Post 373. BACK TO NORMAL THEN.

OR IN MY CASE

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

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

Post 372. A FINAL FAREWELL

TO A LIFELONG FRIEND.

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

Post 371. NINETY YEARS OLD.

AT HOME.

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

POST 370. RECENTLY LOOKED BACK.

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

Keep reading the tablets, eh?

POST 369. STILL LAUGHING AT

THE FAST SHOW.

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

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

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

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

POST 368. TIME FOR ANOTHER CHAT.

BEFORE THE MONTH ENDS.

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

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

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

POST 367. STILL READING.

KINDLE BOOKS.

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

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

So what brought this on?

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

TIED TO THE TELEVISION.

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

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

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

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

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

He is.

POST 366. PARDON ME IF I YAWN.

WHEN I SHOULD BE ALERT.

THE GOVERNMENT'S PANDEMIC PROPAGANDA becomes ever more puerile and prone to pall. The latest voices to wheedle us on air are those of a proclaimed bus driver (maybe an actor) and a proclaimed care home worker (maybe an actress) who implore us not to ignore the wearing of face masks, or social distancing, or some other such act of mutual concern and decency. It makes sense, but don't ask me to explain precisely what it is all about. Like most pandemic propaganda it is voiced in pre-school language and we didn't have pre-school in 1934.

What we did have from 1939 to 1945 and beyond was the ability to laugh at propaganda, the acceptance that we would be unable to go on holiday, and the realization that we could not go sunning ourselves at the seaside. Seafronts at that time were lined with barbed wire and beaches were festooned with mines. Only Bomb Disposal men trod the shoreline. We also learned that selfish people existed in plentiful numbers, that they lived in cloud-cuckoo-land, and that all the appeals in the world would not change their self-serving NIMBY minds about anything they would rather not acknowledge. Common sense was lost on them. They were the sort who would throw a bucket of water over a flaming incendiary bomb. (Look it up.)

Trouble is: they still exist.

Now they are ambling in and out of each other's houses, ignoring social distancing, crowding parks and beaches the moment the sun shines, and declaring with utter conviction: “ It's all over! It's perfectly safe! Why are you still worried?”There is no point in saying to them : “Look at Leicester. Look at Oldham. Look at Barnsley. Look at Manchester.” Common sense? Huh! 

Drop the juvenile propaganda. We don't need it and they don't hear it.

THE HOME CINEMA FLOURISHES.

WE HAVE JUST SEEN The Highwaymen. (Netflix) Originally mooted by Universal as a project for Paul Newman and Robert Redford, the rights were bought by Netflix in 2018. The story was set in the nineteen thirties era of notorious Bonnie and Clyde. 

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were at their lethal peak and had to be brought down. For two years they had impudently outwitted the law. Now they had two reputable names from the disbanded Texas Rangers (played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, both of whom were excellent) on their trail. It ended (just as history tells) with the wipeout to end all wipeouts of that murderous, but uniquely popular, young couple.

Not usually my cup of tea: but I enjoyed every well-acted moment of it. 

FINALLY OUR GARDEN WHICH WAS

IS NOW

WELL DONE OUR ROZ! 

A great end to the month.

POST 365. JUST FOUND ALEXANDER MALOFEEV.

A PIANOFORTE MAESTRO.

ONLY EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE. It would not have happened but, in the way of fortunate happenings, I skimmed along a haphazard video selection seeking a suitable follow-up to Brahms' Intermezzo in A Major (which you'll know, musician or not, if you've ever watched the Jessie Stone series on television) and there was this fair-haired Russian lad (pictured) performing Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 with all the passion and command of a seasoned veteran. A further search and I found him playing Mozart's 20th Piano Concerto, Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No 2, the Rachmaninov Piano No. 3 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. If you are not a lover of classical music none of that will mean a thing to you, but if you're a Classic Fm listener, a Proms supporter or simply, like me, a devotee of concert piano, this young man is a twenty first century pianoforte genius whose presence will, post pandemic, fill concert halls for years to come.

со всеми добрыми пожеланиями, maestro. I hope those who arrange the BBC Proms will have you in their sights for 2021 or 22. If, by that time, they can possibly afford you.

IN THE MEANTIME.

THANK GOODNESS FOR YouTube on television. Its boundaries are truly widespread. In the past fortnight I have listened to star soprano Grace Moore, who died in a plane crash in 1947, performing a duet with fine lyric tenor Joseph Schmidt, who died in 1942 at the age of 38. (Diminutive Herr Schmidt can also be found soaring to the top note of Nessun Dorma.) I have seen famous tenor Richard Tauber (who, bless him, never did quite hit the top note of Nessun Dorma) singing songs by Franz Lehar, with the composer accompanying him on the piano, and I have been transported all the way back to my WW2 Workers' Playtime days to watch Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth (soprano/tenor/married) gather lilacs on behalf of Ivor Novello. Add to that the opportunity to take in recorded appearances by just about any 'turn' I have ever enjoyed over the years and my admiration for those shrewd cookies at Google who bought YouTube goes up by the day. It is slightly tempered, though, by our daughter Jac's news that she still encounters difficulty sending comment to any of my blog posts. Well, Google's a huge employer and I don't know a soul who works there. I just hope things will right themselves. Or that this will catch someone's eye:

  Cheers.

POST 364. LOST TELEVISION RECEPTION.

FOR FOUR NIGHTS.

FOR A SCORE OF PAVING STONES. Well it was a tall van and the television disc is sited on the driveway side of the property. The little guy whose momentary lapse of caution left the disc slightly less receptive than an old cat's whisker radio detector, afterwards wheeled the stones to the car park behind the house. Roz, who had ordered them, later transferred them one at a time to her newly seeded lawn area beyond the car park, and there they are in the picture. Look good, don't they? In time that path may lead to a gazebo: which will cost a bit. So maybe next year.

Meantime, she prays for rain for her grass and an absence of it for her long walks in almost empty countryside with Buddy. Fingers crossed.

AND WHY FOUR NIGHTS? Simple. Reception was lost on a Friday morning, none of us could resite the disc, and the nice guy at Sky (after an unsuccessful try at talking us through the problem} said we would need a Sky engineer; and the first one of them available to us would be next Tuesday. So that was that.

WE WATCHED old recordings and Netflix and YouTube. We now know more about many long departed actors than we know about ourselves. It was at first interesting and at length pointless. Incredibly, I missed BBC news. The Sky engineer was customarily efficient when he got here and I am now back to cursing the giftless somnambulists who produce 'reality' television. Ah well.

THIS IS STARK REALITY. After weeks of encouraging us to get out on our doorsteps and clap NHS staff and other carers (many of them on appallingly poor pay) who have risked, and in far too many cases lost, their lives to Covid 19 for us, the government of England has now decided that, when the pandemic is over, charges for hospital car parking will be reintroduced and managed by the same profiteering shits who have for years been screwing parking fees from those visiting the sick and, worse still, from the hospital staff who work there and tend them. So it will be back to square one.

Just a couple of questions:

(1) Is that the way you and your obsequious underlings repay those who saved your prevaricating, back-stabbing life, Johnson?

(2) Where, you vainglorious buffoon, did the gratitude go?

STILL AT HOME.

A pleasant young guy from our sole remaining hospital came here this morning to take blood from me. A non-fasting test. He wore a mask and told me I didn't need one, which was reassuring.

Whole procedure took no more than twenty minutes. The personal touch has to do with my age and possible vulnerability to the dreaded virus. My GP, a charming lady from somewhere across the seas who I have never met face to face, was not inclined to push a four month lockdown patient straight back into the virus front line.

The latest news on that score (just as the country is being urged back to work) is that recovery from coronavirus may not preclude you from catching it again.

So don't be careless, don't be complacent, and don't be irresponsible. Though why I write that I don't know. If you are reading this you will not be any of those things.

Mind how you go on the pavement: and keep an eye out for any silly sod riding a one-wheeled electric monstrosity – especially if his name is Jeremy.

Enough is enough.

Post 363. GARDENER OR BAKER.

IF YOU AIN'T ONE YOU'RE THE OTHER.

SOMETIMES BOTH. As daughter Roz  has recently proven. A little of her venture into garden restructuring at our humble hovel can be seen above. That border was previously a tangle of tree roots and weeds edging the car park behind the house. Beyond it was a jungle of neglect and neighbouring misuse. Not now. With such outside help as kind family members could give, she set about righting it. 

 New fencing. Ground levelling. Total clearing up job. Voila! 

SHE HAS ALSO boldly embarked on that other staple of the British lockdown prisoner, bread baking. Her first loaf graced our kitchen this week and was an instant success. It was a 'Paul Hollywood's loaf for beginners' recipe which can be found on the net, and the result was well worth a congratulatory handshake. Her great grandfather would have been delighted with her. Granddad's name was Bill Pope and he was probably the only foreman baker in Portsmouth still baking bread after two WW2 blitzes by the Germans in one night wiped out the city's electricity. He knew how to fire up the wood ovens to produce loaves the old-fashioned way and that was what he did.

He would have carefully cut a slice off Roz's loaf, eyed it up, given it an appreciative sniff, and uttered the magic words: “Beautiful texture.” Those two words were his ultimate seal of approval. He would have adored her and she him. Oh, the loaf in the picture, though hers looked very like it, is not the one made by Roz: hers was half devoured before anybody could photograph it. The one above does look good though, doesn't it. Well done Mr. Hollywood. And well done Rosalind Barnden.

 NOT SO WELL DONE.

THE GREAT BRITISH PUBLIC, particularly those of it who, because they could, lethally packed British beaches come the first unfettered glimpse of sunshine.  Despite closed shops, padlocked public toilets, and a plethora of parking tickets, the silly born bastards drove in their droves to the seaside to ignorantly risk furthering the COVID-19 pandemic. Don't ask. I long ago stopped wondering why human beings can be so bloody daft.

Keep far enough apart, dear reader.

Though maybe not that far.

 

Post 362. SOMETHING ORIGINAL?

YOU'RE UNLIKELY TO FIND IT ON TELEVISION.

ORIGINALITY is the programme producer's bête noire. If the coronavirus lockdown in our country has illustrated one negative facet of national television above any other it surely has to be the dogged determination with which the production powers-that-be adhere to the status quo: or amend it to its detriment. Much of today's programming is presented as if the target audience is a class of pre-school children. I watch it briefly, then reach for the 'let's find something other than this rubbish' remote. You have to have some pride. Among my pet hates I would particularly mention the new format of:  

BARGAIN HUNT. Who was it decided that this popular old programme would be improved if you set the contestants a programme presenter's challenge of buying at least one item priced over £70 and/or an item made in a place like Outer Mongolia? Could nobody convince whoever the moron was that you don't spend over £70 for something in a junk shop and make a profit on it in an auction house where the customers (most of whom have only come in to get out of the rain) have absolutely no intention of bidding any more than a tenner for anything no matter where it came from? Did nobody think to mention that the only bargain hunters who ever made a profit at auction were those who spent threepence ha'penny for something that fetched thirty bob or who risked thirty bob on something that magically made them thirty quid (less auction percentage and VAT)? 

For chrissake get back to the timeworn formula. It worked.

POINTS OF VIEW. Let us see the current presenter Tina Daheley on screen. We saw more than enough of Mr. Ubiquitous (Jeremy Vine) for ten years. On each of the last two series I have sent an email complaining about this sexist oversight. Neither approach was heeded. Well, neither complaint started “why oh why oh why...” 

 Do come on though, BBC. Before y'know what you'll be making me pay the licence fee.

AND THERE ARE MORE. But life really is far too short to go over the list of antique twaddle, cooking crap, reality rubbish etc. etc. yet again. As it is:

WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING Prime Video series Hanna (too many episodes: half a dozen would be quite enough) and are increasingly drawn to Netflix and YouTube where many of the repeats are so old even I have forgotten how good or bad they originally were. Recently saw Alan Ladd and his son, David, in The Proud Rebel, a film with Olivia deHavilland which I don't think I ever did see before. It was sensitively directed by Michael Curtiz. Was reminded how unkind technicolour was to actors. The acting was good though: David Ladd won a Golden Globe award as “Best Newcomer of 1958” and a special award for “Best Juvenile Actor.” Hard to believe he's 73 now. Ms. de Havilland, bless her, is 103.

Coming back to the twenty first century, we have been chilling out with Jason Statham's blood and thunder offerings on Netflix. Apparently he doesn't like that many of them and very bluntly says so. Well, there are far worse action movies being produced without apology by his competitors. Actors should only utter unscripted lines to those of their nearest and dearest they know they can trust. Not all publicity is good publicity. Even the UK government must have realised that. Hancock's half hour as coronavirus patsy for the PM came to a complete end yesterday evening. The PM took the stand in person. There's a surprise.

AND TO CONCLUDE. The monster garden here at our island home is slowly being licked into shape by one of our nearest and dearest, daughter Roz. She has also spared me the expense of buying a violin by cutting my hair: it had reached a lockdown length of hippy proportions. Now I could take a squad on a drill square again and face not a single questioning eyebrow. That's what I call a haircut.

All for now.

Mix from a sensible distance: don't mingle.

Post 361. EVERYBODY HAS A GRIEVANCE.

HENCE THE THREAT TO PIGEONS' LAVATORIES.

IN A WORLD OF RETRIBUTION SEEKERS.

NOW IT'S STATUES. Throughout my boyhood, and certainly until we moved over here, there was a statue of Queen Victoria in the Guildhall Square, Portsmouth. I never gave it much thought. I'm not a royalist, but I'd rather have them in our palaces than a load of bloody politicians: then again, I'd rather have affordable homes for young people than a load of bloody palaces. I'm no great supporter of privilege: but I can't stop it. 

Anyway, I believe the Queen Vic statue is still there, though I gather it is currently under threat from today's militia of aggrieved zealots who, seeking abject apology for our past misdeeds, are threatening to remove all reminders of sins such as slavery from the world they feel it should now be. Some task.

Not to be left out of any possibility of a ruckus, hordes of moronic football hooligans, bored without opposition supporters to kick into A & E, are determined to “protect our heritage” from those would-be erasers of the more unlaudable events in our history. Oh dear oh dear.

When I was working for the - long defunct - Portsmouth Executive Council (NHS) back in the sixties a senior colleague, shooing the pigeons off his office windowsill for the umpteenth time, remarked to me: “Look at 'em, the useless articles. Good for nothing but fornicating, and defecating.”

I grinned and said: “Old Queen Victoria probably sent them here.” The royal statue was just a few hundred yards away. ”Maybe they'll go cooing back there now and crap on her.”

He liked the sound of that. “Good,” he said. “Serve her bloody right.”

And that was that.

The respected art historian Sir Simon Schama (he of the most gloriously unkempt bookcase in the UK) thinks statues should be relocated to museums. An interesting viewpoint. It would cost a lot of money, but it could save a lot of angst. When you think about it, though, there would not be that much sense in such an evacuation. Most statues are just lavatories for pigeons. The majority of us spend our lives strolling past them without a second glance: they are ignored stone effigies of royals and so-called national heroes left there for the pigeons to shit on. Public toilets have been closed to humans for several months now; don't let's begrudge our feathered friends their simple relief. Leave their loos alone. The retribution seekers will eventually find something else for which to seek retribution. If there's a second pandemic it'll probably be that.

I STILL DO NOT SUBSCRIBE to Twitter, and seldom open my Facebook account. Am extremely wary of social discourse.

J.K. Rowling's recent experience of social media backlash (if you're one of her fans, or a determined detractor, you'll know more about it than I do) has done nothing to allay my cautious outlook on expressing honest opinion nowadays.

This much I do know: if I had been a child actor blessed with wealth and fame by the magical talent of a world famous author and, when I grew up, that author had somehow said or written something with which I had misgivings, I would have waited until I next met her to make my doubts known and seek further enlightenment. 

Publicly I would have kept my big trap shut.

All for now.

Keep your distance, it ain't over yet!

Post 360. WITH RESPECT...

THE PUBLIC NEEDS TO KNOW.

IT'S FOR THE GREATER GOOD

BOLLOCKS! is my immediate reaction whenever some sniffily superior citizen confronts me with one or the other of those patronising platitudes. I was never convinced when foot-in-the-door journalists used: 'The public needs to know' as their prime excuse for downright rudeness. The public does not always need to know and seldom ever will if it is a matter of any importance. 'With respect' is an opening I hear from far too many people who clearly intend anything but respect for the person they are about to address. And I have never heard the words 'It's for the greater good' said by somebody who, whatever 'it' was, had been or would be adversely impacted by it. 

Right now we are up to our necks in sound bites. The clever dicks who pied pipered us out of Europe are using the same tactics to put across their pandemic messages. 'Save our NHS' as a slogan from a political party that has spent years undermining it at every turn and would still, given the opportunity, put it entirely into the hands of private enterprise, is hypocritical cant. So, it now seems, was 'Stay at  home.' 'Only go out for essential shopping.' 'We're all in it together,' etc. Many people were fined for failure to comply with fairly clear instructions and I have to admit I was firmly of the belief that the government was doing everything it could in an unprecedented situation. Ah no. Think again. 

CUMMINGSGATE put paid to that. 

While all we normal (?) mortals (including the millions who put this government into power with a massive majority) were abiding by the rules, the Prime Minister's chief aide, Dominic Cummings, decided the rules were not for him and drove his wife and himself, both coronavirus infected, with their small son, to an empty cottage in the grounds of his parents house in Durham. It has all been told too many times now for me to waste blog space churning over it again. Enough to ask: What the hell was he thinking? Did he really believe he was that impregnable? Is he? If so, why? 

One thing is for sure. No matter how much the P.M. may wish to 'move on', this won't go away.

Mr. Cummings has hitherto seemed to relish his 'most hated man around Westminster' image. Now it's biting him on the bum. Well, they never learn. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to the way the world now is for his 'most hated man' predecessor, Alistair Campbell, and taken up the bagpipes.

I dunno though. Perhaps his one saving grace is that he hasn't.

LASTLY: A LOSS AND A FIND.

Sad to report the loss from our lives of old friend Jim Plant who died a few nights ago at the age of ninety four. Jim and I became friends after his retirement from the police: he was the station sergeant at Newport I.W. for many years and when he befriended you he became your friend for life: a trait I have been fortunate enough to find in many career services (army, excise, police) personnel over the years.  Jim joined the police as a cadet, from his home in Shanklin I.W., at the age of seventeen and was an Islander through and through. He died of natural causes in a chair at his bungalow, here on the island, with his daughter Carolyn at his side.  RIP old pal, you will be much missed.

The find was a friendly email from Mr. Kym Barnden in Adelaide. South Australia who, while researching Barnden family history, found my blog and has sent a cheerful hello message. I shall get back to him with as much family stuff as I can, but I'm not great on remembering the past. It ain't age, it's idleness. Ne'er mind.

Be in touch, mate.                           

  

. 

  

Post 359. STILL SCRIBBLING.

STILL PUZZLING.

And getting no less forgetful.

I forgot to mention grandson Ellis's fifteenth birthday in my last post. It was a great day, too. Even in lockdown. Roz decorated her living room with lockdown birthday balloons and posters and arranged for the remainder of the family, who do not live here, to gather in their homes that evening with computer, ipad, phone (whatever), set up online to wish the birthday lad every success and a joyful future. There was birthday cake and Roz organised a quiz which enabled us to share with each other our hilarious ignorance of the world at large. Well, none of us ever intended challenging the Eggheads anyway. I think everyone enjoyed themselves, though. Mo and I certainly did. We seldom get all the family together nowadays. Thanks again, Roz.

Thanks for the neat tidying up job in the front garden, too. Along with Mo's driveway border (not pictured) it looks a treat.

Which, considering I don't want WATCHING to be seen only as a published personal diary, is enough about us for the time being.

SO WHAT IS LOCKDOWN TO YOU?

Is it still a sad necessity?

Or are you starting to see it as unnecessary imprisonment? Depends on so many things, doesn't it?

If you are alone. If you are healthwise endangered. If you have elderly or otherwise vulnerable loved ones at risk. If you are in the non-essential work category. If you see financial ruin on the horizon. If you are a seaside/sun/social gatherings worshipper. If you are one of the 'I knows me rights' tribe. If you are of the sort who seriously thinks workers may enjoy not being at work. If you are predominantly of responsible or irresponsible disposition.

Any or many of those things may colour your outlook.

And if you think governmental directives will eventually make sense, think Dominic Cummings and think again.

IN THE MEANTIME.

Music.

It's another bank holiday and, sitting here with the view down a sunny back garden, I have again enjoyed my CD of Lars Vogt (above) and the Royal Northern Sinfonia performing Beethoven's Piano Concertos 1 and 5, and am currently being beguiled by Peter Donohoe's definitive performance of Litolff's Concertos Symphonique. Hard life, ain't it.

Meanwhile, Classic FM has informed us with monotonous regularity that HRH the Prince of Wales will be broadcasting tonight and tomorrow on Classic FM at 8 pm. Both sessions will be of two hours duration. (Doubtless Ts and Cs will apply.)

Apparently Charlie is going to let us in on his musical tastes. Well, if nothing else, it will be the longest Desert Island Discs on record.

Royalists, those who think it has to be better than what's on television, and the downright inquisitive, will tune in.

That's enough about everything for the time being. 
Stay safe.

Post 358. TRUTH TO TELL.

CLINT EASTWOOD IS SO RIGHT.

About we anti-socials.

To those like me who spend far too many hours locked in with a computer I doubt there has been a more apposite view on anti-sociability than this one from Clint Eastwood.

What a wonderfully dry observation.

It was sent to my Facebook account which I mostly forget to look at. My cellphone is switched off most of the time, too. I forget to switch it on. Twenty quid's worth ($24) of pay-as-you-go goes a long way with me.

So, for what it's worth, this is a more accurate view of my pandemic world than any other expressed so far.

Sad, ain't it.

WHEN IT'S NOT CORONAVIRUS.

It's still the weather.

Yes, with we Brits the weather is still probably the most regular topic of our everyday conversation next to the vast number of fatalities from Covid 19 (apparently the highest in Europe).

How long it will be before we can return to normal life again, and whether anything will ever be the way it was, is also much discussed.

The former royals Harry and Meghan, thanks largely to their current press image in the UK, get scant mention.

Ah well. They'll survive.

So will chit-chat about the weather.

Eh? Oh, currently sunny with cold winds.

I know, I know...

THEN THERE'S TELEVISION.

Or house hunting.

Most of it (if the sight of a packed bookcase conveniently situated behind even the most vacuous of television personality is to be trusted) around startlingly bookish people. 
No, I don't believe it either.

I do believe that chat show panellists, accustomed to the approval of a compliant audience, are struggling with lockdown broadcasting: none of the popular shows still making an appearance has a comfortable feel to it. Many of them would have been better served staying away and giving their regulars a rest. Off-screen introverts do not react well to intrusion: they embrace their personal space. 
It shows.

SO FOR THE LAST LAUGH.

Trust a smart kid.

Is this why they want 'em back at school?

Enjoy a bit of relaxation.

Don't go socially berserk.