanc.
It's one of my personal choice tapes: put it together some years ago and still enjoy every one of the more than thirty tracks on it.
Good job I shall never be invited to choose eight Desert Island Discs.
How do those who get the invitation make up their minds?
Yesterday, in similar tranquil mood, I listened to the Yes album Fragile and marvelled again at the superb musicianship of Bill Bruford, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Rick Wakeman and at Jon Anderson's terrific rendition of Heart of the Sunrise.
Well they'd never have time for that on your radio desert island, would they?
Na-a-h, I couldn't select just eight tunes.
I'd be forever hankering after the stuff I'd left out.
Reading.
I continue at a leisurely pace with Bryan Forbes' The Endless Game.
Could go faster but for incessant interruptions and a couple of months backlog of DVDs demanding attention.
So far ol' Bryan has been such darned good value that whatever DVD I have on at the same time as I read needs constant rewinding (or whatever you call it on a DVD) because I become so immersed in the book I lose the plot on the box.
Well, to be honest, losing the plot is not something I find difficult to do nowadays.
Once did a complete three year correspondence course with my radio playing in the background, but that was more than fifty years ago and you didn't have to watch radio.
Come to think of it, I sometimes wonder why I am watching...
Television.
And Springwatch again.
Kate Humble, Simon King and Chris Packham are doing the honours.
Bill Oddie should be missed, sadly or happily according to whether you were or were not a fan, but I don't see any signs of the team falling apart since his departure so I guess that says it all for programme presenters.
They're as necessary as they are popular and as popular as last week's show.
Kingdom is back on Sunday evenings.
Ol' Stephen Fry playing the kindly country solicitor Peter Kingdom.
Lovely start of week tosh with a great cast including a lady particularly popular in this part of the world, Celia Imrie.
I think she has a home here somewhere.
Everybody likes her.
In the first episode, the guest stars were June Whitfield and Peter Sallis, both on the run from
Last of the Summer Wine.
Since the demise of Kathy Staff somebody (tell me not Roy Clarke?) has decided that Russ Abbot, as Hobbo, should replace the late Brian Wilde's Foggy as the token Walter Mitty character.
Hobbo is not a success, the series is sadly limping, and I do not blame June Whitfield and Peter Sallis if they are AWOL.
At the moment they are better off with Stephen than with Russ and far better off with either than with the other Stephen on
Stephen Tomkinson's African Balloon Adventure.
Always liked the idea of travelling by hot air balloon, but this is a trip too far.
What goes up must come down and when I came down it would have to be somewhere flat, convenient for rescue and clear of hazards.
It would not have to be in the middle of impenetrable scrubland or herds of startled wild animals.
I'm sure Stephen Tompkinson and camera crew survived the three episodes - we'd have heard, wouldn't we? - and well done them.
But beautiful though the scenery clearly is, the thought of where we could land next would have precluded participation on my part.
Against my religion.
Devout coward.
AWAY.
Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK, 2009.
In July our daughter Jac and her friend Zoe Farndon are going to see the singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright's new opera Prima Donna.
I don't know how Zoe is with languages; Jac is fluent in German and can manage a smattering of Italian: the opera is in French.
Doesn't matter.
Hell, I speak nothing but Isle of Wight English with a side-helping of Invective but that never stopped me enjoying opera in Italian.
Che Gelida Manina is melodic in a way that Your Tiny Hand is Frozen just ain't.
I hope Prima Donna will be a magical first for Rufus and a total treat for all those faithful fans who make it to Manchester.
That particularly goes for Jackie and Zoe.
Enjoy every minute my dears.
Music.
The weather has been glorious so I have been sitting here doing less than I should and not giving a tinker's cuss.
In the background my old aiwa digital audio system (posh description for an inexpensive stereo) is helping lull me from the slog of extemporaneous composition.
Randy Crawford is halfway through the fascinating One Day I'll Fly Away; Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes will shortly be telling me that they are Up Where We Belong, then it will be Still Magic with Peter Skellern and then still more magic with Peggy Lee's You Can Sing A Rainbow: Mick Hucknall will follow to remind me how he feels Every Time We Say Goodbye and after that the duet from The Pearl Fishers will be sung in French by Nicolai Gedda and Ernest Blanc.
It's one of my personal choice tapes: put it together some years ago and still enjoy every one of the more than thirty tracks on it.
Good job I shall never be invited to choose eight Desert Island Discs.
How do those who get the invitation make up their minds?
Yesterday, in similar tranquil mood, I listened to the Yes album Fragile and marvelled again at the superb musicianship of Bill Bruford, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Rick Wakeman and at Jon Anderson's terrific rendition of Heart of the Sunrise.
Well they'd never have time for that on your radio desert island, would they?
Na-a-h, I couldn't select just eight tunes.
I'd be forever hankering after the stuff I'd left out.
Reading.
I continue at a leisurely pace with Bryan Forbes' The Endless Game.
Could go faster but for incessant interruptions and a couple of months backlog of DVDs demanding attention.
So far ol' Bryan has been such darned good value that whatever DVD I have on at the same time as I read needs constant rewinding (or whatever you call it on a DVD) because I become so immersed in the book I lose the plot on the box.
Well, to be honest, losing the plot is not something I find difficult to do nowadays.
Once did a complete three year correspondence course with my radio playing in the background, but that was more than fifty years ago and you didn't have to watch radio.
Come to think of it, I sometimes wonder why I am watching...
Television.
And Springwatch again.
Kate Humble, Simon King and Chris Packham are doing the honours.
Bill Oddie should be missed, sadly or happily according to whether you were or were not a fan, but I don't see any signs of the team falling apart since his departure so I guess that says it all for programme presenters.
They're as necessary as they are popular and as popular as last week's show.
Kingdom is back on Sunday evenings.
Ol' Stephen Fry playing the kindly country solicitor Peter Kingdom.
Lovely start of week tosh with a great cast including a lady particularly popular in this part of the world, Celia Imrie.
I think she has a home here somewhere.
Everybody likes her.
In the first episode, the guest stars were June Whitfield and Peter Sallis, both on the run from
Last of the Summer Wine.
Since the demise of Kathy Staff somebody (tell me not Roy Clarke?) has decided that Russ Abbot, as Hobbo, should replace the late Brian Wilde's Foggy as the token Walter Mitty character.
Hobbo is not a success, the series is sadly limping, and I do not blame June Whitfield and Peter Sallis if they are AWOL.
At the moment they are better off with Stephen than with Russ and far better off with either than with the other Stephen on
Stephen Tomkinson's African Balloon Adventure.
Always liked the idea of travelling by hot air balloon, but this is a trip too far.
What goes up must come down and when I came down it would have to be somewhere flat, convenient for rescue and clear of hazards.
It would not have to be in the middle of impenetrable scrubland or herds of startled wild animals.
I'm sure Stephen Tompkinson and camera crew survived the three episodes - we'd have heard, wouldn't we? - and well done them.
But beautiful though the scenery clearly is, the thought of where we could land next would have precluded participation on my part.
Against my religion.
Devout coward.
AWAY.
Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK, 2009.
In July our daughter Jac and her friend Zoe Farndon are going to see the singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright's new opera Prima Donna.
I don't know how Zoe is with languages; Jac is fluent in German and can manage a smattering of Italian: the opera is in French.
Doesn't matter.
Hell, I speak nothing but Isle of Wight English with a side-helping of Invective but that never stopped me enjoying opera in Italian.
Che Gelida Manina is melodic in a way that Your Tiny Hand is Frozen just ain't.
I hope Prima Donna will be a magical first for Rufus and a total treat for all those faithful fans who make it to Manchester.
That particularly goes for Jackie and Zoe.
Enjoy every minute my dears.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
126. It's poetry week or month or something.
HOME.
Poetry time again.
The cat Shadow appeared as he does and, to my surprise, did not demand food.
"Something wrong?" I asked.
"Not at all," he said. "The Boot-Kicking Scot's team got beaten in the Champion's League Final and the departed Portuguese-in-the-posh-overcoat's team won the F.A. Cup. There is a God."
"I know you're not a Ferguson fan, but since when did you support Chelsea?" I demanded.
"I don't," he said. "But it does y'good to see them win something in the wake of Mourinho."
"Oh, does it?" I said.
"It does," he said, "but that's not why I'm here."
I was intrigued. "All right then, why are you here?"
"Because it's poetry week or month or something, mate, " he declared triunphantly, "and I have a poem for you."
I eyed him with customary suspicion: "Go on then."
He struck his poetic pose and announced:
"A Stroll With A Musing Moggy."
Along this wall and that flat roof
I'm seeking nightly for the truth
Of what I am: of who I be
A muse while scratching for a flea
And marking off my boundary
By spraying up the same old tree.
Foursquare, fourscore, foreshore, forsooth,
I'm getting longer in the tooth
No more accepting I'm perverse
For bandying with nonsense verse
Nor heeding those who cannot see
The innate graciousness in me.
Humans allergic to my touch
Them as just can't bear me much
Worried gal and aggressive chap
Who'd like to see me off the map
Onto their lap I'll surely pitch
And stay until they've got the itch.
Goodbye, auf Wiedersehen, farewell
The curfew tolls the flippin' knell
Of any climbing, rhyming cat
Who aspires to Poet Laureate
The post has gone to Carol Anne Duffy
Feminine if not female fluffy.
So atop this wall and that flat roof
Seeking nightly for the truth
Hiding under hedge and van
A Jehovah Witness in the Vatican
I know, too, I shall never be
The Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Let's face it, I'm too cool a cooky
To draw attention to another's nooky
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Ruth Padel should have more sense.
You're not forgiven when you win a fight
Not when you are the one who's right!
He had a quick wash and eyed me expectantly.
"Did the guys on the roof help you with that?" I queried.
"Not this time," he said proudly.
"It shows," I said.
"How kind of you," he said.
I chose not to correct him.
TELEVISION.
CSI NY (Five).
A short time ago I saw an interview in which Gary Sinise, who plays Mac Taylor in CSI NY, talked about the early days of the show.
Seems the regularly featured players were encouraged to personalize their characters and this somewhat inhibited expression until they had finally developed the role.
Back then I joked that he had but two acting expressions.
Apologies being all the rage, I shan't apologize.
He is certainly much more expressive now.
Even his eyebrows sometimes get in on the act.
Truth to tell, one of my favourite acting moments came in a CSI NY episode.
Stella Bonasera, who had been cut by a piece of glass removed from an HIV positive victim, gave life-saving CPR to Dr. Sid Hammerback: she later had to convey to the doctor her fear that she could have infected him with AIDS.
Massively contrived though it may have been, the scene where Stella (Melina Kanakaredes) broke the brittle news to a wonderfully fatalistic Sid (Robert Joy) was mesmerising.
Gok's Fashion Fix (C4).
In Post 109 I was a trifle sniffy about fancily priced fashion and I now regret that.
Bleating on blogs will not save the third world.
Acceptance that vast riches will attract, (and succumb to) vastly inflated prices is just common sense.
Gok is close to the end of another series and it has been great fun.
Weekly he re-outfits a fashion misfit, re-garbs a star, tests items of female apparel on a heavyweight group of lasses from Rotherham and dresses his fashion models in High Street clothes to compete on a catwalk with costly designer outfits chosen by Brix Smith-Start.
In the latter he has to date emerged the joyful winner five times and the generous loser twice.
My Leader and I watch and wonder and laugh.
It's hard not to like Gok Wan.
Eurovision Song Contest (BBC1).
There was a bit more Brit interest this year following the departure of ol' Tel Wogan and the introduction of a Lloyd Webber song entitled (over optimistically) It's My Time.
Andrew L.W. and singer Jade Ewen were reported to have blitzed Europe trying to sell the song in advance, so nobody could accuse them of not taking a crap competition seriously.
Graham Norton, an arch version of his predecessor, came across as equally unimpressed by it all.
Gawd bless 'im for that.
Divided (ITV1)
Talking of crap, we have here a quiz produced by sadistic shits hellbent on proving that it is not only Members of Parliament who are avaricious arseholes.
I have watched it a couple of times and on both occasions, sadly, the producers' case has been proven.
It is presented by Andrew Castle and to any nice person going to become a contestant I would offer the following advice: in the unlikely event that you look like winning, take a note with you to read out when you are asked to say what your share of the prize money should be; have it go along the lines of: I shall accept Share A but only on the clear understanding that I require the Share A prize money to be divided into three equal parts - one part to go to me and one part to each of my fellow contestants - and that my two fellow contestants (being Share B - pointing to one of them - you: and Share C - pointing to the other - you) agree to their shares also being divided equally between the three of us.
Let Andrew Castle, the studio crew and the entire viewing public take note that we three contestants have agreed to take equal shares of the total prize money we have won on Divided today.'
Then gently point out to the other contestants that they can either do it your way or get nothing because you will veto anything else until the kitty runs dry.
I don't know if it will work and I don't really care.
It is something else I shall not be watching again.
The Classical Brit Awards (ITV1).
Watched this: did you? Classic mutual admiration. I think Classic FM has got a lot to answer for.
Britain's Got Talent (ITV1).
Watched this: didn't everyone? I think Diversity, Susan Boyle and Julian Smith were the right choices in the right order, even if the news of their success was marred by the usual stupid...agonizing... long...drawn...out...wait...which the daft bastards who run these programmes think adds to the excitement.
The final was good old-fashioned music hall.
Don't know about the preliminaries.
Didn't watch them.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show (BBC).
Watched this on and off. This year there seemed to be less of the exhibits than there was of Alan Titchmarsh who has started to dress as though he's expecting a knighthood.
Who knows?
I may even yet refer to him as Sir Titchy.
Poetry time again.
The cat Shadow appeared as he does and, to my surprise, did not demand food.
"Something wrong?" I asked.
"Not at all," he said. "The Boot-Kicking Scot's team got beaten in the Champion's League Final and the departed Portuguese-in-the-posh-overcoat's team won the F.A. Cup. There is a God."
"I know you're not a Ferguson fan, but since when did you support Chelsea?" I demanded.
"I don't," he said. "But it does y'good to see them win something in the wake of Mourinho."
"Oh, does it?" I said.
"It does," he said, "but that's not why I'm here."
I was intrigued. "All right then, why are you here?"
"Because it's poetry week or month or something, mate, " he declared triunphantly, "and I have a poem for you."
I eyed him with customary suspicion: "Go on then."
He struck his poetic pose and announced:
"A Stroll With A Musing Moggy."
Along this wall and that flat roof
I'm seeking nightly for the truth
Of what I am: of who I be
A muse while scratching for a flea
And marking off my boundary
By spraying up the same old tree.
Foursquare, fourscore, foreshore, forsooth,
I'm getting longer in the tooth
No more accepting I'm perverse
For bandying with nonsense verse
Nor heeding those who cannot see
The innate graciousness in me.
Humans allergic to my touch
Them as just can't bear me much
Worried gal and aggressive chap
Who'd like to see me off the map
Onto their lap I'll surely pitch
And stay until they've got the itch.
Goodbye, auf Wiedersehen, farewell
The curfew tolls the flippin' knell
Of any climbing, rhyming cat
Who aspires to Poet Laureate
The post has gone to Carol Anne Duffy
Feminine if not female fluffy.
So atop this wall and that flat roof
Seeking nightly for the truth
Hiding under hedge and van
A Jehovah Witness in the Vatican
I know, too, I shall never be
The Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Let's face it, I'm too cool a cooky
To draw attention to another's nooky
Honi soit qui mal y pense
Ruth Padel should have more sense.
You're not forgiven when you win a fight
Not when you are the one who's right!
He had a quick wash and eyed me expectantly.
"Did the guys on the roof help you with that?" I queried.
"Not this time," he said proudly.
"It shows," I said.
"How kind of you," he said.
I chose not to correct him.
TELEVISION.
CSI NY (Five).
A short time ago I saw an interview in which Gary Sinise, who plays Mac Taylor in CSI NY, talked about the early days of the show.
Seems the regularly featured players were encouraged to personalize their characters and this somewhat inhibited expression until they had finally developed the role.
Back then I joked that he had but two acting expressions.
Apologies being all the rage, I shan't apologize.
He is certainly much more expressive now.
Even his eyebrows sometimes get in on the act.
Truth to tell, one of my favourite acting moments came in a CSI NY episode.
Stella Bonasera, who had been cut by a piece of glass removed from an HIV positive victim, gave life-saving CPR to Dr. Sid Hammerback: she later had to convey to the doctor her fear that she could have infected him with AIDS.
Massively contrived though it may have been, the scene where Stella (Melina Kanakaredes) broke the brittle news to a wonderfully fatalistic Sid (Robert Joy) was mesmerising.
Gok's Fashion Fix (C4).
In Post 109 I was a trifle sniffy about fancily priced fashion and I now regret that.
Bleating on blogs will not save the third world.
Acceptance that vast riches will attract, (and succumb to) vastly inflated prices is just common sense.
Gok is close to the end of another series and it has been great fun.
Weekly he re-outfits a fashion misfit, re-garbs a star, tests items of female apparel on a heavyweight group of lasses from Rotherham and dresses his fashion models in High Street clothes to compete on a catwalk with costly designer outfits chosen by Brix Smith-Start.
In the latter he has to date emerged the joyful winner five times and the generous loser twice.
My Leader and I watch and wonder and laugh.
It's hard not to like Gok Wan.
Eurovision Song Contest (BBC1).
There was a bit more Brit interest this year following the departure of ol' Tel Wogan and the introduction of a Lloyd Webber song entitled (over optimistically) It's My Time.
Andrew L.W. and singer Jade Ewen were reported to have blitzed Europe trying to sell the song in advance, so nobody could accuse them of not taking a crap competition seriously.
Graham Norton, an arch version of his predecessor, came across as equally unimpressed by it all.
Gawd bless 'im for that.
Divided (ITV1)
Talking of crap, we have here a quiz produced by sadistic shits hellbent on proving that it is not only Members of Parliament who are avaricious arseholes.
I have watched it a couple of times and on both occasions, sadly, the producers' case has been proven.
It is presented by Andrew Castle and to any nice person going to become a contestant I would offer the following advice: in the unlikely event that you look like winning, take a note with you to read out when you are asked to say what your share of the prize money should be; have it go along the lines of: I shall accept Share A but only on the clear understanding that I require the Share A prize money to be divided into three equal parts - one part to go to me and one part to each of my fellow contestants - and that my two fellow contestants (being Share B - pointing to one of them - you: and Share C - pointing to the other - you) agree to their shares also being divided equally between the three of us.
Let Andrew Castle, the studio crew and the entire viewing public take note that we three contestants have agreed to take equal shares of the total prize money we have won on Divided today.'
Then gently point out to the other contestants that they can either do it your way or get nothing because you will veto anything else until the kitty runs dry.
I don't know if it will work and I don't really care.
It is something else I shall not be watching again.
The Classical Brit Awards (ITV1).
Watched this: did you? Classic mutual admiration. I think Classic FM has got a lot to answer for.
Britain's Got Talent (ITV1).
Watched this: didn't everyone? I think Diversity, Susan Boyle and Julian Smith were the right choices in the right order, even if the news of their success was marred by the usual stupid...agonizing... long...drawn...out...wait...which the daft bastards who run these programmes think adds to the excitement.
The final was good old-fashioned music hall.
Don't know about the preliminaries.
Didn't watch them.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show (BBC).
Watched this on and off. This year there seemed to be less of the exhibits than there was of Alan Titchmarsh who has started to dress as though he's expecting a knighthood.
Who knows?
I may even yet refer to him as Sir Titchy.
Friday, May 15, 2009
125. Here's a bit of scandal
IN THE NEWS.
The Gurkhas. What a furore about whether or not Gurkhas should become permanent residents here.
The little blokes have fought in countless wars on our side and I'd rather they were for us than against.
So what is all the fuss about?
Are the Powers-That-Be worried lest, a generation or two on, Gurkha soldiers living here will become civilians uninterested in going to war? Do they think martial Nepalese may that quickly transform into pacifist Brits?
Would it matter if they did?
Joanna Lumley's Joan of Arc presence on their behalf has served to further her iconic status, remind us again that she is a consummate actress (many times during her M.P. belittling campaign she gave us her Margaret Thatcher browbeating the boys audition piece) and has provided a tasty hors d'oeuvre to the prize scandal of the week...
MPs Expenses. "What I did was within the rules" will surely go down as the poorest excuse for mishandling public money that has ever been trotted out by elected representatives to a suddenly aware electorate.
The fact that they and their benighted advisers compiled dodgy rules to legalize their actions screams of sharp practice.
If you or I had been discovered doing anything of the kind, whatever our employment, we would have been taken to court, fined and sacked.
So far as their reaction to being caught with their hands in the till is concerned, the apologies of party leaders have been more acceptable than the defiant bluster of the jumped up little Speaker of the House, but only just!
We are surrounded by acquisitive scoundrels and, as usual, the honourable few (that's very few) will suffer for their rascally associates.
Football. Surprisingly, when it comes to the honourable, a football manager has just shown the way.
Steve Coppell, faced with the realization that his Reading side, beaten by Burnley, would not gain the promotion he sought, has resigned.
Somebody badly needs him.
Pompey? The Saints? The House of Commons?
TELEVISION.
Kirstie's Home-Made Home (C4). This little series was a gem. Kirstie Allsopp ('er who's always after knockin' down walls on Location Location) showed MPs how to make money out of second home renovations without bending any rules.
You just film the whole bang shoot and flog it to commercial television.
It was a five parter which finished last night and if she decides she can make a few quid more by bringing it out on DVD we will buy it.
Newsnight Review (BBC 2). I was well pleased to see the quiet assassin Tom Paulin, accompanied by Anthony Horowitz and Natalie Haynes, doing battle with popular culture again last Friday: Martha Kearney chaired impeccably.
When I looked on the website later it became apparent that Dr. Paulin was not everyone's favourite academic that night.
A "beam me up" bunch of Trekkies was ray gunning for him.
Well, he has survived bigger and better spaced-out showers than them.
Mr Horowitz was not their most popular author, either; they regarded him as a mere writer of children's fiction, presumably unable to comprehend the mind blowing complexity of pointed ears and daring to boldly go where no man has gone before.
This to the man who wrote Foyle's War, one episode of which was worth any ten roller coaster sets of tumbling Enterprise crew members.
Ah well, to each his own.
Inspector George Gently (BBC 1). At the risk of spoiling it for someone, the crimes took something of a back seat in Gently in the Night when our hero challenged his assistant, Sergeant Bacchus, to step into the boxing ring with him for charity.
Young John was full of youthful confidence, but the outcome of the bout probably rested on one word dropped at the time of the challenge.
Suggesting that his superior officer was getting on a bit for fisticuffs, the young man said: "I know you did a bit of boxing in the army..."
and received the timely correction: "For the army."
Nice touch, that.
Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (BBC2). A combination of Peter and The Wolf, The Young Person's Guide and (never mind The Buzzcocks) some glorious music hall zaniness.
We recorded it.
We shall keep it.
BOOKS.
Bryan Forbes. I have started reading The Endless Game (published, together with A Song At Twilight, by Arrow in 1998) and am reminded that over the years Bryan Forbes has proven to be a very smart all rounder.
Not only did he act, write scripts and direct films, but he turned out a number of very decent thrillers.
And he married Nanette Newman.
Who says you can't have it all?
Kathy Reichs. Following my comments about Death Du Jour, I have acquired (courtesy of my Leader) two more Dr. Temperence Brennan stories Grave Secrets and Break No Bones.
I'll just have to speed up my reading.
Well, at my age...
FILMS.
The Bridges of Madison County. Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and co-starring Meryl Streep.
I did not see this 1995 film when it was first released; would never have done so had it not been shown on television earlier this year and, even then, have kept it languishing on the recorder for a few months.
Need not have feared.
Mushiness is not on the cards: not with Eastwood directing.
Meryl Streep, using one of her foreign American/American foreign accents, plays an Italian war bride, Francesca Johnson, who has an affair with much travelled photographer Robert Kincaid.
I watched it last night and rather enjoyed it.
Have always liked Meryl Streep, whatever her accent, and Clint Eastwood is totally reliable.
Nice change to see him packing a camera instead of a .44 Magnum, too.
The Night Listener. By coincidence this was screened on television a short time after I wrote about Armistead Maupin's novel in my last post.
It was directed by Patrick Stettner, starred Robin Williams and Toni Collette and sadly, even with Maupin as one of the screenwriters, lacked the suspense and surprise of the book.
No fault of the actors.
Some authors, Maupin and Mary Wesley among them, are just difficult to adapt to the screen.
A FINAL WORD ON THEM.
Trouble is, we could do worse!
I have heard it said already. "Next election we'll vote them all out!"
People are seething and their mood might well be reflected at the polls.
But before we all go off half-cocked I hope common sense will kick in.
We have seen what happens here when riot police are given free rein.
Do we want a reproduction of 1933 Germany?
A National Socialist British Workers' Party, by whatever name and under whatever leadership, would be a disaster.
I think we'd be better off just kicking this lots' arses and sticking to the status quo.
Trouble is, we really could do worse!
The Gurkhas. What a furore about whether or not Gurkhas should become permanent residents here.
The little blokes have fought in countless wars on our side and I'd rather they were for us than against.
So what is all the fuss about?
Are the Powers-That-Be worried lest, a generation or two on, Gurkha soldiers living here will become civilians uninterested in going to war? Do they think martial Nepalese may that quickly transform into pacifist Brits?
Would it matter if they did?
Joanna Lumley's Joan of Arc presence on their behalf has served to further her iconic status, remind us again that she is a consummate actress (many times during her M.P. belittling campaign she gave us her Margaret Thatcher browbeating the boys audition piece) and has provided a tasty hors d'oeuvre to the prize scandal of the week...
MPs Expenses. "What I did was within the rules" will surely go down as the poorest excuse for mishandling public money that has ever been trotted out by elected representatives to a suddenly aware electorate.
The fact that they and their benighted advisers compiled dodgy rules to legalize their actions screams of sharp practice.
If you or I had been discovered doing anything of the kind, whatever our employment, we would have been taken to court, fined and sacked.
So far as their reaction to being caught with their hands in the till is concerned, the apologies of party leaders have been more acceptable than the defiant bluster of the jumped up little Speaker of the House, but only just!
We are surrounded by acquisitive scoundrels and, as usual, the honourable few (that's very few) will suffer for their rascally associates.
Football. Surprisingly, when it comes to the honourable, a football manager has just shown the way.
Steve Coppell, faced with the realization that his Reading side, beaten by Burnley, would not gain the promotion he sought, has resigned.
Somebody badly needs him.
Pompey? The Saints? The House of Commons?
TELEVISION.
Kirstie's Home-Made Home (C4). This little series was a gem. Kirstie Allsopp ('er who's always after knockin' down walls on Location Location) showed MPs how to make money out of second home renovations without bending any rules.
You just film the whole bang shoot and flog it to commercial television.
It was a five parter which finished last night and if she decides she can make a few quid more by bringing it out on DVD we will buy it.
Newsnight Review (BBC 2). I was well pleased to see the quiet assassin Tom Paulin, accompanied by Anthony Horowitz and Natalie Haynes, doing battle with popular culture again last Friday: Martha Kearney chaired impeccably.
When I looked on the website later it became apparent that Dr. Paulin was not everyone's favourite academic that night.
A "beam me up" bunch of Trekkies was ray gunning for him.
Well, he has survived bigger and better spaced-out showers than them.
Mr Horowitz was not their most popular author, either; they regarded him as a mere writer of children's fiction, presumably unable to comprehend the mind blowing complexity of pointed ears and daring to boldly go where no man has gone before.
This to the man who wrote Foyle's War, one episode of which was worth any ten roller coaster sets of tumbling Enterprise crew members.
Ah well, to each his own.
Inspector George Gently (BBC 1). At the risk of spoiling it for someone, the crimes took something of a back seat in Gently in the Night when our hero challenged his assistant, Sergeant Bacchus, to step into the boxing ring with him for charity.
Young John was full of youthful confidence, but the outcome of the bout probably rested on one word dropped at the time of the challenge.
Suggesting that his superior officer was getting on a bit for fisticuffs, the young man said: "I know you did a bit of boxing in the army..."
and received the timely correction: "For the army."
Nice touch, that.
Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (BBC2). A combination of Peter and The Wolf, The Young Person's Guide and (never mind The Buzzcocks) some glorious music hall zaniness.
We recorded it.
We shall keep it.
BOOKS.
Bryan Forbes. I have started reading The Endless Game (published, together with A Song At Twilight, by Arrow in 1998) and am reminded that over the years Bryan Forbes has proven to be a very smart all rounder.
Not only did he act, write scripts and direct films, but he turned out a number of very decent thrillers.
And he married Nanette Newman.
Who says you can't have it all?
Kathy Reichs. Following my comments about Death Du Jour, I have acquired (courtesy of my Leader) two more Dr. Temperence Brennan stories Grave Secrets and Break No Bones.
I'll just have to speed up my reading.
Well, at my age...
FILMS.
The Bridges of Madison County. Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and co-starring Meryl Streep.
I did not see this 1995 film when it was first released; would never have done so had it not been shown on television earlier this year and, even then, have kept it languishing on the recorder for a few months.
Need not have feared.
Mushiness is not on the cards: not with Eastwood directing.
Meryl Streep, using one of her foreign American/American foreign accents, plays an Italian war bride, Francesca Johnson, who has an affair with much travelled photographer Robert Kincaid.
I watched it last night and rather enjoyed it.
Have always liked Meryl Streep, whatever her accent, and Clint Eastwood is totally reliable.
Nice change to see him packing a camera instead of a .44 Magnum, too.
The Night Listener. By coincidence this was screened on television a short time after I wrote about Armistead Maupin's novel in my last post.
It was directed by Patrick Stettner, starred Robin Williams and Toni Collette and sadly, even with Maupin as one of the screenwriters, lacked the suspense and surprise of the book.
No fault of the actors.
Some authors, Maupin and Mary Wesley among them, are just difficult to adapt to the screen.
A FINAL WORD ON THEM.
Trouble is, we could do worse!
I have heard it said already. "Next election we'll vote them all out!"
People are seething and their mood might well be reflected at the polls.
But before we all go off half-cocked I hope common sense will kick in.
We have seen what happens here when riot police are given free rein.
Do we want a reproduction of 1933 Germany?
A National Socialist British Workers' Party, by whatever name and under whatever leadership, would be a disaster.
I think we'd be better off just kicking this lots' arses and sticking to the status quo.
Trouble is, we really could do worse!
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
124. And yet more of the usual.
BOOKS.
Kathy Reichs. I have recently finished Kathy Reichs' death du jour.
Ms. Reichs is forensic anthropologist at the Labatoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. Her heroine, Temperance Brennan, is also a forensic anthropologist.
Fact and fiction merge so well in her stories that it is difficult to see the join.
I have the utmost respect for those talented people who succeed in transforming the subject of their working lives into award winning fiction. (Scott Turow, a practicing lawyer, has the same wonderful gift, though it comes as less of a surprise that a legal man should be able to spin a yarn.)
A forensic anthropologist clearly requires physical and mental toughness, patience, dedication and one helluva brain.
Kathy Reichs is good value.
Armistead Maupin. I read The Night Listener in less than a week: something of a record for me nowadays.
It is vintage Maupin: fascinating characters, absorbing plot and the sort of page turner one would expect from the man who wrote Tales of the City.
In a world beyond my comprehension Mr. Maupin, too, is good value.
TELEVISION.
De-Lovely. (ITV1) One good thing about television programme padding is the opportunity it gives to see films you missed when they were released.
This 2004 musical biography, directed by Irwin Winkler and based on the life and work of Cole Porter, starred Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd as the composer and his wife, Linda.
My Leader and I enjoyed it immensely.
Like all good musicals it bore no relationship whatsoever to real life.
Cole Porter was a gifted tunesmith and superb lyricist who, apart from his marriage, had much in common with Noel Coward and Ivor Novello: they were talented composers and they were homosexuals.
Now they're dead.
Best remember them for their music.
Inspector George Gently (BBC1). He's back then: good old Martin Shaw in Fabian of the Yard mode, all gruff-voiced authoritarianism and unflinching rectitude.
Lee Ingleby, playing the hasty, ambitious know-all D.S. John Bacchus, is still with him.
Excellent stuff.
Primeval (ITV1). Jason Flemyng has taken over from Douglas Henshall.
It's still as daft as ever.
Robin Hood (BBC 1). Toby Stevens, playing Prince John, is replacing Keith Allen's Sheriff of Nottingham for a couple of weeks.
Never fear, it's still as daft as ever.
HOME.
Sister Doris. In between the moves into sheltered accommodation and into care of two of my wife's sisters, another sister, Doris, was admitted to hospital where she died suddenly.
She was 84 and a Jehovah's Witness.
Her funeral service, held at Portchester Crematorium, was well attended by family members - religious and irreligious - and by a good turnout of brother and sister Witnesses.
It was a Witness service.
At the customary gathering afterwards the Watch Tower tribe turned out to be a pleasant enough bunch, bless 'em.
I regard them as cranks rather less sinister than Scientologists, but I do wonder what accident they witnessed. At worst they suffer from an unquestioning belief in their religion, but there's an awful lot of that about.
I remain blissfully irreligious.
Don't care who it is, Jehovah or L. Ron Hubbard: I'd as soon believe in Harry Potter.
Council Elections. Leaflets through the letterbox: the Blair clone Cameron running around the country exhorting people to "vote for change" in the forthcoming local elections (figure it worked for President Obama do they?) and, very soon, the smiling faces of people you do not know and do not want to know, people who have neither known nor particularly wanted to know you, will invite you to vote for them.
Well, we've currently got the Tories and they're rubbish. Before them we had the Liberals and they were ditto. Labour stands not a chance here but, as experienced nationally, who would bank on them?
Whoever gets in here will continue to be manipulated by the suits they are supposed to be employing.
Costs will escalate and services will depreciate.
It has been going on for years.
Don't talk about bloody change to me.
Kathy Reichs. I have recently finished Kathy Reichs' death du jour.
Ms. Reichs is forensic anthropologist at the Labatoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. Her heroine, Temperance Brennan, is also a forensic anthropologist.
Fact and fiction merge so well in her stories that it is difficult to see the join.
I have the utmost respect for those talented people who succeed in transforming the subject of their working lives into award winning fiction. (Scott Turow, a practicing lawyer, has the same wonderful gift, though it comes as less of a surprise that a legal man should be able to spin a yarn.)
A forensic anthropologist clearly requires physical and mental toughness, patience, dedication and one helluva brain.
Kathy Reichs is good value.
Armistead Maupin. I read The Night Listener in less than a week: something of a record for me nowadays.
It is vintage Maupin: fascinating characters, absorbing plot and the sort of page turner one would expect from the man who wrote Tales of the City.
In a world beyond my comprehension Mr. Maupin, too, is good value.
TELEVISION.
De-Lovely. (ITV1) One good thing about television programme padding is the opportunity it gives to see films you missed when they were released.
This 2004 musical biography, directed by Irwin Winkler and based on the life and work of Cole Porter, starred Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd as the composer and his wife, Linda.
My Leader and I enjoyed it immensely.
Like all good musicals it bore no relationship whatsoever to real life.
Cole Porter was a gifted tunesmith and superb lyricist who, apart from his marriage, had much in common with Noel Coward and Ivor Novello: they were talented composers and they were homosexuals.
Now they're dead.
Best remember them for their music.
Inspector George Gently (BBC1). He's back then: good old Martin Shaw in Fabian of the Yard mode, all gruff-voiced authoritarianism and unflinching rectitude.
Lee Ingleby, playing the hasty, ambitious know-all D.S. John Bacchus, is still with him.
Excellent stuff.
Primeval (ITV1). Jason Flemyng has taken over from Douglas Henshall.
It's still as daft as ever.
Robin Hood (BBC 1). Toby Stevens, playing Prince John, is replacing Keith Allen's Sheriff of Nottingham for a couple of weeks.
Never fear, it's still as daft as ever.
HOME.
Sister Doris. In between the moves into sheltered accommodation and into care of two of my wife's sisters, another sister, Doris, was admitted to hospital where she died suddenly.
She was 84 and a Jehovah's Witness.
Her funeral service, held at Portchester Crematorium, was well attended by family members - religious and irreligious - and by a good turnout of brother and sister Witnesses.
It was a Witness service.
At the customary gathering afterwards the Watch Tower tribe turned out to be a pleasant enough bunch, bless 'em.
I regard them as cranks rather less sinister than Scientologists, but I do wonder what accident they witnessed. At worst they suffer from an unquestioning belief in their religion, but there's an awful lot of that about.
I remain blissfully irreligious.
Don't care who it is, Jehovah or L. Ron Hubbard: I'd as soon believe in Harry Potter.
Council Elections. Leaflets through the letterbox: the Blair clone Cameron running around the country exhorting people to "vote for change" in the forthcoming local elections (figure it worked for President Obama do they?) and, very soon, the smiling faces of people you do not know and do not want to know, people who have neither known nor particularly wanted to know you, will invite you to vote for them.
Well, we've currently got the Tories and they're rubbish. Before them we had the Liberals and they were ditto. Labour stands not a chance here but, as experienced nationally, who would bank on them?
Whoever gets in here will continue to be manipulated by the suits they are supposed to be employing.
Costs will escalate and services will depreciate.
It has been going on for years.
Don't talk about bloody change to me.
Monday, April 20, 2009
123. Mostly one mess after another...
IN THE NEWS.
Quick revenge. No matter what Boris Johnson actually said, "Revenge is a dish best served cold" would have been by far the most appropriate comment he could have made as, carefully denying a witch-hunt, he hurried to announce the resignation of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick and the appointment of his counter-terrorism successor.
A.C. Quick was clearly careless not to have considered the shits with cameras before he climbed from a car carrying undisguised secret material for all to see. It was a dream come true for the thin-skinned parliamentary creeps thirsting to be rid of a man who had recently caused them considerable political embarrassment.
In his shoes my deepest regret would be that I once made the mistake of apologizing for something I had said about them.
High-flyers' wives. To the forefront in the media muckrake over Bob Quick's actions was the revelation that his wife ran a luxury car hire firm from their home. Since the firm was not funded by the taxpayer I'm not sure how discreditable this was supposed to be.
It did remind me, though, that not only has the salary of high-flyers risen hugely over the years but, in local government especially, the partners of high flyers seem to possess a magic password that somehow obtains them a sinecure in social services or suchlike to coincide with their other half's appointment: I presume this little extra to be, like everything in the high flyer's salary deal, an irritating but inevitable consequence of letting public servants take themselves too seriously and our money too easily.
The maxim "if you pay peanuts you get monkeys" cuts no ice with me: so far as I'm concerned, if you up the ante you just get greedy monkeys.
Another playground squabble. And another pointless apology. Yep, this time from the jaw-dropping Scot, no less.
In his begrudging apology Gordon Brown accepted responsibility for the shameful scheme (see crocodile tears) to slate Tories on the internet and, in the same breath, said that was why the person responsible had been removed from office.
So McBride minor has been sent home with a note and another playground squabble has been settled. Hurrah!
Enter the mealy-mouthpiece. This morning a high ranking police spokesman firmly defended their policing of demonstrations.
Well, no matter how wrong an organization may be it will always find a mealy-moutnpiece to insist that it is right. This one is defending kettling and talking of how lucky the protesters in this country are (compared, presumably, to China). It appears not to have dawned on him and his colleagues that even the most peaceful protester is going to become infuriated at being roughhoused by unidentifiable thugs in uniform.
Last week a totally innocent man was killed. He was attacked in full view of millions watching television, His attacker was clearly a former school bully who had found his calling as a riot policeman and was now a baton-happy bastard.
No mealy-mouthpiece can talk that away. There have been too many instances of official bullying since the crushing of the miners.
Now there is modern technology. No good just switching off the CCTV cameras and hiding your faces. Thousands of citizens have mobile photographic recording devices.
You too, officer bully boy, are being watched,
TELEVISION.
A Question of Genius (BBC2). Yet another general knowledge quiz. This is presented by Kirsty Wark.
The questions are difficult and the prize money is poor: it is the good old Beeb at its parsimonious best and it concludes with Kirsty badgering the last person standing with questions about what their final answer may be, appearing to squeeze the answer from them against their will and then waiting...waiting...waiting...waiting to say whether or not they have answered correctly.
By the time she tells them I have usually gone to make a cup of tea: one of these days a finalist will keel over: but it's good tele, innit?
No, it bloody isn't.
It is boring and patronizing to competitor and viewer alike.
Newsnight Review (BBC 2). When Kirsty Wark originally presented this programme Tom Paulin and Germaine Greer were regular panellists.
Never know who is going to be on it now.
Last Friday night Ian Hislop and Michael Portillo gently crossed swords. There was also a pleasant young woman, Clemency Burton-Hill, who did her best to prevent open warfare.
Kirsty appeared not to notice the atmosphere of mutual dislike enveloping the two men. Well, she has experienced it all before, Greer and Paulin didn't always hit it off, either.
I made Hislop a points winner, but that may be because I have never liked Portillo.
Britain's Got Talent (ITV1). The success of Susan Boyle. Amateur talent nights stopped being my idea of entertainment way back in the days when Hughie Green, exuding smarminess, presented Opportunity Knocks.
His show, like this modern version of it, did find the occasional gem (e.g. Pam Ayres and Les Dawson) but relied in the main on a stream of sadly talentless hopefuls who should never have listened to the blandishments of relatives and pub mates before venturing into the lions' den.
I tend to think in terms of the gormless being judged by the giftless.
One should never be too dismissive, however.
Yesterday daughter Roz and granddaughter Jess drew our attention, via YouTube, to Susan Boyle, a Scottish spinster who sang her way to a standing ovation on the first round of the third series of Britain's Got Talent.
Much has been made of her homely appearance and, though she has the voice, she is certainly no Ruthie Henshall.
But I am old enough to remember when you judged singers by their voices, not their looks.
Anyway, Ms. Boyle instantly became a worlwide success: and she's a cat lover.
Good luck to her.
Primeval (ITV1). Mention of Ruthie Henshall reminded me that Douglas Henshall (no relation so far as I know) has left this crazy Saturday night caper where prehistoric creatures as big as houses visit shopping malls and eat the occasional shopper without attracting public attention.
Like Bill Petersen in CIS, ol' Dougie is sadly missed: which is more than can be said for the assembly line of monster fodder not even remembered for their terrified screams.
Comes as no surprise to me.
The British public expects anything to happen in shopping malls.
When daughter Jac lived in Wandsworth she was firmly convinced that mothers only took their children to the Arndale Centre to smack them.
She did not hang around there.
Once, as she was striding through on her way to Sainsbury, a man with a clipboard stepped out and said: "Excuse me madam, have you had an accident in the last three years?"
"No," she replied, without pausing in her stride, "I always walk like this."
Countryfile (BBC1). Come on then. Own up. Which ...king genius thought it a good idea to downsize dear ol' John Craven, move his excellent Sunday morning programme to seven o'clock in the evening and put it in the hands of a bunch of unknown (albeit likeable) juniors?
Sunday morning has always been the right time to discuss cows contracting consumption, badgers being culled and pigs being de-knackered.
I can do without it over my dinner, thanks.
Last of the Summer Wine (BBC1). And is that the same ...king genius who moved this new series from its traditional seven o'clock on a Sunday evening spot to six o'clock so that old guys like me miss the first episode because six o'clock is the traditional time for not-much-with-Aled?
Yes I do buy a television guide.
A very expensive one.
But I should not need to consult a television guide for some programmes: some programmes should be sacrosanct.
If you can't see that, you ...king genius, you're a ...king plank!
SOCCER.
The F.A. Cup. (Semi-final) I woke the cat Shadow and told him that Everton had despatched Man.United on a penalty shoot-out.
"I suppose Man.U. fielded a weak side," he said.
"Don't think it was their full first team," I replied, "How did you know?"
"Just seemed likely. They're in line to win almost everything but they want their best players fit to go for the most prestigious things. National trophies are no longer that important."
"I think that's sad," I mused. "What do you think? "
"I think it's called progress, mate," he said.
HOME.
When is a mess not a mess? A little pile of clean nightwear sat on the first stair leading to Jess's top floor bedroom.
After she had retired to bed it was still there.
In the morning when her grandmother tackled her about it she laughingly admitted to having felt too lazy to move it.
I gave her an old-fashioned look.
"Well I hope you will," I admonished her. "I don't want that mess there forever."
"It's not a mess, Pops," she replied sweetly. "It's creativity."
Collapse (in helpless mirth) of stout party.
Quick revenge. No matter what Boris Johnson actually said, "Revenge is a dish best served cold" would have been by far the most appropriate comment he could have made as, carefully denying a witch-hunt, he hurried to announce the resignation of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick and the appointment of his counter-terrorism successor.
A.C. Quick was clearly careless not to have considered the shits with cameras before he climbed from a car carrying undisguised secret material for all to see. It was a dream come true for the thin-skinned parliamentary creeps thirsting to be rid of a man who had recently caused them considerable political embarrassment.
In his shoes my deepest regret would be that I once made the mistake of apologizing for something I had said about them.
High-flyers' wives. To the forefront in the media muckrake over Bob Quick's actions was the revelation that his wife ran a luxury car hire firm from their home. Since the firm was not funded by the taxpayer I'm not sure how discreditable this was supposed to be.
It did remind me, though, that not only has the salary of high-flyers risen hugely over the years but, in local government especially, the partners of high flyers seem to possess a magic password that somehow obtains them a sinecure in social services or suchlike to coincide with their other half's appointment: I presume this little extra to be, like everything in the high flyer's salary deal, an irritating but inevitable consequence of letting public servants take themselves too seriously and our money too easily.
The maxim "if you pay peanuts you get monkeys" cuts no ice with me: so far as I'm concerned, if you up the ante you just get greedy monkeys.
Another playground squabble. And another pointless apology. Yep, this time from the jaw-dropping Scot, no less.
In his begrudging apology Gordon Brown accepted responsibility for the shameful scheme (see crocodile tears) to slate Tories on the internet and, in the same breath, said that was why the person responsible had been removed from office.
So McBride minor has been sent home with a note and another playground squabble has been settled. Hurrah!
Enter the mealy-mouthpiece. This morning a high ranking police spokesman firmly defended their policing of demonstrations.
Well, no matter how wrong an organization may be it will always find a mealy-moutnpiece to insist that it is right. This one is defending kettling and talking of how lucky the protesters in this country are (compared, presumably, to China). It appears not to have dawned on him and his colleagues that even the most peaceful protester is going to become infuriated at being roughhoused by unidentifiable thugs in uniform.
Last week a totally innocent man was killed. He was attacked in full view of millions watching television, His attacker was clearly a former school bully who had found his calling as a riot policeman and was now a baton-happy bastard.
No mealy-mouthpiece can talk that away. There have been too many instances of official bullying since the crushing of the miners.
Now there is modern technology. No good just switching off the CCTV cameras and hiding your faces. Thousands of citizens have mobile photographic recording devices.
You too, officer bully boy, are being watched,
TELEVISION.
A Question of Genius (BBC2). Yet another general knowledge quiz. This is presented by Kirsty Wark.
The questions are difficult and the prize money is poor: it is the good old Beeb at its parsimonious best and it concludes with Kirsty badgering the last person standing with questions about what their final answer may be, appearing to squeeze the answer from them against their will and then waiting...waiting...waiting...waiting to say whether or not they have answered correctly.
By the time she tells them I have usually gone to make a cup of tea: one of these days a finalist will keel over: but it's good tele, innit?
No, it bloody isn't.
It is boring and patronizing to competitor and viewer alike.
Newsnight Review (BBC 2). When Kirsty Wark originally presented this programme Tom Paulin and Germaine Greer were regular panellists.
Never know who is going to be on it now.
Last Friday night Ian Hislop and Michael Portillo gently crossed swords. There was also a pleasant young woman, Clemency Burton-Hill, who did her best to prevent open warfare.
Kirsty appeared not to notice the atmosphere of mutual dislike enveloping the two men. Well, she has experienced it all before, Greer and Paulin didn't always hit it off, either.
I made Hislop a points winner, but that may be because I have never liked Portillo.
Britain's Got Talent (ITV1). The success of Susan Boyle. Amateur talent nights stopped being my idea of entertainment way back in the days when Hughie Green, exuding smarminess, presented Opportunity Knocks.
His show, like this modern version of it, did find the occasional gem (e.g. Pam Ayres and Les Dawson) but relied in the main on a stream of sadly talentless hopefuls who should never have listened to the blandishments of relatives and pub mates before venturing into the lions' den.
I tend to think in terms of the gormless being judged by the giftless.
One should never be too dismissive, however.
Yesterday daughter Roz and granddaughter Jess drew our attention, via YouTube, to Susan Boyle, a Scottish spinster who sang her way to a standing ovation on the first round of the third series of Britain's Got Talent.
Much has been made of her homely appearance and, though she has the voice, she is certainly no Ruthie Henshall.
But I am old enough to remember when you judged singers by their voices, not their looks.
Anyway, Ms. Boyle instantly became a worlwide success: and she's a cat lover.
Good luck to her.
Primeval (ITV1). Mention of Ruthie Henshall reminded me that Douglas Henshall (no relation so far as I know) has left this crazy Saturday night caper where prehistoric creatures as big as houses visit shopping malls and eat the occasional shopper without attracting public attention.
Like Bill Petersen in CIS, ol' Dougie is sadly missed: which is more than can be said for the assembly line of monster fodder not even remembered for their terrified screams.
Comes as no surprise to me.
The British public expects anything to happen in shopping malls.
When daughter Jac lived in Wandsworth she was firmly convinced that mothers only took their children to the Arndale Centre to smack them.
She did not hang around there.
Once, as she was striding through on her way to Sainsbury, a man with a clipboard stepped out and said: "Excuse me madam, have you had an accident in the last three years?"
"No," she replied, without pausing in her stride, "I always walk like this."
Countryfile (BBC1). Come on then. Own up. Which ...king genius thought it a good idea to downsize dear ol' John Craven, move his excellent Sunday morning programme to seven o'clock in the evening and put it in the hands of a bunch of unknown (albeit likeable) juniors?
Sunday morning has always been the right time to discuss cows contracting consumption, badgers being culled and pigs being de-knackered.
I can do without it over my dinner, thanks.
Last of the Summer Wine (BBC1). And is that the same ...king genius who moved this new series from its traditional seven o'clock on a Sunday evening spot to six o'clock so that old guys like me miss the first episode because six o'clock is the traditional time for not-much-with-Aled?
Yes I do buy a television guide.
A very expensive one.
But I should not need to consult a television guide for some programmes: some programmes should be sacrosanct.
If you can't see that, you ...king genius, you're a ...king plank!
SOCCER.
The F.A. Cup. (Semi-final) I woke the cat Shadow and told him that Everton had despatched Man.United on a penalty shoot-out.
"I suppose Man.U. fielded a weak side," he said.
"Don't think it was their full first team," I replied, "How did you know?"
"Just seemed likely. They're in line to win almost everything but they want their best players fit to go for the most prestigious things. National trophies are no longer that important."
"I think that's sad," I mused. "What do you think? "
"I think it's called progress, mate," he said.
HOME.
When is a mess not a mess? A little pile of clean nightwear sat on the first stair leading to Jess's top floor bedroom.
After she had retired to bed it was still there.
In the morning when her grandmother tackled her about it she laughingly admitted to having felt too lazy to move it.
I gave her an old-fashioned look.
"Well I hope you will," I admonished her. "I don't want that mess there forever."
"It's not a mess, Pops," she replied sweetly. "It's creativity."
Collapse (in helpless mirth) of stout party.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
122. From cat chat to Fen country
HOME.
More cat chat.The cat Shadow was to all intents asleep in the chair beside me when of a sudden he asked: "Why d'you keep tippety-tappin' on that computer keyboard?"
At first I thought the gentle rattle of the keys must have irked him, but he did not sound querulous and he has never complained before.
I had to think on my seat.
"It keeps me off the streets."
He yawned.
"Whatever. You'll not change anything. All the television programmes you detest have gained in popularity since you started decrying them."
I sensed an unwinnable conversation coming on and tried to head him off.
"Why do governments keep effiin' about with the time?" I grumbled. "Every six months we have to put an hour on the clock, or take off an hour; my body clock takes ages to re-adjust."
He made it clear that he was not to be distracted.
"Truth is, mate, when it comes to tele you're swimming against the popular tide. People love all that phone in and join in stuff. They feel involved: like it's their television."
I snorted. Sod the popular tide. Today's loved is tomorrow's loathed.
"There's still too much cookery, property and reality on the box," I said. "Too many auctions and phone-ins and long...long waits for some smarmy git to reveal who will or won't be back next week. And there's far too many masochists just waiting to let a cretinous cook curse them or a mouthy little millionaire in need of a shave tell them they're fired. I don't care how popular it all is, it's crap."
"Well that's stymied your chances of appearing in anybody's kitchen or on The Apprentice," he mused. "Speaking as your personal adviser I must warn that you're running out of options."
"Just don't volunteer me for Big Brother or anything to do with Ant and Dec," I said.
He blinked his cat smile.
"How about Lloyd and Webber?"
A long twenty years. It has recently been reported that a third of army families are discontented with the accommodation allocated to them.
A MoD spokesman says it will take twenty years to upgrade the offending homes.
But military families were making similar complaints, to my knowledge, when I joined the army in 1945.
Rather a long twenty years that.
TELEVISION.
Live International Football (ITV1). Shadow's Soccer: he woke up ten minutes after the England v. Ukraine game ended.
"England won 2 -1," I told him. "They weren't bad in the first half but struggled a bit in the second. Barry and Johnson and Becks were yellow carded."
My Leader's customary subsequent engagement having kept her from the game, he had enjoyed the comfort of her chair for the evening.
Now he dropped down and stretched.
"Time for supper, ain't it?" he enquired.
I struggled to my feet.
"Sometimes I wonder what your last servant died of. And how come you were awake right through the Slovakia game and slept right through this one?"
"Don't be a blonde," he said. "The Slovakia game was a good one. Try to remember the last time England played two good games in a row."
Law & Order: UK (ITV1). In post 120 I expressed uncertainty about this Dick Wolf inspired addition to the many cops and robbers shows already to be seen on our screens. I should have known better.
The likes of Bill Paterson and Harriet Walter are always good value and Bradley Walsh is excellent as senior DS Ronnie Brooks.
With this cast, Law and Order: UK, like the American original, could run and run.
CSI Crime Scene Investigation (Five). Ol' Bill Petersen, wearing a silly hat and an uncomplimentary beard, took off to find the love of his life in Pategonia or somewhere.
His departure left a huge empty space that not even the imperturbable Laurence Fishburne has so far managed to fill.
Robin Hood (BBC1) and Primeval (ITV1). Two new series for Saturday night viewing. Watched them. Look foward to the return of Merlin.
READING.
Kathy Reichs. I should by now have finished reading her death du jour and probably would have had I not become sidetracked by re-reading Edmund Crispin's Fen Country: twenty six stories featuring Gervaise Fen. The first detective story omnibus I owned contained The Moving Toyshop by Crispin, and I very much enjoyed it. Fen Country has merely served as a reminder that short story writing is difficult and dates quickly.
Must get back to Ms.Reichs.
More cat chat.The cat Shadow was to all intents asleep in the chair beside me when of a sudden he asked: "Why d'you keep tippety-tappin' on that computer keyboard?"
At first I thought the gentle rattle of the keys must have irked him, but he did not sound querulous and he has never complained before.
I had to think on my seat.
"It keeps me off the streets."
He yawned.
"Whatever. You'll not change anything. All the television programmes you detest have gained in popularity since you started decrying them."
I sensed an unwinnable conversation coming on and tried to head him off.
"Why do governments keep effiin' about with the time?" I grumbled. "Every six months we have to put an hour on the clock, or take off an hour; my body clock takes ages to re-adjust."
He made it clear that he was not to be distracted.
"Truth is, mate, when it comes to tele you're swimming against the popular tide. People love all that phone in and join in stuff. They feel involved: like it's their television."
I snorted. Sod the popular tide. Today's loved is tomorrow's loathed.
"There's still too much cookery, property and reality on the box," I said. "Too many auctions and phone-ins and long...long waits for some smarmy git to reveal who will or won't be back next week. And there's far too many masochists just waiting to let a cretinous cook curse them or a mouthy little millionaire in need of a shave tell them they're fired. I don't care how popular it all is, it's crap."
"Well that's stymied your chances of appearing in anybody's kitchen or on The Apprentice," he mused. "Speaking as your personal adviser I must warn that you're running out of options."
"Just don't volunteer me for Big Brother or anything to do with Ant and Dec," I said.
He blinked his cat smile.
"How about Lloyd and Webber?"
A long twenty years. It has recently been reported that a third of army families are discontented with the accommodation allocated to them.
A MoD spokesman says it will take twenty years to upgrade the offending homes.
But military families were making similar complaints, to my knowledge, when I joined the army in 1945.
Rather a long twenty years that.
TELEVISION.
Live International Football (ITV1). Shadow's Soccer: he woke up ten minutes after the England v. Ukraine game ended.
"England won 2 -1," I told him. "They weren't bad in the first half but struggled a bit in the second. Barry and Johnson and Becks were yellow carded."
My Leader's customary subsequent engagement having kept her from the game, he had enjoyed the comfort of her chair for the evening.
Now he dropped down and stretched.
"Time for supper, ain't it?" he enquired.
I struggled to my feet.
"Sometimes I wonder what your last servant died of. And how come you were awake right through the Slovakia game and slept right through this one?"
"Don't be a blonde," he said. "The Slovakia game was a good one. Try to remember the last time England played two good games in a row."
Law & Order: UK (ITV1). In post 120 I expressed uncertainty about this Dick Wolf inspired addition to the many cops and robbers shows already to be seen on our screens. I should have known better.
The likes of Bill Paterson and Harriet Walter are always good value and Bradley Walsh is excellent as senior DS Ronnie Brooks.
With this cast, Law and Order: UK, like the American original, could run and run.
CSI Crime Scene Investigation (Five). Ol' Bill Petersen, wearing a silly hat and an uncomplimentary beard, took off to find the love of his life in Pategonia or somewhere.
His departure left a huge empty space that not even the imperturbable Laurence Fishburne has so far managed to fill.
Robin Hood (BBC1) and Primeval (ITV1). Two new series for Saturday night viewing. Watched them. Look foward to the return of Merlin.
READING.
Kathy Reichs. I should by now have finished reading her death du jour and probably would have had I not become sidetracked by re-reading Edmund Crispin's Fen Country: twenty six stories featuring Gervaise Fen. The first detective story omnibus I owned contained The Moving Toyshop by Crispin, and I very much enjoyed it. Fen Country has merely served as a reminder that short story writing is difficult and dates quickly.
Must get back to Ms.Reichs.
Friday, March 20, 2009
121. From red noses to a man's cough
TELEVISION.
QI. This programme provided a red letter day for Alan Davies who actually managed to win.
I put it down to the company he was keeping.
Faced with clever Emma Thompson, clever David Mitchell and clever John Sessions, he abandoned his customary habit of jumping in with the obvious - invariably incorrect - answer and simply left it to whichever of them felt lucky.
When they did, they weren't, he was: clever Alan.
Comic Relief: Funny for Money. In The Independent last week Janet Street-Porter saw red over red noses.
Under the heading I'll be relieved when this charade ends she wrote that she was not impressed with entertainers who "bravely take a few days out of their busy schedule to visit Africa and be photographed with grateful orphans" and declared that "the whole ego trip of such exercises is thoroughly nauseating."
My concern was less with the motives of the entertainers than with the accuracy of the title. With the exception of the French, Saunders, Lumley Mama Mia and the climax of Corden's pep talk I thought 'funny for money' was stretching it a bit.
Occasionally funny...slightly funny...downright unfunny...or even relying on your charitable goodwill to accept as funny...would have been more accurate descriptions.
Truth to tell, much of the show is self-indulgent twaddle.
If you think I'm an old curmudgeon, you're leaning on an open door.
I also have qualms about the obsequious claptrap presented at Royal Command shows: generally finish up thinking this shouldn't befall a bloody politician, let alone H.M. Queen Elizabeth II (an elderly woman who has done me no harm).
Small wonder she turns out less and less nowadays.
I wouldn't bother at all.
Lark Rise to Candleford. Series two finished last Sunday. Twelve episodes and farewell to ruraltania until next year.
I shall miss it, but there comes a time when the mar-ing and par-ing has to stop. Anyway, I'm pleased that Dorcas Lane, played by Julia Sawalha (my one weakness) has acquired a little man. Suits her. Shall worry slightly about the abandoned hotel, though. Won't it get terribly damp and musty while James Dowland is away seeking another fortune?
He's such a twirp. I knew he shouldn't have given everything to that female former partner.
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The first of a new six part series and I enjoyed it.
My Leader was uncertain and gave it a miss; she has not said why, but one senses that she, in common with the respected television critic Tom Sutcliffe, is concerned that its naivety may be a trifle condescending and doubts it will stand the test of time. I just sat back and allowed the believable Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose, as Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, to free me for an hour from the customary African output.
It's not that I don't care, it is that I feel there is more to the country than prey being killed by beasts of prey and humans being killed by disease, neglect and political corruption. The lady detectives are no more fanciful than Crabbe's Pie in the Sky and Africa is clearly a fascinating place, so I shall accept No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in the same lighthearted spirit that it is offered.
Life's too short...
READING.
Kathy Reichs. I have started on death du jour and get the feeling one needs to be a forensic anthropologist to properly appreciate it.
Ne'er mind, I'll keep reading. After all, I never miss a CSI.
HOME.
Moving on.Two of my Leader's sisters, widows in their eighties, have recently had to move from their houses. One has gone into a care home and the other to sheltered accommodation. The upheaval experienced by the elderly when this happens is equalled only by the strain visited upon those charged with making the change as easy as possible for them. There is invariably a mountain of surplus-to-requirements belongings to be sorted and disposed of (much of it of nostalgic value and mysteriously required at a later date) and there is often property to be sold and legal things like Power of Attorney to be considered involving solicitors and estate agents and pretty much everyone else with a licence to print money.
Then finally, when all is done and dusted and the bills have been paid, the recriminations start to come from those who now feel they have been unnecessarily deprived of their independence and have consequently become denizens of God's waiting room.
As the youngest of six (originally eight) sisters, my Leader's help is usually sought whenever there is a family crisis. This is both flattering and very tiring. This week she has been involved with moving her oldest sister who lives on the Island. Next week she will be on the mainland, helping deal with the aftermath of the other sister's move. I don't think there will be much negative output from either of them. Well, not in Maureen's direction there won't. She may be the youngest but she is the one who most resembles their late mother.
Funny the effect that can have.
Anonymous John. News from friend Sheila (via my Leader) that our old friend Anonymous John is labouring with the dreaded man's cough. (I know that one, it's much worse than the discreet hack into a handkerchief cough suffered by secretary girls with shorthand notebooks on their knees.)
It's no joke to you, John, so keep warm, take such medicine as you are allowed, and get back to fighting fit very soon.
QI. This programme provided a red letter day for Alan Davies who actually managed to win.
I put it down to the company he was keeping.
Faced with clever Emma Thompson, clever David Mitchell and clever John Sessions, he abandoned his customary habit of jumping in with the obvious - invariably incorrect - answer and simply left it to whichever of them felt lucky.
When they did, they weren't, he was: clever Alan.
Comic Relief: Funny for Money. In The Independent last week Janet Street-Porter saw red over red noses.
Under the heading I'll be relieved when this charade ends she wrote that she was not impressed with entertainers who "bravely take a few days out of their busy schedule to visit Africa and be photographed with grateful orphans" and declared that "the whole ego trip of such exercises is thoroughly nauseating."
My concern was less with the motives of the entertainers than with the accuracy of the title. With the exception of the French, Saunders, Lumley Mama Mia and the climax of Corden's pep talk I thought 'funny for money' was stretching it a bit.
Occasionally funny...slightly funny...downright unfunny...or even relying on your charitable goodwill to accept as funny...would have been more accurate descriptions.
Truth to tell, much of the show is self-indulgent twaddle.
If you think I'm an old curmudgeon, you're leaning on an open door.
I also have qualms about the obsequious claptrap presented at Royal Command shows: generally finish up thinking this shouldn't befall a bloody politician, let alone H.M. Queen Elizabeth II (an elderly woman who has done me no harm).
Small wonder she turns out less and less nowadays.
I wouldn't bother at all.
Lark Rise to Candleford. Series two finished last Sunday. Twelve episodes and farewell to ruraltania until next year.
I shall miss it, but there comes a time when the mar-ing and par-ing has to stop. Anyway, I'm pleased that Dorcas Lane, played by Julia Sawalha (my one weakness) has acquired a little man. Suits her. Shall worry slightly about the abandoned hotel, though. Won't it get terribly damp and musty while James Dowland is away seeking another fortune?
He's such a twirp. I knew he shouldn't have given everything to that female former partner.
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The first of a new six part series and I enjoyed it.
My Leader was uncertain and gave it a miss; she has not said why, but one senses that she, in common with the respected television critic Tom Sutcliffe, is concerned that its naivety may be a trifle condescending and doubts it will stand the test of time. I just sat back and allowed the believable Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose, as Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, to free me for an hour from the customary African output.
It's not that I don't care, it is that I feel there is more to the country than prey being killed by beasts of prey and humans being killed by disease, neglect and political corruption. The lady detectives are no more fanciful than Crabbe's Pie in the Sky and Africa is clearly a fascinating place, so I shall accept No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in the same lighthearted spirit that it is offered.
Life's too short...
READING.
Kathy Reichs. I have started on death du jour and get the feeling one needs to be a forensic anthropologist to properly appreciate it.
Ne'er mind, I'll keep reading. After all, I never miss a CSI.
HOME.
Moving on.Two of my Leader's sisters, widows in their eighties, have recently had to move from their houses. One has gone into a care home and the other to sheltered accommodation. The upheaval experienced by the elderly when this happens is equalled only by the strain visited upon those charged with making the change as easy as possible for them. There is invariably a mountain of surplus-to-requirements belongings to be sorted and disposed of (much of it of nostalgic value and mysteriously required at a later date) and there is often property to be sold and legal things like Power of Attorney to be considered involving solicitors and estate agents and pretty much everyone else with a licence to print money.
Then finally, when all is done and dusted and the bills have been paid, the recriminations start to come from those who now feel they have been unnecessarily deprived of their independence and have consequently become denizens of God's waiting room.
As the youngest of six (originally eight) sisters, my Leader's help is usually sought whenever there is a family crisis. This is both flattering and very tiring. This week she has been involved with moving her oldest sister who lives on the Island. Next week she will be on the mainland, helping deal with the aftermath of the other sister's move. I don't think there will be much negative output from either of them. Well, not in Maureen's direction there won't. She may be the youngest but she is the one who most resembles their late mother.
Funny the effect that can have.
Anonymous John. News from friend Sheila (via my Leader) that our old friend Anonymous John is labouring with the dreaded man's cough. (I know that one, it's much worse than the discreet hack into a handkerchief cough suffered by secretary girls with shorthand notebooks on their knees.)
It's no joke to you, John, so keep warm, take such medicine as you are allowed, and get back to fighting fit very soon.
Friday, March 06, 2009
120. Billy,Feds,Julie,Tom,Alan,Sigourney & Catgut.
TELEVISION.Billy Connolly: Journey to the Edge of the World. (ITV1)
We have thoroughly enjoyed Billy Connolly's journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Northwest Passage. Wonderful scenery, fascinating people along the way and a lively, sympathetic commentary from ol' Bill.
You either like him or you don't. We do.
Those who don't should shelve their prejudice: this is too good to miss.
US Cop Shows.
The more I see of Dexter, and many another US cop show, the more convinced I become that we should not, under any circumstances, introduce the equivalent of the FBI into this country.
It alarms me slightly that we are now producing a British television version of Law and Order. I do hope it is not the thin end of the wedge.
Thames Valley tossers and public school wallies in wigs are bad enough, but at least they are our tossers and wallies.
BOOKS.
Julie Walters.
I finished That's Another Story, the autobiography with a faint feeling of déjà vu.
Fine actress, many acclaimed performances in the theatre: Mrs. Overall of Acorn Antiques on television and that marvellous old waitress serving - and corpsing - Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston in Victoria Woods' Two Soups sketch: Rita in the film Educating Rita, dance teacher to Billy Elliot, Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter films: awards galore.
But the more successful the acting becomes the less time there is for anything else. This, along with a desire to maintain a private life, must be a common problem for popular actors seeking to avoid unwelcome attention and prying eyes.
Trouble is, the desire for privacy, no matter how understandable, does not make for a gripping read and at times I had the feeling, just as I did when reading Angela Lansbury's biography, that I might as well be reading the Wiki entry.
Never mind, she says she enjoyed writing it so who am I to carp?
What? Criticise Mrs. Weasley? Never!
FILMS.
Mission Impossible Three.
I like Tom Cruise but I didn't much like this film.
Well, even an all action thriller has to be a bit sensible: Ethan Hunt (Tom) would have killed off Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian as soon as it became obvious that nothing was to be gained from him but personal threats.
Everybody (not least ol' Tom) would then have been spared the tedium of Ethan sprinting everywhere like a leftover character from Chariots of Fire.
Snow Cake.
Starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver, this gentle film, shown on BBC2 earlier this year, was described in my copy of The best TV and radio listings you can get! as a tragicomedy.
An unpromising story line dealt with the death of a bright, quirky girl, reluctantly given a lift by Alex (Alan Rickman), who is killed when his stationary car is hit by a lorry. The guilt he feels for his guiltless involvement in the matter is lost on her mother (Sigourney Weaver), a fully functioning autistic woman who sees no point in pointless apology.
For me, the two leading players were enough to sell it and from the outset it was clear that they were were made for their roles.
If you missed it make a note to watch it next time around. Lovely acting from all concerned and a unique take on a small town in Canada.
MUSIC.
At Home.
The cat Shadow is settled in his chair behind me at the other end of the little computer room which my Leader still declines to think of as the study because, at five foot wide by ten foot long, it falls short of study status.
Nigel Kennedy is playing Bruch's Violin Concerto No.1 (a tape on the ancient aiwa) with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Tate.
We are at peace with the world.
I don't know what it is with cats and violins, but our first ever cat would come running from anywhere to join me in listening to the Tchaikovsky.
Shadow is the same.
Try telling them that catgut comes from the intestines of goat, sheep, horse, pig or suchlike creature, but never from a cat.
When they believe they're listening to the innards of an ancestor?
Do come on.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
119. In memory of Rosie Brown
Last week we attended a thanksgiving service for the life of Rosie Brown who has been our daughter Jacqui's closest friend since primary school.Rosie was vivacious company and a joy to everyone who knew her. A practising Christian and highly respected Art Therapist, she exuded impishness, was funny, caring and kind.
She called us Auntie Mo and Uncle Den and we adored her.
The service last Monday was held in a packed St. James' Church, Ryde. Three ministers, including her pastor from Hanwell, conducted the service and people came from near and far; an entire coachload travelled from London.
Everyone who knew her will cherish memories of her uniquely comic outlook. We first experienced it at a childrens' party in our house when she was little more than six or seven. Asked what she was going to do when she grew up she replied, her eyes shining with gentle mischief, "Marry a rich man."
It may not have come true, but it was the answer the question deserved.
Over the years she perfected a glorious lunacy and once turned up as Sir Les Patterson at a send-off 'do' when Jac was going to Australia.
Recently she could be seen sporting a t-shirt inscribed: Jesus loves you but I'm his favourite.
Rosie travelled extensively and for the past several years had been living and working in the London area. Her parents and brother are still resident on the Island and she regularly returned to see them.
On the morning of 2nd February, at around six o'clock, she was found to have died in her sleep.
She was 43.
Rosemarie Jane Brown, Art Therapist and friend;
born Isle of Wight 17.06.1965; died London 02.02,2009
For further tributes see GonetooSoon.org
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
118. From Simon's Cat to yet more apologies
BRAINCHILD OF SIMON TOFIELD.
Simon's Cat.
Praise be for friends who can put you right. The cat Shadow was a trifle disappointed but agreed that he neither could nor should take credit for being the inspiration behind the moggy shown under the heading Wake Up in my post of January 15.
Our favourite hairdresser and good pal Maxine pointed out that the cat in the animated cartoon is Simon's Cat, the creation of London animator Simon Tofield (Tandem Films). The cartoon is called Cat Man Do and is one of a hilarious series, the others being Let Me In, TV Dinner and Simon's Sister's Dog: we had only seen Cat Man Do as a forwarded email under the heading Wake Up: no mention was made as to the originator.
So apologies to Mr. Tofield, thanks for a little bunch of great laughs and if anybody reading this is as much in the dark as I was and would like to see the entire series, YouTube is the place to look.
And two Simon Tofield illustrated books are to be published by Canongate, one at the end of this year and one for Christmas 2010.
Make great presents - if you can resist hanging on to them.
A LOAD OF BALLS?
Front Page Stuff.
On the front page of The Independent yesterday was the headline: Cannabis linked to testicular cancer. Seems scientists in the United States have been doing their stuff again.
I'm not a user; don't even like the smell of it; but I can hear cannabis users all over the country shouting: "Bollocks!"
TELEVISION.
Demons. (ITV1)
Philip Glenister with Christian Cooke as Buddy the Vampire Slayer. Passes an hour.
Not Going Out. (BBC1)
Written by and starring Lee Mack.
If you don't like him you can always go out.
The Old Guys. (BBC1)
Roger Lloyd Pack, Clive Swift and Jane Asher. Put years on me.
Unforgiven. (ITV1)
When I occasionally moan that reality crap is taking over television I am in truth pleading for more plays like this gem by Sally Wainwright.
We recorded it and watched all three parts on the same afternoon.
An excellent cast led by Suranne Jones (as Ruth Slater who, after fifteen years in prison for the murder of two policemen, sets out to find her young sister) kept us enthralled from start to finish.
So to hell with your kangaroo cooks and gourmand geezers, I'll settle for more of this, please.
BOOKS.
Julie Walters.
I am about a third of the way through That's Another Story, the autobiography. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson.)
No surprises so far but she has only just left school.
Alan Barrett.
Laugh on the Loo presents Wicked Comedy for the Cistern Chapel. (Marks & Spencer)
Highly recommended to everyone except haemorrhoids sufferers.
FOOTBALL.
Goodbye to Tony Adams.
Have just heard the news that Portsmouth F.C. manager Tony Adams has been sacked.
The team has been abysmal since Harry Redknapp left, to be followed like a cruise missile by striker Jermain Defoe, so the sacking comes as no surprise.
Who best to replace him?
I asked the cat Shadow and he said: "It's Premiership football - at least, until the end of the season it is - so there's probably not a solitary player in the side who was born in Pompey. Who cares who the next manager is?"
I think he's still sulking over ol' Harry.
MORE APOLOGIES.
Bankers.
So now it's a bunch of bankers saying how sorry they are that their avarice and incompetence finally rebounded.
My response can only echo the one I attributed to the cannabis users.
Simon's Cat.
Praise be for friends who can put you right. The cat Shadow was a trifle disappointed but agreed that he neither could nor should take credit for being the inspiration behind the moggy shown under the heading Wake Up in my post of January 15.
Our favourite hairdresser and good pal Maxine pointed out that the cat in the animated cartoon is Simon's Cat, the creation of London animator Simon Tofield (Tandem Films). The cartoon is called Cat Man Do and is one of a hilarious series, the others being Let Me In, TV Dinner and Simon's Sister's Dog: we had only seen Cat Man Do as a forwarded email under the heading Wake Up: no mention was made as to the originator.
So apologies to Mr. Tofield, thanks for a little bunch of great laughs and if anybody reading this is as much in the dark as I was and would like to see the entire series, YouTube is the place to look.
And two Simon Tofield illustrated books are to be published by Canongate, one at the end of this year and one for Christmas 2010.
Make great presents - if you can resist hanging on to them.
A LOAD OF BALLS?
Front Page Stuff.
On the front page of The Independent yesterday was the headline: Cannabis linked to testicular cancer. Seems scientists in the United States have been doing their stuff again.
I'm not a user; don't even like the smell of it; but I can hear cannabis users all over the country shouting: "Bollocks!"
TELEVISION.
Demons. (ITV1)
Philip Glenister with Christian Cooke as Buddy the Vampire Slayer. Passes an hour.
Not Going Out. (BBC1)
Written by and starring Lee Mack.
If you don't like him you can always go out.
The Old Guys. (BBC1)
Roger Lloyd Pack, Clive Swift and Jane Asher. Put years on me.
Unforgiven. (ITV1)
When I occasionally moan that reality crap is taking over television I am in truth pleading for more plays like this gem by Sally Wainwright.
We recorded it and watched all three parts on the same afternoon.
An excellent cast led by Suranne Jones (as Ruth Slater who, after fifteen years in prison for the murder of two policemen, sets out to find her young sister) kept us enthralled from start to finish.
So to hell with your kangaroo cooks and gourmand geezers, I'll settle for more of this, please.
BOOKS.
Julie Walters.
I am about a third of the way through That's Another Story, the autobiography. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson.)
No surprises so far but she has only just left school.
Alan Barrett.
Laugh on the Loo presents Wicked Comedy for the Cistern Chapel. (Marks & Spencer)
Highly recommended to everyone except haemorrhoids sufferers.
FOOTBALL.
Goodbye to Tony Adams.
Have just heard the news that Portsmouth F.C. manager Tony Adams has been sacked.
The team has been abysmal since Harry Redknapp left, to be followed like a cruise missile by striker Jermain Defoe, so the sacking comes as no surprise.
Who best to replace him?
I asked the cat Shadow and he said: "It's Premiership football - at least, until the end of the season it is - so there's probably not a solitary player in the side who was born in Pompey. Who cares who the next manager is?"
I think he's still sulking over ol' Harry.
MORE APOLOGIES.
Bankers.
So now it's a bunch of bankers saying how sorry they are that their avarice and incompetence finally rebounded.
My response can only echo the one I attributed to the cannabis users.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
117. Parky and a line up he might have interviewed
BOOKS.
Michael Parkinson.
I enjoyed Michael Parkinson's autobiography, Parky, in the course of which I discovered that as a boy he loved the cinema - so did I: saw himself as Wilson, the superstar athlete of The Truth About Wilson in The Wizard comic - so did I: for a short time became Hopalong Cassidy, a cowboy played by William Boyd (I was Johnny Mac Brown, the star of Flaming Frontiers.) and that he did not go to a university - neither did I.
After that we part company.
He tells how, despite his best efforts, he was conscripted for national service, conned his way into a commission and, inside two years, was promoted to the rank of captain: I, from the age of fourteen until twenty six, was a regular soldier and was once told by a conscript second lieutenant that I made the word sir sound like an insult.
Nonetheless, by the time I had finished his thoughtful and entertaining book I no longer held the same opinion of ol' Parkinson that I had entertained ever since his hit-back-at-my-detractors television appearance of painful memory.
I remember watching at that time, faintly incredulous, as he slated one after another of his critics - few of them as well-known or popular as he had become - until, midway through, I said: "Christ, something's upset Arkela."
At that point I dismissed him as just another vanity case in a posh suit.
Mistake.
His book shows that he has seldom done anything that is not cricket; that his ambition has always been offset by a gentle self-mockery and that, all things considered, by the time he received his knighthood it was well earned.
I gather he is currently some sort of voice for the old. Good on him.
And If ever I meet him - I'm not holding my breath - I might even manage the sir without making it sound like an insult.
But don't bet on it, Sir Michael.
TELEVISION.
Cash in the Celebrity Attic. (BBC2)
Another follow on. Where the simple Cash in the Attic programme has Gertie and Arthur trying to sell a load of household trash at auction to get the money for an air balloon trip around Milton Keynes - a peaceful enough background entertainment while you read the paper - the show has now been revamped to give celebrities the opportunity to show off their homes and auction off their surplus acquisitions.
They, of course, do it for charity.
I sometimes watch, but only if I have the faintest idea who the celebrity is. I have seen Toyah and Lesley Joseph and, this week, the dancer Wayne Sleep.
Some years ago my Leader and I went to see Wayne in a show at Chichester Festival Theatre. Lorna Luft (every bit the singing equal of her mother and sister) co-starred.
He was a pocket dynamo: unstoppable: magic.
By the time the show was over he was exhausted and so was the audience.
We left the theatre marvelling at how he could put himself through such a tough routine night after night. Anybody who dismisses male ballet dancers as fairies has to be retarded.
His celebrity attic takings went to the Wayne Sleep Foundation which provides scholarships for talented young dancers.
Made me wonder why he has not been given a knighthood.
Could it be a backlash from his friendship with Princess Diana?
Or did somebody simply balk at the idea of newspapers describing him as The Shortest Knight of the Year?
Extreme Dreams (BBC2)
Young Fogle is back with more groups of climb every mountain adventurers keen to prove themselves to themselves and whoever might care to watch them.
The first team really did tackle a mountain: Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.
In the end they didn't reach the summit, but they walked half of uphill South America before getting to the mountain and only narrowly failed to climb it, so they did prove to be a very commendable little bunch of true Brits.
Nice people, too.
The second team also proved to be good'uns. They trekked through mud, muck and rain forest, suffered from heat exhaustion and insect bites, braved the terrain and the elements and still kept a stiff upper lip.
As the Polish ambulance man said to the Indian surgeon, "It makes you proud to be British."
I'm bound to admit that taking a long walk into jeopardy (they always finish up in jeopardy) in order to prove myself is not an undertaking high on my wish list.
And as for being a cameraman... On one of our Ben's jaunts?
No thanks.
Not for all the money in Teleland.
Anyway, it's reality television again.
QI (BBC1)
Perhaps Alan Davies's initial reservations about the transfer from BBC2, doubling of series length and probable change of guests, were groundless.
This, the second of the new twelve part series, was another pleasant programme: guests were Pam Ayres, Sean Lock and Johnny Vegas.
Sean and Johnny quickly developed a smart double act and Pam, nobody's double act, was eventually the winner.
I think ol' Fry was a bit surprised at that.
Well, bless 'im, he wouldn't be the first to be fooled by gentle self-mockery delivered in a regional accent.
Books and covers, ol' lad, books and covers.
Lark Rise to Candleford.(BBC1)
Lovely Julia Sawalha and the rest of ruraltania in the second delicious dose of mar-ing and par-ing.
For all the likeness it bears to reality it might as well be called Lilliput to Blefuscu.
It is outlandish: it is mawkish: it is unbelievable tosh: it is Sunday night fodder... and?
And, so help us, we thoroughly enjoy it.
HOME.
What's New?
On the day after U.S. President Barack Obama was sworn in I left my Leader in the downstairs living room doing the ironing and watching a DVD recording of Come Dine With Me, a reality version of the old sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.
She can iron quickly and competently, watch television and drink tea, all at the same time.
It is a masterclass in the female art of doing more than one thing at a time; even if she does let the tea get cold.
I never learned the trick of quick, efficient ironing (not even in the army) and, as friends know, reality television is anathema to me.
The alternative to the back stabbing dinner party was to watch the two thousandth repeat of Diagnosis Murder starring the world's best ever old bamboo and worst ever cockney accompanied by the entire Van Dyke family.
I stopped watching that at around the forty fourth repeat.
So I came up here with the cat Shadow to stay until I had a request for more tea, or went back down to collect ironed shirts or was given the all clear.
I hammered the computer keyboard and he slept.
What's new, then?
Apart from President Barack Obama?
Not much.
Michael Parkinson.
I enjoyed Michael Parkinson's autobiography, Parky, in the course of which I discovered that as a boy he loved the cinema - so did I: saw himself as Wilson, the superstar athlete of The Truth About Wilson in The Wizard comic - so did I: for a short time became Hopalong Cassidy, a cowboy played by William Boyd (I was Johnny Mac Brown, the star of Flaming Frontiers.) and that he did not go to a university - neither did I.
After that we part company.
He tells how, despite his best efforts, he was conscripted for national service, conned his way into a commission and, inside two years, was promoted to the rank of captain: I, from the age of fourteen until twenty six, was a regular soldier and was once told by a conscript second lieutenant that I made the word sir sound like an insult.
Nonetheless, by the time I had finished his thoughtful and entertaining book I no longer held the same opinion of ol' Parkinson that I had entertained ever since his hit-back-at-my-detractors television appearance of painful memory.
I remember watching at that time, faintly incredulous, as he slated one after another of his critics - few of them as well-known or popular as he had become - until, midway through, I said: "Christ, something's upset Arkela."
At that point I dismissed him as just another vanity case in a posh suit.
Mistake.
His book shows that he has seldom done anything that is not cricket; that his ambition has always been offset by a gentle self-mockery and that, all things considered, by the time he received his knighthood it was well earned.
I gather he is currently some sort of voice for the old. Good on him.
And If ever I meet him - I'm not holding my breath - I might even manage the sir without making it sound like an insult.
But don't bet on it, Sir Michael.
TELEVISION.
Cash in the Celebrity Attic. (BBC2)
Another follow on. Where the simple Cash in the Attic programme has Gertie and Arthur trying to sell a load of household trash at auction to get the money for an air balloon trip around Milton Keynes - a peaceful enough background entertainment while you read the paper - the show has now been revamped to give celebrities the opportunity to show off their homes and auction off their surplus acquisitions.
They, of course, do it for charity.
I sometimes watch, but only if I have the faintest idea who the celebrity is. I have seen Toyah and Lesley Joseph and, this week, the dancer Wayne Sleep.
Some years ago my Leader and I went to see Wayne in a show at Chichester Festival Theatre. Lorna Luft (every bit the singing equal of her mother and sister) co-starred.
He was a pocket dynamo: unstoppable: magic.
By the time the show was over he was exhausted and so was the audience.
We left the theatre marvelling at how he could put himself through such a tough routine night after night. Anybody who dismisses male ballet dancers as fairies has to be retarded.
His celebrity attic takings went to the Wayne Sleep Foundation which provides scholarships for talented young dancers.
Made me wonder why he has not been given a knighthood.
Could it be a backlash from his friendship with Princess Diana?
Or did somebody simply balk at the idea of newspapers describing him as The Shortest Knight of the Year?
Extreme Dreams (BBC2)
Young Fogle is back with more groups of climb every mountain adventurers keen to prove themselves to themselves and whoever might care to watch them.
The first team really did tackle a mountain: Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.
In the end they didn't reach the summit, but they walked half of uphill South America before getting to the mountain and only narrowly failed to climb it, so they did prove to be a very commendable little bunch of true Brits.
Nice people, too.
The second team also proved to be good'uns. They trekked through mud, muck and rain forest, suffered from heat exhaustion and insect bites, braved the terrain and the elements and still kept a stiff upper lip.
As the Polish ambulance man said to the Indian surgeon, "It makes you proud to be British."
I'm bound to admit that taking a long walk into jeopardy (they always finish up in jeopardy) in order to prove myself is not an undertaking high on my wish list.
And as for being a cameraman... On one of our Ben's jaunts?
No thanks.
Not for all the money in Teleland.
Anyway, it's reality television again.
QI (BBC1)
Perhaps Alan Davies's initial reservations about the transfer from BBC2, doubling of series length and probable change of guests, were groundless.
This, the second of the new twelve part series, was another pleasant programme: guests were Pam Ayres, Sean Lock and Johnny Vegas.
Sean and Johnny quickly developed a smart double act and Pam, nobody's double act, was eventually the winner.
I think ol' Fry was a bit surprised at that.
Well, bless 'im, he wouldn't be the first to be fooled by gentle self-mockery delivered in a regional accent.
Books and covers, ol' lad, books and covers.
Lark Rise to Candleford.(BBC1)
Lovely Julia Sawalha and the rest of ruraltania in the second delicious dose of mar-ing and par-ing.
For all the likeness it bears to reality it might as well be called Lilliput to Blefuscu.
It is outlandish: it is mawkish: it is unbelievable tosh: it is Sunday night fodder... and?
And, so help us, we thoroughly enjoy it.
HOME.
What's New?
On the day after U.S. President Barack Obama was sworn in I left my Leader in the downstairs living room doing the ironing and watching a DVD recording of Come Dine With Me, a reality version of the old sitcom Love Thy Neighbour.
She can iron quickly and competently, watch television and drink tea, all at the same time.
It is a masterclass in the female art of doing more than one thing at a time; even if she does let the tea get cold.
I never learned the trick of quick, efficient ironing (not even in the army) and, as friends know, reality television is anathema to me.
The alternative to the back stabbing dinner party was to watch the two thousandth repeat of Diagnosis Murder starring the world's best ever old bamboo and worst ever cockney accompanied by the entire Van Dyke family.
I stopped watching that at around the forty fourth repeat.
So I came up here with the cat Shadow to stay until I had a request for more tea, or went back down to collect ironed shirts or was given the all clear.
I hammered the computer keyboard and he slept.
What's new, then?
Apart from President Barack Obama?
Not much.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
116. New stuff on the box
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (Series 9).
Here we go again. Dear, likeable Warrick Brown, played by Gary Dourdan, shot at the end of the last series, breathed his last at the beginning of this.
It was harrowing, beautifully acted by the entire cast, left Grissom saturated with blood that ill-matched the new colour of his hair, beard and moustache and left everyone else close to tears. There are twenty four parts to the series. Don't know about you but we can stand that.
Relocation, Relocation.
I like Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, so I feel a trifle guilty when I find myself saying: "Oh gawd, not that Relo-bloody-cation again!"
Well at least, I tell myself, they occasionally get a couple of their clients to buy something, even if the publicity seeking misfits do drop out as soon as the camera is off them.
Same can't be said for that lovely Pompey girl Amanda-lamba-landa-lamba-Lamb (A Place in the Sun), who I also like. Her alleged property seekers exist only to wander around in the sun, admire Amanda's soon-to-be-a-mum figure and depart with the we-won't-be-buying-now-but-we'll-be-back-in-the-future line that nobody believes, not even them.
I suppose it is a good living for these pleasant presenters. They are dealing with some thoroughly tiresome twits - not to mention estate agents - so there has to be ample compensation.
Trouble is, I don't give a twopenny damn who does or doesn't move, or where to, so long as it's not around here. Too many old buggers have come here to avoid the rat race and succeeded in bringing it with them.
But that's another story.
Ice Road Truckers.
Those supreme lunatics Alex, father of eleven children and seven grandchildren, Hugh, the polar bear, and Rick and Drew, the uncertain finishers, are back.
This time they are driving those thumping great loads over hundreds of miles of frozen ocean. It's a thirteen part series and we shall miss none of it.
WAKE UP!
"Been a quiet start to the year," I remarked to the cat Shadow, more by way of making conversation than anything else.
"Too quiet if you ask me," he replied. "Makes me wonder what shenanigans you're up to when it's this quiet."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," I said loftily.
"Oh yes you do. This time it's that little animated wake-up film. You're hoping to put it on the blog, aren't you."
"I've still no idea what you're talking about," I said, less convincingly.
"Never try to bullshit a bullshitter," he said. "You'll have to tell them it isn't me."
"And you think they'll believe me when I say it isn't you? It's you all over."
He thought for a moment: "Yeah, it is a bit, ain't it," he said smugly.
(Judge for yourself, click here...)
wake-up.wmv
That's a good enough note to finish on.
Here we go again. Dear, likeable Warrick Brown, played by Gary Dourdan, shot at the end of the last series, breathed his last at the beginning of this.
It was harrowing, beautifully acted by the entire cast, left Grissom saturated with blood that ill-matched the new colour of his hair, beard and moustache and left everyone else close to tears. There are twenty four parts to the series. Don't know about you but we can stand that.
Relocation, Relocation.
I like Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, so I feel a trifle guilty when I find myself saying: "Oh gawd, not that Relo-bloody-cation again!"
Well at least, I tell myself, they occasionally get a couple of their clients to buy something, even if the publicity seeking misfits do drop out as soon as the camera is off them.
Same can't be said for that lovely Pompey girl Amanda-lamba-landa-lamba-Lamb (A Place in the Sun), who I also like. Her alleged property seekers exist only to wander around in the sun, admire Amanda's soon-to-be-a-mum figure and depart with the we-won't-be-buying-now-but-we'll-be-back-in-the-future line that nobody believes, not even them.
I suppose it is a good living for these pleasant presenters. They are dealing with some thoroughly tiresome twits - not to mention estate agents - so there has to be ample compensation.
Trouble is, I don't give a twopenny damn who does or doesn't move, or where to, so long as it's not around here. Too many old buggers have come here to avoid the rat race and succeeded in bringing it with them.
But that's another story.
Ice Road Truckers.
Those supreme lunatics Alex, father of eleven children and seven grandchildren, Hugh, the polar bear, and Rick and Drew, the uncertain finishers, are back.
This time they are driving those thumping great loads over hundreds of miles of frozen ocean. It's a thirteen part series and we shall miss none of it.
WAKE UP!
"Been a quiet start to the year," I remarked to the cat Shadow, more by way of making conversation than anything else.
"Too quiet if you ask me," he replied. "Makes me wonder what shenanigans you're up to when it's this quiet."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," I said loftily.
"Oh yes you do. This time it's that little animated wake-up film. You're hoping to put it on the blog, aren't you."
"I've still no idea what you're talking about," I said, less convincingly.
"Never try to bullshit a bullshitter," he said. "You'll have to tell them it isn't me."
"And you think they'll believe me when I say it isn't you? It's you all over."
He thought for a moment: "Yeah, it is a bit, ain't it," he said smugly.
(Judge for yourself, click here...)
wake-up.wmv
That's a good enough note to finish on.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
115. Another Year Gone
LET'S START THE NEW YEAR RIGHT.
Here we are, almost a fortnight into the New Year, seasonal decorations down and packed away, forgotten which classic film repeat we most eagerly avoided over Christmas, kids back to school wearing new outfits and shoes and the cost of it all, if seriously considered, more than enough to have us wheeled into Intensive Care.
As Bing Crosby sang in Holiday Inn: "Let's Start the New Year Right."
BOOKS.
Paul O'Grady.
I have just finished reading Paul O' Grady's autobiography At my mother's knee... and other low joints which surprisingly finishes when he reaches the age of eighteen years: i.e. before he found and lost his famous alter ego Lily Savage.
He was clearly the sort of young man he would find hard to tolerate now.
I know that feeling all too well.
Other than that, a working class background and both being childhood duffers at maths is all we have in common.
I do hope he keeps writing, though.
His story, as you might guess, is full of wry humour and a sensitivity he would probably (vehemently) deny.
Frequently funny and at times very moving. I look forward to the sequel.
Arthur Grump.
No, of course that's not his real name, he'll be keeping his real name under wraps for fear of being traced by Gordon Ramsey or the Gallagher brothers. Arthur Grump may even be a pseudonym for all the contributors to the Grumpy Old Gits programmes on television.
Whatever, his book One Grump or Two had me laughing from first page to last.
Loved it.
Then it dawned: he has appropriated most of my blog material for the next three years.
And been paid for it.
Bastard!
TELEVISION.
The Devil's Whore.
This lively bodice ripper, set in the days of the English Civil War, was a four part C4 series. Andrea Riseborough impressed in the leading role, John Simm was splendid as her most ardent supporter and the story reminded us yet again that all they got when they beheaded the appalling Charles 1 was the even more appalling Oliver Cromwell.
Survivors.
This was a six part BBC1 retake on the series of the seventies.
It starred Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
Ended just before Christmas. Should be back,
Like it or not it demands a follow up.
Midsomer Murders.
This turned up on Christmas Eve, for a change was not a repeat, had Barnaby and Jones being dragged off an unwelcome training execise to investigate an explosion, set the scene for future encounters with one of those infuriating high flyers who grace the top posts on every tele police force and, in case you missed it, will surely be shown again and again.
Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death.
Nick Park again. This was a new one for Christmas Day.
Of course they're great.
But they'll have to watch it.
They're in danger of becoming the replacement for Eric and Ern.
Jonathan Creek.
Good to see Alan Davies back in this barmy but beguiling load of tosh.
As a change from QI it was nice for him to be the winner, too.
I know it was supposed to be a one-off, but I hope another series is in the offing.
Above Suspicion.
This two-parter provided the opportunity for Jason Durr to prove that he is more than just that good looking bloke on the motor bike in Heartbeat. He has (according to Wiki) performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was certainly on his mettle here.
Kelly Reilly and Ciaran Hinds were fine as the duo of typical Lynda La Plante coppers hellbent on bringing him to justice.
The 39 Steps.
Rupert Penry Jones, apparently dispatched to a previous life by the explosion in Spooks, turned up here as the John Buchan hero, Richard Hannay.
Read the book at school.
Have seen the films starring Robert Donat, Kenneth More and Robert Powell.
Don't remember much about it.
Certainly don't remember the spy girl, Perhaps she was a reincarnated spook, too.
Oh, for good measure there was a touch of The Lady Vanishes thrown in.
Anyway, it filled up an hour and a half of prime time tele and hurt nobody.
NEW SERIES.
Dexter. (Series 2.)
More lethal logic from the murderers' murderer, Dexter Morgan.
Sgt. Doakes doesn't find him at all funny and I am still in a bit of a quandary about whether I should.
QI.
Alan Davies is reported to have doubts about whether the move to BBC1 and expansion to a 12 part series is entirely a good thing. Well, he may be the constant loser in this Stephen Fry showcase but he's nobody's fool.
He could be very right.
NCIS. (Series 5)
Hurray! They're back! Yeah, the lot of them: Jethro Gibbs and his acting haircut; lovely Abby; beautiful Ziva; nice guy Timothy; dear old Ducky and trouble magnet Tony who just can't wait to have his head smacked.
That's our Friday nights booked for a while.
AND FINALLY, A LESSON LEARNED (WITHOUT APOLOGY).
Last year we were regularly promised that lessons will be learned or apologies will be made for one thing or another.
The lessons to be learned were invariably lessons that should have been learned long ago.
They weren't then and...guess what...they never will be.
As for apologies, I make no apology for believing they are mostly feeble attempts at avoiding litigation: cynical cop outs.
They are seldom made by those who should be making them.
The real culprits in this world never apologize lest it be construed as a sign of weakness. The real culprits come in a variety of guises to cover their greed, spite and vanity.
They are without exception treacherous, paranoid, power-crazed and surrounded by sycophants. They rush mankind headlong into wars for which there is no reason and from which there is no return. They ignore disease and starvation.
They are national leaders.
Here endeth the lesson.
"And," as Dave Allen used to say. "may your God go with you."
Here we are, almost a fortnight into the New Year, seasonal decorations down and packed away, forgotten which classic film repeat we most eagerly avoided over Christmas, kids back to school wearing new outfits and shoes and the cost of it all, if seriously considered, more than enough to have us wheeled into Intensive Care.
As Bing Crosby sang in Holiday Inn: "Let's Start the New Year Right."
BOOKS.
Paul O'Grady.
I have just finished reading Paul O' Grady's autobiography At my mother's knee... and other low joints which surprisingly finishes when he reaches the age of eighteen years: i.e. before he found and lost his famous alter ego Lily Savage.
He was clearly the sort of young man he would find hard to tolerate now.
I know that feeling all too well.
Other than that, a working class background and both being childhood duffers at maths is all we have in common.
I do hope he keeps writing, though.
His story, as you might guess, is full of wry humour and a sensitivity he would probably (vehemently) deny.
Frequently funny and at times very moving. I look forward to the sequel.
Arthur Grump.
No, of course that's not his real name, he'll be keeping his real name under wraps for fear of being traced by Gordon Ramsey or the Gallagher brothers. Arthur Grump may even be a pseudonym for all the contributors to the Grumpy Old Gits programmes on television.
Whatever, his book One Grump or Two had me laughing from first page to last.
Loved it.
Then it dawned: he has appropriated most of my blog material for the next three years.
And been paid for it.
Bastard!
TELEVISION.
The Devil's Whore.
This lively bodice ripper, set in the days of the English Civil War, was a four part C4 series. Andrea Riseborough impressed in the leading role, John Simm was splendid as her most ardent supporter and the story reminded us yet again that all they got when they beheaded the appalling Charles 1 was the even more appalling Oliver Cromwell.
Survivors.
This was a six part BBC1 retake on the series of the seventies.
It starred Julie Graham and Max Beesley.
Ended just before Christmas. Should be back,
Like it or not it demands a follow up.
Midsomer Murders.
This turned up on Christmas Eve, for a change was not a repeat, had Barnaby and Jones being dragged off an unwelcome training execise to investigate an explosion, set the scene for future encounters with one of those infuriating high flyers who grace the top posts on every tele police force and, in case you missed it, will surely be shown again and again.
Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death.
Nick Park again. This was a new one for Christmas Day.
Of course they're great.
But they'll have to watch it.
They're in danger of becoming the replacement for Eric and Ern.
Jonathan Creek.
Good to see Alan Davies back in this barmy but beguiling load of tosh.
As a change from QI it was nice for him to be the winner, too.
I know it was supposed to be a one-off, but I hope another series is in the offing.
Above Suspicion.
This two-parter provided the opportunity for Jason Durr to prove that he is more than just that good looking bloke on the motor bike in Heartbeat. He has (according to Wiki) performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was certainly on his mettle here.
Kelly Reilly and Ciaran Hinds were fine as the duo of typical Lynda La Plante coppers hellbent on bringing him to justice.
The 39 Steps.
Rupert Penry Jones, apparently dispatched to a previous life by the explosion in Spooks, turned up here as the John Buchan hero, Richard Hannay.
Read the book at school.
Have seen the films starring Robert Donat, Kenneth More and Robert Powell.
Don't remember much about it.
Certainly don't remember the spy girl, Perhaps she was a reincarnated spook, too.
Oh, for good measure there was a touch of The Lady Vanishes thrown in.
Anyway, it filled up an hour and a half of prime time tele and hurt nobody.
NEW SERIES.
Dexter. (Series 2.)
More lethal logic from the murderers' murderer, Dexter Morgan.
Sgt. Doakes doesn't find him at all funny and I am still in a bit of a quandary about whether I should.
QI.
Alan Davies is reported to have doubts about whether the move to BBC1 and expansion to a 12 part series is entirely a good thing. Well, he may be the constant loser in this Stephen Fry showcase but he's nobody's fool.
He could be very right.
NCIS. (Series 5)
Hurray! They're back! Yeah, the lot of them: Jethro Gibbs and his acting haircut; lovely Abby; beautiful Ziva; nice guy Timothy; dear old Ducky and trouble magnet Tony who just can't wait to have his head smacked.
That's our Friday nights booked for a while.
AND FINALLY, A LESSON LEARNED (WITHOUT APOLOGY).
Last year we were regularly promised that lessons will be learned or apologies will be made for one thing or another.
The lessons to be learned were invariably lessons that should have been learned long ago.
They weren't then and...guess what...they never will be.
As for apologies, I make no apology for believing they are mostly feeble attempts at avoiding litigation: cynical cop outs.
They are seldom made by those who should be making them.
The real culprits in this world never apologize lest it be construed as a sign of weakness. The real culprits come in a variety of guises to cover their greed, spite and vanity.
They are without exception treacherous, paranoid, power-crazed and surrounded by sycophants. They rush mankind headlong into wars for which there is no reason and from which there is no return. They ignore disease and starvation.
They are national leaders.
Here endeth the lesson.
"And," as Dave Allen used to say. "may your God go with you."
Monday, December 22, 2008
114. The Seasons Greetings Again!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Yes, it's Christmas again and our little house is alive with goodwill and greetings cards and (mostly Father Christmas) decorations. If you're passing, pop in; if you're not, let me take this opportunity to say
MERRY CHRISTMAS, DEAR FRIENDS, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
READING.
Alan Bennet.
I finished Alan Bennett's Untold Stories with mixed feelings.
Heartened yet faintly saddened best sums it up.
Can't say why.
Greatly respect the man. He impresses as a decent human being. He is well regarded; an intellectual; a talented playwright; a man who has twice been offered a knighthood and who, deep down, probably regrets at least one of his principled decisions to decline it.
My mixed feelings about the book were not helped when a friend enthused that she had read it twice and enjoyed it even more the second time because she had then picked up on things she seemed to have missed earlier.
Once was enough for me.
Don't think I could take all those churches and graveyards and encounters with celebrities a second time around.
Perhaps I'm just too godless.
J.K.Rowling.
Maybe it is the mood of the moment but I finished reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard with mixed feelings, too.
I can, and doubtless shall, read it a second - even third - time.
It's tiny enough.
But somehow I came out of the first encounter wondering whether these little tales served any other purpose than as a collection box for the Children's High Level Group charity.
Doesn't really matter.
It is obviously a very worthwhile charity and it is still the J.K.Rowling who, so far as I am concerned, can walk on water.
I just feel she may have got her feet a little wet this time.
HEALTH.
That magical damn cold.
I have had that damn cold again.
Coughing and oozing and thinking of applying for the number of handkerchiefs I could fill in one day to be added to the Guinness Book of Records.
So how did I come by it this time?
Wasn't difficult.
Grandson Ellis, who carried it around for a few weeks, decided the time had come to pass it on. At the same time he discovered the CD game Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to be played on my computer with me as his assistant.
He simply said: "Expelliarmus!" and my immune system was disarmed.
Cough and cold transference was effortless.
Perhaps I should have said "Specialis Revelio!" to identify the ingredients or enchantments in his potion, but I didn't.
I didn't think to say "Finite Incantatum," which stops any current spells, either.
What? Oh, if it bothers you just look up Harry Potter - Spells: Veritaserum Book 7 on Google.
TELEVISION.
Maigret.
Have been watching the French Maigret, Bruno Cremer: very good in a Rupert Davies sort of way.
Georges Simenon was such a superb writer of detective fiction and to be given the chance to play his main character must be an actor's dream equalled only, I would suspect, with being offered the role of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell was the definitive) or Leslie Charteris's The Saint (George Sanders was never bettered).
Incidentally, Michael Gambon has played both Maigret and Philip Marlowe, but his Marlowe was the Dennis Potter version (Marlow) in The Singing Detective.
European detectives have been the vogue on British television of late starting with:-
Wallander.
A Swedish Maigret character played in a recent three part English tv series by Kenneth Branagh who looked, for the most part, as though he had just woken up and had slept in his clothes.
The unwashed, unshaven, tangle-haired look did quite suit him though.
Henning Mankell wrote the books and proved to be an interesting interviewee in a subsidiary documentary.
Simultaneously the BBC screened two Wallander films from Sweden good enough to make me forget I was reading subtitles. Swedish actor Krister Henriksson was a much less dishevilled version of the detective.
I enjoyed both depictions and will now buy the books which, I have to confess, had so far eluded me: the Swedish representation in my elderly library of thrillers runs to just a couple by Sjowall and Wahloo. Time to correct that.
Time, too, to look for Andrea Camilleri's books about:-
Montalbano.
Inspector Montalbano is a fictional Italian detective based in Sicily.
Played by Luca Zingaretti he swam onto our screens in Excursion To Tindari (BBC4) and immediately established himself as a thoroughly decent Maigret type and worthy bookshelf companion for Wallander.
I really must increase my crime library - though not so loudly as to alert my Leader of my intentions.
There's never enough shelf space for the books we already have!
DANCE.
Strictly Come Dancing.
I nearly gave this a miss. Not the programme (which surely had millions hooked) but writing about it.
You should never read the observations of someone like Carrie Dunn (Organ Grinder Blog) before you do your own thing. She will be way ahead of you.
Not only that...she'll be right. Dreadful girl!
At the risk of losing friends, here is an excerpt from my computer diary of the 20th December:-
In the evening we watched Simply Come Dancing - the final - which was won by an actor called Tom Chambers from the Holby City Hospital programme.
Second, and the better dancer, was singer Rachel Stevens.
Third was model and television presenter Lisa Snowdon (also a better dancer) who lost the viewers' sympathy early on with a tendency to tears which clearly disconcerted her professional partner, the talented but touchy New Zealander Brendan Cole.
So, by whatever means it was fixed, the tossers with telephones finally had their way.
Tom came across as a nice enough lad, though, and his final dance was quite a show stopper.
I just wish ol' Forsyth and the rest of 'em had refrained from comparing him and Camilla Dallerup with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
The artistry of the latter pair will never be matched and they must be pirouetting in their graves!
LAST WORD.
Apologies.
If this year is to be remembered for anything much it will have to be for the number of apologies bandied about, mostly by the police and the BBC, in the (surely mistaken) belief that by saying sorry and admitting you were wrong you will probably be forgiven.
Latest - and hopefully last - grovel this year was at the weekend when Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was required to retract comments he had made that the Conservative Party tried to undermine a Whitehall leaks enquiry.
I know nothing of A,C, Quick's private life. His wife's business affairs are no concern of mine and, since I don't read the office boy press, I shall remain blissfully unaware of them.
But if he says that any politician, of whatever party, is a corrupt rascal, he will be but telling the truth.
There should be no need to apologise for that.
Yes, it's Christmas again and our little house is alive with goodwill and greetings cards and (mostly Father Christmas) decorations. If you're passing, pop in; if you're not, let me take this opportunity to say
MERRY CHRISTMAS, DEAR FRIENDS, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
READING.
Alan Bennet.
I finished Alan Bennett's Untold Stories with mixed feelings.
Heartened yet faintly saddened best sums it up.
Can't say why.
Greatly respect the man. He impresses as a decent human being. He is well regarded; an intellectual; a talented playwright; a man who has twice been offered a knighthood and who, deep down, probably regrets at least one of his principled decisions to decline it.
My mixed feelings about the book were not helped when a friend enthused that she had read it twice and enjoyed it even more the second time because she had then picked up on things she seemed to have missed earlier.
Once was enough for me.
Don't think I could take all those churches and graveyards and encounters with celebrities a second time around.
Perhaps I'm just too godless.
J.K.Rowling.
Maybe it is the mood of the moment but I finished reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard with mixed feelings, too.
I can, and doubtless shall, read it a second - even third - time.
It's tiny enough.
But somehow I came out of the first encounter wondering whether these little tales served any other purpose than as a collection box for the Children's High Level Group charity.
Doesn't really matter.
It is obviously a very worthwhile charity and it is still the J.K.Rowling who, so far as I am concerned, can walk on water.
I just feel she may have got her feet a little wet this time.
HEALTH.
That magical damn cold.
I have had that damn cold again.
Coughing and oozing and thinking of applying for the number of handkerchiefs I could fill in one day to be added to the Guinness Book of Records.
So how did I come by it this time?
Wasn't difficult.
Grandson Ellis, who carried it around for a few weeks, decided the time had come to pass it on. At the same time he discovered the CD game Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to be played on my computer with me as his assistant.
He simply said: "Expelliarmus!" and my immune system was disarmed.
Cough and cold transference was effortless.
Perhaps I should have said "Specialis Revelio!" to identify the ingredients or enchantments in his potion, but I didn't.
I didn't think to say "Finite Incantatum," which stops any current spells, either.
What? Oh, if it bothers you just look up Harry Potter - Spells: Veritaserum Book 7 on Google.
TELEVISION.
Maigret.
Have been watching the French Maigret, Bruno Cremer: very good in a Rupert Davies sort of way.
Georges Simenon was such a superb writer of detective fiction and to be given the chance to play his main character must be an actor's dream equalled only, I would suspect, with being offered the role of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell was the definitive) or Leslie Charteris's The Saint (George Sanders was never bettered).
Incidentally, Michael Gambon has played both Maigret and Philip Marlowe, but his Marlowe was the Dennis Potter version (Marlow) in The Singing Detective.
European detectives have been the vogue on British television of late starting with:-
Wallander.
A Swedish Maigret character played in a recent three part English tv series by Kenneth Branagh who looked, for the most part, as though he had just woken up and had slept in his clothes.
The unwashed, unshaven, tangle-haired look did quite suit him though.
Henning Mankell wrote the books and proved to be an interesting interviewee in a subsidiary documentary.
Simultaneously the BBC screened two Wallander films from Sweden good enough to make me forget I was reading subtitles. Swedish actor Krister Henriksson was a much less dishevilled version of the detective.
I enjoyed both depictions and will now buy the books which, I have to confess, had so far eluded me: the Swedish representation in my elderly library of thrillers runs to just a couple by Sjowall and Wahloo. Time to correct that.
Time, too, to look for Andrea Camilleri's books about:-
Montalbano.
Inspector Montalbano is a fictional Italian detective based in Sicily.
Played by Luca Zingaretti he swam onto our screens in Excursion To Tindari (BBC4) and immediately established himself as a thoroughly decent Maigret type and worthy bookshelf companion for Wallander.
I really must increase my crime library - though not so loudly as to alert my Leader of my intentions.
There's never enough shelf space for the books we already have!
DANCE.
Strictly Come Dancing.
I nearly gave this a miss. Not the programme (which surely had millions hooked) but writing about it.
You should never read the observations of someone like Carrie Dunn (Organ Grinder Blog) before you do your own thing. She will be way ahead of you.
Not only that...she'll be right. Dreadful girl!
At the risk of losing friends, here is an excerpt from my computer diary of the 20th December:-
In the evening we watched Simply Come Dancing - the final - which was won by an actor called Tom Chambers from the Holby City Hospital programme.
Second, and the better dancer, was singer Rachel Stevens.
Third was model and television presenter Lisa Snowdon (also a better dancer) who lost the viewers' sympathy early on with a tendency to tears which clearly disconcerted her professional partner, the talented but touchy New Zealander Brendan Cole.
So, by whatever means it was fixed, the tossers with telephones finally had their way.
Tom came across as a nice enough lad, though, and his final dance was quite a show stopper.
I just wish ol' Forsyth and the rest of 'em had refrained from comparing him and Camilla Dallerup with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
The artistry of the latter pair will never be matched and they must be pirouetting in their graves!
LAST WORD.
Apologies.
If this year is to be remembered for anything much it will have to be for the number of apologies bandied about, mostly by the police and the BBC, in the (surely mistaken) belief that by saying sorry and admitting you were wrong you will probably be forgiven.
Latest - and hopefully last - grovel this year was at the weekend when Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick was required to retract comments he had made that the Conservative Party tried to undermine a Whitehall leaks enquiry.
I know nothing of A,C, Quick's private life. His wife's business affairs are no concern of mine and, since I don't read the office boy press, I shall remain blissfully unaware of them.
But if he says that any politician, of whatever party, is a corrupt rascal, he will be but telling the truth.
There should be no need to apologise for that.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
113. A cute picture and a few words
A-A-A-H!Our friend Jan Bennett forwarded us this Picture of The Year.
Don't know who first sent it or to whom.
And I'm not much of a believer.
But it's a gem, ain't it.
NOVEMBER AGAIN.
Yep! November again. The little front garden and the rear courtyard full of holy leaves from the nearby church, educated leaves from the school opposite and neighbourly leaves from further along the terrace.
Me sweeping, cursing, roundly objecting that I have no trees and fully aware that I am back to my autumn (US: fall) Groundhog Day.
Ah well, there are plently of poor old devils who cannot walk around their garden unaided, let alone sweep it.
I count myself lucky.
MAGIC FOR 75p.
My Leader came across it quite by chance.
It was hanging alone on a peg at the end of a sale line in M & S.
It was a Spiderman helmet/mask which had apparently lost its outfit and it was priced at 75 pence (which I think is currently 1.11 USD).
It was presented to Grandson Ellis (3) who is obtaining wicked enjoyment from it.
We now have Spiderman leaping from behind doors; crawling on his belly across floors which have imaginatively been transformed into the walls of skyscrapers; firing web strands at us from between the first and little fingers of each hand and happily answering to the name Peter Parker.
He has the full outfit - the pyjamas too - but never mind that: best of all he has what he cheerfully refers to as "My hat."
Oh, every now and then he pulls it off to reveal a beaming face and tell us, like LeClair in Allo Allo, "It's me!"
We look suitably surprised. Gosh! It's not Peter Parker!
75 pence worth of magic.
I MISS THIS SOFTLY SPOKEN ASSASSIN.
Some time ago Stephen Fry, who presumably only appeared for the money, explained why he disliked critics and persuaded Paul Merton to consign the outspoken critic and poet Tom Paulin to Room 101.
Even if he heard about it (and doubtless some unwell wisher will have told him) I cannot imagine that Dr.Paulin was unduly concerned.
He has faced far worse.
Since then, though, I have seen him but once on Newsnight Review (BBC2).
I wonder why.
Is he too busy at Oxford?
Has he felt that he must slow down?
Has he been declared persona non grata by some pillock in power at the BBC?
Whatever.
I miss this softly spoken assassin's amiable appearance at eleven o'clock of a Friday night.
His fellow critic Germaine Greer is seldom seen now, either.
Pity.
They could so be relied upon to disagree.
TWO SPECIAL SCORPIOS.
Last week my Leader reached the age of 65 and became entitled to monotonously moan about everybody and everything: forever.
Today our granddaughter Jess is thirteen and entitled to sulk for England for the next six years.
Neither of 'em will do any such thing of course.
Not in our house they won't.
THINGS PEOPLE SEND.
Jokes, pictures and trivia still arrive in my email as the above picture shows.
Most of it is amusing, some of it touching, a little of it irksome.
I am seldom shocked and quite often intrigued.
Try this if you have not already seen it:
Click Here:
Unusual Puzzle
And as the comedian Jimmy Wheeler used to say, "Aye aye, that's your lot!"
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