Post 387. IT'S NOT SIMPLE PATRIOTISM.

IT'S INSIDIOUS XENOPHOBIA

PEDDLED BY POSTURING POLITICIANS.  
Modern television coverage shows that Westminster is never packed with our chosen representatives, in or out of lockdown, unless they are discussing their own (let's forget inflation) remuneration.
When Samuel Johnson said "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" he was right, whatever the context of his remark. What we are experiencing in this country right now, though, is not simple patriotism, it is insidious xenophobia peddled by posturing politicians in Union Jack bedecked surroundings. It is populist bullshit and we should be concerned lest our country become too much a clone of Germany in the nineteen thirties.
I might have started this post with a picture of the PM, backed by the compulsory complement of limp UK flags, but then I would have had to mention his name, and I am disinclined to afford him name-dropping recognition in my blog: he has yet to mention me in any of his newspaper articles. 
Which brings me to another thing. Politicians writing in newspapers.
Don't they get paid enough as parliamentarians?
Are they so bloody desperate they have to appear on reality television?
Must they flout their views on social media?
I know it's the twenty first century, but they are still elected to be politicians.
They are not chosen for their prowess as journalists, or their talent as show biz personalities, or their reliability as Facebook friends or, God help us, as Twitter tittle-tattlers.

So they should stop playing to the gallery and get a touch of decorum.
Even the most hidebound, mealy-mouthed, back stabbers in past governments had a vestige of dignity.
Though, to be fair, that could be down to the fact that there was no TV or social media, and newspaper proprietors openly pulled all the top parliamentary strings anyway. 
As for the Union Jack.
I think we had enough respect for that not to use it as a petty political backdrop. 
But there y'go.

READING.

M.W. CRAVEN
Credit where credit's due, Mo put me on to The Puppet Show and, just as she had been, I was totally intrigued. Now I have read the follow up Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw yarn, Black Summer, and am completely hooked.
Mr. Craven was born in Cumbria, brought up in Newcastle, completed a degree in social work with specialisms in criminology and substance misuse, became a probation officer in Whitehaven and eventually took redundancy to become a full time writer. His stories have everything. The detective with the daft name, The hilarious female assistant/computer genius. The lot. And the author spent ten years in the army from the age of sixteen, which has to be a bonus.
He's great value. If you like detective stuff and have not read him, do buy him.

ROZ

Roz has been suffering painful side effects, which include broken bones, in connection with her secondary breast cancer. She bravely fights on. Please spare some of your very best wishes for her.
Thank you. 

 Until next time.

 

Post 386. I HAVE TO WRITE THIS.

HOWEVER LITTLE I WANT TO.

 
LAST WEEK WAS A SHIT WEEK, 
As you will perhaps have heard if you are family or friend, that bastard cancer has hit our brave Roz again and this time it is in her liver, backbone, and lymph nodes. It is, she has been formally advised, treatable but not curable. Her immediate response was to circulate the above picture.
This in a week that started with news from friend of many years Ian Dillow of the negative result relayed to him by those monitoring his brain tumour treatment.
As he succinctly put it: “Just heard from hospital. Basically brain is buggered. No more treatment of any kind. Just a matter of time now. I’ll still fight all the way."
He would like, he tells us, to see Spring.
We'll second that: and more.
Here he is with with Jean.

Our kindest thoughts my dears.
AND THANKS BE FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
Ironically, for want of a better word, on Friday of last week Roz (pictured below with her loyal Buddy) reached her fifty first birthday.
She had been warned of the unfavourable cancer news on the Wednesday, kept it from us until our return from my second covid vaccination on the Thursday (because she 'didn't want to worry us') and then, it being confirmed, broke the distressing news.
So her birthday wasn't quite the joyous occasion we had all hoped for.
There has been a vast outpouring of love and kindness from her many friends, though, and the quiet reassurance of support from all the family (including Pauline who is currently, with Neil's staunch help, recovering from cancer surgery undertaken recently at Southampton Hospital).
Yes, friends, that is the way of it here right now.
Can you forgive me if I am without interest in the wrongdoings or otherwise of the Windsors?

Stay safe: avoid punch-ups with policemen.  

Post 385. TO THOSE STILL LOOKING IN.

THANKS AGAIN.

YEP. THANKS for staying with me.
You are, as the actor Andy Serkis might say, precious.
I do worry that my meanderings may have become tediously personal of late, but I'm too ancient and dyed-in-the-wool to change now. No matter how anticipated, the death of family members and friends in recent months, together with the latest pandemic lockdown, has been a soberingly introspective experience. I need a new CD cleaner, too. 
What? 

Oh, thought I'd throw that in apropos introspection.
My Leader will immediately point me in the direction of the almost unused old one which my ever active mind has somehow forgotten. Or she may have ordered a new one before anyone can blink. 
John who delivers the Amazon stuff lives in our driveway.
ENTERTAINMENT.

WELL IT'S ONLY THE TV now, isn't it.
Sorry to harp on, but little of it is to my taste. I dislike being fobbed off with increasingly banal versions of the same old mishmash. Television producers (to whom originality is clearly a dirty word) lazily modify everything they see as popular and plug it to way past its going home time. I cheerfully avoid much of it.
Have looked in on the opening episodes of The Walking Dead and NCIS. Not sure, but give 'em Covid time.
Have recently seen three quite interesting films (two old, one new) on the box. They were interesting insofar as they featured a recognised leading man with a comparatively unknown young co-star.
Back in 1973 Charles Bronson and sixteen year old Vincent Van Patten were in Chino, in 2012 Jason Statham and thirteen year old Catherine Chan were in Safe and, as recently as 2020, Tom Hanks and twelve year old Helena Zengel made News of the World.

Each of the leading actors shone in scenes with their likeable co-star. I think actors are generally advised to avoid acting with animals or children, but those partnerships were pretty nigh perfect.

THIS PARTNERSHIP ISN'T BAD, EITHER.

TAKE IT EASY.
Cheers.

Post 384. ANOTHER BLOG POST LOST.

HIT A WRONG KEY AGAIN.

SO I'M BACK AT THE COMPUTER KEYBOARD WITH LITOLFF: 
Concerto Symphonique 2 and 4 played by Peter Donohoe who I am convinced has hit very few wrong notes in a distinguished career, then with Daniel Barenboim (Brahms Piano 2), who would probably regard any wrong note by anyone as a personal affront, and I may finish with Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 played by John Ogden (who I have on video playing Rachmaninov's 2nd and gently tutting at a spot where, almost imperceptibly, he touches an unwanted note). Now where was I?
Hit a wrong key!
Wiped the entire draft of this blog post. Nothing saved and no back up. Swore my soul to hell! It isn't the rewriting so much as the remembering what I was writing about. Nowadays my short term memory can seldom be found where I thought I'd left it. I do remember that it had something to do with fame again.
Oh...yes...

LOOKING FOR FAME?

I'D SOONER RELAX.
The one thing you learn about fame on an island like this is that, whoever you are (actor, broadcaster, television celebrity, national treasure), you should not expect recognition.
Islanders have a very healthy outlook on the famous: ignore the buggers until they've proven they are something more than a giant ego. A few of them manage that right away and are popular. Given time, others scrape by and become reservedly accepted. 
Those who envision awed respect are studiously ignored.
Two people unlikely ever to be burdened with fame, Mo and I, have only been in wordless proximity to two immensely famous people worth the mention: Years ago, waiting with friends outside a nightclub in London to board a black cab, we vaguely recognised the angry-looking passenger who disembarked from it.
We clambered aboard, chattering that we ought to know who that was, and the cabbie, taking pity on an obvious bunch of provincials, said:
“That was Mr. Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
When we remarked that, for all his success, he looked far from happy, The Knowledge said: “Oh that's because he's looking for his wife. He looks like that quite a lot nowadays.”
Andrew Lloyd Webber was married to Sarah Brightman at the time.
The other much lauded national treasure we came across was David Attenborough.
He was sitting at a table in a large bookshop on the main street in Edinburgh where it would seem his publishers had booked him to sign copies of the immensely expensive tome that accompanied his immensely popular television documentary of the time. Don't ask me which one: there have been so many of them. 
Anyway, just for the record, he looked more determinedly disconsolate, more unapproachably lonely, more totally and utterly pissed off, than any world famous television presenter – national treasure or not – should ever look, in or out of the public eye.
So much for fame.
ANOTHER SAD VIEWING.
In Post 381 I mentioned the death of Mo's nephew Phil.
Last Wednesday we were afforded the opportunity to see his funeral service on a computer link.
In normal times the crematorium would have been crowded. With lockdown there was just a sparse family attendance, but the ceremony, free from religion, was affectionate and heartfelt, and concluded in a way that was so Phil Butler it brought tears to our eyes.
They played PLAY UP POMPEY
The entire Fratton Park crowd. Full blast!
Thank you, lovely family.
RIP, mate.

Post 383. GRANDPA MET CECIL RHODES

IT WAS A BRIEF ENCOUNTER.

WHEN OUR WORLD WAS VERY DIFFERENT.
Back in the eighteen hundreds my mother's father, Grandpa Pope, was an apprentice baker to Judge the Baker of Hastings. His duties included the delivery of bread which he carried, in a basket, to customers near and far. He would have been about eleven years old. 
One morning he made a delivery across a field to a large house and on his way back, at the gate in the fence bordering the field, saw a man on a horse approaching. He opened the gate and, when they were through, closed it behind them. 

The horseman abruptly reined in, shouted: "Good lad! Catch!" and threw him a coin which he duly caught with his free hand.
"Keep that, boy," the rider advised as he departed. "And when you're old you'll be able to tell people Cecil Rhodes gave it to you."
I was young at the time my grandfather told me the story, but old enough to have heard of Rhodesia. 
"So did you keep it?" I asked.
"No, spent it within a week," he said. "To me he was just another posh fella on a horse."
I have upheld that matter-of-fact outlook to national heroes ever since.
I am seldom disappointed.
MUSIC.

KATIE DERHAM.

Mo and I. Either end of the settee. Feet up. No tele. Reading. When I said:
"I do hope the Proms will be back soon. I miss lovely Katie Derham." 
"With her trainers," said Mo.
"And, on Last Night, a pretty dress and her trainers," I said. "You have to look up to a woman like that."
"You certainly do." said Mo.
That's fifty nine years of marriage for you
TELEVISION.
We binged until the repeat demise of George Gently and binged until the repeat near demise of AC12 (Law and Order) and now we're just about binged out on repeats.
We found we'd forgotten almost all of it anyway. Sad.
NCIS is back and The Walking Dead will be back on 1st March.
Death in Paradise has just finished again: our hero still hasn't told his pretty lady sergeant he loves her, so there's bound to be another series.
I'll watch 'em  all if I'm not asleep with a cat.

Stay safe buddies.
 

 

 

  

Post 382. EVEN THE OLDEST FRIENDS.

SOMETIMES DON'T GET IT. 

MY DEFAULT STYLE is DISTRUST when the FONT NAME is BREXIT.
Earlier this week an old friend forwarded the following – probably concocted by a brexiteer - email to me:
Dear Ms Nicola Sturgeon,
As your country voted to remain in the EU, the UK Government has diverted your share of Covid-19 vaccines to Brussels. Please contact the EU Commission on what dates you might receive your vaccine supplies. You will of course be in an alphabetical queue behind Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Romania. 
Love and kisses,
Boris 
I decided that Nicola Sturgeon should not be begrudged a reply and the following day sent my old friend this response on her behalf: 
Dear Master Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson,
When I require a rant from a patronising, puerile, public school Sassenach I shall cease to be a Scot. 
Scant regards, 
Nicola 
To which my old friend replied: Very good Alan. You've missed your vocation. 
Which would have been quite flattering if my name was Alan.
Ah well. 
READING.
I finished A Song for the Dark Times, another good Rebus yarn by Ian Rankin. Told you the man was a page turner. Now I have started on The Secret Language of Cats by Susanne Schotz, who starts by telling me she has five cats and talks to them all.
I've never found talking to the beggars difficult.
Getting them to listen can be hard. 
TELEVISION. 
Death in Paradise (BBC One) Sound acting. Lovely location. Dire dialogue. Unbelievable comic characters. Pitiful plots. Worldwide popularity (I am told).  What?
Oh, I watch it, but I'm just another lockdown detainee.
63 Up (ITV) We have watched the seven yearly pry into the lives of this pleasant group of individuals from right back when they were seven years old. Those still with us are now approaching the age of retirement.
Michael Apted, the man who directed them from the beginning, died on 7 January, 2021.
I can only thank each of the participants for their stoicism in the face of such constant public scrutiny, and wish them all the very best for the future. 
That's all for the time being.

Post 381. I KEEP READING.

VERY SLOWLY...

BUT WITH NO LESS ENJOYMENT. On Jan 8, 2020 (yes, 2020), I wrote that I had just started reading Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling and conjectured: it's a long one so lord alone knows when I'll finish it. It turned out to be 460-ish pages long. I have just finished it. Droll, informative, sharp, straight, and gloriously humorous, it is typical Bill Bryson and I should have absorbed every last word by February 2020, even at my island driver's speed, but I got lost somewhere between his views on the paucity of worthwhile BBC television and his final weird experience of the Duchy of Cornwall. When I finally returned to it last week I found myself smiling, laughing, agreeing, regularly saying: “Only a very popular Yank could get away with a comment like that, mister,” and respectfully admitting: “Well there's another thing I didn't know...”right until the end. The man has national treasure status. I like him despite that and I hope he's here for keeps. 

NOW I'M READING

THANKS to daughter Jacqueline I am also a quiet disciple of Ian Rankin. One of my two book Christmas presents from her was the latest John Rebus thriller, A Song for the Dark Times (Orion 2020). which I started mid week and am already about two thirds through: fast reading for me but Ian Rankin is that sort of page turning writer. In this one, the begrudgingly retired detective is called back into action by a late night telephone call from his daughter, Samantha, whose husband has been missing for two days. It's splendidly written of course. I empathise with the ageing Rebus, a man well aware that he is no longer up to knocking your average thug's head off. My fervent hope now is that the writer avoids a Morse, a Van der Valk, or even a Wallander, ending for John Rebus. I think the old guy should enjoy a peaceful retirement: or is that just me? He was a tough cop, not a NHS desk jockey. 

AND WHAT WAS THE OTHER BOOK?

 Oh, The Secret Language of CATS by Susanne Schotz (HQ 2018). Haven't started it and when I do I probably won't believe a word of it. I'll ask the pair we have living here: they'll know.

TELEVISION. 

We have watched The Investigation, a Danish crime drama on BBC2. Six episodes covering the investigation into the death of Swedish journalist Kim Wall. This is a compelling police procedural series and the excellent cast includes (in the role of Kim's father Joachim Wall) Rolf Lassgård who was arguably the best Wallander ever (on a list that includes Kenneth Branagh).

FINALLY THIS MONTH. 

It is with deep regret that I record the death from cancer of Maureen's nephew Phil Butler: a brave, cheerful, popular Gosport resident and lifelong Pompey FC supporter. Phil was in his early sixties, worked hard all his life, and only recently retired. We loved him and will never forget him. I do hope you've found your mum and dad, mate. 

 

 

Post 380. SECOND APPOINTMENT CANCELLED.

SO NO SECOND JAB YET, 

DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU. I had the letter two days before I was due to attend for the second of my Covid-19 vaccinations. Don't bother coming on the date originally set, it advised me, and concluded in the way I understand most unsuccessful stage auditions have since time began: Don't call us, we'll call you when it's convenient for you to be given your second appointment. Unlike Dame Joan Bakewell,  I shall not be threatening the Health Secretary with legal action. I can't afford lawyers. Anyway, both our daughters are in the teaching profession and our granddaughter is a pharmacist at the only hospital left here since successive governments and their civil service minions set about buggering up the NHS. From the outset all three of them should have preceded me in the queue for a jab. Their lives are still ahead of them. I will be far happier when I know they have been protected than I would be in knowing that Pfizer's recommended twenty one days between doses had been strictly adhered to in my case. All in all it's the usual government cockup. C'est la vie. 

MUSIC.

 I have never taken much to awards. That could be down to the fact that I have never been caught winning one: I am not a willing - or even slightly interested - competitor. It is also something of a certainty that I will never choose the person who is going on to win any competition I am watching, or to which I am listening - ever. I blame the judges. I hear now that a rapper has, not for the first time, been given a music award and, even in a world where nobody over seventy dare venture an opinion in any but a PC way without incurring the wrath of Fractious on Facebook or Tantalised on Twitter, I have to admit that, (like most modern classical music which to me is discord for the tone deaf), rapping comes over as an indecipherable monotone delivered on one unmusical note. These youngsters don't know what lyrics are. We had the real thing in my day. Lyrics like Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey: A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? and  When you come to the end of a lollipop: Plop goes your heart! It was the stuff of romance. They don't write gems like it anymore. I wonder why? 

As Dave Allen used to say: "May your God go with you."

  

   

Post 379. NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS.

MADE ANY HAVE YOU?

I TRY NOT TO. Can no longer be bothered with promises I know I won't keep, even to myself: though I must admit the temptation is there. This year I was tempted to resolve the routine switching on of my mobile (cell) phone every morning. I may have resolved that last year, too. It didn't happen. I forget and it doesn't seem all that important. Hell, nobody is going to press the red button because I'm not on my mobile. Friends can always phone me on the land line. Few do. A great deal of my NHS career was spent on the phone placating disgruntled members of the public, mollifying the more demanding of doctors, ignoring the frequent incandescence of (mostly ex RN officer) dentists, and sympathising with put upon pharmacists for the multiple scrutiny their professional competence underwent. So I have not been a particularly keen or sparkling telephone conversationalist since, nearly 32 years ago, I retired. 

AND AS A CLASSIC FM LISTENER

YOU NEVER STOP HEARING that Ts and Cs apply. It is advice that concludes the majority of Classic FMs multifarious adverts, to none of which I ever listen. I also blank the 'this is me' ramblings of the handful of presenters who have drifted over to commercial broadcasting since it was ruled that the income of high earning BBC presenters would be publicised if they were not simultaneously employed by another broadcaster: dual employment apparently labels them freelance and shields their earnings from publication. I honestly don't give a toss how much any of them earns. I do wish they wouldn't keep reminding me who they are, though. They (and all the bloody politicians in the country) should be better known by what they purport to do than by name. Their names really do not matter. Inside a year after their departure, from whatever post, they'll be forgotten by all but those closest to them. As Jimmy Durante once sang: 'fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute.' So make someone happy, you lot. Stop reiterating who you are. At the beginning and the end is quite enough. Politicians should only be named when they've cocked up of a job: most of those in the UK government would qualify.          

AND IN AMERICA.  

THE SILLY BUGGER DID IT. Yes, departing President Donald Trump finally pushed a few hundred of the inbred sociopaths who support him into attacking Congress. What did he think he was doing? And what sort of country gifts an egomaniacal reality television tosser such power? Well, it showed the world on Wednesday. Anarchists with guns. Only this wasn't the OK Corral in 1881, you gun-happy morons, it was Capitol building in 2021.

You're a big country.

Do grow up.   

 

 

Post 378. THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL...

IS PROBABLY A NON-STOP EXPRESS TRAIN.

SO TO END A CRAP YEAR this short post is written wishing all who read it A Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2021.
If we missed you out in this year's somewhat diminished festive card bun fight please accept our apologies. My Leader did all that again this year and I sat around looking suitably helpless – a knack I have perfected to a fine art.
Sorry to be so downbeat, but with the new high speed coronavirus on the loose, and Facebookers currently spreading the message HAPPY NEW TIER EVERYONE, next year's prospect looks no better.
I gather we have not been helped over here by those brave locals who (never mind Hands - Face - Space) have declared themselves too independent to keep a sensible distance from others or wear a mask.
Christ!
And we did away with lunatic asylums!
Well, we're all locked indoors, so now what do we do?
INVARIABLY WE TURN TO NETFLIX.

AN IMPROVEMENT ON THE REST, even if it is mostly a load of 'B' movies. I'll not list 'em, or rabbit on about Christmas Tele.
No more negativity this year my dears.
Anyway, this computer is in the extension/conservatory/garden room/whatever and it's bloody cold here right now, so I'm off to a warm living room, at least until next year.
Take care. You're a special person.

Post 377. THERE ARE MORE OUT THAN IN.

AND MOST OF THEM CAME HERE.

TO THIS TIER ONE ISLAND.
They came in their unwanted hordes from near and far to get noisily drunk and show the Isle of Wight what irresponsible twits human beings can be. On Saturday 5th of December our police cells were jampacked with the useless bastards. More of them were in custody here than in any nearby south coast county. It was mayhem. So much for being the only Tier One designated area in the south east.
Since the type of policing that probably prevailed when we came here fifty two years ago is no longer acceptable, it is unlikely that the prime troublemakers were carefully selected, firmly chastised and, bruisedly convinced that future visits to these shores would be highly inadvisable, put on the earliest boat back to the mainland.
So I guess they'll keep returning now until our coronavirus figures go up high enough to force an amendment to the Tier One designation.
Don't imagine I have always welcomed them as summer visitors, either. Since I own neither a hotel nor or a guest house, I have only ever viewed visiting drivers as hazards on our dicey Island roads: much like those slow old locals who kid themselves they're 'safe' behind the wheel (and who were largely responsible for my decision to give up driving).
It's a mad world.
Enough of the grinch stuff.
CHRISTMAS IS UPON US.

Yep. Here we are again. Back to the world of 'Why did we ever take the decorations down?' 'How long have we got left to send a card to Timbuktu?' and, this year: 'How do we price this properly when we no longer have a village post office to take it to?'
Yes, that's our Britain in still-no-deal Brexit 2020.
Happy Christmas my dears.
Stay as safe as you possibly can.

Post 376. LAST INCARCERATED WORDS.

BEFORE LOCKDOWN ENDS

ANOTHER SAD MONTH.
This is going to be brief.
It has not been a happy month.
One of my wife's former workmates, and a friend for close on thirty years, Fiona Elliott, died suddenly. Unable to attend her funeral, we watched the crematorium service on the net. Ah, the wonderful world of technology. It was a surreal experience but one to which we shall become ever more accustomed I fear. Our heartfelt commiserations go to her husband, Barry, and entire family.
We also had starkly realistic news that friend Ian Dillow and nephew Phil Butler cannot yet relax in their respective attempts to best that bloody disease, cancer.
Phil has been back in hospital and Ian is awaiting another appointment.
Dear old pal John Appleton, too, has been going through a particularly rough patch.
I don't have the words to rightly express our concern for them.
It is constant.
AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW.
I have had a swollen, painful, left foot which is just clearing up. Well-wishers have been told that it was gout caused through me being posh and eating too much rich food.
What?
No, I've no idea what it was.

Oh, the illustrations have been put in to cheer things up a bit.
Be lucky.

Post 375. FIRST THINGS FIRST.

HOME.

TWO VERY SPECIAL BIRTHDAYS.
Since my last post two of the leading ladies in my world have celebrated birthdays. Mo (pictured backing British farmers: dunno why, none of them sent her a birthday card) reached the august age of seventy seven on 12 November. She won't mind me disclosing that; she's still thirteen years my junior.
All the family got in touch by any means possible and it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.
Then yesterday we celebrated granddaughter Jess's twenty fifth birthday.
Roz organised a lockdown get-together and quiz that enabled us all to meet on our family laptops. Must have been a dozen of us from half a dozen locations. It all went splendidly and was a triumph of technical ingenuity at a dicey time.
Sadly missing from the proceedings was our artist daughter-in-law, Pauline, who has now been found to be suffering from a form of cancer and is undergoing the onset medical procedures. Neil is doing everything he can for her. We can only wish them the very best. What can one say? That bloody disease.
STILL WANT TO BE A WRITER?

THEN YOU HAVE TO WRITE.
You can't just sit and stare.
I'm no doubt repeating myself here, but one of the prolific crime story writers of yesteryear (John Creasey I think) once asked an audience of ambitious would-be scribblers:
“Are you really set on being writers?”
And in response to their unanimous affirmative said: “Then you shouldn't be here, should you. You should be away...writing!”
Every SAD season for as long as I can remember I have found myself sitting at a keyboard wondering whether I've had enough of me in print and whether perhaps you have, too.
Trouble is, if I gave up writing altogether I'd just sit and stare, and you can't just sit and stare; that would be a totally negative thing to do. So I knock out a few words and hope for the best.
At my time of life I'm not likely to obtain sudden literary fame and now that lockdown is with us again every dubious celebrity in Christendom is turning up on television to advertise a – probably ghost written – book. So even if I produced a saga of should-be best sellers there is scant likelihood they'd make it past first base without the cloying insincerity of (in my case non-existent) television buddies to plug them.
It's a funny old world.
Always has been.
I do sit and stare of course: weak-kneed I know, but still can't resist the box in the living room.
TELEVISION.
We have looked in on Gogglebox (Channel 4) once or twice and reached the conclusion that it is as well we are not among the couples whose programme views are televisually recorded.
The forthrightness and profanity evinced in this house by yours truly alone would have the law at our door even more quickly than they got here when, some years ago, Mo gifted them a batch of her home-made cheese straws.
No, it wasn't bribery, it was repayment for their kindness after her - then relatively new - car gave up the ghost at an awkward location in Newport. What? Yes, she makes very good cheese straws.
And we have some great coppers on this Island.
Now where was I?
Oh...yes....

We recently binged on Justified, a modern day western which ran from 2010 until 2015 and starred Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, Joelle Carter and a host of splendid fellow actors: a most enjoyable medley of mayhem based on stories (mainly Fire in the Hole) by the late Elmore Leonard. To offset that diet of violence we have also been watching episodes of Brokenwood, half a dozen series of nicely observed whodunits from New Zealand starring Neill Rea, Fern Sutherland, Pana Hema Taylor, Nick Sampson and, of course, a host of splendid fellow actors. There's no shortage of talent in the acting world today. Opportunities to perform have always been sparse though, and the cursed Covid must seem like the final straw to more young hopefuls than ever before.
Ah well. Keep learning your lines: and avoid bumping into the furniture.

Post 374. HERE WE GO AGAIN.

NATIONAL LOCKDOWN TWO.

WITH SCHOOLS BACK IN ACTION.
Two of our family (daughter Jac, a teacher, and pupil grandson Ellis) have been required to go back to school. The second lockdown does not apply to schoolchildren and those who teach them.
As you nice people will know, Roz, a LSA at Medina College, resides here. She is in the 'shielded' category, temporarily unable to work at the college, and currently locked down with us. Grandson Ellis, who also lives here, is required to attend that same college every day. Work out the logic of that.
Apparently pandemics cease at school gates.
Perhaps we should simply scrap the slogan Save our NHS.
How about Bugger the Teachers and Anyone Close to the Aged?
Or even...
LET'S EMPTY THE SUPERMARKETS.
Have you ever wondered why, a couple of days before a two day Christmas break, people can be seen pushing trolleys towards supermarket checkouts with maybe a dozen loaves of bread piled atop their festive shopping? Ever thought: they can't all be hoteliers, or guest house owners, or nursing home proprietors: so what the hell is the size of their family? Ever thought: I wonder how much of that load the avaricious bastards will have to throw away?
The moment there came warning of another lockdown they were at it again: only now they were heading towards the checkouts with trolleys laden with enough food and toilet rolls to last right through this year and next.
So much for “We're all in it together.”
We're not. In every group of people there's at least one pain in the arse.
America has just got rid of its most obvious one.
TRUMP IS OUT.
I didn't think they'd get rid of him. Every trigger happy bullshitter in the USA was rooting for him and there are a lot of them.
I guess it was just a case of enough is enough. Replacing a politician with a reality show spin merchant may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the reality soon palls.
In this country we once replaced a royal with a commoner and look where that got us. Charles the First was (like most royals) a waste of space, but Cromwell, an empowered 'man of the people' who replaced him, was a petty dictator.
Best leave palaces to royalty and politics to politicians, no matter your thoughts on those fitting either description.
If it was left to me I'd pull down all the palaces, replace them with affordable housing, and pension off the royals. By the same token, I'd only give politicians ten years in which to do their worst. I'd then present them with a good pension and tell them to piss off.
Anyway, just over half the USA has voted Trump out, so now they'll have much the same atmosphere in their country that we've had in ours since Brexit. Difference is, theirs will be with guns. Good luck with that.
Trump now seems hellbent on earning himself the title “sore loser of all time.” What a dickhead.
AS FOR US.
Maybe we'll even come to realise how tenuous the 'special relationship' we are purported to have with America really is. President-elect Joe Biden Jr. (77), who likes to describe himself as Irish, will have no more time for England than does any of the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish nationalists around us in the British Isles. I think only a handful of Americans are aware the UK exists and those that do see it merely as a quirky provider of visiting entertainment to the USA (e.g. Billy Connolly, Bradley and Barney Walsh, Miriam Margolyes), as a repertory company of television actors prepared to play baddies with an English accent, or as a handy area in Europe wherein to site the nuclear weapons an unfriendly power might attack as a conflict opener.
Let's face it, we're on our own.
And that, with the boy Boris and his bumbling bunch in charge, ain't particularly reassuring.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST.
Old friend Anonymous John has discontinued using his computer. Healthwise he has had a very hard time for a very long time. Our hopes for his complete recovery are constant. He and Sheila have now gifted me his fine Canon PIXMA printer. Mine did need updating.
So thank you, John, I shall try to put it to good use.
You may not be surprised to learn that Roz had to install it for me. Sometimes I wonder how I ever learned to ride a bike.
It's too late for 'soon' but get well, old mate, get well.
You're a one-off and much missed.

Post 373. BACK TO NORMAL THEN.

OR IN MY CASE

MOSTLY CYNICAL.
I have never been a party person. Don't particularly like dinner groups either. Small talk eludes me and I invariably find myself faced with the guy who knows twenty five alternative routes to Slough, or believes he makes the definitive cup of tea, and insists on sharing this joyous knowledge with a captive listener. I no longer drive and if I did there is no way I would be driving to Slough (come friendly bombs), no matter how charming it may now have become and, by the same token, I make most of the tea in this house for my Leader and I (hers 'gnats' - mine 'builders') so require no lengthy diatribe on boiled-not-boiling water, heated teapots, loose leaf or bag, standing time, bone china cups, or whether the milk should go in first or last. I try not to offer people unsolicited advice and would prefer they kept their dubious 'expertise' to themselves. That particularly applies to the plethora of know-alls on television. Ah, yes!
TELEVISION.
I avoid most chat shows now. They have become home to the vaguely journalistic 'broadcaster', failed politicians (which of them isn't?), any television face who has a book to sell, actors flogging their latest project, and people with a grievance about some -ism or other.
God what a pain they all are!
Among the morning offerings, Jeremy Vine (Channel 5) has been devoid of the man himself for the past fortnight (half term I guess). Anne Diamond stood in for him, so I watched it. She was good: the guests were the usual bunch. Nothing to get excited about.
Don't bother much with him since he started bobbing up and down to a blackboard like a demented schoolmaster: give him a schoolmaster's pay for a couple of months, that'd stop him short. He'll be back next week. I'll have something else to do.
TRYING TO ADJUST.
That bloody hour.
So now I'm up at eight a.m. making a morning cuppa. That's a nine o'clock job when you're an oldie. Why do the silly sods do it? Back an hour: forward an hour. Why?
Well the cynic in me says they do it because they can.
They make clocks change time simply to prove that they have the power to bugger the populace about.
But me no buts.
AND FINALLY
Forgive me if all the above has been rather negative. It has been a sad month and a particularly shit final week.
But we in this house are blessed with each other and three lovely animals.

If you're a friend, thanks for being one.
If you're not...well...y'can't please 'em all.

Post 372. A FINAL FAREWELL

TO A LIFELONG FRIEND.

HAROLD CHARLES ELLIOTT.
Shortly before the publication of my last blog post I received a phone call from Doreen and Harold Elliott's daughter, Linda, to say that Harold had died peacefully at home. He was ninety one and we had been firm friends since boyhood.
In the years that he and his younger brother, Brian, spent with my parents and I (Post 160 refers) he became an unofficial, much respected, older brother to me, too.
Never a big lad, but wiry and tough, he was a naval cadet, a fine swimmer and a formidable scrapper. Once, when we were youngsters on a family trip to the beach at Eastney, a bigger boy threw a stone that hit me on the head. Dazed and distressed, I staggered back to our family group. Harold reacted swiftly and decisively. He sought out the boy whose father later came complaining to my father: “Your boy has hit mine and made his nose bleed.” My father, a man not given to high drama, solemnly turned to Harold and said: ”Well done, son.”
It was 1930s England: another world.
Litigation was not a working class word.
After the Portsmouth blitzes we moved to Bognor Regis and Harold gained a place at Chichester High School. It was well deserved: he was the meticulous, brainy one of us.
His time at the high school and at Bognor came to an end when Harold Snr. (Uncle Tosh to me) remarried and the boys moved back to be with him in Portsmouth. We returned there shortly afterwards and lived not too far away from them. I had missed both their company and the second-hand high school education imparted to me by Harold: Thanks to him I can still quote the first few lines of P. B. Shelley's Ozymandias of Egypt and Charles Wolfe's The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna. (When, some years later, I told him that, he said: “Crikey, can you? I can't.”)
Our friendship pretty much took up where it had left off until Harold joined the army as a boy soldier. Apparently the navy, his first choice, would not allow boys as young as fourteen and a half to enlist. So he settled for the army and, no surprise, when his full time in uniform came to an end Sgt. Major H. C. Elliott, REME, was employed for many years as a civilian instructor at Borden Army Camp.
Clearly he was a successful soldier. He was also a contented husband and family man with an irrepressible sense of humour (Earwig O was never far away).
Somehow all three of us boys found the right girl to marry. Doreen was certainly the right girl for Harold and Linda a lovely daughter. Our heartfelt commiserations go to them and their entire family.
I shan't be at your funeral, Harry. Elderly diabetic lockdown precludes attendance at such gatherings. Just as well, perhaps. I can imagine your gently disapproving shake of the head as you perceived this old man sitting there with tears running down his face. Men of our ilk don't cry in public.
RIP dear friend.

Post 371. NINETY YEARS OLD.

AT HOME.

THE BIRTHDAY WENT WELL Thanks to family and friends.
No matter how blasé you may think you are there are times when the good wishes of those who are close to you mean a very great deal. My ninetieth last Sunday was one such. Being feted by all and sundry was very flattering. I'll try not to let it go to my ancient head.
Five days before, on the 22nd September, Mo and I celebrated our 58th Wedding Anniversary: an altogether more important occasion. Couldn't have a knees-up for any of it of course. Confounded coronavirus. But again, family members and staunch friends found ways of expressing their best wishes and we quietly enjoyed the ambience.
“You could have murdered her,” one wit told me, “and been released in thirty years.”
Well...yeah...or she me. It's equal rights in this house.
Anyway, thanks again everybody.
And every good wish to 'Anonymous' John Appleton, Phil Butler and Ian Dillow, good pals who have been going through tough times healthwise for far too long. Good luck and total recovery the three of you.
TELEVISION.
Two short series to remember:
The Third Day (Sky Atlantic) starred Jude Law, Katherine Waterston, and a supporting cast of fine actors (e.g. Paddy Considine). It was a miniseries the viewing of which will be remembered by us as a prime example of time we shall never get back. I trust the actors were well paid.
The Write Offs (Channel 4) starred eight adults wanting to learn how to read and write. They were mentored by the splendid Sandi Toksvig and proved to be a likeable, thoroughly worthwhile, group of individuals who, when I was a boy, would have been banished to the back of the class to be studiously ignored other than for regular canings or having the blackboard cleaner thrown at them.
Nobody questioned it at that time. Nor, apparently, on the evidence of these nice people, for many years after. What a bloody country ours can be. Thank God for a decent Dane and the occasional reminder that not all reality television is utter garbage. This was a heart-warming two-parter that will surely be repeated. Well worth watching.
NO MORE FOR NOW.
A sad, though not unexpected, phone call received here this morning. I'll try to write a little about it next post.

POST 370. RECENTLY LOOKED BACK.

AT MY ORIGINAL BLOG POSTS. e.g.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
24. As a newcomer to this blog lark...
NOTHING CHANGES. Well, not that much it doesn't. I become slightly more intractable and the people for whom I have the least time become slightly more irksome. My first sizeable bunch of blog posts was dated as above. Entries were brief and pictures were noticeably absent. Back then I was using the pseudonym Justin Thyme and, unknowingly (because I have no crystal ball), was just ahead of the rush to the net by increasingly unsaleable national newspapers.
Looking back I find myself scribbling much the same stuff now as I did then. Have no idea what the papers are saying on the net: I read them no more than any of them reads me. Still read the i in print six days a week. Our corner shop delivers it and I pay the full price for it: have never joined the i 'buy in bulk' price reduction scheme and suspect it's only the carefully rich among us who have. It was an innovative idea though.
Now I am pondering yet again whether to keep scribbling or - as I regularly snarl at political pundits on television - give it a fuckin' rest.
Oh, I'll probably just carry on. Nothing changes. Well, not that much. Government advice does: all the time. So, I'm sorry to say, does my twenty first century propensity for foul language.

Keep reading the tablets, eh?

POST 369. STILL LAUGHING AT

THE FAST SHOW.

NICE. This wonderful load of tele nonsense recently came around again and was as zanily likeable as ever. Originally the brain child of Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse (above), the show (which some wit once labelled 'a series of catchphrases') first came our way in 1994. What - or who - brought it up from the archives I'm not sure, but I think it may have something to do with a proposed revival. Everything's being revived now, isn't it. Little of it to its betterment. I can't see The Fast Show protagonists falling into that 'God! Not again!' trap: if they came back it would be to deliver an appropriately sardonic take on the twenty first century. They were always way ahead of their time anyway. POSITIVELY OF THEIR TIME.

MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING is back. And Series 2 is every bit as gently entertaining as its predecessor. Paul's best buddy attempts at furthering Bob's recuperation from 2016 heart surgery and, in the process, make an angler of him, are low-key hilarious. Bob, in his turn, shows a kindness of nature seldom discernible within the ranks of his comedic contemporaries. Mo and I, along with better half of the nation, are well and truly hooked. The scenery is wonderful. too. BUT IF YOU MUST HAVE A REMAKE

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL. To give the lie to my notion that no remake of a television series ever equals the original, this adaptation of James Herriot's vet stories appears, on the evidence of the first episode alone, to be every bit as good as the Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy, Peter Davison BBC original. In the current (Channel 5)version, Nicholas Ralph as James, Rachel Shenton as Helen, Samuel West as Siegfried, Callum Woodhouse as Tristan and Anna Madeley as the excellent Mrs. Hall are perfectly cast as was Dame Diana Rigg as Mrs. Pumphrey.

Dame Diana died on the 10th of September 2020 aged 82. She was the gorgeous Emma Peel in The Avengers, the only Bond girl to marry James Bond (it didn't last), in her later years a formidable presence in an episode of Doctor Who, and an Emmy nominee for her performance in Game of Thrones, She was also a superb stage actress and the tongue-in-cheek arranger of the 'worst ever reviews' book No Turn Unstoned. RIP you lovely lady. And that's it for now. Mind how you go.

POST 368. TIME FOR ANOTHER CHAT.

BEFORE THE MONTH ENDS.

AND WHILE I'M STILL HERE: because you never know.. . So what brought this on? Well, at the beginning of last week I received a newsletter from the Chairman of the 254 Old Boys Association (Southern Chapter), Pat Soward, containing news that two of my best friends in R. Signals Boy's Squadron 1945 - 48, Wally Brown and Nat Preece, died in June and July of this year respectively. They were six months or so younger than me and their names were included in a list of nine old boys who have died since March 2020. In the way of the military we three had not kept in touch, but I knew that Wally had served a full time career in the Signals, even though he could have become a professional footballer, and that when he was stationed in BAOR he played part-time for a German soccer club. Nat, I learned, had left the army to become a Customs and Excise officer in Scotland. Had I not chanced upon their names among the attendees at a 254 OBA meeting reported on the net (I had no previous idea such an association existed), it would never have been my intention to revisit the past. Not much given to nostalgia so far as work is concerned. A job is just a job. But I then decided I really would like to see how they were faring. Thus it came about that Mo and I went (maybe ten years ago) to our first OBA AGM to meet them: in her case, for the first time. Now they are irrevocably gone and, as I later wrote to Pat, though I recognise the inevitability of it, their departure has shocked and deeply saddened me. That, I added, is another problem with growing very old...nobody, even fractionally younger than you, is supposed to die before you do. I really should be used to it, but I’m not... There is little more left to say. Our deepest sympathy goes to Wally's wife, Claire, to Nat's wife, Moira (who is in a care home), and to all those mourning the departure of a name on that list. WE ARE ALL MORTAL.

ANY IMAGININGS OF IMMORTALITY I may have had were further shattered a few nights ago when I suffered a fall in the back garden. The cat Spike, having completed her evening session of beating the bounds, came indoors with a gift for us: a live grass snake. She tends to do that. My Leader gently declines these kind offerings and returns them to their natural habitat. On this occasion she was not immediately available so I, wishing no fuss, lightly brushed the little snake onto a dustpan and went outside with it. It was dark, but the courtesy lights came on as I left the back door and I took off across our substantial car park, confident in my ability to tip the unwanted visitor out of harm's way. I never made it to the fence fronting the sanctuary hedge. Those outside lights ceased to be courteous and I lost my footing on the new concrete path. I went down heavily, just managed to deposit the snake back onto the car park, and struggled to my knees to discover I was never going to regain my feet unaided. Mo eventually found me, Roz and Ellis, by torchlight, got me up and back to the house and between them they cleaned me up. There was plently of blood and I now have a huge bruise on my left hip, but nothing was broken and I soon stopped shaking. All in all it was a bloody silly thing for me to do and I shall be good and sure never to attempt anything like it again. AND FINALLY It was exactly a year ago today that we said our final farewell to the irreplaceable cat Shadow. No other of our treasured feline companions over the years ever climbed into my arms in quite such a proprietorial way. His death has left a void that none of the dear creatures currently with us can ever quite fill, though they do try.

Sorry about the sadness. More media stuff next time. That's always good for a laugh.

POST 367. STILL READING.

KINDLE BOOKS.

THUS NO ADDITION to my bookshelf of thrillers (pictured).

Literary critics (for want of a better description), publishers, and librarians (a dying race), have chosen over the years to pigeonhole authors into convenient categories, rather like the talent-blind blockheads in Hollywood past who lazily typecast many consummate actors with the assurance: 'This is how the public likes to see you,' which was a creeping alternative to the outspoken: 'You stick to what you're good at: it sells.”

So what brought this on?

The two books I have just read on kindle are The Enemy, a Jack Reacher story by Lee Child and In a House of Lies. a John Rebus yarn by Ian Rankin. The crime story label attached to both writers obscures literary talent far beyond that of the whodunnit-cum-whydusanybodyreadit mishmash churned out by purveyors of crime when I was a boy. Both writers depict a world far removed from“There's a body in the library,” or “Leave it to: A.S.P./The Baron/Bulldog Drummond/The Saint/The Toff/1066” etc.etc. There is a chapter In The Enemy where Reacher and his brother go, with some trepidation as to her health, to see their mother in Paris: Lee Child's description of the meeting left me unusually misty eyed. Tight, sensitive prose. Similarly, In a House of Lies shows Rebus (who doesn't see Ken Stott?) as battling, with characteristic stoicism, the indignities of age and of no longer being a recognised police presence. Ian Rankin's tough but empathetic stance on an ageing guy's fight with slower reflexes and enforced retirement is fine novel writing.

TIED TO THE TELEVISION.

LIKE IT OR NOT. And mostly I don't. Be it bombastic presenters or their banal programme producers I have become fed up with television people as a race. Never did cotton to them much.

In the nineteen seventies a tribe of them frequented one of our local pubs. My wife worked there at the time (no way we were ever going to bring up three kids on my NHS E.O.'s salary alone), and those lads regularly crowded the bar, shouting to each other about their programmes and earnings, and roundly dissing absent competitors. “Oh, he can't be picking up any more than 60k a year,” was a typically dismissive jeer that lingers in the mind. My thought then was: So now we all know you're picking up more than that, don't we, you loudmouthed little prick.

Truth to tell, I was not envious. I was bewildered. The majority of them were such conceited dickheads.

Sadly, I don't think that has changed much.

There's a handful of television personalities for whom I have the utmost respect. The rest are of the sort who clearly do not come alive until the camera is on them. They dismiss any competitor's viewing figures less than theirs as: “Only friends and family then.” And they mistakenly see themselves as the most beautiful, handsome, watchable creatures on earth. Of course they aren't. In this house the dog Buddy and the cats Angel and Spike are the most beautiful, handsome, watchable creatures on earth. Most tele presenters are tedious twits who make the gogglebox a lockdown drag. Just thank the gods if you are one of the fortunates able to see Netflix, YouTube and the like, on your viewing machine. You can at least be discriminating about what, or who, you watch.

He is.