169. News views and the last Potter.

HOME.  

What are they hiding this time?

Is it just me or does anybody else think this phone hacking furore is a load of twaddle? So far we have had an Australian billionaire and his son answering questions in parliament, a police chief out on his ear, sackings, resignations, the wrapping up of the Screws Of The World and a load of gutter press journalists cast into the wilderness wondering whether they still have that unwritten best seller left in them, Where will it all end? The House of Commons was jampacked when they discussed it. Far more members turned up than would dream of so doing to discuss a rise in the old age pension, a proposed reduction in the obscene profits made by privatised public utilities, or the discontinuation of our futile involvement in the Middle East.Sometimes it just makes you despair. What the hell are they all hiding this time? What is so secret in their paranoid political lives that nobody, but nobody, should know about it? Christ! Anybody can hack into my phone if they want to. (The mobile, too: it’s seldom switched on) I’ll cheerfully tell them in advance what they’ll hear on the house phone. They’ll hear innocuous conversations with family and friends and they’ll hear the odd sales guy from India being given short shrift because he has rung at mealtime again. They’ll hear top secret info regarding the dates and times of our dental and medical appointments and highly confidential conversations disclosing whether one or the other of us can collect our grandson from school. They’ll hear sisters and friends talking to my Leader and people talking to me who have rung up hoping to talk to my Leader. They may even intercept the needs to know news that the cat (codename Shadow) who worryingly failed to report for breakfast has now been seen sunbathing on next door’s kitchen roof. They’ll be brain numb in under a week and it will serve them bloody right!  Phone hacking? Baloney! The most dreadful recent news has come from

ABROAD.

The Norway deaths. 

Why this beautiful country, filled with peace loving people, should have become victim to a solitary man’s murderous craving for publicity is surely beyond the comprehension of any sane human being. Between seventy and eighty people died in his bomb and shooting attacks before, relying on the professional integrity of the lawmen who caught up with him, he yielded without resistance to avoid being justifiably executed on the spot. Now a nation mourns and the world awaits what will doubtless be a protracted, much publicised trial: precisely the outcome he was looking for. Norway abolished capital punishment in 1905, but I guess he will be given a life sentence. If it was left to me it would be a life sentence for every life he took and they would run consecutively. He would thereafter be made a non- person, unspoken of right up until he was eventually forgotten. Hell, the sad little misfit has had too much publicity already.

READING.

Reaper by Graham Hurley.

Reaper was first published in 1991 and entails events leading up to the 1982 Falklands conflict. It is a story involving love, betrayal, the lunatic antics of the IRA, the actions of a couple of Special Branch thugs and the machinations of an assortment of psychopaths masquerading as intelligence operatives. If you generally like Graham Hurley’s work you will like it. I did.

Our Lady of Pain by M.C.Beaton (MarionChesney).  
I think Marion Chesney’s alter ego does better with the Agatha Raisin stories. This is an Edwardian pot boiler which features Lady Rose Summer and Captain Harry Cathcart with both of whom I quickly lost patience.If you generally like M..C. Beaton’s work you may like it. I didn’t.

TELEVISION.

New Tricks. (BBC1)

Another series well underway and, in Setting Out Your Stall, a rare appearance by Sheila Hancock as Sandra Pullman’s unpopular mother. Easy viewing.              

The Hour. (BBC2)                      

Fifty nine minutes too long for me.

Torchwood: Miracle Day. (BBC1) 

The fire quickly went out on this, too. There are now American connections.Everybody except the formerly immortal Captain Jack has found they are unable to die. He is dying and his could be the only funeral in the cemetery. Episode 3 of 10 has just been shown. I’ll try and relight the torch but I’m not optimistic.

50 Greatest Harry Potter Moments. (ITV1)

They might be the 50 Greatest if your tastes exactly match those of the programme compiler. Mine seldom do, so I invariably miss such gems as: 50 Most Shunned Heroes With Halitosis, 50 Most Bloodthirsty Origami Disasters, 50 Most Unconvincing Elvis Impersonators,etc. I also determinedly avoid anything that starts with the words The Very Best Of…or The Late Great…It’s not the subject that puts me off, it’s the presentation. I get heartily pissed off with that old guy, wearing Li’l Abner overalls and a straggly moustache, who cuts in every twenty seconds to tell you how he knew the star in the sixties but can’t remember anything about it because if you can remember the sixties you weren’t there. So I viewed this 50 Greatest with misgivings and they were justified. The contributions from those who acted in, or worked on, the films were fine; pertinent, interesting and often amusing. But I was at a loss to work out why anybody thought the views of non participants - comedians, pop singers, reality show winners et al - no matter how enthusiastically voiced, would be of any more interest to me than mine would to them. Oh well, I remain a Potter devotee. No PR sales doc will change that.

FILM.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (Pt.2).

A super finish to a super series. All eight films have been moderately true to the seven books and all have been perfectly cast. The addition of a somewhat low key Deathly Hallows Pt.1 (which included the demise of Dobby) set the tone for this all action, occasionally tear-jerking, finale.

Nobody disappointed. The youngsters who have featured throughout the entire series: Daniel Radcliff (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron), Emma Watson (Hermione), Harry Melling (Dudley), James and Oliver Phelps (Fred and George), Bonny Wright (Ginny), Tom Felton (Draco), Matthew Lewis (Neville), Josh Herdman (Goyle) and Devon Murray (Seamus), together with the slightly later additions, Hugh Mitchell (Colin) and Evanna Lynch (Luna), have become attractive young adults and fine actors. 

They have provided hours of innocent pleasure to millions of enchanted filmgoers and there should be success for them far beyond Potter. I certainly hope that will be the case. 

(I also hope that Jamie Waylett, who played Crabbe in the first six films and missed out on Deathly Hallows through drug charges, will stop being a silly young man before he ruins his life completely.) 

As for the bevy of respected stage and screen stars who did not feel it beneath them to appear in a Potter film, none gave less than their impressive best. Lovely Maggie Smith, battling a couple of debilitating illnesses along the way, commanded attention whenever she appeared (hasn’t she always?) and splendid Alan Rickman’s Snape was surely the most insidious antihero of all time.

From beginning to end we have been spellbound by Hogwarts and all who spelled in her. Book and film. The spell is unbreakable so I care not for the opinions of detractors and begrudge not a single penny made by those involved in the franchise. We went as a family group to see Deathly Hallows Pt.2 and next year we shall take a family trip to Leavesden studios where this very British series has been filmed. Magic like that just lasts and lasts.

Well done, J.K. Rowling!

Good man, Professor Snape!

168. Goodbye Columbo. Hello WALL-E.

 IN APPRECIATION.

Peter Falk. (1927 - 2011)

Watching the Detectives would be a misnomer if I failed to lament the loss of Peter Falk who played the gloriously scruffy and deceptively clever Lt.Columbo, Los Angeles Police Department’s finest, from 1971 until 2003.
I dare say every Columbo follower has a favourite episode. Mine, and that of my daughter Jackie, was Try To Catch Me, made in 1977 and co-starring Ruth Gordon. The veteran actress and the likeable actor clearly relished every scene they played together. It was close to perfection.
For that matter, Columbo guest actors mostly did seem hugely at ease with a star who was the personification of technical competence and generosity of spirit.
Oh, just one more thing…
Peter Falk, actor, artist and chess enthusiast, died in Beverley Hills on the 23rd of June, 2011 at the age of 83.
He will long and fondly be remembered.

HOME.

Social Networking.
Every now and then a friend, relative or chance acquaintance has approached me to become a fellow traveller on one of the social networking websites.
I have always politely declined or simply ignored the offer.
In the first place, blogging takes up quite enough of my time; in the second, I could neither face up to Facebook nor witter on Twitter without quickly making plain my ingrained unsociability.
Why should anybody be interested in what I had for breakfast, whether my Leader or I cooked dinner, or what time I made my way to bed?
I know it has become the in thing to proffer up one’s private life for public scrutiny, but I am not celeb interviewee material; chat show hosts would not want to talk to me. Might be different if I had half a dozen mistresses fifty years my junior, had succeeded in grafting a new strain of orchid onto the dog rose in my courtyard, or had obtained a knighthood following years of flouting a modest talent to maximum effect before a stupefied audience.Might be different, too, if I was the sort of moron who just couldn’t wait to be seen doing bushtucker trials or getting himself fired by an arrogant little twat in need of a shave.
But such is not the case.
So I’m afraid someone else will have to chit chat with the social network dabblers: a good old gossip on the net is not for me, even if it is cheaper than the pub.
But thanks again for asking.
Giveaway headgear.
When I was young most men wore hats. A hat was an indication of the job, place on the corporate ladder, even the class, of the wearer. I seldom wore a hat after I parted company with the army: nearly twelve years of military headgear was quite enough. But a few weeks ago my Leader and I were over in Pompey, shopping at Gunwharf Quays, when I chanced upon baseball caps similar to those worn by the NCIS cast and, on a whim, bought one.
I donned it for the first time when I set out on an unpromising morning to collect my newspaper.
“I am actually an NCIS employee,” I told my Leader. “But I don’t have the letters on my cap because I’m working incognito.”
“Off you go then, Special Agent David,” she said.
Blew me cover completely.

TELEVISION.

Camelot. (C4)
The current craze is for depictions of the medieval to be downright manic. This series is no exception. It may well be the way things were back then.
Anyway, if I was around I don’t remember it; and thank whatever god for that.
Decent cast but, at ten episodes, too long.
Top Gear. (BBC2)
Yeah, they’re back again. Same overgrown schoolboys racing about in same (albeit latest model) cars. Wonder if any of them would know how to stop the air conditioning unit in my Hyundai i10 piddling all over the garage floor?
No?
Neither does my main dealer.
Scott & Bailey. (ITV1)
Lesley Sharp played DC Scott, Suranne Jones played DC Bailey and Rupert Graves played an arsehole barrister. Not much new there then.
It was a six part series. The girls will be back. He won’t.
The Shadow Line. (BBC2)
In this sombre seven parter nobody decent, or even half decent, came to a happy ending. Beautiful performances from a splendid cast which included Lesley Sharp again, this time playing an Alzheimer’s sufferer. Such a fine actress. Well deserves to be a Dame of the British Empire, though I guess my recommendation won't help her.
Luther. (BBC1)
Still not my cup of tea, but lasted only four episodes so I scarcely had time to ignore it.
It will be back.
Perhaps I’ll ignore it then.
Castle. (C5)
Could as easily have been called Murder He Wrote but wasn’t, presumably to avoid litigation.
I’m determined to give this a chance, even if it does at first come across as a desperate attempt to revamp The Mentalist by introducing a bit of family interest. The leading actors are pleasant and the stories so far are viewable standard fare. We’ll see.
The Killing. (C4)
Talking of revamps, this is an unashamed American remake of the immensely successful Danish crime series Forbrydelsen. I am again determined to give it a chance, but I cannot help being reminded of the English remake of Wallander which abysmally failed to match the excellence of its Swedish precursor.
Well it stands to reason, doesn‘t it?:
Portrayals of Scandinavia are best left to Scandinavians.

READING.

Alexander McCall Smith.
I finished The Full Cupboard of Life. (Abacus £6.99 or see Google for outlets with reduced prices.)
Mr. McCall Smith’s Botswana remains delightfully amusing and his characters charmingly predictable. Yet another success for No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
So did Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni make the parachute jump?
That would be telling.
Heck, you can always buy the book.

FILM.

 Add this animated gem by Pixar to my list of favourites. The world has long come to an end, buried under trillions of tons of waste, and the only moving things left are a small robot, WALL.E,  and his friend Hal, a cockroach.
WALL-E is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class - the last of his kind - who ventures forth daily to transform acres of rubbish into cubes which he neatly stacks atop each other until they form compact mountains.
He is kind, industrious and a lover of the musical film Hallo Dolly, to which he hums and dances along. His enthusiasm, like Jerry Herman’s opening music, is infectious and my Leader and I have since been haunted by Michael Crawford’s rendition of Put On Your Sunday Clothes.
WALL-E’s lonely world is suddenly invaded by Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator EVE, a Ziva David style robot (NCIS fans will comprehend) landed on earth to search for any sign of plant growth. WALL-E falls in love with her and, coincidentally, he has unearthed a seedling plant…
The film was released in 2008 and was directed by Andrew Stanton. If you have not seen it I suggest you look out for the next TV showing, or pick up a DVD somewhere.
For those who are interested there is an excellent article on Wikipedia,
My Leader has now bought me the CD and the DVD. Talk about spoilt.
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (Pt,2)
The big night for the stars is over and next week on the 15th we get to see the final film.
I believe daughter Roz has been persuaded to take granddaughter Jess to the 0001 hours Island premiere. They’ll love it. I’d go too, but I’m usually asleep at that time. (A snippet of info I shall not be divulging on Facebook or Twitter.
Oh, I shall go as soon as I can. And bollocks to the Potter haters.
Have a good whatever...

167. School‘s out.

HOME.


Rediscovering school.
My Leader and I were recently involved in a family learning course held at Ellis’s school on Thursday mornings. We were accepted as student stand-ins for his working mother and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
The lessons included an outside search for interesting insects, an analysis of Goldilocks and The Three Bears and an in depth appreciation of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.
Did you know that woodlice are crustaceans, not insects? Were you cognizant of the fact that they have fourteen jointed limbs, or that they do not pee but do eat their own poo?
Were you aware that worms have five hearts and no eyes?
Did you care? (No? Shame on you!)
The course ran for five weeks at the conclusion of which we each received a certificate of attendance. As my Leader cheerfully put it: “We have finally been certified.”

Ribald remarks will be ignored.

If there’s a next time, we’ll go again.

Traffic control: you have to admire the logic.
One of the recent forays into Never-Never Land taken by those responsible for controlling the traffic over here has been the imposition of a one-way traffic order on a road which took traffic from Sandown and Shanklin across the outskirts of Newport to the village of Carisbrooke and beyond. The road was perfectly adequate for two-way traffic throughout, but somebody - probably a councillor - saw a way of reducing the flow of vehicles past his house and that was that. The upshot has been the, now legally established, closure of that road to uphill traffic at a junction halfway along it, and a diversion taking said traffic back into Newport and out past two (one of them primary) schools. This, it seems, is what the planners (surely a contradiction in terms) call planning.
Waste of time writing to them I am reliably informed: they answer not.
Waste of time phoning them, too: they heed not.
Their maxim seems to be: ignore the buggers and they’ll go away.
You have to admire the logic, don’t you?

TELEVISION.

Game of Thrones. (Sky Atlantic)
Nobody plays tough but honourable better than Sean Bean. He was tough but honourable Richard Sharpe (a hero of the Napoleonic Wars) from 1993 to 2008 and here he is tough but honourable Ned Stark (hero of a medieval fantasy). It is clear that Ned can come to no good. A fair-minded man is at a distinct disadvantage when all about him are downright medieval.
There is a shortage of likeable characters in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire fantasies and heroes are killed off before you have chance to know them. It is bloodthirsty but compelling.
I might have found it disturbing, but I am old enough to remember John Creasey bumping off the heroes in his Department Z stories whenever he appeared to tire of them.
And that was before Mr. Martin was born.
There’s nothing new in the world of fiction.
Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood. (BBC2)
Paul Merton is a fan of old Hollywood and it shows in every reel of this short series.
As would be expected of a regular on HIGNFY he is quick and funny; he is also refreshingly outspoken at times. The film director D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which was largely responsible for the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, gets a particularly sober mention, as does the public humiliation of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.
We learned, we laughed, we pondered, we enjoyed.
Can’t ask more than that of a documentary.

Prince Philip at 90. (ITV1)
Alan Titchmarsh (still wearing his posh suit for RHS Chelsea Flower Show) made a further bid for the knighthood with this, suitably deferential, probe into the life of the longest-serving royal consort in British history.
Once, when she was about twelve years old, my future wife hurtled down Market Hill, Cowes, on a bicycle and screeched to a halt barely inches from HRH and his old friend Uffa Fox. Had the ground been wet (and it inevitably rains during Cowes Week) she would have brought down not only a promenading prince and his companion but probably the whole of Special Branch.
It was the closest either of us has ever been to royalty.
Prince Philip saw the funny side. Well, he was over fifty years younger then and no harm had been done.
Ol’ Titchy didn’t find out much more than we already know about the royal personage.
At his best the old boy charms attractive females who catch his eye and testily suffers unattractive males who walk on broken glass around him.
At his worst he is a pain in the arse.
Aren’t we all?
Classic Brit Awards (ITV1)
I usually avoid these fawning get-togethers, too, but this one was rather good. Myleene Klass’s presentation was faultless.
Il Divo opened the show in fine style: Alfie Boe and the cast of Les Miserables were absolute magic; a splendid selection of solo performers followed and, to round it all off, Dame Shirley Bassey took to the stage to perform John Barry’s Bond theme Goldfinger with the London Chamber Orchestra.
Nobody spent too long thanking their mother, father and the tortoise at the end of the garden,
Yes, it really was rather good.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. (Series 11) (C5)
This, on the other hand, has become rather bad. A dreadful load of tosh.
I don’t know whether the actors are privy to future story lines, but would never be surprised the learn that William Petersen had some inkling of what the future held in store and bolted for freedom before the compulsory serial killer could be brought in to make a daft ’go it alone’ idiot of him. Lawrence Fishburne surely had no idea and has my sympathy.I suppose it is inevitable that a country where forty percent of the population own guns will have a neurotic fixation on mass murderers, but in America the serial killer has become as much a lazy scriptwriter’s plot stand-by as has the omnipresent turbaned terrorist.
How many writers contribute to this cliched crap?
No matter.
Just give it a rest, will you?
Martina Cole’s The Runaway. (Sky 1)
Recorded this and watched all six episodes over a couple of days.
Apart from the drag queens, led by Desrae (Alan Cumming) the characters made the Game of Thrones crowd look like something out of Beatrix Potter.
Medieval minds would know no better; but this was London in the sixties. Not for the faint hearted.
Made you proud not to be a Londoner.

READING.

Alexander McCall Smith.
The Full Cupboard of Life is Botswana’s No.1 Ladies’ Detective agency again.
Mma Ramotswe continues gently to wrestle with her own problems and with those of her clients. I have only reached chapter five and am totally hooked. Will Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni make the parachute jump?
More next time.

166. Trips near and far and Barry Cryer

HOME

Finally sorted.
If you look up Hogwarts on Google you will be find a couple of Hogwarts Sorting Hat quizzes designed to tell you which school house you belong to.
I tried them both and each gave me the same result :- "Gryffindor!"
Yeah, I thought it would probably say that for everybody, too: but it doesn’t.
My Leader’s result said Ravenclaw. Would you believe it?
Go on. Be daft. Have a go!
Get Sorted By The Hogwarts Sorting Hat!
That wedding.
Were you carried along on the flood of publicity for the Kate and Wills nuptials? I may not have been, but there was no denying my Leader.
“It’s a woman’s thing,” she explained gently. “No woman can resist a good wedding.”
Well, I thought, it would be churlish and probably sexist to turn my back on it then. So I watched with her.
Good, wasn’t it?
Oh, I can understand if you are one of those who saw it only as a royal publicity stunt, a costly exercise in public manipulation at a time when thousands…millions even…of youngsters have a snowballs chance in hell of affording any sort of wedding, let alone the deposit on a small house. But, no matter how understandable your disenchantment, when it comes to the Kate and Wills wingding you will find yourself much in the minority.
Thing is, this country does pageantry better than any other country in the world. Nowadays, come to think of it, pageantry is probably the only bloody thing this country does do better than any other country in the world.
As a devout non-believer (in just about everything), to my surprise I quite enjoyed the wedding service, approved of the hymns and found myself solemnly agreeing with the Bishop of London’s homily.
They came across as a nice young couple and no matter how undesirable the idea of another hereditary king may be, the contention that the post would better be filled by some power-mad …king politician is just a nonsense.
Anyway, all the horses and carriages and smiling and waving and kisses on the balcony and mass adulation whilst a dear little girl held her hands over her ears was magically awful.
Christ knows what it has cost, but there is certainly no shortage of people wishing the pair all the best.
We’re among ‘em.

AWAY

Hogwarts and beyond.
A couple of weekends back the young family went on holiday to Florida for a fortnight to visit Disneyland and the world of Harry Potter. They returned just a few days ago. Enjoyed every moment of it. Didn’t want to come back. They plan to return in a couple of years when Boo is eight and big enough to go on all the rides.
My Leader and I enjoyed their enjoyment via phone calls, texts etc. Neither of us was keen to discover Disney, but I would quite like to have seen Hogwarts. Bit long in the tooth for all the traipsing around now, though, and the sight of a moving staircase would make me queasy.
Anyway, we quite enjoyed a selfish fortnight to ourselves.
More 254.
By way of a short break, on the day the young family went to America we returned to Botleigh Grange Hotel, Hedge End, Hants, for this year’s get-together of 254 OBA Southern Chapter (Posts 135 and 143 refer).
We travelled across on the Friday. this time the weather favoured us and our experience of last year made the trip that much easier. Indeed, the following day we motored around Hampshire finishing up at Alton - what a super little town - and drove back via the area where we lived when we were first married. Lord, in nearly fifty years how everything has changed!
Once again the service at Botleigh Grange Hotel was excellent and the accommodation first class.
Our thanks to Pat and Maureen Soward for the understated time and effort they always put into organizing the event and to all the OBA members, spouses and guests whose mutual affability is the making of it.

ABROAD

Death of Osama Bin Laden.
After nearly a decade, the alleged mastermind behind 9/11 has been killed by U.S. troops in Pakistan. The news was announced by President Barack Obama on 2nd May.
Given the American propensity for death by friendly fire, my first reaction was one of relief that Lawrence of Arabia died in a motor cycle accident in 1935.

TELEVISION.

Doctor Who. (BBC1)
I don’t quite know what this new series is all about. In the first two-part story President Richard Nixon figured prominently and that was enough to curdle my yoghurt.
River, played by Alex Kingston, cheered things up a bit, but the producers are apparently going for a darker approach this time. Could be good. We might even finish up in Copenhagen with DI Sarah Lund.
The second story took place in pirate land. Hugh Bonneville and Lily Cole were the guest stars and it all took place in a single episode which wickedly incorporated every cliché in the book (except Long John Silver’s parrot). Funnily enough, the one episode formula was more understandable. Perhaps condensing it simplified the plot.
Exile. (BBC1)
This was a three parter with a sterling cast which included Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Shaun Dooley, Claire Goose, John Simm and Timothy West.
Tom Ronstadt, a drug-riddled journalist, returns to Lancashire determined to discover why his father, Sam, former deputy editor of the local newspaper and now an Alzheimer’s sufferer, had once beaten him so badly that he had left home intending never to return.
Tom’s investigation uncovers a Haut de la Garenne style scandal and a brutal truth about his background.
The story could as easily have been told in two parts, but the acting well compensated for any feeling that it took its time and, as is often the way with a good drama, there was the occasional line of dialogue that particularly appealed to me.
Tom’s father - in a rare lucid moment - said of a former boss:
“He couldn’t write fuck on a dusty blind.”
God bless cantankerous old journalists!
Vera. (ITV1)
Shades of Sarah Lund, the goggle-eyed crime fiction fan cannot help but feel a sense of déjà vu whenever a new British cop show is aired.
DCI Vera Stanhope, played by Brenda Blethyn as a cranky, menopausal matriarch, is another addition to the let’s-doff-our-hats-to-Denmark school.
I have been a Brenda Blethyn admirer since the days of Chance in a Million and Outside Edge, so feel sorry that I cannot see Vera as the next Jack Frost.
Not that I’m an expert: when I first saw Frost I thought David Jason was miscast and way too small for a copper.
Didn’t take into account the size of the talent, did I?
Case Sensitive. (ITV1)
Detective Sergeant Charlie Zailer (Olivia Williams), the second female sleuth to appear on ITV in as many days, turned out to be a personal life disaster in charge of a complicated murder enquiry. Her problems were compounded by a slim DC sidekick who was probably in love with her and a fat overbearing boss who definitely was not.
She and her sidekick solved the case and, in so doing, doubtless saved the fat boss from a quick walk into early retirement. Well, unless he was looking to end his career, no head of a police department would put a lowly sergeant in charge of a high profile murder investigation. Not bloody likely.
Poetic licence?
Do come on.
United. (BBC2)
The Busby Babes and the Munich air tragedy.
We watched, close to tears, as David Tennant (playing coach Jimmy Murphy) and the remainder of an excellent cast, took us back to the BEA Elizabethan plane crash that resulted in the dreadful depletion of Matt Busby’s brilliant young Manchester United football team in February 1958.
United is back at the top again this year.
Whatever you may think, it belongs there.
The Wright Stuff. (C5)
When I have nothing else to do, which is seldom, I look in on Matthew Wright, an ex Mirror journalist (Piers Morgan was his editor. Cassandra must have been spinning at the speed of light!) who has a weekday morning show where he tolerates a small studio audience and accepts a few phone-ins from people prepared to chance his mood of the moment.
To like the show you have to like Matthew Wright; or simply thank God he’s not Jeremy Kyle. I fall into the latter category.
It helps, too, if you like the (mostly media) people invited along as guests for the week. I usually do.
Last week Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Neil Stuke were the permanent guests and Claire Goose turned up one morning to talk about her part in Exile. It was a change to see Mrs. A-B without the unwell-wishers who seem to dog her every public appearance and the panellista were generally lively and candid without being unnecessarily aggressive.
This week Mark Little is on the panel: another excellent contributor. The host, though, will be away undergoing an operation on his lower back.
I wish him good luck and hope he will be back soon (cue for song).
Well, The Wright Stuff without Wright would never run on like Taggart has.

READING.

Graham Hurley.
In No Lovelier Death (Orion) a teenage party at a judge’s house in the posh Southsea district of Craneswater is advertised on Facebook, attracts scores of kids from contrasting backgrounds, and culminates in riot and murder.
There are two corpses alongside the swimming pool of the holidaying judge’s next door neighbour and one of them is the party giver, Rachel, the judge’s daughter.
To add to DI Faraday's problems, he and his colleagues are not alone in their pursuit of the murderer. The judge’s next door neighbour is Baz Mackenzie, a former drug baron and semi-reformed hard case who had promised to keep an eye on things while the judge was away. Baz feels he has a personal score to settle…
This is Graham Hurley on top form.

THEATRE.

Barry Cryer.
We enjoyed a rare evening out recently when Pauline and Neil (the Ventnor Barndens) asked us if we would like to see Barry Cryer at Shanklin Theatre with them and a bunch of friends. We would and we did.
Ol’ Baz, accompanied by I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue pianist Colin Sell, coasted through the evening like a cyclist on a long downhill run.
Using the alphabet method to introduce his topics he cruised through just about every email joke doing the rounds in the past five years (he probably wrote most of them), performed a couple of songs, indulged in a little Flanders and Swann banter with pianist Colin, dropped a few famous names without making us cringe and concluded his act (with an encore) to warm applause.
Well you have to admire a man who not only can remember all those email jokes at the age of 76, but is brave enough to wear a bright red waistcoat.
Lovely evening, Mr. Cryer.
Thanks again, Paul and S.J.

165. A gentle stroll through time..

HOME.

Ellis‘s time.
End of last week was end of school term and time for the Easter fair at grandson Ellis’s school. Children, teachers and parents combined to make a happy after-school occasion of it and little Boo, a pupil when I took him to school in the morning, was a tiger by the time he got home in the evening.
Ain’t education great nowadays?
My time.
I hated school for much of my young life. Bully boys formed bullyboy gangs and too many of the staff were superannuated sadists.
At one of the seven schools I went to between the age of five and thirteen I recollect Mr. Supercilious, a wartime schoolteacher venting his ire at being excluded from uniformed combat by launching a zero tolerance campaign against the kids in his charge.
“If you ever have to rely on arithmetic for your living, boy,” he thundered at me on one occasion, “you’ll finish up a dustman!”
He had two approaches, the bellowing and the sarcastic, which he often combined. I cannot remember him ever laughing, smiling. or showing the slightest hint of humour.
I don’t know how he finished up..
Careers adviser, perhaps.
What? Oh, I finished up an administrator and finance officer in the NHS.
My father‘s time.
My father went to St. Luke’s school in Portsmouth where he learned the three R’s and how to fight. His father (one of the first warrant officers in the RN) died when dad was nine and he left school to take up an apprenticeship as a carpenter and joiner at the age of fourteen.
I remember less of him than I would have liked. He died at the age of fifty four; that was over fifty years ago, three years after I left the army and three before my marriage to Maureen, who never met him.
He was Portsmouth born and bred. Dark, short (only five foot six and a half - he insisted on the half), thickset, shrewd, a self-taught pianist in the mode of Charlie Kunz, a loyal family man and a dry humorist.
In my early teens I once stood with him at the top of Portsdown Hill looking out across Portsmouth. It was a clear day and for no good reason my teenage imagination ran riot. “I bet they could build a bridge from here all the way to France,“ I said.
Just the trace of a smile flickered across his face.
“Yeah,” he said. “With lifts down to the Isle of Wight.”
For many years he was chairman of Southsea Liberal Club (‘No political or religious talk in the club, please.’) and once told me he owed his regular re-election to never becoming involved in excitable squabbles.
“I’m phlegmatic; I wear ‘em down.”
His views on people were pithy but not venomous.
On a large, likeable woman: “Stout party; heart of gold.”
On a pompous man: “He rates himself a bit.”
On any entertainer he liked: “Good turn that one.”
On a seemingly innocuous snooker player. “Never play him for money.”
And on anyone he considered to be mental: “A bit touched I reckon.”
As a young man he played football, Portsmouth League, for the Dockyard Recorders. He played in goal, though he was never a dockyard employee and well below average height for a goalkeeper. His only connection with 'The Yard' was via his brother-in-law, Bill, who was a recorder and also in the team. The two were good friends, so I guess a sort of ‘on loan’ scheme went on, even back then. Anyway, uncle Bill rated him as a ‘keeper and you worked every fiddle you could to be top of the league, even back then.
In the course of his working life Dad went from carpenter to building firm manager, to costings clerk in the Portsmouth City Architect department, a post he held until his death.
My most abiding memory is of an immensely competent man. Lord knows what he could have achieved had he been given the luxury of a university education.

TELEVISION.

Waking the dead. (BBC1)
It’s all over. Dead and buried.
DS Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve) has yelled his last yell, broken his last rule and neatly arranged for the assassination of the assassin of the person assigned to his team to assassinate his career.
Don’t get it?
Don’t matter.
The Walking Dead. (C5)
Yep, another doom-laden title. Andrew Lincoln (him who was Egg in This Life), turns up in America with a sheriff’s badge and a credible accent to fight incredible zombies played by an incredible army of incredibly awful looking extras.
Totally barmy.
Lewis. (ITV1)
The murder count has surely risen since dear ol’ Kev Whately took up the reins in Oxford. Any one of a host of talented actors could have been the murderer in the episode shown last Sunday.
It was a bit Midsomer with dreaming spires, but we enjoyed every minute.

FILMS.

Taken.
Liam Neeson starred in this all action thriller. He played a retired CIA agent who went after the white slave captors of his daughter. If you saw Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight, Tom Cruise in the Mission: Impossible films, Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity or Gene Hackman in Target you will get the idea.
At a time when there is so much dross on television, Taken was a welcome change. Liam Neeson sitting in a chair reading a newspaper would be more watchable than many another actor delivering Hamlet‘s soliloquy and the catalogue of continuity goofs to be found on Google went by my Leader and I unnoticed. We were too busy enjoying the film to be sidetracked by trivia.
Wanted.
James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie were the stars of this dip into mayhem. Based on a comic book limited series, its lineage was all too apparent, Decent plot twist and fun to watch, though.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1. (DVD)
The DVD is out just in time to be relished before the release of the final part in July.
I do not intend writing more about it here; Potter followers can find excellent Amazon reviews on the net.
We purchased the double disc set from them. Good price, too.

READING.

Christine and Christopher Russell.
My Leader was looking for a particular book in Waterstone's when we chanced upon this nice couple signing copies of their first two Warrior Sheep books The Quest of the Warrior Sheep and The Warrior Sheep go West (published by Egmont).
Intrigued, we bought them for me to read to Boo when he is a little older.
Meant I had to read them first. Any excuse.
So will he enjoy them when he is a little older?
I think he will.
And have I enjoyed them?
Ohmygrass yes!

164. Not bad here - think I'll stay.

HOME.

Shake-up at the BBC.
Chris Patten, or Lord Patten of Barnes if you want to be formal, is one of those done-all-right-thank-you political figures (like Lord Coe, Lord Mandelson and many another Lord Elpus) whose charmed career proves it ain‘t what you know, it‘s who you know.
He has just been made Chairman of the BBC Trust.
It seems he doesn’t watch much TV but does have the right connections.
So now, to top up the £30,000 a year he is guesstimated to obtain as a paid advisor to BP (one assumes his advice was never sought as far away as the Gulf of Mexico) he has fallen into every OAP’s dream pension: £110.000 a year to sit his arse in at two or three meetings a week.
One can only assume the government is banking on him finding time between his advisories, honorary fellowships and position as Chancellor of Oxford University, to act as a Brit Joe McCarthy, rooting out all those involved in the notorious BBC left-wing conspiracy.
Expect heads to roll. Expect creepers to keep climbing. Expect no good to come of it. Political dabbling spells disaster.
(If in doubt see Police, Education and the NHS.)
And at ITV.
If George Orwell had written Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984 it might have contained the Political Correctness Police, for surely PC is the present day version of his Thought Police.
Latest to fall foul of this insidious cult is the Midsomer Murders producer Brian True-May. He dared exercise his right to free speech with the revelation that ethnic minorities do not appear in his Midsomer villages because he is trying to present something that appeals to a certain audience, it seems to have succeeded (for 15 years) and he doesn’t want to change it.
Now he is in hot water.
For what? Telling the truth?
Shades of Gerald Ratner, are we still punishing people for that?
I don’t think there was any racist intent on the man’s mind. I’ve watched his programme since its inception and have honestly never noticed an absence of ethnic minorities. Why would I? The nineteen thirties England where I was brought up had no such thing. Proves his point really, doesn’t it?
Racism is ignorant lunacy and should be firmly discouraged, but political correctness is not the answer and only a tabloid mind would imagine it is.
People from abroad do play a crucial role in this country today, but surely they don’t have to appear in every act to prove the point.
After all, it isn’t as if every episode of Midsomer ended with a song by the Black and White Minstrels. Now that really would be something for the PC brigade..
If the law has been broken, act on it. If it hasn’t, drop it!
And re-instate Mr. True-May.

ABROAD.

Living here's not so bad.
Earthquake in New Zealand. Tsunami killing thousands and causing nuclear power leakages in Japan, trouble throughout the Middle East, civil war in Libya leading to air strike intervention.
Not so bad living here after all, is it?
Think I'll stay.

TELEVISION.

Mad Dogs. (Sky1)
It was a cast to die for; or at least to take out an extra mortgage for.
Max Beesley, Ben Chaplin, Philip Glenister, John Simm and Marc Warren, all in the same show. I’d have been very happy with 10% of their combined wages bill.
What? I wouldn’t buy a house in Majorca, I’d buy Majorca.
Ben Chaplin apart (anybody as unpleasant as Alvo, the character he played, had to be erased early on) the remaining protagonists were present throughout the entire four part series. It must have cost their paymasters a fortune. Needless to say they were worth every penny.
Strange ending, though. Very, very strange ending.
Marchlands. (ITV1)
The story behind little Alice’s sad death was revealed in the fourth and final episode. This was a welcome relief to the remainder of the cast, particularly those who had lived in the haunted house and especially to the woman who, right until the last moment, dogmatically refused to believe in ghosts.
Never mind spoilers, Alice turned out to be a nice little girl and everyone but the surviving members of her family lived happily ever after.
Outcasts. (BBC1)
Short titles, sci-fi and futuristic drama being all the vogue, Outcasts had a familiar feel to it.
What we had here was The Survivors evacuated from an uninhabitable or disappearing world (your guess is as good as mine) to a far from friendly planet five years’ space ride away.
In the real world a drop in viewing figures resulted in the programme being rescheduled from prime time on Mondays and Tuesdays to late night on Sundays. I missed an episode or two. Didn’t realise. Thought it was just bad continuity. By the time I cottoned on it was too late. Then the news leaked through. There will not be another series; not even to sort out the bevy of loose ends. So I shall forever wonder why, in a culture which could produce a shield powerful enough to protect the entire planet, people were living in a shanty town.
Ah well, ne’er mind.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. (BBC2)
The format has been tried in various ways but this series puts two dealers in competition, using their own money, to find which of them can make the most money buying and selling antiques over the course of a week, profits to go to the individual‘s chosen charity.
I have no objection to the dealers (though many of the people with whom they do business will surely not welcome them so kindly after the programme has been aired): but I do object to the idiot voice-over and the ludicrous use of nicknames to describe them. The Fox? Knocker? The Hit Man? Makes them sound like a bunch of all-in wrestlers. I thought only snooker introductions had become that silly.
On the subject of idiot voice-overs, though…
Come Dine with Me. (C4)
I still avoid this puerile time-waster. My Leader watches it: she‘s the people person here. I not only lack patience with the backstabbing participants, I invariably finish up wanting to butcher and cook the mouthy twat who does the background commentary.
Slow roast on a spit, perhaps?
The Killing. (BBC4)
This dark Danish mystery is literally that: dark.
It’s the old CSI syndrome. Nobody seems to know how to switch a light on so they all shine torches everywhere. We have now reached episode 19 of the 20 part series and have had maybe half a dozen glimpses of Copenhagen in daylight throughout the lot.
Detective Inspector Sarah Lund has been in the dark so long she has become a life-risking fatalist: in pitch black conditions she ventures to obvious danger spots, leaves her gun in the car, advertises her location to any possible assailant by loudly enquiring whether anybody is there, waves her torch to no useful effect and constantly becomes separated from the colleague with whom she was initially instructed to collaborate. She was supposed to be transferring to Sweden. Believe it when it happens.
Don’t care about the dark. Don’t care about the subtitles.
Love it.
Silk. (BBC1)
Oh gawd, I thought, another bloody barrister thing. Good actors (Maxine Peake, Rupert Penry-Jones, Neil Stuke), but another bloody barrister thing?
I shouldn’t have prejudged.
Even more soap opera than the real thing, but very watchable.
Rather like it.
NCIS. (FX)
Despite its increasing resemblance to 1940s b/w English propaganda films (think Leslie Banks in Went the Day Well and Cottage to Let), we are still watching this delightful War On Terror twaddle. We were hooked long ago. If nothing else holds us, the chemistry between Gibbs and Abby never fails.
In recent series the scare-mongering Us versus Them storylines have been lightened by sideline stories, the latest of which featured Bob Newhart as Dr. Walter Magnus, former Chief Medical Officer of the department and an Alzheimer’s sufferer. His scenes with ‘Ducky’ Mallard (David McCallum) were excellent.
Mrs. Brown’s Boys. (BBC1)
Written by and starring Brendan O’Carroll and recorded in front of a live audience. They feckin’ laughed. We feckiin’ laughed. The PC are doubtless havin’ feckin’ apoplexy and the critics feckin’ hated it.
Has to be a huge feckin’ success.

163. Not Booker but very readable.

HOME.

A bright morning.
Sitting in my cubbyhole, computer room, study (think modesty, realism or Hyacinth Bucket), listening to old classics on the ancient Aiwa and looking out at the familiar back-of-house scene bathed in wintry sunshine, I was at peace with the world until…
A gloomy forecast.
I picked up on news that the Isle of Wight would probably be saddled with two members of parliament instead of one following the next election (due in 2015).
My first reaction probably gets it about right: if this government has agreed to two for one it will only be because it expects another diehard Tory to be elected. Two wet planks wearing blue rosettes are as likely to win as one over here. Oh, following the Bembridge Harbour scandal there were a couple of nods in the direction of orange, but orange is this year’s blue isn‘t it?
Rest assured, whatever colour the pair start out as they will quickly prove to be chocolate fire-guards, the public will be burdened with yet another set of questionable expenses claims, and the Island will have gained nothing

AND ABROAD.

The Middle East.
Churlish really to complain about parliamentarians in this country.
Frequent bloody protest continues in Egypt, despite the removal of President Mubarak.
Hundreds have been killed by Gaddafi’s - allegedly mercenary - army in Libya.
Tunisia seems set to boil over.
We should keep out of it. We should never have been there anyway.
And that’s been my opinion since the nineteen forties.
New Zealand.
The earthquake at Christchurch has taken lives and demolished buildings. The Kiwis have never failed to support us in times of trouble. We should do everything in our power to help them now.
Never could understand why Heath chose to cut them dead and take up with Europe. His French was lousy anyway.

TELEVISION.

Faulks on Fiction. (BBC2)
Somebody at the BBC decided it was time to adorn a prime-time Saturday night spot with a touch of culture and, to the joy of booksellers I’m sure, commissioned Sebastian Faulks to chat about literary heroes, heroines, snobs and villains.
He is an urbane chap, decently educated, and he says little with which even an old-fashioned elementary schoolboy would disagree. Such is the range of his subject, however, that much is overlooked or ignored.
(At this point I think the subject becomes more reading than television and I courteously invite the reader to take it up again further on.)
My Life in Books. (BBC2)
This is another opportunity for familiar faces to impress us with their versatility.
Seems if they’re not skating, dancing or performing silly tasks in an imitation jungle for a couple of overpaid Geordies, they are (as I am sure their agents would confirm) dedicated bookworms.
I would have to be more than desperate for publicity before I agreed to appear on any programme fronted by Anne Robinson, but a couple of otherwise intelligent people now turn up each evening, presumably under the misguided impression they will simply be sought to talk about the books that have shaped their lives.
They really should know better.
'Rita Skeeter' Robinson cannot resist digging the dirt. Artfully choosing her moment she transforms the interview into a prurient quiz session.
Why does she do it?
Most likely answer: “It’s good tele, innit.”
Well, not for me it isn’t. I simply don’t care whether the person she’s talking to is gay, or a reformed cokehead, or a presenter who has been sought out by a dozen illegitimate children. It‘s none of my flaming business. Or hers.
Oh. I shall continue to watch the programme, but only in the hope that one of her victims will tell her where to shove her magic quill. And walk out.
South Riding. (BBC1)
I think I saw the cinema version. Must have been a hundred years ago. Ralph Richardson was in it. Upstaging rascal he was. Always liked him.
Anyway, it’s costume drama on Sunday night again. David Morrissey, Anna Maxwell Martin, Penelope Wilton and a barely recognisable Peter Firth are in it. Nobody upstages them. Douglas Henshall and John Henshaw are along for good measure.
I am fascinated by the closed little world depicted, but not surprised. I’m old enough to remember 'means testing.' From what my seniors told me, if concentration camps had been set up in this country back then there would have been no shortage of volunteers to run them.
Mean little race we can be.
Marchlands. (ITV1)
Three families living in the same house at separate times: 1968, 1987 and 2010. The story dodges about a bit, but basically comes down to the mystery of how and why little Alice drowned in 1967. It is a creepily cliched ghost yarn, but very watchable. Only one episode left, so this week Alice will probably tell us what did happen to her; or at least tell the woman who refuses to believe ghosts exist.
Mad Dogs. (Sky 1)
Taped - and have just watched - the first three episodes of this four parter. The last part will be shown on the same night as Marchlands.
Four blokes go to Majorca to visit an ostensibly wealthy mate who nobody with any sense would cross the road to meet.
So far things have gone from bad to worse.
More next time.

READING.

Footnote to Faulks on Fiction.
I cannot agree with Faulks’s contention that, after Sherlock Holmes, there were no heroes between the two world wars.
My boyhood was packed with heroes from our local twopence-a-book-a-week lending library, (two detectives and a western or two westerns and a detective chosen every Friday to be read over the weekend and returned on Monday).
Sadly, purists like Mr. Faulks and the late Julian Symons in his book Bloody Murder, chose to ignore, or sniffily dismiss as unreadable, most of the popular thrillers favoured by we tuppence-a-week bookworms back in the thirties and early forties.
Bulldog Drummond, the creation of ‘Sapper,’ H.C. McNeile, was a hero of that time, so was John G. Brandon’s A.S.P. (the Rt.Hon. Arthur Stukely Pennington would you believe?) and D.I. Patrick Aloysious McCarthy, a loose cannon cop before his time.
The phenomenal John Creasey’s The Toff and The Baron (written under the pseudonym Anthony Morton): Leslie Charteris’s Simon Templar (The Saint) and Berkeley Gray’s Norman Conquest, each cast in the same mould, were gloriously unstoppable amateur crime fighters.
Most of the writers had several pen names (Berkeley Gray - real name Edwy Searles Brooks - was also Victor Gunn, Rex Madison and Carlton Ross) and nearly all of them boosted their earnings by writing Sexton Blake stories.
Blake, with his assistant Tinker - a young man who lived with him without attracting adverse comment in more innocent (even blinkered?) times - was a hero of such likeness to Sherlock Holmes that he must have been a cousin from the other side of the tracks.
Many detectives combined brains with brawn. J.V. Turner, who wrote as Nicholas Brady and also, under his more famous pseudonym, David Hume, produced the Mick Cardby stories. Cardby was a two-fisted private eye with a police inspector father who kept an eye on him. Peter Cheyney wrote about Lemmy Caution and Slim Callaghan, both of them tough private eyes with nobody to keep an eye on them. All were infallible and charming.
Back then most heroes were tough but decent, even our boyhood ones: Rockfist Rogan (Champion) and Wilson (The Wizard) were comic book winners and the likes of Biggles (W.E Johns) William Brown (Richmal Crompton), Richard Hannay (John Buchan) and Tarzan (Edgar Rice Burrows) were champions in hardback.
Yes, fiction was crowded with heroes between the wars.
They may not have been up to Booker Prize standard, but they did exist..

FILM.

The King’s Speech.
It seems I am the only one in the world who has not seen it, so my Leader has persuaded me to accompany her today - she has already seen it but says it is worth a second viewing. Shan’t write about it next time. The awards have already said everything there is to say, though I am told Geoffrey Rush was brilliant and should really have won the Oscar for best supporting actor.
Nice that the best actor Oscar went to Colin Firth, though. Nice, too, that he did not start his acceptance speech by thanking his mother, father, wife, sons, agent, manager, pet cat and the tortoise at the end of the garden.
It’s all so bloody luvvie, isn’t it.
Jane Russell.
News this morning that this beautiful woman has died at the age of 89.
She may not have been the greatest actress in the world, but any lad who saw her debut in The Outlaw and did not madly envy Billy the Kid had to have had something wrong with him.

(Must finish now or the indexing of this will take longer than it took to write it.)

162. With scant resolve but much belief.

HOME.

Lacking resolution.
I avoid New Year resolutions. So does my Leader. So does the cat Shadow.
In my case, the first month of the year has always gone before I take in that Christmas is no longer with us.
Anyway, I long ago resolved that resolution keeping requires too much willpower.
In my Leader’s case, she is too involved with family, friends and staying upright (a lifelong teetotaller, she is frighteningly prone to tripping over) to go making sudden lifestyle changes.
Furthermore, she recently took up pilates and has joined the W.I., so that‘s change enough, thank you.
As for the cat Shadow, he just says: “Me? Change? Na-a-ah. Why try to improve on perfection?” and scoots off through the cat flap ahead of my coarse one word reply.
Lacking credibility.
Are you as pissed off as I am by the constant “this has all been left to us by the left” whine of coalition mouthpieces every time another political balls-up comes to light?
They never learn, do they? This lot blames the last lot and the last lot blamed the lot before them.
If they put as much time into doing their best for the country as they do into scoring political points, promoting themselves on chat shows and writing Gilderoy Lockhart style books, we’d all be living in Shangri-La.

AND ABROAD.

Egypt.
I have been in Egypt twice. Each occasion was brief, but not brief enough, I was in the army and the visits involved incarceration in a transit camp at Port Fouad. Neither time was a particularly pleasant experience and my lasting impression of the country was that it bred some of the world’s most talented thieves.
Now public pressure has finally unseated President Hosni Mubarak, a dictator who, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, refused to relinquish power.
Thousands of Egyptians, watched by the world and an army that had vowed not to fire upon them, turned out to peacefully protest his continued presence. In no time at all the cowardly bully boys who support him were attacking the protesters: hundreds were killed and thousands injured.
What will happen now is anybody’s guess. Mine is that if the current army administration ever steps aside it will only be to make way for another undesirable approved by the Oil Grabbing Club of America.
And that is the most thought I have given to Egypt since the Suez crisis postponed my departure from the army until the end of 1956.
I shall not repeat what I said about Eden, Nasser and Eisenhower at that time; they are all dead now and they were never on my Christmas card list anyway.

TELEVISION.

Silent Witness. (BBC1)
I hope this isn’t a spoiler, but Harry was bumped off and reincarnated in a way that made mockery of Bobby Ewing’s return to Dallas all those years ago. Series 14 is now over.
Do we need any more?.
Lark Rise to Candleford. (BBC1)
A good final series with misty-eyed Dorcas and dizzy housemaid Minnie finally getting their men; the postman‘s wife falling pregnant; Queenie sensing the grim future; Gabriel’s newfangled seed sowing machine a success and the return of Alf’s hopeless mother, convict Caroline.
Would have been nice if Emma’s husband could have made it, too, but even Ruraltania can’t have everything.
Any Human Heart. (C4)
I taped the four episodes of William Boyd’s fascinating drama and watched them recently. The actors who played different ages of the leading character, Logan Mountstuart, were so good I even stopped laughing at his name and the pair cast as the awful Duke and Duchess of Windsor were so convincing I badly wanted to slap them.
The murder of Sir Harry Oakes at the time the duke was governor of the Bahamas provided an interesting plot strand and the author’s article on the subject (published in The Guardian last year) can be found on Google under the title The real-life murder case behind Any Human Heart.
Arctic with Bruce Parry. (BBC2)
He has captivated desert tribes and charmed arctic tribes with equal ease. How does he do it? Well, he’s an obviously nice bloke who will have a go at anything and he doesn‘t mind being laughed at. Invariably he finishes up liked and respected. I have never met Bruce Parry but he is well up on my list of people who are good value.
Episodes. (BBC2)
In this barbed little comedy, television writers Bev (Tamsin Greig) and Sean (Stephen Mangan) have accepted an invitation to take their successful English sitcom across the Atlantic to be buggered about by the Americans.
So far every indignity imaginable has been heaped upon them including the introduction of Matt LeBlanc, played by Matt LeBlanc, as replacement for their own - Royal Shakespeare Company - leading actor (Richard Griffiths).
If you liked Friends you will probably like it: I didn’t so I don’t.
Gok’s Clothes Roadshow. (C4)
Of whom was Michael Buerk thinking when (in an outspoken few words about the ageism furore at the Beeb) he mentioned “mincingly camp” television presenters?
I have no idea, so don‘t ask me.
Oh, Gok Wan is back. Same protagonists. Same format. Same feel-good affectation. Same compulsive viewing. We’ll watch the lot.
He doesn’t hurt anyone, ol’ Gok.
Taggart. (ITV1)
With a blog title like Watching the Detectives you would be failing in your remit were you not still watching this unlovely bunch.
Jackie Reid (Blythe Duff), Robbie Ross (John Michie) and Matt Burke (Alex Norton) are still solving every mur-r-rder in Glasgow with practised ease and without so much as a mention of Stuart Fraser (Colin McCredie).
We missed the seemingly unmissed Stuart and, unlike his detective colleagues, went in search of him. Our enquiries revealed that Colin McCredie was simply telephoned one afternoon (by some woman in London) and told he was no longer in the show.
I imagine much the same thing happened to Hugh Fraser (Hastings), Philip Jackson (Japp) and Pauline Moran (Miss Lemon) when Agatha Christie’s Poirot was apparently taken over by bloody accountants.
Strange and frequently cruel business, show business.

READING.

Michael McIntyre.
Readers of Life and Laughing who anticipate 300 bouncing pages of sheer hilarity are going to be disappointed. It falls short by 5 pages,
It also turns out to contain rather more life than laughter and to be a down-to-earth reminder that there is no such thing as overnight success in this world.
Michael McIntyre clearly deserves his excellent reputation.
Anyone who wants to be a stand-up should read him…and think on.
Judi Dench.
And Furthermore  is another pleasant memoir by another pleasant actress.
I happened upon it by chance among my Leader’s ‘to read’ pile and read it through in a couple of days. It revealed little a fan of Dame Judi’s did not already know.
In the end I can only refer to my piece on Julie Walters (Post 120).
Graham Hurley.
Blood and Honey starts with a headless body washed up beneath cliffs on the Isle of Wight. The torso cannot be identified and DI Joe Faraday is soon embroiled in a seemingly no win investigation involving a nursing home owner with Bosnian connections.
DC Winter, in the meantime, has problems enough with his own head, a beautiful, sympathetic call girl and a ruthless businessman.
If I didn’t know better I would swear Graham Hurley was a policeman.

161. A warm, warm welcome and a last farewell.

HOME
A warm. warm welcome…

To Ava Rose Bennett-Rice, daughter and first child of our step-grandson Theo and his lovely partner Caroline.
Ava was born on the 10^th January and weighed 6lb 1oz. Mother and daughter are doing well and T (who was born on the same day as me, but 45 years later) has already been inducted into the magic of nappy changing.
Congratulations to the parents and to new grandparents Neil and Pauline.
Gosh! Maureen and I are now great grandparents!
Look at her, though.
Ain’t she gorgeous?
A last farewell.
My mother’s funeral took place at the Isle of Wight Crematorium on Friday last. The service was conducted by her former vicar and friend of many years, Rev. Graham Akers, and was well attended by family, friends from Arreton C/E and Newport Congregational churches, the managers and several of the staff from Cornelia Manor Care Home where she had been a resident for the better part of the last ten years, and by several worthy individuals who braved the elements late in the afternoon on a bleak day simply to pay their last respects.
We thank them and may their god bless them.
Thanks also to those who expressed their condolences by e-mail or post. There was the published comment from Anonymous John, and there were longer, unpublished but saved, messages of sympathy from mainland relatives, and a pleasantly nostalgic one from Helmut Stacher in Austria.
She would have been extremely pleased.
A fitting last comment…
We gladly accepted the customary invitation to dine at daughter Roz’s place on Christmas Day.
Lunch was barely underway when grandson Ellis brightly inquired of me:
“How is G.G., Boo?”
Suddenly I had to break solemn news to a little boy.
“I’m afraid she died three nights ago, Boo,” I said. “She’ll have gone to heaven now.”
He considered this briefly before asking:
“Will they let her in?”
Any reply I might have made was forestalled by his own, swiftly delivered, coup de grâce.   
“They let Michael Jackson in.”

FILM.

What American Movies Have Taught Us.
(Comical but true observations forwarded by friend Jan Bennett)
 1) All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices which have large red read-outs to tell you exactly when they will go off.
2) Should you need to pass yourself off as a German officer it will not be necessary to speak the language, a convincing accent will do.
3) All apartments in Paris overlook the Eiffel tower.
4) Most lap top computers are powerful enough to override a bank security system or the communication system of an invading alien civilization.
5) Every single person in martial arts film has a black belt in karate.
6) When staying in a haunted house, women investigating strange noises should be wearing their most revealing underwear.
7) 1 man shooting at 20 men has more chance of hitting them than 20 men shooting at 1 man if he is the hero.
8) During a police investigation it will be necessary to visit a strip joint at least once.
9) Large studio-type apartments in big cities are affordable by single people with a low wage.
10) The entire British population lives in London.
11) It doesn't matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a martial arts fight; your enemies will attack you one at a time while the others dance around you menacingly.
12) In musicals everyone you meet in the street will know all the words to the songs and the steps to the dances.
13) When a hero is captured by evil international terrorists, guns are not necessary to defeat them, sarcasm and wisecracks are the best weapons.
(And to round the number up, here are a few of my own)
14) If there is something nasty in the woodshed it will have been put there by Al-Qaida.
15) In thrillers the biggest name guest star will be the murderer.
16) In whodunits the very nicest character will be the murderer.
17) All the problems faced by people in musicals can be overcome by ‘putting on a show.’
18) There is no such thing as a secure law enforcement office.
19) Anyone who says: “Thar ain’t no injuns within miles o’ here” will immediately be struck by an arrow.
20) Films given a lukewarm reception in the thirties, forties and fifties will today be lauded as art house, film noir or classic.

TELEVISION.

Eric and Ernie. (BBC2)
Daniel Rigby was superb as the young Eric Morecambe and Bryan Dick excellent as little Ernie Wise, slogging their way around the variety circuits before being ‘discovered’ by television.
Victoria Wood and Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) were entirely convincing as Eric’s supportive mum Sadie and down-to-earth dad, George Bartholomew.
The brainchild of Victoria Wood and beautifully written by Peter Bowker, this delightful drama should win awards galore.
Incidentally, I well remember the appalling early shows that nearly scuttled their television future. Remember thinking: these lads are too funny for this crap…what the hell are they playing at?
Turns out they weren’t playing at anything - a dickhead BBC producer was.
If you missed the New Year‘s Day transmission, watch out for a repeat.
They really do not make ‘em like Eric and Ern anymore.
Primeval. (ITV1)
They’re back! Blundering prehistoric creatures lolloping through vortices in pursuit of screaming extras.
Connor (Andrew Lee-Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearritt) are still in more danger of being destroyed by predatory bureaucrats than by any of the man-eating monsters on show. Lester (Ben Miller) is touchingly supportive of them in face of the ominously dictatorial new management team.
It’s to be in seven parts and we are already hooked.
Zen. (BBC1)
Rufus Sewell as Aurelio Zen, an Italian detective working in and around Rome, looks so much like a cousin of mine who I always greatly respected and liked that I would have watched this short series even if it was not all that good.
It is good and I hope there will be more to follow.
Agatha Christie’s Marple. (ITV1)
I presume the Agatha Christie’s this-and-that titles are the bright idea of a dickhead ITV producer. There must be a bunch of them on every channel.
Anyway, it was Julia McKenzie…arguably the best Miss Marple since Joan Hickson… again and the wholly improbable plot of The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side…again.
So we enjoyed it…again.
Silent Witness. (BBC1)
I’m still not sure about this ghoulish hardy annual, The technique of mixing background comment with sudden close-ups of horrendous happenings and/or sullied corpses is too imitation CSI for my taste.
Everybody acts well even when their character is required to react to an unbelievable situation in a bizarre way.
Maybe I just need a break from television violence.
Above Suspicion: Deadly Intent. (ITV1)
I’ve seen Lynda La Plante a few times on chat shows. Comes across as a thoroughly nice woman, so I always feel rather bad when I don’t like one of her stories or find myself detesting her coppers. Way back (in Post 115) I said Ms. Reilly and Mr. Hinds were fine as the detective duo in a yarn featuring Jason Durr. The two actors are still fine, but…
In this three-part offering, Ciarán Hinds’s DCS James Langton comes across as the nastiest, most self-serving, least competent piece of work to bedevil any police station anywhere and Kelly Reilly’s DI Travis as an unbelievably masochistic ninny who has fallen in love with him.
I watched it to the end and wondered why.
The Secret Mediterranean with Trevor McDonald. (ITV1)
Good ol’ Sir Trev. traipses around every posh spot and stays at every plush hotel along the Med.
He’s like Alan Whicker on speed.
Very nice, but I’m glad it’s not being funded with BBC licence money.
Come Fly With Me. (BBC1)
Was never a Lucas and Walliams fan; thought they were a bit something and nothing. Then I saw Matt Lucas’s Les Miserables appearance with Alfie Boe and was impressed with the little bloke’s determination and sense of the ridiculous.
Consequently I have watched this airport mockumentary with more kindly eyes and it has been great fun.
All Heathrow and Stansted is there!
Not Going Out. (BBC1)
Lee Mack and Co are back without Miranda Hart who has risen above the part-time cleaning job.
Painlessly sees off half an hour if you‘re not going out.

READING.

Halfway through a Graham Hurley and a third of the way through Michael McIntyre’s autobiography. Loads still to read.
More next time.

Happy New Year!

160. A Century Plus

IN MEMORIAM.

Lilian Florence Barnden.
Lilian was born in Portsmouth shortly before midnight on the last day of December 1907, the third of the four daughter family of William Arthur Pope, a foreman baker and his wife Edith who, when he met her, was a cook at Charterhouse School.
Lilian often joked that had she been born a few minutes later she would have been a year younger. By the same token, she would have been 103 today had she not departed - as she arrived - a little early (22. 12. 2010).
In a life which saw two world wars, the early years of the aeroplane, radio, the telephone and television and the fall of the British Empire, she had a secure childhood, strictly disciplined by her mother and gently indulged by a father who, though absent during WW1, was one of those who fortunately survived the conflict. When he returned, “Ginny” (his pet name for her in reference to her beautiful golden hair) would have nothing to do with him until he shaved off the ‘military’ moustache he had grown during the war.
She always did know her own mind.
From early childhood Lilian was an entertainer. She danced, sang, acted, played the violin and once won a talent competition (a ten shilling note) in a Portsmouth theatre, for whistling. Unfortunately she had neglected to seek her mother’s permission beforehand so her triumph was short-lived. Her ears were boxed, her prize was thrown on the fire, and she was told: “A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men.”
They taught tough lessons, the Victorians.
By the time she reached her early twenties, Lilian’s dream of a career as a ballet dancer was over. She had suffered an injury to the base of her spine that was to trouble her on and off for the rest of her life.
In June 1929 she married William who worked for his uncles‘ building firm, They lived in and around Portsmouth, where they were members of the Portsmouth Choral Society and Will sang bass in Portsmouth Male Voice Choir.
In 1930 Lilian gave birth to son Dennis, coming close to death in the process. A year or two later (little was ever said of it) twin boys were stillborn and it was advised that the pair should discontinue trying for children. They responded by fostering Harold and Brian, the sons of their next door neighbour, when his marriage broke up.
After the blitzes on Portsmouth, the family - including the two lads - moved to a large house in Bognor Regis. The boys continued to be part of the family until their father remarried and they rejoined him. They forever remained kind and loyal honorary sons of “Aunty Barnden.”
Lilian and Will moved back to Portsmouth while the buzz bombs were still falling and settled in a flat in Southsea where they remained until the early fifties: they then moved out of town to Widley, on the side of Portsdown Hill. It was to be their final move; Will died suddenly at the age of 54.
Lilian continued to run a weekly old time dance in Portsmouth (she danced to Gold Medal standard) and obtained a job in Widley sub post office.
Dennis, not long out of the army, married Maureen and Lilian’s first two grandchildren, Neil and Jacqueline, were born in 1964 and 65 respectively.
In 1968 Dennis and Maureen moved to the Isle of Wight and bought a house at Wootton Bridge. Their daughter Rosalind was born there a couple of years later.
In 1973 Lilian moved across to be closer to the family. Initially she lived at Cowes, then came an eight years spell at Wootton, then two quite lengthy periods in flats at Newport. During this time, Roz gave birth to Lilian’s great granddaughter, Jessica, who was later to nickname her great grandmother G.G. Jess is now 15. Some ten years ago it became apparent that Lilian was in need of permanent assistance and she moved to Rosebury, now Cornelia Manor Care Home, where she has since remained.
For as long as she could see, hear and physically manage, she maintained an independent attitude to looking after herself, watching and feeding the birds outside her window, following events on her radio and television, and taking in news of the family, particularly her grandchildren and great grandchildren (Jess was joined by little brother Ellis five years ago and he was an instant favourite).
Lilian was a devout Christian, an unapologetic fault-finder, a good friend, an unrelenting enemy and, basically, a well-meaning human being for whom not that much ever went truly right.
God won’t find too much wrong in her. He kept her waiting far longer than she wished. If it comes to finger pointing, He won’t stand a chance.

159. Seasonal Greetings and all that...

HOME.

Weather warning.
This lovely Fw email came from friend Ian Dillow.
There has been a weather warning advising that we could be getting two feet of snow.

  

                                                                  
 So take care!
Snow and ice.
I sometimes wonder whether we Brits are not citizens of the silliest little nation in the world. Where else does the entire bang-shoot suffer an ignominious shutdown because of the weather?
Do Canadians, Russians, Scandinavians, find it necessary to close their airports? I think not. Do their trains cease to run and their major roads become impassable? Not so far as one hears.
We never are, and never have been, ready for difficult conditions. Penny-pinching administration, local and national, fails to purchase the necessary machinery or employ sufficient manpower to deal with major changes in the elements. Everything has been farmed out to sub-contractors who cut costs by cutting corners; the slightest crisis finds us wanting.
On the Isle of Wight we have been lucky this time. We had an overnight four to six inches of snow which lasted two days before being washed away by overnight rain. Our kids only lost a couple of school days.
Sorry kids, I know snowballs and sledges are more fun than the classroom..
But at my age one simply counts one’s blessings.

AND AWAY.

It’s only footie.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, only a man with a heart of stone could read the death of England’s 2018 World Cup bid without laughing.
Prince William and Cameron and Becks, presumably all expenses paid, were wasting their time when they ventured into enemy territory.. They might as well have been bidding to win the Eurovision Song Contest. What chance was there when newspapers in this country were declaiming (no doubt rightly) that certain FIFA officials are unashamedly corrupt? Did they think the little tossers would turn the other cheek?
Oh, don’t confuse me with someone who gives a shit: I don’t.
It’s only footie.
WikiLeaks.
And when it comes to little tossers who will never turn the other cheek…
The claim by WikiLeaks that former PM Gordon Brown sought to nullify the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon to America (unsuccessfully of course), shows the silly asses running the US defence system to be every bit as meanly vengeful as are their buffoon counterparts the world over.
Now there are establishment lackeys in hot pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. How true the rape and suchlike allegations made against him in Sweden may be only he and his accusers will know.
But, stones and glasshouses notwithstanding, the word payback springs to mind.
At least, to my mind it does.

TELEVISION.

Strictly Come Dancing. (BBC1)
Strictly from a dancing point of view, the judges’ current favourite is Pamela Stephenson. She, celebrating her 61st birthday, danced the perfect tango with partner James Jordan.
Matt Baker, Scott Maslen and Kara Tointon continued to impress.
Gavin Henson still looked like a lost rugby player in search of a scrum and Ann Widdecombe looked more and more like the reason why Anton Du Beke should be awarded a medal for conspicuous gallantry.
Merlin. (BBC1)
Series conclusion: King Uther finally discovered that Morgana hated him. Thick Arthur still did not twig that Merlin was a wizard (let alone the greatest wizard in the world) and a bevy of photogenic actors were conscripted to be knights of the round table in the next series.
How could anyone not enjoy it?
Garrow’s Law. (BBC1)
The end of another series here, too. Fine speeches from Southouse (Alun Armstrong) and Garrow (Andrew Buchan) and a reasonable conclusion to the adultery case brought against our hero.
There’s loads of mileage left in this one.
Miranda. (BBC2)
Miranda Hart is funny in the same way that Hylda Baker was funny. You find yourself laughing even when you are not sure why.
If current popularity is the benchmark, she will eventually appear in a Christmas special. She has the right qualifications. She is funnier the second - and even third - time around.
And, make no mistake about it, the repeats could run for years.

READING.

J.K. Rowling.
I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows right through with only a brief pause (in the middle) to see the film. This being J.K. Rowling, it was no less enchanting the second time around.
If you’re too grown up for Potter I’m sorry for you. You have missed out.

FILM.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1).
Four of us went to see this. Little Boo didn’t come because he had seen the trailer on television and thought it ‘didn’t look suitable for a five year old.’
Unlike the Independent columnist Johann Hari, who found it insufferably boring, we all found it very enjoyable. But we had seen every one of the previous films and read the books. It helps.
Incidentally, my rereading of Hallows had reached exactly the spot where the film ended.
Part 2 should be an absolute cracker!

AND FINALLY (In case I don’t get back beforehand)

A Happy Christmas, Dear Reader, and
All the Very Best for the New Year.