Over the centuries the great names in pantomime have included John Rich, David Garrick, Joe Grimaldi, Dan Leno, William Beverley, E.L. Blanchard, Herbert Campbell, Nat Jackley, Florrie Ford, Dorothy Ward, Wyn Calvin, King Charles II, the Emperor Augustus and my Mum who was Second Principal Boy in “Aladdin” at the Theatre Royal, Salford, in 1917.
Augustus played a pantomime - the word is Greek for dumb show performer - in his court entertainments. When the Christians came to power such shows were banned. An act of cultural savagery only paralleled by the Puritans who banned Christmas - and New Labour which made T Bone steaks illegal and tried to do the same with turkey.
Happily pantomime, the most magical theatrical event, survived down the centuries with groups of players putting on “Commedia dell’ Arte”, simple stories about an old man Pantaloon who tries to guard his pretty daughter Columbine from the dashing Harlequin. Harlequin bribes Pantaloon’s servant Polcinella to perform tricks to prevent his master catching them.
That Merrie Monarch Charles II brought “Commedia” to London where it split into separate theatrical traditions: Polcinella fathered Punch and Judy and Harlequin pantomime.
The first musical play was put on by John Weaver, a Shrewsbury dancing master, at Drury Lane in 1702. His boss, actor John Rich called it pantomime and introduced magical tricks. He was a brilliant mime artist but could not speak properly and his company were such lousy actors the performances were done in dumb show. Rich invented Harlequin’s costume of many colours for a very good practical reason. Each colour, the audience was told, represented an emotion. Yellow for jealousy, blue for truth, scarlet for love. When Harlequin wanted to express an emotion he would strike an attitude and point to a colour. He could even make himself invisible by pointing at black. Even Rich's scenery was inventive. He represented rough seas by getting small boys to jump up and down under a canvas sheet.
Rich’s pantomimes were so successful that tragedian David Garrick was forced against his will to put one on. Garrick was a great actor but a poor mime. His Harlequin had a speaking role.
Rich invented many of the pantomime traditions, beautiful scenery and mechanical monsters among them. When by 1789 people tired of the Harlequin tales he adapted Robinson Crusoe, the first of the traditional pantomimes. When a critic suggested it might be a good idea to adapt other tales like Cinderella, Babes in the Wood and Puss in Boots as pantomime, everyone thought he was crazy.
William Beverley invented the transformation scene, while he and E.T. Smith, the lessee of Drury Lane, watched a leg of mutton roasting on a spit. Said Smith: “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a stage that revolved like that mutton, changing colour as it is doing under the flame?”
“I will paint you one,” said Beverley. In 1859 a wondering audience gasped at its first transformation scene.
I am delighted it was a journalist E.L. Blanchard who invented the modern panto and brought in the first man to play dame. She was called Widow Twankey after the china tea Twankay which was popular at the time. And it was Blanchard who decided the Principal Boy should be a girl. The first, a Miss Ellington, appeared in his first pantomime in 1852. He wrote every Drury Lane pantomime and many more from then until 1888.
Oh yes he did.............................................
A TIMELY REMINDER
Sam Johnson wisely said that no-one but a blockhead writes except for money. Nevertheless, when The Times used an interview with cousin Isabel,- now 7th in Amazon's Pre Order charts and winner of the Yorkshire Young Acheiver in the Arts - to complain at the exploitation of children by record companies it was necessary to send out letters of fire and sword:
Sir,
I am at a loss to see any evidence of the exploitation of children in your story “Isabel the Choirgirl” on the Arts page (24/11). Following the writer's argument is like pursuing a ferret down a dark hole. She seems to suggest that boy trebles were exploited because a record company dropped them when their voices broke. The alternative was to cut a record of a group of boys who could not sing. Tempting as it is to suggest that a similar disadvantage has not harmed the success of our pop stars, it is not quite the same when there are pretensions of harmony. I cannot think such a record would sell many copies.
Speaking as a grandfather, I can assure you that in the present day exploitation of the British young is an oxymoron. Those boys for whom your writer seeks sympathy were the envy of every other teenager in Britain. They had their Warhol moment and will carry the memory with them into old age. It was their own fault that they did not turn that moment into a career like Ernest Lush, or more recently Aled Jones.
When Aled Jones was 16 his voice broke. At the suggestion of his father, I included him in my radio series “Radio Brynsiencyn” on BBC Wales. In very short order he became a proficient interviewer and presenter and went on to music college where he formed a band and experimented with other kinds of singing. After music college he joined a theatre company in Bristol where he learned to act. Those skills assembled, he went on to forge a new and highly successful career on stage, screen and radio. .As Hotspur suggested, nettles are for grasping.
In passing I was sad to see that your reporter should, like Adrian Chiles on Daybreak, make a bitter jibe about Isabel's surname “Suckling”. Half a century ago when I wrote for The Times I would have been expected to know that Suckling is the family name of her ancestor, Lord Nelson's wife.
May I illustrate this with an example of that happier time? Putting over my copy about an exhibition of Icons at the Chester Festival, the copy-taker insisted I had given one of them an over valuation. “Expert, are you?” I sneered. “Perhaps not expert,” he said, “but I have written a book on the subject which has been well received.”
Next time may I suggest you send a copy-taker.
Yours faithfully,
Ian Skidmore
12-year-old Cousin Isabel put the feature writer in her place in fewer words when, gathering her text books, she told her:
“I don't know if this sounds bad, but I'm not expecting anything out of this. Some people expect that because I have a record contract it's going to escalate to something, but it might not. I just take it as it comes along.“
How Isabel's voice matures is unpredictable but she will certainly outgrow the
Choirgirl image. “When I'm 18 I wouldn't like to be photographed at 1am falling out of a bar in the cassock,” she told the interviewer with good humour.
Out of the mouths of Babes and Sucklings................................
S>A>S
Joyce, the lady in the chip shop, has given me a woolly hat emblazoned with “BAH HUMBUG”, the motto of the Scrooge Appreciation Society of which I have the honour to be the founder. Reactions of the outside world have not done much for the reputation of our standards of national literacy. Said a small boy: “Are you a toffee?”
Friday, 26 November 2010
Friday, 19 November 2010
LOUSES of PARLIAMENT
See the politicians forming a disorderly queue for the dock in the Old Bailey. Luckier ones escaped a similar fate by paying back the millions they acquired by a parliament-backed fraud. An MP admits he used a house the taxpayer funded as security on a loan. Disgraced MPs are caught on camera offering to subvert their former colleagues in the interests of business. MPs rush to defend one of their fellows who has been kicked out for cruel defamation of a competitor.
Gerry Adams, former IRA terrorist leader, was elected an MP but refused on principle to attend parliament although he took salary and expenses. Now he has decided to resign and will walk away from Westminster with a £41,000 pay off.
Unaccountably the House of Lords seeks to prevent a cut in the number of MPs though we have the most of any EC country. Those that remain share with those who may go another distinction. They have allowed themselves to become lobby fodder to Europe and their own sofa cabinet.
The Government shamelessly admits giving to “terrorists“ from Guantanamo Bay a multi-million pound bribe to drop their claims of British collusion in their torture.
Scoop a netful of the pond life which swims in the waters of Westminster. Ask them why they came into Parliament. With one voice they will utter the mantra, “We wanted to make a difference.”
It would be salutary to examine the DIFFERENCES that politicians have made since Western Civilisation ended in 1914.
We are at war with the Muslim World because of our Janus- faced government. They won the Arab tribes to the Allied side in World War One with promises that after the Ottoman Empire was smashed the Arabs would be given their land back. They were not told that in 1917 under the terms of the Sykes-Picot treaty their land would be shared between England and France.
The reason the Palestinians and Israelis are fighting is another consequence of duplicity. The Balfour Doctrine awarded the Jews a homeland that the Palestinians had lived on for centuries. Again they did not tell the Arabs. Its architects, Lloyd George and Balfour, were both Christian Zionists. Lloyd George had another reason for keeping the Israelis sweet. His family firm of solicitors represented the Zionist movement.
The reason the Nazi party came into being and the world war that followed were a direct consequence of the crippling reparations the Germans had to pay after world war one.
Our subsequent invasions of other sovereign countries are too many to mention.
The most recent catastrophic failure of Government was to take us to the verge of bankruptcy by its failure to regulate bankers, whose patron saint is Francis. He, you recall, gave away his father's goods just as they made free with our money and then borrowed money from us. Even when it had walked us down the crooked mile the Government had not finished with us. It imposed drastic cuts on us and immediately spent the £7 billion we would have saved this year by giving it to the Irish Government to save them from the disaster which was the inevitable cost of government by Hire Purchase.
It is a small consolation that compared with the venal Irish government our own merry band of outlaws shines like a good deed. Perhaps the Government should study the history of the ruling party Fianna Fail. It is the child of the IRA, which in 1922 rejected a treaty with Britain and went to war with the Irish Free State, the new government of Eire. Ten years later it wrested power and launched an economic war on the British Empire. After twice almost ruining the economy, in 1970 Fail launched the Provisional IRA with government funds.
With friends like that...............................
REMEMBER THEM
Every Armistice Day for many years I stood in the main road in our village and recited, for the benefit of the British Legion and other veterans, those immortal words: “They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.”
Words so beautiful we never examine the thought behind them. Frankly it is an insult to those millions of servicemen whose shades presumably watch over us. Are they supposed to be grateful that they were blown to pieces on the threshold of manhood? Are they relieved that years cannot condemn them to a lifetime of laughter, love, marriage, literature and all the other things which are the gifts of life?
Don't take a vote on it. “Grateful Dead” is an oxymoron. “Growing old?” I will lay odds they wouldn't mind a slice of that. Their frail spirits would no doubt add: “Kindly put my name down for being by the years condemned.”
It would be more to the point to recite Dylan Thomas's “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”
There is something demeaning in the howls of protest which greeted the news reader who insisted he would only wear the poppy on Remembrance Day, which not all that long ago everyone did. Just so long as you buy one, when you wear it is unimportant.
I have become sickened by the whole Festival of Remembrance, which every year reeks of show business. This year new depths were plunged by parading the war widows after a heart breaking video interview with one. Isabel the Choirgirl
sang as they marched across the arena. After the rehearsal when she first saw them, immediately after watching the video, she burst into tears. The only way she could get through the performance was by not looking at that sad procession. If I were a dead soldier I would value that child's tears more than a thousand poppies floating down from the roof of the Albert Hall.
Incidentally, I hope someone paid for that mawkish gesture more suited to a scene in a Disney Madame Butterfly.
I found myself wondering what the widows were thinking. Perhaps that the government had rewarded them for their tragic loss by reducing their pensions. Look on the bright side. The money the government grabs from the widows and their mites will help to pay the bribes of the tortured Muslims.
ROYAL FOOTMAN NOTE
Three women have saved the monarchy and all with firmly working class roots: the Queen Mother, Camilla and Miss Middleton.
HUZZAH,THREE TIMES THREE
SO YOU THINK IT IS FUN BEING OLD
My friend Geoff Mather emails:
“I am passing on some vital information that might have escaped your attention as it did mine:
The information comes from Lancashire District Aged Aid Assimilation
project, dedicated to correcting the unfortunate discrepancies in the
lives of senior people like us.
Today is Thursday.
Please let me know if you wish to have daily bulletins from LDAAA.
Subject: What day is it? A primer
You will, for instance, be told immediately when it is Friday.
Monday alone will not be notified week by week in conformity with Mr
Cameron's need to conserve both energy and money.
Gerry Adams, former IRA terrorist leader, was elected an MP but refused on principle to attend parliament although he took salary and expenses. Now he has decided to resign and will walk away from Westminster with a £41,000 pay off.
Unaccountably the House of Lords seeks to prevent a cut in the number of MPs though we have the most of any EC country. Those that remain share with those who may go another distinction. They have allowed themselves to become lobby fodder to Europe and their own sofa cabinet.
The Government shamelessly admits giving to “terrorists“ from Guantanamo Bay a multi-million pound bribe to drop their claims of British collusion in their torture.
Scoop a netful of the pond life which swims in the waters of Westminster. Ask them why they came into Parliament. With one voice they will utter the mantra, “We wanted to make a difference.”
It would be salutary to examine the DIFFERENCES that politicians have made since Western Civilisation ended in 1914.
We are at war with the Muslim World because of our Janus- faced government. They won the Arab tribes to the Allied side in World War One with promises that after the Ottoman Empire was smashed the Arabs would be given their land back. They were not told that in 1917 under the terms of the Sykes-Picot treaty their land would be shared between England and France.
The reason the Palestinians and Israelis are fighting is another consequence of duplicity. The Balfour Doctrine awarded the Jews a homeland that the Palestinians had lived on for centuries. Again they did not tell the Arabs. Its architects, Lloyd George and Balfour, were both Christian Zionists. Lloyd George had another reason for keeping the Israelis sweet. His family firm of solicitors represented the Zionist movement.
The reason the Nazi party came into being and the world war that followed were a direct consequence of the crippling reparations the Germans had to pay after world war one.
Our subsequent invasions of other sovereign countries are too many to mention.
The most recent catastrophic failure of Government was to take us to the verge of bankruptcy by its failure to regulate bankers, whose patron saint is Francis. He, you recall, gave away his father's goods just as they made free with our money and then borrowed money from us. Even when it had walked us down the crooked mile the Government had not finished with us. It imposed drastic cuts on us and immediately spent the £7 billion we would have saved this year by giving it to the Irish Government to save them from the disaster which was the inevitable cost of government by Hire Purchase.
It is a small consolation that compared with the venal Irish government our own merry band of outlaws shines like a good deed. Perhaps the Government should study the history of the ruling party Fianna Fail. It is the child of the IRA, which in 1922 rejected a treaty with Britain and went to war with the Irish Free State, the new government of Eire. Ten years later it wrested power and launched an economic war on the British Empire. After twice almost ruining the economy, in 1970 Fail launched the Provisional IRA with government funds.
With friends like that...............................
REMEMBER THEM
Every Armistice Day for many years I stood in the main road in our village and recited, for the benefit of the British Legion and other veterans, those immortal words: “They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.”
Words so beautiful we never examine the thought behind them. Frankly it is an insult to those millions of servicemen whose shades presumably watch over us. Are they supposed to be grateful that they were blown to pieces on the threshold of manhood? Are they relieved that years cannot condemn them to a lifetime of laughter, love, marriage, literature and all the other things which are the gifts of life?
Don't take a vote on it. “Grateful Dead” is an oxymoron. “Growing old?” I will lay odds they wouldn't mind a slice of that. Their frail spirits would no doubt add: “Kindly put my name down for being by the years condemned.”
It would be more to the point to recite Dylan Thomas's “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”
There is something demeaning in the howls of protest which greeted the news reader who insisted he would only wear the poppy on Remembrance Day, which not all that long ago everyone did. Just so long as you buy one, when you wear it is unimportant.
I have become sickened by the whole Festival of Remembrance, which every year reeks of show business. This year new depths were plunged by parading the war widows after a heart breaking video interview with one. Isabel the Choirgirl
sang as they marched across the arena. After the rehearsal when she first saw them, immediately after watching the video, she burst into tears. The only way she could get through the performance was by not looking at that sad procession. If I were a dead soldier I would value that child's tears more than a thousand poppies floating down from the roof of the Albert Hall.
Incidentally, I hope someone paid for that mawkish gesture more suited to a scene in a Disney Madame Butterfly.
I found myself wondering what the widows were thinking. Perhaps that the government had rewarded them for their tragic loss by reducing their pensions. Look on the bright side. The money the government grabs from the widows and their mites will help to pay the bribes of the tortured Muslims.
ROYAL FOOTMAN NOTE
Three women have saved the monarchy and all with firmly working class roots: the Queen Mother, Camilla and Miss Middleton.
HUZZAH,THREE TIMES THREE
SO YOU THINK IT IS FUN BEING OLD
My friend Geoff Mather emails:
“I am passing on some vital information that might have escaped your attention as it did mine:
The information comes from Lancashire District Aged Aid Assimilation
project, dedicated to correcting the unfortunate discrepancies in the
lives of senior people like us.
Today is Thursday.
Please let me know if you wish to have daily bulletins from LDAAA.
Subject: What day is it? A primer
You will, for instance, be told immediately when it is Friday.
Monday alone will not be notified week by week in conformity with Mr
Cameron's need to conserve both energy and money.
Friday, 12 November 2010
DOWNTOWN ABYSS
The Ferret is away so catering here is back on a wartime footing. One spoon, one knife, to save washing up, and an endless oxtail eaten from the pan for the same reason.
I expect the friend who sent me the Oxford University Press paperback edition of the incomparable Mrs Beeton’s book on household management meant it kindly. But when I've forgotten to put the rubbish out, the dog is sulking in the waste paper basket and the mice are running riot, recipes that begin “First catch your hare” strike quite the wrong note.
Not that Mrs Beeton would have been unsympathetic to my chaos. She was one of twenty-one children and her mother’s idea of getting them out of the way was to send them to live in the grandstand at Ascot racecourse, where their father was Clerk of the Course. On race days they were farmed out. Yet this amazing lady lived through it happily, at the same time amassing the knowledge that enabled her to write one of the great classic books in the English language.
The instructions to a valet might be copied by a greyhound called Taz to advantage....... “of course subject to their master’s every command. They themselves being subject to erring judgement, aggravated by an imperfect education, their duty leads them to wait upon those who from sheer wealth, station and education are more polished and consequently more susceptible to annoyance.”
The valet must warm the young master’s body linen before the fire, shaving him, washing and combing hair, moustache and beard “where such an appendage is encouraged, arranging the whole simply and gracefully according to the age and style of countenance.”
Heady stuff when you have been wearing your socks so long olfactory gifted hounds can find them.
Mrs Beeton will never be a feminist icon. “Men are so well served out of doors,” she writes, “at their clubs, well-ordered taverns and dining-houses that in order to compete with the attraction of these places a mistress must be thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practise of cookery........there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly cooked dinners and untidy ways.”
Labour saving devices include a scullery maid who lights the fire, sweeps and cleans the kitchen, cleans the entrance step, the halls, passages and stairs. Twice a week she washes and scours these places as well as tables, shelves and cupboards. She dresses the nursery and servants’ meals and prepares all meat, poultry and vegetables. You will not wish to hear about the 13-year-old maid of all work in one-servant houses but the recipes are mouth watering.
At Skidmore Prava these tasks are carried out by She Who Must Never Be Obeyed.
Before she left, SWMNBE dropped a domestic bombshell. She announced that she plans to adopt a tiger.
Alas, the dog overheard and I have not known a peaceful moment since. Dogs have a literal mind and the concept of adoption without accommodation is foreign to them. No-one does apprehension like a greyhound.
Belay “Forests of the Night”. So far as Taz is concerned, the “tiger, tiger” is “burning bright” on his sofa in the sitting room which he now enters with great care, rather like the late John Wayne “casing” a saloon. Taz, though his manners are immaculate, though he leaks love which comes off him in warm waves and has two speeds, “Fast” and “Fast Asleep” is not the bravest of dogs. He was traumatised early in life in consequence of being mugged by a robin.
Also he has form where cats are concerned. He largely uses his turn of speed to put the fear of doggy god into the neighbours' cats. Now he is convinced the cats have taken out a contract on him with a giant cat that is going to chase him down the days like the Hound of Heaven .
When he finally plucks up courage and sidles into the sitting room to find an empty sofa, he leaps on it, curls into the smallest conceivable ball, firmly closes his eyes and sinks into a deep sleep. Not undisturbed, it must be said. From time to time he utters little cries as of one pursued by tigers.
Mark my words, no good will come of it.
A NEW ZEALAND CRITIC OF THE PELVIC ORACLE'S CHRONICLE:
“I hesitate to say that Fry, who, alas, did not reach the Olympian heights of playing a grumpy doctor on prime time US television, has his sights fixed on similar pretty pennies. In a way, this is why this book is what was once called a curate's egg: uneven in parts.
When he riffs on his faults - "physical awkwardness, reliance on speech, tendency to choose ironic ruefulness over raw emotion" - he puts his finger on exactly what is missing here. It is all performance, disarming, rueful, sweet, 'candid' and just the teeniest, weeniest little bit of a fake.”
WEBB SIGHT
A young man with an ego which approaches the Great Fry Up is the newest recruit to “Today” on R4, Justin Webb.
The Great Libby Purves, whom God preserve, has wisely said that reading the news is the easiest job on earth. I have done it and the only job I have had which was easier was sweeping out the R.C. Chapel on Jankers.
Newsreaders get a script, an autocue that unrolls at the speed of their speech and a producer in the ear offering advice. Newsreaders not only get paid far too much: they develop enormous egos in inverse ratio to their ability.
Witness James Naughtie on “Today”. By the time this latter day Harry Lauder has finished a question, and on the rare occasions the interviewee gets a word in, the programme is “Tomorrow”.
Naughtie invariably begins the next question by explaining what the interviewee meant by his answer. “I think what you are saying is this...” There is no greater passion than a Scotchman in love with himself, though Webb proves the feeling passes over frontiers.
In a recent interview he announced that ALTHOUGH THE LISTENERS WOULD HATE IT he proposed in future to interrupt the guests more often.
Thus he demonstrates how unimportant listeners are to him and how his ignorance of the techniques of his trade is boundless.
Older listeners will recall that I once fell asleep whilst interviewing a chum on a Radio 4 series. A Russian princess called Masha.
No one noticed and I wasn't going to tell them. When the programme went out letters arrived from listeners saying, “At last a presenter who isn't for ever interrupting.”
Oh, what a tangled Webb..............................
I expect the friend who sent me the Oxford University Press paperback edition of the incomparable Mrs Beeton’s book on household management meant it kindly. But when I've forgotten to put the rubbish out, the dog is sulking in the waste paper basket and the mice are running riot, recipes that begin “First catch your hare” strike quite the wrong note.
Not that Mrs Beeton would have been unsympathetic to my chaos. She was one of twenty-one children and her mother’s idea of getting them out of the way was to send them to live in the grandstand at Ascot racecourse, where their father was Clerk of the Course. On race days they were farmed out. Yet this amazing lady lived through it happily, at the same time amassing the knowledge that enabled her to write one of the great classic books in the English language.
The instructions to a valet might be copied by a greyhound called Taz to advantage....... “of course subject to their master’s every command. They themselves being subject to erring judgement, aggravated by an imperfect education, their duty leads them to wait upon those who from sheer wealth, station and education are more polished and consequently more susceptible to annoyance.”
The valet must warm the young master’s body linen before the fire, shaving him, washing and combing hair, moustache and beard “where such an appendage is encouraged, arranging the whole simply and gracefully according to the age and style of countenance.”
Heady stuff when you have been wearing your socks so long olfactory gifted hounds can find them.
Mrs Beeton will never be a feminist icon. “Men are so well served out of doors,” she writes, “at their clubs, well-ordered taverns and dining-houses that in order to compete with the attraction of these places a mistress must be thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practise of cookery........there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly cooked dinners and untidy ways.”
Labour saving devices include a scullery maid who lights the fire, sweeps and cleans the kitchen, cleans the entrance step, the halls, passages and stairs. Twice a week she washes and scours these places as well as tables, shelves and cupboards. She dresses the nursery and servants’ meals and prepares all meat, poultry and vegetables. You will not wish to hear about the 13-year-old maid of all work in one-servant houses but the recipes are mouth watering.
At Skidmore Prava these tasks are carried out by She Who Must Never Be Obeyed.
Before she left, SWMNBE dropped a domestic bombshell. She announced that she plans to adopt a tiger.
Alas, the dog overheard and I have not known a peaceful moment since. Dogs have a literal mind and the concept of adoption without accommodation is foreign to them. No-one does apprehension like a greyhound.
Belay “Forests of the Night”. So far as Taz is concerned, the “tiger, tiger” is “burning bright” on his sofa in the sitting room which he now enters with great care, rather like the late John Wayne “casing” a saloon. Taz, though his manners are immaculate, though he leaks love which comes off him in warm waves and has two speeds, “Fast” and “Fast Asleep” is not the bravest of dogs. He was traumatised early in life in consequence of being mugged by a robin.
Also he has form where cats are concerned. He largely uses his turn of speed to put the fear of doggy god into the neighbours' cats. Now he is convinced the cats have taken out a contract on him with a giant cat that is going to chase him down the days like the Hound of Heaven .
When he finally plucks up courage and sidles into the sitting room to find an empty sofa, he leaps on it, curls into the smallest conceivable ball, firmly closes his eyes and sinks into a deep sleep. Not undisturbed, it must be said. From time to time he utters little cries as of one pursued by tigers.
Mark my words, no good will come of it.
A NEW ZEALAND CRITIC OF THE PELVIC ORACLE'S CHRONICLE:
“I hesitate to say that Fry, who, alas, did not reach the Olympian heights of playing a grumpy doctor on prime time US television, has his sights fixed on similar pretty pennies. In a way, this is why this book is what was once called a curate's egg: uneven in parts.
When he riffs on his faults - "physical awkwardness, reliance on speech, tendency to choose ironic ruefulness over raw emotion" - he puts his finger on exactly what is missing here. It is all performance, disarming, rueful, sweet, 'candid' and just the teeniest, weeniest little bit of a fake.”
WEBB SIGHT
A young man with an ego which approaches the Great Fry Up is the newest recruit to “Today” on R4, Justin Webb.
The Great Libby Purves, whom God preserve, has wisely said that reading the news is the easiest job on earth. I have done it and the only job I have had which was easier was sweeping out the R.C. Chapel on Jankers.
Newsreaders get a script, an autocue that unrolls at the speed of their speech and a producer in the ear offering advice. Newsreaders not only get paid far too much: they develop enormous egos in inverse ratio to their ability.
Witness James Naughtie on “Today”. By the time this latter day Harry Lauder has finished a question, and on the rare occasions the interviewee gets a word in, the programme is “Tomorrow”.
Naughtie invariably begins the next question by explaining what the interviewee meant by his answer. “I think what you are saying is this...” There is no greater passion than a Scotchman in love with himself, though Webb proves the feeling passes over frontiers.
In a recent interview he announced that ALTHOUGH THE LISTENERS WOULD HATE IT he proposed in future to interrupt the guests more often.
Thus he demonstrates how unimportant listeners are to him and how his ignorance of the techniques of his trade is boundless.
Older listeners will recall that I once fell asleep whilst interviewing a chum on a Radio 4 series. A Russian princess called Masha.
No one noticed and I wasn't going to tell them. When the programme went out letters arrived from listeners saying, “At last a presenter who isn't for ever interrupting.”
Oh, what a tangled Webb..............................
Friday, 5 November 2010
MINERS TRAPPED ( exclusive
)
LINES ON THE BRIERLEY HILL COLLIERY INUNDATION THAT OCCURRED MARCH 17th 1869
"A Week in the Jaws of Death"
"A Chat with one who was there"
Business, curiosity, combined with perhaps just a suspicion of thirst, drew an Exprss and Star man the other day into a house of call in Stafford Street, Dudley, kept by one George Skidmore. The landlord, a big brawny fellow of middle age, sat in the tap room conversing with several men, evidently colliers. From the tenour of the conversation it soon became apparent that the host had been at one time a collier himself. Our representative's attention was drawn to a portrait which hung on the wall, depicting about a dozen men and boys in flannel trousers and jackets such as colliers used to wear, and sometimes do still. Noticing that the faces of the individuals in the group looked uncommonly pinched and worn, "What is this," he queried, "a lot just out of hospital?" "Nay," quoth the host, "that's me and my chums after living a week on boot leather." "Well, I can see that the diet suited you bettr than the others." "I did not need much on it." After further questioning the landlord said, "That's a picture of Tom Hunt, Ben Higgs, Jack Holden, Johnnie Handley, Tim Tailor, David Hickman, Steve Page, George Skidmore (that's me), Zackariah Parson and the lads - Timmins, Sankey and Joe Pearson. We was all shut in the Nine Locks pit at Brierley Hill for nearly a week, twenty-seven year come next March. "Ah, the Lock's Lane inundation, I have heard of that." "Never was such a commotion in this part of the country, I can tell you," chimed in one of the company. "There were thousands and thousands on the bank; and when they were gotten out there never were so many visitors in Brierley Hill before nor since." "Never was such a good job neither in the history of mining," continued the landlord. "All on we were saved except one poor chap who wandered off and got down with the damp I expect. He had been in a queer affair just before. There had been two on 'em in the pit and he came up alive and the other was found there dead." "Kinder prayed on his mind," suggested an old miner who sat in a corner. "Ah!" assented Skidmore. "How did you get imprisoned?" "Oh, the Thirteen on we went down on the Tuesday night to work, and when we started to go up in the morning we could not get to the shaft for water." "And what did you do?" "Do? Why we got into the safest place as we could find and it wasn't long before I was asleep." "He slept mostly all the while," interjected the old collier. "He gave his food to the lads," said another. "I had been boozing a lot and didn't need my supper. I had some pork and bread and when the lads began to cry with hunger Timmins and young Joe Pearson had it between them." "But you say you were in a week. From the Tuesday night till the next Monday morning. And how on earth did you exist all that time?" "Well, as he told you, I slept most of the time. The other chaps kept putting bits of coal on the rails to see whether the water was rising or falling. When they got tired on that they huddled down beside me and we kept each other warm that way." But without food. How did they exist?
"I wasn't a bit hungrier than I am now but the other chaps were restless and were clammed. They ate candles and we had no light after that. They chewed the leather of their straps and shoes and bits of coal. It was a terrible wait for them. What feelings they must have had. Ah! that's it, I didn't seem to mind much, though. When we got to the bank, old Dr Walker said as how I could have lived another fourteen days." "Were you all together?" "Oh no, Tom Hunt, Ben Higgs and the lads, Timmins and Pearson, and Johnnie Handley and Jack Sankey and the man what died were on the other side of the mine. Some of them were got out the day before we were." "I suppose you had given up all hope?" He smiled, "Well we could tell as how they were working for us. They had a tank at work as drew two tons and half of water every time and a pump that took 250 gallons every stroke. If it had been with any other firm but the Earl of Dudley it would have been all over with us. Every time the tank dipped, it sent the water up a yard, and back two, and that kept the air circulating. The water was 50 feet up the shaft at first, but at last they got to us with a raft. We were glad enough to see daylight, I can tell you." "Could you tell how the time passed?" "Ah, yes, one of the chaps had a watch and we kept note with that. It was a long week for them. More like a month to them. A day or two after we got out we had our portraits took and the next Sunday we went to Church. Parson took for his subject Jonah in the whale's belly." "You had beat him." "Ah, you're right there. Yet I don't know, having no experience of seafaring. I was working in Yorkshire some time after, and one of our fellows tapped an old working. There was a rush of water, and well, I remembered the Nine Locks. I had on a pair of clogs, but you should have heard them patter up that road. Butty said he would put us in Wakefield Gaol for leaving it. But if yer wanting to know more about that here better than I can remember..." With that he produced a ragged slip of paper...
Alas, my cousin Jean Skidmore who sent me this fascinating dispatch has not yet been able to trace the cutting.
FROM MY POSTBAG
My friends Geoff Mather and Colin Dunne offered:
Geoff's Cranks and Oddities:
Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine. A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking. Dijon vu - the same mustard as before. Practice safe eating - always use condiments. Shotgun wedding - a case of wife or death. A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy. A hangover is the wrath of grapes. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red. When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.
What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.) Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it. Local Area Network in Australia - the LAN down under.Every calendar's days are numbered. A lot of money is tainted - taint yours and taint mine. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat. He had a photographic memory that was never developed. A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
Colin's Puns for Educated Minds
The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. A backward poet writes inverse. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'
Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says 'Dam!' Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.' Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
AMERICAN HORROR MOVIE PRESS HAND OUT
from my friend John Edwards
"An oneiric, eroticized homage to 1970s Italian giallo horror movies reimagined as an avant-garde trance film. A delirious, enigmatic, almost wordless death-dance of fear and desire. Drawing its stylized, hyperbolic gestures from the playbooks of Bava, Leone, Argento, and De Palma and taking them into a realm of near-abstraction, Amer has genre in the blood. Its bold wide-screen compositions, super-focused sound, emphatic music (lifted from original giallo soundtracks), and razor-sharp cuts make for an outrageous and intoxicating cinematic head-trip.
Official Section New Directors/New Films Moma Film Society
LINES ON THE BRIERLEY HILL COLLIERY INUNDATION THAT OCCURRED MARCH 17th 1869
"A Week in the Jaws of Death"
"A Chat with one who was there"
Business, curiosity, combined with perhaps just a suspicion of thirst, drew an Exprss and Star man the other day into a house of call in Stafford Street, Dudley, kept by one George Skidmore. The landlord, a big brawny fellow of middle age, sat in the tap room conversing with several men, evidently colliers. From the tenour of the conversation it soon became apparent that the host had been at one time a collier himself. Our representative's attention was drawn to a portrait which hung on the wall, depicting about a dozen men and boys in flannel trousers and jackets such as colliers used to wear, and sometimes do still. Noticing that the faces of the individuals in the group looked uncommonly pinched and worn, "What is this," he queried, "a lot just out of hospital?" "Nay," quoth the host, "that's me and my chums after living a week on boot leather." "Well, I can see that the diet suited you bettr than the others." "I did not need much on it." After further questioning the landlord said, "That's a picture of Tom Hunt, Ben Higgs, Jack Holden, Johnnie Handley, Tim Tailor, David Hickman, Steve Page, George Skidmore (that's me), Zackariah Parson and the lads - Timmins, Sankey and Joe Pearson. We was all shut in the Nine Locks pit at Brierley Hill for nearly a week, twenty-seven year come next March. "Ah, the Lock's Lane inundation, I have heard of that." "Never was such a commotion in this part of the country, I can tell you," chimed in one of the company. "There were thousands and thousands on the bank; and when they were gotten out there never were so many visitors in Brierley Hill before nor since." "Never was such a good job neither in the history of mining," continued the landlord. "All on we were saved except one poor chap who wandered off and got down with the damp I expect. He had been in a queer affair just before. There had been two on 'em in the pit and he came up alive and the other was found there dead." "Kinder prayed on his mind," suggested an old miner who sat in a corner. "Ah!" assented Skidmore. "How did you get imprisoned?" "Oh, the Thirteen on we went down on the Tuesday night to work, and when we started to go up in the morning we could not get to the shaft for water." "And what did you do?" "Do? Why we got into the safest place as we could find and it wasn't long before I was asleep." "He slept mostly all the while," interjected the old collier. "He gave his food to the lads," said another. "I had been boozing a lot and didn't need my supper. I had some pork and bread and when the lads began to cry with hunger Timmins and young Joe Pearson had it between them." "But you say you were in a week. From the Tuesday night till the next Monday morning. And how on earth did you exist all that time?" "Well, as he told you, I slept most of the time. The other chaps kept putting bits of coal on the rails to see whether the water was rising or falling. When they got tired on that they huddled down beside me and we kept each other warm that way." But without food. How did they exist?
"I wasn't a bit hungrier than I am now but the other chaps were restless and were clammed. They ate candles and we had no light after that. They chewed the leather of their straps and shoes and bits of coal. It was a terrible wait for them. What feelings they must have had. Ah! that's it, I didn't seem to mind much, though. When we got to the bank, old Dr Walker said as how I could have lived another fourteen days." "Were you all together?" "Oh no, Tom Hunt, Ben Higgs and the lads, Timmins and Pearson, and Johnnie Handley and Jack Sankey and the man what died were on the other side of the mine. Some of them were got out the day before we were." "I suppose you had given up all hope?" He smiled, "Well we could tell as how they were working for us. They had a tank at work as drew two tons and half of water every time and a pump that took 250 gallons every stroke. If it had been with any other firm but the Earl of Dudley it would have been all over with us. Every time the tank dipped, it sent the water up a yard, and back two, and that kept the air circulating. The water was 50 feet up the shaft at first, but at last they got to us with a raft. We were glad enough to see daylight, I can tell you." "Could you tell how the time passed?" "Ah, yes, one of the chaps had a watch and we kept note with that. It was a long week for them. More like a month to them. A day or two after we got out we had our portraits took and the next Sunday we went to Church. Parson took for his subject Jonah in the whale's belly." "You had beat him." "Ah, you're right there. Yet I don't know, having no experience of seafaring. I was working in Yorkshire some time after, and one of our fellows tapped an old working. There was a rush of water, and well, I remembered the Nine Locks. I had on a pair of clogs, but you should have heard them patter up that road. Butty said he would put us in Wakefield Gaol for leaving it. But if yer wanting to know more about that here better than I can remember..." With that he produced a ragged slip of paper...
Alas, my cousin Jean Skidmore who sent me this fascinating dispatch has not yet been able to trace the cutting.
FROM MY POSTBAG
My friends Geoff Mather and Colin Dunne offered:
Geoff's Cranks and Oddities:
Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine. A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking. Dijon vu - the same mustard as before. Practice safe eating - always use condiments. Shotgun wedding - a case of wife or death. A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy. A hangover is the wrath of grapes. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red. When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.
What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.) Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it. Local Area Network in Australia - the LAN down under.Every calendar's days are numbered. A lot of money is tainted - taint yours and taint mine. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat. He had a photographic memory that was never developed. A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
Colin's Puns for Educated Minds
The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. A backward poet writes inverse. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'
Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says 'Dam!' Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.' Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
AMERICAN HORROR MOVIE PRESS HAND OUT
from my friend John Edwards
"An oneiric, eroticized homage to 1970s Italian giallo horror movies reimagined as an avant-garde trance film. A delirious, enigmatic, almost wordless death-dance of fear and desire. Drawing its stylized, hyperbolic gestures from the playbooks of Bava, Leone, Argento, and De Palma and taking them into a realm of near-abstraction, Amer has genre in the blood. Its bold wide-screen compositions, super-focused sound, emphatic music (lifted from original giallo soundtracks), and razor-sharp cuts make for an outrageous and intoxicating cinematic head-trip.
Official Section New Directors/New Films Moma Film Society
Saturday, 30 October 2010
I AM REVOLTING
Revolutions have lousy timing. By the time they happen the need for them has passed. When the mob stormed the Bastille it contained nine people, eight of whom were having lunch with the Governor. The Germans rushed Lenin across Europe in a special train. The Czar was bringing in reforms at such a rate the Bolsheviks all but missed their cue. There had been several revolutions before theirs but they were squashed with the flick of a cosh.
This week, if I could have found a barricade, I would have leaped up it like an angry chamois. It began badly with the domination of radio and TV by Stephen Fry, the Pelvic Oracle. But you could have ironed trousers with the steam which came from my ears when I read of the latest con trick of the House of Windsor.
"How nice," we all thought, when the Chancellor announced that Her Gracious wanted to suffer with her subjects and so had agreed to freeze the royals' pay packets. It emerged later that in doing so the Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore wind farms.
They will net up to £37.5 million extra income every year from the drive for green energy because the seabed within Britain’s territorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate. Prince Charles has banned these useless excretions from within sight of his country estate. Elsewhere the Family welcome them with Open Wallets.
They will pocket another £38 million a year from an offshore wind farm on Queen Caroline, Canada's 'Galapagos' island. Although the island houses one of that country's most important bird sanctuaries, the wind farm will use the old-style, three-bladed, prop-style designs; not only inefficient, but infamous bird and bat killers.
ROASTING THE PEASANTS
The fabulously wealthy Grosvenor Estates, which includes large swathes of London's Mayfair and Belgravia, as well as the new 43-acre Liverpool One development, is one of the creditors trying to bankrupt the lowly Portsmouth F.C. The Estates owns a shop in its Festival Place Shopping Centre in Basingstoke. Portsmouth is thought to be the guarantor for the tenant, a retailer who has fallen in to administration and therefore made the football club liable for the costs. So much for the beatiful game of the peasantry.
Ironic.The present Duke, as a child, told me his ambition was to be a professional footballer. He had a trial with Fulham F.C. Now he is one of Britain's richest men but he would have been a pauper except for one of his andestor's peasants, a forestry worker called Ridley who rose to found Grosvenor Estates. He was promoted by the second Duke, incidentally an active supporter of the Right Club, formed "to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry", and of the Peace Aims Group that supported the idea of a negotiated peace settlement with Nazi Germany.
With Ridley's help, he developed Grosvenor Estates into a diversified property empire as it acquired much property in Australia and Annacis Island in British Columbia.
On the second Duke's death in 1953, the estate was clobbered for £20 million in death duties and the family sold Pimlico to meet the liability. The Inland Revenue is said to have created a whole department simply to deal with the matter.
Ridley created a twenty-part trust fund which dispersed the title and the ownership of Grosvenor Estates. The money and the title only came back together on the accession of the current Duke.
When he (the present duke) was a schoolboy I was asked by his father not to publicise his annual birthday party at Chester Zoo. I know how Portsmouth feel. When the fourth duke, a dotty eccentric who was obsessed with chickens, died, Cheshire Police were INSTRUCTED by the Estate to threaten me with arrest if I covered the funeral. The Oblige was well and truly nobbled.
This week, if I could have found a barricade, I would have leaped up it like an angry chamois. It began badly with the domination of radio and TV by Stephen Fry, the Pelvic Oracle. But you could have ironed trousers with the steam which came from my ears when I read of the latest con trick of the House of Windsor.
"How nice," we all thought, when the Chancellor announced that Her Gracious wanted to suffer with her subjects and so had agreed to freeze the royals' pay packets. It emerged later that in doing so the Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore wind farms.
They will net up to £37.5 million extra income every year from the drive for green energy because the seabed within Britain’s territorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate. Prince Charles has banned these useless excretions from within sight of his country estate. Elsewhere the Family welcome them with Open Wallets.
They will pocket another £38 million a year from an offshore wind farm on Queen Caroline, Canada's 'Galapagos' island. Although the island houses one of that country's most important bird sanctuaries, the wind farm will use the old-style, three-bladed, prop-style designs; not only inefficient, but infamous bird and bat killers.
ROASTING THE PEASANTS
The fabulously wealthy Grosvenor Estates, which includes large swathes of London's Mayfair and Belgravia, as well as the new 43-acre Liverpool One development, is one of the creditors trying to bankrupt the lowly Portsmouth F.C. The Estates owns a shop in its Festival Place Shopping Centre in Basingstoke. Portsmouth is thought to be the guarantor for the tenant, a retailer who has fallen in to administration and therefore made the football club liable for the costs. So much for the beatiful game of the peasantry.
Ironic.The present Duke, as a child, told me his ambition was to be a professional footballer. He had a trial with Fulham F.C. Now he is one of Britain's richest men but he would have been a pauper except for one of his andestor's peasants, a forestry worker called Ridley who rose to found Grosvenor Estates. He was promoted by the second Duke, incidentally an active supporter of the Right Club, formed "to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry", and of the Peace Aims Group that supported the idea of a negotiated peace settlement with Nazi Germany.
With Ridley's help, he developed Grosvenor Estates into a diversified property empire as it acquired much property in Australia and Annacis Island in British Columbia.
On the second Duke's death in 1953, the estate was clobbered for £20 million in death duties and the family sold Pimlico to meet the liability. The Inland Revenue is said to have created a whole department simply to deal with the matter.
Ridley created a twenty-part trust fund which dispersed the title and the ownership of Grosvenor Estates. The money and the title only came back together on the accession of the current Duke.
When he (the present duke) was a schoolboy I was asked by his father not to publicise his annual birthday party at Chester Zoo. I know how Portsmouth feel. When the fourth duke, a dotty eccentric who was obsessed with chickens, died, Cheshire Police were INSTRUCTED by the Estate to threaten me with arrest if I covered the funeral. The Oblige was well and truly nobbled.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
FEN SING
The startling front page headline in our local paper read;
MARCH MAN GAOLED FOR GROPING
This incident which in Italy would have been taken as a compliment did not even happen in March but on some London tube train. In fairness to the newspaper, this is an area where little happens. Even scenery is absent. Civilisation came late to the Fens. Untill the 17th century it was forest and swamp. The Fenmen lived a life free of law on a plentiful diet of fish and game. When the Clearances began the Fen people were bitterly opposed but the Improvers beat them. They imported hundreds of Scottish prisoners from early Jacobite wars. It was a hard life digging the network of canals which were named after the distance dug in a day. The biggest was the 100 ft drain. Many died and were buried in the walls of the ditches they dug.
The Fens are entirely foreground and the discovery of perspective was wasted on them. The bonus is the architecture, both ecclesiastic and vernacular. Even on housing estates they build individually designed dwellings. Cities are few but attractive. Ely is a Georgian joy. Peterborough has a traffic free centre opening on to a tree-lined boulevard like the Ramblas in Barcelona. Its cathedral, where two queens were buried, has the finest facade in Europe. The city approaches might have been gloomy but the most enlightened civic planners in Britain encircled the city with a forest. Both cities are on river banks
All over the Fens there are churches and cathedrals which are treasures. The people make an effort if the landscape doesn't. Wonderful pubs, many with good restaurants. and thatched cottage villages. There is a Straw Bear festival, river festivals, and at Christmas there's a 'Extravaganza' in a village of 400 which attracts 40 busloads of visitors A NIGHT. It is held in a massive barn where there is a collection of vintage hurdy gurdies. It has spectacular scenery and a cast of hundreds picked in auditions in London that start in July.
Chrustmas is in its infancy outside the Fen
The Fenland Christmas is a thing to behold. Every town and large village is ablaze with faery lights, as are many of the houses. The fens have fewer buildings and larger electricity bills than anywhere in the UK.
And glory of glories, there is Mr Hipkin who has worked as a gardener with my wife's family for around forty years. He used, single-handedly, to tend grounds which included rose and kitchen gardens, a vegetable garden and an orchard. When the family downsized, he came with them.
He refuses to take more than a pittance for a full morning's work (he is richer than we are) and my wife feels so tenderly towards him she brings professional gardeners in at enormous cost for any jobs that require a ladder. I don't think Hipkin approves but of course he knows his place and wouldn't quarrel with his employer!!! Like me, he is 81 but gets very moody if I attempt to lift anything and insists I leave it to him.. He tends around twenty old people's gardens as acts of charity and every year he carries off at least twenty prizes in the village flower show, including the four cups he presented to the show over the years. His partner Miss Beart is a sturdy 5ft 4ins, 5ft 3 inches of which is heart. Hipkin bought her a stone dog. A week later he brought it round to us. "She couldn't sleep worriting about it bein' out in all that snow."
Their own dog Bailey is a terrier who lives like a Rothschild. He has never eaten dog food. He has bacon, egg and sausage for breakfast and when Hipkin asks him how many sausages he wants he barks four times.
He is very fond of the cathedral city of Ely. Wherever the three ofthem go they have to come home via Ely because Bailey likes the shops there, and they holiday in Skegness for the same reason.
There may be little to look at in the Fens but that doesn't say we have no wonders.
..........................................................................
People are far more perceptive than politicians give them credit. Amusing the way BBC presenters, lefties to the core, have had little success in finding workers who oppose the cuts. Though the row over a hostile Questiontime deliberately placed in a Labour stroghold shows how hard they try. Unlike politicians and presenters, people are used to the notion that if you are broke you don't buy things; and few would put anyone earning the thick end of £500 a week amongst the world's poor. Though no-one I meet can understand why overseas aid has been ring fenced. Personally, I would add education to that.
Why, I wonder, in this state of the art century, at the very heart of the white heat of education theory, do we keep a rusting relic of the Middle Ages? Universities were founded for a specific purpose. In an age of limited scholarship, any city - Athens, Padua and Paris - that had a celebrated teacher attracted students from all over school-less Europe. Because of the expense and difficulty of travel, the students stayed in lodgings round the teacher's dwelling.
And we keep these relics in an Age when we have an Open University. I wonder why we do not make better use of it?
FULL STOP PRESS
Blessed be the name of Cathy Sutherland who graces a chair in English at Oxford University. She has established that Jane Austen could not spell or punctuate.
That is Austen, Byron, Wordsworth and ME
MARCH MAN GAOLED FOR GROPING
This incident which in Italy would have been taken as a compliment did not even happen in March but on some London tube train. In fairness to the newspaper, this is an area where little happens. Even scenery is absent. Civilisation came late to the Fens. Untill the 17th century it was forest and swamp. The Fenmen lived a life free of law on a plentiful diet of fish and game. When the Clearances began the Fen people were bitterly opposed but the Improvers beat them. They imported hundreds of Scottish prisoners from early Jacobite wars. It was a hard life digging the network of canals which were named after the distance dug in a day. The biggest was the 100 ft drain. Many died and were buried in the walls of the ditches they dug.
The Fens are entirely foreground and the discovery of perspective was wasted on them. The bonus is the architecture, both ecclesiastic and vernacular. Even on housing estates they build individually designed dwellings. Cities are few but attractive. Ely is a Georgian joy. Peterborough has a traffic free centre opening on to a tree-lined boulevard like the Ramblas in Barcelona. Its cathedral, where two queens were buried, has the finest facade in Europe. The city approaches might have been gloomy but the most enlightened civic planners in Britain encircled the city with a forest. Both cities are on river banks
All over the Fens there are churches and cathedrals which are treasures. The people make an effort if the landscape doesn't. Wonderful pubs, many with good restaurants. and thatched cottage villages. There is a Straw Bear festival, river festivals, and at Christmas there's a 'Extravaganza' in a village of 400 which attracts 40 busloads of visitors A NIGHT. It is held in a massive barn where there is a collection of vintage hurdy gurdies. It has spectacular scenery and a cast of hundreds picked in auditions in London that start in July.
Chrustmas is in its infancy outside the Fen
The Fenland Christmas is a thing to behold. Every town and large village is ablaze with faery lights, as are many of the houses. The fens have fewer buildings and larger electricity bills than anywhere in the UK.
And glory of glories, there is Mr Hipkin who has worked as a gardener with my wife's family for around forty years. He used, single-handedly, to tend grounds which included rose and kitchen gardens, a vegetable garden and an orchard. When the family downsized, he came with them.
He refuses to take more than a pittance for a full morning's work (he is richer than we are) and my wife feels so tenderly towards him she brings professional gardeners in at enormous cost for any jobs that require a ladder. I don't think Hipkin approves but of course he knows his place and wouldn't quarrel with his employer!!! Like me, he is 81 but gets very moody if I attempt to lift anything and insists I leave it to him.. He tends around twenty old people's gardens as acts of charity and every year he carries off at least twenty prizes in the village flower show, including the four cups he presented to the show over the years. His partner Miss Beart is a sturdy 5ft 4ins, 5ft 3 inches of which is heart. Hipkin bought her a stone dog. A week later he brought it round to us. "She couldn't sleep worriting about it bein' out in all that snow."
Their own dog Bailey is a terrier who lives like a Rothschild. He has never eaten dog food. He has bacon, egg and sausage for breakfast and when Hipkin asks him how many sausages he wants he barks four times.
He is very fond of the cathedral city of Ely. Wherever the three ofthem go they have to come home via Ely because Bailey likes the shops there, and they holiday in Skegness for the same reason.
There may be little to look at in the Fens but that doesn't say we have no wonders.
..........................................................................
People are far more perceptive than politicians give them credit. Amusing the way BBC presenters, lefties to the core, have had little success in finding workers who oppose the cuts. Though the row over a hostile Questiontime deliberately placed in a Labour stroghold shows how hard they try. Unlike politicians and presenters, people are used to the notion that if you are broke you don't buy things; and few would put anyone earning the thick end of £500 a week amongst the world's poor. Though no-one I meet can understand why overseas aid has been ring fenced. Personally, I would add education to that.
Why, I wonder, in this state of the art century, at the very heart of the white heat of education theory, do we keep a rusting relic of the Middle Ages? Universities were founded for a specific purpose. In an age of limited scholarship, any city - Athens, Padua and Paris - that had a celebrated teacher attracted students from all over school-less Europe. Because of the expense and difficulty of travel, the students stayed in lodgings round the teacher's dwelling.
And we keep these relics in an Age when we have an Open University. I wonder why we do not make better use of it?
FULL STOP PRESS
Blessed be the name of Cathy Sutherland who graces a chair in English at Oxford University. She has established that Jane Austen could not spell or punctuate.
That is Austen, Byron, Wordsworth and ME
Friday, 15 October 2010
BOBBY ON THE BEATUP
Murder Inc, or the Metropolitan Police as it is more generally known, appears to be getting away with murder. The Force has never had the highest reputation, When I was doing the background to the infamous Richardson Brothers who had the unpleasant habit of nailing their victims hands to the floor, so many Met policemen were taking backhanders from the Brothers, the investigation HQ moved to the Home Counties.Now they have shown even more alarming developments. Most recently by using fifty-six marksmen to kill one drunken lawyer with an empty shotgun. Witnesses to this over reaction were unanimous in their belief that he could have been talked into submission but a court has ruled that the posse of gunmen were right in acting as they did. It is curious that marksmen fire tranquilisers at animals who have escaped. If you are carrying a suspicious chairleg, just passing through a crowd of protesters, or indeed going to work on the Tube, a death sentence is mandatory. Small boys with toy guns have often brought out Murder Inc in force. I was taking my life in my hands when I bought plastic highwaymen's pop pistols for my grandchildren at Disneyland in Paris. Fortunately I was not allowed to bring them on the plane.
My father, a world war one veteran who joined the police in 1920, had a propemsity towards violence. Nonetheless, he shared the view of most of his fellow constables that it would be a mistake to arm the police. He was himself armed during the pre- and post-war IRA raids, including a siege in Erskine St in Manchester when he was shot in the head. An IRA man called Shaughnessy got life. I was with him in Dublin when he met Shaugnessy who was anxious to apologise because, "Sure,there was nothing personal."
" Don't feel badly about it," said my father. "It wasn't you who shot me; it was my Inspector."
Mind you, that was a different IRA. As the sainted Kevin Myers wrote in the Irish Independent this week:
"Even the misnamed 'Anglo-Irish War' turns out be much less 'Anglo' and far more 'Irish' than nationalist history allows. In 1930, Charlie Dalton, one of Michael Collins' Squad, described to the Bureau of Military Archives how he had spontaneously opened fire on a British army roadblock in Drumcondra, Dublin. 'Brigadier (Dick) McKee sent for me and asked me what was in my mind in firing on the soldiers. As far as I know, this was the first occasion on which the British military had been fired on since the (1916) Insurrection.'
"This was October 1920, after nearly two years of the so-called 'Anglo-Irish war', and though Dalton's memory was at fault here -- Kevin Barry's unit had shot dead three soldiers a couple of weeks before -- the fact remains that British soldiers were not targets for the IRA. Moreover, within 18 months, the violence was about to become purely Irish, as the conjoined traditions of Fenianism -- one violent and conspiratorial, the other cultural and tribal -- united in opposition to the new Free State."
It is odd how tempting it is to play pretend soldiers. Only the fact that Britain is bankrupt has persuaded the police to get rid of its cavalry, though the horse has long since outlived its role in crowd control.
No indication so far to standing down its Air Force which performs with traffic much the same as the role the horse played with crowds and a single policeman on point duty did perfectly efficiently with cars. The Chief Constables in their faux military silver braided uniforms argue that the helicopter would play a vital role in fighting terrorists. Others might have difficulty explaing why and how. Perhaps we will bomb the next furtive jihadist.
If only our bankers could be made to answer for their crimes. Unthinkable. They are responsible for the coming reductions in everything we hold dear. One wonders why we are being punished whilst they are sharing a billion-pound reward for wrecking the country. It is comparable to giving the train driver twenty years in gaol and dipping into the poor box for the Train Robbers' Benevolent Fund. Don't have much faith in our sincerity to pay off that Deficit either. They rifle Mums' purses for the children's allowance, they cut public services, they reduce the Forces to a level that would make it difficult for them to win a game of Housey Housey. And what do they do with the money? They spend £12 billion on the Olympic Games. That is twelve billion to jump over gates, hurl cannon balls and throw spears........................
One important lesson to learn if you are stealing is,Think Big. In Chester, Grosvenor Estates owned the Grosvenor Hotel on one side of a road in the city centre. On the other side was a commercial property they were anxious to develop into a shopping centre. When building began huge screens blocked off the road between the two properites. Their purpose was to protect passers-by from being injured by falling debris.
When the screens were taken down the street had vanished and a concourse joined the Grosvenor Hotel with the new development. Grosvenor Estates, which was the creation of the fabulously wealthy Dukes of Westminster, had stolen the street.
HOKEY COKEY POLITICS
BRUSSELS — The United States is helping senior Taliban leaders attend initial peace talks with the Afghan government in Kabul because military officials and diplomats want to take advantage of any possibility of political reconciliation, Obama administration and NATO officials said ...NYTimes
Remember the Hokey COKEY DANCE...."In Out, In OUT. Shake it all about......." Now it's official US Foreign Policy. They put the Taliban in, they kicked the Taliban out, and now they are shaking them all about.
FROM MY POSTBAG
My oldest friend, a Daily Mail columnist, writes;
Three cheers for Chile. Wonderful effort. The country has come through this exploding with pride and envy from much of the rest of the world.
I mean, let's face it. If it was in this country they'd all be dead. We don't have the expertise any more and for sure any home manufactured machinery would break down straight away. The greatest threat might have come from the police who would want to interfere and completely screw the entire rescue effort. They do it every time.
Tip: When there is a world event like the mine event try watching on US Fox News TV. It is so good it makes the BBC, SKY and ITV coverage look silly.
Another friend of my youth, a Fleet Street editor agreed:
They'd have insisted on a screen around the cage as it emerged from the earth, and they'd have had the rescued miners, and their loved ones, being re-united in private. The next pictures would have been long-tom shots of a fleet of ambulances taking them to a hospital that had a news black-out, and where police guarded every door. Then a hospital spokesidiot would read, stumbling, and haltingly, a statement saying that they were all undergoing thorough tests.
The only good bit is that we would have been saved from a television cretin asking the rescued: "How do you feel?"
Our friend's views on what would have gone wrong in Britain are dead right. They'd all be dead by now. But did you notice that the Drill Boss (that's his title) who directed the rescue drilling, was an American, trained at the Denver School of Mines, Denver, Colorado? "
It used to be worse. When I was working as a reporter for the BBC every programme sent its own reporter on a story. There would be as many as eight radio reporters AND a TV crew, which, in those Union-led days, could consist of twelve people, since every technician had to have a deputy. All of them had to have a three-course lunch and two hours to eat it in.
My father, a world war one veteran who joined the police in 1920, had a propemsity towards violence. Nonetheless, he shared the view of most of his fellow constables that it would be a mistake to arm the police. He was himself armed during the pre- and post-war IRA raids, including a siege in Erskine St in Manchester when he was shot in the head. An IRA man called Shaughnessy got life. I was with him in Dublin when he met Shaugnessy who was anxious to apologise because, "Sure,there was nothing personal."
" Don't feel badly about it," said my father. "It wasn't you who shot me; it was my Inspector."
Mind you, that was a different IRA. As the sainted Kevin Myers wrote in the Irish Independent this week:
"Even the misnamed 'Anglo-Irish War' turns out be much less 'Anglo' and far more 'Irish' than nationalist history allows. In 1930, Charlie Dalton, one of Michael Collins' Squad, described to the Bureau of Military Archives how he had spontaneously opened fire on a British army roadblock in Drumcondra, Dublin. 'Brigadier (Dick) McKee sent for me and asked me what was in my mind in firing on the soldiers. As far as I know, this was the first occasion on which the British military had been fired on since the (1916) Insurrection.'
"This was October 1920, after nearly two years of the so-called 'Anglo-Irish war', and though Dalton's memory was at fault here -- Kevin Barry's unit had shot dead three soldiers a couple of weeks before -- the fact remains that British soldiers were not targets for the IRA. Moreover, within 18 months, the violence was about to become purely Irish, as the conjoined traditions of Fenianism -- one violent and conspiratorial, the other cultural and tribal -- united in opposition to the new Free State."
It is odd how tempting it is to play pretend soldiers. Only the fact that Britain is bankrupt has persuaded the police to get rid of its cavalry, though the horse has long since outlived its role in crowd control.
No indication so far to standing down its Air Force which performs with traffic much the same as the role the horse played with crowds and a single policeman on point duty did perfectly efficiently with cars. The Chief Constables in their faux military silver braided uniforms argue that the helicopter would play a vital role in fighting terrorists. Others might have difficulty explaing why and how. Perhaps we will bomb the next furtive jihadist.
If only our bankers could be made to answer for their crimes. Unthinkable. They are responsible for the coming reductions in everything we hold dear. One wonders why we are being punished whilst they are sharing a billion-pound reward for wrecking the country. It is comparable to giving the train driver twenty years in gaol and dipping into the poor box for the Train Robbers' Benevolent Fund. Don't have much faith in our sincerity to pay off that Deficit either. They rifle Mums' purses for the children's allowance, they cut public services, they reduce the Forces to a level that would make it difficult for them to win a game of Housey Housey. And what do they do with the money? They spend £12 billion on the Olympic Games. That is twelve billion to jump over gates, hurl cannon balls and throw spears........................
One important lesson to learn if you are stealing is,Think Big. In Chester, Grosvenor Estates owned the Grosvenor Hotel on one side of a road in the city centre. On the other side was a commercial property they were anxious to develop into a shopping centre. When building began huge screens blocked off the road between the two properites. Their purpose was to protect passers-by from being injured by falling debris.
When the screens were taken down the street had vanished and a concourse joined the Grosvenor Hotel with the new development. Grosvenor Estates, which was the creation of the fabulously wealthy Dukes of Westminster, had stolen the street.
HOKEY COKEY POLITICS
BRUSSELS — The United States is helping senior Taliban leaders attend initial peace talks with the Afghan government in Kabul because military officials and diplomats want to take advantage of any possibility of political reconciliation, Obama administration and NATO officials said ...NYTimes
Remember the Hokey COKEY DANCE...."In Out, In OUT. Shake it all about......." Now it's official US Foreign Policy. They put the Taliban in, they kicked the Taliban out, and now they are shaking them all about.
FROM MY POSTBAG
My oldest friend, a Daily Mail columnist, writes;
Three cheers for Chile. Wonderful effort. The country has come through this exploding with pride and envy from much of the rest of the world.
I mean, let's face it. If it was in this country they'd all be dead. We don't have the expertise any more and for sure any home manufactured machinery would break down straight away. The greatest threat might have come from the police who would want to interfere and completely screw the entire rescue effort. They do it every time.
Tip: When there is a world event like the mine event try watching on US Fox News TV. It is so good it makes the BBC, SKY and ITV coverage look silly.
Another friend of my youth, a Fleet Street editor agreed:
They'd have insisted on a screen around the cage as it emerged from the earth, and they'd have had the rescued miners, and their loved ones, being re-united in private. The next pictures would have been long-tom shots of a fleet of ambulances taking them to a hospital that had a news black-out, and where police guarded every door. Then a hospital spokesidiot would read, stumbling, and haltingly, a statement saying that they were all undergoing thorough tests.
The only good bit is that we would have been saved from a television cretin asking the rescued: "How do you feel?"
Our friend's views on what would have gone wrong in Britain are dead right. They'd all be dead by now. But did you notice that the Drill Boss (that's his title) who directed the rescue drilling, was an American, trained at the Denver School of Mines, Denver, Colorado? "
It used to be worse. When I was working as a reporter for the BBC every programme sent its own reporter on a story. There would be as many as eight radio reporters AND a TV crew, which, in those Union-led days, could consist of twelve people, since every technician had to have a deputy. All of them had to have a three-course lunch and two hours to eat it in.
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