Post 400. Index 8 Posts 352 - 399

Allen, Dave: 380 Angel. the cat: 357, 367,390, 395 Appleton, John: 371, 374, 376 Appleton, Sheila: 374 Aristotle: 396 Atlas, the cat: 395 Attenborough, David: 384 Bakewell, Joan: 380 Barenboim, Daniel: 384 Barnden, Jac: 365, 374, 381, 389, 395 Barnden, Kym: 360 Barnden, Mo: 354, 359, 368, 371, 375, 384, 398, 399 Barnden, Neil: 375, 395 Barnden, Pauline: 375 Barnden, Roz: 352, 357, 359, 362, 363, 364, 366, 368,374,386, 387, 389, 390, 391, 392, 397 Barnden, William: 396 Barrow, Clyde: 366 Bean, Sean: 399 Beard, Mary: 357, 396 Berenson, Saul: 353, 356 Bhaskar, Sanjeev: 388 Biden, Joe: 374 Bolton, Michael: 357, 390 Booth, Webster: 365 Branagh, Kenneth: 381 Brightman, Sarah: 384 Bronson, Charles: 385 Brown, Johnny Mack 353 Brown, Wally: 368 Brown, Claire: 368 Bryson, Bill: 381 Buddy, the dog: 357,367,390, 397, 398 Butler, Phil: 371, 376, 381, 384 Byrne, Gabriel: 353 Campbell, Alistair: 360 Carter, Joelle: 375 Catz, Caroline: 399 Chan, Catherine: 385 Charles, HRH Prince: 359 Child, Lee: 367 Churchill, Winston: 356 Connolly, Billy: 374 Considine, Paddy: 371 Costner, Kevin: 366 Cotton, Billy: 353 Craven, M.W. 387, 391 Creasey, John: 375 Cummings, Dominic: 359, 360 Curtiz, Michael: 362 Daheley, Tina: 362 Danes, Claire: 353 Davison, Peter: 369 Dayer, Ellis (grandson) 357, 359, 368, 374, 390,392, 395 Deam, Jack: 399 de Havilland, Olivia: 362 Dench, Judie: 388 Derham, Katie: 383, 396 Diamond, Anne: 373 Dillow, Ian: 352, 371, 376,386, Dillow, Jean: 352,386, Donohoe, Peter: 356, 359, 384 Durante, Jimmy: 279 Eastwood, Clint: 358 Edwards, Sue: 392 Egan, Peter: 388 Elliott, Harold Charles: 372 Elliott, Fiona: 376 Fields, Dorothy: 399 Fields, Gracie: 396 Flanagan and Allen: 396 Gillen, Aiden: 355 Gnann, Moritz: 396 Goggins, Walton: 375 Graham, Stephen: 399 Gray, Effie: 353 Hancock, Matt: 362 Hanks, Tom: 385 Harding, Daniel: 399 Hardy, Robert: 369 Harrelson, Woody: 366 Harry and Meghan: 358 Herriot, James: 369 Higson, Charlie: 369 Hollywood, Paul: 363 Hynek, J. Allen: 355 Izzard, Eddie:388Johnson, Boris: 355, 364, 374, 382 Johnson, Samuel: 387 Kane, Harry: 398 King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson: 396 Kuusisto, Pekka: 355 Ladd, Alan: 362 Ladd, David: 362 Lassgård, Rolf: 381 Law, Jude: 371 Lawrance, Brian: 396 Lehar, Franz: 365 Leonard, Elmore: 375 Levit, Igor: 399 Lowe, Andrea: 399 Luke, Thomas: 356 Madeley, Anna: 369 Malofeev, Alexander: 365 Margolyes, Miriam: 374 Mathison, Carrie: 353, 356 McGovern, Elizabeth: 353 Mitchell, David: 388, 391 Mitchell, Victoria Coren: 391 Moore, Grace: 365 Morgan, Hilarie Burton: 389 Morgan, Jeffrey Dean: 389 Morgan, Sian: 390 Mortimer, Bob: 369 Newman, Paul: 366 Ogden, John: 384 Olyphant, Timothy: 375 Parker, Bonnie: 366 Patinkin, Mandy: 353 Patten, Vincent Van: 385 Pavarotti, Luciano: 357 Plant, Jim: 360 Pope, Bill: 363, 383 Pratchett, Terry: 391 Preece, Nat: 368 Preece, Moira: 368 Prince Philip: 389 Pullman, Philip: 356 Queen Victoria: 361 Ralph, Nicholas: 369 Rankin, Ian: 367, 381, 382, 396 Rashford, Marcus: 399 Rawicz and Landauer 353 Rea, Neill: 375 Redford, Robert: 366 Rhodes, Cecil: 383 Rigg, Diana: 369 Robinson, Peter: 399 Rook, Clive: 352 Rowling, J.K. 356, 361 Ruskin, John: 353 Sachar, Lpuis: 356 Saka, Bukayo: 399 Sampson, Nick: 375 Sancho, Jadon: 399 Schama, Simon: 357, 361 Schmeichel, Kasper: 398 Schmidt, Joseph: 365 Schotz, Susanne: 381, 382 Serkis, Andy: 385 Shadow, the cat: 368 Simply Red: 352 Southgate, Gareth: 399 Soward, Pat: 368 Spark, Muriel: 396 Spike, the cat: 357, 367, 368, 390, 395 Shenton, Rachel: 369 Statham, Jason: 362, 385 Sterling, Raheem: 398, 399 Stott, Ken: 367 Sturgeon, Nicola: 382 Sutherland, Fern: 375 Tauber, Richard: 365 Taylor, Pana Hema: 375 Thompson, Emma: 353 Timothy, Christopher: 369 Toksvig, Sandi: 371 Tommaso, Freddie De: 395 Tompkinson, Stephen: 399 Trump, Donald: 355, 374 Vine, Jeremy: 362, 373 Vogt, Lars: 359 Walker, Nicola: 388 Wall, Kim: 381 Walsh, Barney: 374 Walsh, Bradley, 374 Waterston, Katherine. 371 Webber, Andrew Lloyd: 384 Wesley, Mary: 356 West, Samuel: 369 White, Daryl: 390 White, Jessica: 375, 390, 392, 395, 397 White, T.H. 356 Whitehouse, Paul: 369 Whitfield, David: 395 Woodman, George: 356 Woodhouse, Callum: 369 Woods, Mike: 389, 395 Zengel, Helena 385 Ziegler, Anne: 365 

Post 399. FOOTBALL'S STILL ABROAD.

MORE SCREWED-UP PENALTIES AND

OH DEAR, ENGLAND...A 3 - 2 loss to Italy.

I looked up from my book (my usual accompaniment to all the tippy-tap passing, professional shirt pulling, falling down when challenged near the penalty area, ditto and rolling in agony when breathed upon within the penalty area, and expostulating with the referee over any decision not in your favour) when I heard the dreaded words:
"So now it's the penalty shoot-out"
"That's it then," I said quietly. "We've shit it."

We had. A penalty shoot-out is a ludicrous lottery. It is no way to end a game. You might as well toss a coin.

Ne'er mind. Gareth Southgate and his team will (as Dorothy Fields once wrote) pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.
They are a credit to their game and to their country.
The same cannot be said for the horde of bloody morons who gate-crashed the stadium before kick off, or the racist twats who showered abuse on Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Raheem Sterling after we lost out in the penalty lottery. Far too many social media arseholes (nameless cowards) masquerade as football supporters.
Sometimes makes you wonder what this bloody country is coming to.
TELEVISION.

The box seems somewhat desolate without Wembley and Wimbledon. What remains is the same old array of tired formats and narcissistic presenters.

There is still some stuff worth watching if you are prepared to go for it though.

Maureen watched Time, the BBC prison drama starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham (above). She said it was wonderfully acted (with that pair it would be) but ultimately very sad.
I have not seen it and, though I like both actors, may chicken out. I think it could be a bit too realistic for me. I feel queasy  even driving past the prisons on this island. Some very nasty deviants are incarcerated over here.
I recorded the Summer Night Concert from Vienna 2021 (BBC Four) which was broadcast at the same time as the Euro football final was being shown on BBC and ITV. I watched it the following night and it was a harbour of calm after that penalty shoot-out.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding, gave its usual polished performance of works by Bernstein, Elgar, Debussy, Holst, Sibelius and Verdi, and pianist Igor Levit enchanted the audience with a splendid performance of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

All this in the wonderful Schönbrunn Palace Gardens, Vienna. I am so glad I recorded it.
I shall watch it again and again.
You're allowed to be square when you're ninety.
In complete contrast, Mo and I are watching re-runs of  DCI Banks.
Stephen Tompkinson is Banks: his police colleague and sometime girlfriend is played by Andrea Lowe, his disturbingly straight DI no.2 is Caroline Catz, and reliable Jack Deam plays his team's reliable DC.The books were written by Peter Robinson.
I believe five series were made between 2010 and 2016. Not sure what sort of order they are in on this ITV3 showing, but we have thoroughly enjoyed every episode we have seen so far.
Thank you, Mr. Tompkinson and friends

And that's about it for now.

My next post will probably be Index 8.

If you're not in it, don't sue me.
If you are in it, don't sue me.

   

    

 

Post 398. A GEORGE CROSS FOR THE NHS.

 WELL-MEANING TOKENISM.

BUT NOT A DECENT WAGE
The Queen has awarded the George Cross to the NHS for seventy three years of dedicated service with particular emphasis on the courage shown by many NHS staff throughout the COVID pandemic.
I imparted the news to my book reading lady of the manor as we sat in bed with our morning cuppa.
Scarcely glancing up from the book she enquired dryly: "Who is going to wear it?"
I do love that woman.
She was right again though. This gallantry award is nothing more than tokenism. Well-meaning, I'm sure, but mere tokenism. It is not the grateful approach that awarding NHS staff decent pay and free parking within hospital grounds would be. It will not put a cent on the wage slip of any nurse, junior doctor, or ancillary staff member in or around a hospital. It is much the same futile gesture that the recent 1% pay rise to nursing staff was. It will not put a roof over the head of any one of them, let alone buy them the sort of home they could afford if all they did was kick a football about. 
Which brings us to...
FOOTBALL

HURRAY FOR ENGLAND!
A  2 - 1 win over Denmark.
I think they did it fairly enough by modern football standards.
In extra time, the full time score being 1 - 1, Raheem Sterling crashed down in the Danish penalty area.
Did he fall or was he pushed? Who cares (other than the Danes)?
The referee gave England a penalty.
Harry Kane made a bit of a pig's ear of it, but was fortunate in that it rebounded off Kasper Schmeichel to be firmly rebooted into the net.
Then, English euphoria, the game was won.

So it's Italy at Wembley next Sunday.
I expect we'll watch it.

WELL, IT'S VERY QUIET HERE.

BUDDY WAS ALWAYS PRESENT.
Not a noisy dog, but a constant presence in the nicest possible way. He is missed, but we gather that he has settled down nicely in his new surroundings, is enjoying all the  admiration and attention, and is generally living the life of Riley.
Good for him.
And we shall still be seeing him from time to time.
Life goes on.

.  

 

Post 397. BUDDY HAS MOVED.

.TO A NICE HOME IN RYDE.

WITH A BRAND NEW FAMILY.
Our granddaughter Jess took him last Friday night. We thought it was to be  for a trial weekend with his new adopters, but she sensibly pointed out that there would be no point bringing him back here if the weekend was a success, that would only confuse him: so she took his entire bag and baggage and departed in the sudden, certain, factual, way that the young and confident do such things.
Ah well. He didn't need us. We're old. We'll get over it. He is a dear pal who deserves a happy future.  Roz bought him when he was a puppy: was devoted to him and he to her. Other, possibly, than Jess herself (who is currently in no position to keep him), nobody will ever replace Roz in his affections. We did our best, and we have been assured he will be much loved by his new family. We wish them joy with him, and him happiness with them. 
We shall be able to see him occasionally, which is good. 
He has come quite a long way from this.

Now he barks at dogs on the television.

It's a token gesture.
He's a Buddy.

Well you didn't expect football from me, did you? 

Post 396. MOSTLY TOO MUCH TELEVISION.

BUT IN A MORE DISCERNING WAY.

GOGGLEBOX (Channel 4).
I have again concluded that I could never have been a participant on Gogglebox. 
That said, I do like many of those we see watching it, no matter how inexplicable I may find their positive responses to the abundance of trash they are required to watch. Whatever their recompense, most of them are value for it. My invective-laden outlook would immediately rule me out.
Never mind Aristotle's 'Give me the child until he is 7 and I will show you the man,' this man's 7 year old recollections include Noddy and Big Ears, Mr. Plod the Policeman, the Ovaltineys (and their bloody awful theme tune), Gracie Fields singing Little Old Lady and Flanagan & Allen singing Underneath the Arches. There was also an Australian crooner called Brian Lawrance who my mother quite liked and my father insisted was 'a sissy' (quite why I do not know as, to the best of my knowledge, he never ever met the man): but my father could sometimes be very English.
In our house there were little tin seats at either end of a fender box where small children could sit and be taught how to toast crumpets over an open fire. There was a deal of boring adults-only conversation about family and work and the politics of the day, and there was the mantra 'children should be seen and not heard,' and there was all the palaver about King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.
Of more importance to our family in 1936, my father gained second prize in an All England Amateur Bass Singer competition held at one of those Palaces in London (Crystal or Alexandra): I believe he sang a piece from Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (probably Onaway Awake Beloved) and was told by the judge that he forfeited first prize because he held his rolled up sheet of music in his hand and Hiawatha wouldn't have done that.
My father, afterwards, was his usual phlegmatic self.
“I doubt Hiawatha would have worn a monkey jacket and a bow tie, either,” he said. “But they'll have needed a reason not to split the first prize.”
I know I keep saying it was a different world, but it really was.
The small boy who was taken to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 (totally unaware that the dwarfs should have been called 'persons of limited size') was a long, long way away from the old man who has recently watched and enjoyed Ian Rankin talking about Muriel Spark (Sky), Katie Derham (the most elegantly feminine wearer of trainers in the entire world) discussing The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra with Moritz Gnann and the BBC Orchestra of Wales (BBC FOUR), and finally, because nothing can follow it, absolutely any subject presented by delightful Dame Mary Beard (pictured – with apologies for the impudence) on whatever channel she may have appeared.

And I think she would agree with my
THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH:
Only an ignorant yob boos another country's national anthem.

Post 395. NEVER GIVE UP.

WHATEVER ELSE.

TODAY IS FATHER'S DAY.
Or, as my realistically-minded children might describe it: another commercially contrived celebration day invented by the Americans.
Jac and Mike arrived yesterday with a dad's day dinner: 'lamb shanks with roasted vegetables and all the trimmings.' A lovely gift.
And I am writing with Jac's further present, the Freddie De Tommaso CD Passione, playing in the background. Nice disc, but his producers should have excluded Cara Mia from the line-up: if you are not going to finish on the David Whitfield top note, don't do it.
A week or so ago Neil gave me a self-winding (for an active tennis player which, of course, I am not) watch. It stopped in a few days and, despite his careful instructions when he gave it to me, neither Mo nor I can restart it. It has a great name, though, and looks nice. He'll start it again when next he is here. Meantime, I smile every time I look at it: it is the ideal unfather's day bonus and will be cherished right up until I kick the bucket.
THAT'S ABOUT ALL FOR NOW.

Ellis stayed overnight at his father's home to be there for today: he'll be back here later on. Glad to say he continues to confidently walk the bass guitar road, to the approval of the music master of his former school.
Jess's little house is starting to look great, We have seen it, and her recently acquired kitten, now. The kitten was given the name Atlas before it was discovered to be a girl.
In this family some oversights just keep repeating: remember the girl named Spike and the boy called Angel? They've never seemed to be bothered.
Anyway, this is Atlas.

Cute or what?

Post 394. STILL AVOIDING.

AWARDS CEREMONIES AND...

MOST COMPETITIVE CRAP,
Any doubts that I was becoming my old self again were quickly dispelled once the 2021 awards season began. I do not care who, or what, wins or has won anything this, last, or any other year. I cannot be having with jubilant games winners who hang all over each other in flagrant disregard of pandemic rules, and I long ago tired of award- winning actors winsomely playing the mock modesty role.
To my jaundiced eye, none of it has been helped this year by the racism lobby. Y'know I really don't give a toss what colour, creed, race, or gender an arts/sports person is. I try to maintain good manners to all and deplore discourtesy under whatever guise it may appear. As a consequence I am disconcerted by the intensity of current racial disharmony. I would no more boo a footballer for taking the knee than I would have booed Smith for 'mooning' at the borstal governors in The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. The England footballers who were booed recently had a point to make (and so did Smith). I respect that: Pity the feeble-minds who don't.
I also think freedom of speech should not apply only to those with whom you agree: if you dislike what a speaker has to say, don't refuse them the right to say it: just ignore them.
Same goes for picture hanging. Whether Magdalen College, Oxford, takes down or hangs up a picture of the Queen, or any other monarch, is none of my bloody business.
It's no good calling me woke. Woke is 'the past tense of wake' to me.
And don't try labelling me with the 'privileged white Englishman' tag. I was born white, English, working class, and innately bolshie. Went to half a dozen elementary schools between 1935 and 1945, then into the army for close on twelve years, then clerking in the NHS (1957 - 89). Never seemed privileged. Always had somebody to answer to. Was not blessed with the mindset to focus beyond the confines of my own world.
Still find it difficult.
Never mind. All the old farts like me, and that dwindling number who saw action in WW2, will soon be gone.
England will become a fully multiracial nation. Scotland will, too, but all of them will wear the kilt. In Wales they will all sing. Every Welshman can sing: even those who can't (it was the same in Liverpool after The Beatles.became famous).
Ireland and Northern Ireland will probably become the fifty first state of the USA and feel they have more to sing about than any of the Brexiteers ever will.
What?
I know.
How Can You Buy Killarney?

Toodle pip.

Post 393.RIGHT! BACK TO NORMAL THEN.

RESCUE ME FROM ROBOT VOICES.

ALEXA IS TECHNOLOGY ENOUGH.
I quite like Alexa. She is the robot voice that only speaks when spoken to. She conjures up music when asked and generally seeks to please. She is not that irritating little party in the car who tells you to 'turn left now!' when you are on a forty mile stretch of unbroken motorway with nothing but fields beyond it: nor is she that robotically welcoming young woman who answers any call to a business with the words: 'This conversation is being taped for training purposes.' Do you believe that?
The telephone has become a monster within which lurk Bombay Welsh voices seeking to con you out of your bank card details and tiresome petty dictators directing you to press button 1,2 or 3 in response to a voice recorded on a machine. I seldom use the bloody thing now. Growing old and still being able to put one foot in front of the other is, in the view of one currently that fortunate, privilege enough in this country today,
Times have changed since, just over forty years ago, the government more than halved our money with the introduction of decimalization. Little of it has been for the better.

THE LATEST THREATS are the compulsory transference of all gas driven appliances to electricity, the introduction of driverless, electrically powered, motor cars, purchases of lord-knows-what-weight goods carried by drones, the inexorable upsurge in the management of our lives by soulless robots, and the ghastly realization that political and media control of the country is now largely in the hands of a coterie of amoral public schoolboys.
Let us start with the gas/electric thing. Isn't that going to be just like the diesel/petrol thing? How many times can well-meaning voices cry global warming wolf? I'd like to think it is government listening to experts, but am more inclined to the view that it is government listening to its number who are electricity company shareholders.
Trust not the moneyed few, they always want more. They will be pleased to see you up to your neck in hock for the replacement of a serviceable gas appliance or petrol/diesel fuelled vehicle, with an electric alternative. They will label it progress. The word that better describes it is greed.
Whatever the label, it will be sold under the guise of 'saving the world' and will be accepted by the same servile public that failed, decades ago, to firmly advise local authorities and suchlike public service providers that they are the employed, not the employers, and could stick any form of tax-related extortion, other than the basic one on income, precisely where the sun does not shine.
So far as I am concerned, people in influential positions should be reminded that power is there to be used, not abused. As it is, the rule makers up there get away with far too much without being brought to book. Always have. Always will.
That's the monthly grouse done for.
Enjoy your bank holiday.

Hang up on any voice you don't know. 

Post 392. THE DAY IS DONE.

ROZ HAS BEEN CREMATED.

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE....
Our Roz was duly cremated on Thursday 20th May, 2021. A fine selection of her friends, many of them  former and current colleagues, together with a determinedly available proportion of kin, gathered in a cold wind to be admitted, late, into the crematorium which, it transpired, lacked the up-to-date technology necessary for a planned slideshow of Roz moments to be shown during a playing of  Madness's It Must Be Love, one of her favourite discs. Pictures and song together would have been so much more effective. I gather suitable protestation has since been made to the authority concerned. The outcome of the hoo-ha it caused was that the on line ceremony screening  came to a premature end, too. Not at all the way it was meant to be. Ah well.
Young Ellis, her son, looked good in his suit.

The ceremony went off well. It opened with The Mamas & The Papas singing Dream a Little Dream, which encouraged those who cry in public (and some of us who don't) to shed their tears early on.

Celebrant Sue Edwards then welcomed the mourners and initiated the proceedings with Loving Memories of Roz. 

This was followed by a moving Tribute to Mum from her daughter, Jess.

Madness then did their stuff (sans slideshow) and the ceremony ended with Closing Words  which included an excerpt from Roz's poem:
Loss & Gain.
Roz Barnden

I lost my hair
I lost my mind
I lost my tits
I was what remained of this

I lost my twinkle
I lost my spark
I lost myself
I became leftovers on the shelf

I lost my confidence
I lost my oomph
I lost my self esteem
I was just a person in between

BUT

I gained strength
I gained power
I gained resolve
I never knew I could be so bold

I learned to deal
I learned to face
I learned to cope
That's what eventually brought me hope

With resilience and positivity
She came back, what once was me   

AND YOU'LL NEVER BE GONE FROM US, LOVE.

Though I can't convince this chap of that.
Take care, friends.

       

 

Post 391. WE ARE KEEPING ACTIVE.

IT'S ALL YOU CAN DO.

OUR ROZ WILL BE CREMATED on 20 May 2021 at the Isle of Wight crematorium.
The non-religious ceremony - gods have never been high on our list of certainties - will be given selective screening on the net. The family met here with a representative of the funeral directors earlier this week and emerged from the experience relieved of a few organizational concerns and (to my ancient mind) a lot of money. I shall probably have more to say at a less stressful time, but right now can only say thank you again to all those lovely friends of our girl who, since her death, have been in touch to express their sorrow and sympathy and to offer any help needed. 
MEANWHILE.
I have finished David Mitchell's Back Story. Takes you up to when he met, and a few years later married, Victoria Coren. A good read. I am still reading Born in a Burial Gown by M.W. Craven and have started to re-read Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad.

Reading, like normality, is not so easy right now.
Good luck with any lockdown reprieve.

Post 390. DREADFUL NEWS, DEAR FRIENDS

OUR LOVELY ROZ IS DEAD.

SHE DIED OF AN EMBOLISM BROUGHT ABOUT BY CANCER on April 12, 2021, in St Mary's Hospital, Newport, Isle of Wight. She was 51 years and one month old: brave, kind, and fiercely loyal to family and friends.
Here she can be seen peeping out to smile for the camera on what none of us dreamt would be our last ever Christmas dinner together.
Mo and I have been welcomed to spend Christmas day with her and family, both at her former home and here, for more years than either of us can possibly remember. The festive season will never be the same again.
Rosalind Anne Barnden was the youngest of our three children: a bright infant, a determined youngster, a nightmare teenager: and a wonderfully worthwhile adult. All in all, a woman to be reckoned with. 
As soon as she could walk she wanted to ride a horse. Knew she could do it: then proved it with decidedly favourable reports from the two most respected riding school instructors in the area. She was a natural horsewoman. Might have gone a long way, but there was never equestrian country money in the family and I guess boys eventually became more interesting.

For a variety of reasons, school was not always the happiest place for her. She was bright, but clearly had no desire to take the path followed by her older siblings and seek further education at a university. She did, however, excel at athletics (high jump, long jump, and two hundred yards) and, from around the age of twelve, held an Isle of Wight high jump record that I believe was only beaten some three or four years ago.
Her teens were spent in a state of rebellion about which, years later, she would reflect: 'I was a nightmare to you two and I don't know how you put up with it.'

We knew. She was family and there was a fine young woman waiting there.

She tackled a variety of jobs. Shop worker. Barmaid. Door girl. Manager of the IW branch of a security firm. Hospital cleaning supervisor. And, eventually, a LSA at Medina College, Newport, IW. where her  empathy with the more disturbed and difficult of youngster was regularly evidenced.

She was twice married, twice divorced, and had a child from each marriage: Jessica, who is now a clinical pharmacist at St. Mary's Hospital, and Ellis who is still a pupil at Medina College.
Jess has just bought her first house. It is in Ryde. Needed TLC. And she and boyfriend James are busily making it habitable.
Ellis, who readers of this blog may know has been living here with his mother since March, 2019, will remain with us at least until the end of this term when his Medina education will be completed: a recent audition for Platform One music college in Newport was successful and he will start there in September. He plays bass guitar. Whether he will then opt to live more permanently with his father and stepmother in Cowes will be for him to decide.
While we live there will always be a home for him here.

Roz's dog, Buddy, who is still pining for her (the person of utmost importance in his entire life), along with her cats, Angel and Spike (to whom I am the most important as long as I have a bag of cat treats in my hand) are welcome to remain with us, too.
Jess's father, Daryl, and his other half, Sian, are currently exercising Buddy daily, and Ellis is making sure the entire pack is watered and fed. I think Roz, who recently renamed herself Bee on Facebook (apparently something to do with privacy), would have been deeply touched both at this kindness and by the myriad messages of condolence and offers of help from near and far.

She had some wonderful friends. So do we: and great family.

It was on 14 July, 2018 (Post 309), that I first reported: 'The younger of our two daughters, Roz, has been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer...and has prepared herself with a thoroughness that has been one of her more positive traits ever since she came of age.' The post concluded: 'At present we are feeling very old and sadly aware that we have nothing to offer but concern and love.'

That has remained throughout.
Years ago, on one of her special occasions, I gave her a tape of Michael Bolton singing 'If I could.' It expressed, better than I ever did personally, exactly how I felt about her.
I hope those of you who loved her and somehow get to read this will forgive all that is missing.
There has been so much and I am not as tough as I would like to make out.
Too many tears.
No child should predecease its parents, let alone:
ROZ BARNDEN 12. 03.1970 – 12.04.2021.

Daughter, sister, mother, devoted friend. 
Wherever you are, you won't stand  any nonsense, kid.
Love you xx 

Post 389. YOU'RE GLAD THEY ARE THERE.

BUT DREAD NEEDING THEM.

OUR DEAR DAUGHTER ROZ is back in hospital. 
The ambulance took her on Tuesday.
She had been suffering considerable pain for many weeks (see posts 386/7) and it had reached the stage where she had difficulty even in making her way to her en suite bathroom. She struggled down the stairs when the ambulance arrived, however, and was loaded straight onto a mobile stretcher and thence into the ambulance and away: what a lovely crew the ambulance people are.
She has since undergone innumerable tests, undignified delving etc. No word yet of when she may be back with us.
We wait and hope.
TELEVISION.

Gogglebox (Channel 4) continues to prove that the people watching television can be more amusing than much of the crap they are required to watch. This week, amidst the customary dross, they viewed a harrowing Line of Duty episode: their reactions to the climactic scene in a lake were worthy of BAFTAs. And it is to the programme producers' credit that they did not interrupt it with 'breaking news' of: The Death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. This forthright old fellow was almost a hundred and had a privileged life saying and doing pretty much whatever he chose to say and do. I think the assertion that he has been a firm prop to an occasionally teetering throne is a fair one. But he was no saint, and the decision by every BBC station, presumably at the instigation of its new Director-General, to fill a complete day and more with carefully doctored propaganda about him, was unnecessarily OTT. 
The Walking Dead (Fox UK). A few weeks ago I mentioned watching the opening episodes of The Walking Dead and, considering the pandemic, giving it time to settle in. A couple of nights ago we watched the latest episode, Here's Negan. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays Negan (in case you didn't know), supported by his real life wife, Hilarie Burton Morgan, gives an acting master class in what was probably the best background story ever told in any series of this comic book inspired horror tale. Well done Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.
AND FINALLY.

Daughter Jac captured this picture of yours truly wearing Mike's driving glasses and emailed it to me under the heading Den Corleone. Mo had expressed mild concern after my last blog post that somebody might put out a fatwa on me. I doubted that. Would you threaten a guy who looks like this?
Had your jab yet? 

Go for it.

 

Post 388. DISMISS RELIGIOUS MANIACS.

WHATEVER THEIR RELIGION.

DON'T PANDER TO THEM.
This scene outside Batley Grammar School was an affront to democracy and reflected very badly on its religiously maniacal complainants. Parents, of whatever race, colour, or creed, should not gather en masse outside a school to demand the dismissal of a teacher; nor should they, individually, shove junk food through school railings to their school going children when a school has banned junk food.
Where education is concerned, I see religion and junk food in much the same light: neither is particularly desirable. That being said, for a short time I was a pupil at a church school where, despite the cant, I was quite happy. As a WW2 kid I knew nothing of junk food.

A teacher in religious instruction once conjectured to my classmates and I that the 'loaves and fishes miracle' performed by Jesus could perhaps be translated as: 'He persuaded all those who had brought food with them to share it with those who hadn't.' When I took that home to my parents their reaction was a mild: 'Really?' So throughout my life I have held the cheerful belief that (a few head cases apart) we in this country do not get too worked up over religion.
The behaviour pictured above was outrageous and in some of the countries that those involved came from would have been dealt with severely. Here it should at least have earned them a stern rebuke, a flat refusal to take any disciplinary action whatsoever against the teacher, firm advice that they could, if they were dissatisfied with the tuition at the school, take their child elsewhere and, finally, a gentle reminder that, while cautiously welcomed, if they don't like the way things are here...
To be fair, I feel much the same about all those Brits who move abroad for the sunshine, set up Little England enclaves because they are too thick or lazy to learn the language of their new country, and firmly believe that the 'natives'  will understand them perfectly well if they speak loudly in English.
Nationalism is a blight: and religion and politics cause the bulk of the world's troubles.
I am well aware that demanding sensible eating habits of overweight junk food lovers is, like any attempt to reason with religious maniacs, a pointless exercise.
But for chrissake don't pander to them.
READING

Currently reading M.W. Craven's Born in a Burial Gown and David Mitchell's Back Story.
Mr. Craven introduces us to another detective with a somewhat surprising name, Avison Fluke, and I am already well with it.
Mr. Mitchell is turning out to be much the same in print as he is on television. I like him 
More later.
TELEVISION.
We watched Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench in the film Six Minutes To Midnight. Took me right back to the days of Went The Day Well? and Green For Danger. Didn't even mind that, in the lead up to the climax, the girls and their Nazi teacher apparently walked from Bexhill to Beachy Head. Poetic licence.Well done, Eddie and Co. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
We also saw the final episode of Unforgotten. Nicola Walker, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Peter Egan and a fine  company of players. We do get some great TV drama in Britain. Congratulations to all concerned.
I cannot remember the last time I felt quite so sad at the end of a series.

AND A LAST WORD ON EDUCATION.

Stay safe. Stay open-minded
    

  

 

     

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.