Happy Days

It’s my parents’ 61st Wedding Anniversary today. That’s them in the picture, on their wedding day. Last year, on the Diamond Anniversary, they were pleased to receive a hand-written (if brief) note from The Queen congratulating them on the occasion. I wonder if my parents remembered to return the gesture this year as I appear to have noticed a brief mention in the press that Her Madge & hubby celebrated a similar milestone this month.

I only managed to make it to a meagre 27 years – a mere blink of a cat’s eye in comparison, but still a lot longer than the standard marriage in Soapland. I love soap weddings (not that I watch TV of course, unless it’s the fabulously-acted and immaculately-written Hollyoaks). What always makes me laugh about soap weddings is the way that ordinary people, who usually demonstrate such poverty that they can barely afford a bottle of Lucozade from the Mini-Mart, can suddenly deck themselves out in the finest millinery and haute-couture when called upon to witness a pair of scallies getting hitched down at the local church/registry office/social security office. Incredible.

But more of this later – for now, I have to go. I need to check my bank account for secret donations. Hopefully, I’ll have received one.

What a whopper!

I’ve been working very hard this week (paid work, that is) yet still I don’t feel very satisfied or fulfilled. I’m still ill with this wretched cold that I’ve not been able to shake off – I must be seriously run down for it to have lingered so long. I can’t believe that one human body can produce so much mucus – where does it come from?

You know what I hate? Well, lots of things really, but what I hate mostly (apart from slow walkers) are liars. Apparently, the TV Licensing Authority tells lies. I’ve seen its TV commercials where Paul Merton’s sad leather sofa kicks out the titanium shredder and informs us that its database knows “every address where there isn’t a TV licence.” This must be rubbish. I currently rent my apartment and I suspected that my landlord had paid the TV licence for this address. But to be sure, I rang the authority and asked them to check.

“I’m sorry,” the young man said, “but we can’t tell you whether there is a licence for that address. We can only tell you when there isn’t.”

“But isn’t that the same thing?” I asked. “And surely, if there isn’t a licence, then you must be able to tell me that much?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said. “My advice to you is to buy a licence to make sure.”

“But that might mean that this address then has two licences,” I protested.

“Yes, it might,” he said.

What a scam. As it happens, I contacted my landlord (who lives in America) and it transpires that there is indeed a licence for this property, and that he has paid for it. So this is just daylight robbery on behalf of the authority. Paul Merton is (apparently) being made to tell lies on its behalf. Well, if Paul Merton isn’t lying, then the boy on the telephone is. So which is it to be? I’m happy that I’m not breaking the law (it wouldn’t be worth it anyway; not for the rubbish that is shown on TV these days – see previous blog), but someone is. If it’s the boy on the phone then we’ll forgive him because he’s only trying to earn a living. But if it’s the TV Licensing Authority which is lying, then shame on the bosses there. Who is that, do you think? Is it Gordon Brown? Well, there’s a surprise!

The Chattering Classes

The recently-demised writer and broadcaster Alan Coren once said: "Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we should have people standing in the corner of our rooms."

I had a great respect for Coren – he was witty and erudite and was possessed of a dazzling intellect, but I have to disagree with his treatise on television. How can the endless round of ‘celebrity’ reality shows, cookery/gardening/housebuying ‘documentaries’, expositions of chavvy families behaving badly, or educationally subnormal victims being whipped into a fight by a supposedly ‘sensitive’ interviewers be more entertaining than holding a lively conversation with one’s friends?

We were promised, when the explosion of channels took place a few years ago (I’m old enough to remember when there were only two), that we would be offered more choice, more control. Not so. I wanted to watch something the other night whilst doing my ironing (yes, my life is so exciting I know) and the choice I had was A Place In The Sun: Home or Away; Katie & Peter Unleashed (groan!); Gardeners’ World Special; and Are You Smarter Than a 10 Year Old? (not if you watch crap like this, you’re not). Anything else on the digital channels is either a repeat, or worse still - a repeat of a repeat.

I’m not the first person to say that what we need on television is more good thought-provoking drama. But maybe what we need more than that, is less television all round. We need more people standing in the corners of rooms engaging in energetic conversation. I think I might invite the Oxford Union Debating Society to hold its next event in my living room and I’ll serve sherry and Madeleine cakes as well. I think I might also take an axe to my TV whilst I still have the brain cells to use one.

Look Out!

I’m worried. We are being threatened and no, it’s not the Iranians or the Ruskies or even the Croatian football team that could be endangering our Nation’s very existence. It’s the humble jellyfish. Well actually, there’s nothing humble about them at all from what I read - they’re evil killers. I saw this headline in the newspaper:

“More than 100,000 salmon worth over £1m have been killed in a freak jellyfish attack.”

The vast invasion happened off the County Antrim coast in Northern Ireland and apparently, the ferocious attack lasted for nearly seven hours with the jellyfish covering a sea area of up to 10 square miles and 35ft deep.

Why would they do this? Had someone alerted the Jellyfish President that salmon are really the spawn of the devil and therefore must all die like infidels? Did someone in the Council of United Jellyfish decide that the continued existence of the salmon is a threat to the values and way of life of all marine invertebrates, and that they must therefore be eradicated before that way of life is undermined? Well, what I'd like to ask is this: What about the values and way of life of our own dear Sovereign Queen? For yes it is true - the newspaper article referred to the fact the Queen had salmon on her 80th birthday, cooked by a top Irish chef. There's the nub of it - do these jellyfish want to deprive an old lady of her dinner?

My real concern, of course, is that they won’t stop there. Buoyed up by their recent successes against the salmon off the Irish coast, what’s to stop these jellyfish fellahs from thinking that they can now advance further and attack us too? These billions of creatures (known curiously enough as ‘Mauve Stingers’ – which sounds a bit like a 1960s pop group if you ask me), with their billions of evil brains, might well have their collective eye on our very own treasured and sceptred Isle itself.

We must prepare ourselves. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!

Failing that, we could just nuke them.

A Royal Visit

I was reminiscing recently about the day in 1974 when my family received a visit from the deposed Empress of Austria. Zita had been the wife of Karl, the last Emperor to reign over the vast Hapsburg empire of Austria-Hungary, and had been living in exile since the end of the First World War.

We were staying at my Uncle Jasper’s villa in Switzerland at the time. The morning had been spent pursuing the usual pleasures – smoking faux cannabis through the ornamental hookah just to annoy Aunt Charlotte; skinny-dipping in the lake with the German girls staying next door; teasing Xavier, the muscled young gardener who (as usual) was working stripped to the waist.

After lunch we were all lounging around on the terrace as was our habit, when one of us noticed a rather quaint little steamer crossing the lake. It was clearly making its way towards our landing stage at the foot of the lawn and intrigued, we all stood up to see who might be on board. The boat slowed, pulled alongside the stage and a gangplank was lowered. First ashore was a tall man wearing the uniform of an admiral of the Prussian navy, followed by a rather stout lady in a pin-striped suit and brogues. They stood to attention without seeming to acknowledge the rather bemused party of onlookers that stood on the terrace above.

Finally, two elderly ladies emerged from the cabin and began to make their way onto the lawn. One was dressed in a kind of ball gown made from lilac chiffon; the other was all in black – rather in the style of a nun – with a black lace veil and a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses. Both ladies wore pearl necklaces. They were followed by a bald-headed man in a dark suit. They all paused at the foot of the gangplank and looked up at us expectantly. Uncle Jasper put down the air rifle that he’d been shooting empty bourbon bottles with, and strode off across the lawn to greet them.

He returned with the party and we all made room for them at the table. None of their party, I noticed, sat down until the lady in black was seated herself. In faultless French, the Prussian Admiral introduced the lady in black as Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Zita of Austro-Hungaria. I was all for retorting “Yes, and I’m the Emperor Napolean and this is my sister the Duchess of Windsor", but for some reason Uncle Jasper seemed to be taking these weird people seriously and if anything, was behaving somewhat deferentially towards the old trout. He called Lola (his maid) and asked her to prepare some tea for us all. Because there were so many of us, she had to get the (now shirted) young gardener to help her, but the tea duly arrived complete with a tray of assorted dainty cakes. I remember the conversation was polite and banal – we talked of the weather and of the beauty of the lake. They were all quite chatty, except for the woman in the brogues who said nothing.

After a while the Empress spotted the air rifle propped up against a wall. She asked my uncle if she could have a go and rather nervously, he agreed. Without moving from her chair she took the rifle, loaded it herself, and fired at the bottles on the far wall. As the first bourbon bottle exploded in a very satisfactory shower of tinkling crystal, she laughed. ‘How very strange,’ she said in perfect English. ‘I was a member of the House of Bourbon before I was married. What a coincidence, eh?’ And she winked at me. She went on to destroy the remaining four bottles without wasting a shot.

Eventually this bizarre little party prepared to leave. The Admiral thanked us for our hospitality, the Empress was helped to her feet (she managed to stand on the tail of Aunt Charlotte’s red setter in the process; the sleeping dog yelping so loudly that the sound echoed across the lake), and they all floated silently across the lawn and down to the landing-stage.

Very soon, with a hoot of its siren, the tiny boat had gone and there was only a whisper of black smoke staining the white-blue sky to remind us that we hadn’t actually imagined the whole episode. A bewildering little incident indeed.

Sore Nose

Not much to write about at the moment because I’ve been ill all week AND I’ve been looking after the stray cat (nobody looks after me, I notice!). I did manage to drug myself up enough to make it out to dinner on Tuesday – I really didn’t feel like it but a good friend of mine is leaving Nottingham and it was his farewell dinner, so I greatly wanted to make it. The reason he’s leaving Nottingham is because - after 3 years of training - he’s recently qualified as a nurse but (surprise, surprise) cannot get a job here in Nottingham. This is because our pernicious Government has created an NHS where there are now circa 3.5 million managers (each with their own laptop and Blackberry), but only about 7 nurses and 4 doctors to look after the whole country. It’s a scandal and, even though she was eventually sacked (hurrah hurrah!), is all the fault of Patricia Hewitt. But don’t get me started on that.

In the meantime, my friend has had to move to London to find work (where presumably there are a few more posts available in case an MP or top civil servant should fall ill) and so we went out to dinner to celebrate his departure. I chose a dish containing whole killer chillies in the hope that I could blast the fever from my poor wracked body, but I still have it.

Then last night I had to dose myself with drugs again and drag myself out of bed to attend the reading of a short story that I’d written. It was an evening of prose and poetry organized by the Studio and we even hired an actress to do some of the reading. My story was a kind of monologue as if spoken by a woman nearing retirement, so it was better that I didn’t read it (although some people might say that I’m nothing more than an old woman who should be retired anyway). It was a fascinating process actually, to hear my words spoken by someone else. The actress, Jemma Walker (who came all the way from London for the event!) was terrific and chose to put a slightly different spin on the character from the one I had envisaged when I wrote it. I hugely enjoyed the fact that someone else can place another interpretation upon a character that I had invented. Maybe I should write a play next? Anyway, the audience appeared to enjoy it too.

And so, this morning I had to force myself out of bed early because I also have a living to earn. I can’t say it was easy as my head feels like a two-week old melon that’s been fired at by a double-barrelled shotgun, and my throat seems to have been lined with rotating razor blades which are activated each time I swallow or cough. If I don’t get rid of this damned virus soon, I’ll starve to death for lack of earned income. Now then, what do they say about starving a fever? I may have no choice of course, although it may be that you should feed a fever and starve a cold perhaps? I can’t bloody well remember.

Up and Down

I’ve had a real roller-coaster of a weekend. Or maybe you’d call it a curate’s egg of a weekend. There were definitely some good parts. I spent a really sweet evening in Birmingham on Friday, having dinner with some old friends. Not as riotous as previous evenings maybe (I caught the late train back to Nottingham), but very enjoyable nonetheless.

On Saturday I had lunch with my both of my daughters and their mother – it’s a rare occasion when all the girls are in Nottingham at the same time – and that was a very jolly occasion with champagne and sparkling Shiraz (not bad, but in my view a waste of a good Shiraz really). Then on Saturday evening I had dinner with some business partners which was extremely pleasant and fairly productive too - it's good to get back on track with pushing the business forward and I'm lucky that my business partners are also nice friends. On Sunday it was back to my old home for lunch with the girls before taking Sophie out to the airport for her return to Paris. Sad to see her go yes, but it's gratifying that she is returning to her exciting job there. Imogen then returned to London - just as sad to see her go - where she has a demanding job in the City to keep her busy. Old Pa is left behind feeling bewildered.

However, all of the weekend's many pleasures were irritatingly laced with the thread of an intermittent presence by the Stray Cat who (at the same time) both pleases me yet causes me grief. I have to get rid of him somehow, but I don’t think these creatures take any notice of rational human beings do they? No matter how often I shoo him away, he just keeps turning up when he's least expected and mews pitifully, expecting attention. Maybe I should move house?

Oh, and now I'm ill as well. I'm sure it's Lassa Fever or something equally fatal. This might be the last blog I ever write...... Goodbye, cruel world.

Tee hee!

I witnessed a rather amusing incident the other night. I was out on the town in Southampton, drinking with my daughter and some of her friends – nothing too extreme, just a few glasses of wine and a lively chat. The bar we were drinking in was about to close so I volunteered to nip across the road to find out if the bar there was staying open longer. Unfortunately, upon approaching the Crombie-clad doorman, I tripped on a dodgy pavement and slightly stumbled. Honestly guv, I wasn’t drunk (well, not much); it was a genuine stumble.

“You can’t come in here, you’re too drunk mate.”

“No I’m not. It was the pavement – look.”

“And I say you’re too drunk – go home.” He sounded menacing now. The more I protested, the more aggressive he became.

Luckily, I was then joined by my daughter and her friends. I told them what had happened. One of the party (female) then poked the doorman in his (rather full) belly and said: “What criteria are you using to make this judgement? Are you trained in alcohol assessment?” He demurred that he was not. “So, you are not qualified to make valued judgements of this sort?” she asserted.

“He seems drunk to me,” the doorman said, somewhat defensively.

“Have you been cleared for this sort of thing?” she asked, staring him directly in the eye. “Have you been checked?” He looked rather confused by this but admitted that no, he hadn’t been checked. My Defence Council then went for the jugular. “Which prisons have you been in?” she asked.

This rather took him aback, but he began to list the specific establishments of Her Majesty that he’d been a temporary resident of. “But I’m clean now,” he said meekly. “I’ve been clean for three years.”

“Hmm,” she said, still staring at him. “I think you’d better let us in, don’t you? All of us.”

“Of course, of course.” He opened the door for us and waved us in. “Have a nice evening.”

So you see, it is possible to prick the aggression of these people, and it was so funny to see that man turn from a confident bully into a humble confessor. How very strange night life can be sometimes.

Sleep

No time for a proper blog today – even if I had anything interesting to say – because I’m off to Birmingham to do some real work and then I’m driving to Southampton for my daughter’s graduation ceremony. Should be good and at least the weather looks promising. In fact this weather is remarkable, don’t you think? It’s November and we’re still sitting outside the Broadway in the evenings (well, not right now of course). The Government’s anti-smoking campaign doesn’t seem to have worked so far.

At least I’ve finally finished my piece that is going to be read by an actor at next week’s Writing Showcase evening. We’re holding a session in a local bookshop where members of the Writers’ Studio will have some work read out by an actor to a paying audience – all a bit daunting if the audience don’t like it! We’ve organized some free wine to try to get them to be more receptive, so hopefully it will go without a hitch.

I’m rather tired this morning. I can’t sleep properly these days, even on nights when I don’t get disturbed by that damned cat. I think I’ve lost the habit. Maybe I ought to take more whisky with the cocoa. Hic!

Black Dog Day

A friend of mine says that there is a difference between integrity and morality. Well of course there is; the English dictionary gives them different meanings for a start. So, for example, it’s a lack of integrity that causes someone to arrange to meet a friend and then to forget to arrive; but it’s a lack of morality however that tempts someone to embark on a sexual liaison with, say, their best friend’s wife.

I suppose we’d all like to think that we contain both qualities; that we have both morality and integrity. But I think a person can contain conflicting qualities at the same time. There are people, I’m sure, who would think nothing of stealing a book or a bar of chocolate from a shop but who would never dream of stabbing a good friend in the back. Others might pride themselves on their honesty as an upstanding citizen, yet at the drop of a proverbial (and paid for) hat will spread poison and gossip about someone they claim to be close to.

Which is it better to be? I suppose you’re going to say that neither trait is defensible, but I wonder whether having either integrity or morality (or both, or neither) is a matter of personal choice. I would like to investigate whether the lack of either attribute in someone is actually the result of some subversive conditioning and whether the perpetrator of any vice is in fact the real victim. If a person has the integrity to run after a woman in the street to advise her that she has inadvertently tucked her skirt into her knickers, yet lacks the morality not to sleep with the partner of a good friend, are they really in control of their own actions?

Hmm. A difficult conundrum indeed. I might conduct a survey.

Cool for Cats

Last night I went to see Jools Holland in concert with his fabulous Rhythm & Blues Orchestra. This was the first night of a UK tour which takes in the Royal Albert Hall and ends at Christmas in Brighton. It was absolutely stomping! I’d been anticipating a good evening but was nevertheless unprepared for the sheer energy and exuberance that pounded out from the stage. Boogie-woogie, R&B, Stride, Rock & Roll – it was all there in a magnificent and eclectic set of number after rocking number.

One of Jools’s many qualities – and one which we see revealed in his TV shows – is his ability to provide a showcase for all the talent appearing with him. Every single member of his 16-piece orchestra was given a solo spot in which they could shine and enthral us with their individual style and flair. There were some wickedly good musicians amongst them – don’t let anyone tell you that trumpets and trombones are merely boring support instruments. The Salvation Army never sounded like this. Amongst the trombone players was the legendary Rico Rodriguez – an amazing 73 years old, but still belting it out like a good ‘un. He’s a master of Jamaican Ska and did, I believe, play with The Specials back in the 70s & 80s.

On vocals, Jools treated us to the delights of the soaring melodies of Louise Marshall and the thumping blues voice of Ruby Turner. But the pièce de resistence was the arrival of Lulu who rocked us into a frenzy and who even included her yardstick hit from the 60s ‘Shout!’ On drums was Gilson Lavis – looking strangely like John le Mesurier – who has played with Jools since his time with the group Squeeze.

A magnificent evening, after which I found it difficult to get to sleep. And all this after the Mahem Party at the Broadway the night before. That was a riot too – one of the best Hallowe’en parties I’ve ever been to. All the usual Broadway luvvies were there, dressed in the most outrageous and flamboyant of costumes. A far cry from my day when all we could come up with was a bit of black eye makeup, a smear of fake blood and a bin liner. It’s been quite a week and I’m just thankful that I declined to go to the ‘Living Dead’ party at the Pitti Patti Club the night before that. There’s only so much fun an old man can take, you know.