The Storyteller

Up Up and Away in Colorado with Balloon Boy!!

2026-09-03T10:06:12.198-07:00

I've written before of how I love living where I do; Hollywood. I don't know anywhere else in the state where I would rather live apart from the Hollywood Hills, which I can see through my window from where I type this; it would even be possible to live here without a car as I can go climbing when I want, walk to Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs and to any other service or store.

When I lived miles away from anywhere during the seventies in England it was almost a 'day trip' to take my clothes to the dry cleaners; here, it is fifteen minutes walk and I am just a couple of minutes walk away from the canyon and nature.

Lately we have had some very hot weather with temperatures in the eighties but yesterday it dropped dramatically to the sixties – a summer's day in Canada or Britain – and rained all day.
I walked down to Fresh and Easy on Hollywood Boulevard and it was like walking the streets of Kilburn; but today the weather is fine again: the sun is shining and the temperature is eighty degrees at the moment; what a place to live.

Throughout the day the whole country has been glued to their television sets because a young boy of six had apparently crawled into his father's helium balloon – just before it took off.

In no time the balloon was up in the sky heading towards the moon, for all I know, with no way of communicating with anybody on Terra Firma. The silver balloon, apparently made by the boy's father, reportedly reached heights of 7,000ft in no time; it travelled at around thirty miles an hour headed towards Denver Airport air space and was filmed from a helicopter from an ideal position and this is why we could all see it on our screens. I heard it first on the 12.00 news on the radio (NPR) and, like most people, put the TV on to CNN.

I can't tell you how terrifying the pictures were no matter how spectacular they looked. There was a little boy inside that, relatively, small balloon probably scared to death, crying for his mother and screaming; the balloon was reported to be around twenty feet by five feet and on the screen thirty miles an hour looks really fast.

One report came in to say that a sibling saw the boy fall from the balloon shortly after take off but this wasn't confirmed. Of course every expert then came on TV (where do they find them?) to tell us what they thought was happening; it reminded me of a scene from the comedy movie 'Airplane!' and the various experts gave us their million and one conjectures, hypothesise and forecasts and one of them even said that he thought there was no pay load on board because of the way the balloon was behaving.

When I looked at the TV again the balloon was flying low and was definitely headed towards a landing and, when it got really close, a load of sheriffs surrounded it and started to pat it; it was at this point that I wondered why they didn't just hold it and hold it hard to stop it taking off again!

But they didn't they just patted it! Then one of the sheriffs actually grabbed hold of the downed airship and threw a rope over it; the deputy on the other side of the balloon took a shovel and started to bury that part of it and others started to poke holes to let the helium out; I think the penny dropped in my mind that there was no boy aboard at this point.

Later when I was at lunch in American Burger on Sunset Boulevard it was reported on their TV that a basket had been seen to fall from the balloon shortly after it took off. Questions were asked as to whether the National Guard in Colorado had night sights so they could see where the boy landed if the basket had, in fact, been detached from the balloon. The National Guard were called out to follow the route of the flight to see if they could see where the little fella had landed – either in or out of the basket.

The mind boggled as to what was going on; this was a media circus and I was partaking in it by following it.

I had to leave American Burger to go to the bank and then when I came home I put the TV on only to see President Obama addressing people in New Orleans; in some way it was all over so I returned to where I had started a few hours earlier – KCRW.

The bottom line is the boy was hiding in a box in the attic all the time; the news was greeted with relief by the sheriffs who, I am told, tried hard not to giggle when they gave the good news; but we know what really happened - don't we?

The boy got into the balloon and was taken on a journey to a far away land up in the sky; up there where we couldn't see him he met his friends the giant panda, the giant mouse and the tiny elephant called Ephelump. The three friends took him on a great adventure in the sky where he visited a little village and ate all his favourite food, drank all the fizzy drinks his parents wouldn't let him drink and was returned to the attic just before the balloon landed in that Colorado Sheriff filled field.

His name was Falcon by the way.

33 sperms born from earth mother.

2026-06-03T16:29:19.493-07:00

Florencio Avalos (above) alpha male?

There are few secular miracles in life and one of them is child birth; well not necessarily human child birth but any system of birth; I think the Panda must be the most difficult or they wouldn't have so many problems at the Chinese zoos and I would also hate to imagine the shenanigans two hedgehogs or even porcupines get up to just to have a child and male sea otters actually rape the female.

In the human being millions of sperms race towards those eggs – or is it millions of sperm? - and only one gets there and reproduces; as soon as it penetrates the egg the egg locks itself and no matter how those sperms knock on that egg the egg won't open. Can you imagine the frustration of the sperms after that huge journey swimming against the tide and gravity to be there and to be refused entry? Obviously the strongest and fastest one is the one who makes it – a bit like undocumented immigrants coming to the USA from Mexico; only the strong get in – but I digress.

If there are two eggs waiting there two sperms will be lucky and non-identical twins will be on their way to the birth canal – twins can also be born if two sperms hit that egg at the same time; if that happens the twins will be identical and they can be either sex or both as the fertilizer, the man, is the one with the female chromosome – both males and females retain one of their mother's X chromosomes, and females retain their second X chromosome from their father. Since the father retains his X chromosome from his mother, a human female has one X chromosome from her paternal grandmother (father's side), and one X chromosome from her mother.

The foetus, or the foetuses if there is more than one, gets nourished through the placenta throughout the nine months of pregnancy and the placenta feeds just the right amount of food and oxygen to each foetus – then when it is time the baby enters the birth canal and is born into this world.

When the baby is in the womb it is in a very safe place; the safest place it is every likely to be in and when it is delivered it is in another safe place but at first it needs looking after; so the journey itself from womb to the time the umbilical chord is cut is the most dangerous.

The safe place is only a safe place for a while as the feotus has to leave its very comfortable place or it will probably die.

If there are twins there is usually an alpha twin; evidence of twins in the womb reacting to each other has shown this, with one twin dominating the other.

The other day, when the capsule entered the womb of the earth where the miners were trapped, I couldn't help but think of the birth process.

There was a phallus shaped object entering the uterus of the earth and the miners gathered around to look at it; they were comfortable where they were, everything they needed had been fed to them by the very long placenta; they wore clothes suitable to the place they were in and their food was just the right amount for their dangerous journey.

Each of the miners knew it was the only way out; I can't think of a miner working underground suffering from agoraphobia but they may have been reluctant to enter the tiny capsule but as I said before their safe place is only a safe place for a while as the feotus has to leave its very comfortable place or it will probably die.

The miners were fed a very high salt diet to increase their blood pressure as a high blood pressure was needed for the journey; with high blood pressure it was unlikely that they would faint on the way up in the capsule; I think someone said if one of them had fainted on the way up it would have been fatal.

The stronger men were sent up first – the alpha male – Florencio Avalos, then the weakest and frail and then the others which included the captain who was the last to leave the ship – the afterbirth.

For a short while it would have been possible for someone from the outside to go down and look where the men had been; maybe a crazy photographer or journalist or even a scientist and I wonder if they did? Manuel Gonzalez went down first and there he is below being welcomed by the men; not much talk about that brave fella in the media.

An English Country Garden.

2025-06-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

A Humming Bird.

The story so far in case you are not familiar with this blog: this is the first time for many years that we have lived in this climate; the climate of Great Britain with its four seasons.

We have been here for quite a few Christmases but that was only for a week at the most, but this time we are here all the time; there is no reprieve from this climate so we have to grin and bear it.

Some people like the four seasons, but I have never thought about it apart from appreciating it since we've been back. It was lovely to see the autumn leaves which had fallen from the trees and, indeed, I didn't mind sweeping them up and putting them into 'gardening' bags for the council to collect – they are due to collect this coming Monday and I have three full bags as there were a lot of leaves; and that was only from the front yard and the side where we park the car.

There is room for about four or even five cars at the side where we park and that is part of this property, so you can imagine the leaves, as the little car park is surrounded by trees; the car park or drive is about twenty five to thirty square yards and is surrounded by a small brick wall and a wooden fence which sheilds our rear garden.

Since we have been back, the winter has been relatively mild; not any where near as mild as Los Angeles, but we have seen a lot of sun; the sun is very weird here in the winter as it's so low in the sky it blinds you as you drive.

As I walk in this weather the fresh air hits me in the face and, because I'm walking fast, my body is warm and the thrill and comfort of getting back indoors is quite stimulating.

We are very fortunate to have central heating so the house is reasonably warm when we wake in the mornings and, indeed, I go in to the garden scantily dressed – but I wouldn't dream of sitting out like that.

I go out for a second or two to put food down for the birds and squirrels; when I do this I come back indoors and look through one of the windows, and the first thing I see is a robin; the robin must live close to where I drop the food as he or she is there in seconds.

He hops onto a step looking all around, then hops down to where the food is, takes a morsel, jumps back onto the step then flies up to the nest.

Then it goes quiet for a few minutes; next up will be a sparrow who doesn't come near the food but prefers to stay in the grass and look for seeds or whatever. Now as soon as I come in I hear the crows squawking above as if they are telling each other there is food.

The sparrow seems to ignore what's going on above but is hooshed off by the squirrel when he arrives; he eats more nuts than seeds and sits upright with whatever he is eating held between his two paws; apparently squirrels are either right or left handed. I was thinking of this when I was watching one the other day and wondering how we know that – and why!

As the squirrel eats, the crows above squawk louder and louder and I have seen a couple of crows land quite near to the squirrel to frighten him away; the few times I have seen this, the squirrel has eventually high tailed out of there with his tail – high!

As soon a he starts to run the crows take off again, their job done.

I can't stay there all day but I do notice over the hours that all the food goes; maybe the crows wait for me to go to eat.

The feeding of the birds and squirrels is only for my amusement; they wouldn't starve without me, but when it snows the state of affairs will be different; also if the ground gets hard with frost they might need me.

In Los Angeles I would see different birds on our balcony; there I would see humming birds; when you see a humming bird first of all they look a bit like big bumble bees but when you get close you can see how beautiful they are; they are the only birds who can fly backwards and that's amazing to see.

In Los Angeles, the crows eat the humming birds, so I am told, and I am also told that the crows eat 'road kill' here in the UK.

Above rock'n'roll Ralphs in Hollywood is a parking lot, and one day, whilst I was going into Ralphs, a crow flew quite close to the elevator door and flew straight into a class petition; as soon as it hit the glass it fell to the floor. I went over and picked it up and as I cupped my other hand around it I could feel he was limp, but eventually he came to and started to move. Then he turned his head right around and looked in to my face.

Someone came up to me and said 'he's full of fleas' but I could see he wasn't; then a woman came to me and disagreed with the first person and said she had nursed a few crows and they were very clean.

As soon as I felt the crow was fit I let him go and he flew to the end of the car park, by the Ralphs lifts again, and straight into the same window.

I had to pick him up again but this time, when he came round, I walked to the top of the car park, where there were no windows and when I let him go he flew off to freedom.

There were always crows by our building in Hollywood, and I noticed that sometimes they would make a clicking sound; I don't know what this meant but when I did it a few times to them I took a chance that it wasn't a mating call - but it seemed to make them quiet.

I don't know much about birds and nature and I'm sure the birds and animals of the wild don't know much about it either and don't know the names that man has given them.

One time in Hollywood I was standing on the top of a building having a few drinks with someone who was leaving the company in the building; he was keeping a couple of large owls. He worked for the wild life preservation people and it was time to let the owls go – had to set them free.

He brought one of them up to the roof and I seem to remember he had it wrapped in some kind of sheet and wore gauntlets.

The owl looked at peace and the other people that were there, inquisitively looked at the bird with caution and puzzlement; the fella holding the owl held it up and let it go.

The owl kind of dropped, then lifted up and flew into the distance flying north towards Mullholland Drive and a group of trees maybe a few miles in the distance. As soon as it took to the skies, other birds came from nowhere; crows, of course, and other birds which were a lot smaller.

It was as if the birds had the area under guard and as soon as they saw an alien – a bird of prey - they took to the skies; the owl steered its way through and a few birds went close to it but the owl carried on.

The guy told us that he knew that would happen and the same thing happened when he let the other owl go; that too flew steadfastly on.

It reminded me of the time I worked as an ice cream man in Wolverhampton, when I took the ice cream van to a new area and was approached by an Italian Mister Softie who didn't want me there and . . .. but that's for another day maybe; maybe.

Peter McParland

2025-05-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

There he is at the top of the page, there; Peter McParland: he's the fella on the right with the Villa shirt and he's about to cross that ball out of the reach of the Chelsea fella with him.

He was in all the papers last week as it was his 91^st birthday and he's in them this week as he has died. He waited for the Villa to win again, after the disappointment with Man City and PSG, even though Villa played great in that game.

Aston Villa left winger. Number 11, and the last of the winning FA Cup winning team on 1957 to die. I always remember him with that number eleven on his back, like Georgie Best, which many people are mistaken as they think he was number seven 7.

Every time I saw Georgie play he was eleven with Morgan at number seven.

Peter McParland played in the days when, if the ball came across and the goalkeeper caught it, it was okay to shoulder charge the goalie into the back of the net, with the ball, as long as his feet were on the floor. This is why a lot of keepers punched the ball out which made for faster end to end football.

The goalkeepers since have been a protected species. One time there were not allowed to run with the ball in their hands unless they bounced it and I remember in one game Georgie Best timed his shot so well that when Gordon Banks bounced the ball, wee Georgie kicked it out of his hands and into the goal. NO GOAL, they shouted, you can't score a goal like that, you can't kick it out of the poor goalkeeper's hand like that. Not to Saint Gordon Banks.

But back to Peter McParland who was the first player I saw playing for Aston Villa when I entered Villa Park with my dad, who wasn't much of a football fan and who had taken me the week before to the dreaded Birmingham City who played Lincoln City.

The rest of the Irish in Birmingham supported Aston Villa and that's where we went.

So goodbye to Peter Mc P and thanks for everything.

Memorial Day in America.

2025-03-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

I wrote this some time ago and I am publishing it again as it reminded me of the LA I used to know, the LA I hope returns one day and there it is above.

Memorial Day in America is a national holiday; what you would call in Britain a bank holiday, and when I first moved there I would go to a big house in the San Fernando Valley (The Valley) to celebrate with a friend of a friend.

The friend was a guy called Hank; everybody called him Hank but his real name was Chaim – pronounced Hime, with that guttural sound on the aitch – but people called him Hank. It wasn't that he wasn't proud to be Jewish but Hank was easier for goys to remember and pronounce.

Now 'goy' is a Yiddish word and if there was one thing I liked about Hank it was his use of Yiddish; I learned what a schnorrer was, a schlemiel, a schlepper and all the other uses of words not so complimentary but colourful and interesting.

I also got used to hearing those words from his other friends and when I went to the world première of the movie Showgirls (don't ask) with him I met all the guys in the producer's office and learned their humour too.

When they heard my accent they'd say 'Where you fram – Joysey??'

In fact if there's one thing I miss about LA it's the Jewish humour – not Jewish jokes but Jewish humour – you know: Woody Allen, Seinfeld etc.

The Jews here in Britain, seem to play gentiles ever since David Kossoff died. The closest thing Britain ever got to a Jewish series, since Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width was a series made by Indians called Goodness Gracious Me which had that fish out of water, matriarchal, Italian/Jewish/Irish feel to it, even though it was from a country so far away.

Back to memorial day and my pal Hank.

I went to the house twice in the valley and it was the same story each time; when we arrived we met Hank's pal and he would be sitting in the big house by himself. He would take us in to the rear of the house where there would be loads of food and drinks all set out on a garden table next to the pool.

'The others will be here soon' he would say 'Hey Chris – when we have time maybe you can explain to me the rules of cricket.'

And I would say 'They're quite simple it's . . . '

'When we got time' he'd say; then we would sit around and take a drink.

A little while later his daughter would arrive, by herself, and sit at the table. She had the same conversation each time and that was to do with the 'valley' seceding from Los Angeles.

That's all she was interested in and, in fact, one of the years they had an election and the people of the valley decided to stay in Los Angeles.

After that the fella's ex-wife would show up. She would sit with the daughter and the fella would say 'how about some food' and as we were helping ourselves the son would arrive.

He wouldn't say hello to anybody but would get in to some argument with dad and the arguments would usually spring from the fact that mom and dad were no longer a couple, mom no longer lived in the big house and neither did the kids.

So each Memorial Day this fella would get ready for a big garden party that no one went to; the son was embarrassing, the daughter was a typical 'valley girl' and the poor mother would try and hold on to the remnants that once were her family.

Each time we went there we ended up playing darts and leaving most of the food.

One year, Hank brought along his wife – that was a new one on me and I think he married her so she could get a green card.

She was a make up assistant in the film industry and Hank and his pal were assistant film directors; they were always setting up one big film after another none of which ever happened and if there's one thing to know about the Los Angeles film industry it's that most people have a script in their pocket, a project they are working on and, as an actor, I have been offered stardom more times than I can remember.

It was usually 'I want your voice in my movie' – my voice? Maybe I can get in to it too aye?

Hank asked me to join him when Memorial Weekend came about again – some time in May, as a rule, before the weather got really hot and the sun reflecting on the pool would blind you with its glare and when I would go indoors to get away from it the image of the last thing I was looking at would stay with me – but I passed as it was just too embarrassing.

I never completely lost contact with Hank; he would call me every Saint Patrick's Day and offer his services as a nominated driver. He drove a 1963 Chevy Nova convertible with red seats and white body work and in the winter, even though it was LA, it was cold, as he couldn't get the hood to work – or the top or whatever it's called - so we were forever in the open.

When I started to do my one man Irish Show on St Patrick's Day in the year 2000 he came to see it and one year he brought along the guy from the valley.

'Nice show, Chris; listen when we get time maybe you can tell me the rules of cricket.'

'Yeh – when we get time' I'd say.

I did the show each year up to about 2010 and each year I'd send Hank a flyer and he would call to say he was available as a nominated driver.

As well as the Yiddish, Hank had a very rough voice with a thick Brooklyn accent; he would talk about his 'dawdter' and his 'mudder an' farder' and one day when his daughter showed up she turned out to be quite a beauty. It was strange to see something so beautiful with such a rough looking man – let's face it he looked like a gangster.

One year one of the flyers came back – not at this address, so I feared the worst.

Hank had called me one day, when I got back from New York; I saw his name on my 'caller I.D.' thing on the phone and meant to call him back but I was rushing out so I didn't. He probably wanted to know how his home town was.

I felt guilty not calling him that day as I knew what the returned envelope meant, which I kept in the car; one day when I was travelling through Culver City, I called at his address and what I had suspected was true.

The manager of the building told me he had died; he had a heart attack one day and that was all he knew.

All the stuff I knew died with him: his daughter, his mother in New York, his money worries, the very cheap places to eat he had found all over Los Angeles and his Chevy Nova convertible, which he called Betsy – all gone.

Took me a long time to get over the guilt of not calling him that day – but I did think of him just as I think of all my friends, like you, that I will call one day.

Just as one day I'll tell you the difference between baseball and cricket.

How to pour Guinness, eating in LA and that pesky Arizona law.

2024-09-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up to the post I put up last time; written in 2010 so the dates and views are from then; I wonder, on this day September 28th 2024, if Los Angeles is the same paradise as Ieft.

Well the medics, Remote Area Medical, have left Los Angeles after treating over 6,000 patients and after a couple of other states they are heading for Haiti – and more power to their elbows.
One or two people have asked me how we manage to eat out so often – well let me tell you it is very cheap to live here and very cheap to eat out. Petrol is about £2 a gallon – in the UK the last time I was there it was that much per 2 litres.
Last night we went out to eat at a French Restaurant at the Farmer's Market and it cost, for two of us, about £25. We both had boef bourguignon and a posh bottle of water so it would have cost more if we'd ordered a bottle of wine, I suppose, but you can see how cheap it is.
On Sunday we had a curry and it cost around £23 but there I had a few pints of Guinness.
The Indian food is not great here but we have found a few places – the Guinness is not that good and it's better to have canned Guinness and pour it properly.
The Guinness I drank on Sunday was from the pub next door to the Curry Palace on Sunset Boulevard where they open the can and dump it into the glass upside down.

If anybody came here straight from Dublin they would kill the bartender for doing that.

It makes the Guinness look like slops and it doesn't settle at all properly.
Guinness won an award for the design of the can and the widget inside to make the Guinness taste and look as close to draft Guinness as possible. The draft Guinness in the pubs here leaves a lot to be desired and to be honest nobody here has ever tasted a real pint of Guinness. They may be used to what they drink, and if they ever visit Dublin or even London they might not like the real stuff – a bit like people who are only used to eating processed food not liking the real stuff.
It's the same with the cheese – it's all processed – and there is no real dairy industry as the milk and cream have to be processed more than I am used to.
The milk – when I was there – in the British Isles is pasteurised and here it is homogenised; in Britain it was possible to save the cream from the top of the milk over many days and churn it into butter; if you tried that with the milk here you would end up with cramp and no butter.
Anyway, apart from the dairy and the Guinness, the food here is great. They haven't quite cracked English food and their version of Irish food with actual lumps in the mashed potatoes would cause another potato famine if it was introduced in Ireland.
I haven't drunk wine for a few years, by the way, which was the best decision I ever made – just whiskey and beer and the beer is usually Guinness. So none of those red wine headaches any more and I also object to drinking beer straight from the bottle so if that's the only choice I don't drink.
The area we live in is very nice; we overlook Runyon Canyon and see plenty of palm trees, humming birds and a lot of greenery.

In this shot you can see the welcome you get when you get to the gate of the canyon which might frighten people who are scared of snakes away but I have been over the canyon hundreds of times and I've only seen two or three snakes. I've seen plenty of other things there though like a woodpecker. I have heard them all my life but here I actually saw one.
There are also loads of butterflies and a morning yoga class just as you walk through the gate.

The other photo is on the way down the canyon and you can just see the roof of our building – right at the part where the canyon disappears; the flat roof.
All the talk here at the moment is about the new immigration law in Arizona where cops will be able to stop people, who they suspect is an illegal immigrant (what they call illegals or illegal aliens) and ask for papers. The chances of them asking me is quite remote so they will have to racially profile people with brown skin – the Latino.
The Latino does a lot of the work here by the way, and the Latina; they sweep the streets, do the gardening and do a lot of the manual work the Americans won't do and if they don't do that you can see them selling oranges on street corners. Of course I have heard that the gangs rip them off for, what can only be called, protection money.
What you don't see the Latino doing is begging; there are lots of beggars here after spare change; they are not called beggars they are called pan handlers – is that the politically correct way I wonder?
Santa Monica, I would say, have the most beggars around here; nearly as many as San Francisco, and you see all races begging except for the Latino. Some people just come up to you in the street with their regular decent clothes on and ask for money. Sometimes it comes as a shock, if they're well dressed, and another place you find beggars is at the traffic lights.
At the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard people are dressed as Jack Sparrow, Superman, Batman (he gets into fights) and other movie characters and they have photos taken with tourists who tip them – so they're begging too; in the richest country in the world.
The Los Angeles police are reluctant to get involved in immigration issues; they don't want undocumented immigrants being too scared to report crimes – I've always equated undocumented immigrants with sperms; the strongest come here and survive.
The Arizona law – which comes into force in a few months – signed April on 23rd by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, is similar to Reglamento de la Ley General de Poblacion — the General Law on Population enacted in Mexico in April 2000, which mandates that federal, local and municipal police cooperate with federal immigration authorities in that country in the arrests of illegal immigrants.
Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.
This was pointed out to me by someone who supports the Arizona law but I don't agree with any of it; just because someone else does it doesn't mean we have to.
If the border between Mexico and the USA was open or easy to pass through like it is between the UK and the rest of Europe there wouldn't be an influx of Mexicans to the USA; they would come here to work in the richest country in the world and go home at night or weekends or whatever. People don't really want to leave their own country; they want to stay with their friends and extended families; sometimes they want to, like me, but that is another matter.
So what do people really have against immigrants – maybe the way they look?

Another week in America and Remote Area Medical.

2024-09-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

I love living here; I really do. I love Los Angeles; it is a wild, happening crazy city and there is always something to do.

It's a great place to eat and if you mention that there is a new restaurant or coffee shop that's opened people are all ears; they gather around. This applies to all classes as here everybody eats out a lot – we eat out about three times a week.

3rd Street is full of restaurants and there was an article or series in the LA Weekly some time ago where the writer tried to eat his way through all of them; he ate through all kinds of ethnic food and all kinds of meat including goat – which I ate once and found delicious – so this post is not meant to be anti-American.

I received an e-mail the other day from a friend in England and he said how great it was that the Obama Health Care Plan had been passed by Congress.

Indeed it is wonderful that it is on the books but it wasn't the health care plan that Obama set out to achieve; there is no public option.

Most of us here don't know what has been passed and how it will affect us but what we do know is that on the day the bill passed the shares in health care insurance companies shot up – so they think it's a good deal for them.

Everybody will have to carry health insurance whether we can afford it or not.

Now let me tell you how many people in this country, the richest country in the world, are without health insurance – 40 million.

If these people are sick they have to buy Robitussin from the pharmacists and hope for the best; if they suddenly have appendicitis they find themselves $25,000 or so in debt which usually ends up in bankruptcy; in fact the majority of bankruptcies here are for medical reasons; they call them medical bankruptcies.

So whether the Obama Health Care Plan is going to have any legs is anybody's guess.

Last week the Remote Area Medical team came to the sports centre here in Los Angeles - you will see above at the top of the page ordinary middle class people waiting outside.

On the first day, Tuesday, they carried out procedures which included 95 tooth extractions, 22 oral surgeries, 470 fillings, prescriptions for 140 eyeglasses, 45 mammograms, 43, HIV tests and 96 Pap smears.

You have to ask yourself why the equivalent of Doctors Without Borders are in the second biggest city in the richest country in the world? And I think I have answered that earlier.

In Los Angeles 22% of adults are without medical insurance; that's why they are here.

I have to conclude that it may be too late here for a national health service or any kind of universal health care – or what they call here socialized medicine; I hope I'm wrong.

Remote Area Medical – or RAM – was started by Stan Brock; I looked him up on Wikipedia and he was was born in 1936 in Preston, Lancashire, England.

He was educated at Canford School, Wimborne, Dorset. His father, a civil servant, was posted to the British Colony of Guyana.

He was known on TV for a show called Wild Kingdom and seems to have had, so far, an amazing life – wrestling with anacondas in the Amazon Basin for example.

When RAM were here last time there was a problem as they couldn't bring doctors into the state unless they had a Californian licence to practice; so the doctors without borders status had to be kicked into touch.

So each time they visit a state they have to advertise for volunteers; I think we might volunteer next time; not because of our medical expertise – even though Margaret is a qualified nurse (in the UK) – but to help organizing the queues etc.

They need to people to stand in line for somebody who has to relieve themselves or go to another queue and, you know - it'll be an experience.

At the sports centre they have notices saying 'line for fillings,' line for extractions,' 'line for spectacles' and all the other ailments.

There have been interviews on the radio with some of the doctors – on kpcc.org if you fancy listening – and one of the doctors said that it is just like being in the third world; the poor of the third world are the same as our poor.

Stan Brock shows up to each venue and uses a loud hailer to organise things; he said he sees many things but gets the greatest satisfaction when he sees people newly fitted with glasses; it's as if they've been given sight from being blind, I suppose, and I can easily understand it.

There are very sad cases; a doctor said there was a patient who had diabetes and hadn't taken her meds for six years; the doctor said she was dreading the results of the examinations as the organs will be in failure.

The RAM will be travelling on next week to Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland and other states and each time they will be looking for volunteers.

Here's a letter from Stan Brock - http://www.ramusa.org/about/letter.htm - if you want to write a screenplay what better subject could you want?

The Comedians

2024-09-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

Jack Benny

Dave Allen

Johnny Vegas

Norman Evans

Well thanks very much for the support – I had a lot of private e-mails about the show and about the progress of my voice and in the finishing up we had a good weekend.

I am writing this at three thirty in the morning as we are rushed off our feet with packing and arranging things for the big move back to the UK; it's going to be an adventure for us as we are taking the train from Los Angeles to New York which takes three days, before taking the ship.

We have a stop over in Chicago for six hours so we must take advantage of that; I don't think I'll have time to take in some blues but if there is a chance I'll try.

I also want to try and get on a tourist bus for a guided tour of the city. I am much more interested in seeing where Al Capone lived or where the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred than trying to blend in with the locals. Tourists look like tourists; it's the way they carry their cameras and the way they try and blend in and in any case there's nothing wrong with being a tourist.

Back to the weekend: I really enjoyed the show and learned a lot. I didn't break any box office records but I had decent houses and a lot of my friends came and it was great seeing them after the show.

Nothing is written in stone but I think the script is the way I like it.

For those who don't know what it's about – and why should you? - it's about a comedian who has an 'out of body' experience and sees himself doing his act; he eventually realises what he is which is just like the other 'old school' comedians of his generation with their old ways trying to be hip.

The old comedians would never touch the microphone like the newer ones do today; the new ones walk around the stage with the microphone in their hand which is something you would never see Jack Benny do as he knew what to do with his hands.

There is a famous play called The Comedians by Trevor Griffiths which is set in a comedy school. It was a hit in the West End and on Broadway in the seventies. It deals with the young comedian who doesn't know what to do with his hands taking the microphone off the stand and holding it; some of the play is very funny and sad and has scenes of the 'students' taking the mic off the stand and leaning against it.

Isn't it strange that it's pronounced as mike and spelt mic?

My comedian, Eddie Ramone, also uses the Eff word for the first time on stage as he is trying to be 'dangerous' as he puts it; I got this idea from seeing a very famous comedian at a roast using it like the other younger comics do and it didn't seem to fit; he looked embarrassed.

The top picture is of Jack Benny whom I mentioned earlier on; he was a sophisticated American comedian known for his impeccable timing and poise.

Then we have Dave Allen; an Irish comedian well known in the 60s and 70s who would sit sipping a drink that only looked like whiskey (his drink was champagne) and he was the epitome of relaxation.

Next one down is a modern comedian Johnny Vegas, who also gets a lot of work as an actor, who is a typical northern comedian rather like Norman Evans who is in the bottom photo, who specialised in being Norma Evans too.

All funny and I certainly do not compare myself with any of them; the hardest part of my play is standing up and doing the 'stand up' comedy bits.

This is totally different from being funny in a play or a movie – I always knew it was it has just been confirmed to me that's all.

Oh why not – here is a picture of me as Eddie Ramone.

Eddie Ramone

Bill Sparkman of Clay County, Kentucky.

2024-09-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

Me and my pal Nick, in the street, recently,

with Shaftesbury Avenue in the background.

I wrote this in 2009 when I lived in Los Angeles and today I found it, read it and that's why it's here. The photo - a couple of months ago after a roam around Soho.

I heard an article on NPR this morning (in 2009) about the death of a fella called Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Kentucky.
Bill Sparkman was a Census Bureau worker for Clay County and he was found on September 12th hanging from a tree with the word 'FED' scrawled on his chest; now when they say scrawled I don't really know what they mean unless it was on his actual bare chest which makes the whole thing even more macabre.
The people in Clay County overwhelmingly voted for John McCain in the election last year (2008) and have been protesting against President Obama ever since; they see him as a big spending socialist.

To me, and to anybody from Europe that sounds comedic; we have lived under so called socialists, they have always been in our governments, and Mister Obama is nowhere near being a socialist; if he lived in Britain he would be on the right wing of the Labour Party.

But to get back to Bill Sparkman; he was, apparently, a man who had gone back to school to qualify as a school teacher and, indeed, worked as a substitute teacher; the census only happens every so often – five years is it or ten? - and he had started his census work recently; he had also been diagnosed with a form of cancer – non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The FBI have said that his death is either a homicide, a suicide or an accident. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in all your life; how could a man accidentally scrawl something onto his chest and then hang himself – some accident!

Here is direct quite from Yahoo News: 'Al Cross, a former reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal who covered the area for 30 years, believes that the conditions underlying the murder go back much farther and much deeper - and are more local - than the spate of recent ire.'

Today I'm going to write about illegal alcohol in Donegal, Ireland; not that I know too much about it but I know what I want my characters to do in the next part of my novel. One of my heroins gets involved in the distribution of poteen and I want a little adventure to happen now so I'll get on with that.

Toodle oo!!

The Carrington Event.

2024-09-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

I wrote about this before and here's a reminder.

I hope you are getting satisfaction from the Internet and find it useful; I do and I freely admit it. I do my banking, pay bills, buy from Amazon and, in fact, buy from anywhere using Paypal: I even bought a pair of shoes on line and had to pick them up from the store.

Much better than buying things personally as I just hate shopping.

A friend of mine, Ron, would go on line but didn't trust it; he would amuse himself by looking at the Red Sox statistics, fixtures and historical results; would search on line for nothing in particular but he would never use it for anything like banking, buying something or anything which would involve buying anything or using his credit card.

I remember buying things for him on my computer – but his credit card – as if it were somehow safer.

His point was that he wouldn't put things on to the computer in case the whole system broke down and everything would be lost. It never did in his life time.

But it did once upon a time.

It happened in 1859; in those days (doze daze) electricity was hardly used as it hadn't been harnessed so it wasn't noticed by a lot of people. It was noticed, however, by a man called Carrington and how do I remember this? Because there was a teacher in our school called Mr Carrington. In those days (doze daze) teachers' first names were Top Secret! We would look at the initial and try to guess it.

Back to Carrington the solar storm spotter of 1859: the storm he noticed came during solar cycle 10 and if it happened today it would cut all Internet activity, electrical usage – you name it – and prove Ron right.

The most recent solar storm of similar magnitude was in 2012 – but this didn't strike the earth.

By the way the Carrington I am referring to was Richard C. Carrington (I just looked it up on Wikipidia) and the storm was also noticed by someone called Richard Hodgson independently.

Here's what it says on Wikipedia:

From August 28 to September 2, 1859, numerous sunspots were observed on the Sun. On August 29, southern aurorae were observed as far north as Queensland, Australia. Just before noon on September 1, the English amateur astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently made the first observations of a solar flare. The flare was associated with a major coronal mass ejection (CME) that travelled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150 million kilometre (93 million mile) journey. It is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME (typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth) was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on August 29, that "cleared the way" of ambient solar wind plasma for the Carrington event.

Here is a link if you want to read the lot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

and be careful where you leave your stuff; don't trust that cloud!

London

2024-07-16T05:54:00.000-07:00

Of course the first thing you notice is the extreme drop in temperature; it could be a lot worse; I mean it's not like going to Canada or the North Pole. At the moment it's about forty five degrees - in this room!!!! I jest - it just feels like that but it was forty five when we landed.

They are used to the cold here so they have their thermostats turned down to 17 degrees Celsius and I keep putting it up to 22; now what that is in English (even though this is England!!) I don't know. I've just found a converter on line - 17 = 62.6, F and 22 = 71.6.

But it is The Fall - autumn when the leaves fall from the trees and together with that and a damp atmosphere it's rather squishy underfoot as you walk along the pavements here - which are those things the Americans call sidewalks.

I can't say it's the most pleasant sensation walking in such an atmosphere - I'd much prefer the sunshine and dryness of LA.

We arrived at 7.30 am local time today and took the express train from Heathrow to Ealing; that's about 15 - 20 minutes. It's a bit silly getting a ride as the train is so much faster.

London is now full of Polish immigrants; they work in the pubs as bar men and bar maids, in coffee shops and cafes and in construction.

Sixty years ago it was the Irish doing the same thing; building Britain after the devastation of the war had flattened lots of the conurbations and factories. As then, it is mainly the young who are new to working here and, as before with the Irish, a lot of them will stay as permanent residents and become invisible immigrants as they are the same colour as the English. Not so with the Jamaicans and other West Indian immigrants of sixty years ago; they have settled in ok but have attracted attention to themselves merely because of their colour and they are, sometimes, the targets of bigots and racist groups; these tend to organise themselves and a right wing political group called the British National Party has had their leader, Nick Griffin, voted in as a member of the European Parliament for North West England in the 2009 European Elections. There was some controversy here when the BBC allowed him to appear on one of their editions of Question Time.

So there is an undercurrent of racial tension. In the 1950s when the immigrants came they were, as I said earlier, predominantly young - also single which meant that the Irish had a reputation for partying - and why shouldn't a good looking group of people party? The same accusations are now aimed at the Poles.

There is a shop around the corner which is owned and run by Asians; I don't mean Asian as the Americans describe people from Japan and China but Pakistanis and Indians and people from various African countries of Indian extraction. What I have noticed is that some young Poles, some very big Poles - and a lot of them are big - tend to hang around that shop with the little Pakistanis and I have also noticed that there is very rarely any trouble in that shop from racist thugs with the big boys hanging around. Is that good or bad? Is vigilantism on the rise or will it eventually be the same as America with security guards in every store?

As I write this there have been two bangs; not gunfire but fireworks. There was also a bottle rocket that went off when I first started to type and then two very loud bangs just now.

It was November 5th yesterday; Bonfire Night which I wrote about the other day. I suppose they had bonfires and fireworks last night and, because it's Saturday tomorrow, there will be a lot more tomorrow night. The wrong time for me to come as I hate fireworks!!

Sleep - the cure all and Brafield-on-the-green.

2024-06-19T06:16:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, when the children were growing up, we lived, what seemed, miles away from anywhere. We lived in a little village in Northamptonshire (above) called Brafield-on-the-green; I think it was around four miles south east of Northampton and about sixteen miles north west of Bedford.

I caught trains to London from both railway stations and then it was about one hour into London via Bedford and a bit longer from Northampton; the journey might seem ideal on paper but in real life it was a pain in the arse – especially when the journey was just for a five minute audition.

But life in Brafield was very peaceful and the children were brought up in, what their memories seem, idyllic conditions. They had to travel the four miles into Northampton when they left their village school in Brafield for the big wide world on the big bad bus as we couldn't always take them there and bring them back home in the car.

The kids in the village were children of farm workers and were raised up as country lads and lasses with a knowledge of the countryside and were not necessarily 'street wise.' It was strange for me to go from my life in a village, where I would brew beer and wine and even baked my own bread, to the metropolis of London with my work in films and TV and my time away in the theatre in other cities of the UK.

Once in a while youths of the village would knock our door carrying a few dead rabbits they had shot and offering them to us very cheaply. We never bought any preferring to buy our rabbits from the market in Northampton which had been skinned and dressed and ready for our stew. I can't believe how expensive rabbit is now from the butchers here in Los Angeles compared to what it was back then in Northampton.

The house we lived in had three bedrooms but was rambling with lots of nooks and crannies, a big walk in pantry and a Rayburn cooker/oven, with a kettle of water always on the go and which kept the house really warm during the cold winters. I remember one really cold snap when we were, more or less, trapped in our houses for a day sitting by that Rayburn, reading The Guardian whilst the kids played in other parts of the house or into the one hundred foot garden to make a snowman.

We had an abundance of cats which came and went frequently particularly when they were killed on the main road that split the village between the middle and working classes. That part of the village has slowly become middle class now, I hear, so I can imagine what it's like with the use of coasters, doilies and fish knives catching on.

One cat we had was a beautiful big white one called Flossie. She was a clever cat and would manipulate the door handle and let herself into the living room from the kitchen. Then she would settle herself on top of my stereo unit, or even one of our laps, and sleep.

We didn't have a cat-flap so the cats would jump onto the living room window and meow then we would let them in.

One night Flossie jumped up on the window ledge and she looked in distress. When I let her in I could see she had been shot. Obviously some kid was taking time off from hanging around by the telephone box (which is what the kids of the village did in those days) and shot her; the pellet had lodged around by her hip. She ran passed me and jumped onto the top of my stereo unit and cleaned the wound; then she went to sleep.

She seemed quite comfortable so we left her and she slept till the following afternoon; when she woke up she seemed fine so we left her and didn't bother to take her to the vet. The pellet stayed in her hip for the rest of her life which ended some time later when she was killed on the main A428; she was the last one of our cats to die that way run over by some vehicle or other.

What cured Flossie that day was sleep; sleep has been the greatest cure since records began and an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. population suffers from insomnia and is considered second only to cigarette smoking as dangerous for your health. It has been linked to a variety of health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and chronic pain.

When my wife had pneumonia recently she slept for days; the body knows what it needs and it induces sleep to cure – why then can't anybody sleep when they are in hospital?

I know – I have a strange way of making a point!!

A friend of mine left hospital last week and was glad to get home to get some peace. The nurses, doctors, ancillary workers, orderlies, auxiliaries and even the security people talk and move about as if it's the middle of the day. Patients have the TV on full blast, call out loud for the nurses and the para medics even take patients home on the middle of the night.

My friend was dropped home in an ambulance at 10:45 pm last week. When she queried this with the para medics, they told her it was nothing; they took people home all through the night.

What kind of sense if it when the greatest cure for nearly everything is sleep that the people running hospitals keep you awake.

I rest my case.

Laurence Olivier.

2024-04-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Laurence Olivier.

I read a biography of Laurence Olivier at one time, and the writer opined that he was the greatest actor in the world for one reason, and one reason alone; because he wanted to be.

Now there is something to that.

Not too long ago I wrote a post about Mark Rylance whom it was considered was the current (then) best actor in the world; same reason! He wanted to be - or people wanted him to be - or whatever floated their boat or, to be more precise, filled their theatres.

There was something else I read about Olivier and it opened (not opined this time) by saying 'he was no intellectual' – I mean how could he be, he left school at 15? Okay he went to drama school but so did I; and left school at 15.

Even though Olivier may have been considered to be the best actor in the world, at one time, according to the great man himself, he had to do about 30 or 40 takes in a film, with William Wyler, and when he got frustrated, he said to Wyler “Willie; I did it this way, I've done it that way. I've done it faster and slower - what do you want me to do?”

And Wyler said “I want you to do it better!”

Best actor in the world?

The thing is – and it might have been whilst getting the above direction – he stamped his character on Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights – Samuel Goldwyn called it Withering Heights, according to Olivier.

In fact the anecdotes above are from Olivier himself.

The thing about Heathcliff is that he was from the back streets of Liverpool – a bit of rough – and he fell for the lady of the house, the posh girl and Olivier played him with a posh English accent. Today he would be played by someone from Liverpool.

There are people – actors – here who still worship him; of course there are others who don't like him at all, but he had the two or three things it calls for to be a star – he was ambitious, talented and not very clever.

I think the latter is very important because, according to the great playwright Brien Friel, to be a star to have to have huge huge ambition, a talent that is sensational and unique (there's only one Sir Laurence) and no brain.

And when you think about it, it has a lot of truth.

I know – and I am bound to know – a lot of actors. A lot of them are friends but none of my friends are huge stars – I have a very famous cousin, whom I have never met and when I think about him he may be as thick as two short planks too, for all I know; I don't know, which is why I won't name him, but Friel's view is that brains get in the way.

Maybe they do and maybe they don't!

If you wanted to be a movie star, you are good looking and you think you have what it takes, what kind of a reaction would you get if you took the idea to the bank?

What kind of business plan would you present to them and if they fell for it, what advice would these very clever people give you?

Imagine, for one wonderful moment, going on to the TV show Dragon's Den.

The people on Dragon's Den (they changed the title in America to Shark's Tank.) – the so called Dragons – are the most ambitious kind of people there are, but would you really want to have a drink with them?

They'd be talking about the business plan, the yield, the profit, the bottom line – I have been in the company of such people and I have seen the attitude and the way their face changes if you give them a good idea.

I was on a train once and standing next to me was a businessman with the suit, the brief case, the Financial Times, the whole nine yards, and he complained about the train.

It was British Rail then and he said they had no idea (BR that was – look at it now) how to run it.

And I said “why don't they put advertisements at the back of the seats” and a bulb went off in his head; I could see it.

“Advertise!” he said.

His name?

I have no idea who he was! But that bulb!!

As I was saying I know loads of actors and I have known briefly well known ones on the way up: pains in the arse, stars up there: pains in the arse and stars who were stars here and when I met them in Hollywood they were nice people again; they were lost, they didn't know where to go, where to network (arse hole creep) but when I pointed them in the right direction they became pains in the arse again.

Not being able to look you in the eye in case an important casting director or director came into the room, so they could talk to them and you know it's a sight to see.

What happens is, they sidle up to their prey with a big smile on their face and start a little chat; after about three minutes or so another person will come up and take the head honcho away - I'm sure they are hired to do this – leaving the networker marooned in the middle of the floor.

But you will see others, other networkers, dappled throughout the room, waiting to pounce like hyenas on the savanna – in fact looking like hyenas with their teeth, ready to smile, and their eyes widening and scrunching so as to show them off at their best, waiting for their victim to be alone.

I think the reason I don't know the big big stars intimately is that they don't seem to have many friends; on the way up they twitch and walk around, can't sit down for long, they worry that they'll miss a phone call or a casting and they are no company at all and in any case, as in Hollywood, they drop you and forget you as soon as you've shown them the way.

They pretend to forget you as they know that you know what kind of a prat they really are.

I met quite a few stars in Hollywood and some of them were nice – George Clooney is charming and quite well informed – so it doesn't happen to everybody.

Mrs Gandhi and an Englishman Abroad.

2024-03-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

I once met Mrs Gandhi; now if you knew me you would wonder how some bum of an actor with only one TV credit in the year of 1983 could get to meet the leader of the world’s largest democracy.
It had, indeed, started off as a bad year which I had inherited from the year before; in February I was offered one episode of The Angels – a BBC hospital soap – playing the role of a cop in one scene; I jumped at it; we had three kids to feed.
On the first day of rehearsals I bumped into a BBC producer, Innes Lloyd, in the lift at the BBC rehearsal rooms in North Acton – fondly known as the North Acton Hilton because of its size - and he told me that he had tried to get me for his John Schlessinger film An Englishman Abroad, with Alan Bates, but that my agent had told him I was unavailable.
As I was a big fan of John Schlessinger’s films, I wasn’t very pleased; surely we could have come to some arrangement after all I was only in one scene in ‘The Angels’ and we could have…..oh it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I did my one scene – filmed at some hospital in Coventry and started to look for another agent.
When I got home one day my wife was buzzing with excitement; I couldn’t calm her down.
She had received a telephone call from The Guardian newspaper: our fourteen year old daughter had won an essay writing competition and the prize was a couple of weeks in India for two.
The trip would include staying in New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Bombay and Lonavala staying in the best hotels and included £250 spending money - each.
The essay compared life in The Himalayas to life in England; of course she had never been to The Himalayas and her observations were taken from her geography lessons and her reading of Victor Zorza’s Indian columns in The Guardian under the title The Village Voice – which was about a village north of New Delhi and not The Himalayas at all.
I have to take the credit for pointing out the columns to her and telling her about the competition.
My wife was adamant that I should accompany our daughter to India; it was a world away in those days – it’s a world away these days but we have seen live cricket from there – and my wife felt our daughter needed her father; as it happened she was right but that’s another story.
So we set off for India: the trip was sponsored by Air India and The Guardian and judged by the editor of The Guardian, Peter Preston and my favourite Guardian columnist James Cameron – no not the Titanic/Avatar creator.
There were two other winners: a fourteen year old girl from Bristol and a nineteen year old boy from somewhere in the home counties; his father accompanied him and the girl from Bristol was accompanied by her female English teacher.
We had to have injections for cholera, typhoid and polio and took pills for malaria.
The evening before we were due to fly out to New Delhi we met and were entertained by the Indian High Commissioner and his family at his London residence; they gave us tea with warm milk and samosas; the High Commissioner and his family were charming – as it turned out it was a taste of what was to come – and when they spoke to us they shook their heads, Peter Sellers style, which was something else we saw a lot of in India.
Later that day we were installed in a really nice hotel near Gloucester Road tube station and went out to eat at a posh Indian Restaurant close by; ‘Princess Margaret comes here often’ we were told and we felt really important.
The following morning we emerged for breakfast and it seemed the father and son, from the Home Counties, had never eaten Indian food before and were feeling a bit green around the gills; they hadn’t even tried it as an experiment when they heard they were going to spend a little time in the sub-continent; this was also a sign of things to come: on our second day in India they didn’t even make it out of their room and had to postpone their trip to the Taj Mahal so we went ahead without them; I had wondered about the title of the John Schlessinger film An Englishman Abroad but in India it was slowly starting to make sense.
Their Delhi Belly, or whatever it was, deprived them of one of the greatest train journeys I have ever taken and the wonderful experience at Delhi Railway Station; it was such a huge exciting culture shock that I can still smell and taste it now: everything out of the story and picture books came to life; porters with four or five suit cases on their heads, a blind beggar and a beggar with no hands; crowds of people asleep on the platforms; bikes, rickshaws and more bikes.
There was a certain smell about the place; a smell not unpleasant although it might have been to some; a smell I got to like even though it was probably a mixture of faeces, urine and spices; the father and son missed the first class travel on that train, and from New Delhi to Agra, we were extremely comfortable in individual reclining seats – I remember thinking ‘you don’t get this in Britain!’
The food was freshly cooked and the staff on the train was at our beck and call.
The lavatories on the train gave an introduction to the Indian way of life; there were two lavatories in each cubicle: one for the western way and one for the Asian way; the Asian way was just a hole in the floor as the Asians squat whilst we, the westerners, sit on the loo.
As we looked through the windows on the train we saw plenty of evidence of this as it was early in the morning and people were going about their daily ablutions – in public; they were standing under stand pipes washing their bodies and if we saw one man squatting for a crap we saw a hundred.
I still have the image now of men in the distance squatting with a tail going from their bottoms to the ground.
We learned that they wiped their arses with the paper in their left hands and ate with their right.
Our daughter had never flown before and the journey from Heathrow to New Delhi was a good way of getting used to it. I don’t know how long the flight was but I remember eating, drinking, sleeping, eating again and still being in the air; the flight wasn’t very full and I appeared in the ‘in flight’ movie on that flight and also on the way back; an embarrassingly small role, I have to add, and nobody noticed me in the movie but they all saw my name in the end credits.
Stepping off the plane the heat and humidity hit our ankles even though it was April and dark. It was something like five in the morning UK time but we were raring to go.
We lived in Northampton at the time – maybe that was why my acting career was going south – and whenever we told anybody in India where we lived in England, their eyebrows would lift in confusion and then they would give that charming shake of the head we had seen at the High Commissioner’s Residence; they had never heard of Northampton so we would quickly add ‘sixty miles north of London.’
Even though it was late we needed to rise very early the following morning as an extra trip had been arranged; so at five fifteen I had my first Indian breakfast: masala omelette, toast and tea with hot milk.
Two Ambassador type cars picked us up at the front of our hotel and we were whisked off to Mrs Gandhi’s residence.
Yes we were going to meet the formidable Mrs ‘G’; her official residence seemed to be in a residential area, and we were led into a huge garden; there must have been two or three hundred other people there as there was some rule in India that anyone could show up to meet the Prime Minister; whether she actually met any of them I don’t know.
After the cold and dark of Britain, we were suddenly in a heat wave and hit by extreme brightness from the early morning sun; I had my white jacket on and even wore a tie; the local inhabitants wore very loose clothes, huge bell-bottom trousers or flairs and nearly all wore hats.
Parakeets and monkeys roamed freely as we followed a smiling official towards the main building; there didn’t seem to be a lot of noise but a kind of hum about the place accompanied by the whirls of cameras, the odd call from a human in the distance and then lots of squawking from the parakeets.
Over one side of the garden was a party of people huddled together; I got the impression that this was a whole organisation that had shown up to see the premier and not just their duly elected representatives.
We were shown into a kind of outer room and the others waiting in there seemed very nervous.
I suppose as an actor I had worked, and have worked since, with well known people; well known people in show business world, that is, not world leaders who go down in history; well known people so full of themselves, sometimes, that they are very unpleasant and sometimes when these well known people suddenly become unknown people it’s a bit of a relief.
After about five minutes or so we were called and led into another room; the room didn’t seem to have any aesthetic qualities at all, the furniture was functional: a sofa, an occasional table and a few chairs; behind the table was an open French window, which led to a quiet part of the garden, and another doorway was covered by a curtain.
When Mrs Gandhi entered she did the full theatrical bit through that curtain; she walked in as if she was the leader of the biggest democracy in the world, she walked in like a world leader, an important member of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty and a figure of history.
She was accompanied by a few bodyguards; I have often thought about those body guards as it was her private bodyguard that turned and killed her eighteen months later in the grounds of that very building.
Everybody stood up when she entered and she sat down between the two girls on the sofa; our daughter and the other fourteen year old girl.
Straight away it was obvious she was very comfortable with them; she started to chat informally but I noticed she didn’t have any small talk at all; she asked them about their essays, how they liked India – even though we had only been there eight hours - and would they ever consider coming back again; then she asked them where they lived; when it was our daughter’s turn she said she lived in Northampton sixty miles north of London: “I know where Northampton is” Mrs Gandhi snapped “I was at Oxford.”
At one point I noticed Mrs Gandhi ring a bell she had secreted in her hand; through the curtain came somebody and before we could see them she asked them to get a photographer; this was the cue for us to stand behind her but it was also the cue for the bodyguards to push and shove each other to try and get into the shot.
I was standing at the end so didn’t think I had a chance of being included because when the photographer got ready to take the photo he seemed to aim it over to the other side of the room; but one of the body guards tried to get his face in to the shot and gave me a little push; I shoved gently back and in the subsequent photo he disappeared totally behind the person standing next to me; serves him right.

See above.

After the photo Mrs Gandhi shook hands with a couple of us and swept out as sweepingly as she had swept in.
I often think about those body guards.

My Favourite Smell

2024-02-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

Wrekin College

If I was to ask you what your favourite smell is – what would you say? Your favourite after shave lotion? Some expensive scent like Chanel?

Let's think of something else like the smell of rain; smells good doesn't it but what if it was from an aerosol!! The smell of lavender from a fabric softener? What about the smell of shit from an aerosol. Smells just as good to me as anything from an aerosol like rain or lavender.

When I was a student I worked as a milkman for a short while, and oh how it sent me round the twist. I was at a dairy in Wellington, Shropshire; I had to cycle on a old bike for half an hour every morning at the crack of dawn, get to the bakery, load my van and go out to deliver milk.

It was an electrically controlled vehicle powered like the dodgem cars at a fairground, which I have written about before on here. It had two pedals, like an automatic car, but we used our left foot on the brake with the right on the accelerator which is not recommended in cars.

Each house I delivered milk to had its own smell; the the big posh school, Wrekin College, had it's own smell too; the masters and mistresses and the professors lived 'in house' and when I delivered I discovered my favourite smell, a welcoming smell the greatest smell in the world . . . .. well bear with me, indulge me for a little while and see where this goes. Believe me I don't know at the moment which, I think, is the reason I write this blog, which is to discover what's going on in my mind.

After I delivered to the school – which was to various staff members as well as the place where they cooked for the pupils – I went to private houses and as usual I formed impressions of each of them.

I could kind of tell who were the clever people, the people who were newly rich (the nouveau riché), the pretentious, the thoroughbreds, the educated and the people I envied, at that time, but no more.

For instance, there was a big house called 'Mad-hatters' another called 'Karjohn' and it became obvious to me that Karen and John had named the latter and didn't have much of an imagination – okay, okay they couldn't call their semi-detached 'Grey Gables' or anything like that, but why not leave it just to its number?

Mad-hatters had my favourite smell and every time I went there I could tell that they were a warm family – and indeed they were – with their multitude of children (or what seemed a multitude) and great taste in cars, clothes, furniture and the very building itself.

Each time I opened their gate, carrying three bottles of Jersey Cream milk (in one hand I venture to add) the smell would hit me the closer I got to the kitchen – of course you can guess what it is by now!

As this Wellington was in Shropshire, which is in the West Midlands, and where sterilised milk was and is also available, meant the people who bought it didn't have a fridge or were brought up in a household who didn't have a fridge, and if you have never tasted sterilised milk you have never suffered.

Of course if you haven't tasted Jersey Cream Milk you've never tasted milk.

By the way everything in America is homogenised; you get skimmed, semi-skimmed and full cream milk but it's all - - - homogenised!

But that's America; let's go back to Wellington: there was a big house on the corner of a very big street – in fact I think it was actually on a roundabout; it had a wide gateway, which was surrounded by a high privet, and I could drive the van – hang on it was called a milk float – I could drive the milk float, and the drive had enough room for me to get in and turn around quite easily.

Living in this house was a very tiny woman with a very high squeaky voice. I don't know what kind of house it was, but there were loads of teenagers hanging around all the time, and sometimes, I could smell dope – yes I knew the smell of dope I was at drama school even though I never smoked any.

I think, in retrospect, that it might have been some kind of half way house, with the tiny woman working for some kind of rehab organisation; I had to deliver all kinds of milk to them, apart from the expensive kind, and I figured that the inhabitants were from broken homes and dysfunctional families, because of the large order of sterilised – or sterra as they called it – I delivered.

Okay so I generalise, but sociology generalises too, otherwise sociologists would never have anything to write about!

On Friday evenings I collected money from the customers, which meant calling around at their houses; some people would leave their money on the doorstep, in the mornings, but one particular man would invite me in to his house: as soon as I went in, it was quite obvious he was anticipating my visit. I followed him to the back part of his house to a tiny room. In this room there was a table, with nothing but an exercise book laid open to a particular page. Next to the page, was a little bit of money; enough for the seven pints of milk I had delivered that week; I had to take the money, but not before I signed for it.

After that he walked me to his door and got on with his oh so busy life – I don't think!!!!

Now let me tell you this – I was going to write this post today about something else – and it was this:

When the nuclear accident happened in Chernobyl, the population were told that they had to leave - every single one of them. They were told they could only take one thing away with them, and the people scurried around to choose and find, find and choose and take it to their new life, wherever that might be. One man chose a door – a single door; the door had been used to lay out members of his family when they died. . . . and I got to thinking what would I take – what would it be? I thought about it for some time and was disappointed that I couldn't think of anything so what would yours be?

But back to my favourite smell – bacon. The smell of cooking bacon and indeed the smell of cooking and food, when going in to people's houses, is so welcoming that any attempt to cover it with aerosols or fresh air is to be discouraged.

But the smell of bacon and the taste of it – to me – are two totally different things: It's nearly as disappointing as the taste of coco cola.

Los Angeles to Chicago by train: including a death in Fort Madison, Iowa. 2.

2024-02-03T07:01:00.000-08:00

Our train resting in Chicago.

This is an entry from 2011: we were returning from Los Angeles to London. I find it hard to believe it was thirteen years ago and I read it again just now.

We are on a train and stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico where the temperature between the inside of the train and outside is vast. We were out walking along the platform, looking at the array of Indian trinkets, blankets and the like and, as we were doing this, it was over ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

The journey, so far, has been entertaining. The priority of time on this train has taken a back seat to the attention to detail, the running of the system, and the pleasure of travel.

There is no wi-fi on the train, so I will write in bits over this journey through America from Los Angeles to Chicago; unless anything extraordinary happens between Chicago and New York, I won't write about that part of the journey as I've already written 'On a Train in England' in March, 2011.

The first thing we heard last night, when we got on, was a message over the speaker system from Chip the lounge car attendant, telling us he was delayed slightly getting his groceries, and had a problem with his fridge, and asked us to give him a break, and that he would be starting shortly with a bill of fare which includes coffee, beer, pizza, burgers and potato chips.

After a little while he came on again to say, he was open which meant that everybody on the train went to Chip the lounge car attendant and lined up; his little lounge car is like a mini Seven Eleven – maybe about 30 feet long, with passengers seats on either side – so you can imagine the hustle and bustle.

On the menu it said that they had 'freshly brewed' decaf coffee but when I went there afterwards he told me they were out of decaf!!!

NB: in those days I didn't take caffeine.

After that we heard from 'Jackie in the Diner' – she was asking people if they wanted to make dinner reservations; she would say 'this is Jackie in the diner – would anybody wishing to book for dinner make your reservations now.' This voice would come on at various intervals asking people to come in for dinner, lunch or whatever.

Then Chip from the lounge car would come on again telling us he was going on a break, so if anybody wanted anything they needed to hurry up and come and get it.

Things were swinging along and we were travelling, then Jackie came on the speaker system again, and wanted to know if people could hear her, as the system didn't appear to be working. Chip from the lounge car came on to say he could, in fact, hear her.

When he said this a woman, sitting close by, using her cell- phone, and speaking quite loudly in a New York accent, said 'This is Dolores from Delaware; I need to speak to Mr Jefferson.'

This sounded interesting but then Jackie came on the speaker system again saying 'I can't hear you at all, Chip; you're not coming through.'

Then again 'This is Delores from Delaware! Can you put me through?'

'This is Chip from the lounge car – I am back from my break; if you want bagels or drinks now is the time to come.'

Whilst this was going on over the speaker system, a ticket collector interrupted all by saying he was coming around for tickets and 'don't forget to sign them in the top left hand corner.'

Each time he took a ticket from someone who hadn't signed it he would say 'I need you to put your autograph in the top left hand corner.'

Jackie came on again 'This is Jackie in the diner – am I coming through?'

'I can hear you, Jackie' said Chip from the lounge car.'

'This is Delores from Delaware – is Mister Jefferson there?”

The ticket inspector approached us puffing and blowing after climbing some stairs 'those stairs are killing me' he said; we're on the top deck.

'This is Jackie from the diner; I will be coming around to take dinner reservations, starting with the sleeping section and then coach.'

I sat reflecting about my years in America, seventeen of them, knowing that they are contemplating an all electric super duper rail system which will get you from point A to point B faster than a speeding bullet, and wishing they wouldn't do it, as it would spoil this lot.

The food in the lounge car was ropey to say the least, but the food in the diner was excellent and reasonably priced.

There are four seats at each table, so you are forced to face the other two people, which more or less forces you to communicate with them.

On the first evening at dinner we sat with a Navajo professor and his wife; he was quite famous as he was the first Indian professor – I don't know if he was the first in the state or the country, but he told us he had celebrated his 67th birthday recently by walking down one side of the Grand Canyon, along the flat bit, and up the other side; he was a very fit looking guy, for his age, and he told us he does 10K runs, and was formally a baseball pitcher. I don't know if he was a major league pitcher or just played at college level, as we never got that far, but they were getting out at Flagstaff, Arizona the following morning at 4:30.

The next morning, at breakfast, we met Tom and Jenny from Victorville California; famous for the place where Roy Rogers used to live, and have his western museum; I remember his horse, trigger, nearly stepping on me at the stage door, after I saw Roy Rogers live at a theatre in Birmingham, England. I have to say that as there are quite a few Birminghams in America apart from the one in Alabama.

Tom and Jenny were also an interesting couple having cycled the world, by all accounts; regular train travellers.

In the Observation Car I met another Navajo Indian, this one lived on the reservation. As we sat watching New Mexico flash by, he pointed out lots things about the area, particularly some black stones, in the distance, which he said were from the top of 'that mountain' which exploded with the help of the volcano hundreds of millions of years ago. He went on to say that they used the black stones (he had a name for them which I have forgotten) in their sweat lodges.

He was going from Gallup, New Mexico, to Albuquerque, to meet his son; he was sending his son a message using the modern equivalent of the 'smoke signal', he joked; his Blackberry phone.

He said he was proud of his son as he took the decision to leave the reservation and set up by himself 'abroad.' He said he had lived 'abroad' for a short time – abroad was anywhere off the reservation.

Indeed it is abroad as the reservations have their own sovereignty.

Later that day, Saturday, we had dinner with two people on their way back to live in Chicago from Los Angeles – we wished them well on their journey and they did the same for us.

Before we met them for dinner – in the usual accidental way – a man two seats in front of us was getting leery; he had been drinking all day and his voice was sounding very horse.

Whilst we were away, he called everybody names and started shouting; someone called the conductor who came and told him off; he sat in his seat for a moment but when the conductor went away, he started again. Saying the same things, but this time he was really screaming, so the conductor, a young woman, threw him into his chair, called the cops and they threw him off the train at the next station, and into gaol somewhere; we were oblivious to all this as we were at dinner with our bicycle travellers.

Chip in the lounge car came on the loud speaker, as we pulled in to Fort Madison, Iowa, to say that he was running out of food in the lounge car; he was out of bagels, pizzas and most of the cheese and ham sandwiches.

As the train pulled out of Fort Madison it stopped; we had run over somebody. We were travelling at about 15 - 20 mph and apparently the person was killed. We don't know anything about it at the moment but within two or three minutes I saw a cop car outside scaling a six feet fence; then he was told where the body was by some kids outside.

The latest news is a few young guys tried to cross the tracks and the last one was hit and killed by the train; there's no need to describe what we know or what I saw but you know what train wheels are like; the young guys were all in their early twenties.

As we sit here waiting to move a voice in the background is heard: 'This is Delores from Delaware; I am just north of the train station in Fort Madison, Iowa. Today a man was killed . . . .”

As if oblivious to everything, whilst this was going on, another voice was heard ' this is Chip in the lounge car – I'm just back from my break.'

Cops look at the body (out of shot) as paramedics call the coroner.

Yes - The Guardian, Private Eye, etc and The Post Office.

2024-01-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

This is not going to be a long hi falutin essay about the rabbiting of Farage (the) Cabbage or Trump (the) Hump on our backs, but the whole world by now must be aware of the goings on concerning the post office here.

I used to work for the post office before I went to college. My mother always wanted me to be in a safe job at the age of 15, would you believe, for that is when we left school in my day. When they fitted me out in a uniform with a stupid hat, I felt like a bell boy at an hotel – an hotel? it is correct.

My job was to deliver telegrams and I was offered twice the money I was earning at an 'army and navy' store nearby. I used to hide the hat, I have to say, and I remember the guy who was fitting me out in the uniform saying to me 'oh you'll have all the girls after you when you wear this' – well there are uniforms and uniforms and this was not one of the attractive ones.

But there was a chance of riding a motor bike when I was 16 so that was something to look forward to. Geoff Duke, the great motor cyclist was one of my heroes so I looked forward to it.

All around the offices were big black windows, just below the ceiling – this was in every office – and behind the black windows were people spying on the workers down below. Somewhere on the outside of the building was a secret door where the spies would come in and go out. They were called the I.B., the Investigation Branch.

When I started the job I had to sign The Official Secrets Act – we were civil servants. In fact I signed the Official Secrets Act again, later when I was part time with the SAS which in conjunction with the post office, I was also paid.

That was when I was 18. A lot of the time I would go to the SAS at the weekends, sometimes to a firing range or other outdoor activities.

It was fun - 23 SAS, look them up.

If we had an accident on the motor bike we didn't carry any papers, just our driving licence. If anybody wanted to see proof of insurance we would say 'it's handled by the post office.'

The mighty post office.

The mighty post office with its own laws it's own police (the I.B.) and was a law unto itself. Where was I heading?

Needless to say I got out as soon as I could.

In those days it wasn't acceptable to be out of work – factory fodder and every other kind of fodder when bosses and gaffers talked down to you.

I heard some of the inquiry the other day when the post masters and post mistresses reported that they'd been given the third degree by mafia like interrogators.

The post office sent a guy with a black shirt and jacket in as a witness – nothing like playing the part.

Lots of people in this country for some strange stupid reason, think that anybody who reads The Guardian, is some kind of lefty revolutionary. 'What do you want that for?' I would hear when I was younger, well it was The Guardian, Private Eye, the BBC and their programmes who did all the work to expose the scandal at the post office. It was initially started by an ex postmaster called Alan Bates, no not the late movie star, writing to Computer Weekly Magazine and taken up by a reporter there called Tony Collins, that was in 2004 and the next person was Rebecca Thompson in 2009 – so you can see how long all this has been going on. She hunted for other people accused and charged and eventually a guy at the BBC did a radio series about the whole business and at the end of the day, after all these years, ITV commissioned the series.

Now you may ask why ITV when a lot of other people did the ground work – I don't know, but would as many people have viewed it on the BBC? It had already been on Panorama and loads of times on Radio 4.

So don't criticise The Guardian and the Private Eye with the brilliant Ian Hislop – we need them.

The Fibonacci Sequence, again.

2024-01-11T17:40:00.000-08:00

This Post was viewed the other day by forty odd people. I often wonder how they find the posts so I read it, found it interesting and here it is again. It was up here on November 26^th 2014 which will explain references to the film about Alan Turing (above).

This is going to be a strange old post but I was thinking of something so let's see how it goes.

Everywhere you look these days you will see the name of Alan Turing; this is for a number of reasons. One may be because there is a movie on release starring Benedict Cumberbatch – yes of course that's his real name and we will all remember it just as we remembered Schwarzenegger.

In the film Breaking the Code, Derek Jacobi played Alan Turing and he is seen staring at a fir cone; here:

If you look at it you will see that there is a distinct pattern. What we see when we look at it is the same pattern but when a mathematician looks at it he sees a pattern of numbers.

That pattern is called the Fibonacci Sequence and was spotted nearly a thousand years ago by someone called, would you believe Fibonacci.

He didn't invent it as it was used by Indian mathematicians in the 6^th century.

What do the numbers mean?

Well the Fibonacci numbers are the sum of the two previous numbers and so on so 1, 2, is followed by 3.

Simple?

So far.

Then 3 is followed by 5 and 5 is followed by 8. What does this all mean; how can it be useful.

It's supposed to be a way of predicting how many rabbits two rabbits will begat in a year.

But.

Somehow it is the meaning of life when it comes to a computer.

There is line in Breaking the Code when Turing, quite well in to middle age by now, says 'look at this cone; a Fibonacci sequence.'

Great piece of writing aye? Engels, meet Marx, Rolls meet Royce!! (you know what I mean).

Well look at this:

That is the pattern created by a Japanese Puffer Fish; the fish is about two inches long and in order to attract a mate he makes this pattern in the sand at the bottom of the ocean. When the female arrives he flattens the middle. It was on TV the other day in the David Attenborough series.

Isn't nature wonderful?

Here are some more patterns from nature all with Fibonacci numbers.

Amazing aren't they?

So how does the Fibonacci sequence lead to a genius inventing the computer?

That's why the genius who invented the computer invented it and not me – nor you.

Unfortunately Alan Turing was born in the wrong age: as with Leonardo da Vinci, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo and many more he was homosexual; gay.

But in the time he was active the practice was against the law; it was never against the law for one man to love another man but the actual practice was.

In Britain that is; in some countries it still is.

Gay marriage is legal in lots of states in America and lots of other countries but in Uganda and really backward countries homosexuality is still against the law.

So instead of praising Alan Turing the authorities persecuted him; they chemically castrated him and he eventually committed suicide.

At a time when people knew very little about genetics or DNA, Turing used the early computer to try to crack how a soup of cells and chemicals could transform itself and grow into complex natural shapes - a subject known as morphogenesis. In an incredible article published in 1952, Turing suggested that everything from the spots and stripes on animals to the arrangement of pine cones and flowers could be explained by the interactions between two chemicals. Turing’s work in this area is intimately connected with the timing of his trial and conviction for homosexuality, and his subsequent ‘treatment’ with a course of chemical injections.

Hope you like the patterns:

Me and Tom, back in the day.

2024-01-05T03:58:00.000-08:00

There I am – above – that was in the BBC Shakespeare series As You Like It with Helen Mirren – no I'm not fighting Helen Mirren!!

That thing in my right hand is my sword – it seems to be angled right at the camera so you can't see it properly.

It's not my hair, of course, and that thing at the top of my legs is a small cod piece.

The other fella, by the way, seems to be tied up in knots and believe me if he'd known the photo was being taken he would have bent his head around. The photo was taken by one of the ace guys who take the tennis photos at Wimbledon each summer.

The photo below is going back even farther – or further - I am on the right and the play we were in was called The Alchemist by Ben Johnson – not the runner, the 17^th century playwright.

On the left, looking very elegant and proud is Julian Fellowes (now Lord Fellowes) of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey fame, and in that photo you can see something similar at the top of my legs – yes a cod piece.

The other fella, nearer Julian, is the (now) famous wine expert Oz Clarke and the fella with his hand out is an actor called Eric Corlet, who I haven't heard from since – yes I have a great memory for names; not the ones I have been told last week, but many from 50 years ago.

In that photo I am 'wearing' rather a large one cod piece – I got these two photos from the Internet but I'm sure I have originals somewhere.

I did The Alchemist at The Royal Theatre, Northampton and we stayed on in Northampton to live for some years. That's where we brought the children up, in a small village about six or seven miles east of Northampton, and it would take over an hour to get in to London on a good day – but that would be from the train station which was at least half an hour away.

A year or two after that photo was taken I was walking through the market square in Northampton, when a stocky young fella with long hair and a beard came up to me. He seemed to be dressed in many colours and he said – 'hello boy; you that fella with the cord pace; ent that right?'

Yes, I said.

'I remember that cord pace in that play.'

I asked him if he went to the theatre much and he said no that he only came that once.

He was with a girl and I could see he had a few drinks on him. Tom, his name was, and it turned out that he was quite famous as a singer of folk songs and led a folk band. We talked for a while and went for a drink in, I think, Shipman's bar just off the market square.

Now this little story is a bit vague, in places, as alcohol was used so it might not have been Shipmans, but when I did this entry before that's what I deduced.

I bumped in to him lots of times after that and sometimes we would have a drink and maybe end up at his place. I can't remember where it was but he had loads of musical instruments around the place and I was never sure if it was his place.

Those were hazy days and one time I bumped into him London near Ward's Irish House in Piccadilly and whilst we were there an old friend of mine walked in with his dog.

I don't know what pedigree, the dog was, but it had kind of curly fur as opposed to hair; Tom looked at the dog, very carefully, and said to my pal 'I think his trousers are too short.'

What Tom was doing in Piccadilly that day I don't know but my pal wanted to know if I could do a West Indian accent 'course he can' said Tom 'he can do any accent you like. I saw him doing Walsh and carckney – you name it.'

Walsh? Oh yes he was from Northampton.

'I thought you didn't go to the theatre?' I said.

'Oh I snuck in once or twice.'

So my pal said his friend wanted someone who could do a West Indian accent and go to his flat to read his play.

'You go and do that' said Tom.

'He's a white West Indian' said my pal ' says he Irish.'

'He'll be from Barbados' said Tom 'you heard the saying "Hell or Barbados?"

My pal gave Tom a blank look.

Tom said 'The Irish slave trade; 50,000 Irish men, women and children were sent to Barbados - how about that then?'

'I didn't know that' said my pal.

'Well there you go' said Tom 'some of them were sent to Virginia.'

So Tom wandered off and I went up to Muswell Hill to my pal's friend's flat.

When we got there, he sure was a white West Indian, and he'd written a play 'I need to hear this' he said, and he poured a large whiskey for me.

We sat down and read it and my pal read the other English part.

My accent wasn't that good – more Jamaican – but the whiskey was Jameson's, it flowed and we had a few laughs reading the play.

When we finished the play we played darts – with an air pistol.

We were shooting tiny coloured darts at an ordinary dart board and there was a lot of cheering and shouting, if we hit the bull, and the playwright's wife went out to fetch more whiskey. When it came back it flowed again till it was time to go.

I got to Euston Station just in time to catch the last train to Northampton which was ten minutes past midnight.

As I walked along the platform a loud voice shouted and there was Tom carrying a small bottle of whiskey.

We walked up through the carriages and there, sitting on one of the seats, I met someone else I knew. An actor called Raynor Bourton and he was with his pal who was strumming on a guitar.

Tom passed the whiskey around, and we sipped from the bottle as we travelled up to Northampton. Raynor and his pal were going all the way to Birmingham, and as we travelled, sipped and laughed, Raynor's pal went into one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs Lay Lady Lay; it was beautiful.

You would think we were a nuisance, singing and drinking and laughing, but no.

I could see people were smiling and we sang a couple of folk songs with Tom to the fore and then the guitarist starting singing 'Where do you go to my lovely? When you're alone in your bed' and the whole carriage joined in.

Not too many people as it was the middle of the night and when we finished we had reached Northampton.

Tom left the whiskey with the boys as they continued the other half of their journey to Birmingham and we wandered off in to the night.

I never saw any of them again but when I looked Tom up on the Internet I saw that his name was Tom Hall and he played with a band called The Barback Riders and he died in 2003; R.I.P.

Happy Hogmanay

2023-12-31T12:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Hogmanay to you. Or in Irish athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh, Spanish, feliz año nuevo or Happy New Year, in English.

But look above for Hogmanay in Edinburgh.

This is something I wrote nine years ago. So here it is again and why not?

I have many happy memories of it at new year's eve parties and watching it on TV – letting the new year in. I had black hair so I did a lot of 'first footing' – that is going out with a lump of coal and knocking the door as soon as I heard the midnight bells. My brudder did it too as his hair was blacker than mine.

It means that the first one over the threshold has to be a stranger (I think) with black hair bringing fuel – that was all for luck even though I wasn't a stranger. I did it for others too and I was always welcomed with a kiss and a whiskey! My brudder too with his blacker hair and deeper thirst for the whiskey and the kisses.

Let me digress here, I'll come back to hogmanay later but I mention this as most of the New Year parties I went to over the years had the TV on so we would know when Big Ben struck twelve so we could sing Auld Lang Syne but: do you place your television (if you have one) in the corner of the room?

Why?

Don't you find you get a crick in the neck after a while?

We used to have ours in the corner, with the back towards the window.

I suppose this was very handy when something boring came on and we could avert our eyes up a little and see what was going on outside. Most of the time this would be something like a lamp post or a parked car. Later in the day a curtain as it was usually dark out there and in any case as it was a sin to watch TV in the day time.

I suppose the problem being that many rooms have a fireplace in the middle so think of this:

what if there wasn't a fireplace there and you could sit back and watch the TV sitting on your sofa straight ahead.

I would often do this and think 'wouldn't it be great if the TV was there? Or maybe a little higher and a little bigger just like the movies?'

I really did think those things but I didn't think it for very long.

Eventually I moved the television to a point in front of the sofa so I could view it straight on – it's at eye level and about eight feet away so I can see the detail of the picture. It's not in anybody's way with its back to the wall between two sets of book cases.

Here we are:

Our sitting room is about twenty five feet long – nearly the whole nine yards!! - and I cannot imagine trying to be involved in anything on television from that distance.

I have heard people saying that they don't want the television to dominate the room; why not? They watch it all the time – I don't; I sit in here and type crazy posts for the blog – but that's another story.

But when I do watch it I watch it.

Whilst I am at it - we didn't have a telephone when I was a child in fact we didn't get one till we were married and when we got one we put it in the sitting room – everybody else put the bloody thing in the hall, usually in the cold, but in any case people I knew with small babies couldn't have a conversation in the hall as their voices would carry up the stairs and wake up the babies.

When we bought our first house, in 1967, we put the telephone in the sitting room.

You'd ring people and they'd tell you off for waking the kids – well MOVE it then!!

Move it move it move it!

These days, of course, people use their cell phones more and in any case their land lines (ha ha, land lines!! As if that is what they are) are usually cordless.

By the eway Land Lines don't exist any more, a land line goes directly into the wall and across the street to the telegraph pole – land line – anything else isn't a land line.

But what happened?

Why were they put out there in the first place and why was the TV in the corner?

Who started these crazy rules?

Now that Christmas is out of the way for another year this week we expect Hogmanay, which is celebrated in Scotland. This year a lot of people were expecting it to be the first Hogmanay of an Independent Scotland but not to be (for a while, anyway) – so that is a current meaning of the phrase to be or not to be!

Hogmanay is held by a lot of Scots to be the most important holiday in Scotland – and for the Scottish diaspora – so if you are Scottish and are reading this let me wish a very sincere and happy Hogmanay.

One of the reasons it holds so much importance in Scotland is that Christmas was considered too papist by the Church (Presbyterian) of Scotland so they banned it.

It wasn't even a public holiday till 1958.

In Scotland it is customary to serve a steak pie with mashed tatties, mashed neeps and carrots on Hogmanay which is actually December 31^st.

For the uninitiated tatties are potatoes (pronounced bedadaters in Ireland!!) and neeps are – well what are they? I like to think they are parsnips but fear they are probably turnips.

I heard last week about a woman living down here with her Scottish husband and that she could not match his mother's cooking of the steak pie so she called her husband's mother to ask what the secret ingredient was and was told it was sausages!!!

We would always watch TV at Hogmanay and if I never get to spend it in Scotland I will go my grave disappointed – just as my dad did because he never went to the Grand National.

I took him the The Derby though even though we had a fight on the way back.

What about?

He said Peter Shilton was England's best goalkeeper and I said it was Ray Clemence – or was it the other way around?

Who cares we soon got over it.

We would watch Andy Stewart on TV; he would say words of welcome, something like 'nice to see you' then finish the show with:

Haste ye back, we loue you dearly,
Call again you're welcome here.
May your days be free from sorrow,
And your friends be ever near.

May the paths o'er which you wander,
Be to you a joy each day.
Haste ye back we loue you dearly,

Haste ye back on friendship's way.

To be pedantic – that word loue is an obsolete typography of the word love – but I used it in any case.

During the show Duncan MacRae would recite the poem A Wee Cock Sparrow

Many years ago when I first met my wife, I was invited to meet the parents on New Year's eve – Hogmanay – and I went around there with my brudder.

We sat on the sofa and recited this poem. They looked at us as if we were drunk – we were!– here it is:

A wee cock sparra sat on a tree,
A wee cock sparra sat on a tree,
A wee cock sparra sat on a tree
Chirpin awa as blithe as could be.

Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra,
Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra,
Alang came a boy wi'a bow and an arra
And he said: 'I'll get ye, ye wee cock sparra.'

The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,
The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,
The boy wi' the arra let fly at the sparra,
And he hit a man that was hurlin' a barra.

The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,
The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,
The man wi' the barra cam owre wi' the arra,
And said: 'Ye take me for a wee cock sparra?'

The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra,
The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra,
The man hit the boy, tho he wasne his farra
And the boy stood and glowered; he was hurt tae the marra.

And a' this time the wee cock sparra,
And a' this time the wee cock sparra,
And a' this time the wee cock sparra
Was chirpin awa on the shank o' the barra.
meaning of unusual words: (but you knew them didn't you?) arra=arrow sparra=sparrow barra=barrow farra=father marra=marrow shank=leg

That makes sense now doesn't it??

Well this should and you should know the translation:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Sláinte (health)

Retrospect.

2023-12-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

Guess the year.

This blog has been going since 2009, and this is post number 534 - that is a lot of writing. All the posts are there on line and I believe this is where you go https://www.blogger.com/u/0/blog/posts/7199522268850238755

if you want to read them all. I point this out as I am still getting some of those early posts being read.

Most days I can click on and see if there are any comments. The other day I noticed a post I wrote in 2012 about Lyons Tea Shops, had a comment. The comment was made on December 17^th 2023 by someone called 'Lolli' mentioning the tea shop in Clapham Common. If you want to read that post it is at https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2012/08/lyons-tea-shops.html

and there are quite a few comments.

Once or twice friends have mentioned they tried to put a comment and couldn't – well I'm not in charge of that; I can delete comments but that's about it. By the way I never delete comments unless they are ads – which come now and again as spam – I don't even delete if they are critical, in fact over the years I have only had one bad comment which was funny.

Another post on there, I have noticed, is this one https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2010/11/in-richest-country-in-world-you-meet.html

which is about the famous coffee shop on Sunset Blvd and the closure of another that has comments too.

This one I can't figure out as this has had loads of hits this week – not as many as the BBC, for example but 29 today and it's just a review of my play 'The 2 Side of Eddie Ramone.'

https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-2-sides-of-eddie-ramone-review.html

I, obviously put it up when I was doing the play but why the sudden interest now?

And why some hits for this one https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2011/08/kate-copstick-review-in-scotsman-for.html

another review of the play.

It baffles me.

Oh look, here's one from December 2^nd 2010 – I like this one, am I being flippant and what about th4e comments? Are yours there?

https://storytelleronamazon.blogspot.com/2010/12/qatar-cutter-katarrr.html

La La Land La La Life!

2023-12-24T15:46:00.000-08:00

I was eating dinner a month or so ago, and my daughter suddenly said 'keep still' – I did.

I was wondering if I had a wasp crawling over my face or a spider.

I do remember that happening when we were at mass one day, when I was a child, and because the church was so full we were standing outside. My dad saw a wasp on the neck of a man and went across and slapped it. The fella was shocked, wondering if he should put his mitts up, and start dancing around, and theN he was told – I killed the wasp.

But this wasn't that.

My daughter dashed to pick up her phone with the camera and took that shot above.

I don't know what that was sticking between my lips, and still don't. I looked at her and without moving a muscle I pulled that face.

And so after about a week of Covid I am looking forward to a negative reading, the next time I take the test.

We were going across to Ealing to our other daughter's house to spend Christmas with her and the family but no – we are still positive so we will spend Christmas here with our son who also has COVID.

So on to other things:

I bought 2 films on Blu-ray which I love. The Glenn Miller Story and La La Land to add to my collection.

La La Land is the most wonderful and happiest of films. I was in a play in Los Angeles, once, for eight months, and the girl in our play was about the same age - and not dissimilar in looks - to Emma Stone in the movie, and she would experience the same trials and tribulations; terrible treatment at auditions and one such incident was when, in the movie, Emma Stone was giving it her all at an audition, really doing well, supposed to be speaking to someone on the telephone and having to show extreme emotion; just in the eyes, because that's where all acting comes from and then . . . someone knocked on the door of the audition room and, instead of ignoring it, the casting director beckoned for them to come in.

Emma Stone had to stop, just as it was going so well, as the intruder entered and we, the audience, could hear the casting director say 'I won't be a minute.'

I WON'T BE A MINUTE.

Can you imagine how frustrating that can be when you are working so hard? Okay, you who work in a factory or a bakehouse, you who don't think it's work at all you – you're in the minority, matey boy.

The thing is, the people making the movie probably treated the people in their film the same way at their auditions.

In happened to me in a different way as we travelled over to Dublin once, from London, to meet an executive at RTE. We were pitching a documentary about Chet Atkins and when we started to talk at the meeting, someone knocked on their door, came in, and the person we were talking to told the interloper she would only be a couple of minutes; I can't believe we stood for it.

But there are some wonderful moments in La La Land.

The first scene on the freeway with that fantastic opening song filled us full of delight and does, every time and will, the next time we watch it.

When you say to someone, do you wanna come to the movies to see – whatever film it is you want to see - and they say, I've seen it. That is not a movie buff.

My son has seen 'The Searchers' maybe a hundred times.

Sometimes, when I'm in a bar, and the television is on, and I can see the actor going through his moves, I look around the place and see that nobody is watching and wonder, what it is all about. All that work and nobody looking.

The other film, The Glenn Miller Story, I saw in the 1950s. I think it was released in 1954, when I was ten and I think I must have been at least 13 or 14. and it was the first time I saw the jazz drummer Gene Krupa and it wasn't too long after that when I took up drumming.

Not jazz drumming, I might add, but military. I joined the army cadets – the ACF, Army Cadet Force – and I eventually became the solo drummer and it didn't matter where we were on parade, I would spot my dad in the crowd.

Solo drummer meant I had to teach the kids to play the military drum. Same as any other kind of drumming; rolls, quavers, 4/4 time, 6/8 time, paradiddles – the lot. I had to compete each year to keep my place. A few of us would play solo in the next room and we were adjudicated, supposedly, blind.

I remember when I first joined he cadets we went to Budbrooke Barracks in Warwickshire and as we were sitting in the NAFFI a young soldier, sitting near, said to someone I was sitting with 'Oy! When did your mate leave his nappy off?'

Hi America – Diaper.

Two of my grandchildren are in the army cadets – well one is and the other was on the RAF equivalent, but they were in the CCF – Combined Cadet Force – where the teachers are the officers.

The trouble with us, when we went to various barracks, the NCOs and officers would treat us as regular soldiers even though we were hardly children, so if we didn't salute when passing an officer, or didn't do it properly - OY: THAT MAN THERE!

Looking at The Glenn Miller Story the other night brought it all back to me.

So Happy Christmas.

Colin Campbell in Family at War.

2023-11-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

I wrote his before and thought I would put it up again - edited - as it seems to have attracted some interest recently.

This is a kind of mish mash of stories about disappointments – not to me as I have rarely been disappointed. I've always prepared myself for one. I remember I was with a casting director in Los Angeles who actually did some casting – most of them just suggest you to a director and then you have to meet/audition. This was for a voice for a movie of which I did loads when living there – still receiving residuals even now. I voiced David Bowie, Bill Hunter, Jason Statham, a voice in Cat Woman (when I met Sharon Stone) a load of voices in Time Line and Kangaroo Jack.

The first time I met the casting director she said 'ok you got it; Thursday and Friday and maybe a day next week.'

I said 'great.'

'Is that all?' she said.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, people usually – well, usually looked pleased!'

I said 'Well I am.'

She would have seen the same reaction if she had told me that out of the hundred people they'd seen for the leading role it was between me and the other guy but the other guy got it. I always thought of it like making a sales call and being told no – try somewhere else.

You will gather, by now, that I didn't really start out to write that lot – it just came to me.

Look at that man above in the poster for Family at War! That's Colin Campbell. Family at War was a wonderful TV series made by one of the greatest television companies; Granada Television. It was, as it implies, about a family: three brothers, two sisters, mother and father, close relatives and friends. It was first shown in 1970 and in 2018 the TV channel Talking Pictures.

I was at drama school, when they were making it, and sometimes I would travel all the way to Manchester to do a walk on for £6 per day. After a few 'walk ons' they gave me three lines for which I got more money.

Colin Campbell played one of the sons, David, which was the best role and he was the best actor in it of his age. There are other fine performances too but he was the chap.

A few years later – 1991 – I did one of the Ruth Rendell Mysteries (Inspector Wexford with George Baker) and Colin Campbell was in it. He played a very small part as a cop in the office. I didn't see any of the episodes so I don't know if he was a uniform cop or what, but he did quite a few episodes.

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was quite tiny – even smaller than me! He also had a limp. I remember saying to Wexford's partner (his cop partner) 'you do know who he is, don't you?' and he shrugged his shoulders no. It wasn't as flippant as it might sound as he was interested – now who was he I have forgotten even though he did 50 episodes of Wexford.

I met Colin later through a mutual friend, as we would go to our pal's plays, premiere's etc. and he was a nice bloke. He still had some kind of limp, which I think I read about and it may have affected him somewhat; I said he was tiny but in Family at War he fills the screen. He was giving a stellar performance as David Ashton most weekday afternoons in Britain in 2018 and it sent his STARmeter on the Internet Movie Date Base up to the 27,000s – that might not seem important to some actors but you won't get an agent in LA if you are not in the top 100,000.

Colin was down in the 200,000 not that long before. He was famous again which is a shame as he died on March 1^st2018 aged 81. nine months before becoming famous again; but what is fame?

It is a funny old business when casting directors can dismiss actors like Colin Campbell and leave him to his few lines in Wexford once in a while – the other actors in Wexford hadn't heard of him either and when I watch him I often wonder if he knew the series, Family at War, was coming on; RIP.

But there are loads of disappointments – I went to Dublin many years ago to do a Guinness commercial. I particularly remember it for a couple of reasons, one the song they used, which was recorded by the pop group Blue Mink famous for their song Melting Pot – in our case it was Get Together With a Guinness Right Now.

We worked in a pub in Baggot Street, Dublin. I went in to the loo and someone had written on the wall Sometimes I think I'd like to be the Saddle on a Bike. I remember thinking how wonderful that scanned.

The other thing I remember it for, was the girl who was in it; we'll call her Mavis.

Before filming starts the artists, the actors, the talent, or whatever you want to call us, gather on the set, which in this case was the customer side of the bar, and rehearse the scene for the camera. Three blokes and an attractive girl. The girl had been in make up and was wearing rollers. The three guys included me, and two other well known actors of the day; we were cast in London and flown over the previous evening. The director was an Englishman and most of the crew were from Dublin.

After we ran through the scene the girl had to go back to make up – she was a local Dublin girl. The director asked for one of the girl extras to take the girl's place whilst Mavis was in make up. The 'stand in' was very nice and we all got on well together and then it became obvious that the director preferred the stand in as opposed to the girl who was being made up, quaffed and dressed.

'Get rid of Mavis' he suddenly said to his assistant.

“What?' said the assistant.

'Get rid of her – Mavis'

Of course her name wasn't Mavis – but what an arsehole.

Nobel.

2023-08-17T08:27:00.007-07:00

The gardens of The Highland Garden Hotel.

I'm writing another novel, well I have only just started – maybe about two to three thousand words. I don't know what happens but I've started, that's the main thing, and my characters will show me the way, and that is true.

If you write every day the whole thing will come to you.

I have written two others, and they didn't sell well on Amazon, but here we are years later, and I have seen them going for hundreds of dollars on ebay, and I have often wondered where the catch is there – is it a con? - who knows, and who cares?

I called it The Callaghans and it put me in mind of a man called Nobel – or even Noble - who was the manager of the building where we lived in Los Angeles. He was a dear gentleman, with very long white hair, Indian accent, and he would always claim to be British and said he hated The Beatles and their M.B.E. As they didn't deserve it.

When I first met him he told me he was almost one hundred years old – he would say he was 99 and looked toward his hundredth birthday.

He lived in the penthouse, and you could see, by going inside, that every time one of the tenants left he would empty their apartment into his.

To enter through his front door, you had to go in sideways, as there were mattresses in the hallway, and the rest of the apartment was full of similar items, apart from two seats in front of an electric heater, with a couple of bars of red heat drawing us closer to it.

He always promised that if my children came across to stay, he would be able to put them up; where, I don't know.

In later years some of our children would stay in the hotel around the corner, where many actors would come and stay for the pilot season – that mythical time when casting directors have actors in to audition for roles in the new plethora of series, either crime or comedy.

If you were a selected actor you would have to have at least three or, maybe four, call backs; then they would make you sign a deal. It would be something like $500 per episode for the first season of about 13 episodes, and then the next year maybe a 15% rise (or raise) and before you knew it, you would be expecting to have your life changed because of all the money you would be expecting to earn. This is before you have been offered the job.

Sometimes you might even go into rehearsal and shoot the pilot, for which you were paid handsomely, and then they would drop the whole idea leaving you back to the eggs for breakfast lunch and dinner.

You could even go as far as having the episode you are in broadcast, but if it wasn't well received it would be dropped straight away with no explanation to the viewers.

They did this to protect themselves in case the series was a huge success and the agents would be in to see the producers to triple your salary, or take you out of it.

If you did a full series and then the series is extended to 100 episodes, it could go in to syndication. Then you would be paid a fortune for the series to be shown forever. For example the TV series Seinfeld was screened its last episode in 1998 and went into syndication and this is where the contributors make a fortune – Seinfeld, himself, makes $400 million for each cycle of syndication; can you believe that - $400 million.

In the UK? Nothing like it at all; the top paid actor at the BBC is one of the stars of Casualty who is on around £250,000. If they repeat an episode of Dr Who for example, the Doctor would get £1,000.

That hotel, by the way, was called The Highland Gardens Hotel, and it is the place where Janice Joplin died in 1970; back then it was called The Landmark Hotel and the room, in which Joplin spent her final hours, is still a rentable room, and her fans seem to know it. The closet contains a small brass plaque, commemorating her life, and the walls are heavily decorated with fan art and notes, comprising a shrine to her.

But getting back to Nobel, at one time he was a nurse and worked with Albert Scheweitzer, the Nobel prize winner, at his leper colony in Africa, and had connections in Hawaii. He wasn't anywhere near 100, maybe 75 and he kept falling ill.

He spent some time in The Good Samaritan's Hospital on Wilshire Blvd where they took Robert Kennedy when he was shot at an hotel on Wilshire Blvd.

Nobel got to calling me Mister Callaghan – I know he was deaf but he could hear sometimes and maybe Sullivan sounded a bit like Callaghan to someone who is hard of hearing.

I would go to the hospital on occasion and cut his hair – one time, when trimming his beard, I caught him with the scissors and he pulled a terrible face, almost screwing it up in a ball. I was mortified - not a peep out of him just a painful face.

He would use strange phrases – if he met English people he would talk of Beatles – shouldn't have the MBE.

One time I was giving him a lift, somewhere, and I went into a large pharmacists on La Brea Avenue, where there seemed to be some kind of fuss.

A little old lady was trying to spend her store card, mistaking it for a debit or credit card, and the store manager stopped her. She didn't have credit or debit cards and was getting upset.

I explained to her that her card was worthless, which she eventually accepted.

She must have been older than Nobel and I offered to take her home – it wasn't far away.

I took her back to the car and I told Nobel I was taking her home and he said 'What?? She's your accountant?'

We dropped her off and all was well.

One of the times he was in The Good Sam - as they called it - I went, as usual, to cut his hair, but he was fast asleep.

I didn't want to disturb him so spent the time sitting there looking at him sleep.

Two ambulance men came into his room and woke him up; they had to take him back to the care home, and when they woke him, he looked at them and said 'you can't move me from here; I'm dead.' And went back to sleep.

The poor old sole actually thought he was dead.

He did die not long after that and whilst writing this I can't believe I've never written about him before.

When we first found the apartment building, in Hollywood, we looked at it and he very kindly showed us around and and I called him back to say we would take the apartment. When he answered the phone, I said 'Hello; it's Chris Sullivan.' And he said 'Oh hello Mister Callaghan.'

Birmingham - Mark Wynter.

2023-07-10T05:55:00.010-07:00

Birmingham - Michigan.

A long time ago, when God was a little boy, and Stephen Fry hadn't even been thought of, I went to a place called The Birmingham Hippodrome – and guess where that place was? Yes you guessed it – Birmingham. Not any of the thousands of Birminghams in America like Michigan but Birmingham, Warwickshire – incidentally there are not thousands in America just 16 not forgetting New Birmingham in Tipperary, Ireland.

You don't believe me?? Okay here we go:

Birmingham Alabama the largest city in Alabama and the largest city named Birmingham in the United States.

Birmingham Connecticut.

Birmingham Kentucky, a sunken town

Birmingham Indiana,

Birmingham Iowa,

Birmingham Michigan,

Birmingham Missouri,

Birmingham New Jersey

Birmingham, Erie County, Ohio

Birmingham, Guernset County, Ohio

Birmingham, Chester County, Pennsylvania

Birmingham Huntington County, Pennsylvania

Birmingham Township, Schuyler County, Illinois

Birmingham (Pittsburgh) a neighborhood in Pittsburgh now known as South Side.

Birmingham Township, Pennsylvania.

There we are I'm glad I got that out of the way – everybody says that the 'other' Birmingham is in Alabama, and now you can see it isn't! There are loads of them. Now I suppose I'm going to get hits from all of those Birminghams.

But back to The Birmingham Hippodrome; I was taken there first by my mother, who loved the theatre. I was also taken to The Alexandra Theatre (just round the corner), with the school, to the Christmas Pantomime one year, which had a lasting impression upon me. I can't remember which panto it was, but I remember the set and I remember actors coming on and – acting!!

The Hippodrome was more for variety shows, and it had a long auditorium and you needed microphones; the Alex had a wider auditorium so the acoustics must have been better.

I saw loads of pop singers at the Hippodrome, as I used to go every week, and lots of other shows – I even remember seeing a trapeze act where we thought the man on the flying trapeze, was going to fly in to the audience but caught the trapeze at the last moment.

I saw Norman Wisdom there – he played many instruments including the drums – and some of the pop singers I saw were Charlie Gracie, Slim Whitman and many others including pop packages, when I saw Billy Fury, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager and one time one in the pop packages was a certain Mark Wynter.

He was more of a ballad singer than a rock singer and he covered songs, which was common in those days, of American hits. A cover, in those days, was a cover of a major hit in America and they would release the song in the UK before, or at the same time, as the American hit. Sometimes the UK version would start to sell so well that the American original version would be wiped out, so great singers like Gene McDaniels, never really made it in the UK - although I saw him at the Hippodrome too and he was wonderful.

Mark Wynter covered Venus in Blue Jeans which was originally recorded by Jimmy Clanton (but there was a hit by Frankie Avalon); Go Away Little Girl, recorded by Steve Lawrence – which is a better version than the one byMark Wynter. It was written by Gerry Goffin and Carol King, when they were in the Brill Building in New York, and I always thought it should have been recorded by Bobby Vee, as he was Goffin & King's kind of muse. I see he did record it but too many covers meant it didn't get noticed.

The expression 'cover' has changed over the years – like lol – as it only meant a cover of a current recording. All bands, groups, pop singers sang on stage other people's songs – or numbers (where did that word come from for a song?) - when I saw The Beatles they sang other people's songs – Twist and Shout, Baby It's You, Chains, Till There Was You etc. In fact Elvis never wrote a song in his life (not even Don't Be Cruel), neither did Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby or any of the major stars. If you revived a song it would be called a revival but then someone called it a cover one day – probably some idiotic deejay - and now they call bands who do other people's songs cover bands – or cover groups.

When we saw the pop package at the Hippodrome we went around to the stage door to see the pop stars emerge – it has to be said that most of them emerged as spotty little Herberts and I remember thinking there may be a chance for me – but in those days I didn't have the gall to get up and do that. I won a singing competition at the army cadets Christmas Party one day but – ah we were only messing about, we were on our way to be macho men and . . ..

One of the stars who emerged that day was Mark Wynter – as the girls approached him he said 'Mind my Sunday best!'

So we shoot forward many years in fact to 2013; we went in to the west end because our son bought tickets for us to see the show Dreamboats and Petticoats a rock'n'roll show set in the early sixties. When we approached the theatre the first thing I saw was that Mark Wynter was in it; there was an old photo of him in the street; in it he looked about 25 and it said that he was starring in the show and that he would be singing his four hits for the first time in 40 years. So the first thing we wanted to see when we went in was what he looked like!

We didn't have to wait long for that as he opened the show. His (character's) granddaughter was up in the attic, playing his Dancet Player and he went up to her; what did he look like? Remarkably similar to what he did when he was 20 or 17 or however age he was when I saw him. When he turned around, I noticed, he was going very thin on top and there was a kind of stoop in his posture – but from the time the show started to the finish he never stopped dancing; he did dance like a granddad at a wedding. He had all the steps and the fancy footwork but the stoop gives the age away and make his legs look to be from a different body. But best of luck to him I thought he was great.

The show itself was wonderful – it was announced that all the music and the singing was live, which is a great change from the insulting backing tracks. Three guitars, drums and piano, plus two young female saxophonists.

I knew all the songs they performed and if you are a rocker and you like this stuff trust me they played it just as it was played in the day.

In the first scene he found his fender and his granddaughter said 'Were you in a band?' and he said 'The Coldstream Guards were a band – I was in a group – for five minutes.' Then she said 'Oh look at this (record) Let's Dance' 'Play that one' he said 'that was my audition.'

And the scene shoots back 40 years and away we go with Let's Dance!

Somebody mentioned Mark Wynter to me, the other day, which is why this is here.