2. (23) NEXT TIME IS HERE.

THE OTHER HALF. 

Stop press. Yesterday I tried to publish a lengthy blog post and was duly chastised by Google Blog. The section reproduced below looked as though the “We don't do the editing” editors had smacked me on the head so hard that my legs concertinsed. i.e. It was a bit squeezed up! (Check the last two lines.) 

I tried to remedy the situation, but eventually realized I was on a hiding to nothing and withdrew. (A bit like Suez in 1956.) 

Anyway, here is that other half with – I hope - improved printing.

TELEVISION.

The Detectives. 

Longmire is back and still a programme worth the watching. 

Fortitude ended in a mishmash of fantastic incredibility: My Leader and I shook our heads and asked: “Is that it, then?” 

And Vera, the most improbable CDI in Britain, continues to impress as probable, thanks to the brilliant Brenda Blethyn who, to me and a worldwide viewing public, would be credible in any part she cared to play.
The Rest. 

The Musketeers departed in a rattle of steel and a popping of single shot pistols. (Marc Warren stole the show as loathsome Rochefort.) I enjoyed it but it was very much Boys' Own stuff. 

It is followed by a returning Atlantis, which is also very much Boys' Own stuff: I shall enjoy that, too. Show me an old guy who's not a big kid at heart and I'll show you a sad old guy. 

The death of author Terry Pratchett has led to the reshowing of a couple of his televised stories. The Colour of Magic featured David Jason as the world's worst wizard, Rincewind, together with the Luggage, the Librarian and a hugely formidable supporting cast. I found it enjoyable, but thought it lacked the wicked humour that is the trademark of Sir Tel's books. (I also - and some may regard this as sacrilege - thought that Martin Freeman should have been Rincewind.)

Going Postal was another brave attempt that somehow missed the mark. Lovely cast. (Sir Tel himself came on at the end - speaking role, too.) But there was a faintly laboured feel about it all. I just don't think it was the best Discworld example with which to finish a film trio of the great humorist's work. That's the trouble when you've read his books, though, ain't it. 

READING. 

Re-read some Pratchett and M.C. Beaton and have started on Noddy Holder's The World According to Noddy and on Sir Terry's Men At Arms. Keep an eye on this space if you're at all interested. 

I'm off again now. 

Plenty of reading to do. 

2 (22) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY III.

YOUNG ADULT MEMORIES. 

The Fifties.

At the age of twenty (see picture) I was a barely noticeable cog in the Middle East Land Forces machine stationed in Cyprus. Posted there, via Egypt, at the age of eighteen, I returned to England a couple of months before my twenty second birthday: (via the S.S. Asturias which came from Australia: the Aussies had drunk nearly all the beer before it reached Port Said). There was drizzling rain when we finally got to Soton. We stood on deck and cheered. 
I have never since been bedazzled by the promise of a sunshine holiday. 
Came a break and then British Troops Austria, where I nervously learned to ski, became a cricket follower, obtained expertise in putting up bivouacs and regularly won free seats to the BTA cinema in Klagenfurt by correctly answering questions on films set by a pleasant little British Forces Broadcasting bloke, Willis Toogood, who was also 'Uncle Willis' on the kids' programmes. My answers were both correct and in verse (way before Pam Ayres made a career of it) and ol' Toogood - always, I gleaned, a reluctant 'Uncle Willis' - liked that. 
After a couple of years in Austria and keen for a return to England, I sought and was given the coveted home posting: it was to British Army of the Rhine. 
Y'know, I was not until then aware that the war with Germany had been a civil war. Anyway, off I went to the fatherland; first to a coal dust begrimed barracks at Essen Kray, then on to Rheindahlen where, since I spoke neither French nor Flemish, by some weird logic known only to the military I was appointed troop sergeant of Belgian Liaison Troop. 
I Liked the Belgians. Civilized people. 
Came 1956 and I was all set to leave the service when Anthony Eden, a Prime Minister who, until then, had been little more than a homburg hat on legs, ordered our troops into Egypt to escalate the Suez Crisis. Their action was proceeding with scant hindrance when America demanded it be discontinued. 
Eden was no Churchill. We complied with the demand. It brought to an end our fallacious 'special relationship' with the US; put paid once and for all to the British Empire; finished Eden's career; and kept me in uniform somewhat longer than expected. My final day of Service with the Colours was January 8, 1957, the day before Sir Anthony resigned as prime minister of Britain. (To be continued) 
HOME. 
Our house. Somebody came on Good Friday: told the estate agent they liked the place and thought it would be ideal for 'letting,' but were too concerned at its Grade 2 listed status to proceed any further. So why on earth did they come in the first place? Couldn't they read? Actually, the Grade 2 listing of the house has caused me far less bother than has my Grade 2 listed diabetes. Ah well. Keep taking the tablets. 
A cute present. 

The little bubble quilt seen above was made by my Leader (prompted by, and with some input from, daughter Roz) as a present for the baby girl of close family friends of Roz. It concluded with hours of stitching by hand and I did wonder whether the esteemed Leader would ever finish it. 
Worth every hour, Mo, worth every hour. 
Brother Harold. 
Harry, who I could not like and respect more if we were related by birth, has recently undergone a knee operation. We spoke on the phone this morning and last week he walked around the block with the aid of crutches (and accompanied by his daughter), but feels that his recovery is not as fast as he would like it to be. 
Never is, old mate, never is. 
We will talk again in a fortnight's time when I hope he will have taken more steps towards abandoning those crutches and Pompey will have accumulated a couple of wins (plus a tough, astute new manager).

Enough for the half month.

Television next time 
(including Terry Pratchett films).

 
  

2 (21) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY II.

ADOLESCENT MEMORIES. 

The Forties. 

After a couple of years Harold and Brian's father, Harold Snr., remarried and the boys went back to Portsmouth to live with him. My father, now an overseer of wartime brick shelter building in Pompey, was still working there and commuting from Bognor; so a short time later we, too, moved back. The two families remained close. Enemy planes had been augmented by pilotless V -1 buzz bombs which flew until they dropped and exploded. They were meant to demoralize the nation, London in particular: they didn't. 

Every male seemed to be in uniform back then so, one by one, when we reached the age of fourteen and a half, we three boys joined the army: Harold finished up in REME, I joined the Royal (Corps of) Signals and Brian went into the Royal Engineers. They both made a career of it (Harold going on to become a civilian instructor at Borden); I came out after twelve years. Suffice to say that by the end of the nineteen forties, with the war over, we were all 'old' soldiers and Pompey had the finest football team in the country. 

In 1949 I went to Cyprus to begin a three year term as a special wireless operator. Troopship first to Egypt. (The Empress of Australia)

Nobody went, or came home, by plane in those days. You got there and there you stayed. Shift work. Never mind the sunshine, sometimes it seemed like a long three years. 

More in next post. 

HOME. 

Fascinating. A viewer came last weekend. Apparently flew down from Aberdeen. Seemed to like the place (according to the estate agent) and has gone back to deliberate. 
Another world with the plane now, ain't it? 
THE DETECTIVES. 

Just the two. 

Fortitude: Have you looked in? Gawd! Ennit gory?
Person of Interest: Still as unbelievable as ever and still as watchable. 
AND OTHERS. 

Indian Summers. Julie Walters and colleagues are still cleverly showing us why, as a nation, we are universally detested. How glad India and the rest must have been to see the back of us. 

Four in a bed. My Leader watches this. I look in only occasionally - and shudder. Just in case you, like me, are no follower of reality television, this is a series in which guest house keepers visit rival establishments to make snide comments, find a pubic hair or two and knock a few quid off the price of their room. I invariably finish up determined never stay at another B&B in my entire life. 

Tom Felton meets the superfans. 

This documentary is currently showing on iPlayer. Directed by and starring Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter fame), it takes a fascinating and sympathetic look at what drives people to become obsessive fans. 

Tom talks to fellow Potter actors, to J.K. Rowling and to several of the most persistent fans: his interviewing technique is open, cheerful, friendly and so un-Draco that you cannot help but marvel at what a bloody good actor he is. When he's being himself he's obviously a charming bloke. 

But I write as one who is too old and sceptical to be anybody's fan. I admire the personable and the talented objectively. In the unlikely event I should ever meet any of 'em, I doubt we would become friends. 

From the tone of this programme, though, there's not much harm in most of those dedicated fans who like to think they are the friends of celebrities. 

If it makes them feel good, why not?

Have a good Easter. 

By the time it is over I may even have stopped muttering about that effing hour on the clocks

2 (20) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY.

 BOYHOOD MEMORIES.

The Thirties.

In 1930, the year I was born, aviatrix Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. She flew in a Gipsy Moth biplane and it took her 21 days: nowadays a flight from London to Darwin takes around eighteen and a half hours. That, you might say, is progress. I remember, as a small boy, the magic of sitting on a fender box watching my mother toast crumpets before an open fire. I recollect how, for a short time, my father dabbled with a cat's whisker radio, later replacing it with the valve operated wireless set which for years was our staple entertainment. 

The BBC produced a steady stream of news and popular listening on the old wireless. Children's Hour and In Town Tonight were firm favourites as were songs sung by Gracie Fields, Flanagan and Allen and (with a hefty helping of banjolele and double entendre) George Formby. 
My father was a carpenter and joiner: thirty bob (£1.50) a week and nothing when it rained. Mother was a housewife with aspiration (or father may forever have remained a carpenter and joiner on thirty bob a week...but that's another story). 

Throughout the nineteen thirties our little family moved three times from rented house to rented house, finishing up at Eastney, Portsmouth. To the best of my knowledge we were not particularly moved by the abdication of King Edward V111 in 1936 but, along with the rest of the country, were much moved by the arrival of the Second World War in 1939. By then my parents had acquired a pair of unofficial foster brothers for me in the form of the two lads next door whose mother had inexplicably departed. The older, Harold, was eighteen months my senior; his brother, Brian, a year or so my junior. Came the evacuation (entire school to the Isle of Wight), the 'Phoney War,' the early return of we three to the blitzes on Portsmouth and then, blitzes over, the relocation of the entire family to Bognor Regis, where we were to be bombed only by the occasional hit and run raider. 

The aeroplane was proving to be a dubious blessing. More in next post. 

HOME. 

Our house. A request came for a viewing to take place last Friday. On the Monday we were having a chat with a nice young woman (NYW) from the estate agents when we had a phone call from her office asking if a further viewing, on Wednesday, would be OK. We said 'fine' and agreed with the NYW that with Spring coming the market might soon buck up: that was that. On Wednesday, as is our wont, we made ready to leave the house to the NYW and client/s. The phone rang. It was the NYW's office. They had just been informed that the Friday viewers were now 'suited,' so would we please cancel that viewing. We said OK and off we went. When we got back there was a message from the NYW on the answerphone. The Wednesday clients had duly turned up. Mother and daughter. They had been surprised to discover that the house was on three floors, had not realized that the bathroom was on the first floor and mother, who had recently undergone a hip operation, would never be able to manage the stairs. The place was perfect in every other way. “Perhaps,”added the NYW, “the viewing on Friday will be more successful.” 

Highly unlikely, we thought, highly unlikely. 

THE DETECTIVES. 

Just a quick run through. Fortitude becomes increasingly bizarre and horribly compelling. 

Murder in the First Degree featured Tom Felton as Erich Blunt, an adult Draco Malfoy. He was predictably splendid. I hope they'll soon find a nice guy role for this nice guy. 

The Mentalist is cruising through what is alleged to be the last series. It is still watchable. 

Grimm ploughs on with only leading cast members aware that the world is packed with weird creature-people of lethal disposition. 

NCIS, normally a hive of foreign invasion paranoia, is currently flitting from one character's personal crisis to another. They are such good actors you forgive them all the tosh. 

Person of Interest comes back tonight. I have given up trying to analyse it, but they are such good actors...

As for the Brits, DCI Banks is with us again. 

A suitably taciturn Stephen Tomkinson heads the usual good cast. Still very watchable. 

AND OTHER THINGS. 

Idiots. They make a bit of headway in life and it goes to their heads. Remember when Mrs. Thatcher, perhaps unsurprisingly, started to act as if she was the Queen? The end was nigh. 

Recently, four judges were accused of watching porn on the IT equipment in their offices: it was in no way connected with their court cases, but the powers that be concluded it was not acceptable behaviour. One of them resigned, the other three were sacked. 

Then along came Jeremy Clarkson - again: this time, it seems, he punched a producer of Top Gear in a dispute regarding the absence of a meal (after a day filming that popular boys' toys programme). Consequently he is under suspension. Whether he will be sacked is apparently more important than who wins the next election. Media heavyweights are convinced he is indispensable. He's not. Nobody is. But this is a storm on a dinner plate which should have terminated with the producer casually kicking him in the double de-clutch. Say no more. 

THE BOOK WORLD.

I finished reading Small Gods by Terry Pratchett and, while I was still smiling my appreciation and nodding my agreement, learned of the author's death. It was good to read that he died peacefully, surrounded by family and with his cat asleep on the bed beside him. Death surely will have said, in kindly capital letters: “COME ON THEN, OLD FRIEND, YOU KNOW THE DRILL.” 

Words galore have been - and will be - written about this fine author. I was introduced to his work quite recently, so have a lot of catching up to do. There will be much chuckling and murmurs of approval as, again and again, I inhabit Discworld with the Librarian, the Luggage, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, various heroes, anti-heroes, witches, wizards of varied competency and arch villains of Machiavellian complexity. 

Like millions of others who never met him, I shall very much miss this brave, talented, irrepressibly humorous man. 

RIP Sir Terence David John “Terry” Pratchett OBE.
(For a lengthier tribute you might like to Google “Terry Pratchett: above all, he was funny” by Nick Harkaway.) 
AND FINALLY. 
254 OBA. Southern Chapter members of the Royal Signals Old Boys Association, together with wives and guests, were back at Botleigh Grange Hotel for the annual reunion last weekend. The arrangements (still impeccably orchestrated by Chairman Pat Soward and his wife, Maureen), were little changed from last year. The gathering, other than being a year older, was reassuringly similar to that of last year and the hotel (sans last year's Indian wedding) appears not to have changed anything but the bedclothes. Good food, good staff, good company and a good ambience. What more can you ask?
We thoroughly enjoyed it. 
Cheers!
  

2 (19) WHAT, CYNICAL? ME?

 POLITICS.

Patronizing or what? Three months before the election and already the 'you have a duty to vote' lectures from journalists determined to remind us how lucky we are not to be living in (1) a dictatorship (2) an overbearing kingdom (3) a country run by an immoveable political clique or (4) an inquisitorial hellhole under the thumb of a religious elite. Is that patronizing or what? Well, it is; but, sadly, they are right. 
I just wish they were not quite so holier-than-thou about it. 

Truth is, many people cannot see the point in rushing to the polls when they know the majority of those around them are (according to how politically 'safe' the area in which they live) programmed to vote unquestioningly for any ass with a blue ribbon around its neck or any donkey with a red ribbon, ditto: and that those dedicated party disciples will continue to pursue the same unquestioning ritual because they always have, their parents always did and, blissfully, their children always will. 
Token malcontents may vote for the token political crackpot, no matter how crackpot that crackpot's policies are. 
It is called democracy. 

As I have written before within these walls, there have been times when I have not bothered to vote. It has been said that those of us who fail to go to the polls deserve whatever we get. Bunkum. Whether we vote or not we will finish up being represented by party lackeys who will do exactly what the whips tell them to do. I'm sure the brightest sparks start out with the best of intentions; it's just that by the time their train pulls into London all that lofty idealism has wafted away like so many farts in the wind. 
Parliament is no place for those unwilling to walk the party line. 

This year, though, I shall vote. For whom I am not yet sure. To date only one prospective candidate has put a leaflet through my letterbox. If none of the others bother, I shall probably vote for him. Well, you've got to admire a trier. I think he is a Socialist, though, so he stands no chance over here, my vote or not. (Over her it's less Fifty Shades of Grey than Fifty Hues of Blue.) Anyway, whoever gets in I shall expect nothing. I'm too old to be taken in by promises. Always have been. But don't you find it implausible that each successive government's balls-ups are instantly attributed to errors made when their departed counterpart was in power, no matter how long ago that may have been? And don't you, too, find it exasperating that any promise made by a political party in the run up to an election instantly becomes too impractical (i.e. costly) to implement once that party gains power?

What, cynical? Me? Too right.  

Party leaders' debate on TV? Looks as though this daft import from America may not now come about. Don't ask me why. Ask somebody who gives a shit. 

HOME. 

The unstately edifice. A viewer came on Thursday: said she liked how quiet the place is, but it's not for her. Another on Saturday: her husband in tow. He liked it more than she did. They were only looking for a place to rent out to holidaymakers, anyway. Oh well. Keep 'em coming. 

TELEVISION. 

My view. 

Not only did the Beeb repeat series two of Father Brown, it also treated us to a rerun of the first series in which Hugo Speer played the thick police presence common to all old-fashioned whodunits. Inspector Valentine was an uncouth lout who seldom took his hat off, even in church, and whose senior officers would certainly, in those days, have ordered him to do up his shirt collar and tighten his tie; he didn't, from start to finish: maybe that's why he was later transferred. 

We saw (and have just about forgotten) the last episode of Last Tango in Halifax. Won't come back again, will it? Oh, all right, I expect it will.

Watching Fortitude on Sky Atlantic. Joint stars are: Imported snow, Sophie Grabol, Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Richard Dormer and, for a few moments, Christopher Eccleston. The left hand doesn't seem to know that the right hand has frostbite, but I shall stick with it, if only because it's cold outside.

 Guess I'll also stick with the television adaptation (rewrite) of J.K. Rowling's first story for adults, The Casual Vacancy (BBC1), where Michael Gambon is again one of the stars. (Not bad for a man who allegedly says he has given up the stage because he can't remember his lines.) Sadly, as recorded at time of publication, I did not particularly enjoy the book. I blame public service. During the course of a fairly pedestrian NHS career I encountered just about every one of J.K.'s insular Pagford parishioners and, to a person, loathed the bloody lot of them. 

Broadchurch (ITV). Even the best actors can't rescue a total turkey and, to my mind, this one has been just that. David Tennant and Olivia Colman will surely be back in better yarns. 

The Wright Stuff (Channel 5). I still look in when anybody interesting adorns the guest list. This week Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Lee Hurst are on. Thought they would be amiability personified, but there was an immediate falling out over the three young British girls who have apparently taken off for Syria. Yasmin was sympathetic. Lee was not. Could be an interesting couple of hours every morning. Look for fireworks.

BOOKS. 

My reading seems to have fallen behind of late. Morning tele and an afternoon nap don't help. I am, however, halfway through Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. Bowled over, as usual, at Sir Tel's astuteness. More next time. 

Cheers. Mind how you go.

2 (18) IT'S ALL STILL HAPPENING.

ABROAD. 

The Land of Psychopathia. The Charlie Hebdo and allied murders in Paris were undertaken by religious loonies who (whatever their said country or creed) are basically citizens of Psychopathia, a nation of psychopaths led by paranoid sociopaths. They have a propensity for murder, misogyny and homophobia and there is no reasoning with them. The French dealt with them in the definitive way. What a sad world. 

HOME. 

My Leader. It was Tuesday, 9th of October, 2012 when Maureen went into hospital for an operation to replace her left hip. Prior to the operation she was in considerable pain but could walk without the aid of a walking stick: since the op. she has been free of pain but her physical balance is haywire and she cannot manage without a stick. On the few occasions she has seen him, her surgeon seems at a loss to explain it. She is not one for kicking up a fuss, so follow up appointments have been slow. Lord knows what next. I suppose we just have to be thankful that patients over here are not spending weeks stuck on trolleys in hospital corridors. We have just the one hospital nowadays: everybody there means well, but nobody seems to know quite what to do. In such a closed environment second opinions are are not easily obtained. It can be extremely dispiriting.

An ageing cat. 

The cat Shadow is getting old and it starts to show: not in his appearance, which is still pretty damn good, but in his demeanour and occasional need to take stock before he makes a move. He doesn't go much on that. There are new cats on the block, too. He is wary of them: the little black one seems all right...very young... but there's a pair of big tabbies who look as though they could be Kraycat twins...they'll need watching...and Manners-next-door (a.k.a. the cat Willow) died of old age a couple of weeks ago (indoors, quietly and without fuss, which was nice for him), so now there's no buffer between Shadow HQ and the rest of the terrace. It ain't like old times anymore. Everything is changing. And, for the record, Shadow dislikes change even more than I do. 

Unstately home news. The festive season mostly put an end to requests for a viewing and only only one viewer came before Christmas: she came from France and, though she liked the place, concluded it would not be big enough to accommodate her grand piano. Viva Semprini! 

At the beginning of this week there was an evening viewing. Nothing to report other than that the viewer was going away to think about it. Seems he's still thinking. Ah well. Everybody says it's early days. Roll on spring. 

TELEVISION. 

The Detectives. 

Foyle's War and Father Brown have both been and gone: Foyle, if the blurb be true, forever. We shall miss Michael Kitchen in his trilby hat and Honeysuckle Weeks in that Austerity Britain house of which Sir Stafford Cripps would have firmly approved. There has to be a Foyle follow up, doesn't there? 

Father Brown was as old hat and delightfully daffy as ever. The police were still obtuse; arch-villain Flambeau still an instantly recognisable master of disguise and the Father's class-riddled female followers still a selection of stock, between-the-wars, Brits. We still loved every silly moment of it. It will surely be back. Now Series 2 is being repeated and we're watching that again. Don't say a word. 

Broadchurch has also returned and we are as bemused by the neurotic antics of everybody currently involved as we were when first they descended on us. We still cannot fathom what all the fuss is about. 

NCIS is back, too. 

Only this morning we viewed a couple of taped episodes. One of them was entitled So it Goes and took Dr. Ducky Mallard (David McCallum) back to America's favourite version of England. 

Dear God. I do wish they wouldn't. American film and television people still have us all conversing either in Dick Van Dyke's 'Mary Poppinsh' or in the fraitfully laike thet* posh that only the likes of Noel Coward ever affected. Please be aware, Isle of Wight County, Virginia, anybody who talked laike thet in England today would - with the possible exception of the art critic Brian Sewell - be laughed right out of the country: I presume some already have and are appearing as Englishmen on American television.

AND FINALLY. 

Neil Barnden. 

It is our son Neil's birthday tomorrow, so I take this opportunity to wish him many happy returns and a healthy and prosperous year ahead. Anybody who wants to know what an Englishman of today actually does sound like can Google him on Interview with a game developer: Neil Barnden (Stainless Games) and listen to his interview with HDTanel. There's a chance to learn a little about producing computer games, too. End of the advertising and...*frightfully like that...of this post. 

2 (17) MANNERS! MANNERS!

 WATCHING. 

There is no excuse. Let us start with the really nasty stuff. In Sydney, Australia, an Iranian extremist held nearly a score of people hostage in a cafe, finally killing two of them before he was put down by commandos. And in Peshawar, Pakistan, Taliban terror pedlars murdered 132 pupils and close on a dozen staff in a savage attack on a school: the mad bastards then blew themselves to smithereens. Such acts of violence, for whatever twisted reason, are inexcusable and serve only to confirm what a complete waste of space these hate merchants are. Why we continue to meddle abroad is beyond me anyway, unless it is just for the oil.

In my last blog post.

I failed to mention (put it down to age) a nasty incident that befell Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on a London bus some weeks ago. It seems she was spat upon and called a “bloody paki” by a woman who was moving down the aisle to leave the vehicle. The woman was a stranger to her. Apparently none of the other passengers objected: too shocked, frightened, or apathetic perhaps? Or just silently relieved it had not happened to them? As if to lend weight to this abhorrent attack on an innocent citizen, there later came the spectacle of Black Friday (another daft import from America), a day when irresponsible department stores opened their cut-price doors to cut-throat hordes of shoppers who went mental for 50% off new television sets and not-to-be-missed mobiles. 

It was graceless mayhem. Thousands went for it and, as usual, the greediest bullies came off best. 

What the hell's happening? There was a time when we locked up head cases in asylums; now we mutely encourage their boorish lunacy. I think it started with clowns in union-jack-bedecked waistcoats indulging in vile, drunken behaviour abroad: it has since grown to encompass home and away and both sexes and all age groups, drunk or sober. I'm not sorry I'm old, but I fear for our grandchildren: what sort of future faces them? One can only hope that, growing up with it, they will simply regard a mannerless existence as the norm; rather like my generation has compliantly come to accept foul-mouthed comedians as vaguely acceptable. (Yeah, I think Mrs. Brown's Boys is a hoot, too. Can't believe the effin' and blindin' belongs on Have I Got News For You, though.) As the comedian Arthur English used to say: “Open the cage!” 

THE DETECTIVES. 

Cop these in 2015.

Foyle's War will be back on ITV on 4^th January, Broadchurch will return to ITV on 5^th January and Father Brown is coming back to BBC1 in a ten part series also starting on Monday 5^th January. 

More next time. 

REST OF THE TELE.

The usual Christmas. Loads of repeats: an interesting festive series of University Challenge (in which people who have made it in the media, after obtaining university degrees in everything but the media, competed to show how misuse of a decent education matters not); a plethora of old films (the majority of which I saw when they were first screened) and 'celebrity' (most of whom I did not know from Adam) game shows where the contestants do it for charity. There was also an absolute forest of Victoria Wood.

More next time.

I hope your Christmas was all you hoped it might be and less expensive than you anticipated. May your New Year be free of lying politicians, ill health, religious zealots and anybody who is introduced on television as 'an expert.' 

A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS 2015!

2 (16) STILL PLODDING ALONG.

WATCHING. 

What viewers? So far as the sale of our house is concerned, nothing is now likely to happen before Christmas: the last couple of requests to view ended in cancellation only hours before they were due to take place. Seems prospective buyers are discovering (at the very last moment) that money is tight and mortgages almost non-existent. Oh well, the old place has never looked more clean and tidy. It's eerie. 

Facing up to Facebook. Right now my computer Inbox is awash with shared links, updated statuses and new photos. It is lovely that so many nice people want to share their jokes, interests etc. with me and wonderful how the Facebook gurus contrive to let it be known when said interests are on view: I'd make a clever comment on every one if I had the talent or the time. Sadly I don't. Their splendid contributions are much appreciated, though. Thanks, folks. 
TELEVISION. 

The Wright Stuff. (Channel 5) 

There are worse people than Matthew Wright to watch on reality tele (the little unshaven twat who growls: “You've been fired” and the bald headed twat who shouts: “Cooking never got tougher than this”are obvious examples), so I still watch the bikini boy if his guest list includes somebody I think will interest me. A fortnight ago the pair invited to spend an entire week on the panel were the journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Dr. David Bull. It was a prospective red rag to a bull situation. (Sorry) 

Mrs. Alibhai-Brown is a British Muslim, a socialist and a republican. Dr. Bull is a Brit who has been a prospective conservative MP. He now spends a great deal of his time in America where he appears regularly on television. 
Their confrontation, when it came, was blunt and brief and neither side was the winner. 'Screechy' (the unseen one who talks in the host's ear) must have been delighted. It was what insiders call 'good tele.' I thought the participants were commendably straightforward. Matthew made conciliatory noises and it might all have ended there. But the next phone-in came from a lady who ventured what seemed to me to be a tongue-in-cheek admonition: panelists, she averred, really should be advised not to squabble in public...it ruined their image...(or something along those lines). 

Tch, tch! Exit Never-on-Monday Matthew, the friendly fisherman with the bad back: Enter How-dare-you-slate-my-guests Matthew, tough television front man, bristling with unrighteous indignation. Nobody, but nobody, climbs on their high horse higher than our Matthew once he starts; he can hover at the edge of outer space. And he did. It was like a warm up for the Jeremy Kyle Show. He finally concluded his dramatic denouncement of the flabbergasted caller with a dismissive wave to signal the lecture was at an end. It had been a promising call, too. 

Ne'er mind, I'll still look in when he has somebody interesting, nice, funny, controversial, likeable (perm any two from five) on the panel. He can be a reasonable enough bloke, too, when he's not being Matt the twat. 

War Horse. Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis and based on a novel by Michael Morpurgo, this epic, set at the time of the first world war, was shown on BBC1 a week or so ago. Did you see it? Or did the Beeb's surfeit of salutes to WW1 finally prove too much for you? I watched. The photography was top class and the acting matched it. My Leader, no fan of war films whatever the war (she believes that the politicians who start wars should be sent out to fight them), watched it with me once she realized it was more Black Beauty than All Quiet On The Western Front. It had an ominous beginning, an action-packed middle and a happy ending, so it pleased those of us who still covet such things.

Peaky Blinders (BBC2). 

The boys from Brum, led by Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy), were back for a second villainous, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed series and it looks like they're set for a third. I recorded the entire series and we watched them over a couple of days. Very steamy and violent and a sound reminder that if you're looking for outright chicanery you need only look for the politician. 

George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (Channel 4). George has found an incredible array of quirky dwellings adapted - from a variety of unlikely beginnings - by a host of imaginative and determined enthusiasts. This is a cracking, original little programme. 

Concerto at the BBC Proms (BBC4). Somebody at the Beeb had a bright idea. In the wake of the Proms, why not repeat a few 'notable' concertos performed over the years? So they showed one a week for four weeks and the chosen 'of notes' were: the melodic Mendelssohn Violin Concerto played by Janine Jansen with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Mozart Clarinet played by Julian Bliss, Mozart Piano Concerto number 23 played by Richard Goode and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto number 4 (an extended maze of sophisticated scales and very little else) rattled off by Russian virtuoso Boris Berezovsky accompanied by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Filmed between 2005 and 2008, all four performances seem rather dated now. 

BACK TO BOOKS. 

Talking of dated: I have just finished reading Edmund Crispin's Buried for Pleasure: first published in 1948, it took me right back to the days during the second world war when mate Tony and I used to write (and illustrate) our own detective stories in exercise books for exchange readings. All of that is long gone, but I instinctively knew whodunit in the Crispin story and was smugly pleased when it transpired I was right. Well, in a lively little yarn written when I as about twelve years old, I conjured up a murderer almost identical to the one in Buried for Pleasure: six years before Mister Crispin's pre PC masterpiece, too. My neat nipperpiece was called Pay or Die. 

“So was it ever published?” 
What, written in longhand in a wartime exercise book by an elementary schoolboy? Do behave. 

I finished Sally Green's Half Bad (Penguin books 2014) and concluded it was not at all bad. 

And I have just come to the end of Moving Pictures, the story of how the movies invaded Discworld. Written, directed and produced in glorious technicolor by Sir Terry Pratchett, I nodded and grinned my way through every classic-film-referenced reel of it. What a wonderful writer that man has always been. 

THE DETECTIVES. 

The Dr. Blake Mysteries are back on BBC1 and we are in late 1950s Australia where the crime-busting GP, played by Craig McLachlan, is doing what amateur detectives forever do; testing the patience of his town's friendly constabulary and infuriating the local bigwigs. We like his housekeeper and his Standard motor. 
Body of Proof (Channel 5). 

Megan Hunt, played by Dana Delaney, another doctor who finds the time to poke her nose into things that only armed police officers should be dealing with, is back again and busy poking her nose in...Enjoyable if you like Dana Delaney. We do. 
AND OTHER THINGS. 
Here we go again. “It's less than four weeks to Father Christmas time,” said the cat Shadow. “Have you written any cards yet? Or looked for the decorations? Or put the sprouts on the hob?” 
“Don't nag,” I said. “There's plenty of time and I'm always late anyway.” 
“You're getting worse by the year,” he opined. “I think you'd better wish all the nice folk who read this rubbish the Compliments of the Season before it's too late.” 
“I think you'd better shut up before I put you in Cat's Protection and buy a puppy,” I said. The Festive Season has begun so I'll not print his obscene rejoinder. But in case I am not in print again before the slightly slimmer Santa comes down your chimney this year:
       Have a Happy Christmas 

                       Gawdblessyerwunanall.