HOME.
Paranoid nationalists and web graffiti writers.
In the Middle Ages when a bedlam of bigots held sway, anybody who was different would eventually be dragged to the stocks, the ducking stool, or the stake.
Bigots are suspicious of different. It is something they cannot understand. It frightens them. And because it frightens them, they hate it.
Now, with email, a fast growing army of hate merchants are using the web to decry anything that might be construed as a threat to the volatile and vulnerable USA.
Puerile propaganda is circulated worldwide - excluding countries ruled by despots - and is invariably accompanied by a chain-letter style threat as to the consequences if it is not passed on.
Such offerings to come my way lately have been forwarded by liked and respected friends - presumably unwilling to accept the consequences of not passing them on - and appear to have been initiated by American jingoists who claim to have discovered the best ever (1) reply made to a dismissive French customs official (2) explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation, and (3) answer to anybody questioning gun-happy lawmen.
(1) turns out to be the usual “When I came through here in 1944 there wasn‘t a Frenchman to be seen” old chestnut, (2) is headed: A German’s View of Islam, and has allegedly been written by a Dr Tanay, “well-known and well-respected psychiatrist” (believe that if you will). Emanuel Tanay, M.D. compares Muslim fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam to Nazis who were allowed to take over because the peaceful (German) majority did not speak up…(I thought those who spoke up were put to death, but perhaps that’s me being simplistic) and (3) contains the droll reply made by a sheriff in Florida when asked why 68 bullets had been pumped into a cornered (illegal immigrant of course) murderer: “Because that’s all the ammunition we had.”
It isn’t just gung-ho Yanks, either.
We were bad-mouthing people long before 1776. and still are. The following is the latest English example sent to me:
A tourist walked into a Brighton curio/antique shop. After looking around for a while, he noticed a very life-like bronze Statue of a rat. It had no price tag, but it was so striking that he decided to buy it anyway.
He took it to the owner and said: 'How much is this bronze rat?'
The owner replied: 'It's £12 for the rat, and £100 for the story.'
The tourist gave the owner his £12 and said: 'I'll just take the rat, You can keep the story.'
As he walked off down the street, he noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the sewers and begun following him. This was a little disconcerting, so he started to walk a little faster, but within a couple of blocks the swarm of rats had grown to hundreds, and they were all squealing and screeching in a very menacing way. He increased his speed and ran on towards the beach, and as he ran, he looked behind him and saw the rats now numbered in their MILLIONS, and they were running faster & faster. By now very concerned, he ran down to the pier and threw the bronze rat far out into the water. Amazingly, the millions of real rats jumped into the water after it and were all drowned.
The man walked back to relate all this to the shop owner, who said: 'Ah, you've come back for the story then?'
'No,' said the tourist, 'I came back to see if you've got a bronze Muslim Fundamentalist Cleric, a couple of illegal immigrants, scousers, Man Utd fans and anything French!'
It’s light hearted bigotry which could get a few laughs in the pub. Brownie points may be obtained by replacing scousers and Man Utd fans with drug dealers and expenses fiddling politicians.
At the risk of coming across as a po-faced politically correct prat, I have discontinued forwarding these emails. I’m fed up with paranoid nationalists and web graffiti writers preaching spite is right.
Gossip, even juicy gossip, should be confined to corner shops.
What?
No, I wouldn’t go to a bullfight, a cockfight, a dogfight, or an execution, either.
READING.
Karen Rose.
If you’re looking for gore aplenty Kill for Me (subtitled Kiss the Girls and Make them Die) by Karen Rose should satisfy you.
Hell, at 500 plus pages it should satisfy a vampire.
Daughter Roz gave it to me to read. She enjoyed it. I ploughed through it: thought it had little plot and all the subtlety of Dexter.
Guess I’m getting old.
FILM.
Avatar.
Halfway through this James Cameron film I was convinced he was taking a stand against any nation that waged war simply to appropriate another nation’s natural resources..
I checked on Google and apparently he had no such thing in mind.
Pity.
Alice In Wonderland. (2010)
My Leader has never been one of, or for, the Alice band, so she didn’t watch this DVD. Granddaughter Jess and I watched. I think she saw it all.
I went to sleep somewhere between Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter tramping up and down his tea table and Mia Wasikowska‘s Alice returning to the real world and turning down her soppy, aristocratic, suitor.
Gather Tim Burton directed and that Alice is the highest grossing film of 2010 so far.
I’d have slept less comfortably in the cinema but I’d still have slept.
FOOTBALL.
Japan 1 - England 2.
“England won,” I said to the cat Shadow who had not bothered to move from his chair in the computer room. “Three goals in it, all of them scored by the Japanese.”
“How was that then?” he asked, more out of idle curiosity than interest.
“Seven minutes in and Japan scored the first goal. Wasn’t until the seventy second minute that one of their defenders converted an England cross into his own net and ten minutes later another of them managed the same thing. That’s what won the game for us. None of our bloody lot could beat their goalkeeper. Frank Lampard even failed from the penalty spot!”
“Ah,” he said, “now I understand why you were bellowing down there.”
I was indignant. “Bellowing? I don’t bellow; haven’t bellowed for years. Raised me voice a bit, perhaps…”
“Well, your raised-me-voice-a-bit echoed all the way up here.”
“Go on!”
“It did…I can tell you what your raised-me-voice-a-bit said…it said: ’Bloody ‘ell, Lampard… apart from Christine Bleakley, when did you last score!?’”
“Oops,” I said. “Heat of the moment...I recant.”
“Don‘t bother, they won‘t be reading you, you‘re not the Screws of the World,” he said.
“You did the right thing staying in your chair,” I said. “It was a friendly, played in Graz: the Japanese were the home team so I guess they’ve annexed Austria.”
“Do you not trust them?” he asked lightly, and added: “I don’t trust Siamese cats.”
“Pack that in, “ I said. “You’ll be the next one sending me racist emails.”
England 1 - U.S.A. 1.
First World Cup game and the cat Shadow, taking advantage of some good weather, was away on the rooftops listening to music from the distant pop festival. When he eventually graced us with his presence at suppertime, I told him the result.
“Who scored?” he asked.
“Steven Gerrard scored ours and a chap called Clint Dempsey persuaded Robert Green, our goalkeeper, to score theirs.“
He saw off his cat milk, demolished his food and headed back towards the cat flap.
“Waste of time watching it then,“ he said, “let alone putting up with that bloody great wasps’ nest in the crowd.”
“I had the sound turned down.“
“You could have been out here listening to some music,” he admonished, pushing his way through. “Sometimes I despair of you, mate.”
Thinking about the match, so do I.
AND HOME AGAIN.
Isle of Wight Pop Festival 2010.
It’s here again, to the joy of granddaughter Jess and over sixty thousand supporters from the mainland: some even came from as far away as Totland.
This year seems to be pensioners’ year, with lovely old people like Blondie and Paul McCartney in evidence.
My Leader and I will not go (we can hear most of it from the house) but when I am asked if I went I shall reply: “Liked Mr. Hudson: didn’t mind Shakespears Sister: couldn’t understand a word Jay Z jabbered, but the girl singer with him was good...”
We watched the television coverage and that was enough.
Technology...Huh!
If you had read this post earlier you would have seen the heading Technology! Wow! and this last item, similarly headed, giving credit to the technological genius who invented it.
'It' was the picture of a woman whose head and eyes followed every movement of your mouse and who would clearly speak any words you typed in for her.
It was sent to me by Ian Dillow, one time head of PR at Wessex Regional Health Authority, and it was fantastic.
Unfortunately it was also too clever to hang around for an indefinite time. In a few days the lady was not for talking.
I think it may be possible for you to obtain something of the idea by Googling
Free demo to create avatars using Text-to-Speech (TTS) by SitePal.
So far as I'm concerned, it was nice while it lasted.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
148. Watch YouTube for the best dummies.
HOME.
Real Fur.
This from friend Heather:-
Did you hear about the man who bought his wife a coat made entirely from hamster fur? They went on holiday to Blackpool and he couldn’t get her off the big wheel for two days.
Conversation with my Leader.
We were sitting in bed, supping the morning cuppa, cat Shadow a purr ball between us, when a newsreader mentioned that the new Home Secretary could put paid to Gary McKinnon’s threatened extradition to America. I had doubts and said so.
“When it comes down to it this bunch will be just as gutless as the last,” I opined. “Only hope when he does get dragged over there they’ll get ol’ Jack McCoy’s Law and Order crowd to prosecute him. They never win.”
“Sam Waterston did this week,” murmured my Leader, cleverly disclosing that she knows the name of the actor who plays Jack McCoy. “ He beat Kathleen Turner.”
“You’re right; he did. Afterwards she offered him a job, didn’t she? Then she took off in a black limousine.”
“I think she was some sort of television lawyer,” my Leader opined.
“Yeah. Like Judge Judy. What sort of car d’ you think she has?”
My Leader was in no doubt.
“Bullet proof .”
Death of Ray Alan.
With the death of Ray Alan went another of our gradually disappearing links with music hall variety. He was a superb ventriloquist and a class act. Many years ago when he opened a fete over here, a flustered local dignitary introduced him as: “Ray Charles and Lord Alan!”
“Well, you were close,“ said Ray, amused. “But I assure you I won’t be singing I Can’t Stop Loving You or Georgia On My Mind and I‘m pretty sure he will tell you he’s the one with the title.”
He, of course, was Lord Charles and his response was as expected.
“Silly arse!” he said.
If you want to be reminded of - or even see for the first time - Ray Alan at his hilarious best, go to You tube: Ray Alan with Lord Charles - Worlds Greatest Ventriloquist.- 1986 to savour some real entertainment. And while you are about it, take in my other favourite vent act of all time, the lugubrious Arthur Worsley with his bullying sidekick. Charlie Brown: look for Arthur Worsley - Which one’s the Dummy. Marvellous.
Ray Alan was nine days older than me.
Pays not to dwell on it.
Welcome company.
The cat Shadow has taken up semi-permanent residence on the spare chair in my computer room. I am generally the only other occupant of the room and I am not bothered by his occasional gentle snore. I think he may be wrestling with writer’s block or versifier’s volte-face or something.
He did come downstairs for the England - Mexico soccer friendly: slept through most of it, insisted he enjoyed it, proclaimed it could as easily have gone Mexico’s way and warned there would be more dangerous opponents in South Africa. He can be a cheerful little bugger.
He’s back in the chair now: won’t move until he‘s ready to eat again..
How come they know when you’re going to put their food out?
I’ve asked.
He won’t say.
TELEVISION.
BBC Young Musician of the Year. (BBC2)
16 year old pianist Lara Ömeroglu, playing Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, Op. 22, triumphed over flautist Emma Halnan (17) and violinist Callum Smart (14) to win the coveted BBC Young Musician 2010.
The three finalists must surely have meteoric musical careers ahead of them. To the layman their performances were impeccable; a total delight.
I know it is pointless saying so, but we oldies really should stop moaning about the young. The majority of teenagers are worthwhile, kindly and industrious. This biennial competition is proof that an outstanding few of them are gifted beyond belief.
Dr. Who. (BBC1)
I did hope the departure of Russell T. Davies would not detrimentally affect the new format and, despite some cracks in the seams, it hasn’t. There are pronounced differences; but no more than might be expected from new writers and a fresh production team. We remain optimistic by watching the follow up programme:-
Dr. Who Confidential. (BBC3)
Wherein the director, actors, writer and all concerned with the last episode discuss it, show how stunts and effects were accomplished, and clear away many of the cobwebs surrounding the production.
A fascinating character and plot master class for punters.
Good fun, too.
The National Movie Awards. (ITV1)
It was good to see the Harry Potter youngsters (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Bonnie Wright - Rupert Grint rang in sick) still winning awards with six films gone and two to go. Good, too, to see Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory in H.P. & the Goblet of Fire) win The Performance of the Year award for The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
And good that Tom Cruise received a screen icon award. He’s a darned good actor and he does bother to turn up at these functions.
A CAT’S LIFE.
Stop pussyfooting around.
Must bring this post to an end now. The cat Shadow has departed the computer room and is pussyfooting around downstairs in a furry of righteous indignation. “Ain’t anyone going to feed me? I dunno what it’s coming to around here! Y’ just can’t get the staff anymore!”
I’ll go down, tell him not to be so bloody impatient, feed him and give him a drop of cat milk,
Afterwards he’ll come back up here and settle beside me again.
He doesn’t hold grudges.
Real Fur.
This from friend Heather:-
Did you hear about the man who bought his wife a coat made entirely from hamster fur? They went on holiday to Blackpool and he couldn’t get her off the big wheel for two days.
Conversation with my Leader.
We were sitting in bed, supping the morning cuppa, cat Shadow a purr ball between us, when a newsreader mentioned that the new Home Secretary could put paid to Gary McKinnon’s threatened extradition to America. I had doubts and said so.
“When it comes down to it this bunch will be just as gutless as the last,” I opined. “Only hope when he does get dragged over there they’ll get ol’ Jack McCoy’s Law and Order crowd to prosecute him. They never win.”
“Sam Waterston did this week,” murmured my Leader, cleverly disclosing that she knows the name of the actor who plays Jack McCoy. “ He beat Kathleen Turner.”
“You’re right; he did. Afterwards she offered him a job, didn’t she? Then she took off in a black limousine.”
“I think she was some sort of television lawyer,” my Leader opined.
“Yeah. Like Judge Judy. What sort of car d’ you think she has?”
My Leader was in no doubt.
“Bullet proof .”
Death of Ray Alan.
With the death of Ray Alan went another of our gradually disappearing links with music hall variety. He was a superb ventriloquist and a class act. Many years ago when he opened a fete over here, a flustered local dignitary introduced him as: “Ray Charles and Lord Alan!”
“Well, you were close,“ said Ray, amused. “But I assure you I won’t be singing I Can’t Stop Loving You or Georgia On My Mind and I‘m pretty sure he will tell you he’s the one with the title.”
He, of course, was Lord Charles and his response was as expected.
“Silly arse!” he said.
If you want to be reminded of - or even see for the first time - Ray Alan at his hilarious best, go to You tube: Ray Alan with Lord Charles - Worlds Greatest Ventriloquist.- 1986 to savour some real entertainment. And while you are about it, take in my other favourite vent act of all time, the lugubrious Arthur Worsley with his bullying sidekick. Charlie Brown: look for Arthur Worsley - Which one’s the Dummy. Marvellous.
Ray Alan was nine days older than me.
Pays not to dwell on it.
Welcome company.
The cat Shadow has taken up semi-permanent residence on the spare chair in my computer room. I am generally the only other occupant of the room and I am not bothered by his occasional gentle snore. I think he may be wrestling with writer’s block or versifier’s volte-face or something.
He did come downstairs for the England - Mexico soccer friendly: slept through most of it, insisted he enjoyed it, proclaimed it could as easily have gone Mexico’s way and warned there would be more dangerous opponents in South Africa. He can be a cheerful little bugger.
He’s back in the chair now: won’t move until he‘s ready to eat again..
How come they know when you’re going to put their food out?
I’ve asked.
He won’t say.
TELEVISION.
BBC Young Musician of the Year. (BBC2)
16 year old pianist Lara Ömeroglu, playing Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, Op. 22, triumphed over flautist Emma Halnan (17) and violinist Callum Smart (14) to win the coveted BBC Young Musician 2010.
The three finalists must surely have meteoric musical careers ahead of them. To the layman their performances were impeccable; a total delight.
I know it is pointless saying so, but we oldies really should stop moaning about the young. The majority of teenagers are worthwhile, kindly and industrious. This biennial competition is proof that an outstanding few of them are gifted beyond belief.
Dr. Who. (BBC1)
I did hope the departure of Russell T. Davies would not detrimentally affect the new format and, despite some cracks in the seams, it hasn’t. There are pronounced differences; but no more than might be expected from new writers and a fresh production team. We remain optimistic by watching the follow up programme:-
Dr. Who Confidential. (BBC3)
Wherein the director, actors, writer and all concerned with the last episode discuss it, show how stunts and effects were accomplished, and clear away many of the cobwebs surrounding the production.
A fascinating character and plot master class for punters.
Good fun, too.
The National Movie Awards. (ITV1)
It was good to see the Harry Potter youngsters (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Bonnie Wright - Rupert Grint rang in sick) still winning awards with six films gone and two to go. Good, too, to see Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory in H.P. & the Goblet of Fire) win The Performance of the Year award for The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
And good that Tom Cruise received a screen icon award. He’s a darned good actor and he does bother to turn up at these functions.
A CAT’S LIFE.
Stop pussyfooting around.
Must bring this post to an end now. The cat Shadow has departed the computer room and is pussyfooting around downstairs in a furry of righteous indignation. “Ain’t anyone going to feed me? I dunno what it’s coming to around here! Y’ just can’t get the staff anymore!”
I’ll go down, tell him not to be so bloody impatient, feed him and give him a drop of cat milk,
Afterwards he’ll come back up here and settle beside me again.
He doesn’t hold grudges.
Friday, May 14, 2010
147. None of them would vote for me...
HOME. A family view.
Grandson Ellis and I were sprawled in my armchair watching Cbeebies Grandpa In My Pocket.
Grandson Ellis and I were sprawled in my armchair watching Cbeebies Grandpa In My Pocket.
Of a sudden he asked: “Why has Jason Mason got curly hair?”
“I expect that’s how it grows,” I ventured. ”When I was your age I had fair curly hair.” He peered at me like a predatory nit nurse. “Hmm… now you’re grey, aren‘t you…” he said…“and spiky”
Keeps your feet on the ground, don’t it?
The expected unexpected.
I care not what the ITV people say to the contrary, their adverts are louder than their programmes; I am constantly reducing the sound to avoid being deafened as well as brainwashed. There are frequent frantic searches for the remote.
Recently I was halfway through a British Gas advert boasting how they are committed to ringing ahead so that you don’t wait in all day when, unexpectedly, the doorbell rang.
It was a man to read the gas meter.
Music.
Following up on the treats to be found on YouTube I came across one that combined my fondness for the Harry Potter films with my favourite track from Michael Bolton’s Vintage CD. The scenes are from Potter films and the song is called If I Could. If you would like to give it a try, go to you tube - harry potter/if i could.
Incidentally, for those who hate Draco Malfoy, you may also find a young man called Tom Felton playing the guitar and singing If You Could Be Anywhere. He looks a bit like Draco but is clearly a much nicer chap. I like him.
I bet he’s a good actor, too.
“I expect that’s how it grows,” I ventured. ”When I was your age I had fair curly hair.” He peered at me like a predatory nit nurse. “Hmm… now you’re grey, aren‘t you…” he said…“and spiky”
Keeps your feet on the ground, don’t it?
The expected unexpected.
I care not what the ITV people say to the contrary, their adverts are louder than their programmes; I am constantly reducing the sound to avoid being deafened as well as brainwashed. There are frequent frantic searches for the remote.
Recently I was halfway through a British Gas advert boasting how they are committed to ringing ahead so that you don’t wait in all day when, unexpectedly, the doorbell rang.
It was a man to read the gas meter.
Music.
Following up on the treats to be found on YouTube I came across one that combined my fondness for the Harry Potter films with my favourite track from Michael Bolton’s Vintage CD. The scenes are from Potter films and the song is called If I Could. If you would like to give it a try, go to you tube - harry potter/if i could.
Incidentally, for those who hate Draco Malfoy, you may also find a young man called Tom Felton playing the guitar and singing If You Could Be Anywhere. He looks a bit like Draco but is clearly a much nicer chap. I like him.
I bet he’s a good actor, too.
TELEVISION.
Goodbye Mr. Chips.
This television film, originally released over Christmas 2002, was one my Leader and I missed at the time. It was well worth the repeat showing.
Martin Clunes is splendid as Chips and Victoria Hamilton excellent as the freethinking wife who, in life and after her early death, is responsible for his transformation from retiring Latin teacher to respected Headmaster.
Our enjoyment owed as much to the moving story as to the fine acting.
Neither of us was privately educated (family finances scarcely ran to public schools) but we did see Roedean from the car - several times - and were favourably impressed without being at all envious.
Perhaps we should have had more ambition.
Nah.
Who wants to rule the country or study Latin?
We didn’t and still don‘t.
ora pro nobis.
Lewis. (ITV1)
Reliable Kevin Whately is back with laconic Laurence Fox to investigate donnish dark deeds and masterly murders. [I really must stop listening to Tim Wonnacott!]
The casting is extremely good and the plots give a reassuring nod towards an absent Colin Dexter. I think it meets the Morse code. All it needs now is a background tune playing ditdahditdit dit ditdahdah ditdit ditditdit and ol’ Robbie Lewis will be home and dry.
Luther. (BBC1)
New cop on the block is DCI John Luther, played by Idris Elba. He is a coppers’ copper; a loose cannon; a top office nightmare; a hopeless husband, an adoring father; a door-demolishing, table-overturning, friend-testing basket case.
Actually, he’s every cliché in the book.
And so is everything else about this dark psychological thriller - including that description of it.
I’ll not stop watching, but I do hope it will become less predictable.
Outnumbered. (BBC1)
Series three and to my detriment I have only just become a regular viewer of this all-too-close-to-home family romp.
As the parents, Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner cope splendidly with every actor’s biggest nightmare - apart from somebody whistling in the dressing room or naming Macbeth - working with children and animals.
These parents simply play along. They have to. They are out-talked, outwitted and upstaged at every turn (by children Karen and Ben in particular) but they maintain moderate control and their sanity by the constant employment of gentle reproof and dry asides..
W.C. Fields once said: “Anyone who hates children and animals can't be all bad.” He died in 1946, 55 years before Karen (Ramona Marquez) was born.
He would have loved her. And she would have made mincemeat of him.
The Mentalist. (Five)
My Leader and I recently caught up on a backlog of Mentalist recordings and found we were hooked again. It is daffy and unbelievable and inclined towards the “let’s get rid of a few characters” shock technique, but Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) have a clear rapport and everything else is incidental.
In a country full of people who seem to act first and think later, I have stopped counting the number of times the insufferably clever and good-looking Jane would have finished up flat on his back and toothless.
You just have to go with the flow,
It’s quirkily watchable.
Doctors. (BBC1)
Just as nobody without the death wish would choose to live in Cabot Cove or Midsomer, so nobody (unless suffering from latrophobia) would choose to be a patient of any other practice than this.
My Leader, who once worked for a GP, regards it as a sitcom; a daily dose of pseudo A.J. Cronin; a farce.
Did you ever find practice nurses, receptionists. managers, accountants, a couple of doctors and the local police sergeant rushing to your home to reassure you that not only would your panic attack not kill you, but neither would your child’s teddy bear - no matter how threatening it looked?
If your answer is “yes” you had better start looking for Alice; you are clearly in Wonderland.
It’s the sort of thing that only happens on Doctors. Ne’er mind, it gives employment to a bunch of actors and technicians and encourages me to have an afternoon doze without feeling guilty.
POLITICAL HANGOVER.
Election post mortem.
That’s it, then. All over for as long as the courting couple stay together.
Who can say how long that will be?
Gordon the jaw-dropping-Scot gained more sympathy in his last appearance as PM, heading with family away from No.10, than he managed to muster from public or colleagues at any other time throughout his tenure.
Blair-clone-Cameron now has to show himself to be something other than a Morecambe and Wise double act with his Lib-Dem-double, Clegg.
As John Laurie oft lamented: “We‘re doomed. We‘re all doomed.”.
So did I vote?
Gosh no.
None of them would vote for me.
Anyway, a wet plank could win an election over here if it was wearing a blue rosette.
One did this time.
Again.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
146. Votes for all - well, not politicians....
HOME.
Battle of the Dental Plate.
A routine visit to old friend and long time dental surgeon Keith Fradgley of Ventnor turned out to be more than the customary: “All OK here. I’ll give them a clean and polish…people like you could drive me out of business…” and concluded in a no-holds-barred contest to extract a tooth and a half (an eight and a five I believe) from my bottom jaw.
Tooth and a half? Well, yes, one of the blighters had cracked right through and in the process of taking a mould to extend a small lower dental plate…
Anyway, the final confrontation lasted better part of an hour; the wisdom tooth was a bit of a beast and the remaining half tooth fought savagely.
Keith won on points, but it was a split decision.
I was awarded the Modified Dental Plate for being best opponent of the day.
Music.
Son Neil has sent me a copy of the BBC television programme Harry Nilsson - A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, a 1973 recording session which made me a lifelong fan. It and many others can be found on You Tube.
All the tunes are golden oldies. Of the five parts, the last two contain my favourite: This is All I Ask, by Gordon Jenkins and Harry’s version of Over The Rainbow which I like very much.
Listen in. There’s not a bad tune among ’em.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Zsjphc3RI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyfnqEADpSY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lwdePZg9BU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNXXSYjWnO4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF8wkXvPSM&feature=related
AND AWAY..
Rufus Wainwright at Oxford.
Daughter Jac went to the New Theatre (Formerly Oxford Apollo Theatre) on 26th April to see this young chap in concert again.
Her pal Zoe Farndon travelled from Warwick to go with her.
I gather the first half was a somewhat downbeat tribute to his late mother, but it picked up after the interval and he finished in customary buoyant fashion. They enjoyed it.
Of course they did.
They are loyal, if not uncritical, fans.
TELEVISION.
Foyle’s War.
At the end of this short series Foyle departed for America. Before he left he cleared up a couple of nasty murder cases for D.I. Milner; put paid to a council scheme to build on a Roman burial ground; saved Sam’s future husband from prosecution for assault and, with his last word, cut Milner’s bumptious assistant down to size.
Pity there was no sign of Andrew Foyle.
Could have done with a few decent outfits for Sam, too; even if it was Cripps‘ austerity Britain.
The Prime Ministerial Debate.
So all three of the Brickbats at Five Paces sessions are out of the way. According to the pundits, Nick won the first, Gordon probably shaded the second and David took the third.
Most critics agreed that putting the leaders of the largest parties into American style debate was a good thing.
I think it is too much America and would be better left there.
Gordon probably scuppered his chances before the last session by forgetting he was wearing an open microphone when he ‘privately’ pronounced elderly Gillian Duffy to be a bigot.
Later I thought I saw a damp patch under the television.
It wasn’t the cat, so it must have been Tony Blair wetting himself with laughter.
Joanna Lumley’s Nile.
The ol’ girl was on form here. There was plenty of head prefect enthusiasm and slightly breathless wonder There was the expected touch of raunchy naughtiness (think Purdey in The New Avengers and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous) and there was the customary lack of vanity.
Joanna’s Nile may have been a far cry from her Girl Friday Island or her quest to view the Aurora Borealis but she is never disappointing.
She holds an MBE.
Why not make her a Dame?
An Ambassador?
Hell, now we’ve seen the other three, why not make her Prime Minister?
READING.
M.C.Beaton.
Have just read Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye by M.C.Beaton. The writer was a Fleet Street journalist and had written 18 Agatha Raisin novels at the time this one was published.. It shows.
Easy reading.
AND POLITICS AGAIN.
The Election.
A former son-in-law used to tell me that if I didn’t vote I deserved whoever I got and had no right afterwards to complain about them.
My reply was that whether I voted or not the winners always turned out to be self-serving pains in the bum and I would most certainly complain about them ad infinitum.
Our polling station is the church just around the corner, My Leader may go to vote on Thursday. The cat Shadow and I will probably not.
We might have done if Joanna Lumley had been standing.
Battle of the Dental Plate.
A routine visit to old friend and long time dental surgeon Keith Fradgley of Ventnor turned out to be more than the customary: “All OK here. I’ll give them a clean and polish…people like you could drive me out of business…” and concluded in a no-holds-barred contest to extract a tooth and a half (an eight and a five I believe) from my bottom jaw.
Tooth and a half? Well, yes, one of the blighters had cracked right through and in the process of taking a mould to extend a small lower dental plate…
Anyway, the final confrontation lasted better part of an hour; the wisdom tooth was a bit of a beast and the remaining half tooth fought savagely.
Keith won on points, but it was a split decision.
I was awarded the Modified Dental Plate for being best opponent of the day.
Music.
Son Neil has sent me a copy of the BBC television programme Harry Nilsson - A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, a 1973 recording session which made me a lifelong fan. It and many others can be found on You Tube.
All the tunes are golden oldies. Of the five parts, the last two contain my favourite: This is All I Ask, by Gordon Jenkins and Harry’s version of Over The Rainbow which I like very much.
Listen in. There’s not a bad tune among ’em.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Zsjphc3RI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyfnqEADpSY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lwdePZg9BU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNXXSYjWnO4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF8wkXvPSM&feature=related
AND AWAY..
Rufus Wainwright at Oxford.
Daughter Jac went to the New Theatre (Formerly Oxford Apollo Theatre) on 26th April to see this young chap in concert again.
Her pal Zoe Farndon travelled from Warwick to go with her.
I gather the first half was a somewhat downbeat tribute to his late mother, but it picked up after the interval and he finished in customary buoyant fashion. They enjoyed it.
Of course they did.
They are loyal, if not uncritical, fans.
TELEVISION.
Foyle’s War.
At the end of this short series Foyle departed for America. Before he left he cleared up a couple of nasty murder cases for D.I. Milner; put paid to a council scheme to build on a Roman burial ground; saved Sam’s future husband from prosecution for assault and, with his last word, cut Milner’s bumptious assistant down to size.
Pity there was no sign of Andrew Foyle.
Could have done with a few decent outfits for Sam, too; even if it was Cripps‘ austerity Britain.
The Prime Ministerial Debate.
So all three of the Brickbats at Five Paces sessions are out of the way. According to the pundits, Nick won the first, Gordon probably shaded the second and David took the third.
Most critics agreed that putting the leaders of the largest parties into American style debate was a good thing.
I think it is too much America and would be better left there.
Gordon probably scuppered his chances before the last session by forgetting he was wearing an open microphone when he ‘privately’ pronounced elderly Gillian Duffy to be a bigot.
Later I thought I saw a damp patch under the television.
It wasn’t the cat, so it must have been Tony Blair wetting himself with laughter.
Joanna Lumley’s Nile.
The ol’ girl was on form here. There was plenty of head prefect enthusiasm and slightly breathless wonder There was the expected touch of raunchy naughtiness (think Purdey in The New Avengers and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous) and there was the customary lack of vanity.
Joanna’s Nile may have been a far cry from her Girl Friday Island or her quest to view the Aurora Borealis but she is never disappointing.
She holds an MBE.
Why not make her a Dame?
An Ambassador?
Hell, now we’ve seen the other three, why not make her Prime Minister?
READING.
M.C.Beaton.
Have just read Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye by M.C.Beaton. The writer was a Fleet Street journalist and had written 18 Agatha Raisin novels at the time this one was published.. It shows.
Easy reading.
AND POLITICS AGAIN.
The Election.
A former son-in-law used to tell me that if I didn’t vote I deserved whoever I got and had no right afterwards to complain about them.
My reply was that whether I voted or not the winners always turned out to be self-serving pains in the bum and I would most certainly complain about them ad infinitum.
Our polling station is the church just around the corner, My Leader may go to vote on Thursday. The cat Shadow and I will probably not.
We might have done if Joanna Lumley had been standing.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
145. Mostly a mad world
HOME.
Refuse refusal.
Latest of the Isle of Wight Council’s tail-wagging-the-dog policies is to order all citizens to place their politically correct rubbish (no bottles, or plastics, or cardboard; and no garden waste unless contained in overpriced green bags bought from the Council) in black dustbin bags and, on the given day, take them to the kerbside - or an allocated spot - outside their houses for collection by refuse collectors, waste disposal operatives or whatever else dustmen are calling themselves nowadays.
If rubbish is put out earlier than six the night before collection is due, the miscreant is liable to be prosecuted. Taxpayers’ money will be used to bring the prosecution.
For years we have been placing our dustbin bag in our front garden the night before the lads who collect it come around. We site it less than a yard from the front gate. Our garden is no more than a large forecourt anyway. Neighbours have adopted the same routine, give or take a bag or two or a yard or two,
This week all those who have ignored, overlooked, forgotten or simply not absorbed the new rule have had their rubbish left where they put it. No warning. The bags have simply been labelled with a notice saying they have not been collected because they are in the wrong place.
Why, I find myself constantly asking, are we employing the arrogant sods who run things around here? And why have none of them reasoned that litter-filled thoroughfares attract litter-scavenging vermin?
At the end of the road running alongside this terrace is a large woodyard wherein reside - if local folklore be believed - some rather large rats.
How long before said rats (accompanied by various other forms of wildlife) realise that the kerbs are being routinely littered with goodie-filled plastic bags lacking so much as a garden gate to protect them?
Since the new rules are clearly not designed to benefit the customer, one can only presume their purpose is to reduce the number of dustmen (or whatever title) we are currently employing. What a mean, futile saving.
A cutback in the number of overpaid, bullshit blathering top officers would be more to the point.
A huge reduction in the number of inflated expenses claims submitted by avaricious councillors would be even more so.
And a return to the days (if they ever existed) when the lunatics did not run the asylum would not come amiss.
The election.
So we’re off to a flying start. They’re going to build Utopia for us - again. The Blues, the Reds, the Oranges, the Greens, the Plaids, the Tartans, the BNP, UKIP and whatever the OMRLP might now be. For the next few weeks every one of them will promise everything you ever hoped for.
Your vote for them will surely make you the equivalent of a National Lottery winner.
And now they’ve imported another American game show, Brickbats at Five Paces, which consists of party leaders indulging in televised verbal jousting. What anybody is supposed to learn from it (other than just how undignified politicians are at election time) I do not know. It comes complete with highly paid opportunist American advisers of course, and that should be warning enough. At first glance they need a more exciting opening.
As a starter, the contestants should have been seated in the audience.
A compere - someone like the late lamented Leslie Crowther - should then have come on stage, introduced the show, and shouted:
“So who’s going to play Brickbats at Five Paces tonight? (long pause) David! Gordon! Nick! Come on down!”
What?
Give it time…
The Easter Hols.
Grandson Ellis has been stricken with the irritating itch of chicken pox, stoically refrained from excessive scratching and is on his way to a clear skin again. (Always happens at holiday time, doesn’t it?)
The cat Shadow has been stricken with cystitis; bad bout. I had not realised cats suffered from it.. We wrapped him in a blanket to take him to the vet. He goes berserk in a cat box. Thank gawd my Leader is a firm but kind administer of medicines. She is dealing with the daily dosage. I’m hopeless: get more fraught than the cat does. He has been very tolerant about it.
“That cat has not got a mean bone in his body,” was Mo’s verdict.
He had a quick wash to cover his embarrassment
FILMS.
Prairie Fever (2008)
This western had drunken ex sheriff Kevin Sorbo (think James Woods without the menace) escorting a group of women from a small town where neither he nor they were any longer wanted. It didn’t get much of a write up but we enjoyed it.
Tuck Everlasting. (2002)
Nice little fantasy from the Disney people. Starring William Hurt and Cissy Spacek, it was clearly family viewing for holiday time.
Ben Kingsley played the villain and the supporting cast included some attractive young people we did not recognise; they were all very good.
TELEVISION.
Foyle’s War.
The three leading characters are back. Sam is out of uniform (pity); Milner is a newly-appointed Detective Inspector with a lot to learn; Foyle is still a reluctant Detective Chief Superintendent who would rather go fishing; and the acting hat is still effortlessly upstaging everybody except its owner, who obviously taught it everything it knows.
Another three weeks of Honesuckle Weeks (what a smashing name), Anthony Howell (whose acting limp may not have kept up with his promotion) and the master of underplay, Foyle himself, Michael Kitchen (complete with his acting hat).
Might have been better to have a complete end to war and give us Foyle’s Peace?
Who knows?
Perhaps Anthony Horowitz does not want Foyle to become a home counties George Gently.
Midsomer Murders.
In a two hour episode, Barnaby and Jones investigated the customary mixture of class distinction, sex, spite and Middle England mayhem.
Dear old John Nettles is still being made to run all over the place before delivering an out-of-breath caution to a detestable toff.
I think he is really looking forward to the arrival of Neil Dudgeon.
FOOTBALL.
Mad world.
So penniless Pompey beat Redknapp’s Spurs and now Redknapp’s Spurs have beaten Chelsea. Can’t help wondering whether the ol’ boy will find the right players to beat the Inland Revenue.
Mad world, football.
Surprisingly decent world too, sometimes. When four staff at Pompey’s Eastleigh training ground were axed recently, head coach Avram Grant, club captain Hermann Hreidarsson, goalkeeper David James and the rest of the team, chipped in enough money to pay their wages until the end of the season.
In adversity, eh?
Refuse refusal.
Latest of the Isle of Wight Council’s tail-wagging-the-dog policies is to order all citizens to place their politically correct rubbish (no bottles, or plastics, or cardboard; and no garden waste unless contained in overpriced green bags bought from the Council) in black dustbin bags and, on the given day, take them to the kerbside - or an allocated spot - outside their houses for collection by refuse collectors, waste disposal operatives or whatever else dustmen are calling themselves nowadays.
If rubbish is put out earlier than six the night before collection is due, the miscreant is liable to be prosecuted. Taxpayers’ money will be used to bring the prosecution.
For years we have been placing our dustbin bag in our front garden the night before the lads who collect it come around. We site it less than a yard from the front gate. Our garden is no more than a large forecourt anyway. Neighbours have adopted the same routine, give or take a bag or two or a yard or two,
This week all those who have ignored, overlooked, forgotten or simply not absorbed the new rule have had their rubbish left where they put it. No warning. The bags have simply been labelled with a notice saying they have not been collected because they are in the wrong place.
Why, I find myself constantly asking, are we employing the arrogant sods who run things around here? And why have none of them reasoned that litter-filled thoroughfares attract litter-scavenging vermin?
At the end of the road running alongside this terrace is a large woodyard wherein reside - if local folklore be believed - some rather large rats.
How long before said rats (accompanied by various other forms of wildlife) realise that the kerbs are being routinely littered with goodie-filled plastic bags lacking so much as a garden gate to protect them?
Since the new rules are clearly not designed to benefit the customer, one can only presume their purpose is to reduce the number of dustmen (or whatever title) we are currently employing. What a mean, futile saving.
A cutback in the number of overpaid, bullshit blathering top officers would be more to the point.
A huge reduction in the number of inflated expenses claims submitted by avaricious councillors would be even more so.
And a return to the days (if they ever existed) when the lunatics did not run the asylum would not come amiss.
The election.
So we’re off to a flying start. They’re going to build Utopia for us - again. The Blues, the Reds, the Oranges, the Greens, the Plaids, the Tartans, the BNP, UKIP and whatever the OMRLP might now be. For the next few weeks every one of them will promise everything you ever hoped for.
Your vote for them will surely make you the equivalent of a National Lottery winner.
And now they’ve imported another American game show, Brickbats at Five Paces, which consists of party leaders indulging in televised verbal jousting. What anybody is supposed to learn from it (other than just how undignified politicians are at election time) I do not know. It comes complete with highly paid opportunist American advisers of course, and that should be warning enough. At first glance they need a more exciting opening.
As a starter, the contestants should have been seated in the audience.
A compere - someone like the late lamented Leslie Crowther - should then have come on stage, introduced the show, and shouted:
“So who’s going to play Brickbats at Five Paces tonight? (long pause) David! Gordon! Nick! Come on down!”
What?
Give it time…
The Easter Hols.
Grandson Ellis has been stricken with the irritating itch of chicken pox, stoically refrained from excessive scratching and is on his way to a clear skin again. (Always happens at holiday time, doesn’t it?)
The cat Shadow has been stricken with cystitis; bad bout. I had not realised cats suffered from it.. We wrapped him in a blanket to take him to the vet. He goes berserk in a cat box. Thank gawd my Leader is a firm but kind administer of medicines. She is dealing with the daily dosage. I’m hopeless: get more fraught than the cat does. He has been very tolerant about it.
“That cat has not got a mean bone in his body,” was Mo’s verdict.
He had a quick wash to cover his embarrassment
FILMS.
Prairie Fever (2008)
This western had drunken ex sheriff Kevin Sorbo (think James Woods without the menace) escorting a group of women from a small town where neither he nor they were any longer wanted. It didn’t get much of a write up but we enjoyed it.
Tuck Everlasting. (2002)
Nice little fantasy from the Disney people. Starring William Hurt and Cissy Spacek, it was clearly family viewing for holiday time.
Ben Kingsley played the villain and the supporting cast included some attractive young people we did not recognise; they were all very good.
TELEVISION.
Foyle’s War.
The three leading characters are back. Sam is out of uniform (pity); Milner is a newly-appointed Detective Inspector with a lot to learn; Foyle is still a reluctant Detective Chief Superintendent who would rather go fishing; and the acting hat is still effortlessly upstaging everybody except its owner, who obviously taught it everything it knows.
Another three weeks of Honesuckle Weeks (what a smashing name), Anthony Howell (whose acting limp may not have kept up with his promotion) and the master of underplay, Foyle himself, Michael Kitchen (complete with his acting hat).
Might have been better to have a complete end to war and give us Foyle’s Peace?
Who knows?
Perhaps Anthony Horowitz does not want Foyle to become a home counties George Gently.
Midsomer Murders.
In a two hour episode, Barnaby and Jones investigated the customary mixture of class distinction, sex, spite and Middle England mayhem.
Dear old John Nettles is still being made to run all over the place before delivering an out-of-breath caution to a detestable toff.
I think he is really looking forward to the arrival of Neil Dudgeon.
FOOTBALL.
Mad world.
So penniless Pompey beat Redknapp’s Spurs and now Redknapp’s Spurs have beaten Chelsea. Can’t help wondering whether the ol’ boy will find the right players to beat the Inland Revenue.
Mad world, football.
Surprisingly decent world too, sometimes. When four staff at Pompey’s Eastleigh training ground were axed recently, head coach Avram Grant, club captain Hermann Hreidarsson, goalkeeper David James and the rest of the team, chipped in enough money to pay their wages until the end of the season.
In adversity, eh?
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
144. At the onset of a month of balderdash.
HOME
That wretched hour.
Again the half yearly muck about with the clocks. Forward an hour this time. Why?
A theory is that it’s for Scottish farmers. But they’ve got electricity up there, haven’t they? And don’t they have machines to milk the cows nowadays?
So why are millions of non-rural folk currently losing an hour’s sleep in the mornings and bundling little kids off to bed in broad daylight?
Cannot the pillocks-in-power be persuaded on a compromise?
Why don’t we just knock half an hour off the time next autumn and never change the bloody clocks again?
That wretched election.
So, the election is to be on Thursday 6th May, eh? Can’t say the prospect excites me.
Well, we either vote for the bunch that has been too long in power now, or the crowd that was too long in power before them, don‘t we?.
You pays your taxes and you takes your choice.
One thing for sure, whoever gets in can be relied upon to put up taxes and forget their promises. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em with my grandson’s money box.
Johann Hari wrote an excellent article (As Britain ages, will generational conflict dominate our politics?) in The Independent on the day before the PM went to HM.
In a lively and sympathetic defence of old Boomers, the journalist deftly dismantled Tory front-bencher David Willetts who, it seems, has written a book blaming the old for taking too big a slice of the nation’s financial pie.
Mr. Hari slyly suggests that the £20bn more needed in support of the elderly by 2017 could be covered by simply recovering the £25bn in tax which the super-rich currently avoid or evade each year.
In the same paper, Andreas Whittam Smith, with an article entitled The triumph of political mendacity, did a fine demolition job on New Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling.
Mr. Darling, he concluded, lacks respect for the electorate and is not alone among politicians in so doing. Mr. Darling, it seems, is nobody’s darling.
He will give a little with one hand and take back a lot with the other.
Even more galling, he will be convinced that we won’t notice
My favourite start to the month of balderdash we shall now endure, however, was John Humphrys interview with Neil Kinnock (BBC Radio 4 Tuesday 6th April) in which the two Welshmen debated whether Gordon Brown would or would not be a liability to his party in the forthcoming election.
Lovely stuff.
They sounded like two old guys in a pub in Pontypridd.
A trill too far?
After commending Della Reese’s interpretation of The Story of a Starry Night I broke a personal house rule and bought The Classic Della CD.
My Leader looked unsure but did not demur. Her uncertainty was not without foundation. (Post 96 refers) I have a collection of CDs containing one or two tracks to which I actually listen: the rest, no matter how appealing they may be to devotees of the particular artiste concerned, are not to my taste and regularly suffer the skip button.
Della was primarily a jazz singer (hear Cleo Laine). It is my loss that I am not a jazz fan.
An excellent collection for anybody who is, though.
In later discussion with Maureen I said that her initial doubts about the CD, though unexpressed, had been apparent.
She conceded that she had wondered whether twenty four tracks would be a trill too far.
Ah.
TELEVISION.
Doctor Who (New series).
All hail the youngest Doctor to breeze onto the scene since William ‘Billy’ Hartnell first graced our screens in 1963.
On the evidence of episode 1 alone, Matt Smith is the ideal replacement for David Tennant, who was one helluva hard act to follow.
The young Doctor has also acquired lovely Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) as his travelling companion (presumably ‘assistant’ is no longer a PC description).
This first episode was really Amy’s story: writer Steven Moffat cleverly used the updating of the Tardis and its time traveller to show how a brave little girl, Amelia (Caitlin Blackwood), became a feisty young woman, Amy, in the twelve years that it took the Doctor to get back from his ‘I’ll only be gone five minutes’ first encounter with her.
Casting and production have got it right again: this team is nigh on perfect.
Jonathan Creek.
Writer David Renwick’s likeable character, played by likeable Alan Davies, re-emerged at last to tackle another bizarre mystery. This time a one-off.
It was the same old, fondly remembered, formula. But for me, once again, there was something missing.
It was not the unbelievable plot and it was not the entire reel of loose ends, both of which were much in evidence.
No, what was missing (and has been for far too long) was Carolyn Quentin.
All the other Jonathan baiters have been good, but Carolyn was the best.
If there is ever another series, she really should be in it.
A Touch of Frost.
Jack came back in a final two-parter, He fell in love with and married RSPCA Inspector Christine Moorhead, played by Phyllis Logan (who, I seem to remember, once played the love of DCI Matt Burke’s life in Taggart).
Of course it all had to end in high drama: how else, with Adrian Dunbar and George Costigan in the cast?
Pity the producers felt the need to make public their decision to film three endings and leave the choice of which would be screened to David Jason.
He chose well enough, but it savoured of another of those ghastly reality shows which would end with the three threatened characters standing in the spotlight while an off-screen voice intoned: “And the first character chosen not to die tonight is...“
Long - long - long - long pause…
“David!”
(Cut to a delighted Jason. Switch to show Bruce Alexander and John Lyons applauding and trying to look like good sports.)
It was otherwise a decent Frost yarn and a fitting farewell to the long running favourite.
Question Time.
The last time I saw this it came from Stevenage and the panel consisted of three members of parliament, a Daily Mail columnist, and (for the sake of sanity) Victoria Coren.
She came across as unbiased.
Say no more.
That wretched hour.
Again the half yearly muck about with the clocks. Forward an hour this time. Why?
A theory is that it’s for Scottish farmers. But they’ve got electricity up there, haven’t they? And don’t they have machines to milk the cows nowadays?
So why are millions of non-rural folk currently losing an hour’s sleep in the mornings and bundling little kids off to bed in broad daylight?
Cannot the pillocks-in-power be persuaded on a compromise?
Why don’t we just knock half an hour off the time next autumn and never change the bloody clocks again?
That wretched election.
So, the election is to be on Thursday 6th May, eh? Can’t say the prospect excites me.
Well, we either vote for the bunch that has been too long in power now, or the crowd that was too long in power before them, don‘t we?.
You pays your taxes and you takes your choice.
One thing for sure, whoever gets in can be relied upon to put up taxes and forget their promises. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em with my grandson’s money box.
Johann Hari wrote an excellent article (As Britain ages, will generational conflict dominate our politics?) in The Independent on the day before the PM went to HM.
In a lively and sympathetic defence of old Boomers, the journalist deftly dismantled Tory front-bencher David Willetts who, it seems, has written a book blaming the old for taking too big a slice of the nation’s financial pie.
Mr. Hari slyly suggests that the £20bn more needed in support of the elderly by 2017 could be covered by simply recovering the £25bn in tax which the super-rich currently avoid or evade each year.
In the same paper, Andreas Whittam Smith, with an article entitled The triumph of political mendacity, did a fine demolition job on New Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling.
Mr. Darling, he concluded, lacks respect for the electorate and is not alone among politicians in so doing. Mr. Darling, it seems, is nobody’s darling.
He will give a little with one hand and take back a lot with the other.
Even more galling, he will be convinced that we won’t notice
My favourite start to the month of balderdash we shall now endure, however, was John Humphrys interview with Neil Kinnock (BBC Radio 4 Tuesday 6th April) in which the two Welshmen debated whether Gordon Brown would or would not be a liability to his party in the forthcoming election.
Lovely stuff.
They sounded like two old guys in a pub in Pontypridd.
A trill too far?
After commending Della Reese’s interpretation of The Story of a Starry Night I broke a personal house rule and bought The Classic Della CD.
My Leader looked unsure but did not demur. Her uncertainty was not without foundation. (Post 96 refers) I have a collection of CDs containing one or two tracks to which I actually listen: the rest, no matter how appealing they may be to devotees of the particular artiste concerned, are not to my taste and regularly suffer the skip button.
Della was primarily a jazz singer (hear Cleo Laine). It is my loss that I am not a jazz fan.
An excellent collection for anybody who is, though.
In later discussion with Maureen I said that her initial doubts about the CD, though unexpressed, had been apparent.
She conceded that she had wondered whether twenty four tracks would be a trill too far.
Ah.
TELEVISION.
Doctor Who (New series).
All hail the youngest Doctor to breeze onto the scene since William ‘Billy’ Hartnell first graced our screens in 1963.
On the evidence of episode 1 alone, Matt Smith is the ideal replacement for David Tennant, who was one helluva hard act to follow.
The young Doctor has also acquired lovely Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) as his travelling companion (presumably ‘assistant’ is no longer a PC description).
This first episode was really Amy’s story: writer Steven Moffat cleverly used the updating of the Tardis and its time traveller to show how a brave little girl, Amelia (Caitlin Blackwood), became a feisty young woman, Amy, in the twelve years that it took the Doctor to get back from his ‘I’ll only be gone five minutes’ first encounter with her.
Casting and production have got it right again: this team is nigh on perfect.
Jonathan Creek.
Writer David Renwick’s likeable character, played by likeable Alan Davies, re-emerged at last to tackle another bizarre mystery. This time a one-off.
It was the same old, fondly remembered, formula. But for me, once again, there was something missing.
It was not the unbelievable plot and it was not the entire reel of loose ends, both of which were much in evidence.
No, what was missing (and has been for far too long) was Carolyn Quentin.
All the other Jonathan baiters have been good, but Carolyn was the best.
If there is ever another series, she really should be in it.
A Touch of Frost.
Jack came back in a final two-parter, He fell in love with and married RSPCA Inspector Christine Moorhead, played by Phyllis Logan (who, I seem to remember, once played the love of DCI Matt Burke’s life in Taggart).
Of course it all had to end in high drama: how else, with Adrian Dunbar and George Costigan in the cast?
Pity the producers felt the need to make public their decision to film three endings and leave the choice of which would be screened to David Jason.
He chose well enough, but it savoured of another of those ghastly reality shows which would end with the three threatened characters standing in the spotlight while an off-screen voice intoned: “And the first character chosen not to die tonight is...“
Long - long - long - long pause…
“David!”
(Cut to a delighted Jason. Switch to show Bruce Alexander and John Lyons applauding and trying to look like good sports.)
It was otherwise a decent Frost yarn and a fitting farewell to the long running favourite.
Question Time.
The last time I saw this it came from Stevenage and the panel consisted of three members of parliament, a Daily Mail columnist, and (for the sake of sanity) Victoria Coren.
She came across as unbiased.
Say no more.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
143. Every cloud has a silver lining.
HOME.
Sahil Saeed.
Only a week or so after my last post this little boy was kidnapped and his family faced with the terrible fear that they might never see him again. Praise be he is back with them now and Interpol (if that’s what it still is) appears to have caught some of the gang involved. Makes you realise how lucky you are to live in a spot where your biggest concern is whether some inconsiderate sod may have parked in front of your garage.
Conversation in a car.
Mention of a little boy takes me to a recent car trip. Just the two of us; Big Boo driving and Little Boo (grandson Ellis) strapped into his special seat at the back. All was quiet and I thought he had gone to sleep.
Suddenly he said: “You’re very old aren’t you, Boo.”
I admitted that to be the case.
“Yes…“ he mused…“You’ll be dead soon.”
I confirmed that could be the case, too.
“Mmm…I shan’t see you anymore then,” he said.
There was a pause.
His timing was perfect: “I shall still see La though.”
La is his pet name for his grandmother.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
AWAY.
254 OBA Southern Chapter.
We have just spent a pleasant couple of days at Botleigh Grange Hotel, Hedge End, on the outskirts of Southampton. The occasion was the annual get-together of our local branch of 254 OBA (Post 135 refers).
The Southern Chapter is organized by ex boy soldier Pat Soward and his wife, Maureen: they do it excellently.
Despite a liberal helping of miserable weather - and our uncertainty on foreign roads (I was even passed by a Smart Car) - with the help of satnav Hermione Granger we journeyed too and fro safely enough. There were some white knuckle moments and no little cursing on my part, but we made it.
It was worth the effort.
Many of the nice people we met last October were there, plus a few welcome additions. It was good to be reunited with kindly remembered folk and to recall events that took place when the world was altogether different from the one we know today.
Our thanks to the, mostly young, staff of Botleigh Grange Hotel. Their performance in dealing with our reunion dinner, a wedding reception and a charity function, all on the same night, was laudable and, with a little more direction, could have been outstanding. They did not let the apparent shortage of experienced management (or cooks or whatever) faze them: they remained calm and cheerful and they did their level best.
Well done…
And the journey home…
Our journey home, via Gosport and Alverstoke, was made in the best weather of the entire trip.
At Gosport we visited my Leader’s nephew, Steve, who wanted me to see his new flat. I should have gone to see it when Maureen did, shortly after he moved in, but I tend to stay put on the Island out of sheer bloody laziness.
It is a nice flat in a quiet area and he has decent - mostly elderly - neighbours. We arrived to find two visitors already there; his brother Phil, and a pleasant lady, Doreen, who used to be the occupant of Steve’s flat and now lives downstairs. She and Steve cook lunch for each other on alternate Sundays. We had coffee and he showed me around. It is an excellent pad, he waited a long time for it and his patience has been rewarded: it suits him perfectly.
Well done…
At Alverstoke we had lunch with Maureen’s sister, our Marg, and her husband, Mike. The sisters talked sister talk and Mike and I cheerfully agreed to disagree on just about every topic imaginable. (So what’s new?) I slept on the late afternoon boat back to the Island. My Leader didn’t offer to take over the driving. She knew I’d be shaken wide awake the moment we hit the concrete ploughed fields that pass for roads over here.
TELEVISION.
Five Days.
Suranne Jones, David Morrissey, Anne Reid and Bernard Hill starred in this drama shown on BBC1.
There was some fine acting, a tortuous plot, and the realistically ironic death of one of the leading characters.
Good television.
Missing. (BBC1)
Second series about a police Missing Persons Unit. The action is set in the Kent towns of Tonbridge and Dover. Pauline Quirke plays DS “MJ.” Croft who leads the team and Mark Wingett (him off The Bill) plays a local radio broadcaster. Any tendency to cosiness is tempered by the constant reminder that high-flying jobsworths run the police nowadays, just as they do pretty much every other concern.
READING.
Terry Wogan.
Finished ol’ Tel’s Where Was I?! I enjoyed it. Bit lighter than his autobiographical books, I thought. More blog-like. Don’t suppose he’d mind me saying that. Blog-like or not, he’s been paid for it: and he won’t have come cheap.
RADIO.
Heard that song before?
Listening to Classic FM one morning recently I heard the haunting Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens and found myself wondering how many people know it only as the theme from Jonathan Creek. I then wondered how many classical composers cavort in their crypts at the cavalier use of their music by film and television producers or, worse still, by numpties who adorn it with banal pop lyrics.
That having been said, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Pathétique, Op. 74, shamelessly hijacked for Howard Hughes’ s 1943 film The Outlaw, was actually complemented by The Story of a Starry Night, particularly when it was sung by the superb Della Reese.
Click on and listen in…
Della Reese - The Story of a Starry Night ...2 min 51 sec She made a very decent job of the Schubert Serenade, too.
FILM.
Zathura.
Two squabbling brothers were propelled into space in their old house. Tim Robbins’ name was there to sell it; he hardly appeared: but we thought it was great fun anyway.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
We have the complete DVD set but ITV is showing the films again and we cannot but look in. Emma, Dan and Rupert were all so small. Keep seeing things we missed the first/second/third time around and keep wondering why we don’t just put on the DVD and avoid the darned adverts.
Got to go: they’re showing The Chamber of Secrets again this afternoon…
Sahil Saeed.
Only a week or so after my last post this little boy was kidnapped and his family faced with the terrible fear that they might never see him again. Praise be he is back with them now and Interpol (if that’s what it still is) appears to have caught some of the gang involved. Makes you realise how lucky you are to live in a spot where your biggest concern is whether some inconsiderate sod may have parked in front of your garage.
Conversation in a car.
Mention of a little boy takes me to a recent car trip. Just the two of us; Big Boo driving and Little Boo (grandson Ellis) strapped into his special seat at the back. All was quiet and I thought he had gone to sleep.
Suddenly he said: “You’re very old aren’t you, Boo.”
I admitted that to be the case.
“Yes…“ he mused…“You’ll be dead soon.”
I confirmed that could be the case, too.
“Mmm…I shan’t see you anymore then,” he said.
There was a pause.
His timing was perfect: “I shall still see La though.”
La is his pet name for his grandmother.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
AWAY.
254 OBA Southern Chapter.
We have just spent a pleasant couple of days at Botleigh Grange Hotel, Hedge End, on the outskirts of Southampton. The occasion was the annual get-together of our local branch of 254 OBA (Post 135 refers).
The Southern Chapter is organized by ex boy soldier Pat Soward and his wife, Maureen: they do it excellently.
Despite a liberal helping of miserable weather - and our uncertainty on foreign roads (I was even passed by a Smart Car) - with the help of satnav Hermione Granger we journeyed too and fro safely enough. There were some white knuckle moments and no little cursing on my part, but we made it.
It was worth the effort.
Many of the nice people we met last October were there, plus a few welcome additions. It was good to be reunited with kindly remembered folk and to recall events that took place when the world was altogether different from the one we know today.
Our thanks to the, mostly young, staff of Botleigh Grange Hotel. Their performance in dealing with our reunion dinner, a wedding reception and a charity function, all on the same night, was laudable and, with a little more direction, could have been outstanding. They did not let the apparent shortage of experienced management (or cooks or whatever) faze them: they remained calm and cheerful and they did their level best.
Well done…
And the journey home…
Our journey home, via Gosport and Alverstoke, was made in the best weather of the entire trip.
At Gosport we visited my Leader’s nephew, Steve, who wanted me to see his new flat. I should have gone to see it when Maureen did, shortly after he moved in, but I tend to stay put on the Island out of sheer bloody laziness.
It is a nice flat in a quiet area and he has decent - mostly elderly - neighbours. We arrived to find two visitors already there; his brother Phil, and a pleasant lady, Doreen, who used to be the occupant of Steve’s flat and now lives downstairs. She and Steve cook lunch for each other on alternate Sundays. We had coffee and he showed me around. It is an excellent pad, he waited a long time for it and his patience has been rewarded: it suits him perfectly.
Well done…
At Alverstoke we had lunch with Maureen’s sister, our Marg, and her husband, Mike. The sisters talked sister talk and Mike and I cheerfully agreed to disagree on just about every topic imaginable. (So what’s new?) I slept on the late afternoon boat back to the Island. My Leader didn’t offer to take over the driving. She knew I’d be shaken wide awake the moment we hit the concrete ploughed fields that pass for roads over here.
TELEVISION.
Five Days.
Suranne Jones, David Morrissey, Anne Reid and Bernard Hill starred in this drama shown on BBC1.
There was some fine acting, a tortuous plot, and the realistically ironic death of one of the leading characters.
Good television.
Missing. (BBC1)
Second series about a police Missing Persons Unit. The action is set in the Kent towns of Tonbridge and Dover. Pauline Quirke plays DS “MJ.” Croft who leads the team and Mark Wingett (him off The Bill) plays a local radio broadcaster. Any tendency to cosiness is tempered by the constant reminder that high-flying jobsworths run the police nowadays, just as they do pretty much every other concern.
READING.
Terry Wogan.
Finished ol’ Tel’s Where Was I?! I enjoyed it. Bit lighter than his autobiographical books, I thought. More blog-like. Don’t suppose he’d mind me saying that. Blog-like or not, he’s been paid for it: and he won’t have come cheap.
RADIO.
Heard that song before?
Listening to Classic FM one morning recently I heard the haunting Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens and found myself wondering how many people know it only as the theme from Jonathan Creek. I then wondered how many classical composers cavort in their crypts at the cavalier use of their music by film and television producers or, worse still, by numpties who adorn it with banal pop lyrics.
That having been said, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Pathétique, Op. 74, shamelessly hijacked for Howard Hughes’ s 1943 film The Outlaw, was actually complemented by The Story of a Starry Night, particularly when it was sung by the superb Della Reese.
Click on and listen in…
Della Reese - The Story of a Starry Night ...2 min 51 sec She made a very decent job of the Schubert Serenade, too.
FILM.
Zathura.
Two squabbling brothers were propelled into space in their old house. Tim Robbins’ name was there to sell it; he hardly appeared: but we thought it was great fun anyway.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
We have the complete DVD set but ITV is showing the films again and we cannot but look in. Emma, Dan and Rupert were all so small. Keep seeing things we missed the first/second/third time around and keep wondering why we don’t just put on the DVD and avoid the darned adverts.
Got to go: they’re showing The Chamber of Secrets again this afternoon…
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
142. Melina who?
HOME.
That window.
Happy with the window. Content to pay the bill even if it was more than double the original price of the house. Far from happy with the V.A.T demanded by a grasping treasury. Don’t mind paying those who do it all. Very much mind paying those who do fuck all.
Mini Cooper Y 438 CBL.
And while I am about it, let me express my displeasure with the owner of the above numbered Mini. Last Saturday morning this idiot parked on the hard standing directly in front of our garage door. My wife, prevented from using the family car, was made twenty five minutes late for an assignment.
She left a note on the windscreen of the Mini inviting the owner to call at the front door and apologise.
Fat chance.
As secretly as it had been left, the car was removed. Presumably the owner thought possession of Island Residents Permit IRP 38836 - 01 meant he or she had permission to park anywhere.
I am assuming whoever it was cannot read - there is a No Parking sign above the garage door - so if you know him or her perhaps you would be good enough to pass on this message:
DO
NOT
DO
THAT
AGAIN
YOU
DICK
HEAD.
Thank you for your co-operation.
TELEVISION.
DVDs.
We have started to pile up the recordings again. Don’t remember when Mo was screened, but we watched it last weekend.
Julie Walters was excellent as former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam who finally brought peace to Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement.
The credit for her success was hijacked by P.M. Tony Blair and his creepy henchman Peter Mandelson.
Trust politicians?
The News.
Accusations of Bullying.
Don’t care where they are. In the school playground, the workplace, or at 10 Downing Street; bullies are scum. Now the jaw-dropping Scot is accused of bullying staff at No.10. His creepy henchman Peter Mandelson (yes, that little bugger again) hurried to his defence, as did Britain’s prize model of self-control John Prescott. They were followed by Ed (talking) Balls.
With an election in the offing, who the hell knows who to believe.
But I ask you…
Trust politicians?
CSI: NY.
CSI Detective Third Grade Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) is walking again. I presume he finally accepted this season’s pay offer. His disablement provided a reasonable sub plot based around his will to recover. Meantime, he kept working. Hell, if Melina Kanakarides had been on the staff in my office I’d have kept working if I had to walk there on my hands.
Lark Rise To Candleford.
Ruraltania trotted out its disabled character sub plot when Robert Timmins (Brendan Coyle), distracted by the chatter of Minnie Mude (Ruby Bentall), fell off his ladder. The fall left him in agony, Ivy. (That’s one for the older reader.) Guess it is not too much of a spoiler to say he got over it. There was a fleeting visit from the lady of the manor and a gloriously daffy St. George and the Dragon play. There were fine performances again from Linda Bassett, Karl Johnson and the rest of the cast. You can tell when a series is doing well: it attracts stars like Tom Conti, who appeared the week before last as a concert pianist. He is another Scottish actor, like Ken Stott, who only has to be on the screen to steal the scene. He was gently written in and out and we were all left smiling through the tears.
CSI Trilogy.
This was a good gimmick enabling Laurence Fishburne to fully establish his grip on the CSI scene while reminding the stars of NY and Miami that, in the acting world as in every other business, nobody is indispensable.
NCIS.
There has to be an exception to every rule and Mark Harmon is such an exception. So far as I can see, in what has become close to a cult show, he is indispensable.
READING.
I have just read Lost for Words by John Humphrys. (Hodder and Stoughton). Good book about the mangling and manipulating of the English language. Made me re-read some of my blog posts and think: bloody hell, did I write that? I then recalled the advice given to me years ago by the novelist George Woodman: “It is good that you can admire another person's writing, but never let it undermine your opinion of your own work.” So I shall not dwell too long on the done and dusted.
I am still reading and enjoying Where Was I ?! The World According to Terry Wogan. Not sure about his new show on Radio 2, though. I was never all that happy with Parkinson’s weekly tribute to Frank Sinatra, so a weekly dollop of obsequious TOGs could be a fawn too far. Sunday lunchtime has never been the same since the Billy Cotton Band Show disappeared.
My reading may be further put on hold: Simon’s Cat, the promised book of cartoons by Simon Tofield, has just been presented to me by my Leader.
Not a Christmas or a birthday present: just a present because she knew I wanted it.
Melina who?
That window.
Happy with the window. Content to pay the bill even if it was more than double the original price of the house. Far from happy with the V.A.T demanded by a grasping treasury. Don’t mind paying those who do it all. Very much mind paying those who do fuck all.
Mini Cooper Y 438 CBL.
And while I am about it, let me express my displeasure with the owner of the above numbered Mini. Last Saturday morning this idiot parked on the hard standing directly in front of our garage door. My wife, prevented from using the family car, was made twenty five minutes late for an assignment.
She left a note on the windscreen of the Mini inviting the owner to call at the front door and apologise.
Fat chance.
As secretly as it had been left, the car was removed. Presumably the owner thought possession of Island Residents Permit IRP 38836 - 01 meant he or she had permission to park anywhere.
I am assuming whoever it was cannot read - there is a No Parking sign above the garage door - so if you know him or her perhaps you would be good enough to pass on this message:
DO
NOT
DO
THAT
AGAIN
YOU
DICK
HEAD.
Thank you for your co-operation.
TELEVISION.
DVDs.
We have started to pile up the recordings again. Don’t remember when Mo was screened, but we watched it last weekend.
Julie Walters was excellent as former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam who finally brought peace to Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement.
The credit for her success was hijacked by P.M. Tony Blair and his creepy henchman Peter Mandelson.
Trust politicians?
The News.
Accusations of Bullying.
Don’t care where they are. In the school playground, the workplace, or at 10 Downing Street; bullies are scum. Now the jaw-dropping Scot is accused of bullying staff at No.10. His creepy henchman Peter Mandelson (yes, that little bugger again) hurried to his defence, as did Britain’s prize model of self-control John Prescott. They were followed by Ed (talking) Balls.
With an election in the offing, who the hell knows who to believe.
But I ask you…
Trust politicians?
CSI: NY.
CSI Detective Third Grade Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) is walking again. I presume he finally accepted this season’s pay offer. His disablement provided a reasonable sub plot based around his will to recover. Meantime, he kept working. Hell, if Melina Kanakarides had been on the staff in my office I’d have kept working if I had to walk there on my hands.
Lark Rise To Candleford.
Ruraltania trotted out its disabled character sub plot when Robert Timmins (Brendan Coyle), distracted by the chatter of Minnie Mude (Ruby Bentall), fell off his ladder. The fall left him in agony, Ivy. (That’s one for the older reader.) Guess it is not too much of a spoiler to say he got over it. There was a fleeting visit from the lady of the manor and a gloriously daffy St. George and the Dragon play. There were fine performances again from Linda Bassett, Karl Johnson and the rest of the cast. You can tell when a series is doing well: it attracts stars like Tom Conti, who appeared the week before last as a concert pianist. He is another Scottish actor, like Ken Stott, who only has to be on the screen to steal the scene. He was gently written in and out and we were all left smiling through the tears.
CSI Trilogy.
This was a good gimmick enabling Laurence Fishburne to fully establish his grip on the CSI scene while reminding the stars of NY and Miami that, in the acting world as in every other business, nobody is indispensable.
NCIS.
There has to be an exception to every rule and Mark Harmon is such an exception. So far as I can see, in what has become close to a cult show, he is indispensable.
READING.
I have just read Lost for Words by John Humphrys. (Hodder and Stoughton). Good book about the mangling and manipulating of the English language. Made me re-read some of my blog posts and think: bloody hell, did I write that? I then recalled the advice given to me years ago by the novelist George Woodman: “It is good that you can admire another person's writing, but never let it undermine your opinion of your own work.” So I shall not dwell too long on the done and dusted.
I am still reading and enjoying Where Was I ?! The World According to Terry Wogan. Not sure about his new show on Radio 2, though. I was never all that happy with Parkinson’s weekly tribute to Frank Sinatra, so a weekly dollop of obsequious TOGs could be a fawn too far. Sunday lunchtime has never been the same since the Billy Cotton Band Show disappeared.
My reading may be further put on hold: Simon’s Cat, the promised book of cartoons by Simon Tofield, has just been presented to me by my Leader.
Not a Christmas or a birthday present: just a present because she knew I wanted it.
Melina who?
Friday, February 05, 2010
141. Sky High with Toad of Toad Hall
TELEVISION.
The Sky High story.
We finally did it.
In common with millions of fellow goggle box watchers we decided we would have to throw more money Murdoch’s way and have a Sky dish installed. It had less to do with programme satisfaction than with the erratic reception of freeview obtained via the standard aerial. Our fun began with the news that adjacent buildings precluded any simple siting of a dish. Only a topmost site would do. Ordinary pop-up-a-ladder lads checked their insurance policies and ran for cover.
We spoke to a nice Scottish woman on the telephone. She said it sounded like a job for their high aerial installers. We needed the Sky High boys.
She arranged it.
They came, they saw, they debated, they said they could do it, but not that day: that day somebody else on the firm was using the requisite ladders. They would return later in the week. They departed.
Next day it snowed. Semi Arctic conditions prevailed for the following fortnight.
When the freeze was over we rang again.
Another couple of Sky Highers came. They debated and decided the work would take more time than the allocated time slot allowed them. They left promising that we would be visited again later in the week.
They were true to their word.
Later in the week the original pair arrived. There had been several dry days. On the morning of their arrival it was raining.
They were polite and efficient. Impervious to the weather they set about the task. In one and a half hours they had sited the aerial, installed the box, polished off the standard cuppa, shown me the basics of the remote control and departed again.
Now I only have to digest the instruction manual, pick up on all I didn’t immediately take in about the remote control, re-install my freeview box elsewhere to watch all the unseen recorded stuff contained therein (never a problem when recordings were on old fashioned video cassettes) and add my monthly subscription to ol’ Rupert’s billions.
It’s got to be worth it.
Hell, in only the last couple of days I could have seen James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase (1945): would have done, too, had I not seen them when they were first released (and probably half a dozen times since).
And if I had been even half sure how to record them.
Lark Rise to Candleford.
To coincide with the collection of the harvest, Ruraltania was hit by measles. Little Man got it and Alf’s little brother got it and only one of ’em survived it and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Unreality television, but real entertainment.
NCIS (Heartland).
Ralph Waite, down off Walton’s Mountain, was discovered to be Gibbs’s father. I am still trying to puzzle out whether that makes Gibbs the half brother of John-Boy Walton.
Lovely episode: beautifully acted.
Arena: Harold Pinter - a Celebration.
It is to my eternal discredit that I never could see the point of Pinter‘s plays. By the end of the evening I didn’t care whose birthday party it was or why anybody came to take him away. I was equally Philistine (despite our son’s singular success in a school production of Krapp’s Last Tape) about the works of Samuel Beckett. Long before David Caruso’s acting sunglasses Mark Harmon’s acting haircut and Michael Kitchen‘s acting trilby, Beckett invented the acting banana. I remember getting the humour but missing the point. There just didn’t seem to be one.
Nonetheless, this Arena programme showcasing the work of Harold Pinter was a fascinating tribute to a unique talent and contained contributions from many of my favourite performers including David Bradley, Kenneth Cranham, Lynsay Duncan, Colin Firth, Douglas Hodge, Jeremy Irons, Jude Law, Roger Lloyd Pack, Gina McKee, Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Samuel West and Penelope Wilton, along with students from LAMDA.
Obviously they all thought he was worth it.
I enjoyed most of it.
Still missed the point, though.
READING.
Corduroy Mansions.
I meandered a bit pointlessly through Alexander McCall Smith’s crumbling mansion block in Pimlico, too. Didn’t so much lose the plot as have difficulty in finding it.
Perhaps I should have hired the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
HOME.
That Window.
Whisper it very softly. No fuss, no fanfare, it’s in. A like-for-like wooden replacement window. My Leader spoke to Tammany Hall in her customary reasonable fashion and obtained a surprisingly kindly response. The only time I spoke was to say hallo to a return caller and pass the phone over to her. The window looks good and well in keeping.
Say no more - I hope.
Living with minor fame.
The cat Shadow leapt onto his choice chair in the computer room and struck the pose I know all too well.
“You must have a poem,” I said unenthusiastically.
“Live with it, mate,” he replied, and was orating before I could blink:
Shadow the Blogger’s Model.
Now you’ve seen me in the fur,
Glistening eyes and fit to purr,
If you’re honest you’ll concur
I’m something of a blinder.
Much too smart for dog or flea,
No mouse puts one over me,
Even a bird up in a tree,
Knows I’ll surely find her.
As models go I’m a natural mog,
Made for posing on a blog,
Quite as cute as the cutest dog:
(I can’t say anything kinder.)
And one day maybe I’ll be seen
On the front of a national magazine.
Escorting a female cat, pristine:
If only as her minder.
He had the usual wash before asking: “Well, what do you think?”
“Pure Toad of Toad Hall” I said. “Right up ‘til the last line..”
“Knew you’d like it,” he said.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
140. One distraction after another.
The Cat Shadow.
AT HOME.
An apologetic shrug of the shoulders.
For the first year in the last five I failed to complete my computer diary. Made the last entry on the 15th December, 2009. Not sure what happened after that. There was a load of rain, then an early rush to install Christmas decorations inside and out; then the sudden realisation that nice people were sending us Christmas cards and we were floundering to reciprocate.
I have no idea who we missed or who missed us. My Leader and I agreed to jointly tackle the card writing and that is a fatal mistake. In the end neither of us knew who had or had not done what. To be honest, it was much like last year.
So if you were expecting a card and we missed you, please forgive us and we hope you and yours had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year.
Rest assured other things were overlooked.
My diary for one.
For the first year in the last five I failed to complete my computer diary. Made the last entry on the 15th December, 2009. Not sure what happened after that. There was a load of rain, then an early rush to install Christmas decorations inside and out; then the sudden realisation that nice people were sending us Christmas cards and we were floundering to reciprocate.
I have no idea who we missed or who missed us. My Leader and I agreed to jointly tackle the card writing and that is a fatal mistake. In the end neither of us knew who had or had not done what. To be honest, it was much like last year.
So if you were expecting a card and we missed you, please forgive us and we hope you and yours had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year.
Rest assured other things were overlooked.
My diary for one.
And an air of distraction...
“Got the message in the end, did you?” enquired the cat Shadow sniffily.
I feigned faint distraction (something I do rather easily).
“Message?” I murmured: “What message?”
“You know the one,” he persisted. “The drop the diary and concentrate on the blog one. ‘Forget the diary and stick to the blog,’ I said. Remember?”
“Gawdawmighty, that was a long time ago,” I protested. “More than a year I’ll bet.”
“October 2008,” he said smugly.
“And I tried it and you said it was no different from my usual stuff.”
“I think I probably said it was a bit like your usual stuff but with dates instead of headings. That didn’t mean you shouldn’t stick with it.”
“But I suffer from retired geezers’ syndrome. Not a minute to spare. I just can’t find the time to do a daily blog. Anyway, I don‘t think the Blog Eds would welcome that sort of intrusion into their cyberspace.”
“It’s not their bloody cyberspace,” he said. “And if you think they so much as know you exist you’re even more self - delusional than I imagine you to be.”
I sighed my despairing sigh.
“Don’t go lookin’ to heaven either, mate,” he said. “You claim to respect that Giles Turnbull’s computer nous. Well he says you have to keep blogging on a regular basis; if you look at his blog nowadays it’s up to date and full of daily photo stuff.”
“It’s a bit of a while since I looked in at him,” I admitted. “Haven’t found the time.”
I feigned faint distraction (something I do rather easily).
“Message?” I murmured: “What message?”
“You know the one,” he persisted. “The drop the diary and concentrate on the blog one. ‘Forget the diary and stick to the blog,’ I said. Remember?”
“Gawdawmighty, that was a long time ago,” I protested. “More than a year I’ll bet.”
“October 2008,” he said smugly.
“And I tried it and you said it was no different from my usual stuff.”
“I think I probably said it was a bit like your usual stuff but with dates instead of headings. That didn’t mean you shouldn’t stick with it.”
“But I suffer from retired geezers’ syndrome. Not a minute to spare. I just can’t find the time to do a daily blog. Anyway, I don‘t think the Blog Eds would welcome that sort of intrusion into their cyberspace.”
“It’s not their bloody cyberspace,” he said. “And if you think they so much as know you exist you’re even more self - delusional than I imagine you to be.”
I sighed my despairing sigh.
“Don’t go lookin’ to heaven either, mate,” he said. “You claim to respect that Giles Turnbull’s computer nous. Well he says you have to keep blogging on a regular basis; if you look at his blog nowadays it’s up to date and full of daily photo stuff.”
“It’s a bit of a while since I looked in at him,” I admitted. “Haven’t found the time.”
TELEVISION.
Celebrity Mastermind 2009/2010.
The world of television has been beset by celebrity reality and game shows of late, so I almost dismissed this one without looking up from the concise crossword. Glad I changed my mind. It turned out not half bad, even if I didn’t know most of the people taking part.
Episode 9 was won by the actor Nigel Planer with an impressive 17 marks for his specialist subject (Robert Louis Stevenson) and an overall mark of 31.
Described in Wiki as an English actor, comedian, novelist and playwright, he gained my undivided attention when he told John Humphrys:
“I love actors. Actually I think actors are a lot nicer than comedians and a lot less vain than writers.”
Knows what he’s talking about, that one. He’s done it all.
The Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best.
This male version of Two Fat Ladies has Dave Myers and Si King biking around the country in search of mums’ recipes to be presented by mums at various nosh fairs which I have to admit I had no idea existed.
It’s all as pleasant as the two pleasant blokes presenting it and we wouldn’t miss a single episode.
Finding the recipes on the internet was a losing battle, but perhaps that has been rectified now: they do have a cookbook to sell, though, so perhaps not.
Survivors.
At the end of the first series I thought there had to be a follow up, but realised that would not necessarily be the case because programme producers have their own strange agenda. Nonetheless, goody lethal bug survivors Max Beesley, Julie Graham, Paterson Joseph and friends are back to do bewildered battle with baddie survivors Patrick Malahide, Nicholas Gleaves, Geraldine Somerville and an army of hard-faced extras. It’s still watchable tosh.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
New series and already the ever open door of the CSI lab has been used to lethal purpose, this time by an armed gang of pseudo funeral directors.
Dr. Raymond Langston punched one of them through a plate glass window and with that KO punch - despite the strange reappearance on the team of Sara Sidle - symbolically despatched ol’ Gil Grissom to distant memory.
NCIS.
Episodes 1 and 2 of series six.
Jenny is dead. Gibbs and his acting haircut are left with Abby and Ducky. The new director appears to be the sort of suspect character who, upon appointment, shreds one of the sheets on his own personnel file and disbands the agency team. By the end of episode 2 we have been brought up to speed. There has been yet another infiltration of the NCIS workplace by Russian gangsters/al Qaeda/China/N. Korea…whatever.Part positive action has been taken. (There must be a threat left for future episodes.) The team is gradually being reconstructed. The new director now seems slightly less ominous. By episode 25 he will be entirely trustworthy - until he turns out to be the second cousin of Osama bin Laden. But no matter how poorly the critic in Britain’s Best-Value Digital TV Guide rates it, we shall continue to watch every head smacking, coffee drinking, silly daft second of it.
Dr. Raymond Langston punched one of them through a plate glass window and with that KO punch - despite the strange reappearance on the team of Sara Sidle - symbolically despatched ol’ Gil Grissom to distant memory.
NCIS.
Episodes 1 and 2 of series six.
Jenny is dead. Gibbs and his acting haircut are left with Abby and Ducky. The new director appears to be the sort of suspect character who, upon appointment, shreds one of the sheets on his own personnel file and disbands the agency team. By the end of episode 2 we have been brought up to speed. There has been yet another infiltration of the NCIS workplace by Russian gangsters/al Qaeda/China/N. Korea…whatever.Part positive action has been taken. (There must be a threat left for future episodes.) The team is gradually being reconstructed. The new director now seems slightly less ominous. By episode 25 he will be entirely trustworthy - until he turns out to be the second cousin of Osama bin Laden. But no matter how poorly the critic in Britain’s Best-Value Digital TV Guide rates it, we shall continue to watch every head smacking, coffee drinking, silly daft second of it.
Numb3rs.
Another new series. This is the one with the reasonably unlikely premise that a mathematical genius brother of an FBI special agent based in Los Angeles is able to assist in the solving of crimes by scrawling equations on a blackboard. The leading characters are charming and are played by likeable actors; does anyone dislike Judd Hirsch? I watch it fitfully. At school I was a bored, consequently poor, maths student. So I tend to drop off… What? Oh, the gunfire wakes me up.
CSI: NY.
So the sinister black car from which a machine gun opened up on our heroes did not contain a hit man from the mob but an idiot who did not mean to injure anybody and was just looking for publicity. One of our heroes has been put in a wheelchair - maybe until he agrees the latest pay deal - and the rest are unscathed - but probably on much the same salary as they got for the last series…
Wallander.
Kenneth Branagh has just finished another short series as the Swedish detective. Still solving gory murders, weathering a sad family life, sleeping in his clothes and going to the office unkempt, unshaven and bleary eyed. Branagh‘s a fine actor but I prefer the Swedish production. The English version is too morose and sepia tone. And there’s too much wood. All the English Swedes seem to live in sheds.
QI.
Stephen Fry, Alan Davies and assorted guests continue to provide excellent entertainment on this unique show. The episode entitled Genius was particularly good. Messrs. Fry and Davies, together with David Mitchell, Graham Norton and Dara O’Briain, were clever, interesting and funny. It can still be watched on QI, Series 7, Genius (or downloaded at BBC iPlayer) if you missed it. Give it a go.
Popstar to Operastar.
Some production genius suddenly came up with a novel idea.
Another new series. This is the one with the reasonably unlikely premise that a mathematical genius brother of an FBI special agent based in Los Angeles is able to assist in the solving of crimes by scrawling equations on a blackboard. The leading characters are charming and are played by likeable actors; does anyone dislike Judd Hirsch? I watch it fitfully. At school I was a bored, consequently poor, maths student. So I tend to drop off… What? Oh, the gunfire wakes me up.
CSI: NY.
So the sinister black car from which a machine gun opened up on our heroes did not contain a hit man from the mob but an idiot who did not mean to injure anybody and was just looking for publicity. One of our heroes has been put in a wheelchair - maybe until he agrees the latest pay deal - and the rest are unscathed - but probably on much the same salary as they got for the last series…
Wallander.
Kenneth Branagh has just finished another short series as the Swedish detective. Still solving gory murders, weathering a sad family life, sleeping in his clothes and going to the office unkempt, unshaven and bleary eyed. Branagh‘s a fine actor but I prefer the Swedish production. The English version is too morose and sepia tone. And there’s too much wood. All the English Swedes seem to live in sheds.
QI.
Stephen Fry, Alan Davies and assorted guests continue to provide excellent entertainment on this unique show. The episode entitled Genius was particularly good. Messrs. Fry and Davies, together with David Mitchell, Graham Norton and Dara O’Briain, were clever, interesting and funny. It can still be watched on QI, Series 7, Genius (or downloaded at BBC iPlayer) if you missed it. Give it a go.
Popstar to Operastar.
Some production genius suddenly came up with a novel idea.
"Why don’t we try to turn celebrities into dancers - er, no - ice dancers - er, no - singers - that’s it - singers! Eh? No, Andrew Lloyd - Thingy hasn’t done it already. His were unknowns who became Marias or Nancies or something. Ours will be celebs. Tell you what, we’ll get pop stars. We’ll turn ‘em into opera singers. We’ll ask the public to vote for their favourite turn. (So 90% of the public can’t sing…that doesn’t matter…90% of ‘em can’t dance or ice skate, either.) The phone calls will bring in decent revenue and one of the hopefuls will be voted off every week. We’ll have long - long - long waits while they sweat over which of ’em is for the chop. It has to be a hit don’t you think? " Well, yes, I do think. On the first show the judges (even manic Meatloaf) came across as encouraging and responsible, the public vote was reasonable, and there were some rather good voices to be heard. I look forward to marked improvement all round as nerves are conquered, confidence builds, and operatic numbers are more carefully chosen to suit the vocal capability of the individual. I look forward to hearing Darius tackle something like On With The Motley. I do not look forward to the screaming bobbysoxers - or whatever they’re called nowadays - in the audience every week. And I certainly do not look forward to the long - long - long wait to hear which one is for the chop.
Nurse Jackie.
Yet another new series. This one stars New Yorker Edie Falco. Christ! Ain't she a good actress!
READING.
Interruptions on the way to the library.
Finally finished Linwood Barclay’s No Time For Goodbye.
Was intrigued by the opening chapters, enjoyed all the twists and turns, and sussed out the villain long before the end. My sort of thriller. Have just read Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes by Louis Sachar. It is not as good as Holes but it does convey the same degree of empathy with its young protagonists. In the meantime, am still flitting in and out of Corduroy Mansions, harassed by the likes of Louis Sachar and by dear old Terry Wogan pleading: “Where was I ?!”
Finally finished Linwood Barclay’s No Time For Goodbye.
Was intrigued by the opening chapters, enjoyed all the twists and turns, and sussed out the villain long before the end. My sort of thriller. Have just read Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes by Louis Sachar. It is not as good as Holes but it does convey the same degree of empathy with its young protagonists. In the meantime, am still flitting in and out of Corduroy Mansions, harassed by the likes of Louis Sachar and by dear old Terry Wogan pleading: “Where was I ?!”
I’ll have to finish with Corduroy Mansions before my welcome runs out.
Monday, January 04, 2010
139. Eyes Down, Look In.
HOME.
A holiday break to remember.
Throughout the festive season we have been invited to meals by our entire family. It has been a pleasant and memorable time for us.
Hope Christmas was kind to you, too, and that you will have a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2010.
Anonymous John.
Our old pal forwarded the following.
Well it made me laugh, John.
http://www.eyegas.com/sproutifarts/
That window.
Thought I’d bring you up to date with the replacement window saga previously mentioned in Post 136.
Our builder approached the Council’s listed buildings department (not a move I’d have made) and was told that we would have to apply for planning permission enclosing photostat evidence of when the current window was installed etc.
I had a good swear and my Leader took over.
She spoke to our solicitor who searched the house deeds for evidence and eventually unearthed what appeared to be partial proof that the job was done in 1973, thought to be the year before the unstately pile was listed.
We are keeping our fingers crossed. I am keeping right out of it.
Maureen will deal with them.
She is younger, kinder and far more tolerant of their bureaucratic claptrap than am I.
The weather.
Hoped not to mention it again but hasn’t the weather been gross?
Snowfalls, black ice, torrential rain; hardly anywhere has escaped it.
We have avoided the worst of it.
That’s one advantage of living on the Isle of Wight.
Seems we even escaped the Triffids…
TELEVISION.
The Day of the Triffids.
Dougray Scott and Joely Richardson, assisted by Brian Cox and a likeable supporting cast, took on Eddie Izzard at his most hateful, Vanessa Redgrave at her least likeable, and several fields full of stinging, blinding, carnivorous cacti at their less than believably mobile.
It was the silliest story John Wyndham ever wrote and no amount of jiggery-pokery with the plot could disguise that.
Finally though, with the whole of Britain lined up on the menu, it transpired that the Isle of Wight was Triffid free,
Surprised me.
I would have thought they’d be invited over to join the Council.
Never mind, it was good holiday viewing and I enjoyed every daft minute of it.
Dr. Who.
David Tennant’s demise took almost as long as the never ending departure of ol’ Tel Wogan.
Russell T. Davies wrote a terrific exit for the Doctor.
We were all turned into replicas of a blonde John Simm (it took years off me): there was a lot of shouting and groaning from David Tennant, some lovely acting by a splendid cast - no apologies for picking out dear old Bernard Cribbins again - and finally a succession of cameo appearances by star characters from past series and the spin-offs thereof.
It all made for great holiday viewing and, yes, I enjoyed every daft minute of it.
Victoria Wood’s Midlife Christmas.
Hurray! She’s back!
And with her a host of cherished favourites including Julie Walters’s self-obsessed actress Bo Beaumont (Mrs. Overall in Acorn Antiques) who, seeking to rekindle her declining career, disdainfully refuses to join the ‘bush tucker’ tribe on Celebrity Big Brother with the scathing observation that if she is ever that desperate for work she will just become a guest in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner. (One could almost hear the “Ouch” from Geoffrey Durham.)
There was a splendid skit entitled Lark Pies To Cranchesterford in which a comely lass left her Mar and Par and went to work in a Post and Potato Office. There was a spoof Apprentice sketch and there was the marvellous Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let’s Do It!) incorporating a final dance routine straight out of Busby Berkeley.
Welcome back Victoria Wood!
What else was on?
Well there was a two-part Cranford, a Marple, the ubiquitous David Tennant appearing as Hamlet and again as a QI panellist, the hundredth Taggart, a few interesting Celebrity Masterminds, loads of repeats in different guises and, on Christmas Day, an animated version of the children’s picture book The Gruffalo which was arguably the best holiday offering of them all.
And what is coming soon?
The new series of CSI/NY is on the way and we shall find out who was bumped off for seeking too big a pay rise…
NCIS is due back (cheers!), and…
Lark Rise to Candleford will be happily mar-ing and par-ing again; good old Ruraltania!
READING.
A mini library.
Even as I struggle to conclude my current couple of fascinating reads (find I get slower and slower with age), Christmas has brought a mini library of book gifts to my side table.
So now I not only have Corduroy Mansions and No Time For Goodbye to finish but Louis Sachar’s Dogs Don’t tell Jokes: Terry Wogan's Where Was I? and - a tour de force - The Penguin TV Companion to tackle.
I have also been given The ultimate RONNIE BARKER collection of 12 DVDs to watch.
Cannot help but wonder how I shall manage to cope now that all these new telly series are starting.
Well I shan’t abandon anything.
The books will take even longer to finish and the list of unseen recordings may reach sixty odd, that’s all.
I’m not bothered.
Nobody’s holding a gun to my head.
Back soon if I’m not reading or watching.
A holiday break to remember.
Throughout the festive season we have been invited to meals by our entire family. It has been a pleasant and memorable time for us.
Hope Christmas was kind to you, too, and that you will have a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2010.
Anonymous John.
Our old pal forwarded the following.
Well it made me laugh, John.
http://www.eyegas.com/sproutifarts/
That window.
Thought I’d bring you up to date with the replacement window saga previously mentioned in Post 136.
Our builder approached the Council’s listed buildings department (not a move I’d have made) and was told that we would have to apply for planning permission enclosing photostat evidence of when the current window was installed etc.
I had a good swear and my Leader took over.
She spoke to our solicitor who searched the house deeds for evidence and eventually unearthed what appeared to be partial proof that the job was done in 1973, thought to be the year before the unstately pile was listed.
We are keeping our fingers crossed. I am keeping right out of it.
Maureen will deal with them.
She is younger, kinder and far more tolerant of their bureaucratic claptrap than am I.
The weather.
Hoped not to mention it again but hasn’t the weather been gross?
Snowfalls, black ice, torrential rain; hardly anywhere has escaped it.
We have avoided the worst of it.
That’s one advantage of living on the Isle of Wight.
Seems we even escaped the Triffids…
TELEVISION.
The Day of the Triffids.
Dougray Scott and Joely Richardson, assisted by Brian Cox and a likeable supporting cast, took on Eddie Izzard at his most hateful, Vanessa Redgrave at her least likeable, and several fields full of stinging, blinding, carnivorous cacti at their less than believably mobile.
It was the silliest story John Wyndham ever wrote and no amount of jiggery-pokery with the plot could disguise that.
Finally though, with the whole of Britain lined up on the menu, it transpired that the Isle of Wight was Triffid free,
Surprised me.
I would have thought they’d be invited over to join the Council.
Never mind, it was good holiday viewing and I enjoyed every daft minute of it.
Dr. Who.
David Tennant’s demise took almost as long as the never ending departure of ol’ Tel Wogan.
Russell T. Davies wrote a terrific exit for the Doctor.
We were all turned into replicas of a blonde John Simm (it took years off me): there was a lot of shouting and groaning from David Tennant, some lovely acting by a splendid cast - no apologies for picking out dear old Bernard Cribbins again - and finally a succession of cameo appearances by star characters from past series and the spin-offs thereof.
It all made for great holiday viewing and, yes, I enjoyed every daft minute of it.
Victoria Wood’s Midlife Christmas.
Hurray! She’s back!
And with her a host of cherished favourites including Julie Walters’s self-obsessed actress Bo Beaumont (Mrs. Overall in Acorn Antiques) who, seeking to rekindle her declining career, disdainfully refuses to join the ‘bush tucker’ tribe on Celebrity Big Brother with the scathing observation that if she is ever that desperate for work she will just become a guest in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner. (One could almost hear the “Ouch” from Geoffrey Durham.)
There was a splendid skit entitled Lark Pies To Cranchesterford in which a comely lass left her Mar and Par and went to work in a Post and Potato Office. There was a spoof Apprentice sketch and there was the marvellous Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let’s Do It!) incorporating a final dance routine straight out of Busby Berkeley.
Welcome back Victoria Wood!
What else was on?
Well there was a two-part Cranford, a Marple, the ubiquitous David Tennant appearing as Hamlet and again as a QI panellist, the hundredth Taggart, a few interesting Celebrity Masterminds, loads of repeats in different guises and, on Christmas Day, an animated version of the children’s picture book The Gruffalo which was arguably the best holiday offering of them all.
And what is coming soon?
The new series of CSI/NY is on the way and we shall find out who was bumped off for seeking too big a pay rise…
NCIS is due back (cheers!), and…
Lark Rise to Candleford will be happily mar-ing and par-ing again; good old Ruraltania!
READING.
A mini library.
Even as I struggle to conclude my current couple of fascinating reads (find I get slower and slower with age), Christmas has brought a mini library of book gifts to my side table.
So now I not only have Corduroy Mansions and No Time For Goodbye to finish but Louis Sachar’s Dogs Don’t tell Jokes: Terry Wogan's Where Was I? and - a tour de force - The Penguin TV Companion to tackle.
I have also been given The ultimate RONNIE BARKER collection of 12 DVDs to watch.
Cannot help but wonder how I shall manage to cope now that all these new telly series are starting.
Well I shan’t abandon anything.
The books will take even longer to finish and the list of unseen recordings may reach sixty odd, that’s all.
I’m not bothered.
Nobody’s holding a gun to my head.
Back soon if I’m not reading or watching.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
138. Seasonal Greetings from a Moaning Blogger...
IN THE NEWS.
The Floods.
I guess everybody from religious fanatics to global warming know-alls will spout their reasons for the unprecedented rainfall that has caused such devastation and sad loss of life this autumn.
Truth is, we are never prepared for freaks of nature and mostly live in a cocoon of complacency wherein disasters only happen to other people.
Television reminds us that the elements can beset anybody, but the comfort of an armchair in a warm living room removes reality from the situation.
Cameras never linger too long on chaos. Insurance companies hurry to advance it as a reason why next year’s premiums will go up. The usual platitudes about lessons being learned are routinely served up by beleaguered officialdom.
Cures are promised right up until the crippling pecuniary aspects become clear; then councils cravenly decide that effectiveness cannot be guaranteed; anyway, next year it will probably happen somewhere else…
Lessons will have been learned, though.
Mind out for that flying pig!
FILMS.
Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
Well I suppose one way to ensure that audiences know exactly the sort of film they are going to see is to slap a number after the title and rely on the success of the original to bring them back
So far none of these computer-animated gems has failed to amuse and entertain. This one incorporates a wealth of original ideas with some extended sight gags carried along from the two earlier films.
We loved it.
The numbered Ice Ages have even been given subsidiary titles (number 2 was The Meltdown).
Whether you have kids or, like me, are a big kid, I would recommend you obtain the complete DVD set.
And refuse to lend any of them out!
Night at the Museum 2.
No additional title to this one, just the number and Ben Stiller’s name at the top.
It’s OK, but only half as good as the original.
Don’t know whether any more are planned.
Hope not.
A third night at the museum would be one and a half too many.
TELEVISION.
Merlin. (BBC1)
New characters come and go, with or without ceremony.
King Uther Pendragon (Anthony Head) firmly believing that he has weeded out all the wizards in Camelot, maintains a blinkered unawareness that they are still gathered around him. In a recent episode he even married a troll (lovely OTT stuff from Sarah Parish).
His son Arthur (Bradley James) has yet to realise that manservant Merlin (Colin Morgan) has the description 'practising wizard' included in his C.V.
Amidst all the drama on offer, this sublime load of tosh gets barmier and more enjoyable by the week.
A great Saturday teatime warm-up for…
Strictly Come Dancing. (BBC1)
Where none of the pairs now stands out for culling.
I have no idea who the winners will be: was originally convinced that Ricky and Natalie had to make it to the final and there probably be competing with Ali and Brian. But Chris (with Ola) has terrific public support and Laila (a very good dancer) has Anton, a superb partner.
Nope, I can’t choose between them. They’re all great.
If it was left to me they’d all get a trophy.
The Paul O’Grady Show. (C4)
Theatricals and showbiz names clearly enjoy being on this show. Paul O’Grady’s ’You’re a star’ interviewing technique makes him the easiest of conversationalists and his guests revel in it.
This week Bradley James and Colin Morgan appeared again. Away from the set of Merlin their banter is little changed except that Colin Morgan clearly hails from Northern Ireland. Yes, Merlin has a charming Nor’ern Ir’ern accent. Well it surprised me.
In fact it’s the most surprised I’ve been since Dr. Who turned out to be a Scot.
The Graham Norton Show. (BBC1)
This fellow’s fay following is still a bit beyond my comprehension, but since Woss had his wrist slapped there has been a tad less of the outlandish about him.
Recent guests on the show have included Dame Shirley Bassey who, when her fellow guest Michael Sheen’s absent mother was insulted by comedian Rhod Gilbert for living in Port Talbot, simply said to Sheen: ”Hit ‘im.” (Good ol’ Shirl!) and Stephen Fry who made it clear that he delights in twitterers because they twitter and hates bloggers because they moan.
I shall retain a dignified silence.
No I won’t.
Fuck off, Stephen.
Bargain Hunt. (BBC1)
Retirement brings with it certain cultural restraints, one of which is daytime television.
I try to avoid all the reconditioned barrow boys with their auction dabbling, property dealing, small-time entrepreneurial find-me-a- cottage-priced-mansion-with-a-heated-swimming-pool stuff and concentrate on just a couple of cheerful time-wasters a day.
The ebullient, camera-mugging Tim Wonnacott presents Bargain Hunt.
In this house he is known as: “That bloke with the bow ties and the silly hats.”
He’s a bit posh English and is always ‘going orf ‘ to one stately home or another where he is invariably on first name terms with the owner.
I think y’gets what y’sees with him.
And never mind the office boy press screaming that the show is a sham, if I had a house full of antiques and needed to sell them I would get the lot transported up to Great Western Antiques and Fine Art Auctions, Glasgow, and have them sold off by Anita Manning.
What an auctioneer!
THE FESTIVE SEASON.
Christmas Again.
What did I tell you?
Well it’s not my fault if you’re not ready. Join the club: I never am.
Cards have started to arrive from those wonderful folk who are ready, of course, and by the end of next week I shall doubtless be running around like Hugh Grant at the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Remember?
Anyway, this will probably be my last blog post before the holiday, so let me say
A Merry Christmas to all you nice folk who take the trouble to read it and A Happy and Prosperous New Year even to those who don’t, Stephen.
Now Be Sure Sound is on:
(The wait is worth it)
Click here: Santa and Reindeer
The Floods.
I guess everybody from religious fanatics to global warming know-alls will spout their reasons for the unprecedented rainfall that has caused such devastation and sad loss of life this autumn.
Truth is, we are never prepared for freaks of nature and mostly live in a cocoon of complacency wherein disasters only happen to other people.
Television reminds us that the elements can beset anybody, but the comfort of an armchair in a warm living room removes reality from the situation.
Cameras never linger too long on chaos. Insurance companies hurry to advance it as a reason why next year’s premiums will go up. The usual platitudes about lessons being learned are routinely served up by beleaguered officialdom.
Cures are promised right up until the crippling pecuniary aspects become clear; then councils cravenly decide that effectiveness cannot be guaranteed; anyway, next year it will probably happen somewhere else…
Lessons will have been learned, though.
Mind out for that flying pig!
FILMS.
Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
Well I suppose one way to ensure that audiences know exactly the sort of film they are going to see is to slap a number after the title and rely on the success of the original to bring them back
So far none of these computer-animated gems has failed to amuse and entertain. This one incorporates a wealth of original ideas with some extended sight gags carried along from the two earlier films.
We loved it.
The numbered Ice Ages have even been given subsidiary titles (number 2 was The Meltdown).
Whether you have kids or, like me, are a big kid, I would recommend you obtain the complete DVD set.
And refuse to lend any of them out!
Night at the Museum 2.
No additional title to this one, just the number and Ben Stiller’s name at the top.
It’s OK, but only half as good as the original.
Don’t know whether any more are planned.
Hope not.
A third night at the museum would be one and a half too many.
TELEVISION.
Merlin. (BBC1)
New characters come and go, with or without ceremony.
King Uther Pendragon (Anthony Head) firmly believing that he has weeded out all the wizards in Camelot, maintains a blinkered unawareness that they are still gathered around him. In a recent episode he even married a troll (lovely OTT stuff from Sarah Parish).
His son Arthur (Bradley James) has yet to realise that manservant Merlin (Colin Morgan) has the description 'practising wizard' included in his C.V.
Amidst all the drama on offer, this sublime load of tosh gets barmier and more enjoyable by the week.
A great Saturday teatime warm-up for…
Strictly Come Dancing. (BBC1)
Where none of the pairs now stands out for culling.
I have no idea who the winners will be: was originally convinced that Ricky and Natalie had to make it to the final and there probably be competing with Ali and Brian. But Chris (with Ola) has terrific public support and Laila (a very good dancer) has Anton, a superb partner.
Nope, I can’t choose between them. They’re all great.
If it was left to me they’d all get a trophy.
The Paul O’Grady Show. (C4)
Theatricals and showbiz names clearly enjoy being on this show. Paul O’Grady’s ’You’re a star’ interviewing technique makes him the easiest of conversationalists and his guests revel in it.
This week Bradley James and Colin Morgan appeared again. Away from the set of Merlin their banter is little changed except that Colin Morgan clearly hails from Northern Ireland. Yes, Merlin has a charming Nor’ern Ir’ern accent. Well it surprised me.
In fact it’s the most surprised I’ve been since Dr. Who turned out to be a Scot.
The Graham Norton Show. (BBC1)
This fellow’s fay following is still a bit beyond my comprehension, but since Woss had his wrist slapped there has been a tad less of the outlandish about him.
Recent guests on the show have included Dame Shirley Bassey who, when her fellow guest Michael Sheen’s absent mother was insulted by comedian Rhod Gilbert for living in Port Talbot, simply said to Sheen: ”Hit ‘im.” (Good ol’ Shirl!) and Stephen Fry who made it clear that he delights in twitterers because they twitter and hates bloggers because they moan.
I shall retain a dignified silence.
No I won’t.
Fuck off, Stephen.
Bargain Hunt. (BBC1)
Retirement brings with it certain cultural restraints, one of which is daytime television.
I try to avoid all the reconditioned barrow boys with their auction dabbling, property dealing, small-time entrepreneurial find-me-a- cottage-priced-mansion-with-a-heated-swimming-pool stuff and concentrate on just a couple of cheerful time-wasters a day.
The ebullient, camera-mugging Tim Wonnacott presents Bargain Hunt.
In this house he is known as: “That bloke with the bow ties and the silly hats.”
He’s a bit posh English and is always ‘going orf ‘ to one stately home or another where he is invariably on first name terms with the owner.
I think y’gets what y’sees with him.
And never mind the office boy press screaming that the show is a sham, if I had a house full of antiques and needed to sell them I would get the lot transported up to Great Western Antiques and Fine Art Auctions, Glasgow, and have them sold off by Anita Manning.
What an auctioneer!
THE FESTIVE SEASON.
Christmas Again.
What did I tell you?
Well it’s not my fault if you’re not ready. Join the club: I never am.
Cards have started to arrive from those wonderful folk who are ready, of course, and by the end of next week I shall doubtless be running around like Hugh Grant at the beginning of Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Remember?
Anyway, this will probably be my last blog post before the holiday, so let me say
A Merry Christmas to all you nice folk who take the trouble to read it and A Happy and Prosperous New Year even to those who don’t, Stephen.
Now Be Sure Sound is on:
(The wait is worth it)
Click here: Santa and Reindeer
Saturday, November 21, 2009
137. From Poor Press to Good Listening
IN THE NEWS.
Poor Press.
Nobody expects Gordon Brown to be viewed with much favour anymore.
It is clear, though, that he has been attempting to express his sympathy with those who have lost loved ones in the Afghanistan conflict by sending them a hand written letter of condolence.
Surely that is something to his credit, even if you believe the continuation of our part in the war is not.
Now a bereaved mother has been further upset because his letter to her family contained an incorrect spelling of their son’s name.
It was a regrettable, though I think understandable, mistake.
But I am old enough to remember how thousands disappeared in two world wars with their missing presumed deaths coldly disclosed in a telegram delivered by a downcast telegraph boy.
I would not want to see such a soulless system reintroduced just to avoid the blame for a misspelled name falling on any individual.
Would you?
Would that tabloid with tits The Sun?
Nurses.
Latest in the war on NHS common sense waged by wacky Department of Health advisers is the decision that by 2013 all nurses will be required to have a degree qualification. The nursing diploma will no longer suffice.
Now I have no objection to education. Didn’t get that much of it, so respect it the more.
But I do believe some jobs are best served by common sense and that a PhD in bedpan manipulation will be a qualification too far.
A nurse does not need a degree, she needs humanity.
Edward Woodward OBE.
We were sorry to hear the news of this fine actor’s death on the 16th November.
His early television appearances as Callan were gems.
They gained him a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor and thousands of fans (among them my Leader and me).
His role as McCall in the American television series The Equalizer won him a 1986 Golden Globe Award and he was an acclaimed stage and film performer.
He could sing, too.
Those who knew him said he was a pleasant man.
So did those who came across him by chance.
Back in the late sixties, the elderly father-in-law of a colleague of mine found himself sharing a railway carriage with “A chap on his own who looked as though he thought at first I might know him…”
They chatted all the way to Town.
After they had left the train and exchanged cheery farewells, the old gent’s son, waiting on the concourse to meet him, exclaimed: “ Dad! You never told me you knew Callan!”
“Who?”
“Edward Woodward. Callan on the tele. He’s famous.”
“Really? He didn‘t say. Nice young chap…very intelligent…liked him…“
On a personal note, it was while watching Callan that my first boss on the Isle of Wight was reported to have said to his wife: “I don’t care what he’s called in this programme, I see him in the office every day. His real name’s Barnden. He’s my Deputy.”
I could have been likened to many less worthy characters.
Thank you, Edward Woodward.
R.I.P.
READING.
Flowers For His Funeral.
It is some time since I began and finished a book inside a week but this Mitchell and Markby page turner by Ann Granger (Headline, 1994) kept me reading as though I was back in the old tuppence-a-week library days.
Guessed the murderer - always satisfying - but was caught out by the denouement - a reminder not to get too smug - and came away thinking I really must obtain more of this readable writer’s updated whodunits.
TELEVISION.
Doctor Who. (BBC1)
The Waters of Mars starred David Tennant and Lindsay Duncan, was co-written by Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford and was the first of a final three part episode which will conclude with David Tennant’s departure from the Doctor role at Christmas.
Here we had a darker and more self-absorbed Doctor Who than we have ever seen before and this one-off special ended with a splendid scene in which he and Mars research station boss Adelaide (Lindsay Duncan) did verbal battle over the changes in his doomed personality.
Time Lord or not, he’s still a man, he didn’t stand a chance of winning that one.
FlashForward. (Five)
I quickly became disorientated by all the flashing backwards and forwards. Intend to keep trying but catnaps may prevail.
Strictly Come Dancing. (BBC1)
Bruce Forsyth was away last week. Flu.
Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman were more than adequate stand-ins despite the help of Ronnie Corbett.
Tuffers went: it was time anyway.
This week Ricky and Erin were out.
Old Bruce was back.
Ah well, you can’t win ‘em all.
Garrow’s Law. (BBC1)
Andrew Buchan (previously John Mercer, the 21st century Callan) is Garrow, a young and better looking Rumpole of the Bailey, in this 1700s historical drama .
I have recorded the first three of a four part series and have just started watching it. Have to say yet again that nobody produces better historical stuff than we do in this country.
It would be a shame if one little series was all there is to be of Garrow.
My Leader and I are already hooked.
The Queen in 3-D. (C4)
H.M. has turned up a couple of times this week.
Where the hell did we put our 3-D glasses?
Children in Need Rocks the Royal Albert Hall. (BBC1)
Every now and then television compensates for all the dross with a true showpiece. This musical assortment of gifted performers provided just that.
There was something for everyone and every fiver it obtained for the charity was thoroughly deserved.
Gary Barlow organised splendidly.
Oh, I’d have contributed just for Annie Lennox‘s performance.
Children In Need. (BBC 1)
I think this was the best of these jamborees we have been offered in a long time.
There was the usual collection of tame sketches, end-of-the-pier vocals and ‘we’re-not-just-soap-actor’ song and dance routines performed by well-meaning celebrities.
There was a great deal of Terry Wogan. (I tend to the view that Sir Terence should be like a television in the next room, heard and not seen.) And there was a great deal to enjoy. A lovely ’turn’ by the newsreaders, the children’s tv show characters doing their official single (courtesy of Peter Kay) and even dear old Richard Wilson saying: “I don’t believe it.”
Who could ask for anything more?
LISTENING.
Golden Memories.
My Leader found this four part CD set for me. It contains recordings by just about everyone from The Andrews Sisters to Frankie Vaughan via Ella Fitzgerald and Al Martino.
She has also presented me with a CD containing a splendid selection of poems with music…
Words For You.
The voices of Honor Blackman, Brian Cox, Joanna Lumley, Geoffrey Palmer and a host of other well-known actors reciting just about everyone from Betjeman to Wordsworth over a background of popular classical music.
Magic.
Who could ask for anything more?
Poor Press.
Nobody expects Gordon Brown to be viewed with much favour anymore.
It is clear, though, that he has been attempting to express his sympathy with those who have lost loved ones in the Afghanistan conflict by sending them a hand written letter of condolence.
Surely that is something to his credit, even if you believe the continuation of our part in the war is not.
Now a bereaved mother has been further upset because his letter to her family contained an incorrect spelling of their son’s name.
It was a regrettable, though I think understandable, mistake.
But I am old enough to remember how thousands disappeared in two world wars with their missing presumed deaths coldly disclosed in a telegram delivered by a downcast telegraph boy.
I would not want to see such a soulless system reintroduced just to avoid the blame for a misspelled name falling on any individual.
Would you?
Would that tabloid with tits The Sun?
Nurses.
Latest in the war on NHS common sense waged by wacky Department of Health advisers is the decision that by 2013 all nurses will be required to have a degree qualification. The nursing diploma will no longer suffice.
Now I have no objection to education. Didn’t get that much of it, so respect it the more.
But I do believe some jobs are best served by common sense and that a PhD in bedpan manipulation will be a qualification too far.
A nurse does not need a degree, she needs humanity.
Edward Woodward OBE.
We were sorry to hear the news of this fine actor’s death on the 16th November.
His early television appearances as Callan were gems.
They gained him a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor and thousands of fans (among them my Leader and me).
His role as McCall in the American television series The Equalizer won him a 1986 Golden Globe Award and he was an acclaimed stage and film performer.
He could sing, too.
Those who knew him said he was a pleasant man.
So did those who came across him by chance.
Back in the late sixties, the elderly father-in-law of a colleague of mine found himself sharing a railway carriage with “A chap on his own who looked as though he thought at first I might know him…”
They chatted all the way to Town.
After they had left the train and exchanged cheery farewells, the old gent’s son, waiting on the concourse to meet him, exclaimed: “ Dad! You never told me you knew Callan!”
“Who?”
“Edward Woodward. Callan on the tele. He’s famous.”
“Really? He didn‘t say. Nice young chap…very intelligent…liked him…“
On a personal note, it was while watching Callan that my first boss on the Isle of Wight was reported to have said to his wife: “I don’t care what he’s called in this programme, I see him in the office every day. His real name’s Barnden. He’s my Deputy.”
I could have been likened to many less worthy characters.
Thank you, Edward Woodward.
R.I.P.
READING.
Flowers For His Funeral.
It is some time since I began and finished a book inside a week but this Mitchell and Markby page turner by Ann Granger (Headline, 1994) kept me reading as though I was back in the old tuppence-a-week library days.
Guessed the murderer - always satisfying - but was caught out by the denouement - a reminder not to get too smug - and came away thinking I really must obtain more of this readable writer’s updated whodunits.
TELEVISION.
Doctor Who. (BBC1)
The Waters of Mars starred David Tennant and Lindsay Duncan, was co-written by Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford and was the first of a final three part episode which will conclude with David Tennant’s departure from the Doctor role at Christmas.
Here we had a darker and more self-absorbed Doctor Who than we have ever seen before and this one-off special ended with a splendid scene in which he and Mars research station boss Adelaide (Lindsay Duncan) did verbal battle over the changes in his doomed personality.
Time Lord or not, he’s still a man, he didn’t stand a chance of winning that one.
FlashForward. (Five)
I quickly became disorientated by all the flashing backwards and forwards. Intend to keep trying but catnaps may prevail.
Strictly Come Dancing. (BBC1)
Bruce Forsyth was away last week. Flu.
Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman were more than adequate stand-ins despite the help of Ronnie Corbett.
Tuffers went: it was time anyway.
This week Ricky and Erin were out.
Old Bruce was back.
Ah well, you can’t win ‘em all.
Garrow’s Law. (BBC1)
Andrew Buchan (previously John Mercer, the 21st century Callan) is Garrow, a young and better looking Rumpole of the Bailey, in this 1700s historical drama .
I have recorded the first three of a four part series and have just started watching it. Have to say yet again that nobody produces better historical stuff than we do in this country.
It would be a shame if one little series was all there is to be of Garrow.
My Leader and I are already hooked.
The Queen in 3-D. (C4)
H.M. has turned up a couple of times this week.
Where the hell did we put our 3-D glasses?
Children in Need Rocks the Royal Albert Hall. (BBC1)
Every now and then television compensates for all the dross with a true showpiece. This musical assortment of gifted performers provided just that.
There was something for everyone and every fiver it obtained for the charity was thoroughly deserved.
Gary Barlow organised splendidly.
Oh, I’d have contributed just for Annie Lennox‘s performance.
Children In Need. (BBC 1)
I think this was the best of these jamborees we have been offered in a long time.
There was the usual collection of tame sketches, end-of-the-pier vocals and ‘we’re-not-just-soap-actor’ song and dance routines performed by well-meaning celebrities.
There was a great deal of Terry Wogan. (I tend to the view that Sir Terence should be like a television in the next room, heard and not seen.) And there was a great deal to enjoy. A lovely ’turn’ by the newsreaders, the children’s tv show characters doing their official single (courtesy of Peter Kay) and even dear old Richard Wilson saying: “I don’t believe it.”
Who could ask for anything more?
LISTENING.
Golden Memories.
My Leader found this four part CD set for me. It contains recordings by just about everyone from The Andrews Sisters to Frankie Vaughan via Ella Fitzgerald and Al Martino.
She has also presented me with a CD containing a splendid selection of poems with music…
Words For You.
The voices of Honor Blackman, Brian Cox, Joanna Lumley, Geoffrey Palmer and a host of other well-known actors reciting just about everyone from Betjeman to Wordsworth over a background of popular classical music.
Magic.
Who could ask for anything more?
Monday, November 02, 2009
136. If Hamlet sees a dagger...
HOME.
That bloody autumnal hour.
So let’s get the moans out of the way for a start. That bloody autumnal hour has had to be fiddled with again: the clocks, as my Leader annually reminds me, fall back in the fall.
I neither know nor care why we are required to put them back an hour in autumn, or indeed put them forward again come spring.
My body clock will be all at sevens not sixes for several weeks; I see the entire exercise as an unnecessary intrusion; and I never did manage to change the clock in my last car.
An unstately pile.
As I may have mentioned before, the terrace where we live was built in the early eighteen forties and became Grade 2 listed in the nineteen seventies.
Quite why it was given a listing I do not know.
The properties are no more than simple town houses: this one provides fairly adequate living accommodation for a small family, is spread over three floors and is in a convenient spot for schools and shops.
As listed property owners we’re entitled to be members of the Listed Property Owners Club, just as are Bedford, Bath and the entire Grade 1 crowd. But in our case it‘s nothing to boast about. I think many terraces like ours were given a listing to save local councils the trouble of knocking them down; a move that was likely to attract the vociferous displeasure of the Victorian Society and unfavourable mention in poems by Sir John Betjeman.
We never really think about it until the time comes for replacements, repairs and even, heaven forbid, additions:
then we have to think about it.
Local Government (which I vaguely remember was once a public service) has an entire department of busybodies to check that wooden doors and window frames are not replaced with sensible plastic, that nothing new is introduced into hallowed hovels and that planning permission is sought before so much as a scaffold is erected or a builder’s bum glimpsed.
We now require a replacement front window on the ground floor. Based on past experience (Post 42 refers) it is likely to be a long drawn out process.
We only bought the house because my Leader fell in love with the photograph of it taken by the estate agent when it was up for sale. As I recall, he did very little else of any use. Anyway, the word listed would not have concerned me if it had nothing to do with subsidence.
But I have grown increasingly fond of the old place over the years: it is our own unstately pile, has a mini moat outside the front gate when it rains (something else the useless tits at the Council have never bothered to cure), is comfortable, conveniently situated (just four minutes stroll from M & S) and has a garage worth almost as much as the entire terrace.
I am hoping our builder will deal with the Council’s Listed Buildings bunch.
My tolerance with bureaucracy was tested and found wanting years ago.
There will be more on this subject in (probably a long) time.
Flu Jab time again.
On a lighter note: as I know I have mentioned before (Post 112), time is a sprinter. Last year was yesterday, next year is tomorrow.
A week ago we held the 2009 AGM of the Flu Jab Club.
Same four people; same venue; fresh cheese scones, tea and coffee.
Lovely to see Wendy and Mo again.
I must look out the Christmas decorations…
TELEVISION.
Football: England v Belarus.
“Well, what did you think?” I asked the cat Shadow after England’s impressive 3 - 0 win.
“Opposition wasn’t all that special,” he said.
“Couple of goals poached by Peter Crouch, though, and some precision passing by Becks,” I said. “I thought it was a tidy performance.”
“Brilliant might win the World Cup,” he said. “Tidy won’t.”
I sighed. Sometimes there’s no pleasing him.
Trinity. (ITV 3)
A strong cast keeps this bizarre series - set in an updated Lindsay Anderson style public school - humping merrily along.
There is the customary clique of top toffs (the untouchable Dandelion Club); a pair of naïve idiots for light relief; sinister manipulation of Dean Dr. Edmund Maltravers (Charles Dance) from a television screen in his study, and an occasional murder to help things along.
It is total tosh, but it certainly ain’t boring.
Merlin vanished.
Just to prove he is a magician in the making the young Merlin disappeared completely from BBC1 for a fortnight this month. The only spell he cast to cover his magical departure was the screening of Formula 1 motor racing, World Championship:
Button won so all’s well with the world.
Doc Martin. (ITV1)
Dr. Ellingham (Martin Clunes) has finally overcome his aversion to the sight of blood. He only has to do the same with his lousy bedside manner and he’ll be home and dry.
What?
Yes, I did meet NHS consultants exactly like him!
The Force. (C4)
This short documentary series about the work of Hampshire Constabulary started with an enquiry, led by DCI Jason Hogg, into the killing of a young woman: her body, found in a country lane, had been stuffed into a suitcase and set alight.
“Sex could be a motive for the murder or a reason for the murder, there’s a subtle difference,” said the DCI, or some equally wise soul on his team. He and they came across well.
On a personal note, it might look all right on the box but I wouldn’t want their job.
True Blood. (C4)
Duelling banjos with fangs. I am having trouble getting my teeth into this.
Guess it‘s just not to my taste..
The Armstrong and Miller Show. (BBC1)
Some of the sketches will be a decided hit and some a total miss: depends on your sense in humour. We enjoy the two airmen talking mod teen, the gloriously accident prone lecturer and the spoof Flanders and Swann.
Good value the pair of ‘em.
Murderland. (ITV1)
Robbie Coltraine, Sharon Small, Amanda Hale and Bel Powley share the limelight in this intriguing three parter. The story is told through the eyes of each of the main characters.
Like Trinity, it’s total tosh but it ain’t boring.
Last episode tonight.
Don't like all the flashbacks but I shan’t miss it.
READING.
A Song At Twilight.
Finally finished Brian Forbes’ excursion into John le Carré territory. It is a measure of his skill in the depiction of devious characters that by the end I cared not one jot what happened to any of them.
I have always thought that people who talked to each other in gobbledegook of the “If Hamlet sees a dagger someone will be shafted” sort, were clowns playing a silly, nonsensical game.
I believe more information about enemy intentions has been obtained from bad wireless security than ever has from sad sociopaths masquerading as spies.
And I think the CIA, GRU,KGB, MI5, MI6 and every other so-called intelligence agency of whatever country should have been laughed out of existence long before their silly self-deception got too big for their Alice in Wonderland boots.
Oh, one more thing: please stop sending me Russian emails, whoever you are. I am not a linguist, a communist, a capitalist or even a Seventh-day Adventist, so whatever your messages convey they are lost here.
That having been said, I wish you no less than you wish me.
That bloody autumnal hour.
So let’s get the moans out of the way for a start. That bloody autumnal hour has had to be fiddled with again: the clocks, as my Leader annually reminds me, fall back in the fall.
I neither know nor care why we are required to put them back an hour in autumn, or indeed put them forward again come spring.
My body clock will be all at sevens not sixes for several weeks; I see the entire exercise as an unnecessary intrusion; and I never did manage to change the clock in my last car.
An unstately pile.
As I may have mentioned before, the terrace where we live was built in the early eighteen forties and became Grade 2 listed in the nineteen seventies.
Quite why it was given a listing I do not know.
The properties are no more than simple town houses: this one provides fairly adequate living accommodation for a small family, is spread over three floors and is in a convenient spot for schools and shops.
As listed property owners we’re entitled to be members of the Listed Property Owners Club, just as are Bedford, Bath and the entire Grade 1 crowd. But in our case it‘s nothing to boast about. I think many terraces like ours were given a listing to save local councils the trouble of knocking them down; a move that was likely to attract the vociferous displeasure of the Victorian Society and unfavourable mention in poems by Sir John Betjeman.
We never really think about it until the time comes for replacements, repairs and even, heaven forbid, additions:
then we have to think about it.
Local Government (which I vaguely remember was once a public service) has an entire department of busybodies to check that wooden doors and window frames are not replaced with sensible plastic, that nothing new is introduced into hallowed hovels and that planning permission is sought before so much as a scaffold is erected or a builder’s bum glimpsed.
We now require a replacement front window on the ground floor. Based on past experience (Post 42 refers) it is likely to be a long drawn out process.
We only bought the house because my Leader fell in love with the photograph of it taken by the estate agent when it was up for sale. As I recall, he did very little else of any use. Anyway, the word listed would not have concerned me if it had nothing to do with subsidence.
But I have grown increasingly fond of the old place over the years: it is our own unstately pile, has a mini moat outside the front gate when it rains (something else the useless tits at the Council have never bothered to cure), is comfortable, conveniently situated (just four minutes stroll from M & S) and has a garage worth almost as much as the entire terrace.
I am hoping our builder will deal with the Council’s Listed Buildings bunch.
My tolerance with bureaucracy was tested and found wanting years ago.
There will be more on this subject in (probably a long) time.
Flu Jab time again.
On a lighter note: as I know I have mentioned before (Post 112), time is a sprinter. Last year was yesterday, next year is tomorrow.
A week ago we held the 2009 AGM of the Flu Jab Club.
Same four people; same venue; fresh cheese scones, tea and coffee.
Lovely to see Wendy and Mo again.
I must look out the Christmas decorations…
TELEVISION.
Football: England v Belarus.
“Well, what did you think?” I asked the cat Shadow after England’s impressive 3 - 0 win.
“Opposition wasn’t all that special,” he said.
“Couple of goals poached by Peter Crouch, though, and some precision passing by Becks,” I said. “I thought it was a tidy performance.”
“Brilliant might win the World Cup,” he said. “Tidy won’t.”
I sighed. Sometimes there’s no pleasing him.
Trinity. (ITV 3)
A strong cast keeps this bizarre series - set in an updated Lindsay Anderson style public school - humping merrily along.
There is the customary clique of top toffs (the untouchable Dandelion Club); a pair of naïve idiots for light relief; sinister manipulation of Dean Dr. Edmund Maltravers (Charles Dance) from a television screen in his study, and an occasional murder to help things along.
It is total tosh, but it certainly ain’t boring.
Merlin vanished.
Just to prove he is a magician in the making the young Merlin disappeared completely from BBC1 for a fortnight this month. The only spell he cast to cover his magical departure was the screening of Formula 1 motor racing, World Championship:
Button won so all’s well with the world.
Doc Martin. (ITV1)
Dr. Ellingham (Martin Clunes) has finally overcome his aversion to the sight of blood. He only has to do the same with his lousy bedside manner and he’ll be home and dry.
What?
Yes, I did meet NHS consultants exactly like him!
The Force. (C4)
This short documentary series about the work of Hampshire Constabulary started with an enquiry, led by DCI Jason Hogg, into the killing of a young woman: her body, found in a country lane, had been stuffed into a suitcase and set alight.
“Sex could be a motive for the murder or a reason for the murder, there’s a subtle difference,” said the DCI, or some equally wise soul on his team. He and they came across well.
On a personal note, it might look all right on the box but I wouldn’t want their job.
True Blood. (C4)
Duelling banjos with fangs. I am having trouble getting my teeth into this.
Guess it‘s just not to my taste..
The Armstrong and Miller Show. (BBC1)
Some of the sketches will be a decided hit and some a total miss: depends on your sense in humour. We enjoy the two airmen talking mod teen, the gloriously accident prone lecturer and the spoof Flanders and Swann.
Good value the pair of ‘em.
Murderland. (ITV1)
Robbie Coltraine, Sharon Small, Amanda Hale and Bel Powley share the limelight in this intriguing three parter. The story is told through the eyes of each of the main characters.
Like Trinity, it’s total tosh but it ain’t boring.
Last episode tonight.
Don't like all the flashbacks but I shan’t miss it.
READING.
A Song At Twilight.
Finally finished Brian Forbes’ excursion into John le Carré territory. It is a measure of his skill in the depiction of devious characters that by the end I cared not one jot what happened to any of them.
I have always thought that people who talked to each other in gobbledegook of the “If Hamlet sees a dagger someone will be shafted” sort, were clowns playing a silly, nonsensical game.
I believe more information about enemy intentions has been obtained from bad wireless security than ever has from sad sociopaths masquerading as spies.
And I think the CIA, GRU,KGB, MI5, MI6 and every other so-called intelligence agency of whatever country should have been laughed out of existence long before their silly self-deception got too big for their Alice in Wonderland boots.
Oh, one more thing: please stop sending me Russian emails, whoever you are. I am not a linguist, a communist, a capitalist or even a Seventh-day Adventist, so whatever your messages convey they are lost here.
That having been said, I wish you no less than you wish me.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
135. Roofing at home and 254 away.
HOME.
Maintenance.Forgot to mention in my last post that we have had our kitchen re-roofed.
It is a board and felt job with a couple of roof lights and when we moved in, around about 2000/1, we were advised by the surveyor that it would probably be necessary to replace it in a couple of years.
We held out; it lasted.
So this year, after a couple of reasonable summer months, we decided to have it replaced before, perhaps, winter forced our hand.
We found a reliable firm, accepted their quote, and a couple of weeks back they came in: Jim and his mate.
It pee-ed down, on and off, for the entire time they were here.
Jim was phlegmatic. “Better we know right away whether there are going to be any problems,” was his philosophy. “This way we find out early on.”
One night they left us with a tarpaulin between us and the rain.
That night we experienced the first truly unbelievable downpour for months. Water teemed off the kitchen roof and into the courtyard in a solid sheet. Standing at the kitchen sink was like standing behind Niagara Falls.
But we were miraculously leak free and the next day saw the laying of the new felt.
Finally came the replacement of old, cracked lead and the modification of the antiquated drainage system.
Job done.
Well, I take it job done.
Should last twenty years I am told, so I‘d be a tad optimistic if I said I‘ll let you know.
AND AWAY.
254 OBA.
My Leader and I spent the last few days of last week at a reunion of the 254 Old Boys’ Association. It was our first visit and it came about by chance.
I was wallowing around the web one night and happened upon the names of some ex boy soldiers who had been lads in the Royal Corps of Signals with me. Seemed they had formed an Association consisting entirely of those whose army numbers began 254 i.e. boys who, at the age of fourteen (and from the years 1942 to 1948/9 only), had enlisted in the Royal Signals as apprentices.
Further inquiries elicited the information that they hold an annual reunion (have done so since 1991), that wives were welcome and that, courtesy of the Grim Reaper, the Association’s numbers were fast depleting.
We were sent a nominal roll of OBA members and some copies of their magazine, Jimmy’s Journal, by editor Brian Fisher. We were invited to attend this year‘s bash, drove our car to Salisbury, were driven from there to Derby and back by newly found chum Jim Jenkins, were cordially received by Chairman Toby Seymour - together with as nice a bunch of people as you could find anywhere - and quietly enjoyed the entire experience.
Well…four star Mickleover Court Hotel, Derby…nice staff…all the trimmings… old pals like Wally Brown, Ted Mellor, Nat Preece and Brian Stockwell…a host of affable new pals, all contemporaries…a bevy of charmingly patient (not to say long-suffering) spouses…great organisation by dedicated volunteers…what was not to enjoy?
We shall go again next year if, as Sarah Kennedy so appropriately puts it, we are spared.
Alverstoke Michaelmas Fair.In a pleasant spot just outside Gosport, Hampshire can be found the charming village of Alverstoke wherein live my Leader’s sister, Our Marg, and her husband, Mike.
Every year the village holds a Michaelmas Fair and if we can we pay it a visit.
Brother-in-law Mike meets us at Gosport Ferry terminal and taxis us back and forth. The weather is usually fine. There couldn’t be a nicer way to spend a day.
We wander around the stalls and various charity catchpennies until loose change has departed and elderly energy flags.
We then repair to Our Marg’s to sample her excellent cooking; the two sisters talk sister talk and Mike and I cheerfully agree to disagree on just about every topic imaginable.
He is a devout Tory who firmly supported Margaret Thatcher and believes global warming is a myth. I am a devoutly non-partisan detester of politicians who regards himself as too old to do anything about global warming, myth or fact, and who refuses to lose so much as an hour’s catnap about it.
To the best of my knowledge we have never parted company on a sour note.
Why would we? He married Our Marg.
TELEVISION.
Leeds International Piano Competition.
Is it three years already? I suppose it must be.
This year I saw the televised concert performances of the first two contestants and pronounced them fine by me.
Cristina Ortiz, a magnificent concert pianist, quickly put the damper on such naive enthusiasm.
So I replayed them on DVD.
And of course the lady was right.
Her forthright views also made total nonsense of my theory that piano competitions are won by playing Rachmaninov, hitting the right notes in the right order, and finishing up at the same time as the orchestra.
Ah well…
Merlin.They’re back again. Young Colin Morgan (Merlin) and the rest of them: Anthony Head, Richard Wilson, Angel Coulby, Katie McGrath, Bradley James as Arthur, and the Voice of the Dragon provided by John Hurt.
Incidentally, how come nobody but Merlin and his mentor seem to know that there’s a bloody great talking dragon in the cellar?
It’s as daft as ever was and I shall try not to miss a single episode.
Harper’s Island.
We have regularly recorded this series and have just started watching it.
There’s plenty of misty forest, duelling banjos characters, lust and loathing.
And, like Merlin’s talking dragon, nobody seems to realise that the trees are full of booby traps and bodies.
Gawd! Ain’t it bloodthirsty?
I shall try not miss a single episode.
DAFT DAYS INDEED.
World Egg Day.The second Friday in October, the 9th, was World Egg Day.
What purpose did it serve?
Is the world falling behind in egg consumption? Are the world’s dairy farmers on the breadline? Is there fear that, universally, hens will become paranoid if the total amount they drop into their baskets is not instantly snapped up?
I like eggs, boiled, fried or poached, but I won’t be brainwashed into eating them by the announcement of another daft day.
National Poetry Day.And on the subject of daft days, National Poetry Day, with the theme Heroes and Heroines, fell on the 8th of October.
Probably the daftest thing about that one was news that the nation’s favourite poet is T.S. Eliot.
I was mulling it over, musing that I’d have bet on Pam Ayres myself, when the magical mystery Shadow appeared before me.
“Old Possum Eliot is favourite poet then,” he said. “Were you surprised?”
“Very,” I said. “Were you?”
“Oh yeah. I’d have bet on Pam Ayres myself.”
He struck his poetic pose.
I sighed, but there was no stopping him.
Shadow - The Poetry Cat (he announced)
A poem by Himself.
Shadow is a poetry cat: he’s called the Feline Bard
He scribbles on the rooftops and he scribbles in the yard.
And if by chance you find a scratchy scribble on your door,
You can bet composing Shadow has been at the muse once more.
Shadow, Shadow, you can rely on Shadow,
Shadow will be rhyming all the time:
No dog out-doggerels Shadow, top-cat poetic laddo,
He’s a dedicated master of the rhyme.
So lock up all your notepaper and cover all your walls,
For when it comes to scribbling verse ol’ Shadow don’t lack balls.
He’ll scribble in the sunshine and he’ll scribble in the rain.
He’ll scribble on your lavatory door - or even on the chain.
He’ll inscribe a rhyme on your Pekinese, or even on its fleas
He’ll tattoo a verse on your elbow and two of them on your knees.
He’s not averse to appending a verse that would make other poets despair,
But when he tried to do it to Eliot - MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
He had a quick wash.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
“Not bad,“ I said. “Quite T.S. Eliot. Especially the last three words.”
Maintenance.Forgot to mention in my last post that we have had our kitchen re-roofed.
It is a board and felt job with a couple of roof lights and when we moved in, around about 2000/1, we were advised by the surveyor that it would probably be necessary to replace it in a couple of years.
We held out; it lasted.
So this year, after a couple of reasonable summer months, we decided to have it replaced before, perhaps, winter forced our hand.
We found a reliable firm, accepted their quote, and a couple of weeks back they came in: Jim and his mate.
It pee-ed down, on and off, for the entire time they were here.
Jim was phlegmatic. “Better we know right away whether there are going to be any problems,” was his philosophy. “This way we find out early on.”
One night they left us with a tarpaulin between us and the rain.
That night we experienced the first truly unbelievable downpour for months. Water teemed off the kitchen roof and into the courtyard in a solid sheet. Standing at the kitchen sink was like standing behind Niagara Falls.
But we were miraculously leak free and the next day saw the laying of the new felt.
Finally came the replacement of old, cracked lead and the modification of the antiquated drainage system.
Job done.
Well, I take it job done.
Should last twenty years I am told, so I‘d be a tad optimistic if I said I‘ll let you know.
AND AWAY.
254 OBA.
My Leader and I spent the last few days of last week at a reunion of the 254 Old Boys’ Association. It was our first visit and it came about by chance.
I was wallowing around the web one night and happened upon the names of some ex boy soldiers who had been lads in the Royal Corps of Signals with me. Seemed they had formed an Association consisting entirely of those whose army numbers began 254 i.e. boys who, at the age of fourteen (and from the years 1942 to 1948/9 only), had enlisted in the Royal Signals as apprentices.
Further inquiries elicited the information that they hold an annual reunion (have done so since 1991), that wives were welcome and that, courtesy of the Grim Reaper, the Association’s numbers were fast depleting.
We were sent a nominal roll of OBA members and some copies of their magazine, Jimmy’s Journal, by editor Brian Fisher. We were invited to attend this year‘s bash, drove our car to Salisbury, were driven from there to Derby and back by newly found chum Jim Jenkins, were cordially received by Chairman Toby Seymour - together with as nice a bunch of people as you could find anywhere - and quietly enjoyed the entire experience.
Well…four star Mickleover Court Hotel, Derby…nice staff…all the trimmings… old pals like Wally Brown, Ted Mellor, Nat Preece and Brian Stockwell…a host of affable new pals, all contemporaries…a bevy of charmingly patient (not to say long-suffering) spouses…great organisation by dedicated volunteers…what was not to enjoy?
We shall go again next year if, as Sarah Kennedy so appropriately puts it, we are spared.
Alverstoke Michaelmas Fair.In a pleasant spot just outside Gosport, Hampshire can be found the charming village of Alverstoke wherein live my Leader’s sister, Our Marg, and her husband, Mike.
Every year the village holds a Michaelmas Fair and if we can we pay it a visit.
Brother-in-law Mike meets us at Gosport Ferry terminal and taxis us back and forth. The weather is usually fine. There couldn’t be a nicer way to spend a day.
We wander around the stalls and various charity catchpennies until loose change has departed and elderly energy flags.
We then repair to Our Marg’s to sample her excellent cooking; the two sisters talk sister talk and Mike and I cheerfully agree to disagree on just about every topic imaginable.
He is a devout Tory who firmly supported Margaret Thatcher and believes global warming is a myth. I am a devoutly non-partisan detester of politicians who regards himself as too old to do anything about global warming, myth or fact, and who refuses to lose so much as an hour’s catnap about it.
To the best of my knowledge we have never parted company on a sour note.
Why would we? He married Our Marg.
TELEVISION.
Leeds International Piano Competition.
Is it three years already? I suppose it must be.
This year I saw the televised concert performances of the first two contestants and pronounced them fine by me.
Cristina Ortiz, a magnificent concert pianist, quickly put the damper on such naive enthusiasm.
So I replayed them on DVD.
And of course the lady was right.
Her forthright views also made total nonsense of my theory that piano competitions are won by playing Rachmaninov, hitting the right notes in the right order, and finishing up at the same time as the orchestra.
Ah well…
Merlin.They’re back again. Young Colin Morgan (Merlin) and the rest of them: Anthony Head, Richard Wilson, Angel Coulby, Katie McGrath, Bradley James as Arthur, and the Voice of the Dragon provided by John Hurt.
Incidentally, how come nobody but Merlin and his mentor seem to know that there’s a bloody great talking dragon in the cellar?
It’s as daft as ever was and I shall try not to miss a single episode.
Harper’s Island.
We have regularly recorded this series and have just started watching it.
There’s plenty of misty forest, duelling banjos characters, lust and loathing.
And, like Merlin’s talking dragon, nobody seems to realise that the trees are full of booby traps and bodies.
Gawd! Ain’t it bloodthirsty?
I shall try not miss a single episode.
DAFT DAYS INDEED.
World Egg Day.The second Friday in October, the 9th, was World Egg Day.
What purpose did it serve?
Is the world falling behind in egg consumption? Are the world’s dairy farmers on the breadline? Is there fear that, universally, hens will become paranoid if the total amount they drop into their baskets is not instantly snapped up?
I like eggs, boiled, fried or poached, but I won’t be brainwashed into eating them by the announcement of another daft day.
National Poetry Day.And on the subject of daft days, National Poetry Day, with the theme Heroes and Heroines, fell on the 8th of October.
Probably the daftest thing about that one was news that the nation’s favourite poet is T.S. Eliot.
I was mulling it over, musing that I’d have bet on Pam Ayres myself, when the magical mystery Shadow appeared before me.
“Old Possum Eliot is favourite poet then,” he said. “Were you surprised?”
“Very,” I said. “Were you?”
“Oh yeah. I’d have bet on Pam Ayres myself.”
He struck his poetic pose.
I sighed, but there was no stopping him.
Shadow - The Poetry Cat (he announced)
A poem by Himself.
Shadow is a poetry cat: he’s called the Feline Bard
He scribbles on the rooftops and he scribbles in the yard.
And if by chance you find a scratchy scribble on your door,
You can bet composing Shadow has been at the muse once more.
Shadow, Shadow, you can rely on Shadow,
Shadow will be rhyming all the time:
No dog out-doggerels Shadow, top-cat poetic laddo,
He’s a dedicated master of the rhyme.
So lock up all your notepaper and cover all your walls,
For when it comes to scribbling verse ol’ Shadow don’t lack balls.
He’ll scribble in the sunshine and he’ll scribble in the rain.
He’ll scribble on your lavatory door - or even on the chain.
He’ll inscribe a rhyme on your Pekinese, or even on its fleas
He’ll tattoo a verse on your elbow and two of them on your knees.
He’s not averse to appending a verse that would make other poets despair,
But when he tried to do it to Eliot - MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
He had a quick wash.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
“Not bad,“ I said. “Quite T.S. Eliot. Especially the last three words.”
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