2 (7) Yet more catching up to do.

WATCHING.

A sort of clock watching.

The trouble with setting oneself time limits (in this case, once a month) to produce a few printed words, is that a sort of clock watching process becomes the norm and invariably culminates in a last minute dash to meet one's needlessly set deadline.

It thus came as some surprise to me last month when I finished Beware saying...a couple of days early and cheerfully published it.

Blame that confounded election. It left...

Yet more catching up to do.

For a start I must send greetings to Anonymous J.A. and say how pleased we were to hear that he and his driveway were well on the mend. Sheila and Mo keep in touch on the ipaddy-touch-type-telephone-thingies, 'tis true, but your occasional blog comment is still very welcome, John.

Then I must say hello to Jac's friend, Zoe Farndon (how long has it been?) and a thanks for your nice little note. The cat Shadow still thinks yours is the only name that rhymes with Barnden – it is if you say it quickly. And Botleigh Grange, eh? What a small world. We've still not met; but one day, who knows? All the very best, Zoe.

READING.

Alex Grecian.

I finished The Yard (Penguin fiction) and it was a damn good read so I went on to the second of the Murder Squad yarns, The Black Country, which was as good, if not better. Mr. Grecian is an American who, occasional slips in dialogue and period apart, clearly has an affinity with Jack The Ripper's England. Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the first ever (and seemingly self-appointed) forensic pathologist, together with his clever daughter, Fiona, and his trustworthy factotum, Henry Mayhew, do the scientific stuff and a fledgling band of Scotland Yard detectives, Inspector Walter Day and Sgt. Nevil Hammersmith prominent among them, do the investigating. The whodunit appears in italics from the outset, so the stories are stronger on action than on plot: but they are high, wide and hansom (cab) page turners: well worth adding to your crime library.
Robert B. Parker.
In Post 2 (5), I pleaded for the return of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe to the crime novel scene.                               Now I have to admit, shamefacedly, that for many years my reading has too often given way to an idle fixation with the television screen. Robert B. Parker's books thus went by unnoticed and he wrote exactly the sort of yarn I thought no longer existed. I have just finished Night Passage, the first Jesse Stone novel (No Exit Press); great stuff if the majority of your boyhood reading consisted of tough detectives and westerns.                                                                               All very American but reassuringly familiar to a Brit who was a fan of the old b/w B pictures where Jerome Cowan was Sam Campbell and Chester Morris was Boston Blackie. Mr. Parker, who also wrote the hard-boiled detective series Spenser, died at his desk in 2010. He was 77. A gilt-edged professional writer. Unusual marriage arrangements. Fascinating. (See Google.) 
Terry Pratchett. 

I conclude this section, appropriately, with a gilt edged British writer. My Leader and I are still laughing over our joint favourite recent read, Mort. (Corgi Books) If you have read Terry Pratchett's work you will probably know the true magic of Discworld. If you have not, what's stopping you? All you need is a sense of humour and the resolve to, for a start, borrow or buy the witches and wizards stories: you'll never regret it. In this one, Mort becomes Death's apprentice. DEATH TALKS LIKE THIS and has a horse called Binky. Mort, a simple lad, whose body “appeared to have been built out of knees” learns more about life from Death than he would ever have learnt from life.

By the time I had finished this tale it was my hope (and I wish this for Sir Terry, too) that when my time does come, Death himself – or a subcontractor who looks startlingly like Mort - might appear beside me and say: TIME TO GO, OLD BOY, TIME TO GO.

And I shall go, smiling, all the way to wherever.

TELEVISION.
Happy Valley.
Sarah Lancashire's portrayal of police sergeant Catherin Cawood, as written by Sally

Wainwright, Last Tango in Halifax/Scott and Bailey etc., 

should see her among the TV award winners next year.

The climax to Happy Valley, where only the tough survived,

was one of the most violently satisfying this peace loving old geezer has seen for years. The story had a beginning, a middle and an end, too. Excellent.

Anyway, I'll watch anything with Sarah Lancashire or Lesley Sharp in it. They play the sort of woman I married fifty two years ago.

Jack Taylor.

If you have watched any of these you will know they are set in Ireland and Iain Glen plays private eye (former garda) Jack Taylor. If you haven't watched it, Jack is a boozer and a womaniser who looks as though he has been pulled through a hedge backwards. He gets beaten up in every episode. His young buddy was shot by a madwoman but, pay negotiations willing, will recover for the next series. Jack has a heart of gold and anyone who likes Iain Glen will like him. I do.

That's about it.

Quirke.
I gather this short series hung about somewhere in the Beeb's
Lost and Reluctantly Found department for nigh on a couple

of years before somebody presumably thought it would be 

better than another bloody cookery show. Well, it is. But only just.The story is set in Ireland where Quirke (Gabriel Byrne) is chief pathologist in the Dublin city Morgue.
Our hero is a boozer and a womaniser and looks as though he

has been dressed by a mortician. He gets beaten up in the first episode. By the end of the series, the love of his life has died, his father is on the critical list and his daughter is thinking of going abroad. Incidentally, he has a heart of gold and anyone who likes Gabriel Byrne will like him. I do.
And that's about that.

Eggheads.
So dear old Daphne Fowler, the smiling assassin, has left

Eggheads. She became a member of the team at its inception in 2003 and has decided, at the age of seventy five, that enough is enough. Good for her. On current form, Chris Hughes (some eight years her junior) should do likewise.

My Leader still follows the programme. I can take it or (mostly) leave it. To my mind, any team that takes on a new boy whose name is preceded with the words “tremendous knowledge” has been well dumbed down. And as I said somewhere way back, now that the entire world knows the weakest head-to-head subject of every egghead, any decent pub quiz team can beat them; and that's doubly sure if Kevin is on the team and cooking is on the question list.

Happy retirement, Daphne. Put your feet up, girl.

Have also been watching...Castle, Coast Australia, Fargo, Game of Thrones, Grimm, Rizzoli and Isles, and Wallander, to name a few. 

I really do need to get out more, don't I?

LAST THOUGHTS.

Daft dress.
Breakfast on BBC1 recently sent reporter Steph to interview fisher folk and a whisky producer at a Scottish port. She and they stood, quayside, to talk. She and they – presumably at the whim of some health and safety fanatic - wore white overall coats and white mesh trilbies. Steph and her fishery interviewee then moved on to the fish storehouse: a vast shed full of fish-filled stalls. People wandered to and fro around and between the stalls, most of them hatless and all dressed in their everyday garb: clearly nobody owned a white overall or a white mesh trilby.
Suddenly our broadcasters looked a bit overdressed.

Later, as is the way with Breakfast, the interviews were

repeated: by that time, Steph and her quayside companions had lost their whiter than white h/s gear and were suitably attired in warm, sensible mufti.

I'd love to have heard what was said in the interim.

AND DEEDS.

Facebook.

My Leader is a regular follower of the Facebook outpourings of family and friends and has spent a considerable time trying to persuade me to look in on their – often very funny – exchanges.

Thus it was that, the other day, I allowed myself, with considerable misgivings, to finally join this popular social network. Mo did the signing up stuff for me. I don't do admin. Haven't done since 1989.

I did fill in my personal page, though. That resulted in me being listed as living in Isle of Wight, Virginia where, it seems, a couple of hundred people were pleased to hear it, over a hundred talked about it and a couple of thousand didn't give a toss. I'll never be able to afford a visit to I.W. Virginia, but I shall take the opportunity to look in at a few nice people's Facebook offerings. Doubt I'll become a very active participant. I do, as I pointed out to nephew Kelvin, have enough writing and washing up to do already. His response was to call me a grumpy old sod; an impudent (albeit accurate) description. So to

The Queen's Birthday Parade.

BBC Television screened the customary Trooping of the Colour at this year's birthday parade for H.M. Queen Elizabeth II (gawdblesserintshewonnerful) who was celebrating one or other of her two birthdays: don't know why she gets two but think it may be the reason she describes herself as “we.”

The Coldstream Guards Trooped the Colour

 and were magnificent. I would be very happy if that, together with ceremonial guard/escort duties were to be their sole task nowadays.

We are not officially at war unless, behind my back, somebody has decided otherwise, so we should not be sending troops to Afghanistan, or anywhere else, at the whim of some inflated politico, be it a Blair, a Cameron, or an American “ally.” Even the most inflexibly martial moron must secretly realise that going gung ho into the Middle East was an appalling mistake and remaining there has been an exercise in life-wasting futility. Our involvement has cost far too much in human misery and appears to have been of benefit only to American oil firms, international arms dealers and the scum who deal in illicit drugs.

Where was I? Oh...yes...the birthday parade was customarily well orchestrated. H.M., sadly, looked less than happy. Prince Philip managed a dutiful wave or so to the cheering crowd. The royal children proved they can still sit on horses and, in timeworn fashion, the family finally adorned the balcony of Buckingham Palace to acknowledge the adoration of that meticulously regimented throng in The Mall.

A flyover of planes, ancient and modern, brought the proceedings to a satisfactory conclusion.

They (and we) are still pretty good at the pomp lark.

I.W. Music Festival 2014.
Last weekend it was Isle of Wight Music Festival time again.

Some of our bunch went to see Red Hot Chili Peppers who were the stars (good, I'm told) on Saturday. Kings of Leon topped the bill on Sunday. The musical cat Shadow heard it all from next door's kitchen roof. (He said he prefers Biffy Clyro.)

My Leader and I didn't go. Well, she drove me past the site on Father's Day, but I think that was just to teach me a lesson. None of it appeals to me. But from outside our front door we were treated to a display of aerobatics by the Red Arrows on the last day. They, like the Guards, were magnificent.

SO TO LAST LAST THOUGHTS.
Scotland with Douglas.

Son Neil and his wife, Pauline, have been on holiday north of 

the border. They have been accompanied by Douglas, a travelling hamster who first joined them in America and now goes everywhere with them. He has taken to Scotland like a caber, has been seen on Facebook in a kilt and a hamoshanter and has been photographed with two Castle Douglas guides.

Don't ask me where such lunacy comes from, but I'll try and get a picture for the next post. 

2 (6) Beware saying without thinking!

WATCHING.

Shadowland again.

“How about making it a hat trick?” suggested the cat Shadow, casually. I ignored him. He's just trying to engineer another cute cat appearance, I thought, and it ain't going to happen.

Ever get the feeling you can't win?

Home improvements.

With considerable assistance, from Roz and Nick, my Leader has set about redecorating the unstately pile. Granddaughter Jess's gloriously shambolic pied-a-terre has become a pristine guest bedroom and the facade has been given sympathetic updating. My contribution has sensibly taken the form of positive encouragement and negative involvement. I'm too old to be a decorator and, truth to tell, never was any good at it. Anyway, by the time they're through I may not know the old place. Intriguing prospect, that.

Beware saying without thinking!

My Leader hurriedly hushed me in Marks and Sparks the other day. She didn't threaten divorce or tell me she'd 'have to let me go' (doesn't anybody ever get 'the sack' or 'their cards' or 'fired' any more?) but she was clearly discombobulated and that's not like her. I was almost hushed.

So what, you may ask, had I done to warrant the application of a hurried hush? Had I loudly broken wind, or belched, or introduced foul language into the sacrosanct world of men's cardies and ladies' undies?

Well...not exactly...but almost; what I'd done, in all innocence, was put into words my preferred colour for a v-neck jumper to go with light brown slacks.

“These primary colours are all well and fine,” I said, “but what I'm really looking for is nigger brown. Don't they do that now?” 

Well, you must forgive me, I have never wittingly insulted a foreign person (of whatever colour) and I was a trifle taken aback at Mo's sudden hushing, let alone the embarrassed air of resignation with which she delivered it. I had, it seems, committed the latest in an ever increasing list of English mortal sins. I had spoken aloud a taboo word and it wasn't brown.

But, you see, right through my childhood and teens in the nineteen thirties and forties, a rich, dark shade of brown was exactly what n-word brown was: I held many skeins of wool in that very colour on my outstretched hands while my mother rolled it into balls for knitting; it was a colour I rather liked and, to the best of my knowledge, neither it nor I hurt a soul.

So, American rednecks and South African bigots apart, what happened to suddenly make the word so unspeakable that it brought the television presenter Jeremy Clarkson – strangely cowed without car - to our screens, begging forgiveness lest he lose his job?

For that matter, what damned silliness prompted the BBC to force the resignation of Radio Devon broadcaster David Lowe (a 'veteran DJ' who some unwell wisher has probably been seeking to remove for years) for playing an ancient version of The Sun Has Got His Hat On which, unbeknown to him, contained said word?

It does sometimes seem that Big Brother is alive and well and buggering about not only with the English language but with everyone born to speak it.

OK, so I will probably never say the offending word aloud again – well, not in public anyway. Nor will my descendants. They've been well advised.

Perversely, though, I do wonder how long it will be before words like yellow and slanted and homely are outlawed because they may offend people of the Orient, or those of even slightly craven disposition, or those with almond - shaped eyes, or those who are not exactly Helen of Troy or Adonis.

Where will it all end?

Who knows? 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise' no longer applies. The PC contingent and educated outsiders expect better of 21st Century Britain than blissful ignorance excused by freedom of speech: given their way the dungeons will be full of free speakers (a few of whom may even remember what colour n-word brown was).

So if, by some weird cosmic miracle, my spirit comes back here at the end of the century, I'll not expect to understand a word anyone says. It won't matter. Nobody will be talking face to face anyway. They'll all be nattering into their mobile phones and secretly doing the dirt on each other for grammatical/political slips of the tongue. 

lol that, eh?

THE DETECTIVES.

When is a detective?

You can't really call Finch and Reese detectives or Person of Interest a murder mystery yarn. If you have ever watched it you will know what I mean and if you have seen any of the last three episodes you will fully understand my contention that it should be retitled Person of Perplexity. Another series over and we must wait until next year to face the bewilderment all over again.

Another series of The Mentalist completed, too. 

Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) finally got it together and that could well have been that. But I gather there will be a final series next year. Pleasant, daft and always watchable.

Hinterland, set in Wales, is very Welsh and, at times, seems very long. In a north country sort of way, pet, the same goes for Vera. Not even Brenda Blethyn can solve that. An hour and a half is about fifteen minutes too long for most cop stuff: in some cases, two hours can be three too many.

Most established American crime dramas are made in series of twenty or more episodes. The current way of dealing with this on British television (apparently unhappy beyond four – or, at best, six – episodes a series) is to lose patience halfway through and start screening episodes two at a time; this is done without warning and, for those smart enough to pre-record (i.e. make sure they can fast forward the adverts), evokes a situation where entire episodes can be missed due to non-planning or because they clash with other plans.

Castle, NCIS, CSI and many others have endured this cavalier treatment after a series or two. Makes you wonder who bought them and why.

LAST BUT BY ALL MEANS LEAST.

That Election.

I never trusted Harold Wilson with his pipe and his Gannex raincoat: I thought he was a total con man. By the same token, I deeply distrusted the insincere grin that was Tony Blair; a man who feathered his own nest all the way from his WMD 'friendship' with George Bush to his hate hate agreement with that humourless careerist Gordon Brown.

Southern Television now tells us that, at the recent EU elections, the Isle of Wight had the biggest UKIP turnaround in the South. So Nigel Farage, a prick with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, has become the man of the moment and the Island, always an area of high unemployment, has taken yet another backward step in its search for a saviour.

Me? I wouldn't buy a used car from the bloke or lend the slightest support to his pure-blood-wizards' party; but I was born in Portsmouth, so over here I'm just another foreigner who took a job that could have been given to an Islander: I kept it for 21 years, too.
Some people have no shame.

Back next month, age and slips of the tongue willing.

2 (5) A precis of sorts.

WATCHING.

A cat at home.

The cat Shadow was so taken by his rooftop picture that he has pestered me for another appearance ever since.

Well, you try telling him he's not a fashion model. 

Another ...king cockup.

This is the genuine last minute flyer. Yesterday I was cheerfully contemplating closing a completed Post 5 when, without warning, the blogspot.doc.odt - Open Office Writer upon which I have thus far recorded all my Part 2 posts, inexplicably jumped to a blank page and the entire preceding scribble was gone. I cannot find it: I know it must be lying in wait somewhere but I have not the slightest idea where. So this hurriedly cobbled together mishmash is the result of – yeah, you've seen the heading - another ...king cockup.
If I ever do suss the way to recover the original I shall publish it, no matter how outdated it may then be. If you, dear reader, have a solution, I can be reached on barndens@talktalk.net and will cheerfully consider it.

(Don't be rude, it doesn't become you.)

I know I could call in Dan the Man again, but he was here no more than a fortnight ago and one lost blog post hardly seems worth wasting his valuable time.

In the meantime, a sort of precis...

254 OBA. 
We attended the Southern Chapter annual reunion at Botleigh Grange Hotel, Hedge End, Southampton.

Most of the regulars were there. We made it despite satnav Hermione who decided to sulk and direct us back to the Royal Pier, Southampton. Ignoring her nonsense cost us an hour and forty-plus minutes of fruitless driving around Hampshire.

When we finally reached the hotel there was an Indian wedding reception on the go. Beautiful bride, handsome groom, brightly coloured turbans, exotic saris, wall-pounding music, Rolls Royce departure car; the lot. Lovely occasion.

Made you proud to be British.

As did the gathering of R. Signals old boys, plus many of their kith and kin, gathered for dinner on Saturday April the 5th. The event was, as usual, organized by Pat and Maureen Soward and presided over by Pat, an excellent Chairman. We thoroughly enjoyed the company and the ambience. Our journey back the following day, with the help of a rejuvenated Hermione, was a doddle. Left the hotel at 10.20am and caught the 11.00am car ferry.

As Our Ernie's dad said: “Daft, I call it.”
WHAT ELSE?
Oh...yes...The Wright Stuff. 
On Monday 7th of April, St. Patrick's Day, columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, there for the week, appeared in a smart green outfit with matching accessories. It later transpired that (for once in her life) she didn't know what day it was. The following Friday – different colour each day – she wore red to herald Sports Relief weekend. Well informed choice, that. 
If I ran The Independent I'd introduce a new fashion page and ask her to edit it. Well, I'm quite brave long range: think brickbats at one hundred yards.

THE DETECTIVES.

The US paranoia persists.

During the second world war we had good reason to produce propaganda films in this country. We were officially at war with Germany, a martial nation, and our national confidence needed regular boosting. In retrospect, most of those wartime films were farcical, low budget and about as believable as snow in the Sahara. But we accepted them without question. Now, without officially being at war with anyone, the Americans are playing the same farcical propaganda game. Watch any US television drama and you will soon find yourself knee-deep in forebodings about the threat from Iraq (usually pronounced Eye-rack), the remainder of the Middle East, Pakistan, China, Russia and anyone whose accent may be hopelessly mangled by a bit part actor. It is all total tosh of course, but the paranoia persists and, I fear, grows. I so prefer detectives who solve whodunnits and get into punch-ups with crooked cops and hoodlums who are not Russian Mafia heavies. 

Come back Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, all is forgiven!

AND SO TO THIS MONTH'S FOOTNOTE.

Anonymous John.

Word reached me that Anonymous John Appleton was very much under the weather and I should have phoned him. But I'm not much of a conversationalist on the phone. So I hope you won't mind me taking this opportunity to wish you (and your driveway) a rapid and complete recovery, John. 

Cheers, old mate.

2 (4). Shadow, Sarah-Jayne and supporting cast.

WATCHING.

Shadowland.

The cat Shadow woke suddenly.

"You didn't publish my poem," he said.

I donned my guileless look. "Poem? What poem?"

"Last month...Loitering around with a poetry look...? He can wait until next month? I can read, y'know.”

“Oops,” I said. “I was in a bit of a hurry.”

“Yeah. Well, you can make up for it this month. I have an equal-gender, next-year's-election, party-political poem.”

“Christ,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said and struck his poetic pose.

“Are you sure about this?” I queried.

“Publish and be damned,” he said. "Here goes..."

Predictable pre-polls prediction.

When an MP comes pubbing and buys you a beer,

And promises you some monstrous favour,

You can bet your sweet life it's election next year

And s/he seriously hopes you'll vote Labour.

When an MP's doorstepping in your part of town

And compliments you on your cat:

You can bet that s/he's hoping to get your name down

As that rare Liberal Democrat.

When an MP appears - just the once - in your pub,

And gives you the Glory Days story;

(Then asks why you don't join the local Con club)

You won't need to ask if s/he's Tory.

But the dedicated xenophobe who makes it quite clear

You should break free from foreigners forthwith,

Is the one, by and large, that you most have to fear;

S/he'll be BNP or UKIP --- and a DIV!

He eyed me quizzically.

I shook my head in a shrug-of-the-shoulders sort of way.

“What?” he said.

“Didn't you say you were off football and politics?”

“When?”

“The last time Pompey got beaten by some back alley town which, in their heyday, they would have driven past without noticing it was there.”

“How are the mighty fallen,” he said.

“Them and a lot of others,” I said. “That apart, I seem to remember you saying football was just an excuse for all the countries we've beaten in wars to get their own back."

“Did I say that? How perspicacious of me. And politics?”

“You went along with our Leader when she decided MPs were all talk and no listen and she would have no further truck with them.”

"It was Dimbleby's Question Time and I was dozing on her lap," he muttered. "I was in no position to disagree."

“So why go all politically poetic now?”

“Well, from now on everything the politicos think or do is going to be geared to next year's election, isn't it? I just thought I'd get in on the act.”

“Now that's prescient,” I said. “That's sagacious.”

He yawned. “Yeah...and if you put them with perspicacious, what have you got?”

I took too long trying to form an unflattering reply.

“Journalese,” he said, and went back to sleep.

2010 revisited.

I'm not very good on names and am slightly apprehensive when it comes to double-barrelled Christian names (a fad based on the dicey assumption that hyphenated monikers are likely to be large, pushy, female and American).

Way back in Watching... I made the mistake of expressing this prejudice and was rightly taken to task by Sarah-Jayne Leverton (not large, not pushy, not American; pleasant, attractive, based in Cornwall) who, I think, was - and for all I know may still be - a copywriter for Clifford James.

At that time I also concluded that opening up my blog to guest writers might turn it into a cost free advertising spot for them. Sheer paranoia, my dears. This is a random monthly blog; not even that posturing little prick Putin would undertake a Crimea on it. Blame such fears on an ingrained tendency to like most people and trust but few.

Anyway, quite by chance, in my documents the other day, I came across the 2010 Rambler blogs we love article, written by Sarah-Jayne, which led to our contretemps. It was a nice little piece, I appreciated it and apologize if I did not say so at the time. Hope she is well and that her business thrives.

As to apologies.

Is an apology a sign of weakness? I don't think so. To my mind, never to apologize is a sign of pig ignorance.

That 'never apologize, it's a sign of weakness' line was originally delivered by the late John Wayne in the film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and has since (presumably in tribute) become a staple of Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in the television series NCIS. I wince whenever I hear it.

That having been said, I wonder how much worse it is than the patently insincere apology delivered nowadays by the spokesperson of whatever authority, business, or country, is deemed to be responsible for some awful wrong done in its name. When it comes down to it, none of them actually cares, do they? Better they said nothing than meant nothing.

End of cynical exposition.

THE DETECTIVES.

Comings and goings.

Person of Interest. Reese (Jim Caveizel) and Finch (Michael Emerson) are back on Channel 5 (Thursdays) for the second half of the current series. Totally daft concept, but we like it.

Likewise, The Mentalist (Simon Baker) is back. He, together with Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and Cho (Tim Kang), has been drafted into the FBI: don't ask. The remainder of the gang are currently wafting around the periphery; they can be seen on Channel 5 on Tuesdays.

Also on Channel 5 (every Saturday) a new detective series

Sheriff Longmire, starring Robert Taylor: not the American one (he would have been over a hundred years old now) but a fine Australian actor who was in The Matrix. If you liked Tom Selleck as Jessie Stone you will like Robert Taylor; they are interchangeable.

The same cannot be said for Inspector De Luca (another new series, this time on BBC4, Saturdays 9pm) and Montalbano, a very different plate of pasta. De Luca is played by an actor new to me, Alessandro Preziosi, and is set in Italy at the time when Mussolini was in power. It is a four part series which, on first showing, does not measure up to its Sicilian counterpart in either performance or location. But I live in hope.

For those suffering from an absence of Nordic noir, BBC1 is currently screening another series of Shetland (Tuesdays) starring the excellent Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez. The cast includes Alison O'Donnell, Steven Robertson and a host of familiar Scottish actors. The stories are as dark as their Scandinavian counterparts and it is good to know that, for some anyway, there is life after Taggart.

Line of Duty: Series 2 was written by Jed Mercurio. It could equally have been written in 1977 by G.F. Newman (Law and Order). There was not one trustworthy or likeable character in it. Great stuff for actors, though. Keeley Hawes et al were splendid.

AND OTHERS.

More comings and goings.

I continue to enjoy The Walking Dead , but have to be in the mood for it. No such reservations with the second series of Mr. Selfridge and the first of The Musketeers, both of which my Leader and I have enjoyed from start to finish.

The same has to be said for David Hare's Worricker trilogy, Page Eight, Turks and Caicos and Salting the Battlefield. Bill Nighy starred in all three as Johnny Worricker, a disenchanted Mi5 officer. If you like him you will have liked it; if you don't...well...

In the meantime, Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman are back with the third series of Rev (Hurray!) and Timothy Spall, playing P.G. Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth, has just completed another series of Blandings (A-a-ah).

Not much wrong with the British acting scene, is there?

FINALLY.

Back on the Isle of Wight.

Nothing ever changes. Not really.

Last year a bunch of local politicians got together here to offer the electorate an alternative to its customary choice of increasingly unpopular Conservatives and Liberals.

The new crowd called themselves Independents. They were, by and large, former Conservatives and Liberals; but the ploy worked and they were voted in.

This year an Independent Remuneration Panel (fuck knows who they are or who elected them) has recommended a hefty rise in the allowances of senior Island councillors. The council has “agreed to accept the recommendations.” 
What a surprise. Their total allowances bill is £471,696 and hundreds of their employees are in line for redundancy.

It's another world, ain't it.

What's more, those confounded clocks have gone on again!

I might recover in April.

2 (3) Those darned detectives.

FIRSTLY: ON THE BOX.

You can't shake them off, can you? Once you've started watching them there's no going back. Well, the chances are they're also watching you. So those discerning souls who kindly keep up with this (more or less) monthly session of scribble may have noticed that The Detectives have sneakily reappeared in the title. They're rife on the box, too. Banks, George Gently, Death in Paradise and True Detective are currently with us; mostly short series, but none the worse for that. NCIS is well into series 11 and may include the demise of Leroy Jethro Gibbs's father, Jackson, played by veteran actor Ralph Waite who died on 13^th February at the age of 85:

he is probably best remembered as the father of John Boy and siblings in The Waltons. 

A new Mentalist series will be starting shortly and there could be more of Lewis and Vera to come. Bring 'em on.

AND IN PRINT.

Robert Galbraith.

Thriller news of the month has to be Robert Galbraith's second Cormoran Strike offering, The Silkworm, which is due out in June. You can read about it on the net.

It seems unlikely that I shall obtain an exclusive interview with the writer, but I do have what I think is a blog first in this exclusive picture of him.

Well, I doubt you'll see it on the book cover.

J.K. Rowling.

The Harry Potter author has apparently said (in a recent interview with Emma Watson) that Hermione Grainger should not have married Ron Weasley. Hermione, she said, should have married Harry.

So what's new? In my experience, very few mothers think their daughter married the right bloke: they seldom think the bloke she will marry after that, or the one after the one after that, will be the right one either. For what it is worth, and that ain't much, I think both Harry and Hermione married well. Harry was orphaned as a baby and Hermione effectively became an orphan when she removed her parents' memories, so the two orphans needed the warmth and security of family life: and where in the wizarding world would they find a better family than the Weasleys? Anyway, Ginny Weasley was never going to get hitched to anybody but Harry – that was clear from the first moment she saw him – and Hermione was far too good a wizard to spend her life in the shadow of 'The Boy who Lived.' They were best mates and needed not invoke 'The Cure for Love' (see Robert Donat's 1949 film).

As for people who were made for each other, surely the most compatible pair to graduate from Hogwarts had to be Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. To my mind, that really would have been a marriage made in Valhalla.

What? No, I don't give a Wrackspurt or Nargle what you think.

Alex Grecian.

Believe I mentioned that daughter Jac bought me three thrillers for Christmas or Dad's Day or suchlike and I had just finished the Rebus one: a good Scottish tourist guide. The other two were by Alex Grecian and I am about halfway through the first of them, The Yard. This is a well written and informed narrative set in Ripper times. I am enjoying it and will get back to you.

LASTLY: THE ODDS AND SODS.

How else to describe The House of Commons?

Refreshing to see, with a Scottish referendum and a national election creeping ever near, that this masterclass in Lord of the Flies antics is being besought to modify its childishness. About bloody time too. But a word in your ear: if you're expecting a drastic change on the part of politicians, don't hold your breath.

AND THAT'S ALL FOR NOW.

Short month, short post. But I believe the cat Shadow is loitering around with a poetry look about him. Ne'er mind. He can wait until next month.

2 (2) Celebrations and suchlike.

LAST SATURDAY.

The 1^st of February was our son Neil's 50th birthday (try saying that without feeling old) and the entire family, together with a goodly selection of friends, met at Pauline and Neil's coach house residence for posh party nosh and a few bevvies. Daughter Roz produced a splendid birthday cake in the shape of a Carmageddon car and the Stainless crew arrived in some force to help see it off: they are a good bunch, even if the "demented Banksy style" birthday present with which they adorned his car (it gave a whole new meaning to the description "car tool kit") did put him at minor odds with the law. 

Anyway, gawd bless coppers with a sense of humour.

Family, friends, workmates and car are all back to pristine normality now. 

I think everybody had a good time.

NEXT SATURDAY.

1,000th edition of i coming up.

Next Saturday the newspaper with the fastest growing circulation of them all, i, will be on news stands for the 1,000^th time. I really did buy the first edition and the lad in the newsagent's really did say: "There's not much in it," and I really did consider the reply: "Well you didn't expect tits for twenty pence, did you?" And that really does seem a very long time ago.

For a while I read The Independent every Monday and i for the rest of the week. This enabled me to take in Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's column and Tom Sutcliffe's TV review: they were both Independent on Monday people.I think Mr. Sutcliffe is now a BBC radio 4 broadcaster, but Yasmin A-B sometimes turns up in i to create bobsy-die (usually with the utmost justification) about something some dickhead (or bunch of dickheads) has or has not said or done. I would hesitate to disagree with her, even from 78 miles away. 

My newsprint reading is now confined to i and The Radio Times. Well, RT still publishes cast lists for films and plays and i still has the former editor, Stefano Hatfield (now editorial director of London Live), contributing an article every Monday that (unlike ol' Fergie since his retirement at Man U) is happy and amiable and cheers me up no end.

I generally end up smiling, too, when the north countryman with a Welsh name, Owen Jones, takes off on one of his left wing outpourings. My grandfather was a proud member of the Bakers' Union and a staunch supporter of the old labour party; my mother's political outlook was red labour and I, at one time, was an active member of two (innocuous) unions simultaneously; so I'm with Owen, even if I do think nearly all politicians, of whatever ilk, are lying rapscallions.

I'm also laughingly with Mark Steel, politely in awe of Andreas Whittam Smith and constantly in accord with Simon Kelner, a damn good journalist.

Current editor Oliver Duff and sub editor Rhodri Jones cannot be other than on the ball. Look at the people who are keeping a (surely benevolent) eye on them.

I have just one question: now that i has become more successful than a critical news industry thought it could ever be, shouldn't it be joined by a Sunday i?

Perhaps one day I will write and suggest it.

DEAR OLD PAL ADVERTS.

It's the start of another year and time to receive the sort of Dear Dennis/Maureen letters that presume we have full pockets and empty heads and will be keen to: (1) test drive the latest model of our (rather elderly) car (2) replace our (now outdated) sewing machine and (3) spend a truly exciting fortnight's holiday on a deep sea fishing trawler in midwinter.

We appreciate that businesses have a living to make and it pays to advertise; we just wish they would show as much concern for the environment as they do to get their unwanted invitations printed and shoved through our letter box. Ah well, better that than...

THOSE GAS AND ELECTRICITY BILLS.

British Gas has just alerted us online to the state of our Gas and Electricity accounts and we are mightily in debt on both of them. Why is this? In common with anybody who can read, or who owns a working television, we are well aware that we have become sitting ducks in the telescopic sights of the nation's privatized profiteers (the last three governments of this country have a helluva lot to answer for) but we have been paying our bills by direct debit for years and find it intolerable and incomprehensible that British Gas could not bother even to guestimate the effect their enormous price hike would have on us (or indeed on anyone who pays by D/D) and advise an adjustment to our monthly payments.

One can only surmise, now, that public utilities - along with banks and the majority of the rail companies - are irretrievably in the hands of the greedy and incompetent. 

FILMS ON TELEVISION.

Did you see Hanna, a film about a robotic little girl who has been trained by her 'father' to become the ultimate soldier? It was another of those all-action films in the style of Bourne, Mission Impossible etc. Acting was good throughout and we particularly enjoyed the transformation of Rev (Tom Hollander) into a blonde hit man; wickedly polite. Don't ever lend him your biro.

The Thirteenth Tale.

This film had Vanessa Redgrave (as a dying author), Olivia Colman (as her biographer) and a convoluted plot with a twist in the tail. The director was James Kent.

It was worth the watching.

DETECTIVES ON TELEVISION.

Sherlock and Marple.

If Britain has shifted around a couple of degrees in the past few months it will be because Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle are revolving in their graves.

A recent episode of Marple had Julia McKenzie dodging in and out of woodland like an elderly yeti on speed. When she finally tackled the murderer she was alone and could (indeed, would) have been his next victim in the twist of a neck. He gave himself up. Would you believe it?

Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) still, somehow, has his sidekick. The great detective is now subjected to visions that make clues sprout out of supporting cast members and any photogenic item of scenery. His eyes dart about and he gabbles in high speed gobbledegook. Nobody has had him committed. Well, not so far. But Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson (the friend who ought to have had him committed) has married and his new wife is, it turns out, some sort of hit woman. Would you believe it?

A-a-ah. It's easy viewing.

The Bridge.

I loved every sombre second of this second series in which there was never a doubt that Saga (Sofia Helin) and Martin (Kim Bodnia) were destined for the compulsory Scandinavian unhappy ending.

Wonderful, wonderful viewing. The cat Shadow slept through every episode.

DETECTIVES IN PRINT.

My Leader discovered a couple of Graham Hurley's Faraday and Winter yarns and it became difficult to get a word out of her: I don't know whether I should have been peeved or relieved. Anyway, she enjoyed them immensely. Told me he's a very good writer and well worth reading.

I said OK, I'll look at them later. 

Another world, ain't it?

Daughter Jac bought me three thrillers including Standing In Another Man's Grave, the latest from Ian Rankin, which I have just finished reading. John Rebus is back for a Cook's Tour of Scotland with some corpses thrown in. When it is adapted for television Ken Stott (below) will find it a doddle. Just sit him in a Saab, set him off from Edinburgh to Inverness via Pitlochry and leave him to it. He'll enjoy it and so will we.

I THINK THAT'S ABOUT ALL FOR NOW.